But I was shocked to see that CALLBACKS were put down by C++ purists
???
Callbacks are everywhere in C++ although these days they are often function objects instead of function pointers. Somebody who puts down callbacks is certainly no C++ purist.
You can never know that a law holds and direct observation won't help here. The point of calling it a law is not that we know it always holds but that we _claim_ it always holds until proven wrong. A law describes what we claim to be a necessary relationship. If A then _always_ B. If you there is one single occasion where you can proof that A doesn't result in B then the law is invalid. Which usually means you have to modify it a bit to make it valid again, at which point the game can start again.
GNU and LInux are interesting for sociological/political reasons. they are not scientifically interesting.
Amen to that.
Happily the science of operating systems isn't very interesting anymore so this is no great loss. Political and economic reasons are of much greater importance, and this is where Linux shines.
the logical extension of a system that was in place before it
Software is very much like knowledge and unlike 'normal' goods in that it has a zero marginal cost. So the 'logical extension' of the system would have been to make all programmers scientists:-) Not that I advocate such a solution.
[...] you will reach a point at which the root of the system was put in place with sufficient justifications.
I'm sure you can dig them up and provide them to us as evidence.
Systems grow to meet current demands.
When left unattended systems will grow to meet the special interests of those involved. If you want it to serve the general interest then you better keep a very close eye.
That a system exists is prima facie proof that the system's existence is justified.
A bold statement. This suggests that there is some kind of selection mechanism that weeds out the unjustified systems and/or strengthens the justified ones. Think natural selection or market mechanism. Those don't apply in this case so what would that selection mechanism be?
Is not a group of people who want to scavenge the work of creators for free also a "special interest group"?
It sure is. And there is no reason why those who profit shouldn't pay. But with the software patent system the consumers are paying, the taxpayers are paying and most of the creators aren't profiting but suffering.
We should implement a system that really rewards creators and without these silly monopolies.
You want to spend, or keep spending rather, lots of taxpayer money on the software patent system which creates monopolies by design. You owe a justification in the form of some proof to the taxpayers and consumers who you are taxing and burdening with higher product cost. Therefore the burden of proof is on you.
And no, just the fact that this system is _in place_ doesn't in any way justify its existance. How did you come up with that one??
Please show us that the positive effects of the system are real and not just wishful thinking of the special interests involved.
And of course no need to show us that the system works 100%; where did you get that idea from? Just show us that it works i.e. that the benefits are greater that the cost. Give us some links.
# Free Software is motivated by the moral need to create a Free Way to use computers -- to free software users from their "masters". # Open Source software is motivated by the practical advantages of the Open Source development process.
This is the way Free Software advocates like to look at things. Its depiction of Open Source is completely wrong. What Open Source is about is a different strategy to reach the same goal: to reach the masses moralizing is of little use and might even be counterproductive. Instead people should be 'converted' by showing them the practical advantages of using Free Software/Open Source.
Show people how 'freedom' in a particular case empowers them and results in practical advantages.
In modern C++ idiom buffers are dynamically allocated so they can't overflow. No need for bounds checking. If you still want bounds checking then the at() member function of the standard containers provides it.
In the case of copyright infringement, someone is being harmed -- property in the form of lost revenues is being stolen from its owners.
That is not really what's happening now is it? What is really going on is that the government is cracking down on (re)producers of music and films who are infringing on state created monopolies.
What the state should be doing is cracking down on the monopolists and reinstate a free market so that everybody can reproduce music or films as long as they pay a certain fee to the creators of the item.
Piracy is a productive activity. Theft refers to activities that are not productive This is such an important difference that you don't want to call these activities by the same name. Pirates are illegally competing with monopolists. This is an activity very different from stealing, most importantly: it requires a very different solution.
if people save money by going with OSS then they have more money to spend elsewhere. One industry shrinks, another grows.
No both are growing, the fact that OSS has no marketvalue doesn't mean it has no consumervalue. And the fact that it has no marketvalue means that there are no financial restrictions to its consumption. This should lead to massive consumption which means a massive rise in total consumervalue.
So the BNP gets a big boost when an economy switches from marketware to OSS. Well, most likely not, but that's because it's not measured correctly.
The C++ implementation of his Borg pattern is simpler than the Python one. What can be simpler than making some variables static.
