Well, if "chemistry" includes electronics, I'll agree. Otherwise it's sounding like robots can't love, which while currently true, I doubt is forever true. In fact, I would class "love", etc., as basicly alogrithmic in nature, even though we don't currently know what the algorithm is. So saying it's chemistry is identifying the implementation with the algorithm.
OK, I guess that's a bit closer to what I really meant.
I think MacroLife is a much more reasonable concept than a Dyson sphere. Or a Topopolis. Or both. Or maybe you could find a way to solve the problems of a ringworld.
P.S.: A Dyson sphere doesn't have the dynamic instability problem of a ringworld, but it has a static version of the same thing. There's NOTHING to keep the sun in the center. Unlike the ringworld it isn't pulled off a peak of unstable equlibrium, but it's also not held at the center by anything. So ANYTHING that imparts momentum to the shell will tend to cause it to drift off center. This is less commonly realized than the problem of how to hold the air in place.
P.P.S.: I was addressing the most common form of Dyson sphere imagined. Engineers don't usually design it that way, but rather design lots and lots of habitats that can link at the edges. The solar cells have nearly complete coverage, but the habitats don't need that. That's much more practical for several reasons (e.g., you can build it in pieces). But note that this is closer to the concept of a Topopolis. And a Topopolis doesn't start with the intention of intercepting all solar radiation, though it could expand to do so, in which case it would be an implementation of a Dyson sphere. It could also extend "tentacles" intoo the Oort cloud, to facilitate the harvesting of comets...but I think MacroLife is a more appropriate way to do that.
N.B.: Topopolis doesn't require controlled fusion. MacroLife probably does. (I don't think fission is energetic enough, though one could certainly build small & slow versions using fission.) But note that even the "fast" versions of MacroLife would probably never get faster than 0.01c unless there are DRAMATIC improvements in several areas of technology. Guarding against meteor impacts is only one. And energy production is only one. It might required controlled generation of something analogous to gravity, i.e., something that could impart momentum over the entire structure without stressing the parts unevenly. My current idea is an ion engine that could exert several hundred pounds of thrust. This is probably better seen as a panel of ion engines, some of which eject electrons, and others of which eject protons at.99c or higher. I have no idea how practical this would be, but it doesn't seem totally out of the question. Clearly with this kind of motive power, you DON'T want to come in close to something heavy. But comet heads, etc. should be reasonable, and even Pluto, if you were careful. Don't think of it as a ship, but rather as a city. It may be slightly mobile, but even an ocean liner would be a marvel of acrobatic grace next to it (except, of course, that it would be mobile in three dimensions).
The real question is, what is the lowest level of energy difference that can be profitably collected. When you decide that, you've decided on the band of em-radiation that will be radiated. I'm not convinced that we can yet say what that would be, so it's possible that we should be looking for radio-waves. OTOH, mid-low infrared is certainly plausible. (Even if you *could* collect a tiny bit more, you've already extracted most of the energy, and building the collector would require a LOT of work. But it's also possible that we should be looking at red giants. Quite plausibly extracting the energy that falls below red requires a structure that costs more to build and maintain than it will ever yield in value.
OTOH, I'm not convinced by the Dyson sphere. It takes too much material, and disaters are too all-encompassing. I prefer topopolis (also know as "cosmic spaghetti"), which has many of the values of a Dyson sphere, but isn't quite as complete at collecting energy, but has many fewer engineering problems. Think of it as a linear space habitat 10-20 miles in diameter, and indefinitely long. It can come in chunks that are coupled together like train cars, only using magnetic couplers, so the sections are free to rotate with respect to each other. This allows Y juctions, and more (which don't rotate). But each chunk in in orbit. Ends can split and join. Etc. And it could be long enough to loop around the sun as many times as you have material to build. Another problem of the Dyson sphere is atmosphere. This seems to require two or more layers, and I have serious doubts that there is enough material even if you disassemble all the planets. Unless you are presuming efficient matter conversion, so that you can change granite and basalt into good steel...and even then I'm a bit dubious. And gravity. Topopolis solves this by rotating the chunks (which could be long enough to completely circle the sun multiple times, but why do it that way, still, if you did steel will flex enough that a 20 mile diameter tube wrapping around the sun wouldn't even notice the flexing).
So I really doubt they'll find anything. Still, it's worth looking, since the data needs to be collected for normal astronomical purposes anyway.
Sorry, but while chemistry is involved, it isn't even approximately the same as love. Love is *much* more complicated. So is hat, but it's simpler than love. Both love and hate require a computational model that hasn't been properly developed yet. It *is* clear that chemistry is used in the current implementation of the model, but saying it's required appears to be like saying computation requires an abacus.
Granted, I'm being nitpicky, but this *is* slashdot. And oversimplistic answers are... oversimplistic.
If you've been following the news...you don't have long to wait. In fact, if you consider a virus alive, they did it years ago. But work progresses on synthysizing total cells. (Usually under the label of "trying to find the simplest possible cell.".)
