. ..electrical items that catch fire could be considered defective. Are you this lacksadaisical about anything you buy?
And yet a candle that doesn't catch fire could be considered defective. A candle that isn't defective can burn your house down (or your mom's hair off) even when used as directed. Damned if I'd let my mom buy one of those things, but I can't believe she'd be so lackadaisical as to actually do so.
Dude, all electrical devices carry a certain risk of fire, your house for instance (yes, your house is most likely an electrical device). I wouldn't go to sleep tonight if I were you. Houses catch fire from inside the walls all the time.
If the odds of it happening to me are lower than being hit by an asteroid, well, I'll take whatever precautions seem warrented, like feeling the charger/battery the first couple times I use it to see if it's overheating, but no, I'm not going to worry about it much. That way lies madness.
. ..such items come with warranties about being free from defects. ..
Warranties do not actually certify that any particular item is defect free. This isn't possible in this particular universe. There is always a risk factor involved. In fact, ironically, that's why products come with "guaruntees," because they can't actually give you one that it won't fail, but can guaruntee that some particular, but as yet unidentified, unit will fail.
What they can do is give you compensation in the event of failure, which is the sole function of a warranty.
If you really think they're there to protect you from harm you need to do a good deal more thinking about the nature of risk, which is not a bad idea in general anyway, and you look like you could use it.
Airport and border security have always been a joke. The point of the TSA is to con you into thinking you're "safe" so you'll go about your life instead of cowering in fear.
It ain't workin'. I can't fly anymore because I'm cowering in fear of the morons in security who haven't got the brains or basic good sense of the plastic crochet hooks they confiscate from grannies.
. ..this country's core creed is "the protection of capital" even to the point of propping up failed business models. ..
I'm changing my name to Chrysler, And I am going down to Washington DC And I will tell some power broker, what they did for Ioccoca Will be perfectly acceptable to me.
I'm changing my name to Chrysler, and I am getting in that great receiving line And when they hand a million grand out, I'll be standing with my hand out Yes sir, I'll get mine
I am just glad they found a cause better than education to give money to.
And what makes you think that some of this money won't be spent "educating" your kids about the shame and horror of giving a friend a copy of a CD, or even just loaning it to him, because, you know, he's just borrowing it to copy it?
I figure they'll drop ten mil just making the movie "File Sharing Madness." History shows that that sort of thing works like a charm.
Your not checking to see if this painting is likly painted by some specific guy
You are incorrect and apparently have not read the article or anything about signature identification.
This is precisely what is being checked. You don't want to know if the signature on check #101 is the same as on the signature on check #101. That is trivial. You want to know if the same person who signed check #101 actually signed check #102.
The value of check #102 depends a good deal on the answer.
Similarly with art. A painting by Rembrandt is worth far more than a painting by one of his students, which is worth far more than a painting by someone trying to pass himself off as either, and this technique is specifically intended to make that differentiation and not merely to tell whether the painting that's hanging on your wall right now is same one that was hanging there yesterday.
. ..you couldn't get the same ink blot no matter how many times you tried.
You don't want to tell if one ink blot is the same as another. You want to tell who made the ink blot, and any number of other unique ink blots from the same source.
By the way, you can't get the same signature either, no matter how many times you try. You can't even get the same tracing twice.
Now, squirt ink out of the fountain pen onto the paper.
Which of these do you think is the most likely to be uniquely identifiable as having been produced by you, and you alone?
"Lopping" is an essentially mechanical process disconnected from the media that leaves no uniquely indentifiable traits. There is too much chaos in the process. It is the physical manipulation of the applicator, by your unique fingers, in actual contact with the media, that creates uniqueness.
Extrapolate all that data about each artist's technique, then turn around and paint a bunch of "authentic" art "authored" by those masters.
This is basically what the best art forgers already attempt to do. Give it a try if you think it's easy.
They already have "pencil sketch", "charcoal sketch", and "regular photo" settings at the picture booths down at your local mall. It's just a matter of running a filter over an original image and reproducing the image with the desired effects.
And how do you apply this filter to your brush strokes?
This seems like the wrong direction if they want to authenticate images.
They don't want to authenticate "images." They want to authenticate paintings and drawings. Hand made works of art, which are often three dimensional (look at an oil closely).
