Is it just me, or is there a lot of hype over an OS that doesn't seem to be much more then a real time executive? It seems to get its speed more from not having any protection, or abstraction layer then being in asm. Having worked with stripped down OS's/Execs for years, I'll tell you its better to just add more machine. They have their place on smaller micros like the motorola 68xx and intel 8051 families, but not the IA-32 series.
The easiest way to sum it up is that they outline a set of accounting and security practices that are what the government considers the bare minimum for installing in many facilities without an exemption.
C2 is the first, and least restrictive certification. It is in reference to the red and orange books, which I'd have to look up the actual reference numbers of. Most commercial workstation vendors have had this for some time now. NT now has it. It is granted after a very entensive code review by a branch of the NSA.
FIPs is actually a set of a few hundred Federal security standards. There are some for password security, encryption, system control, etc...
The lawyers make money by representing people in legal matters that are to complex for the client, or when it must enter court. Innovation and the advance of technology is not in their favor. If a lawyer, or their staff, is made more effecient then they have to find more clients to keep the same profit margin. Thus meaning they will want to make things more complicated for legal matters or revoke the right for non lawyers to represent others in certain dealings (like what happened in Real Estate in many states).
So software patents kill both birds with one stone. They get more places where they have to be the representative, and it stifles innovation along with it. Now I know they consider the first all the time, but the second is probably just in the subconcious.
Plus they don't understand or like free software in general. Here is something that my staff can only charge back labor for? That means I can't tack on a handling charge for parts/materials.
While most of you may not think highly of the US government, they are one of the biggest customers or IT, and a huge director of where things go. An example is how much they can cram a bad standard before they reconsider it (GOSSIP anyone?). I've gotten Linux into a lot of government shops and applications, but its always an uphill battle because it isn't C2, or FIPs, or POSIX (early on for that one). Now with NT being C2 and FIPs (I don't remember the actual FIPS, maybe 140 or 180) certified this arguement has only gotten stronger. Put on top os this of not supporting ATM (yes I know it sucks for LAN apps, but tell the government that) in most distributions and pre built hardware and a large hurdle exists to get into the government and their contractors shops. Maybe RedHat or VA should use some of their newfound richs towards certification. C2 would be a good start and clear most of the problems.
Actually Tragic deals with this issue. It keeps a list of the last known class C that each party came from. It then sends out a query to all 255 addresses in each. Unless you are using one of the really big ISPs you will probably be right more then wrong. Even some of them will work this way due to geographical issues.
Tragic could be extended to make this even more useful. Add an echo net like lookup feature. When it queries for a person, if it contacts a different tragic then they exchange some of their directory info. This way information passes around the net. You then search out via the new dir info and keep repeating the process until you find the person. A simple set of rules could maximize the search for a limited set of resources.
The only issue that tragic doesn't deal with well is the naming. I think this could be done with a unique serial number and then aliases on top of it. Use the aliases, and then add part of the serial number as needed until it becomes unique.
I've thought about extending it myself to get this functionality, but I don't have time to do it yet. If someone else does I'll definitly lend a hand.
Even if there is a standard, the real problem is the fact that you have to use one or two controlled servers. It's the only way any of these IMs will work. Who controls the servers then has your friends and family list for marketing purposes. I'm sure the privacy issues are more then trivial. What is needed is a serverless IM. Tragic looks to be a good starting place, but needs a little help making it more robust and figuring out a better naming convetion. Once it really is peer to peer then privacy is only a matter of encryption, and the single point of failure in the server is gone.
I've been looking for something like this since my days as an undergrad. Wireless has the unique ability to take all your expenditures and put them up front. I can see a local ISP buying two or three of these and having the same coverage as they do now. After that they just have to collect enough money to pay for overhead and the P&I on the loans.
There are problems though. In my area a 30 mile radius encompasses a few million people. Is there the ability for orthogonal coding or seperate channels, or is this bandwidth shared per foot print? How many orthogonal channels are capabale in a footprint? If it's not a lot this could be worse then cable modems (I used to work with cable modems in high density installations about 10 years ago, and after the first large group gets on you wish they hadn't).