I will admit, however, that "not long" is a bit vague. I give it 10-15 years. 20 wouldn't really surprise me. 5 would. So would 25...unless there are drastic cuts in biology funding world-wide.
Yeah, we're heading towards a "turtles all the way down" kind of thing. Well, at least until you get to the ore mined out by the robot miners and processed by the robot chemical factories. Which already exist.
Repair is a more difficult thing to address, but that's being handled by replacing faulty modules. (This was not first applied in space, but it's integral to the design of current expensive space gadgets.)
P.S.: I'm not claiming that we're currently at "turtles all the way down", merely that we are headed consistently in that direction across a *very* broad range of areas. Everywhere the focus is first to make human labor more efficient, then to define efficient in such a way the the labor can be automated, then, as it becomes cheaper to use a robot than a human, to replace the human labor.
Please note that this trend is not inherently bad. But whether it's good or bad is determined by social controls that are placed on it. Given the current social controls, it's terrible. That it could be worse is scant recommendation.
My information is that if you have a "good faith" reason to believe that the copyright of someone that you are representing if violated, there is no penalty. And that there's no penalty for someone hiring a lawyer to file takedown notices lying to his lawyer. Or for the lawyer claiming to believe his client.
If this is so, then the penalties only affect those who are either poor or careless.
Additionally, I've never heard of anyone being prosecuted for a false takedown notice, but that is no indication that it hasn't happened.
N.B.: I'm not sure that would work, and I'm dubious about not requiring the CEO to at least live in Finland, if not Helsinki, but generally that's an excellent list.
FWIW, Elop was a lousy choice, and something they should have KNOWN was a lousy choice before they hired him. They would have done much better to hire from within, but they'd likely to have done better to pick someone off the street at random. At least that person wouldn't likely have been *intending* to sabotage them, which is the way Elop's actions look to me. And they should have known that if they hired an MS VP, that they needed to expect that he would make decisions that favored MS, and (at best) ignore what was beneficial to Noika (except, of course, for plausibility & PR purposes).
Perhaps I'm being overly harsh towards him, but I doubt it. This phone announcement was probably contemplated (by MS) before he was hired (by Noika). OTOH, he may well not have known about it. (Need to know principle.) Just known what he was supposed (by MS) to do.
Am I cynical? Yes. But MS has a long history, and this wouldn't be the most unscrupulous thing they've done.
I know I have a limited understanding, and I do understand that git allows everyone to have a complete copy of the software. This, however, isn't the same as a master copy (though it does facilitate reconstruction of the master copy if necessary from several independant copies). But I don't believe that the master copy is accessible on the web. A complete copy, that is the "working master", yes. But that's not the same thing.
I don't believe that I'm "spouting nonsense". The approach of having the accessible copy being the actual master, as opposed to the working master, is much too dangerous. One can always have a developer whose machiine is penetrated. It's true that if the accession logs are trustworthy, you can always recover from that, but that's a pretty big if. It's much safer and simpler to just have periodic backups of the full system, which are the actual masters.
I'm not, however, actually certain exactly where we differ. Perhaps you are calling the thing that I am calling the "working master" the master, and have a different name for the things I am calling "actual master". I don't think you're denying that they exist.
As you said, I am not fully conversant with git. For this reason I have avoided saying things like "trunk", "head", etc., and used the terminology that makes sense to me. I still, however, can't conceive that you are denying the process to be that which I am asserting.
I think you are misunderstanding how the kernel development works. Yes, there is, indeed, a public copy. But there are also several complete private copies at all times. Off-line. They may be in DVDs, or hard disks, but they aren't accessible to the internet.
So a couple of years ago when Debian got their archives on-line penetrated, they were able to restore from known good copies. There was a bit of work required to re-mirror everything, and to bring things back up to date...the off-line copies weren't totally up to date. This is to be expected. But there was a good journal up updates, and when they knew how the break in happened (a developer got hacked, and his password was used) they could replay the journal avoiding the changes that came from his account. Even if they hadn't been able to, their off-line backup was current to within a week.
If such a law were passed, you can bet it would be the security experts going to jail, not the bosses who overruled them. If necessary, the critical reports and memos would just disappear...but the law would probably be written so that even that was only needed to avoid lawsuits. And so that if there were suits, the company, and not the manager, was responsible. At the very most the CIO might be the fall-guy...and if that were the case, the official CIO would probably be a figurehead, with the real power and decisions made elsewhere.
Doesn't mean that I think that's how it should work, but that's how it appears to work in analogous areas. (OTOH, lots of engineers, who are liable, will quit rather than sign-off on something that they know is untrustworthy. So *maybe* it would still improve things.)
It probably doesn't matter. No OS secures the user directories if you have crackable applications installed. Like just about any web browser. And since this is Adobe, you can probably count on Flash, and probably some Flash development tools being installed.
No. Most of Adobe's customers would see no use in having the source code. Even most for most FOSS packages I use, I don't bother to even download, much less study, the source code. Usually only if I have a problem installing it. (And since it's usually a deb, that's quite rarely.)