Hardly. In fact my city has been a traditional joke city for about 75 years. One of the big laughs of the Cary Grant movie "Dream Wife" is when he says he's from my city and it's funny just to imagine it. Ed Koch called the general area the "land of pickup trucks and gingham dresses." We remembered when it came time to vote for governor.
We do have one hell of a two dollar theater though (three if you want to sit in the balcony. Oh, yeah. The soda's a buck. Candy bars the same price as at the CVS across the street. No need to sneak in your own at all. The city used to be rolling in dough and was one of the biggest stops on the vaudeville circuit (hence the grand old theater) because. ..
Hows the tech industry in your neck of the woods? Some of us migh want to move there.:)
It used to be the tech center of the universe. More PhDs per capita than any place else in the world, including Los Alamos. Once upon a time you could do things like walk down the street and bump into Tesla, Westinghouse, Edison, Bethe, Lord Kelvin, or. ..Kurt Vonnegut.
I'm afraid times have changed, now we play host to the family of the most infamous anti-tech nutball in the world, but in the area we do still have the NY state capital, RPI, Lockheed-Martin, General Electric, Intermagnetics and Plug Power. Lot's of nuclear research, steam turbine manufacture, locomotive manufacture, fuel cell research and banking up the wazoo. You can usually find a job. Especially if you're willing to do desktop tech support. Salaries aren't great, but then the cost of living is nothing compared to NYC or Silicon Valley. $50k here equals a quarter mil there. It's not the money, it's what you can buy with it.
And we have trees, air, trout streams and shit, if you're into that sort of thing.
Grand Prix Legends (the direct connect one. Up to 20 players at a time. 28k of bandwidth per player. The community supports a match service and provides public servers). Red Baron 3D. AOEII. Those are the big three. I've gotten a fair amount of replay value out of Shogun:Total War as well.
I think the only other game I've even fired up (not counting solitaire) in the last two years is Grim Fandango. That one's worth a pass every now and then, just like a good book is worth rereading.
Of course the genres that interest me may not interest others (FPSs bore me to tears, driving in circles may do the same to you), but the key issue is that they all have replayability built into them by design. They're open ended, just like any "real world" game or sport (which they simulate), and they all represent a "best of breed" version of the genre.
People play sports they like for years, and even lifetimes. Golf, Chess and Go frickin' absorb lifetimes. There's no reason you can't do the same with computer games. Find the good ones. Keep playing them until you're good at them. The best computer games you'll never feel like you're really good at them. Just like Go or Golf. That's part of what makes them replayable.
And if you just want a game you can jump into and play for 5 minutes when you have the time, well, doesn't solitaire come with every frickin' OS in the universe these days?
. ..what's that K icon where START should be", I call bullcrap on any point-and-click Linux.
Conversely, when I first started up Windows 95 as a "power user" with decades of computer experience on big iron, minis and micros and perfectly at home with Windows 3.11 I couldn't figure out how to do anything.
There was not only no command line, but no menus and no icons of any interest to me (No, I didn't want to hook up to AOL), no nothin' that would even let me type a memo. Yeah, there was this really stupid button labeled "start," but I was already started. I didn't want to "start," I wanted to open the preinstalled copy of Office and type something.
I basically stared at it for about five minutes and then said aloud, "Where the hell are my programs?"
At that point my wife came over and showed me. She'd been using 95 at work for a few months already.
At which point I said aloud, "Well, that's really stupid, and who the hell would look for their menus at the bottom of the screen anyway?"
So . ..I guess Windows isn't "point and click" either, since, even as an experienced Windows user, I had to be shown what to point at and click on.
At least the big "K" is a button right where a current Windows user would expect the menu button to be.
Look, It's "Point-and-click" Linux, exactly as advertised, not "Exactly like your current version of Windows" Linux. Just like every version of MacOS is point and click, and just as Windows 3.11 was point and click.
Even though they all differ markedly.
And for what it's worth, my 70 year old mom, who has only been using micros for about a year, both Windows and Mac (Mac OS8 at home, Windows (in languages she doesn't read) in internet cafes when she's traveling), was able to get down and dirty with KDE set up for a "power user" in about 2 minutes flat.
