No, it's a reason not to put DRM'ed store content on your Kindle, Sony Reader, iPod, or even laptop.
The hardware is perfectly fine (even pleasant) for playing non-DRM media.
Yeah. I could see this as Palm making the statement to USBIF of "Hey, what these guys are doing here is kinda shady and against the spirit of open interoperability. We've done something technically bad to try to fix it, but we're coming up front with it and letting you know, because we wanna act in good faith. We'd very much appreciate it if Apple didn't do this anymore so we didn't have to resort to such a misuse of the spec in the future."
This is just a convoluted solar power system. But then again, so is everything else: wind, gravity, and more distantly, nuclear and oil.
The nuclei involved in fission are produced in supernovae. So, I guess you could include that as solar power, but not the way you'd usually think of it.
The delta-v required to get off Earth is just plain enormous. That's a fact of physics which will NEVER change. What can change is (a) the cost of energy, and (b) how efficiently we can use that energy to escape our gravity well. If you want to make space exploration more feasible you have to do one or both of those two.
You know, I have to ask: what's Apple's motive here?
Apple's motive is to sell you The Experience, not a piece of software or hardware. Anyone other than Apple who interoperates with Apple products aside from a tightly controlled few avenues (a few open communication standards and their SDKs), is going to be seen as a threat to that.
They want to be able to sell you their vision and their experience, and anyone who deviates from that while piggybacking off their products is going to be seen as a threat. They could be worried about sub-par experiences tarnishing their name, and they could be worried about excellent experiences that they could be making every cent of the money from. But mostly they're worried about people being different, not buying into their vision. Then they can't sell you the next revision of the next product that integrates seamlessly into your digital lifestyle of Apple products.
So they'll bring down every tool they have to fight you, legal and otherwise, because this is the core of their business, and they view it as the thing worth most defending.
Could had done it mixing and matching existing protocols? Maybe yes, maybe not. And maybe those alternatives dont have the flexibility needed for wild evolution that this could have.
Wave is built on top of Jabber/XMPP, with the AJAX side being just one of many possible presentation layers. You can build your own console-based server if you really want, and federate it with the main Wave servers (and people have done this, go watch the demo video).
For science and humanity, surely you are right. This does effect those of us who work on it, however. People are waiting to graduate, waiting to publish, waiting to move on to other things (at the LHC or elsewhere). Scientists sometimes like to have normal lives too, and not have their careers stalled out.
Not to mention, the number of people who get tired of waiting and leave increases as time goes on (this does happen, there's plenty people switching over to D0 and CDF theses), depleting the amount of institutional knowledge retained, which will be necessary when this actually gets going.
The relevant language in the AGPL technically sidesteps this problem, although I'm not sure whether it addresses the spirit of your concern... it's not technically a restriction on use, but rather on modification.
Yeah again, it's trying to take away a right I had (modification without distribution, that's ok under default copyright law, right?). So if I reject the AGPL and use the code anyway, am I doing anything wrong, from a legal point of view?
Here's my issue with the AGPL: it imposes restrictions on you even if you don't distribute the software. Free Software advocates (myself included) have always insisted the GPL was beneficial because it granted you rights that you didn't have to begin with under copyright law, and so you were always free to reject it and still use the software.
But the AGPL says you have to release source if you run the code on a server exposed to the public... That's scarily close to a EULA: it takes away rights you have (the right to use the code given to you; the intermediate copying steps are protected in part explicitly by law and in part implicitly under fair use). What happens if I don't accept the AGPL and use the code anyway?
That's funny because I've been using Gentoo and had too many problems with ALSA (mostly from simultaneous playback. I don't want to worry that I'm missing IMs just because I'm watching a fullscreen movie.)
Switching to Pulse fixed things for me and I've never looked back. My Pulse-compatible apps all play nice with each other, and when I have to use an ALSA app I still can. The distros must be seriously fucking things up for people still to bring up Pulse as a problem these days, and not a solution.
...there have been numerous articles written on the lameness of waste of bandwidth that twitter is
And they all get posted on Slashdot and get at least their average share of comments. So much goes energy goes into "not using Twitter" these days. Methinks people doth protest too much?
My friends and I have a use case for Twitter and we're happy with it. Not everyone does. Perhaps they should just realize it's a tool like any other communication medium and let it be.