Being able to study the source code and wanting to have it are really two different things.
OTOH, it is quite reasonable that machines should have libraries of the code to link, and the source code that the developer is working on. But you NEED air-breaks in your network for security. Where you put them is optional. If you have all the code on a machine, then that machine can't be connected to the internet, sorry. But if you only need one specific chunk, and the rest can be a library, then there's much less problem. So only the code that's being worked on needs to be exposed to a virus attack, or crack of the system.
Even GPL projects need to ensure that the master copies aren't writable by anyone not trusted, and that those people leave an audit trail. Pretending otherwise is silly. When it's commercial software the difference is that the source code is commercially valuable (as opposed to just valuable). And just try to guess how carefully that audit trail needs to be guarded.
So for a FOSS project, you don't expose the master copy of the source to the internet. For a commercial project you don't expose the source to the internet. Pieces of the source are a different matter.
Careful analysis of the problem shows that proper handling of this part of the security needn't be onerous. Improper handling is either dangerous, or overly restrictive. (However, commercial endeavors often have other reasons for limiting access to the internet. Sometimes they confuse these with the problem of securing the source code. This is improper. If they want to ensure that employees don't waste time on irrelevant activities, they shouldn't blur the problem of access to the source code to justify it. Doesn't mean they shouldn't limit the access, but confusing the reasons will lead to problems in the future. Often the quite near future.
And NOBODY is immune to penetration attacks. Some systems are more resistant than others, but that's a very different statement. And pretending otherwise is either foolish or... malicious isn't quite the word I want, but I can't think of a closer one.
Whether you can handle your own memory management or not depends on what you are doing. In relatively small applications it's no problem. Start getting larger, and you can't tell which processes are using, or going to use, which pieces of memory. It does, however, place constraints on what lower level operations are allowed. But so does parallel processing in general, even if it's small enough that you CAN manually handle memory allocation.
FWIW, even algorithmic garbage collectors run into problems when one is processing multiple streams of instructions, which is why so many languages are currently stressing immutable or final data allocation. That way data can safely be copied from place to place. But for this to be possible, any included pointers MUST be managed by the language, not by the programmer.
OTOH, for small programs, garbage collection does slow everything down, so in that context you have a good point. But that's not the entire context that computer languages need to handle.
Am I recommending that C adopt mandatory garbage collection? No. But I am recommending that it be built into the language. It could be a compile-time option, which, if enabled, would forbid certain kinds of activity (casting pointers back and forth to integers, etc.), and allow the compiler that handle the allocation and freeing of memory. This allows one to be maximally efficient when that's what's needed.
OTOH, I can see an argument that C should remain closer to the metal. But it's been moving away from that for a very long time. Still...perhaps it's best that one major language keep as much purity (in the sense of close to the metal) as reasonable. But do note that this is an argument against including even ASCII string literals in the language, and realize that you don't really want to be as pure as possible, or you'd be using assembler, and not even a macro-assembler. (I suppose that since there's memory mapping hardware that these days relocatable assembler code *is* close to the metal. Once it wasn't.)
Well, for one thing C is so basic, that there are fewer places that it needs to adapt. Even so, it *REALLY* needs to improve the handling of unicode strings and utf-8 files. This can't be patched by add-on libraries. And for my purposes, garbage collection would be a real benefit. (I mean standard garbage collection. And a decent garbage collection would mean that you couldn't freely inter-convert integers and pointers, or do pointer arithmetic, though properly constrained pointer arithmetic is feasible. [See Vala.])
If your purposes are different, it's reasonable that you may not need these features. But don't presume that everyone has your same use case.
Don't say always. At some point Python2 will be deprecated. Possibly not for 5 years or more, but at some point. It has been announced that python2.7 will be the last release of the Python2 series. Well, they may change their minds, and go to python2.8, but that's not the current plan.
So Python2 is stable, and will endure for quite awhile. But not forever. If you're planning for the next decade, you should use Python3. Don't plan for longer. C might be stable in that long a run, but don't count on it.
They are taking it seriously. That's why when they looked at the proposed budget they recommended shutting down an valuable piece of equipment. Because their budget wouldn't stretch that far.
I haven't heard any proposals for alternatives. (And given the cost, there may well not be any.)
I doubt it too, because the film was clearly merely a convenient flashpoint. They have been seriously and grievously offended and injured by repeated acts by the US government. Something that stirs up additional reaction creates a flash-mob, and is used by some who have been trying to get revenge for a long time. It isn't the film that's the problem, not basically. But the film is seen as an additional injury.
If you want people to stop hating you, stop injuring them. After a decade or so they'll put their interest on a more current enemy. (And given human nature, there will always be an enemy.)
I wish that were the moral. There is sufficient evidence that if they don't find evidence, they will create it for me to doubt that moral.
That isn't to say that there is much doubt that in this case they needed to do that. It's pretty clear that he's guilty as charged. But if he'd been squeaky clean, they would probably have invented something. "Suspicion of conspiracy to violate copyright laws" or something. (Note that the "conspiracy" part makes it a felony.)
