The proportion of open source projects using the GPL, LGPL and AGPL is declining, not the absolute number of projects.
The absolute number of GPL projects is not a very meaningful number. The GPL license can not be retracted, canceled or otherwise ended. Once released that particular GPL project exists regardless of whether the copyright holder changes his/her mind. All the author can do is re-license and release future versions of the project under a different license. However that previous version persists, as the GPL license was designed to ensure, and is counted even if orphaned and not adopted by users or some community.
Exactly. When you pump water out of the ground it's gone forever.
Underground reservoirs are not necessarily refilled by the next rain. Read up on such reservoirs found in North America. They were filled over many thousands of years and significantly drained by agriculture related drilling and pumping in decades. Every year agriculture has to drill deeper and deeper to find water.
It gets consumed, evaporates, and then it never rains again.
Of course it rains, the problem is that it does not necessarily rain where the water was harvested. Harvesting deep water reservoirs does not somehow change the fact that a region is a desert or arid region with little rainfall.
These two devices solve literally every problem you are trying to solve.
Exactly.
From the article: "Why doesn't she put those to the side, I asked, and prioritize response to individual e-mails from constituents who've taken the time to actually write?" The truth of the matter is that sending an email is *not* considered taking the time to *write*, and there is some truth to this perspective. An email is far more convenient than a handwritten letter.
Correspondence gets ranked according to the medium used and level of personalization:
Personal handwritten letter (most highly valued correspondence)
Personal typed/printed letter
Personal email (low valued correspondence)
Mass paper mailing
Mass emailing (a virtually ignored corresondence)
If you want to be taken more seriously you need to act accordingly. I realize this seems completely unfair, and in some ways it is - ideas are not being evaluated completely on their merits, but people who get lots of mail need to prioritize it somehow. Taking into consideration the effort that the sender put in is somewhat rational, it demonstrates a more strongly held opinion and a more motivated individual (i.e. a more likely to show up on election day). Plus politicians also consider that greater effort suggests more people who feel the same way but were deterred by the effort (i.e. handwritten gets a far larger likely voter multiplier than email).
Do whatever you can to make yourself seen as an independent more likely voter. The only thing that matters to politicians (well those that intend to run again) is independent voters. People who don't vote can be ignored. People who are loyal members of the politician's part can be ignored, they have that person's vote. People who are loyal members of the other party can be ignored, they can't get that person's vote. Only independent voters and disloyal party members are important.
If I recommend it in a slashdot thread regarding calculator apps I am *not* astroturfing because my account name, "perpenso", indicates that I represent the publisher.
What you *should* do is a very simple "Disclosure: this is my product".
I do make such a disclosure when recommending it or comparing it to other products. IMHO that is the correct things to do. If I am just using it to illustrate some general iOS or iTunes point I may not bother.
Presuming that someone will even bother to look at your username, then connect 2 + 2 (lol amirite?)...
Absolutely correct. Even calculators naively using the hardware FPU get that one correct.:-)
... is demanding far too much investigative work from a forum reader.
However I don't think failing to disclose as suggested rises to astoturfing. In my mind astroturfing involves actively hiding any connection. Actively deceiving a reader who is making some sort of investigative effort.
It seems to be a little more complicated. Not all//e motherboards supported double hi-res, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_IIe. I have no idea how many incompatible ones there were. My//e was a fairly early model, it might have been one such model. However my friends and I were targeting the II+ and//e so we probably would have passed on the mode even without such revision issues.
For much the same reason you need an MBA to "manage" a software development team.
You do not need a degree in computer science (CS) to be a software developer, but you do need to learn on your own many of the things that you would learn is a CS degree program. Similarly you do not need an MBA to manage a development team, but you do need to learn on your own many of the things that you would learn in a MBA degree program. If you are going to manage a team an MBA would be useful, both in respect to technical skills and interpersonal skills. If you need to interact with other departments an MBA would be very useful, it helps you understand the perspective of these other departments and to communicate and persuade more effectively.
I once held an attitude similar to the one your post suggests. When I graduated with a CS degree I never imagined that I would someday go for an MBA. However when I eventually did so one of the things than made business school so much fun was to learn just how ignorant and misinformed I had been about business school and what is actually taught there. The CEOs and managers that royally screw things up are generally not following the lessons they were taught in their MBA program, much like the software developers who writes buggy and unmaintainable code are generally not following the lessons they were taught in their CS program. School can teach good lessons but neither CEOs, managers nor software developers necessarily follow their respective lessons.