How do you know your mom is "extremely typical." You have a mom data point of one.
If any readers run into the same problem I did, and can't just shrug and toss Windows completely, my happy-overkill advice would be to invest in a second hard drive and skip all the hassles of dual- or multi-booting.
This is exactly how I have my primary box set up. Are you suggesting that newbies open their cases and swap drive plugs when they want to change OSes? (Been there. Done that.)
If not, how on earth does it save one from dual booting?
Methinks you had some other concept in mind, relating to partitioning a single drive, but the way it came out a newbie reading it would end up confused beyond redemption.
Four bucks. In a real theater. With comfortable seats. Dumpster-O-Popcorn, a buck fifty.
Of course DVD "rentals" are "free".
I saved nice amounts of money on single player games. I used to buy one or two single player games a month, now, not one.
I found a few games five or six years ago that entertainingly offer infinite replay value and have strong communities that keep them up to date. One of them supports internet play with a direct connection so I'm not even dependant on company servers for that one.
I don't have time to buy new games. I'm too busy having fun.
Look, if it's worth it to you I'm not going to gainsay that. It's your money. I honestly don't care if you burn it and I'm not trying to say that you should spend your money as I spend mine. Spend it as you will, but there are those of us who can stretch a dollar a long, long way, and have just as much, or even more fun out of it.
It may look "cheap as it gets" to you, but that doesn't stop it from looking damned expensive to us, because it actually gets a damned sight cheaper.
So you're saying it's okay to modify GPL software, embed it (say into an MP3 player) and not provide means for customers to obtain the modified source code?
No, because GPL licensed software is already protected by copyright, a body of law which specifically deals with the reproduction of physical representations of purely abstract concepts. I can copyright the textbook I write, but not the mathematical concepts I expound upon in said book. Others may write their own textbooks covering the same material without restraint.
Patents are to protect the reproduction of things, and the very reason we have two bodies of law governing "intellectual property" is because there is an inherent difference between an idea and a thing. If you do not understand that difference none of it will ever make sense to you.
In your example the company must provide you with the source code, but you may not reproduce any patented inventions in the mp3 player. There is no dicotomy in this situation.
It is a patent, and only a patent, that would allow the the company to withold the code from you and/or disallow your use of the code. That's the whole issue. See gif.
A number of technologies are available in embedded and non-embedded (CD-ROM, for example) shape. For example, Veritas Volume Manager is available as "bits" on CD-ROM and also (as of recently) embedded in some SAN switches with virtualization features. How can be the same code not protected (if it's shared as "bits" over P2P) and protected (if it's embedded in a switch's ROM).
I prefer to use the literary metaphor when describing both mine and the majority of code out there.
Yes, the story as distinct from the book. One is an abstract concept, one a physical representation of that concept, and most people can instinctually understand how silly it would be to patent a story.
We have copyright laws already to deal with those issues, and already apply such to software, and patents can be applied to new forms of media to represent software. Problem solved.
Mathematics has interesting constraints that most programs for better or worse tend to ignore.
No. Only programmers ignore the mathematical constraints. The program, as applied by the machine never does. It is incapable of doing so, which is a Good Thing, otherwise we wouldn't find them particularly useful. It computes within a very rigid set of mathematical rules.
In any case, to use your prefered literary metaphor, one must inherently first learn the rules of spelling and grammar before one can create art by breaking them. Lewis Carroll and Ogden Nash did not "abuse" the language at random.
It is unfortunate that most programmers today, particularly those who believe you can learn programming entirely through reading websites and existing code, "ignore" the mathematics entirely through ignorance and not art. They literally have no understanding of what they are doing, or why, and rely on the machine to "know" for them.
The machine does not have the mental capacity of a cockroach.
So the programmer is relying on a base of mathematical logic input into the machine by someone else, who also didn't understand the mathematics behind what he was doing. I remember reading a forum post wherein a computer "scientist" mentioned that he was well into his Masters program before he understood that mathematics had anything to do with programming.
Rinse and repeat.
Welcome to the modern world of computer "science" and "engineering." If it doesn't make you despair you've overlooked something.
I thought software was information conforming to computer language rules. ..