FWIW, I think he may well be guilty of "conspiracy to violate copyright laws" based on things that were said by an actress who is suing him over deceptive practices during the making of the film. But I'm no lawyer.
When has the media ever been fair. They don't even cover natural disasters honestly. I saw coverage of a fire near where I live, and from the TV it looked like the entire city was in flames. Yeah, it was pretty bad, but it covered less than 1/10th (I'm not sure how much less), as I discovered when I got back.
In this case I can't complain about they way they are panning Romney. What I do object to is that before the election started they didn't criticize Obama properly. He's an enemy of freedom, possibly an enemy of humanity (though that *may* be an overstatement). That Romney is worse doesn't mean I feel I can vote for Obama. Talk about throwing your vote away...voting for either of them is worse than throwing your vote away. So I'll vote for some minor party, and be sorry that the incompetent that I vote for doesn't have a chance to win. (None of the minor parties I've investigated have a candidate who could even understand more than a fraction of the job of a president. Different parties understand different fractions. And none of them could get much cooperation from congress...or maybe they could? After all, none of the minor parties are the official enemy...
Good example. She was another person who was prosecuted to distract attention away from larger criminals.
And by "another" I mean this guy was too. Both appear to be guilty as charged. And in both cases that isn't sufficient to explain why *they* were chosen to prosecute.
The difference, of course, is that Martha Stewart doesn't appear to have had any malice, while this guy was loaded with it. And the criminals that Martha Stewart took the fall for had no real connection to her, and were powerful WITHIN the country, while those this guy is taking the fall for aren't guilty of the crimes that he is charged with, and are outside the country. Neither is the conventional "fall guy" setup, but in both cases the "victim" ends up in jail for the convenience of external forces, not *because* they committed the crime (though they did, apparently, commit it.)
I hadn't noticed that parallel before. Thanks for pointing it out.
I can't say I'm upset about it either. But I also acknowledge that the mechanism used to return him to jail, i.e., annoying someone important, is a very dangerous thing to exist, and can (and has) been used in much more objectionable ways.
The law was enforced against him because he annoyed someone more powerful. Most parole violations do not result in reincarceration. Often even repeated parole violations don't get more than a warning. That he gets jail is excessive.
OTOH, IIUC, his treatment of the actors and actresses in the film merits his being sued into total bankruptcy, probably for copyright violation. TOTAL. It was, in my non-lawyer opinion illegal as well as immoral. (He may not be much worse than most Hollywood producers, but that's a very low bar to jump over. A worm could do it. And saying he wasn't much worse isn't denying that he was worse.)
Sorry, but we must have different use cases, or different hardware. I do not find the *design* of KDE4's user interface to be as good as that of KDE3. And I last tried it around a month ago. I never had problems with bugs from it, not even in the 4.0 version. But I had problems, and have problems, with design decisions that they have made.
Note that I didn't reach my ranking of user interfaces without trying several of them repeatedly. And I'm not claiming that everyone has, or should have, the same opinions that I have. And some of the results may be due to the Debian implementation of the packages. But I rate things: 1) KDE3 2) Gnome2 3) LXDE 4) xfce (This used to be in the 3rd place, but recent changes in testing have moved it down. Further testing might move it down even further. I'm *not* a great fan of minimalism.) 5) KDE4 6) something I haven't tried yet. fwvm? 7) Gnome3
I have been testing alternatives repeated to be prepared for the day when Gnome2 is removed from Debian stable. I will grant that I don't spend much time on each choice anymore. Just enough to get a feel for what changes have been made. KDE4 does not appear to have improved at all since KDE4.2 (or 4.1?), and has, in fact, gotten slightly worse.
Also, if I am expected to spend a lot of time tweaking a desktop to make it work sensibly, I count that EXTREMELY heavily against that desktop. Some people do that for fun, but I merely find it an annoyance, and a place where breaks are to be expected in the next upgrade.
So I'm tracking MATE and Cinnamon. And Trinity. I don't feel that any of those are quite ready yet, or possibly it was just that the implementations I tried weren't ready. But in my opinion KDE4 falls below LXDE, which is what I currently use on Debian testing.
I assume, given the name that you have assigned to them, that you hate them. As such I don't feel encouraged that you would accept any reasonable suggestion.
There do exist people who deserve the appellation "brilliant jerk", but this is a far narrower category than just everyone who doesn't want to be a business major. (I notice that I'm being hyperbolic in my turn. So take that as an exaggeration of what you were saying. It's not basically wrong.)
That said, and since you appear to want them to leave, perhaps you should let them know. I suspect that they have no idea that you want them to leave, as one of the common characteristics of those who focus on technical skills is a lack of finer social skills. Perhaps you could offer to leave their names with headhunters. Working in a job where management hates your guts isn't a nice thing to discover, so once they discovered your attitude they might be pleased with the assistance...once they recovered from the bitter realization. In fact they might *prefer* to work for your competition.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, if "chemistry" includes electronics, I'll agree. Otherwise it's sounding like robots can't love, which while currently true, I doubt is forever true. In fact, I would class "love", etc., as basicly alogrithmic in nature, even though we don't currently know what the algorithm is. So saying it's chemistry is identifying the implementation with the algorithm.
