But is it the very same ports tree for all 3 BSDs? And what would it take to integrate Linux, and even commercial Unices like Solaris? I would really like to see such a collection that would (or could when the platform specific elements are included) put things on all different Unix class systems.
So explain how to make it work on all UNIX systems, not just the big 3 BSD systems. Include Linux, Solaris, and one other UNIX of your choice. Show your work.
Maybe, with enough attempts, someone will eventually come up with a simple packaging system that is fully compatible. Hey, at least they keep trying, though it would be nice if they tried to make it broader than just BSD... like maybe all of UNIX.
These guys are funded by Microsoft. If you doubt it, check out Net Talk Live, another one of their operations here in Dallas. If anyone does get into a legal process with them, be sure to demand in discovery to see all the agreements they have made with Microsoft to ensure that only Windows gets any support from this device.
Business that do these kinds of patents and other such stuff should be boycotted as much as possible. Obviously that won't directly hurt them. There are ways to make it do so. Those who run (the policy of) DNS servers and block them. Those who run (the policy of) routers can firewall them. And this can be applied even to companies that enthusiastically deal with them.
I use NS 3 (because NS 4 is brain dead) and the site looks fairly decent in NS 3. There is the usual miscalculated table cell problem that most web generators have because they used absolute rather than relative sizes, and assumed the wrong sizes for various objects.
In general dynamically generated web pages are badly done because the programs are intended to be used by artists rather than programmers, and therefore the specs tend to be what artists need. Most web artists come from the print media, and they can't think in terms of different monitor sizes, screen resolutions, fonts, objects, and stuff like that. So the end result is generally bad. You do see pressure to "standardize" to one browser, one screen size, etc. But the IBM Olympics site is definitely better than average with respect to this issue. I remember my first encounter with Domino and it was junk. They've come a long way since then.
As for ALT tags, that's obviously something they missed.
What would you do if a building was constructed that omitted wheelchair ramps, and due to the way it was built will require as much money as the building itself just to add the ramps? I'd say some architects failed.
If we were still using analog, that is, LPs, cassettes, and maybe even 8-tracks, and MP3 came along with the Internet, I believe it would be substantially more popular than it is now. It would in such a case be the ONLY medium that does NOT introduce significant wear per use and the ONLY medium that does not degrade in quality per copy (not counting the first transcription into MP3).
The higher quality of CDs has reduced much of the need for copying. I used to copy LPs to cassette because the cassette format had less wear than LP did. The reason I now copy CDs to MP3 is because it is more convenient. The loss in audio quality is there, but it is one we accept in most cases, and many people can't even hear it at all.
If it becomes impossible to extract raw digital data from CDs and DVDs, people will just digitize the analog form. That's way easier to do today than a couple decades ago when analog ruled. But once the initial loss of quality is done, there is no more loss as the digitized bits are now copied further perfectly.
Will most people know how to digitize analog? NO! But they won't need to. Music/movie piracy is about a few people making originals and a distribution of perfect digital copies.
Then there's the issue of whether the guy who has 30 gigs of MP3's on a $200 harddrive downloaded with $200 worth of DSL time would have been willing to ever pay $5000 for that same music. I believe most of those "stolen" MP3s are things he never would have purchased at the rate the music industry rips people and artists off.
I haven't actually done it headless (as in no video card), yet, but I have completely re-installed without using the keyboard, mouse, video, or any serial port. The way I did this was the way I layed out the system in the first place. Partition 1 has a 63meg self-contained rescue/maintenance system. The remainder of the drive is partitioned for the primary OS. Scripts included in the rescue/maintenance system can do the partitioning, reboot to see the new partitions, format the new partitions, and load the new OS file tree from over the network.
Unfortunately, this isn't helpful for your existing Redhat system. But it shows some ideas for things that can be done.
If I have just one task at a time, such as programming one project, then a computer or 2 on a table, with or near a fridge, and I'm also good to go.
However, I think jobs with one task are boring. I like to multitask. But the side effect is a cluttered desk. It needs walls to prevent collapse. Strong walls sometimes. And I usually need 3 computers or more. A real walled office space is necessary. Window preferred (but my new job doesn't have the window).
Why do you say it is impossible with Windows? How well have you tried it?