Which rules are purely those of mathematics. The machine software runs on is called a computer, because it computes, and does so within a very small mathematical rule set.
. ..and written on a computer-readable medium, including "1+1=3."
No. The readable media is a physical representation of the software, as an abacus in a particular configuration is a physical representation of a number. Hold up two fingers. Those fingers are one possible physical representation of the number 2. They are not software. Similarly the pits on a CD are not software. They are just one of many possible physical representations of that software (a layout of Othello chips would be another).
Software patents do not seek to protect the physical representation of software, patents on the media itself already do that. Copyright protects a particular representation of the software. Software patents seek to protect the abstract concept of the mathematical model.
They effectively make it illegal to lay out Othello chips in particular patterns.
In school they taught us that technology is the applied use of science, of which math is a subset.
They teach you all sorts of daft shit in school, some of which is just plain wrong for one reason or another, such as George Washington being the first President of the United States and the "Pilgrims" being the original colonial founders (and that story is essentially a 20th century invention), Paul Revere's ride, etc; and some of which is effectively wrong by being over simplified so that it may be taught to you "at your level" (not to mention within the level of your teacher who likely doesn't know squat either), like the Civil War being about slavery.
Mathematics is not technology, it is the epitome of pure science. Nothing but abstract thought. A subset of science, not technology. Much of mathematics may be applied to practical pursuits, although much of it, to date, has found no such practical application.
2 is not technology. It is number. A pure abstract. "2" is technology. It is an invention and a physical 'thing.'
Even where mathematics has practical application it is not the mathematics that is the technology, but the device. 1/2mv^2 is not technology. It is an abstract model based on an observation. An armor piercing artillery shell is technology. Gravity, F=m2-m1/r^2, is not technolgy, it simply is. Bungie cords are technology.
(As an aside psychology, to the extent that it really is a science is also not a technology, it is a science. Certain applications of psychology might be technology, such as the polygraph device (which is clearly not science at all, to add to the division of concepts). The maze the rat runs through is technology, the running of the rat is not)
Science only becomes technology when it is applied, and thought is not application, and software is nothing but thought. A mathematical model, just like 1/2mv^2.
In the case of software it is easy to get confused about the issue, since the mathematics is obviously applied to some end with observable physical results.
This is done by having the mathematics given a physical representation (the CD is technology and legitimately patentable) and having that physical representation interact with a machine, but it is the machine that produces the results, not the mathematics, and thus it is the machine that is the real technology, and the machine that is a legitimately patentable invention.
If you wish to tightly control your software, go ahead, invent a machine to run it and patent that. I have no philosophical quibble with that approach. It's what Nintendo does. The console is technology. The cartridge is technology. The bits are not.
But in the world of general use, programable computers the world will beat a path away from your door, which is why the software companies are soliciting governments to post armed guards against your doing so in the first place.
. ..both are technologies that, for whatever their pluses, rely heavily on imitating prior art.
As do virtually all technologies. I'll point out, however, that despite popular views to the contrary software is not technology. It is mathematics.
I don't see any reason to take their views as somehow more correct or enlightened than microsoft's or IBM's might be from the other side.
So I'll go with two of the great thinkers of The Enlightenment, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, who were both scientists and inventors of commercial products and yet opposed the overbroad and over strong application of "intellectual property" in general, believing that ideas were for the benefit, and the property, of all mankind.
Slashdot Mirror
. . .and take your tires back to the lab for testing.
Hey, it's easy enough to claim tires are Y rated, but I believe in empirical verification.
I think I'll call my lawyer first this time though so I get to sleep at home tonight.
KFG
. . .electrical items that catch fire could be considered defective. Are you this lacksadaisical about anything you buy?
.such items come with warranties about being free from defects. . .
And yet a candle that doesn't catch fire could be considered defective. A candle that isn't defective can burn your house down (or your mom's hair off) even when used as directed. Damned if I'd let my mom buy one of those things, but I can't believe she'd be so lackadaisical as to actually do so.
Dude, all electrical devices carry a certain risk of fire, your house for instance (yes, your house is most likely an electrical device). I wouldn't go to sleep tonight if I were you. Houses catch fire from inside the walls all the time.