Monitors over 17 inchs tend to be very particular about anything being in their cases and the linearity of the display. That's why most of them have magnets glued in random place inside the case. Some guy sits and watches the picture while magnets are moved around the back (there was talk of an automated test jig seven years ago, but the one I was going to be involved with wasn't built and I haven't heard of any others). How much did this change that? Does the color get washed out when the CD spins up?
Then again an Imac owner is probably more concerned with the look of the machine then the quality or performance. "I don't want my desk cluttered." or "This matches the decor of my office." Hell none of them match the soldiering iron in mine.
While this seems to have been a mistake, doesn't it make sense to write a child's game in a protable language. The graphics need to be bright and happy, not fast and fancy. The game play isn't some super duper high performance AI, it should be simple and reliable so the little ones can discern the set rules as part of the learning experience.
Seems to me a scripting language such as Python, Perl, or TCL with a graphics toolkit like TK on top would be able to do everything but sound and be portable across a wide range of platforms. Development time should go down, thus reducing the cost of the product to a level that parents don't think twice about buying it, and they wouldn't have to worry as much about having the latest PC for the kids.
I'm not a GUI/game development type person, but for someone that is this could be an idea to start a small company around. The first game would be most of the work. Then with a language like Python you could reuse the modules in each new game thus reducing the effort level and keeping the games coming at a significant pace. In a year I'll be in the market for something like this and I'd buy it.
Yes, but the number varies based on the components and communication infrastructure. A set of components that only consumes 10 watts scale further then one that consumes 100 watts. Basically, infrastructure becomes you limiting factor. Power and communication specifically.
Overall though this just keep an upper bound on realistic growth.
Moore's law doesn't apply to machines like these. It applies to their components, but when you just keep adding components the aggergate will obviously grow faster. If you take the price though for that aggergate I think you'll see Moore's law probably still holds.
Let's face it username/password can be quite secure and quite unsecure. It's all in how you use it. If the password is sent via an encrypted link, or a challenge response system, it is as secure as the underlying transport and the entropy in the password.
Under Unix we have historically had an 8 character limit on passwords. This was due to the underlying implementation, and did lesson security under a number of situations. Now we can use a more generic hash algorithm rather then a bastardized DES, and this allows for much longer passwords. If I have a mixed case alpha numeric password with n characters that is 62 choose n. Take out a calculator, your not going to have a 10 to 15 character password brute forced without noticing it. Offline attacks can be even more fouled by salt.
As with almost all security applications, it not the underlying technology, but how you use it.
I've actually seen it used as threats so many times that I wouldn't call it an urban legend. Now I don't know anyone that has fought it to the point of bankruptcy because all of the individuals were adviced by their lawyers that it would cost X dollars to defend, which was quite a bit more then they had. Granted all of these suits were harrasment suits (harrasment to prevent a former employee from doing something), not comapnies looking for damages.
In this case the companies are looking for a cease and desist. If the indivduals don't comply you had better believe they will look for damages. I don't think they have a good case, but I know that if I was on the receiving end of this one I would be hard pressed for the resources to fight it.
No lawyers justify their fees by being quite effective in getting individuals to cease and desist. A company of medium means can hire a lawyer to harass a chain of people around an individuals effort to the point where the individual must either go into great debt or quit. Something needs to be done about this before it shuts down large sections of the open source movement. Maybe we need a IP rights version of the ACLU? I'd contribute to it.
I think the reason they worry about the piracy issue with DVD over VCR is the quality of the copy versus the cost to make that copy. With VCRs you get generational defects, and even master copies ware out. Once you get your master copy of a DVD you can make perfect copies every time.
Now I really think the entertainment industry is run by lawyers who don't understand the issue here. If I'm a pirate, I'll just bit copy the media (DVD in this case), and press disks. If I don't have the keys I can then just copy the encrupted data and the copy protection. If I do have the keys I can change the content before copying, but pirates don't want that.
Before anyone works on digital IP rights issues they should be forced to read, and understand, the record player example in Godel Escher Bach. Then if they start claiming they have the ultimate meta record player we know for a fact they are idiots.
