After all, physicists are seeking nothing less than the meaning, nature and source of life.
No, that is not physics; that is philosophy. You will recall that, although physics---and indeed science as a whole---was once termed `natural philosophy', a fellow named Newton came along and founded the notion of scientific method, thus putting science on a solid basis of empirical observation and experimentation, rather than metaphysical claptrap.
Two of the Administration's first actions
were to cut the Drug Czar's office by over 80% and to appoint a
Surgeon General who spoke openly about drug legalization.
One of the trade-offs in a microkernel design is
that 'system calls', which are implemented as IPC, tend to have a higher overhead. Linux will tend to
run faster because of that.
Yes, but since more OS functionality will be implemented in user space, you can expect to see fewer `system calls.'
Most of the features he claims are necessary for
a real operating system are, in fact, available for every UNIX version. The fact that they may
have come from different sources does not mean they are not part of a coherent and
cohesive system.
A method of engaging in "secure intercourse" over a digital channel or conduit by transmitting descriptions, in a variety of computer-readable formats, of activities engaged in by two (or more) parties at digital computer terminals. Such formats may include (but are not limited to) textual prose, graphical representations captured by visual I/O devices and aural media encoded with analog-digital microphonic and other aural recording paraphernalia.
Furthermore, this method applies also to delayed or retroactive voyeuristic sexual activity, in which one party at one terminal experiences through a variety of multimedial formats, the sexual activities engaged in by two (or more) parties at a point prior in time or distant in space, i.e., prerecorded at another place.
In addition, digital sexual material received by the experiencing party can be "warehoused" on that party's local storage medium, e.g., a hard drive, for later retrieval.
In addition to point-to-point delivery methods, our patent also covers many-to-one, i.e., multicast, media delivery methods.
Secure intercourse is a novel approach to copulation and more exotic sexual activities which generalizes and significantly improves on the outdated "safe sex" paradigm. First, the technology involved is entirely digital, so no mechanical or chemical prophylactic failure can occur. Second, exchange of bodily fluids is physically impossible over a digital conduit (see diagram), hence there is no danger of accidental impregnation or disease transmission. Third, in the case of prerecorded transmission, both (or, all) parties need not be simultaneously available; thus, sex becomes time-efficient for parties with incompatible schedules.
Please note that "secure intercourse" is designed for recreational sex only! We expect to submit designs for procreational digital intercourse in a few months, in association with the makers of Tamagotchi.
If your proposed law was enacted, Apache could decide that what this world really needs is
halfclick.apache.org, the Open Source Half-Click Project. There are all these mom-n-pop storefronts out
there on the web who can't compete and license my patent (or afford my companies license fees for the
software), so we'll just build them a free version that they can run to circumvent my government-granted
monopoly. Since there's no charge for it, even my normal customer base (B&N) could go hire a few
developers to contribute to this open source project and tailor a version for their needs. No money
changes hands, but I clearly lose the one right I'm granted with the patent, which is the ability to decide
who can use the patent.
So the crux of this argument is that commercial competitors could still use some open source software which exploits a patent, although they could not write such software themselves without violating the patent.
Maybe then, we should simply stipulate in addition that such software also cannot be used for profit or by commercial entities. Unfortunately, formulating a good definition of "use" looks like it might be very difficult.
Open source the creation and registration
of prior art, instead of the implementation of existing ideas. It's been discussed before, but it supports the
ideals of the open source community as well, if not better, than free code. For example, we create an open
"shadow PTO" that open source contributors can submit patentable ideas to in order to stake out ground
we want to protect from the lawyers.
I have to admit that I don't like this idea. There are just too many things that you would want to protect from patenting! You might reply, "but we only need to anti-patent the non-obvious things," but isn't that precisely the problem we are having now? The patent system is not rejecting non-obvious ideas. We might anti-patent a bunch of things, thinking that we've essentially covered the set of `arguably non-obvious things', and then along comes some company which decides to patent dynamic scope or something; oops, we forgot about that one because it was so obvious! But the PTO decides to grant it anyway. It's just the same problem in reverse.
Linux may be a commercial competitor, but is a competitor in that every PC running Linux is one less
Windows licence sold.
(I assume you accidentally omitted a "not".)
Well, considering the number of people who run dual-boot systems, I would have to disagree. But that's not relevant here.
The whole point of the proposal is to introduce a new legal distinction between commercial and non-commercial competitors, and to grant special rights to non-commercial ones.