If the odds of it happening to me are lower than being hit by an asteroid, well, I'll take whatever precautions seem warrented, like feeling the charger/battery the first couple times I use it to see if it's overheating, but no, I'm not going to worry about it much. That way lies madness.
. .
Warranties do not actually certify that any particular item is defect free. This isn't possible in this particular universe. There is always a risk factor involved. In fact, ironically, that's why products come with "guaruntees," because they can't actually give you one that it won't fail, but can guaruntee that some particular, but as yet unidentified, unit will fail.
What they can do is give you compensation in the event of failure, which is the sole function of a warranty.
If you really think they're there to protect you from harm you need to do a good deal more thinking about the nature of risk, which is not a bad idea in general anyway, and you look like you could use it.
KFG
Dude, you've got a 20 gallon high explosive device sitting in your parking space, right now!
You're lucky just to be alive, and the bomb squad will be over in minutes to contain and confiscate it. We hope you drive a Porsche.
KFG
Airport and border security have always been a joke. The point of the TSA is to con you into thinking you're "safe" so you'll go about your life instead of cowering in fear.
.this country's core creed is "the protection of capital" even to the point of propping up failed business models. . .
It ain't workin'. I can't fly anymore because I'm cowering in fear of the morons in security who haven't got the brains or basic good sense of the plastic crochet hooks they confiscate from grannies.
. .
I'm changing my name to Chrysler, And I am going down to Washington DC
And I will tell some power broker, what they did for Ioccoca
Will be perfectly acceptable to me.
I'm changing my name to Chrysler, and I am getting in that great receiving line
And when they hand a million grand out, I'll be standing with my hand out
Yes sir, I'll get mine
-- Tom Paxton
KFG
I am just glad they found a cause better than education to give money to.
And what makes you think that some of this money won't be spent "educating" your kids about the shame and horror of giving a friend a copy of a CD, or even just loaning it to him, because, you know, he's just borrowing it to copy it?
I figure they'll drop ten mil just making the movie "File Sharing Madness." History shows that that sort of thing works like a charm.
KFG
Mods . . . sane. . .
Ah! You done scored some good shit, didn'cha?
KFG
Your not checking to see if this painting is likly painted by some specific guy
You are incorrect and apparently have not read the article or anything about signature identification.
This is precisely what is being checked. You don't want to know if the signature on check #101 is the same as on the signature on check #101. That is trivial. You want to know if the same person who signed check #101 actually signed check #102.
The value of check #102 depends a good deal on the answer.
Similarly with art. A painting by Rembrandt is worth far more than a painting by one of his students, which is worth far more than a painting by someone trying to pass himself off as either, and this technique is specifically intended to make that differentiation and not merely to tell whether the painting that's hanging on your wall right now is same one that was hanging there yesterday.
KFG
And once the fakers get ahold of this technology, they can learn how to paint them so it passes the computer check with flying colors
In precisely the same manner that you could learn to dance exactly like Nijinsky by analyzing photographs of him.
KFG
. . .you couldn't get the same ink blot no matter how many times you tried.
You don't want to tell if one ink blot is the same as another. You want to tell who made the ink blot, and any number of other unique ink blots from the same source.
By the way, you can't get the same signature either, no matter how many times you try. You can't even get the same tracing twice.
KFG
Take a fountain pen. Sign your name.
Now, squirt ink out of the fountain pen onto the paper.
Which of these do you think is the most likely to be uniquely identifiable as having been produced by you, and you alone?
"Lopping" is an essentially mechanical process disconnected from the media that leaves no uniquely indentifiable traits. There is too much chaos in the process. It is the physical manipulation of the applicator, by your unique fingers, in actual contact with the media, that creates uniqueness.
KFG
Extrapolate all that data about each artist's technique, then turn around and paint a bunch of "authentic" art "authored" by those masters.
This is basically what the best art forgers already attempt to do. Give it a try if you think it's easy.
They already have "pencil sketch", "charcoal sketch", and "regular photo" settings at the picture booths down at your local mall. It's just a matter of running a filter over an original image and reproducing the image with the desired effects.
And how do you apply this filter to your brush strokes?
This seems like the wrong direction if they want to authenticate images.