There has been demand for Linux in the EDA/HDL world from the engineering side of the house for years (EETimes has covered it for three years now, and it has to be big enough for them stumble over it). This was a response in most design houses to management wanting to dump UNIX workstations for NT, and most of the software companies were doing that as NT became more reliable for intensive tasks (still not there yet).
Software like this will allow EE programs in schools to have a choice. Many of them were phasing out UNIX for NT because of the software available to VHDL and other courses.
Also, many of the most intense users of computers are the designers that do VHDL and simulation. These people buy a lot of hardware and spend a lot on software, so they tend to carry a bit of influence in where the overall computer market is going.
The "Washington Area" often means from Fredricksburg, VA; to Winchester, and including Baltimore. It's an awful big area.
On the flip side my own observation is that most of that area is about average or a little above when it comes to number of computers or Internet access. Then there are areas like Fairfax county which is just off the charts. Plus Arlington, Alexandira, Loudoun, and Montgomery also have high penetration of technology in most parts of those counties.
I once heard a statistic (around `96) that there are more computers in homes in Fairfax than residents. Homes seems like a stretch (but close if not true), but if you count in computers in offices then the machines probably outnumber people 2 to 1. Many people have two or three machines on their desks to support different levels of classification. It's in interesting area.
Actually USB didn't take off because of the Imac, it just happens that USB components became widely available just around the same time.
What everyone is missing is that USBs ultimate success is that it is CHEAP. Cheap to include in a part like a Motherboard, cheap to interface to, cheap all around. Printers are an example, centronix parallel ports are becoming a thing of the past even though with ECP/EPP they can easily compete in speed with USB. The reason is mainly that the parallel port is much more expensive then the USB port when you make millions of them. A parallel port requires line drivers, buffers, watching lines and general hardware handshaking that cost a bit to roll into a mass market product. While USB requires a single chip that can be had for well under a dollar.
Now if USB goes to something much higher then a few dozen Mbps then I think its only advantage will fly out the window. There is no technology today to make 100Mbps connections between machines, on cheap cable, for under a dollar. That is probably still five to seven years out. You can see this in IEEE 1394 (firewire for non IEEE members:-), where the cost of including that hardware to interface to it is well above $10. That's why we see USB on a $49.99 motherboard, but not IEEE 1394.
For a historical perspective of what is probably going to happen look at HP-IB/GP-IB/IEEE-488. I think firewire is going to go the same route. An excellent interconnect mechanism in its day that was to expensive for general use, but rocked in its niche.
Actually Tysons isn't where it's at. Drive a little further out the toll road and you'll see that the highest density of Internet bandwidth is in Reston, Herndon, and Dulles. I live within 4 miles of huge internet presences of PSI, UUNET, Sprint, AOL, MCI, Bell Atlantic's. Although I still can't get a connection over 51kbps. Of course we also can't forget AT&T and DISA which are little further away.
Of course MAE East used to be in Maryland, but I haven't kept up with where it is now.
Glade does something like this. It will produce C, C++, Ada source code or an XML file describing the GTK application. With python you parse the XML and then use a build tool to build the GTK objects as they are laid out in the XML by Glade. You just have to attach the events to code that you write.
While I see a great possibility here of having a way in which the author gives the user GUI elements and a set layout that the end user can change, the implementation suffers from the same problems that almost all XMl suffers from.
First, very few people understand the full scope of XML and all the adjoining technologies. The only way I understand it is putting it into the same perspective as SGML, but that doesn't cover many of the other parts. I guess most of us are waiting for an O'Reilly book on it.
Second, part of XMLs power is the way it can be used for almost anything. Part of the reason of it not being universally excepted is the the way it can be used for almost anything. Has anyone seen XML used the same way twice? From what I can see this has resulted in a lack of tools to deal with XML from beginning to end. Yes, you can merge a lot of tools to do some really amazing things, but it takes a lot of time and mental effort to come up with these chains of tools (much more so then other chains of tools).
Third, the resource consumption for most XML based projects is high. High enough that it will limit the viable uses of XML in the short term. Building a large GUI from XML may increase the start time of memory consumption beyond where it is usable for some applications. Netscape already loads slowly, if that time were doubled I'd be looking to use lynx for most everything (half:-).