Why do you need a PC to "manage" an iPhone? My Android phone does just fine without any PC.
An iPhone also works just fine without a PC. However the advantage of using it with a PC is that a PC is a very convenient place to backup all the content on the iPhone. The cloud is another convenient place, but a PC is the place I have control over, the place I can do further backups, etc.
Its not just Windows. Having multiple Mac OS X apps managing an iOS device would degrade the user experience. Having one app sync everything (musics, video, photos, apps, etc) makes sense. Having to use more than one app to do so would be annoying, even error prone. Hell, I'm mildly annoyed when I plug in an iPhone and both iTunes and iPhoto launch. I want to use iPhoto far less often than it auto-launches.
iTunes may need to be redesigned and rewritten, but probably not broken up.
I realize your "bake sale to buy a bomber" comment is a joke but the really funny thing is that stuff like that actually happened in WW2. Groups really did organize and collect money to buy an aircraft for the military.
It means that when a private person sees another person or group collecting for some issue, the private person is more likely to ignore them and not contribute. This person will usually justify the decision because his taxes are paying for [insert gov't program here]. This is a real issue that economists and charities have spoken about for many decades.
These charities do not lack organization as you suggest. These charities may in fact be far more effective than Washington DC. Many of these charities are local and much better informed about what is going on locally. They can be far more creative and effective than a well meaning but distant person in Washington DC who often thinks in terms of one-size-fits-all national solutions.
Your fire department analogy doesn't really fit. Washington DC is not providing your fire department services. Plus many fire stations are in fact comprised of local volunteers.
Think of the many local charities as the FOSS communities taking on a large project with a distributed network of volunteers, and the gov't based services as the monolithic corporation designing and implementing an application with a committee designed feature set that it expects will meet the needs of all users.
... if you think about the Citizen's United ruling, the Supreme Court has already said that corporations are people and enjoy 1st amendment rights...
The Citizens United ruling did not say that corporations are people. That was how an opponent of the decision characterized the ruling. In other words it was highly successful political spin.
IIRC what the Supreme Court actually said was that people, whether as individuals or as part of a group (activist organization, trade union, corporation, etc) have first amendment rights. They also said that a corporation that owns newspapers and TV stations does not enjoy any extra privileges compared to other corporations, basically that media corporations are not special.
My odds are 1000000-1 that this statement was never made. Scientists speak in very measured language
The statement was probably made by a politician, a movie star spokesperson or some other advocate. Then it got into the press. Sadly, the actual scientists don't make it into the press so much.
Although grossly misstated, there is a nugget of truth hidden deep within the point the GP was trying to make. What the GP should have said is that when the politicians get involved the public becomes mistrustful. Basically the public did not become skeptical about climate change until one political party adopted the issue for campaigning purposes, inevitably exaggerating things as politicians often do, and then regrettably the real scientists get unfairly tainted with the politics and skepticism.
If climate change had never been adopted as a *political* issue the public would probably be far more concerned.
What is interesting about software engineering right now is that we are at a point where someone, solo or with a couple of buddies, can realistically develop a product and reach an audience. We have not been able to do that very easily in a while.
In the stone ages of personal computers, the 1980s, a few guys working out of their garage could literally develop software, put a 5.25in floppy in a ziplock baggy with a xeroxed manual, and take it to the local mom-and-pop and brick-and-mortar computer shops that were around back then. Some friends and I *literally* did the above. You could talk to the manager, do a quick demo, he'd often buy a few put it on the shelf and after they sold give you a phone call to order some more. Repeat as necessary, increasing your geographic coverage.
Then came a couple of decades where the small computer shops were replaced by big chain stores and later online. During those times it was really difficult to reach customers. Even with the internet you were still largely limited to selling to a relatively small technically inclined niche. The general public did not get onboard until very recently.
Today with the general public largely accepting pure digital distribution via the various app stores the little guy(s) can actually reach a decent audience. For example Perpenso Calc for iPhone iPad, a calculator app offering RPN, scientific, statistics, business and hex functionality. A product like this shows up in a store search right next to HP and TI offerings. So yes, its a pretty good time to be a software engineer.