They don't want to authenticate "images." They want to authenticate paintings and drawings. Hand made works of art, which are often three dimensional (look at an oil closely).
KFG
Some sort of Linux loader? Hmmm, that's an interesting idea.
Yeah, exactly. Someone should Stitch one up.
KFG
Where do you live? Pleasantville?
.
:)
.Kurt Vonnegut.
:)
Hardly. In fact my city has been a traditional joke city for about 75 years. One of the big laughs of the Cary Grant movie "Dream Wife" is when he says he's from my city and it's funny just to imagine it. Ed Koch called the general area the "land of pickup trucks and gingham dresses." We remembered when it came time to vote for governor.
We do have one hell of a two dollar theater though (three if you want to sit in the balcony. Oh, yeah. The soda's a buck. Candy bars the same price as at the CVS across the street. No need to sneak in your own at all. The city used to be rolling in dough and was one of the biggest stops on the vaudeville circuit (hence the grand old theater) because. .
Hows the tech industry in your neck of the woods? Some of us migh want to move there.
It used to be the tech center of the universe. More PhDs per capita than any place else in the world, including Los Alamos. Once upon a time you could do things like walk down the street and bump into Tesla, Westinghouse, Edison, Bethe, Lord Kelvin, or. .
I'm afraid times have changed, now we play host to the family of the most infamous anti-tech nutball in the world, but in the area we do still have the NY state capital, RPI, Lockheed-Martin, General Electric, Intermagnetics and Plug Power. Lot's of nuclear research, steam turbine manufacture, locomotive manufacture, fuel cell research and banking up the wazoo. You can usually find a job. Especially if you're willing to do desktop tech support. Salaries aren't great, but then the cost of living is nothing compared to NYC or Silicon Valley. $50k here equals a quarter mil there. It's not the money, it's what you can buy with it.
And we have trees, air, trout streams and shit, if you're into that sort of thing.
Come to think of it, stay the hell away, ok.
KFG
Grand Prix Legends (the direct connect one. Up to 20 players at a time. 28k of bandwidth per player. The community supports a match service and provides public servers). Red Baron 3D. AOEII. Those are the big three. I've gotten a fair amount of replay value out of Shogun:Total War as well.
I think the only other game I've even fired up (not counting solitaire) in the last two years is Grim Fandango. That one's worth a pass every now and then, just like a good book is worth rereading.
Of course the genres that interest me may not interest others (FPSs bore me to tears, driving in circles may do the same to you), but the key issue is that they all have replayability built into them by design. They're open ended, just like any "real world" game or sport (which they simulate), and they all represent a "best of breed" version of the genre.
People play sports they like for years, and even lifetimes. Golf, Chess and Go frickin' absorb lifetimes. There's no reason you can't do the same with computer games. Find the good ones. Keep playing them until you're good at them. The best computer games you'll never feel like you're really good at them. Just like Go or Golf. That's part of what makes them replayable.
And if you just want a game you can jump into and play for 5 minutes when you have the time, well, doesn't solitaire come with every frickin' OS in the universe these days?
KFG
If only we had some sort of software that allowed us to specify which devices (virtual or otherwise) to boot from when the system comes up...
Yeah, that would be pretty slick. Someone should grub around a bit with that idea. Then we could dual boot.
KFG
. . .what's that K icon where START should be", I call bullcrap on any point-and-click Linux.
.I guess Windows isn't "point and click" either, since, even as an experienced Windows user, I had to be shown what to point at and click on.
Conversely, when I first started up Windows 95 as a "power user" with decades of computer experience on big iron, minis and micros and perfectly at home with Windows 3.11 I couldn't figure out how to do anything.
There was not only no command line, but no menus and no icons of any interest to me (No, I didn't want to hook up to AOL), no nothin' that would even let me type a memo. Yeah, there was this really stupid button labeled "start," but I was already started. I didn't want to "start," I wanted to open the preinstalled copy of Office and type something.
I basically stared at it for about five minutes and then said aloud, "Where the hell are my programs?"
At that point my wife came over and showed me. She'd been using 95 at work for a few months already.
At which point I said aloud, "Well, that's really stupid, and who the hell would look for their menus at the bottom of the screen anyway?"
So . .
At least the big "K" is a button right where a current Windows user would expect the menu button to be.