I think there is a slight confusion on points. If I collect the real estate data for my community and publish it on a CD it is copyrightable due to the value I have added to the collection, but data itself is not copyrightable. Anyone can republish the raw data, or repackage it. Just not sell it with my value added.
The only example of data that I can think of that would be in a DB and be copyrightable is if you generate the data. Let's say I create an intellectual seed of data and software that generates a huge database of derived data. That would belong to me if I choose to copyright it.
Where books like the one you mentioned (I'm not familiar with it), or the ARRL repeater handbook are copyrighted is not the data, but the presentation of the data. I can not copy the book and sell it, but I can take the raw data, format it and sell it with my value added. Granted the ARRL will bully you into not doing this as they have others, but it's still legal.
Actually NCR has had a long line of UNIX systems that they sold for enterprise database systems. I cut my UNIX teeth on a UTower 32/400 MANY years ago. Now they have the terradata servers which are used in a number of enterprise scale solutions.
I think they are sueing for back end products. It could be netscape's livewire product or publishing system. I guess we'll know in a few hours or days.
If you site the original source and only use a quantity small enough not to replace the original it should fall under fair use. An example is using a chapter of a book on one narrow subject in a class, or taking a definition to site in a paper.
There have been different moves nationally and internationally to limit fair use or remove it for a micro payment scheme. All have so far failed, but with international standardization of copyrights and patents on the horizon I wouldn't be surprised if it becomes an issue again.
While databases really couldn't be patented (not the data that is) I'd rather see that then a copyright. Patents expire and then become available to the general public to extend the state of the art. Copyrights can last an awful long time and can be stickier in many different ways.
Of course databases have never been copyrightable before. Collections of data were just that. Your formating, layout, or other presentation could be, but not the collection of data. Granted many copyright holders used armies of lawyers to make people act as if their databases were copyrighted just becuase who can afford to fight it. The ARRL has done this multiple times with their repeater directories (that's why you can't find it online), and I think it's been done with different sports scores with varying amount of success.
Copyrights are to protect the creator of intellectual property. Software, art, literature are the products of the intellect. A collect of data is not.
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Is it just me, or is there a lot of hype over an OS that doesn't seem to be much more then a real time executive? It seems to get its speed more from not having any protection, or abstraction layer then being in asm. Having worked with stripped down OS's/Execs for years, I'll tell you its better to just add more machine. They have their place on smaller micros like the motorola 68xx and intel 8051 families, but not the IA-32 series.
The easiest way to sum it up is that they outline a set of accounting and security practices that are what the government considers the bare minimum for installing in many facilities without an exemption.
C2 is the first, and least restrictive certification. It is in reference to the red and orange books, which I'd have to look up the actual reference numbers of. Most commercial workstation vendors have had this for some time now. NT now has it. It is granted after a very entensive code review by a branch of the NSA.
FIPs is actually a set of a few hundred Federal security standards. There are some for password security, encryption, system control, etc...
The lawyers make money by representing people in legal matters that are to complex for the client, or when it must enter court. Innovation and the advance of technology is not in their favor. If a lawyer, or their staff, is made more effecient then they have to find more clients to keep the same profit margin. Thus meaning they will want to make things more complicated for legal matters or revoke the right for non lawyers to represent others in certain dealings (like what happened in Real Estate in many states).
So software patents kill both birds with one stone. They get more places where they have to be the representative, and it stifles innovation along with it. Now I know they consider the first all the time, but the second is probably just in the subconcious.
Plus they don't understand or like free software in general. Here is something that my staff can only charge back labor for? That means I can't tack on a handling charge for parts/materials.
They aren't serving society in these cases.
While most of you may not think highly of the US government, they are one of the biggest customers or IT, and a huge director of where things go. An example is how much they can cram a bad standard before they reconsider it (GOSSIP anyone?).
I've gotten Linux into a lot of government shops and applications, but its always an uphill battle because it isn't C2, or FIPs, or POSIX (early on for that one). Now with NT being C2 and FIPs (I don't remember the actual FIPS, maybe 140 or 180) certified this arguement has only gotten stronger. Put on top os this of not supporting ATM (yes I know it sucks for LAN apps, but tell the government that) in most distributions and pre built hardware and a large hurdle exists to get into the government and their contractors shops.