OK, I guess that's a bit closer to what I really meant.
Yes. And in that case, why not use them in situ.
I think MacroLife is a much more reasonable concept than a Dyson sphere. Or a Topopolis. Or both. Or maybe you could find a way to solve the problems of a ringworld.
P.S.: A Dyson sphere doesn't have the dynamic instability problem of a ringworld, but it has a static version of the same thing. There's NOTHING to keep the sun in the center. Unlike the ringworld it isn't pulled off a peak of unstable equlibrium, but it's also not held at the center by anything. So ANYTHING that imparts momentum to the shell will tend to cause it to drift off center. This is less commonly realized than the problem of how to hold the air in place.
P.P.S.: I was addressing the most common form of Dyson sphere imagined. Engineers don't usually design it that way, but rather design lots and lots of habitats that can link at the edges. The solar cells have nearly complete coverage, but the habitats don't need that. That's much more practical for several reasons (e.g., you can build it in pieces). But note that this is closer to the concept of a Topopolis. And a Topopolis doesn't start with the intention of intercepting all solar radiation, though it could expand to do so, in which case it would be an implementation of a Dyson sphere. It could also extend "tentacles" intoo the Oort cloud, to facilitate the harvesting of comets...but I think MacroLife is a more appropriate way to do that.
N.B.: Topopolis doesn't require controlled fusion. MacroLife probably does. (I don't think fission is energetic enough, though one could certainly build small & slow versions using fission.) But note that even the "fast" versions of MacroLife would probably never get faster than 0.01c unless there are DRAMATIC improvements in several areas of technology. Guarding against meteor impacts is only one. And energy production is only one. It might required controlled generation of something analogous to gravity, i.e., something that could impart momentum over the entire structure without stressing the parts unevenly. My current idea is an ion engine that could exert several hundred pounds of thrust. This is probably better seen as a panel of ion engines, some of which eject electrons, and others of which eject protons at .99c or higher. I have no idea how practical this would be, but it doesn't seem totally out of the question. Clearly with this kind of motive power, you DON'T want to come in close to something heavy. But comet heads, etc. should be reasonable, and even Pluto, if you were careful. Don't think of it as a ship, but rather as a city. It may be slightly mobile, but even an ocean liner would be a marvel of acrobatic grace next to it (except, of course, that it would be mobile in three dimensions).
The real question is, what is the lowest level of energy difference that can be profitably collected. When you decide that, you've decided on the band of em-radiation that will be radiated. I'm not convinced that we can yet say what that would be, so it's possible that we should be looking for radio-waves. OTOH, mid-low infrared is certainly plausible. (Even if you *could* collect a tiny bit more, you've already extracted most of the energy, and building the collector would require a LOT of work. But it's also possible that we should be looking at red giants. Quite plausibly extracting the energy that falls below red requires a structure that costs more to build and maintain than it will ever yield in value.
OTOH, I'm not convinced by the Dyson sphere. It takes too much material, and disaters are too all-encompassing. I prefer topopolis (also know as "cosmic spaghetti"), which has many of the values of a Dyson sphere, but isn't quite as complete at collecting energy, but has many fewer engineering problems. Think of it as a linear space habitat 10-20 miles in diameter, and indefinitely long. It can come in chunks that are coupled together like train cars, only using magnetic couplers, so the sections are free to rotate with respect to each other. This allows Y juctions, and more (which don't rotate). But each chunk in in orbit. Ends can split and join. Etc. And it could be long enough to loop around the sun as many times as you have material to build. Another problem of the Dyson sphere is atmosphere. This seems to require two or more layers, and I have serious doubts that there is enough material even if you disassemble all the planets. Unless you are presuming efficient matter conversion, so that you can change granite and basalt into good steel...and even then I'm a bit dubious. And gravity. Topopolis solves this by rotating the chunks (which could be long enough to completely circle the sun multiple times, but why do it that way, still, if you did steel will flex enough that a 20 mile diameter tube wrapping around the sun wouldn't even notice the flexing).
So I really doubt they'll find anything. Still, it's worth looking, since the data needs to be collected for normal astronomical purposes anyway.
Sorry, but while chemistry is involved, it isn't even approximately the same as love. Love is *much* more complicated. So is hat, but it's simpler than love. Both love and hate require a computational model that hasn't been properly developed yet. It *is* clear that chemistry is used in the current implementation of the model, but saying it's required appears to be like saying computation requires an abacus.
Granted, I'm being nitpicky, but this *is* slashdot. And oversimplistic answers are ... oversimplistic.
If you've been following the news...you don't have long to wait. In fact, if you consider a virus alive, they did it years ago. But work progresses on synthysizing total cells. (Usually under the label of "trying to find the simplest possible cell.".)