Look, It's "Point-and-click" Linux, exactly as advertised, not "Exactly like your current version of Windows" Linux. Just like every version of MacOS is point and click, and just as Windows 3.11 was point and click.
Even though they all differ markedly.
And for what it's worth, my 70 year old mom, who has only been using micros for about a year, both Windows and Mac (Mac OS8 at home, Windows (in languages she doesn't read) in internet cafes when she's traveling), was able to get down and dirty with KDE set up for a "power user" in about 2 minutes flat.
How do you know your mom is "extremely typical." You have a mom data point of one.
KFG
If any readers run into the same problem I did, and can't just shrug and toss Windows completely, my happy-overkill advice would be to invest in a second hard drive and skip all the hassles of dual- or multi-booting.
This is exactly how I have my primary box set up. Are you suggesting that newbies open their cases and swap drive plugs when they want to change OSes? (Been there. Done that.)
If not, how on earth does it save one from dual booting?
Methinks you had some other concept in mind, relating to partitioning a single drive, but the way it came out a newbie reading it would end up confused beyond redemption.
KFG
Equals about 2.5 meals at McDonalds
Yeah, right. Like I'd do that in the first place.
2 trips to the movies
Four bucks. In a real theater. With comfortable seats. Dumpster-O-Popcorn, a buck fifty.
Of course DVD "rentals" are "free".
I saved nice amounts of money on single player games. I used to buy one or two single player games a month, now, not one.
I found a few games five or six years ago that entertainingly offer infinite replay value and have strong communities that keep them up to date. One of them supports internet play with a direct connection so I'm not even dependant on company servers for that one.
I don't have time to buy new games. I'm too busy having fun.
Look, if it's worth it to you I'm not going to gainsay that. It's your money. I honestly don't care if you burn it and I'm not trying to say that you should spend your money as I spend mine. Spend it as you will, but there are those of us who can stretch a dollar a long, long way, and have just as much, or even more fun out of it.
It may look "cheap as it gets" to you, but that doesn't stop it from looking damned expensive to us, because it actually gets a damned sight cheaper.
KFG
Mathematics is not science.
:)
Ah, well, now we're swimming in deep waters.
KFG
Exactly.
KFG
So you're saying it's okay to modify GPL software, embed it (say into an MP3 player) and not provide means for customers to obtain the modified source code?
No, because GPL licensed software is already protected by copyright, a body of law which specifically deals with the reproduction of physical representations of purely abstract concepts. I can copyright the textbook I write, but not the mathematical concepts I expound upon in said book. Others may write their own textbooks covering the same material without restraint.
Patents are to protect the reproduction of things, and the very reason we have two bodies of law governing "intellectual property" is because there is an inherent difference between an idea and a thing. If you do not understand that difference none of it will ever make sense to you.
In your example the company must provide you with the source code, but you may not reproduce any patented inventions in the mp3 player. There is no dicotomy in this situation.
It is a patent, and only a patent, that would allow the the company to withold the code from you and/or disallow your use of the code. That's the whole issue. See gif.
A number of technologies are available in embedded and non-embedded (CD-ROM, for example) shape.
For example, Veritas Volume Manager is available as "bits" on CD-ROM and also (as of recently) embedded in some SAN switches with virtualization features. How can be the same code not protected (if it's shared as "bits" over P2P) and protected (if it's embedded in a switch's ROM).
By existing copyright law.
KFG
I prefer to use the literary metaphor when describing both mine and the majority of code out there.
Yes, the story as distinct from the book. One is an abstract concept, one a physical representation of that concept, and most people can instinctually understand how silly it would be to patent a story.
We have copyright laws already to deal with those issues, and already apply such to software, and patents can be applied to new forms of media to represent software. Problem solved.
Mathematics has interesting constraints that most programs for better or worse tend to ignore.
No. Only programmers ignore the mathematical constraints. The program, as applied by the machine never does. It is incapable of doing so, which is a Good Thing, otherwise we wouldn't find them particularly useful. It computes within a very rigid set of mathematical rules.
In any case, to use your prefered literary metaphor, one must inherently first learn the rules of spelling and grammar before one can create art by breaking them. Lewis Carroll and Ogden Nash did not "abuse" the language at random.