I'm not saying Microsoft or some other big players would like it, but it may be more palatable to politicians who have the bigger picture in mind. Since the products produced by non-commercial competitors are available to the populace at large, the only way that exemptions can hurt consumers is that some company decides not to waste money on R&D that they can't recover because of non-commercial competitors. But if there are non-commercial competitors who are making passable software clones which are freely available, then the populace has not lost anything anyway. And if Red Hat-like hand-holding companies pop up to maintain that free software, it can survive bit rot.
You don't think Microsoft views Linux as a competitor?
Linux is not a commercial competitor. Red Hat, Caldera, SUSE, these are commercial competitors, but if their modifications are open-sourced, then they are for the greater good, and this is a powerful argument for allowing them the legal flexibility they need to employ best practice.
This not something new, anyway. It's already the case that if, say, Red Hat improves Linux, then Red Hat's competitors, the other distributions, can benefit from that.
GNOME. Tons 'o stuff there that nobody really needs. Especiall Sawmill, who gives a damn if you can
alter the thing with Lisp. Isn't Lisp SLOW?
LISP is not "SLOW", although Sawmill's implementation may be. LISP is not an implementation, it is a programming language specification. LISP is certainly no slower than Tcl, Perl or Python, the most popular scripting/glue languages, and is, in some ways, more expressive. And unlike Tcl, Perl or Python, LISP can be compiled to machine code. Furthermore, compiled LISP is often said to compare favorably in performance with C. And I might add that LISP has been doing reasonably well as a command language for Emacs for the last ten years or more. (I'm not saying that there aren't better choices than LISP for this sort of application; just that LISP is no worse than the other mainstream alternatives.)
This is a little off-topic, but perhaps a good place to introduce the idea.
Most of us dislike software patents. They are intended to encourage innovation, but we feel that, at least with the sort of patents that are presently being granted in our field, that the practice is doing far more to stifle it.
The best thing would be if software patents were eradicated, but in light of the government's endorsement of open source software, maybe we can push through a more moderate proposal.
What I would like to see is an exemption on patents for free (or open source, if you like) software. This means that if the software you produce is non-commercial in nature (by some standard) then you can employ any patented software technique or device without obtaining permission from the patent holders. This would encourage innovation on the part of the authors without posing a threat to the patent holders' government-granted monopoly, since open software is not a commercial competitor in itself. Indeed, because it increases the possibilities to write applications which interoperate with commercial ones, it might stimulate commercial software efforts by providing an environment where greater integration is possible.
Most importantly, it gives non-commercial projects a greater degree of freedom. They can use the best techniques available to build their software exactly when the software is made available to the largest number of people, people who will benefit from good software.
Conversely, of course, you could regard this as a restriction on existing patents: a software patent no longer prevents other people from using the the patented technique/feature, but rather only commercial competitors.
Doubtless there are aspects to this which I haven't thought through, but doesn't this sound like a worthwhile and relatively appealing compromise? If the political climate improves a bit more, maybe something along these lines could be lobbied into legislation.
Several higher authorities believe that the existence of FILM-BUFFS
would be pushing the use of the Arpanet too far beyond its
research-oriented mandate. Not wanting to jeopardize the lists we
have now, I yield to those people's better judgment.
Oh, for the day when such strictures disappear! When WORLDNET lets
each interested party EFT his $10/yr for "postage", and Large Lists
rule the world!
Unfortunately, it doesn't
look like a technique that can be applied to human
beings yet, so you still need a plane or an elevator
for your low-G experiences
Unfortunately?
Re:License wars are a waste of energy
on
KDE Strikes Back
·
· Score: 1
As someone who has worked with Microsoft's products almost exclusively over the last ten
years but has recently come to appreciate the benefits of open source the sort of ideological
arguments that occur in the open source community truly amaze me. I mean, there seems to
be little difference between "free software" and "open source" and yet each concept has
rabid followers which decry the opposition at every step.
The difference between free software and open source is like the difference between the democratic and republican parties in America. To outsiders, the distinction is not so large, and they agree on issues which Americans generally agree on. But where there are disagreements, debates can get hot and heated. Such debates can be productive and constructive, but just as often they are unproductive and pointless. Each side has a right to their opinions, and a right to pursue their goals; the intelligent observer has to decide for him- or herself which camp they will support, or to abstain completely. That freedom to choose lets history decide which ideology is ultimately more efficient and useful.
I hobbled through the shared libraries and whatnot one day.
Know what I found?
Most of Windows! YEP! References to CONFIG.SYS, AUTOEXEC.BAT, instructions for how to configure Plug and Play devices, PCMCIA devices, a SYSTEM.INI, etc, ad nauseum.