I will admit, however, that "not long" is a bit vague. I give it 10-15 years. 20 wouldn't really surprise me. 5 would. So would 25...unless there are drastic cuts in biology funding world-wide.
Yeah, we're heading towards a "turtles all the way down" kind of thing. Well, at least until you get to the ore mined out by the robot miners and processed by the robot chemical factories. Which already exist.
Repair is a more difficult thing to address, but that's being handled by replacing faulty modules. (This was not first applied in space, but it's integral to the design of current expensive space gadgets.)
P.S.: I'm not claiming that we're currently at "turtles all the way down", merely that we are headed consistently in that direction across a *very* broad range of areas. Everywhere the focus is first to make human labor more efficient, then to define efficient in such a way the the labor can be automated, then, as it becomes cheaper to use a robot than a human, to replace the human labor.
Please note that this trend is not inherently bad. But whether it's good or bad is determined by social controls that are placed on it. Given the current social controls, it's terrible. That it could be worse is scant recommendation.
My information is that if you have a "good faith" reason to believe that the copyright of someone that you are representing if violated, there is no penalty. And that there's no penalty for someone hiring a lawyer to file takedown notices lying to his lawyer. Or for the lawyer claiming to believe his client.
If this is so, then the penalties only affect those who are either poor or careless.
Additionally, I've never heard of anyone being prosecuted for a false takedown notice, but that is no indication that it hasn't happened.
Mod parent up.
N.B.: I'm not sure that would work, and I'm dubious about not requiring the CEO to at least live in Finland, if not Helsinki, but generally that's an excellent list.
FWIW, Elop was a lousy choice, and something they should have KNOWN was a lousy choice before they hired him. They would have done much better to hire from within, but they'd likely to have done better to pick someone off the street at random. At least that person wouldn't likely have been *intending* to sabotage them, which is the way Elop's actions look to me. And they should have known that if they hired an MS VP, that they needed to expect that he would make decisions that favored MS, and (at best) ignore what was beneficial to Noika (except, of course, for plausibility & PR purposes).
Perhaps I'm being overly harsh towards him, but I doubt it. This phone announcement was probably contemplated (by MS) before he was hired (by Noika). OTOH, he may well not have known about it. (Need to know principle.) Just known what he was supposed (by MS) to do.
Am I cynical? Yes. But MS has a long history, and this wouldn't be the most unscrupulous thing they've done.
I know I have a limited understanding, and I do understand that git allows everyone to have a complete copy of the software. This, however, isn't the same as a master copy (though it does facilitate reconstruction of the master copy if necessary from several independant copies). But I don't believe that the master copy is accessible on the web. A complete copy, that is the "working master", yes. But that's not the same thing.
I don't believe that I'm "spouting nonsense". The approach of having the accessible copy being the actual master, as opposed to the working master, is much too dangerous. One can always have a developer whose machiine is penetrated. It's true that if the accession logs are trustworthy, you can always recover from that, but that's a pretty big if. It's much safer and simpler to just have periodic backups of the full system, which are the actual masters.
I'm not, however, actually certain exactly where we differ. Perhaps you are calling the thing that I am calling the "working master" the master, and have a different name for the things I am calling "actual master". I don't think you're denying that they exist.
As you said, I am not fully conversant with git. For this reason I have avoided saying things like "trunk", "head", etc., and used the terminology that makes sense to me. I still, however, can't conceive that you are denying the process to be that which I am asserting.
I think you are misunderstanding how the kernel development works. Yes, there is, indeed, a public copy. But there are also several complete private copies at all times. Off-line. They may be in DVDs, or hard disks, but they aren't accessible to the internet.
So a couple of years ago when Debian got their archives on-line penetrated, they were able to restore from known good copies. There was a bit of work required to re-mirror everything, and to bring things back up to date...the off-line copies weren't totally up to date. This is to be expected. But there was a good journal up updates, and when they knew how the break in happened (a developer got hacked, and his password was used) they could replay the journal avoiding the changes that came from his account. Even if they hadn't been able to, their off-line backup was current to within a week.
If such a law were passed, you can bet it would be the security experts going to jail, not the bosses who overruled them. If necessary, the critical reports and memos would just disappear...but the law would probably be written so that even that was only needed to avoid lawsuits. And so that if there were suits, the company, and not the manager, was responsible. At the very most the CIO might be the fall-guy...and if that were the case, the official CIO would probably be a figurehead, with the real power and decisions made elsewhere.
Doesn't mean that I think that's how it should work, but that's how it appears to work in analogous areas. (OTOH, lots of engineers, who are liable, will quit rather than sign-off on something that they know is untrustworthy. So *maybe* it would still improve things.)
It probably doesn't matter. No OS secures the user directories if you have crackable applications installed. Like just about any web browser. And since this is Adobe, you can probably count on Flash, and probably some Flash development tools being installed.
No. Most of Adobe's customers would see no use in having the source code. Even most for most FOSS packages I use, I don't bother to even download, much less study, the source code. Usually only if I have a problem installing it. (And since it's usually a deb, that's quite rarely.)