You think Free Software developers pander to what users say they want?! I can't think of any more group more intransigently opposed to doing anything other than scratching the itches that satisfy their particular use cases.
At least corporations have an obligation to pretend to care (for better and for worse).
Yes, but none of that answers the actual question GP was asking.
Is it useful to society to allow patenting of non-obvious algorithms that accomplish new things in new ways? We certainly want to see the development of these things, so is this the right way to encourage it, or is a funding model like basic research more appropriate? Or should we leave it entirely to the private market and see what comes up incidentally through the development of new products and services?
I don't think patents are the way forward here, but that doesn't mean it's a stupid question to ask.
C++ is widely recognized as a byzantine failure in every case.
Well, I don't know that you can get away with "widely recognized", but certainly you yourself are entitled to the opinion. I used to share it too, even when I was using it professionally.
Two things warmed me up to C++: Exceptions and RAII. Exceptions *cannot* be replicated in C. Throwing an error condition and then aborting block by block until you find one that wants to catch the error condition is just a god-send for writing error-safe code.
RAII is *necessary* given Exceptions, and merely extraordinarily convenient otherwise. You don't want to count on getting to the "cleanup" bits at the end of your functions because (a) you'll forget them occasionally, and (b) exceptions will circumvent them. Allowing cleanup to be associated with the object that needs to be cleaned up, and then having it automatically called when the object goes out of scope, is god-send number 2.
I have yet to see a language that does RAII as nicely as C++. Python is coming close.
Furthermore, just like GTK+ and Qt have cross-platform capability, so do the bindings, and if the appropriate binding library for a given platform is installed on that platform, the Java application, too, will be able to be cross-platform without modification. This is, of course, the job of the distribution and/or installer software
This is not a trivial step. There will always be advantages to pure Java code, the most obvious being it runs anywhere you have a JVM, and installs and behaves exactly the same way with no platform dependent code.
CLR also supports true shared libraries, and the notion of a Global Assembly Cache, to prevent the need for mucking around with CLASSPATHs. And there's (hopefully soon) the Dynamic Language Runtime, to provide true dynamic typing in the VM.
I like Java, I really do. (Well, I don't like Swing, but nor do I like Winforms, so...). But as it stands, the CLR is the best technology with the best promise. The only reason I shy away from it is that the Linux implementation of the class libraries never seems to have all the features of Microsoft's (and we'll always be playing catch-up there).
Ack! No! If you're writing C++ you don't want to use deletes (as counterintuitive as that sounds). Exceptions could cause breaks in code blocks before deletes (not to mention outright bugs like forgetting deletes, or having an if() {return;} before a delete), leaving allocated memory hanging around. The best way to do it is to embrace RAII and encapsulate pointers in objects like auto_ptr, so that regardless of how your object goes out of scope, it's properly destroyed and memory is reclaimed.
You can always license music individually with the rights owner, via for example Creative Commons, or go public domain where you can. What this deal covers is the "compulsory" license, which rights holders are obliged to accept if you want their music under those terms.
Try firefox -ProfileManager. I know it's not as simple as you're asking for, but you can have an entirely separate set of preferences, cookies, cache, etc.
I think most Americans DO understand this, but there is a partisan fiction that they don't. At a high level, though, judges get to change laws, IF (IFF, in theory) they are unconstitutional, or unjust. The whole "legislating from the bench" thing is generally a silly post-hoc argument we use when a judge doesn't rule in a way we (based on our political ideals) want.
As someone who has been reviewing Supreme Court opinions for the last couple years, I can tell you that's bullshit. There most certainly is a history of legislating from the bench and it comes from more than just untoward decisions.
The courts have used the due process clauses of the 5th and 14th amendments to outright make up constitutional bases for decisions they're trying to reach (the dissent in Third Judicial District v. Osborne, decided THIS YEAR, is a great example, if you care to engage in the topic).
Of course the words due process of law, if taken in their literal meaning, have no application to this case; and while it is too late to deny that they have been given a much more extended and artificial signification, still we ought to remember the great caution shown by the Constitution in limiting the power of the States, and should be slow to construe the clause in the Fourteenth Amendment as committing to the Court, with no guide but the Court's own discretion, the validity of whatever laws the States may pass.