As the UML v1.1 was released (Sept. 97), software engineers thought that it was the end of the "yet another methodology" syndrome. I'm sad to say that it was false.
Maybe you should consider adopting the oldest and most successful engineering methodology: mathematics.
I haven't seen the movie yet, but I was a fan of the X-Men when I was in high school.
My question is, is it just me or did anyone else expect Famke Janssen to be cast in the role of Rogue? Rogue always struck me as a strong, kickass femme with an attitude, and Janssen is a tall, handsome woman who tends to play strong-willed characters. It's true that Rogue was also a chronic self-doubter, but then so was Jean Grey. (BTW, does Rogue have her southern drawl in the film?)
I admit I don't know anything about Anna Paquin, but from what I've seen of the trailers and so on, she seems like a young, inexperienced coquette, which makes me think more of Kitty Pryde---although Kitty never had much sex appeal...
Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing a strong actor like Janssen as Dark Phoenix in the next film... and I can't wait to see Storm with a mohawk in her leathers...!
Indeed, by comparing the times of the three events and postulating that they were initiated simultaneously by a single entity, you could calculate the intertial frame of that observer.
Oh, good point! So we can calculate not only that God exists, but also where he lives...!:)
If you weren't just trying to pick knits, you would realize that this question does not require/true/ simultaneity in the physical sense, but simply thinks that happened within the same time frame according to each group's reference frames.
Of course I'm picking nits. I'm trying to be disagreeable. But say the two (for simplicity) civilizations are 1000 light years distant. Then that's 1000 years of "uncertainty" for the "simultaneity". In a 1000 year span of time, in young solar systems, it's not very unlikely to get two large, correlating meteor showers. Hell, even with 3 civilizations involved, such an event could easily be a coincidence. 3 does not a statistical sample make.
For what it's worth, the prohibition of simultaneity does not necessarily apply in all circumstances. Anything that exceeds the speed of light would break it (and such things appear to exist even in our limited scientific knowledge).
Which universe did you take your physics classes in again?
In a nutshell, Calculating God is the story of paleontologist Thomas Jericho's encounter with two alien species which visit earth, and which reveal that the cataclysmic events that shaped Earth's evolution (meteor impact, mass extinctions, etc.) all happened
simultaneously on their home planets as well.
What does this mean, "happened simultaneously"? At the stellar scale, space and time are not orthogonal. Events in disparate solar systems cannot happen simultaneously. Either the reviewer is mistaken, or the writer needs to read up on his relativity.
With high-resolution monitors and TrueColor, we were reaching the limits of what the average eye could distinguish. This must make monitor manufacturers pretty happy.
I've proven myself right. I knew that when Slashdot was purchased by Andover, which subsequently went public, that the overall quality of the site would deteriorate. It has.
I applaud your keen wit. You have shown a direct causal link between Andover's purchase of/. and the quality of posts and, indeed, only you could have proven it to yourself. Clearly Andover has decided to assert its ownership rights by flooding/. with phantom users whose sole intent is to derail the discussion so that lurkers lose interest in the posts and only look at the advertising.
Posts are inferior; as are the stories. Now, total idiots are given moderator status. Moderate me down all you want. The publishers of this site (i.e., Mr. Malda) should crawl out of their hole and emerge into the real world where things move fast and smart people are paying close attention.
I agree 100%, buddy-o! In the Real World, where people aren't distracted by sustained and well-warranted logical arguments with supporting evidence, but rather more highly regard the glib, self-righteous mutterings of a self-proclaimed expert, we are much more likely to reach a state of consensus, since dissenting opinions will not be tolerated in the first place.
I'm sorry, but I shall have to disagree with you: a file manager is NOT a HTML browser! HTML only allows 1 action per click, file browsers require many actions (open/activate, show properties, rename, etc.)
Hm, that's funny. Netscape must be a file browser then, because when I left-click a link, it gives me a pop-up menu... and what are those funny "forms" things doing on the Post Comment page? Is/. a file system?
The only reason MS replaced the file viewer with a browser was to have a reason to embed the browser into the "OS" (actually, the operating environment or OE, but MS has always blurred that line).
Yeah, we wouldn't want to admit that GNOME and KDE are doing unto Linux what MS did unto Windows, because that would make us hypocrites... Just remember, it's only innovative if it's Open Source!:)
Slashdot Mirror
After all, physicists are seeking nothing less than the meaning, nature and source of life.