Being able to study the source code and wanting to have it are really two different things.
"Because it's 2012" is not a valid reason. Sorry.
OTOH, it is quite reasonable that machines should have libraries of the code to link, and the source code that the developer is working on. But you NEED air-breaks in your network for security. Where you put them is optional. If you have all the code on a machine, then that machine can't be connected to the internet, sorry. But if you only need one specific chunk, and the rest can be a library, then there's much less problem. So only the code that's being worked on needs to be exposed to a virus attack, or crack of the system.
Even GPL projects need to ensure that the master copies aren't writable by anyone not trusted, and that those people leave an audit trail. Pretending otherwise is silly. When it's commercial software the difference is that the source code is commercially valuable (as opposed to just valuable). And just try to guess how carefully that audit trail needs to be guarded.
So for a FOSS project, you don't expose the master copy of the source to the internet. For a commercial project you don't expose the source to the internet. Pieces of the source are a different matter.
Careful analysis of the problem shows that proper handling of this part of the security needn't be onerous. Improper handling is either dangerous, or overly restrictive. (However, commercial endeavors often have other reasons for limiting access to the internet. Sometimes they confuse these with the problem of securing the source code. This is improper. If they want to ensure that employees don't waste time on irrelevant activities, they shouldn't blur the problem of access to the source code to justify it. Doesn't mean they shouldn't limit the access, but confusing the reasons will lead to problems in the future. Often the quite near future.
And NOBODY is immune to penetration attacks. Some systems are more resistant than others, but that's a very different statement. And pretending otherwise is either foolish or ... malicious isn't quite the word I want, but I can't think of a closer one.
Whether you can handle your own memory management or not depends on what you are doing. In relatively small applications it's no problem. Start getting larger, and you can't tell which processes are using, or going to use, which pieces of memory. It does, however, place constraints on what lower level operations are allowed. But so does parallel processing in general, even if it's small enough that you CAN manually handle memory allocation.
FWIW, even algorithmic garbage collectors run into problems when one is processing multiple streams of instructions, which is why so many languages are currently stressing immutable or final data allocation. That way data can safely be copied from place to place. But for this to be possible, any included pointers MUST be managed by the language, not by the programmer.
OTOH, for small programs, garbage collection does slow everything down, so in that context you have a good point. But that's not the entire context that computer languages need to handle.
Am I recommending that C adopt mandatory garbage collection? No. But I am recommending that it be built into the language. It could be a compile-time option, which, if enabled, would forbid certain kinds of activity (casting pointers back and forth to integers, etc.), and allow the compiler that handle the allocation and freeing of memory. This allows one to be maximally efficient when that's what's needed.
OTOH, I can see an argument that C should remain closer to the metal. But it's been moving away from that for a very long time. Still...perhaps it's best that one major language keep as much purity (in the sense of close to the metal) as reasonable. But do note that this is an argument against including even ASCII string literals in the language, and realize that you don't really want to be as pure as possible, or you'd be using assembler, and not even a macro-assembler. (I suppose that since there's memory mapping hardware that these days relocatable assembler code *is* close to the metal. Once it wasn't.)
Well, for one thing C is so basic, that there are fewer places that it needs to adapt. Even so, it *REALLY* needs to improve the handling of unicode strings and utf-8 files. This can't be patched by add-on libraries. And for my purposes, garbage collection would be a real benefit. (I mean standard garbage collection. And a decent garbage collection would mean that you couldn't freely inter-convert integers and pointers, or do pointer arithmetic, though properly constrained pointer arithmetic is feasible. [See Vala.])
If your purposes are different, it's reasonable that you may not need these features. But don't presume that everyone has your same use case.
Don't say always. At some point Python2 will be deprecated. Possibly not for 5 years or more, but at some point. It has been announced that python2.7 will be the last release of the Python2 series. Well, they may change their minds, and go to python2.8, but that's not the current plan.
So Python2 is stable, and will endure for quite awhile. But not forever. If you're planning for the next decade, you should use Python3. Don't plan for longer. C might be stable in that long a run, but don't count on it.
They are taking it seriously. That's why when they looked at the proposed budget they recommended shutting down an valuable piece of equipment. Because their budget wouldn't stretch that far.
I haven't heard any proposals for alternatives. (And given the cost, there may well not be any.)
I doubt it too, because the film was clearly merely a convenient flashpoint. They have been seriously and grievously offended and injured by repeated acts by the US government. Something that stirs up additional reaction creates a flash-mob, and is used by some who have been trying to get revenge for a long time. It isn't the film that's the problem, not basically. But the film is seen as an additional injury.
If you want people to stop hating you, stop injuring them. After a decade or so they'll put their interest on a more current enemy. (And given human nature, there will always be an enemy.)
I wish that were the moral. There is sufficient evidence that if they don't find evidence, they will create it for me to doubt that moral.
That isn't to say that there is much doubt that in this case they needed to do that. It's pretty clear that he's guilty as charged. But if he'd been squeaky clean, they would probably have invented something. "Suspicion of conspiracy to violate copyright laws" or something. (Note that the "conspiracy" part makes it a felony.)