It is unfortunate that most programmers today, particularly those who believe you can learn programming entirely through reading websites and existing code, "ignore" the mathematics entirely through ignorance and not art. They literally have no understanding of what they are doing, or why, and rely on the machine to "know" for them.
The machine does not have the mental capacity of a cockroach.
So the programmer is relying on a base of mathematical logic input into the machine by someone else, who also didn't understand the mathematics behind what he was doing. I remember reading a forum post wherein a computer "scientist" mentioned that he was well into his Masters program before he understood that mathematics had anything to do with programming.
Rinse and repeat.
Welcome to the modern world of computer "science" and "engineering." If it doesn't make you despair you've overlooked something.
KFG
I thought software was information conforming to computer language rules. . .
.and written on a computer-readable medium, including "1+1=3."
Which rules are purely those of mathematics. The machine software runs on is called a computer, because it computes, and does so within a very small mathematical rule set.
. .
No. The readable media is a physical representation of the software, as an abacus in a particular configuration is a physical representation of a number. Hold up two fingers. Those fingers are one possible physical representation of the number 2. They are not software. Similarly the pits on a CD are not software. They are just one of many possible physical representations of that software (a layout of Othello chips would be another).
Software patents do not seek to protect the physical representation of software, patents on the media itself already do that. Copyright protects a particular representation of the software. Software patents seek to protect the abstract concept of the mathematical model.
They effectively make it illegal to lay out Othello chips in particular patterns.
KFG
In school they taught us that technology is the applied use of science, of which math is a subset.
They teach you all sorts of daft shit in school, some of which is just plain wrong for one reason or another, such as George Washington being the first President of the United States and the "Pilgrims" being the original colonial founders (and that story is essentially a 20th century invention), Paul Revere's ride, etc; and some of which is effectively wrong by being over simplified so that it may be taught to you "at your level" (not to mention within the level of your teacher who likely doesn't know squat either), like the Civil War being about slavery.
Mathematics is not technology, it is the epitome of pure science. Nothing but abstract thought. A subset of science, not technology. Much of mathematics may be applied to practical pursuits, although much of it, to date, has found no such practical application.
2 is not technology. It is number. A pure abstract. "2" is technology. It is an invention and a physical 'thing.'
Even where mathematics has practical application it is not the mathematics that is the technology, but the device. 1/2mv^2 is not technology. It is an abstract model based on an observation. An armor piercing artillery shell is technology. Gravity, F=m2-m1/r^2, is not technolgy, it simply is. Bungie cords are technology.
(As an aside psychology, to the extent that it really is a science is also not a technology, it is a science. Certain applications of psychology might be technology, such as the polygraph device (which is clearly not science at all, to add to the division of concepts). The maze the rat runs through is technology, the running of the rat is not)
Science only becomes technology when it is applied, and thought is not application, and software is nothing but thought. A mathematical model, just like 1/2mv^2.
In the case of software it is easy to get confused about the issue, since the mathematics is obviously applied to some end with observable physical results.
This is done by having the mathematics given a physical representation (the CD is technology and legitimately patentable) and having that physical representation interact with a machine, but it is the machine that produces the results, not the mathematics, and thus it is the machine that is the real technology, and the machine that is a legitimately patentable invention.
If you wish to tightly control your software, go ahead, invent a machine to run it and patent that. I have no philosophical quibble with that approach. It's what Nintendo does. The console is technology. The cartridge is technology. The bits are not.
But in the world of general use, programable computers the world will beat a path away from your door, which is why the software companies are soliciting governments to post armed guards against your doing so in the first place.
KFG
. . .both are technologies that, for whatever their pluses, rely heavily on imitating prior art.
As do virtually all technologies. I'll point out, however, that despite popular views to the contrary software is not technology. It is mathematics.
I don't see any reason to take their views as somehow more correct or enlightened than microsoft's or IBM's might be from the other side.
So I'll go with two of the great thinkers of The Enlightenment, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, who were both scientists and inventors of commercial products and yet opposed the overbroad and over strong application of "intellectual property" in general, believing that ideas were for the benefit, and the property, of all mankind.
And software is nothing but an abstract idea.
KFG