No, that is not physics; that is philosophy. You will recall that, although physics---and indeed science as a whole---was once termed `natural philosophy', a fellow named Newton came along and founded the notion of scientific method, thus putting science on a solid basis of empirical observation and experimentation, rather than metaphysical claptrap.
I wonder what Fred Saberhagen would think...
Bush criticizes the Clinton-Gore administration:
Two of the Administration's first actions were to cut the Drug Czar's office by over 80% and to appoint a Surgeon General who spoke openly about drug legalization.
An act which should be lauded. There are some good arguments for legalization of drugs and other consensual crimes. See Peter McWilliam's book (the text of which is online) Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in Our Free Country".
One of the trade-offs in a microkernel design is that 'system calls', which are implemented as IPC, tend to have a higher overhead. Linux will tend to run faster because of that.
Yes, but since more OS functionality will be implemented in user space, you can expect to see fewer `system calls.'
Most of the features he claims are necessary for a real operating system are, in fact, available for every UNIX version. The fact that they may have come from different sources does not mean they are not part of a coherent and cohesive system.
UNIX: coherent and cohesive? Hilarious!
A method of engaging in "secure intercourse" over a digital channel or conduit by transmitting descriptions, in a variety of computer-readable formats, of activities engaged in by two (or more) parties at digital computer terminals. Such formats may include (but are not limited to) textual prose, graphical representations captured by visual I/O devices and aural media encoded with analog-digital microphonic and other aural recording paraphernalia.
Furthermore, this method applies also to delayed or retroactive voyeuristic sexual activity, in which one party at one terminal experiences through a variety of multimedial formats, the sexual activities engaged in by two (or more) parties at a point prior in time or distant in space, i.e., prerecorded at another place.
In addition, digital sexual material received by the experiencing party can be "warehoused" on that party's local storage medium, e.g., a hard drive, for later retrieval.
In addition to point-to-point delivery methods, our patent also covers many-to-one, i.e., multicast, media delivery methods.
Secure intercourse is a novel approach to copulation and more exotic sexual activities which generalizes and significantly improves on the outdated "safe sex" paradigm. First, the technology involved is entirely digital, so no mechanical or chemical prophylactic failure can occur. Second, exchange of bodily fluids is physically impossible over a digital conduit (see diagram), hence there is no danger of accidental impregnation or disease transmission. Third, in the case of prerecorded transmission, both (or, all) parties need not be simultaneously available; thus, sex becomes time-efficient for parties with incompatible schedules.
Please note that "secure intercourse" is designed for recreational sex only! We expect to submit designs for procreational digital intercourse in a few months, in association with the makers of Tamagotchi.
Thanks for your thoughtful response.
If your proposed law was enacted, Apache could decide that what this world really needs is halfclick.apache.org, the Open Source Half-Click Project. There are all these mom-n-pop storefronts out there on the web who can't compete and license my patent (or afford my companies license fees for the software), so we'll just build them a free version that they can run to circumvent my government-granted monopoly. Since there's no charge for it, even my normal customer base (B&N) could go hire a few developers to contribute to this open source project and tailor a version for their needs. No money changes hands, but I clearly lose the one right I'm granted with the patent, which is the ability to decide who can use the patent.
So the crux of this argument is that commercial competitors could still use some open source software which exploits a patent, although they could not write such software themselves without violating the patent.
Maybe then, we should simply stipulate in addition that such software also cannot be used for profit or by commercial entities. Unfortunately, formulating a good definition of "use" looks like it might be very difficult.
Open source the creation and registration of prior art, instead of the implementation of existing ideas. It's been discussed before, but it supports the ideals of the open source community as well, if not better, than free code. For example, we create an open "shadow PTO" that open source contributors can submit patentable ideas to in order to stake out ground we want to protect from the lawyers.
I have to admit that I don't like this idea. There are just too many things that you would want to protect from patenting! You might reply, "but we only need to anti-patent the non-obvious things," but isn't that precisely the problem we are having now? The patent system is not rejecting non-obvious ideas. We might anti-patent a bunch of things, thinking that we've essentially covered the set of `arguably non-obvious things', and then along comes some company which decides to patent dynamic scope or something; oops, we forgot about that one because it was so obvious! But the PTO decides to grant it anyway. It's just the same problem in reverse.
(I assume you accidentally omitted a "not".)
Well, considering the number of people who run dual-boot systems, I would have to disagree. But that's not relevant here.
The whole point of the proposal is to introduce a new legal distinction between commercial and non-commercial competitors, and to grant special rights to non-commercial ones.