The Singleton pattern itself is already very simple, that is why everybody and their dog is using it. The suggested Borg pattern has no advantages over it.
The initialisation and sometimes destruction of a Singleton object can be highly problematic. Initialization on first use is often not acceptable. Martelli's Borg pattern offers no solution. He doesn't seem aware of the problem. Rule of the thumb: don't use Singletons for objects that need initialization.
Dependecies of a class should preferable be specified in the interface of that class. This is not the case when you use a global variable, a Singleton or a Borg object. Therefore avoid use of all three if possible and instead just pass the initialized common object as an argument to the constructor.
Please give us a better example of how dynamic languages don't need some of the patterns that static languages do (might very well be true).
At it's heart, copyright is about property rights. Strong protection of property rights encourages investment, which is a good thing for the economy.
No, both copyright and property right are just legal instruments. And there is nothing magic or natural about them, their effectiveness for the purpose at hand has to be argued _every_ time.
If you want to defend copyrights you will have to argue that giving out private monopolies on non-scarce goods is the best way to reward artists for their efforts. Good luck with that.
Your current effort, an argument by association (copyrights are like property) and the invocation of a natural right ('property is a moral right') won't do this trick: argument by association is a no-no (well, it's a last resort failing anything decent) and private property is just an often useful instrument, nothing more.
If you give a group of people some right or privilege they will get used to it very soon and not much later will find some way to rationalize the situation. The best argument is of course a logical one but failing that a 'god-given right' or 'moral right' will do nicely. The fact that these rights are 'deeply felt' don't give them more credibility, it only adds to the unthankful job of the reformers.
Re:There's also O'Reilly's free Using Samba online
on
Samba 3 By Example
·
· Score: 1
Of course your solution is best, but here is a tip that works for at least the Firefox/Linux combo if the url is right:
1. Copy the url to the clipboard by double-clicking it.
2. Past the url into the browser by clicking the middle button.
Crime should not be confused with "new technology that is much more efficient".
You postulate the very thing you should argue, i.e. that illegal reproduction of music should be crime.
It's only "efficient" in the sense that it's an efficient way for free riders to rip off producers of creative works.
No P2P is much more efficient full stop. The freerider problem is a separate issue. You are mixing up things that are orthogonal to each other. There is no reason why paying artists and P2P should be mutually exclusive as you seem to think (In fact Kazaa when it was based in the Netherlands, almost finished a deal with the Dutch version of the RIAA). The challenge is to find the right way to do it.
This is just capitalism at work: a new technology has arisen that is much more efficient that the old one and so many now unproductive jobs disappear. This is a drama for the people involved but the ability to switch to new ways of production despite heavy resistance from vested interests is what makes a capitalist economy special and so succesful.
The real problem is not that jobs disappear, but that few new jobs are created because of the monopoly copyrights give. It makes it hard to start new productive economic activities.
Yes, all the channels will be transmitted anyway so it is just stupid to block them at the receiver. This will only drive cost up, it makes no economic sense whatsoever.
In Amsterdam the cost of cable (UPC) is 12 euro. This is about double the amount when the cable was owned by the local government (it was sold to UPC somewhere around 95/96) but UPC had the upgrade the hardware somewhat so it's not as bad as it sounds.
The thing that kept the price down is government regulation (regulation rules!:-)). Now however UPC seems to have found a legal way to up the prices as last year there was hike from 9 to 12 euro. Happily there are alternatives now in digital tv and satelite and it seems plenty of people are switching as I see more and more dishes around. (competition rules!:-))
My advice to all the 50 dollar a month lusers out there: REGULATION or COMPETITION, don't settle for anything less! Pay per channel is silly.
JITed languages are only noticeably slower when GUI is involved. A JIT can also produce code specialized for your exact hardware- something a C/C++ compiler can't do.
Yes, a JIT can at least in theory produce more efficient code because it has extra information: it _knows_ on which processor it runs which is a luxury the C++ compiler might not have.
However, C++ uses the same trick (i.e. postponing code generation) a level higher: C++ libraries are often distributed to Application programmers in the form of templates instead of code. So the application programmer generates the binary code and at that point the information on what the container will contain or on what the algoritm will operate is available. This results in much faster code (easily several factors under the right conditions). Just benchmark the STL sort() against the C, Java or C# equivalents to verify this.