Maybe RedHat or VA should use some of their newfound richs towards certification. C2 would be a good start and clear most of the problems.
Actually Tragic deals with this issue. It keeps a list of the last known class C that each party came from. It then sends out a query to all 255 addresses in each. Unless you are using one of the really big ISPs you will probably be right more then wrong. Even some of them will work this way due to geographical issues.
Tragic could be extended to make this even more useful. Add an echo net like lookup feature. When it queries for a person, if it contacts a different tragic then they exchange some of their directory info. This way information passes around the net. You then search out via the new dir info and keep repeating the process until you find the person. A simple set of rules could maximize the search for a limited set of resources.
The only issue that tragic doesn't deal with well is the naming. I think this could be done with a unique serial number and then aliases on top of it. Use the aliases, and then add part of the serial number as needed until it becomes unique.
I've thought about extending it myself to get this functionality, but I don't have time to do it yet. If someone else does I'll definitly lend a hand.
Even if there is a standard, the real problem is the fact that you have to use one or two controlled servers. It's the only way any of these IMs will work. Who controls the servers then has your friends and family list for marketing purposes. I'm sure the privacy issues are more then trivial.
What is needed is a serverless IM. Tragic looks to be a good starting place, but needs a little help making it more robust and figuring out a better naming convetion. Once it really is peer to peer then privacy is only a matter of encryption, and the single point of failure in the server is gone.
I've been looking for something like this since my days as an undergrad. Wireless has the unique ability to take all your expenditures and put them up front. I can see a local ISP buying two or three of these and having the same coverage as they do now. After that they just have to collect enough money to pay for overhead and the P&I on the loans.
There are problems though. In my area a 30 mile radius encompasses a few million people. Is there the ability for orthogonal coding or seperate channels, or is this bandwidth shared per foot print? How many orthogonal channels are capabale in a footprint? If it's not a lot this could be worse then cable modems (I used to work with cable modems in high density installations about 10 years ago, and after the first large group gets on you wish they hadn't).
Monitors over 17 inchs tend to be very particular about anything being in their cases and the linearity of the display. That's why most of them have magnets glued in random place inside the case. Some guy sits and watches the picture while magnets are moved around the back (there was talk of an automated test jig seven years ago, but the one I was going to be involved with wasn't built and I haven't heard of any others). How much did this change that? Does the color get washed out when the CD spins up?
Then again an Imac owner is probably more concerned with the look of the machine then the quality or performance. "I don't want my desk cluttered." or "This matches the decor of my office." Hell none of them match the soldiering iron in mine.
While this seems to have been a mistake, doesn't it make sense to write a child's game in a protable language. The graphics need to be bright and happy, not fast and fancy. The game play isn't some super duper high performance AI, it should be simple and reliable so the little ones can discern the set rules as part of the learning experience.
Seems to me a scripting language such as Python, Perl, or TCL with a graphics toolkit like TK on top would be able to do everything but sound and be portable across a wide range of platforms. Development time should go down, thus reducing the cost of the product to a level that parents don't think twice about buying it, and they wouldn't have to worry as much about having the latest PC for the kids.
I'm not a GUI/game development type person, but for someone that is this could be an idea to start a small company around. The first game would be most of the work. Then with a language like Python you could reuse the modules in each new game thus reducing the effort level and keeping the games coming at a significant pace. In a year I'll be in the market for something like this and I'd buy it.
Yes, but the number varies based on the components and communication infrastructure. A set of components that only consumes 10 watts scale further then one that consumes 100 watts. Basically, infrastructure becomes you limiting factor. Power and communication specifically.
Overall though this just keep an upper bound on realistic growth.
Moore's law doesn't apply to machines like these. It applies to their components, but when you just keep adding components the aggergate will obviously grow faster. If you take the price though for that aggergate I think you'll see Moore's law probably still holds.
Let's face it username/password can be quite secure and quite unsecure. It's all in how you use it. If the password is sent via an encrypted link, or a challenge response system, it is as secure as the underlying transport and the entropy in the password.