"He's not being asked to astroturf. He's being asked to like the product."
Astroturfing is astroturfing, no matter the form. Employees are being asked to falsely represent themselves as happily satisfied users of the product. That is astroturfing at its very essence. Whether you are doing it via blog posts or Facebook likes, you are still committing exactly the same ethical breach. There is no difference.
His point is that it is *not* astroturfing if your profile identifies you as an employee or otherwise being involved. Astroturfing involves hiding the involvement.
For example I have an iPhone / iPad app named Perpenso Calc. Its a calculator offering RPN, Scientific, Statistic, Business and Hex functionality. If I recommend it in a slashdot thread regarding calculator apps I am *not* astroturfing because my account name, "perpenso", indicates that I represent the publisher.
FWIW, I have not asked friends, family, colleagues, etc to rate or like my app. Asking an employee to post an announcement that their project/product has shipped may be OK, but asking for ratings and likes seems to go too far. Such ratings and likes should be real.
What is shifty about wanting the best price? If Store A sees that Store B is getting a better price from the manufacturer of course Store A wants the manufacturer to match that price.
Its not necessarily about you the player. While stress may be a factor for you in the sense that you have severe time constraints and have to do a bit of multitasking, the real point is learning to deal with *others* that are severely stressed. The actors, computer controlled characters, are acting in a highly stressed and possibly irrational manner. Learning how such people act and how to deal with them is a skill that a "serious game" can help one learn.
"... I agree these tragic situations exist. I just question suggestions that such are the norm. Monsanto is one company,... Monsanto is not a representative company..." Ok, stop with the political correctness: Monsanto has always been evil as shit. Does anyone dispute that?
You seem to need to re-read some posts. No one is defending Monsanto. What is actually under dispute is whether severe and intentional pollution of the environment is the norm for a company.
It's important to note that the Commodore 64 incorporated graphics support hardware (aka the first "graphics card") which helped make the computer much faster than it's CPU speed would indicate, especially for gaming.
You Sir, must stop talking out of your ass.
Actually, he is correct. The C-64 did have "graphics support hardware" beyond offering a bitmap that programmer could directly manipulate. The GP is only mistaken in that he characterized the hardware as being like a "graphics card". The specialized C64 graphics hardware supported 8 sprites. It was a very handy thing.
You could also consider the reprogrammable character set as such graphics hardware that sped up games. Various VIC-20 and C-64 games used this technique to good effect.
Back then the Apple II had swappable video cards.
Huh? *If* such cards existed they were certainly so rare that hardly anyone had them, a real niche thing. Are you thinking of the 80 column card? It added 64K RAM too but I don't recall this card enhancing graphics. My recollection as a former Apple II,//e, and C-64 programmer is that on the Apple II you had bitmapped graphics and that on the C-64 you also had bitmapped graphics, but it was better, plus specialized hardware support for sprites. The Apple was primitive in comparison.
I hate the smell of noobs in the morning, It smells like ignorance.
You might want to check that attitude if you yourself aren't remembering things quite correctly either.
... I strongly suspect that "pulling stuff from various sources and slapping it together quickly" is probably a pretty good description of how most of the pros go about it...
Or maybe I grew up in the same town and know what is happening there. The town has been testing the wells for decades, no contamination. The local plant was operated properly, as I expect most are.
I grew up two miles south of the Sauget, IL Monsanto plant. Even in the summer when it was 95 degrees (and no car AC back then, most folks' homes didn't even have AC) you had to roll the wondows up when driving past because the aire would burn your eyes and lungs. There were 100,000 55 gallon drums of highly toxic waste buried half mile away on the bank of the Mississippi. Dead Creek, which went past it and Cerro Copper, often caught fire.
I agree these tragic situations exist. I just question suggestions that such are the norm. Monsanto is one company, there are tens of thousands of others, many mostly small and more local. Most of them are deeply integrated into the community. The kids and grandkids of the managers at the plant my grandfather worked at went to the same schools I did, drank the same tap water I did, etc. Monsanto is not a representative company, they are the exception in many ways.
By 1975 there was no odor at all, and the creek stopped catching fire. Who's your grandpa, Ron Paul? He couldn't be more wrong. Tell him another geezer set you straight about his damned neocon lies.
He's a blue collar lifelong democrat. All the idiotic assumptions that you are making are just making you look foolish.