FWIW, I think he may well be guilty of "conspiracy to violate copyright laws" based on things that were said by an actress who is suing him over deceptive practices during the making of the film. But I'm no lawyer.
When has the media ever been fair. They don't even cover natural disasters honestly. I saw coverage of a fire near where I live, and from the TV it looked like the entire city was in flames. Yeah, it was pretty bad, but it covered less than 1/10th (I'm not sure how much less), as I discovered when I got back.
In this case I can't complain about they way they are panning Romney. What I do object to is that before the election started they didn't criticize Obama properly. He's an enemy of freedom, possibly an enemy of humanity (though that *may* be an overstatement). That Romney is worse doesn't mean I feel I can vote for Obama. Talk about throwing your vote away...voting for either of them is worse than throwing your vote away. So I'll vote for some minor party, and be sorry that the incompetent that I vote for doesn't have a chance to win. (None of the minor parties I've investigated have a candidate who could even understand more than a fraction of the job of a president. Different parties understand different fractions. And none of them could get much cooperation from congress...or maybe they could? After all, none of the minor parties are the official enemy...
Good example. She was another person who was prosecuted to distract attention away from larger criminals.
And by "another" I mean this guy was too. Both appear to be guilty as charged. And in both cases that isn't sufficient to explain why *they* were chosen to prosecute.
The difference, of course, is that Martha Stewart doesn't appear to have had any malice, while this guy was loaded with it. And the criminals that Martha Stewart took the fall for had no real connection to her, and were powerful WITHIN the country, while those this guy is taking the fall for aren't guilty of the crimes that he is charged with, and are outside the country. Neither is the conventional "fall guy" setup, but in both cases the "victim" ends up in jail for the convenience of external forces, not *because* they committed the crime (though they did, apparently, commit it.)
I hadn't noticed that parallel before. Thanks for pointing it out.
I can't say I'm upset about it either. But I also acknowledge that the mechanism used to return him to jail, i.e., annoying someone important, is a very dangerous thing to exist, and can (and has) been used in much more objectionable ways.
The law was enforced against him because he annoyed someone more powerful. Most parole violations do not result in reincarceration. Often even repeated parole violations don't get more than a warning. That he gets jail is excessive.
OTOH, IIUC, his treatment of the actors and actresses in the film merits his being sued into total bankruptcy, probably for copyright violation. TOTAL. It was, in my non-lawyer opinion illegal as well as immoral. (He may not be much worse than most Hollywood producers, but that's a very low bar to jump over. A worm could do it. And saying he wasn't much worse isn't denying that he was worse.)
Sorry, but we must have different use cases, or different hardware. I do not find the *design* of KDE4's user interface to be as good as that of KDE3. And I last tried it around a month ago. I never had problems with bugs from it, not even in the 4.0 version. But I had problems, and have problems, with design decisions that they have made.
Note that I didn't reach my ranking of user interfaces without trying several of them repeatedly. And I'm not claiming that everyone has, or should have, the same opinions that I have. And some of the results may be due to the Debian implementation of the packages. But I rate things:
1) KDE3
2) Gnome2
3) LXDE
4) xfce (This used to be in the 3rd place, but recent changes in testing have moved it down. Further testing might move it down even further. I'm *not* a great fan of minimalism.)
5) KDE4
6) something I haven't tried yet. fwvm?
7) Gnome3
I have been testing alternatives repeated to be prepared for the day when Gnome2 is removed from Debian stable. I will grant that I don't spend much time on each choice anymore. Just enough to get a feel for what changes have been made. KDE4 does not appear to have improved at all since KDE4.2 (or 4.1?), and has, in fact, gotten slightly worse.
Also, if I am expected to spend a lot of time tweaking a desktop to make it work sensibly, I count that EXTREMELY heavily against that desktop. Some people do that for fun, but I merely find it an annoyance, and a place where breaks are to be expected in the next upgrade.
So I'm tracking MATE and Cinnamon. And Trinity. I don't feel that any of those are quite ready yet, or possibly it was just that the implementations I tried weren't ready. But in my opinion KDE4 falls below LXDE, which is what I currently use on Debian testing.
I assume, given the name that you have assigned to them, that you hate them. As such I don't feel encouraged that you would accept any reasonable suggestion.
There do exist people who deserve the appellation "brilliant jerk", but this is a far narrower category than just everyone who doesn't want to be a business major. (I notice that I'm being hyperbolic in my turn. So take that as an exaggeration of what you were saying. It's not basically wrong.)
That said, and since you appear to want them to leave, perhaps you should let them know. I suspect that they have no idea that you want them to leave, as one of the common characteristics of those who focus on technical skills is a lack of finer social skills. Perhaps you could offer to leave their names with headhunters. Working in a job where management hates your guts isn't a nice thing to discover, so once they discovered your attitude they might be pleased with the assistance...once they recovered from the bitter realization. In fact they might *prefer* to work for your competition.