It will be interesting to see if Java and C# generics will be able to close this gap somewhat.
Yes, the boost::regex library is much too complicated for my taste too. Another one I don't like is the boost::thread library.
But Boost nowadays consists of about 30 libraries or so, many of them header only. The graph library, the spirit parser generator, the smartpointer stuff, boost::bind, that's all pure gold.
Well, the cheerleader moderators struck again: +5 insightful for the parent. Pretty sad for a message that is essentially a whine.
Now to the author of the parent: what are you suggesting? That we shouldn't listen to people who are biased? Should a jury in court not listen to the defense lawyer or the prosecuter because they are biased? If you don't agree with people then don't go around whining about how biased they are but make yourself useful and attack their arguments.
Or maybe you are saying we get to hear only one side of the story. If so than please provide a link to a detailed technical story that tells us the other side. That would be worth an insightful tag.
What bad economics and planning would that be? Creating a product and then selling it?
No it would be relying on an inefficient distribution monopoly for profits.
The only reason the entertainment industry is having trouble right now is because their product is easy to steal!
Wrong again. The reason they are in trouble is that they are producing a product, the distribution of music, that is obsolete (well soon anyway) thanks to new technology.
And don't be so unwise as to call illegal copying "stealing" as you might then easily miss the fact that illegal copying is hugely productive, which in turn means that you will probably miss a sane solution to the whole issue.
Bad analogy. It would be like those tags when the software made the harddisc crash or the monitor burn out. Then the software would destroy the computer just as the ink packet destroys the clothes.
If you want an analogy for the blowup of the pipeline try securing clothes with handgranates, oh wait, that doesn't quite match it, how about a little bit of tnt so that the whole block blows up when an item gets stolen. Are you still gonna blame the thief then?
If this story really happened the way it is told than you don't need much sense to see that both sides are to blame and both sides had good reason to shut up about it until this silly journalist brought it up again to brag about it.
Slashdot Mirror
You have to catch [execeptions] at every point to free stuff, and the nested structures become even uglier than gotos.
The freeing of resources, all resources not just memory, is automatic in C++ once you learn to use RAII.
Look it up. It is one of major improvements of standard C++ over C/C++.
But I was shocked to see that CALLBACKS were put down by C++ purists
???
Callbacks are everywhere in C++ although these days they are often function objects instead of function pointers. Somebody who puts down callbacks is certainly no C++ purist.
You can never know that a law holds and direct observation won't help here. The point of calling it a law is not that we know it always holds but that we _claim_ it always holds until proven wrong. A law describes what we claim to be a necessary relationship. If A then _always_ B. If you there is one single occasion where you can proof that A doesn't result in B then the law is invalid. Which usually means you have to modify it a bit to make it valid again, at which point the game can start again.
GNU and LInux are interesting for sociological/political reasons. they are not scientifically interesting.
Amen to that.
Happily the science of operating systems isn't very interesting anymore so this is no great loss. Political and economic reasons are of much greater importance, and this is where Linux shines.
the logical extension of a system that was in place before it
:-) Not that I advocate such a solution.
Software is very much like knowledge and unlike 'normal' goods in that it has a zero marginal cost. So the 'logical extension' of the system would have been to make all programmers scientists
[...] you will reach a point at which the root of the system was put in place with sufficient justifications.
I'm sure you can dig them up and provide them to us as evidence.
Systems grow to meet current demands.
When left unattended systems will grow to meet the special interests of those involved. If you want it to serve the general interest then you better keep a very close eye.
That a system exists is prima facie proof that the system's existence is justified.
A bold statement. This suggests that there is some kind of selection mechanism that weeds out the unjustified systems and/or strengthens the justified ones. Think natural selection or market mechanism. Those don't apply in this case so what would that selection mechanism be?
Is not a group of people who want to scavenge the work of creators for free also a "special interest group"?
It sure is. And there is no reason why those who profit shouldn't pay. But with the software patent system the consumers are paying, the taxpayers are paying and most of the creators aren't profiting but suffering.
We should implement a system that really rewards creators and without these silly monopolies.
You want to spend, or keep spending rather, lots of taxpayer money on the software patent system which creates monopolies by design. You owe a justification in the form of some proof to the taxpayers and consumers who you are taxing and burdening with higher product cost. Therefore the burden of proof is on you.