I'm not an expert or anything, but wasn't "look-and-feel" the basis for that failed historic Apple suit against Microsoft? I have it in my head that this isn't sufficient to reach the level of infringement, but my head is often wrong.
I don't think it was failed in the sense that it was thrown out completely. I think it was failed in the sense that most, but not all, of Apple claims were thrown out. Again IANAL, but I think the key is that the court said obvious expressions were OK. So many metaphors passed this test but a few failed, for example the trash can. Hence the recycle bin in Windows. Was it OS/2 that had a shredder?
So in the case of using a bear to depict thermodynamics, I think that falls into the trash can like situation where the court said non obvious things were infringing.
I won't even mention the smog in Los Angeles, which was unimaginable by the late '60s. LA still has smog, but it's nothing like it was 40+ years ago, thanks to strict environmental regulations.
Tragic cases of pollution weren't the exception - in much of the country, they were the rule.
I think you are mixing up high profile with common. While there were certainly some industrial sites that intentionally polluted I do not think that was the norm back then. Cuyahoga is so famous because it was the exception, not a normal occurrence. Again, the guys who did things the right way don't get mentioned in newspapers or books.
As for LA smog. My understanding is that the smog is not so much of an industrial issue but mostly a personal automobile issue. A tragedy of the commons sort of situation where millions of individual people with cars add their little bit of pollution that accumulated and hovered over LA.
In the 90s I was actually involved in the development of a chemistry textbook, we did some software that was bundled with the textbook and some technical quicktime movies as well. I got to spend some time around the two chem professors who authored the textbook and despite all the graphics and multimedia stuff that I thought somewhat excessive, they did too but the "market" demanded it, they did pay a lot of attention to logic and flow and curriculum. That even extended to the software we were doing for the book. They conscientiously wanted the software to be a good fit too.
Slashdot Mirror
The proportion of open source projects using the GPL, LGPL and AGPL is declining, not the absolute number of projects.
The absolute number of GPL projects is not a very meaningful number. The GPL license can not be retracted, canceled or otherwise ended. Once released that particular GPL project exists regardless of whether the copyright holder changes his/her mind. All the author can do is re-license and release future versions of the project under a different license. However that previous version persists, as the GPL license was designed to ensure, and is counted even if orphaned and not adopted by users or some community.
Exactly. When you pump water out of the ground it's gone forever.
Underground reservoirs are not necessarily refilled by the next rain. Read up on such reservoirs found in North America. They were filled over many thousands of years and significantly drained by agriculture related drilling and pumping in decades. Every year agriculture has to drill deeper and deeper to find water.
It gets consumed, evaporates, and then it never rains again.
Of course it rains, the problem is that it does not necessarily rain where the water was harvested. Harvesting deep water reservoirs does not somehow change the fact that a region is a desert or arid region with little rainfall.
These two devices solve literally every problem you are trying to solve.
Exactly.
From the article: "Why doesn't she put those to the side, I asked, and prioritize response to individual e-mails from constituents who've taken the time to actually write?" The truth of the matter is that sending an email is *not* considered taking the time to *write*, and there is some truth to this perspective. An email is far more convenient than a handwritten letter.
Correspondence gets ranked according to the medium used and level of personalization:
Personal handwritten letter (most highly valued correspondence)
Personal typed/printed letter
Personal email (low valued correspondence)
Mass paper mailing
Mass emailing (a virtually ignored corresondence)
If you want to be taken more seriously you need to act accordingly. I realize this seems completely unfair, and in some ways it is - ideas are not being evaluated completely on their merits, but people who get lots of mail need to prioritize it somehow. Taking into consideration the effort that the sender put in is somewhat rational, it demonstrates a more strongly held opinion and a more motivated individual (i.e. a more likely to show up on election day). Plus politicians also consider that greater effort suggests more people who feel the same way but were deterred by the effort (i.e. handwritten gets a far larger likely voter multiplier than email).
Do whatever you can to make yourself seen as an independent more likely voter. The only thing that matters to politicians (well those that intend to run again) is independent voters. People who don't vote can be ignored. People who are loyal members of the politician's part can be ignored, they have that person's vote. People who are loyal members of the other party can be ignored, they can't get that person's vote. Only independent voters and disloyal party members are important.