Slashdot Mirror
No, it's a reason not to put DRM'ed store content on your Kindle, Sony Reader, iPod, or even laptop. The hardware is perfectly fine (even pleasant) for playing non-DRM media.
Yeah. I could see this as Palm making the statement to USBIF of "Hey, what these guys are doing here is kinda shady and against the spirit of open interoperability. We've done something technically bad to try to fix it, but we're coming up front with it and letting you know, because we wanna act in good faith. We'd very much appreciate it if Apple didn't do this anymore so we didn't have to resort to such a misuse of the spec in the future."
This is just a convoluted solar power system. But then again, so is everything else: wind, gravity, and more distantly, nuclear and oil.
The nuclei involved in fission are produced in supernovae. So, I guess you could include that as solar power, but not the way you'd usually think of it.
Why on Earth should he? Barring terribly inequitable starting conditions, If he's better able to adapt than you, doesn't he deserve to prosper more?
The delta-v required to get off Earth is just plain enormous. That's a fact of physics which will NEVER change. What can change is (a) the cost of energy, and (b) how efficiently we can use that energy to escape our gravity well. If you want to make space exploration more feasible you have to do one or both of those two.
You know, I have to ask: what's Apple's motive here?
Apple's motive is to sell you The Experience, not a piece of software or hardware. Anyone other than Apple who interoperates with Apple products aside from a tightly controlled few avenues (a few open communication standards and their SDKs), is going to be seen as a threat to that.
They want to be able to sell you their vision and their experience, and anyone who deviates from that while piggybacking off their products is going to be seen as a threat. They could be worried about sub-par experiences tarnishing their name, and they could be worried about excellent experiences that they could be making every cent of the money from. But mostly they're worried about people being different, not buying into their vision. Then they can't sell you the next revision of the next product that integrates seamlessly into your digital lifestyle of Apple products.
So they'll bring down every tool they have to fight you, legal and otherwise, because this is the core of their business, and they view it as the thing worth most defending.
Could had done it mixing and matching existing protocols? Maybe yes, maybe not. And maybe those alternatives dont have the flexibility needed for wild evolution that this could have.
Wave is built on top of Jabber/XMPP, with the AJAX side being just one of many possible presentation layers. You can build your own console-based server if you really want, and federate it with the main Wave servers (and people have done this, go watch the demo video).
For science and humanity, surely you are right. This does effect those of us who work on it, however. People are waiting to graduate, waiting to publish, waiting to move on to other things (at the LHC or elsewhere). Scientists sometimes like to have normal lives too, and not have their careers stalled out.
Not to mention, the number of people who get tired of waiting and leave increases as time goes on (this does happen, there's plenty people switching over to D0 and CDF theses), depleting the amount of institutional knowledge retained, which will be necessary when this actually gets going.
The relevant language in the AGPL technically sidesteps this problem, although I'm not sure whether it addresses the spirit of your concern... it's not technically a restriction on use, but rather on modification.
Yeah again, it's trying to take away a right I had (modification without distribution, that's ok under default copyright law, right?). So if I reject the AGPL and use the code anyway, am I doing anything wrong, from a legal point of view?
Here's my issue with the AGPL: it imposes restrictions on you even if you don't distribute the software. Free Software advocates (myself included) have always insisted the GPL was beneficial because it granted you rights that you didn't have to begin with under copyright law, and so you were always free to reject it and still use the software.
But the AGPL says you have to release source if you run the code on a server exposed to the public... That's scarily close to a EULA: it takes away rights you have (the right to use the code given to you; the intermediate copying steps are protected in part explicitly by law and in part implicitly under fair use). What happens if I don't accept the AGPL and use the code anyway?
I use Spaz (a FOSS Twitter client) on the Pre.
That's funny because I've been using Gentoo and had too many problems with ALSA (mostly from simultaneous playback. I don't want to worry that I'm missing IMs just because I'm watching a fullscreen movie.)
Switching to Pulse fixed things for me and I've never looked back. My Pulse-compatible apps all play nice with each other, and when I have to use an ALSA app I still can. The distros must be seriously fucking things up for people still to bring up Pulse as a problem these days, and not a solution.
...there have been numerous articles written on the lameness of waste of bandwidth that twitter is
And they all get posted on Slashdot and get at least their average share of comments. So much goes energy goes into "not using Twitter" these days. Methinks people doth protest too much?