And no, just the fact that this system is _in place_ doesn't in any way justify its existance. How did you come up with that one??
Please show us that the positive effects of the system are real and not just wishful thinking of the special interests involved.
And of course no need to show us that the system works 100%; where did you get that idea from? Just show us that it works i.e. that the benefits are greater that the cost. Give us some links.
# Free Software is motivated by the moral need to create a Free Way to use computers -- to free software users from their "masters".
# Open Source software is motivated by the practical advantages of the Open Source development process.
This is the way Free Software advocates like to look at things. Its depiction of Open Source is completely wrong. What Open Source is about is a different strategy to reach the same goal: to reach the masses moralizing is of little use and might even be counterproductive. Instead people should be 'converted' by showing them the practical advantages of using Free Software/Open Source.
Show people how 'freedom' in a particular case empowers them and results in practical advantages.
In modern C++ idiom buffers are dynamically allocated so they can't overflow. No need for bounds checking. If you still want bounds checking then the at() member function of the standard containers provides it.
In the case of copyright infringement, someone is being harmed -- property in the form of lost revenues is being stolen from its owners.
That is not really what's happening now is it? What is really going on is that the government is cracking down on (re)producers of music and films who are infringing on state created monopolies.
What the state should be doing is cracking down on the monopolists and reinstate a free market so that everybody can reproduce music or films as long as they pay a certain fee to the creators of the item.
There we go again :(
Piracy is a productive activity. Theft refers to activities that are not productive This is such an important difference that you don't want to call these activities by the same name. Pirates are illegally competing with monopolists. This is an activity very different from stealing, most importantly: it requires a very different solution.
if people save money by going with OSS then they have more money to spend elsewhere. One industry shrinks, another grows.
No both are growing, the fact that OSS has no marketvalue doesn't mean it has no consumervalue. And the fact that it has no marketvalue means that there are no financial restrictions to its consumption. This should lead to massive consumption which means a massive rise in total consumervalue.
So the BNP gets a big boost when an economy switches from marketware to OSS. Well, most likely not, but that's because it's not measured correctly.
The C++ implementation of his Borg pattern is simpler than the Python one. What can be simpler than making some variables static.
The Singleton pattern itself is already very simple, that is why everybody and their dog is using it. The suggested Borg pattern has no advantages over it.
The initialisation and sometimes destruction of a Singleton object can be highly problematic. Initialization on first use is often not acceptable. Martelli's Borg pattern offers no solution. He doesn't seem aware of the problem. Rule of the thumb: don't use Singletons for objects that need initialization.
Dependecies of a class should preferable be specified in the interface of that class. This is not the case when you use a global variable, a Singleton or a Borg object. Therefore avoid use of all three if possible and instead just pass the initialized common object as an argument to the constructor.
Please give us a better example of how dynamic languages don't need some of the patterns that static languages do (might very well be true).
At it's heart, copyright is about property rights. Strong protection of property rights encourages investment, which is a good thing for the economy.
No, both copyright and property right are just legal instruments. And there is nothing magic or natural about them, their effectiveness for the purpose at hand has to be argued _every_ time.
If you want to defend copyrights you will have to argue that giving out private monopolies on non-scarce goods is the best way to reward artists for their efforts. Good luck with that.
Your current effort, an argument by association (copyrights are like property) and the invocation of a natural right ('property is a moral right') won't do this trick: argument by association is a no-no (well, it's a last resort failing anything decent) and private property is just an often useful instrument, nothing more.
If you give a group of people some right or privilege they will get used to it very soon and not much later will find some way to rationalize the situation. The best argument is of course a logical one but failing that a 'god-given right' or 'moral right' will do nicely. The fact that these rights are 'deeply felt' don't give them more credibility, it only adds to the unthankful job of the reformers.
Of course your solution is best, but here is a tip that works for at least the Firefox/Linux combo if the url is right:
1. Copy the url to the clipboard by double-clicking it.
2. Past the url into the browser by clicking the middle button.
Crime should not be confused with "new technology that is much more efficient".
You postulate the very thing you should argue, i.e. that illegal reproduction of music should be crime.
It's only "efficient" in the sense that it's an efficient way for free riders to rip off producers of creative works.