Quality is ubiquitous. We already use compression to "ruin" quality and people are still happy with it. Nth generation VHS duplicates had, and probably still have, a huge underground market. The digital age changes that even if you have to capture it from the analog video outputs. You have one generation of quality reduction there, but no more after that.
I do not have to reverse engineer anything to access. The reverse engineering was done where no law against it exists. What we have in the USA is a tool. That tool allows me to examine what I own. Through its infinite ignorance, the DMCA omitted this and fair use still applies.
The special hardware is available. It just isn't cheap. Those involved in mass production operations have it. I've heard some lower cost figures on this, but don't have a way to verify it at the time. So far we have heard nothing about the DeCSS pursuing these "pirates".
It is air. But it is also a sense and feeling of the pulse of the community. It is typical for semi-legal and illegal activities to be driven underground when there is a crack-down in enforcement. This ruling does not directly change enough of the internet (it prohibits 2600 and some related sites from offering or linking to offers to provide DeCSS) to have any effect on reducing or eliminating the availability of DeCSS or the motion pictures that are the legitimate concern of the MPAA. It's all available domestically and beyond, and still will be. It will hide. It will move. But there will be more looking for it. And that won't be enforcement (because they don't have enough of a clue to go find it).
The judge was, however, confused by MPAA rhetoric about the distinction between copying and merely accessing. There is no law against accessing what you already own. DeCSS is a tool for accessing, not copying. When used for accessing the information you already own a legitimate copy of, then its use is legal in that no law exists to prohibit it.
The MPAA is relying on misinformation to win this. You can see the misinformation in every statement they make where they claim DeCSS allows copying. As you should know, DeCSS allows access to bypass the encryption. But a DVD player does that, too, with very slightly less quality.
The mere fact that we accept lossy compression means we accept less that perfect reproduction as long as that reproduction does not continue to degrade. I could frame capture a DVD movie from a DVD player, re-digitize it, and it will be somewhat less quality than the original, but the digital copy will not degrade any further. That copy could then be illegally distributed and it would remain at that quality level throughout the entire tree of distribution.
Likewise, the originally encrypted version can be duplicated, and you end up with a perfect copy with the encryption intact. The encryption still means you have to decrypt it, but you now have a mechanism whereby the movie producers are not rewarded for their efforts, and DeCSS is not even involved in this. Copying can be done without DeCSS.
DeCSS has a legitimate purpose (viewing what one already owns by having legally purchased it and rewarded the movie producers), and does not significantly contribute to illegitimate purposes (since it is possible to access acceptable clear copies, as well as make duplicates of the encrypted copy, all without DeCSS). The facts of this case are that the facts have been manipulated by the MPAA.
I am not a supporter of piracy. If the MPAA had a legitimate desire to prevent piracy, they would focus on the piracy that takes place, rather than focusing on a tool that allows them to discriminate against me because I choose to not use crappy software from Redmond Washington. Sadly, the court victory means nothing because it won't stop or even reduce piracy. Mostly likely piracy will go up, and I would not be surprised if it triples or more. And in the mean time lots of people like myself will be boycotting not only DVD movies, but all movies produced by MPAA members. It's time to check out your local art theatre or maybe even a real stage play.
Specific contracts (which are nothing more than attempts to stifle usage) aside, there is nothing wrong with using the bandwidth you pay for for any purpose you want. If I want to exchange random numbers with a friend, it should be no business of the upstream provider. If those computers doing the exchange are deeper in LANs, that doesn't change anything. If those computers are dialed up to my LAN's dialup server, again, it's none of their business. If I get paid for that bandwidth, either more or less than I pay for it, it is still none of their business.
I'm buying BANDWIDTH and a (dynamic) IP address to use it with. Any company wanting to offer less than that is offering less than Internet service. Any contract establishing that is a contract to deny service.
I'm still reading. I do understand what I wrote, but I don't know if everyone else does. I've never read Marcel Proust. But that might happen in my personal time.
That reminds of me of a time when I asked a programmer who did all his application development in C++ and remarked that everything he did was object oriented, "what is object oriented?". He was stumped. He knew he was doing it, because he was using an OO language (which isn't true). But he couldn't define exactly what it was.
That's not to say that all C++ programmers don't know what OO is. But it does say that some don't, and worse, are using the language as a crutch to cover them from ineffective design.