My friends and I have a use case for Twitter and we're happy with it. Not everyone does. Perhaps they should just realize it's a tool like any other communication medium and let it be.
You think Free Software developers pander to what users say they want?! I can't think of any more group more intransigently opposed to doing anything other than scratching the itches that satisfy their particular use cases.
At least corporations have an obligation to pretend to care (for better and for worse).
Yes, but none of that answers the actual question GP was asking.
Is it useful to society to allow patenting of non-obvious algorithms that accomplish new things in new ways? We certainly want to see the development of these things, so is this the right way to encourage it, or is a funding model like basic research more appropriate? Or should we leave it entirely to the private market and see what comes up incidentally through the development of new products and services?
I don't think patents are the way forward here, but that doesn't mean it's a stupid question to ask.
C++ is widely recognized as a byzantine failure in every case.
Well, I don't know that you can get away with "widely recognized", but certainly you yourself are entitled to the opinion. I used to share it too, even when I was using it professionally.
Two things warmed me up to C++: Exceptions and RAII. Exceptions *cannot* be replicated in C. Throwing an error condition and then aborting block by block until you find one that wants to catch the error condition is just a god-send for writing error-safe code.
RAII is *necessary* given Exceptions, and merely extraordinarily convenient otherwise. You don't want to count on getting to the "cleanup" bits at the end of your functions because (a) you'll forget them occasionally, and (b) exceptions will circumvent them. Allowing cleanup to be associated with the object that needs to be cleaned up, and then having it automatically called when the object goes out of scope, is god-send number 2.
I have yet to see a language that does RAII as nicely as C++. Python is coming close.
Moonlight only supports Silverlight 1, which is basically enough to generate the dialog box that tells you you need Silverlight 2.
Furthermore, just like GTK+ and Qt have cross-platform capability, so do the bindings, and if the appropriate binding library for a given platform is installed on that platform, the Java application, too, will be able to be cross-platform without modification. This is, of course, the job of the distribution and/or installer software
This is not a trivial step. There will always be advantages to pure Java code, the most obvious being it runs anywhere you have a JVM, and installs and behaves exactly the same way with no platform dependent code.
CLR also supports true shared libraries, and the notion of a Global Assembly Cache, to prevent the need for mucking around with CLASSPATHs. And there's (hopefully soon) the Dynamic Language Runtime, to provide true dynamic typing in the VM.
I like Java, I really do. (Well, I don't like Swing, but nor do I like Winforms, so...). But as it stands, the CLR is the best technology with the best promise. The only reason I shy away from it is that the Linux implementation of the class libraries never seems to have all the features of Microsoft's (and we'll always be playing catch-up there).
Ack! No! If you're writing C++ you don't want to use deletes (as counterintuitive as that sounds). Exceptions could cause breaks in code blocks before deletes (not to mention outright bugs like forgetting deletes, or having an if() {return;} before a delete), leaving allocated memory hanging around. The best way to do it is to embrace RAII and encapsulate pointers in objects like auto_ptr, so that regardless of how your object goes out of scope, it's properly destroyed and memory is reclaimed.
You can always license music individually with the rights owner, via for example Creative Commons, or go public domain where you can. What this deal covers is the "compulsory" license, which rights holders are obliged to accept if you want their music under those terms.
Try firefox -ProfileManager. I know it's not as simple as you're asking for, but you can have an entirely separate set of preferences, cookies, cache, etc.
(Paraphrasing DNA:)
To summarize the summary: Computers are a problem.
I think most Americans DO understand this, but there is a partisan fiction that they don't. At a high level, though, judges get to change laws, IF (IFF, in theory) they are unconstitutional, or unjust. The whole "legislating from the bench" thing is generally a silly post-hoc argument we use when a judge doesn't rule in a way we (based on our political ideals) want.
As someone who has been reviewing Supreme Court opinions for the last couple years, I can tell you that's bullshit. There most certainly is a history of legislating from the bench and it comes from more than just untoward decisions.
The courts have used the due process clauses of the 5th and 14th amendments to outright make up constitutional bases for decisions they're trying to reach (the dissent in Third Judicial District v. Osborne, decided THIS YEAR, is a great example, if you care to engage in the topic).
-SC Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
It's not the OP, it's Slashdot. In some pages (my user page, for example) "i" tags get rendered as blockquotes. Must be a CSS bug, I suppose.