If I recommend it in a slashdot thread regarding calculator apps I am *not* astroturfing because my account name, "perpenso", indicates that I represent the publisher.
What you *should* do is a very simple "Disclosure: this is my product".
I do make such a disclosure when recommending it or comparing it to other products. IMHO that is the correct things to do. If I am just using it to illustrate some general iOS or iTunes point I may not bother.
Presuming that someone will even bother to look at your username, then connect 2 + 2 (lol amirite?) ...
Absolutely correct. Even calculators naively using the hardware FPU get that one correct. :-)
... is demanding far too much investigative work from a forum reader.
However I don't think failing to disclose as suggested rises to astoturfing. In my mind astroturfing involves actively hiding any connection. Actively deceiving a reader who is making some sort of investigative effort.
It seems to be a little more complicated. Not all //e motherboards supported double hi-res, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_IIe. I have no idea how many incompatible ones there were. My //e was a fairly early model, it might have been one such model. However my friends and I were targeting the II+ and //e so we probably would have passed on the mode even without such revision issues.
Its not having separate apps display content that is the problem. The problem IMHO would be having separate apps only sync their respective content.
Why do you need a PC to "manage" an iPhone?
For much the same reason you need an MBA to "manage" a software development team.
You do not need a degree in computer science (CS) to be a software developer, but you do need to learn on your own many of the things that you would learn is a CS degree program. Similarly you do not need an MBA to manage a development team, but you do need to learn on your own many of the things that you would learn in a MBA degree program. If you are going to manage a team an MBA would be useful, both in respect to technical skills and interpersonal skills. If you need to interact with other departments an MBA would be very useful, it helps you understand the perspective of these other departments and to communicate and persuade more effectively.
I once held an attitude similar to the one your post suggests. When I graduated with a CS degree I never imagined that I would someday go for an MBA. However when I eventually did so one of the things than made business school so much fun was to learn just how ignorant and misinformed I had been about business school and what is actually taught there. The CEOs and managers that royally screw things up are generally not following the lessons they were taught in their MBA program, much like the software developers who writes buggy and unmaintainable code are generally not following the lessons they were taught in their CS program. School can teach good lessons but neither CEOs, managers nor software developers necessarily follow their respective lessons.
Why do you need a PC to "manage" an iPhone? My Android phone does just fine without any PC.
An iPhone also works just fine without a PC. However the advantage of using it with a PC is that a PC is a very convenient place to backup all the content on the iPhone. The cloud is another convenient place, but a PC is the place I have control over, the place I can do further backups, etc.
Its not just Windows. Having multiple Mac OS X apps managing an iOS device would degrade the user experience. Having one app sync everything (musics, video, photos, apps, etc) makes sense. Having to use more than one app to do so would be annoying, even error prone. Hell, I'm mildly annoyed when I plug in an iPhone and both iTunes and iPhoto launch. I want to use iPhoto far less often than it auto-launches.
iTunes may need to be redesigned and rewritten, but probably not broken up.
I realize your "bake sale to buy a bomber" comment is a joke but the really funny thing is that stuff like that actually happened in WW2. Groups really did organize and collect money to buy an aircraft for the military.
pushes out private charity
What does this mean?
It means that when a private person sees another person or group collecting for some issue, the private person is more likely to ignore them and not contribute. This person will usually justify the decision because his taxes are paying for [insert gov't program here]. This is a real issue that economists and charities have spoken about for many decades.
These charities do not lack organization as you suggest. These charities may in fact be far more effective than Washington DC. Many of these charities are local and much better informed about what is going on locally. They can be far more creative and effective than a well meaning but distant person in Washington DC who often thinks in terms of one-size-fits-all national solutions.
Your fire department analogy doesn't really fit. Washington DC is not providing your fire department services. Plus many fire stations are in fact comprised of local volunteers.
Think of the many local charities as the FOSS communities taking on a large project with a distributed network of volunteers, and the gov't based services as the monolithic corporation designing and implementing an application with a committee designed feature set that it expects will meet the needs of all users.
... if you think about the Citizen's United ruling, the Supreme Court has already said that corporations are people and enjoy 1st amendment rights ...
The Citizens United ruling did not say that corporations are people. That was how an opponent of the decision characterized the ruling. In other words it was highly successful political spin.