The sad thing about OO design is that there are no "OO whiteboards" to make sure you do it right.
I'm in my second year of CS studies at the university of Antwerp. So you're free to disregard my comments if you think i'm too "green" to know how a "real" programmer thinks. At the beginning of last year my programming knowledge was mostly procedural, OO was almost alien to me. I had had some experience in Visual Basic, Delphi and Oberon *shudder*. Within one year I managed to learn C++ to such a degree that I could present an entire cgi app used to manage lawtexts (creating fragments, adding annotations,...). This was co-authored with a group, but there was nothing I didn't understand about it, and in fact I wrote most of the code. So within one year (actually 8 months) I learned C++ profoundly enough so that I feel that I could write any type of application in it.
Since you are at university, you are in early learning mentality. You are spending less time using what you do know, because there is less that you know. This isn't a bad thing, and in fact it is an advantage. But I do wonder if your cgi app project included full and complete documentation on the administration and maintenance of the system. Did it account for future upgrade needs? Is it scalable? Can it be run effectively in a "five 9's" environment? You'll find there are a whole lot of new things to learn in the world beyond academia. Don't misunderstand me; what you learn there is important. But it is not everything.
So, now, if you're telling me that you don't want to invest the time to learn C++ because you don't have it, then I tell you that you don't WANT to learn it. I had other stuff to do too, other sujects that needed my attention, but I managed to learn it (btw, after 3 months of school I had already written my first app, an e-mail client in C++). If you really want to learn how C++ works, it's perfectly possible with nothing but Stroustrup's book, a simple "newbies" book (like C++ Primer by Lippman) over a period of a couple of months. The problem is that you seem to be a deeply rooted procedural programmer. There's nothing wrong with that. Anything can be written both procedurally as OO-wise. But maybe you shouldn't try to learn OO languages (please don't take this too personally). Maybe it's just not your thing. OO code can not be thought of in machine terms. It's abstract. That's the very nature of it.
For me to invest time time is significantly different than for you to invest the same time. In a sense, you may be right as I don't have any great burning desired to learn C++ but I don't have any reason to shun it besides those I have mentioned. Where I am in life is entirely different than where you are. If C++ was there when I was in school, I have no doubt I would be coding in it today, unless something had replaced it (the time since I was in school way exceeds the lifetime of C++ so far). And by the time I did learn C, which I learned only because I was desperately seeking an alternative to assembly, I had already written over 800 apps, programs, utilities, or tool kits, in assembly, Fortran, and PL/1.
Myself, I like C++. The people that have most problem with learning it (and I've been able to see this in my close environment) are those that have programmed in C for years. C++ IS C, with OO add-ons. So it's pretty hard to leave behind your old C routines and use their new OO replacements. Even for me, who had no prior C experience, it was pretty confusing at first. But, as they say, I have seen the light. I prefer OO. It's cleaner. Although C++ is not exactly the cleanest language to do it in, it is the most powerfull. And it sure beats the pants of C (because it's a superset of C).
I prefer OO for larger projects. But the OO I learned is rather different than the way it is expressed in C++ based on the fact that the two different schemes didn't mesh. Don't be foolish to assume that just because someone doesn't code in an OO language that they didn't design the project using OO methodologies. Now I don't always do OO, but for larger things I do because it helps organize things. But from so much practice, I can code the OO design into C quite effectively, and don't have any big need to acquire a new language just to be able to code the same design a different way.
I do look forward to finding, some day, a clean yet effective object oriented language. C++ isn't it for me. Java could have been and it was quite close, but the run time environment, and political/legal issues, ruled it out for me. For all I know C# might well be, but I won't be interested in it until it is at least available in a standard form on Unix (not likely by Microsoft). Or maybe it won't be. If it has an obese run time environment, I will walk away from it quite happily.
So, please don't complain that the books and other people are the reason you don't seem to "get" C++. They're not.
As I said, the books are written specifically for a certain kind of learning style which I no longer (and will never again) do. The sad thing is they could be written in the style I would need. Indeed another reply to my post suggested a book that may have potential.