Under Unix we have historically had an 8 character limit on passwords. This was due to the underlying implementation, and did lesson security under a number of situations. Now we can use a more generic hash algorithm rather then a bastardized DES, and this allows for much longer passwords. If I have a mixed case alpha numeric password with n characters that is 62 choose n. Take out a calculator, your not going to have a 10 to 15 character password brute forced without noticing it. Offline attacks can be even more fouled by salt.
As with almost all security applications, it not the underlying technology, but how you use it.
I've actually seen it used as threats so many times that I wouldn't call it an urban legend. Now I don't know anyone that has fought it to the point of bankruptcy because all of the individuals were adviced by their lawyers that it would cost X dollars to defend, which was quite a bit more then they had. Granted all of these suits were harrasment suits (harrasment to prevent a former employee from doing something), not comapnies looking for damages.
In this case the companies are looking for a cease and desist. If the indivduals don't comply you had better believe they will look for damages. I don't think they have a good case, but I know that if I was on the receiving end of this one I would be hard pressed for the resources to fight it.
No lawyers justify their fees by being quite effective in getting individuals to cease and desist. A company of medium means can hire a lawyer to harass a chain of people around an individuals effort to the point where the individual must either go into great debt or quit. Something needs to be done about this before it shuts down large sections of the open source movement. Maybe we need a IP rights version of the ACLU? I'd contribute to it.
I think the reason they worry about the piracy issue with DVD over VCR is the quality of the copy versus the cost to make that copy. With VCRs you get generational defects, and even master copies ware out. Once you get your master copy of a DVD you can make perfect copies every time.
Now I really think the entertainment industry is run by lawyers who don't understand the issue here. If I'm a pirate, I'll just bit copy the media (DVD in this case), and press disks. If I don't have the keys I can then just copy the encrupted data and the copy protection. If I do have the keys I can change the content before copying, but pirates don't want that.
Before anyone works on digital IP rights issues they should be forced to read, and understand, the record player example in Godel Escher Bach. Then if they start claiming they have the ultimate meta record player we know for a fact they are idiots.
There has been demand for Linux in the EDA/HDL world from the engineering side of the house for years (EETimes has covered it for three years now, and it has to be big enough for them stumble over it). This was a response in most design houses to management wanting to dump UNIX workstations for NT, and most of the software companies were doing that as NT became more reliable for intensive tasks (still not there yet).
Software like this will allow EE programs in schools to have a choice. Many of them were phasing out UNIX for NT because of the software available to VHDL and other courses.
Also, many of the most intense users of computers are the designers that do VHDL and simulation. These people buy a lot of hardware and spend a lot on software, so they tend to carry a bit of influence in where the overall computer market is going.
The "Washington Area" often means from Fredricksburg, VA; to Winchester, and including Baltimore. It's an awful big area.
On the flip side my own observation is that most of that area is about average or a little above when it comes to number of computers or Internet access. Then there are areas like Fairfax county which is just off the charts. Plus Arlington, Alexandira, Loudoun, and Montgomery also have high penetration of technology in most parts of those counties.
I once heard a statistic (around `96) that there are more computers in homes in Fairfax than residents. Homes seems like a stretch (but close if not true), but if you count in computers in offices then the machines probably outnumber people 2 to 1. Many people have two or three machines on their desks to support different levels of classification. It's in interesting area.
Actually USB didn't take off because of the Imac, it just happens that USB components became widely available just around the same time.
What everyone is missing is that USBs ultimate success is that it is CHEAP. Cheap to include in a part like a Motherboard, cheap to interface to, cheap all around. Printers are an example, centronix parallel ports are becoming a thing of the past even though with ECP/EPP they can easily compete in speed with USB. The reason is mainly that the parallel port is much more expensive then the USB port when you make millions of them. A parallel port requires line drivers, buffers, watching lines and general hardware handshaking that cost a bit to roll into a mass market product. While USB requires a single chip that can be had for well under a dollar.
Now if USB goes to something much higher then a few dozen Mbps then I think its only advantage will fly out the window. There is no technology today to make 100Mbps connections between machines, on cheap cable, for under a dollar. That is probably still five to seven years out. You can see this in IEEE 1394 (firewire for non IEEE members:-), where the cost of including that hardware to interface to it is well above $10. That's why we see USB on a $49.99 motherboard, but not IEEE 1394.