IIRC what the Supreme Court actually said was that people, whether as individuals or as part of a group (activist organization, trade union, corporation, etc) have first amendment rights. They also said that a corporation that owns newspapers and TV stations does not enjoy any extra privileges compared to other corporations, basically that media corporations are not special.
My odds are 1000000-1 that this statement was never made. Scientists speak in very measured language
The statement was probably made by a politician, a movie star spokesperson or some other advocate. Then it got into the press. Sadly, the actual scientists don't make it into the press so much.
Although grossly misstated, there is a nugget of truth hidden deep within the point the GP was trying to make. What the GP should have said is that when the politicians get involved the public becomes mistrustful. Basically the public did not become skeptical about climate change until one political party adopted the issue for campaigning purposes, inevitably exaggerating things as politicians often do, and then regrettably the real scientists get unfairly tainted with the politics and skepticism.
If climate change had never been adopted as a *political* issue the public would probably be far more concerned.
What is interesting about software engineering right now is that we are at a point where someone, solo or with a couple of buddies, can realistically develop a product and reach an audience. We have not been able to do that very easily in a while.
In the stone ages of personal computers, the 1980s, a few guys working out of their garage could literally develop software, put a 5.25in floppy in a ziplock baggy with a xeroxed manual, and take it to the local mom-and-pop and brick-and-mortar computer shops that were around back then. Some friends and I *literally* did the above. You could talk to the manager, do a quick demo, he'd often buy a few put it on the shelf and after they sold give you a phone call to order some more. Repeat as necessary, increasing your geographic coverage.
Then came a couple of decades where the small computer shops were replaced by big chain stores and later online. During those times it was really difficult to reach customers. Even with the internet you were still largely limited to selling to a relatively small technically inclined niche. The general public did not get onboard until very recently.
Today with the general public largely accepting pure digital distribution via the various app stores the little guy(s) can actually reach a decent audience. For example Perpenso Calc for iPhone iPad, a calculator app offering RPN, scientific, statistics, business and hex functionality. A product like this shows up in a store search right next to HP and TI offerings. So yes, its a pretty good time to be a software engineer.
Does HP still exist!?
The sign and logo are still in use.
"He's not being asked to astroturf. He's being asked to like the product."
Astroturfing is astroturfing, no matter the form. Employees are being asked to falsely represent themselves as happily satisfied users of the product. That is astroturfing at its very essence. Whether you are doing it via blog posts or Facebook likes, you are still committing exactly the same ethical breach. There is no difference.
His point is that it is *not* astroturfing if your profile identifies you as an employee or otherwise being involved. Astroturfing involves hiding the involvement.
For example I have an iPhone / iPad app named Perpenso Calc. Its a calculator offering RPN, Scientific, Statistic, Business and Hex functionality. If I recommend it in a slashdot thread regarding calculator apps I am *not* astroturfing because my account name, "perpenso", indicates that I represent the publisher.
FWIW, I have not asked friends, family, colleagues, etc to rate or like my app. Asking an employee to post an announcement that their project/product has shipped may be OK, but asking for ratings and likes seems to go too far. Such ratings and likes should be real.
What is shifty about wanting the best price? If Store A sees that Store B is getting a better price from the manufacturer of course Store A wants the manufacturer to match that price.
Its not necessarily about you the player. While stress may be a factor for you in the sense that you have severe time constraints and have to do a bit of multitasking, the real point is learning to deal with *others* that are severely stressed. The actors, computer controlled characters, are acting in a highly stressed and possibly irrational manner. Learning how such people act and how to deal with them is a skill that a "serious game" can help one learn.
"... I agree these tragic situations exist. I just question suggestions that such are the norm. Monsanto is one company, ... Monsanto is not a representative company..." Ok, stop with the political correctness: Monsanto has always been evil as shit. Does anyone dispute that?
You seem to need to re-read some posts. No one is defending Monsanto. What is actually under dispute is whether severe and intentional pollution of the environment is the norm for a company.
It's important to note that the Commodore 64 incorporated graphics support hardware (aka the first "graphics card") which helped make the computer much faster than it's CPU speed would indicate, especially for gaming.
You Sir, must stop talking out of your ass.
Actually, he is correct. The C-64 did have "graphics support hardware" beyond offering a bitmap that programmer could directly manipulate. The GP is only mistaken in that he characterized the hardware as being like a "graphics card". The specialized C64 graphics hardware supported 8 sprites. It was a very handy thing.