I'm not saying Microsoft or some other big players would like it, but it may be more palatable to politicians who have the bigger picture in mind. Since the products produced by non-commercial competitors are available to the populace at large, the only way that exemptions can hurt consumers is that some company decides not to waste money on R&D that they can't recover because of non-commercial competitors. But if there are non-commercial competitors who are making passable software clones which are freely available, then the populace has not lost anything anyway. And if Red Hat-like hand-holding companies pop up to maintain that free software, it can survive bit rot.
Linux is not a commercial competitor. Red Hat, Caldera, SUSE, these are commercial competitors, but if their modifications are open-sourced, then they are for the greater good, and this is a powerful argument for allowing them the legal flexibility they need to employ best practice.
This not something new, anyway. It's already the case that if, say, Red Hat improves Linux, then Red Hat's competitors, the other distributions, can benefit from that.
LISP is not "SLOW", although Sawmill's implementation may be. LISP is not an implementation, it is a programming language specification. LISP is certainly no slower than Tcl, Perl or Python, the most popular scripting/glue languages, and is, in some ways, more expressive. And unlike Tcl, Perl or Python, LISP can be compiled to machine code. Furthermore, compiled LISP is often said to compare favorably in performance with C. And I might add that LISP has been doing reasonably well as a command language for Emacs for the last ten years or more. (I'm not saying that there aren't better choices than LISP for this sort of application; just that LISP is no worse than the other mainstream alternatives.)
This is a little off-topic, but perhaps a good place to introduce the idea.
Most of us dislike software patents. They are intended to encourage innovation, but we feel that, at least with the sort of patents that are presently being granted in our field, that the practice is doing far more to stifle it.
The best thing would be if software patents were eradicated, but in light of the government's endorsement of open source software, maybe we can push through a more moderate proposal.
What I would like to see is an exemption on patents for free (or open source, if you like) software. This means that if the software you produce is non-commercial in nature (by some standard) then you can employ any patented software technique or device without obtaining permission from the patent holders. This would encourage innovation on the part of the authors without posing a threat to the patent holders' government-granted monopoly, since open software is not a commercial competitor in itself. Indeed, because it increases the possibilities to write applications which interoperate with commercial ones, it might stimulate commercial software efforts by providing an environment where greater integration is possible.
Most importantly, it gives non-commercial projects a greater degree of freedom. They can use the best techniques available to build their software exactly when the software is made available to the largest number of people, people who will benefit from good software.
Conversely, of course, you could regard this as a restriction on existing patents: a software patent no longer prevents other people from using the the patented technique/feature, but rather only commercial competitors.
Doubtless there are aspects to this which I haven't thought through, but doesn't this sound like a worthwhile and relatively appealing compromise? If the political climate improves a bit more, maybe something along these lines could be lobbied into legislation.
Date: 26-May-81 10:21:40 PDT (Tuesday)
From: Hamilton.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: FILM-BUFFS disappears
Several higher authorities believe that the existence of FILM-BUFFS
would be pushing the use of the Arpanet too far beyond its
research-oriented mandate. Not wanting to jeopardize the lists we
have now, I yield to those people's better judgment.
Oh, for the day when such strictures disappear! When WORLDNET lets
each interested party EFT his $10/yr for "postage", and Large Lists
rule the world!
Unfortunately?
Hm, sort of like CygWin, you mean.
Congratulations. Your argument brings new meaning to the words "security through obscurity."
Maybe you should consider adopting the oldest and most successful engineering methodology: mathematics.
See, for example, Bird & de Moor's Algebra of Programming for a programming-oriented text, and Lawvere & Schanuel's Conceptual Mathematics: A First Introduction to Categories for a very readable introduction to basic modern algebra (all you need to know for the latter is high-school mathematics).
My question is, is it just me or did anyone else expect Famke Janssen to be cast in the role of Rogue? Rogue always struck me as a strong, kickass femme with an attitude, and Janssen is a tall, handsome woman who tends to play strong-willed characters. It's true that Rogue was also a chronic self-doubter, but then so was Jean Grey. (BTW, does Rogue have her southern drawl in the film?)
I admit I don't know anything about Anna Paquin, but from what I've seen of the trailers and so on, she seems like a young, inexperienced coquette, which makes me think more of Kitty Pryde---although Kitty never had much sex appeal...
Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing a strong actor like Janssen as Dark Phoenix in the next film... and I can't wait to see Storm with a mohawk in her leathers...!
Everything you say is wrong, wrong, wrong. I almost wonder whether you are serious.
With high-resolution monitors and TrueColor, we were reaching the limits of what the average eye could distinguish. This must make monitor manufacturers pretty happy.