For a historical perspective of what is probably going to happen look at HP-IB/GP-IB/IEEE-488. I think firewire is going to go the same route. An excellent interconnect mechanism in its day that was to expensive for general use, but rocked in its niche.
You mean long as in the book of random digits that they produced in the 50's or 60's (I can't remember which, but it was awhile ago).
Actually Tysons isn't where it's at. Drive a little further out the toll road and you'll see that the highest density of Internet bandwidth is in Reston, Herndon, and Dulles. I live within 4 miles of huge internet presences of PSI, UUNET, Sprint, AOL, MCI, Bell Atlantic's. Although I still can't get a connection over 51kbps. Of course we also can't forget AT&T and DISA which are little further away.
Of course MAE East used to be in Maryland, but I haven't kept up with where it is now.
Glade does something like this. It will produce C, C++, Ada source code or an XML file describing the GTK application. With python you parse the XML and then use a build tool to build the GTK objects as they are laid out in the XML by Glade. You just have to attach the events to code that you write.
:-).
While I see a great possibility here of having a way in which the author gives the user GUI elements and a set layout that the end user can change, the implementation suffers from the same problems that almost all XMl suffers from.
First, very few people understand the full scope of XML and all the adjoining technologies. The only way I understand it is putting it into the same perspective as SGML, but that doesn't cover many of the other parts. I guess most of us are waiting for an O'Reilly book on it.
Second, part of XMLs power is the way it can be used for almost anything. Part of the reason of it not being universally excepted is the the way it can be used for almost anything. Has anyone seen XML used the same way twice? From what I can see this has resulted in a lack of tools to deal with XML from beginning to end. Yes, you can merge a lot of tools to do some really amazing things, but it takes a lot of time and mental effort to come up with these chains of tools (much more so then other chains of tools).
Third, the resource consumption for most XML based projects is high. High enough that it will limit the viable uses of XML in the short term. Building a large GUI from XML may increase the start time of memory consumption beyond where it is usable for some applications. Netscape already loads slowly, if that time were doubled I'd be looking to use lynx for most everything (half
I think there is a slight confusion on points. If I collect the real estate data for my community and publish it on a CD it is copyrightable due to the value I have added to the collection, but data itself is not copyrightable. Anyone can republish the raw data, or repackage it. Just not sell it with my value added.
The only example of data that I can think of that would be in a DB and be copyrightable is if you generate the data. Let's say I create an intellectual seed of data and software that generates a huge database of derived data. That would belong to me if I choose to copyright it.
Where books like the one you mentioned (I'm not familiar with it), or the ARRL repeater handbook are copyrighted is not the data, but the presentation of the data. I can not copy the book and sell it, but I can take the raw data, format it and sell it with my value added. Granted the ARRL will bully you into not doing this as they have others, but it's still legal.
Actually NCR has had a long line of UNIX systems that they sold for enterprise database systems. I cut my UNIX teeth on a UTower 32/400 MANY years ago. Now they have the terradata servers which are used in a number of enterprise scale solutions.
I think they are sueing for back end products. It could be netscape's livewire product or publishing system. I guess we'll know in a few hours or days.
If you site the original source and only use a quantity small enough not to replace the original it should fall under fair use. An example is using a chapter of a book on one narrow subject in a class, or taking a definition to site in a paper.
There have been different moves nationally and internationally to limit fair use or remove it for a micro payment scheme. All have so far failed, but with international standardization of copyrights and patents on the horizon I wouldn't be surprised if it becomes an issue again.
While databases really couldn't be patented (not the data that is) I'd rather see that then a copyright. Patents expire and then become available to the general public to extend the state of the art. Copyrights can last an awful long time and can be stickier in many different ways.
Of course databases have never been copyrightable before. Collections of data were just that. Your formating, layout, or other presentation could be, but not the collection of data. Granted many copyright holders used armies of lawyers to make people act as if their databases were copyrighted just becuase who can afford to fight it. The ARRL has done this multiple times with their repeater directories (that's why you can't find it online), and I think it's been done with different sports scores with varying amount of success.
Copyrights are to protect the creator of intellectual property. Software, art, literature are the products of the intellect. A collect of data is not.