You could also consider the reprogrammable character set as such graphics hardware that sped up games. Various VIC-20 and C-64 games used this technique to good effect.
Back then the Apple II had swappable video cards.
Huh? *If* such cards existed they were certainly so rare that hardly anyone had them, a real niche thing. Are you thinking of the 80 column card? It added 64K RAM too but I don't recall this card enhancing graphics. My recollection as a former Apple II, //e, and C-64 programmer is that on the Apple II you had bitmapped graphics and that on the C-64 you also had bitmapped graphics, but it was better, plus specialized hardware support for sprites. The Apple was primitive in comparison.
I hate the smell of noobs in the morning, It smells like ignorance.
You might want to check that attitude if you yourself aren't remembering things quite correctly either.
... I strongly suspect that "pulling stuff from various sources and slapping it together quickly" is probably a pretty good description of how most of the pros go about it ...
That is not what I saw. I once had a small role in the development of a chemistry textbook. To avoid duplication: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2774887&cid=39620651.
Your grandpa's either a liar or senile.
Or maybe I grew up in the same town and know what is happening there. The town has been testing the wells for decades, no contamination. The local plant was operated properly, as I expect most are.
I grew up two miles south of the Sauget, IL Monsanto plant. Even in the summer when it was 95 degrees (and no car AC back then, most folks' homes didn't even have AC) you had to roll the wondows up when driving past because the aire would burn your eyes and lungs. There were 100,000 55 gallon drums of highly toxic waste buried half mile away on the bank of the Mississippi. Dead Creek, which went past it and Cerro Copper, often caught fire.
I agree these tragic situations exist. I just question suggestions that such are the norm. Monsanto is one company, there are tens of thousands of others, many mostly small and more local. Most of them are deeply integrated into the community. The kids and grandkids of the managers at the plant my grandfather worked at went to the same schools I did, drank the same tap water I did, etc. Monsanto is not a representative company, they are the exception in many ways.
By 1975 there was no odor at all, and the creek stopped catching fire. Who's your grandpa, Ron Paul? He couldn't be more wrong. Tell him another geezer set you straight about his damned neocon lies.
He's a blue collar lifelong democrat. All the idiotic assumptions that you are making are just making you look foolish.
I'm not an expert or anything, but wasn't "look-and-feel" the basis for that failed historic Apple suit against Microsoft? I have it in my head that this isn't sufficient to reach the level of infringement, but my head is often wrong.
I don't think it was failed in the sense that it was thrown out completely. I think it was failed in the sense that most, but not all, of Apple claims were thrown out. Again IANAL, but I think the key is that the court said obvious expressions were OK. So many metaphors passed this test but a few failed, for example the trash can. Hence the recycle bin in Windows. Was it OS/2 that had a shredder?
So in the case of using a bear to depict thermodynamics, I think that falls into the trash can like situation where the court said non obvious things were infringing.
>BS
Uh, the Cuyahoga River, which flows through Cleavland, OH, caught fire in the 1950s and - famously - in 1969.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuyahoga_River#Environmental_concerns
I won't even mention the smog in Los Angeles, which was unimaginable by the late '60s. LA still has smog, but it's nothing like it was 40+ years ago, thanks to strict environmental regulations.
Tragic cases of pollution weren't the exception - in much of the country, they were the rule.
I think you are mixing up high profile with common. While there were certainly some industrial sites that intentionally polluted I do not think that was the norm back then. Cuyahoga is so famous because it was the exception, not a normal occurrence. Again, the guys who did things the right way don't get mentioned in newspapers or books.
As for LA smog. My understanding is that the smog is not so much of an industrial issue but mostly a personal automobile issue. A tragedy of the commons sort of situation where millions of individual people with cars add their little bit of pollution that accumulated and hovered over LA.
In the 90s I was actually involved in the development of a chemistry textbook, we did some software that was bundled with the textbook and some technical quicktime movies as well. I got to spend some time around the two chem professors who authored the textbook and despite all the graphics and multimedia stuff that I thought somewhat excessive, they did too but the "market" demanded it, they did pay a lot of attention to logic and flow and curriculum. That even extended to the software we were doing for the book. They conscientiously wanted the software to be a good fit too.