No P2P is much more efficient full stop. The freerider problem is a separate issue. You are mixing up things that are orthogonal to each other. There is no reason why paying artists and P2P should be mutually exclusive as you seem to think (In fact Kazaa when it was based in the Netherlands, almost finished a deal with the Dutch version of the RIAA). The challenge is to find the right way to do it.
This is just capitalism at work: a new technology has arisen that is much more efficient that the old one and so many now unproductive jobs disappear. This is a drama for the people involved but the ability to switch to new ways of production despite heavy resistance from vested interests is what makes a capitalist economy special and so succesful.
The real problem is not that jobs disappear, but that few new jobs are created because of the monopoly copyrights give. It makes it hard to start new productive economic activities.
Interesting, around here (Holland) Jan is about as conservative, masculine, old-fashioned, common, etc .. as it gets.
:-)
The very people who would ridicule you in the midwest would probably be named Jan overhere
Yes, all the channels will be transmitted anyway so it is just stupid to block them at the receiver. This will only drive cost up, it makes no economic sense whatsoever.
:-)). Now however UPC seems to have found a legal way to up the prices as last year there was hike from 9 to 12 euro. Happily there are alternatives now in digital tv and satelite and it seems plenty of people are switching as I see more and more dishes around. (competition rules! :-))
In Amsterdam the cost of cable (UPC) is 12 euro. This is about double the amount when the cable was owned by the local government (it was sold to UPC somewhere around 95/96) but UPC had the upgrade the hardware somewhat so it's not as bad as it sounds.
The thing that kept the price down is government regulation (regulation rules!
My advice to all the 50 dollar a month lusers out there: REGULATION or COMPETITION, don't settle for anything less! Pay per channel is silly.
JITed languages are only noticeably slower when GUI is involved. A JIT can also produce code specialized for your exact hardware- something a C/C++ compiler can't do.
Yes, a JIT can at least in theory produce more efficient code because it has extra information: it _knows_ on which processor it runs which is a luxury the C++ compiler might not have.
However, C++ uses the same trick (i.e. postponing code generation) a level higher: C++ libraries are often distributed to Application programmers in the form of templates instead of code. So the application programmer generates the binary code and at that point the information on what the container will contain or on what the algoritm will operate is available. This results in much faster code (easily several factors under the right conditions). Just benchmark the STL sort() against the C, Java or C# equivalents to verify this.
It will be interesting to see if Java and C# generics will be able to close this gap somewhat.
Yes, the boost::regex library is much too complicated for my taste too. Another one I don't like is the boost::thread library.
But Boost nowadays consists of about 30 libraries or so, many of them header only. The graph library, the spirit parser generator, the smartpointer stuff, boost::bind, that's all pure gold.
Well, the cheerleader moderators struck again: +5 insightful for the parent. Pretty sad for a message that is essentially a whine.
Now to the author of the parent: what are you suggesting? That we shouldn't listen to people who are biased? Should a jury in court not listen to the defense lawyer or the prosecuter because they are biased? If you don't agree with people then don't go around whining about how biased they are but make yourself useful and attack their arguments.
Or maybe you are saying we get to hear only one side of the story. If so than please provide a link to a detailed technical story that tells us the other side. That would be worth an insightful tag.
What bad economics and planning would that be? Creating a product and then selling it?
No it would be relying on an inefficient distribution monopoly for profits.
The only reason the entertainment industry is having trouble right now is because their product is easy to steal!
Wrong again. The reason they are in trouble is that they are producing a product, the distribution of music, that is obsolete (well soon anyway) thanks to new technology.
And don't be so unwise as to call illegal copying "stealing" as you might then easily miss the fact that illegal copying is hugely productive, which in turn means that you will probably miss a sane solution to the whole issue.
It's like the security tags on clothing.
Bad analogy. It would be like those tags when the software made the harddisc crash or the monitor burn out. Then the software would destroy the computer just as the ink packet destroys the clothes.
If you want an analogy for the blowup of the pipeline try securing clothes with handgranates, oh wait, that doesn't quite match it, how about a little bit of tnt so that the whole block blows up when an item gets stolen. Are you still gonna blame the thief then?
If this story really happened the way it is told than you don't need much sense to see that both sides are to blame and both sides had good reason to shut up about it until this silly journalist brought it up again to brag about it.
The fact that they lie and that we think it is normal that they lie is rather sad though.
Somehow lying is ok as long as you call it marketing.