It's not an issue of could not learn something; it's an issue of making effective use of time and deciding when it is ineffective to learn something that doesn't present itself with enough apparent benefit to be worth the cost in time to acquire that knowledge. I could spend all my life learning new stuff, and there is plenty out there to learn. But I would have accomplished nothing more than learning, and most certainly given nothing back in that process. I prefer the balance I have already taken by learning what is effective to learn, and using what I do learn, and being creative in the process.
This past weekend I picked up The C++ Standard Library by Josuttis. I've found this to be a wonderful reference, with sections not only covering the STL, but also strings, numerics, iostreams, i18n and allocators. It has a good TOC and index. I've not read it straight through (or even made an attempt), but it is very easy to find what I need. Explanations are clear and concise. Reading one page of the iostreams chapter halped me successfully derive a new stream buffer and class in five minutes. All previous documents were either too esoteric or verbose -- I couldn't get my head around the problem.
Sounds like the C++ version of Plauger's like book for C. Something very useful.
Perhaps you'd be interested in the following books:
I've only read D&E. This is probably where you should start. It is very small. It's whole purpose is to explain why things are they way they are (i.e. you don't pay for what you don't use).
I have D&E and read some of it. It didn't seem to be useful for learning C++ at all.
I saw LSC++SD in a "brick and mortor" bookstore, but wasn't impressed enough to hold on to it for more than about 20 seconds.
However, Inside the C++ Object Model sounds from the title like it might be worth looking into.
In addition, journals like DDJ and the (now-defunct) C++ Report have good articles about practical software development. I hear many of the C++ Report folk are heading over to the C++ User's Journal.
I've rarely ever found magazine articles to be much helpful in things.
The most important thing to remember about C++ is that it is complicated. But only as complicated as you make it. For all intents and purposes, you can write C in C++. A good place to start is using it as "C with classes" to get encapsulation, then move on to polymorphism. It's also important to understand when to use language features (i.e. templates and specialization vs. inheritance) and books like Effective C++ help in that regard.
That I can write C in C++ is probably one of the big negatives for C++ for me. I would be so tempted to just do what I know. Why do I need to "get" encapsulation when I already have it in the abstract sense of the design? C is just the vehicle I use to bridge the abstraction-to-reality gap. Don't assume that because I code in C, that I didn't do anything object oriented in the design (I do to varying degrees in many projects).
I think the books you are looking for are available at this time. Probably even in on-line form with html tarball to download.
That would be great. Now if I can just find the time (besides what gets wasted on /.) for it.
They may not have been available 5 or 10 years ago because at that time C++ was not as well-established. What many people fail to understand about computer books and especially training seminars (as were VERY popular with C++ a few years ago) is that their purpose is to obfuscate and mystify, not to explain. There was a lot of money to be made hyping C++ and OOP. Now that the buzz has worn off an emphasis on practicality and concise explanations for the experienced programmer is more valuable.
Sounds like a lot of man pages and texinfo files I know:-)
Most of the documentation out there for so much stuff is written with the idea of sequential reading in mind. I don't have the time to do that in most cases, so documentation that gives an introductory concept explanation (without the usual sales talk that most use as introductions), and has all the rest as a well indexed reference, would do better for me (and a lot of people I know).
I learned C from books and school after having a little experience with assembly language and found C the easiest language I have ever had the experience of using, and one of the most flexible. It really is a portable assembly language but adds just enough abstraction to vastly speed up development.
I still think of what is being compiled to the machine level (carefully thinking about diverse machines) even as I write code in C. I was able to write a set of functions to write and read arbitrary sized chunks of bits (up to the size of a long) and made it not only work on both big endian and small endian platforms with no tests for endianess anywhere, but the two different platforms could even exchange data between them correctly. Sometimes abstractions just get in the way, especially when dealing with a real world.
C++ on the other hand has lots of wierd constructs and pretends to be OOP, though that is debatable. There is nothing wrong with treating it as an extension of C at first, even if purists who are hyping OOP to pad their resumes say that it requires a different way of thinking. It doesn't. The best way to understand what is really going on in C++ to use a class browser while developing code. But there are now books which explain it all as clearly as can be explained if you feel like looking for them. In my opinion there remain many ambiguities in C++, so if you don't understand them, then don't use those constructs. Use something else. There's more than one way to code it in C++ as well as in perl.
There's always more than one way to code it in just about any language, especially assembly.
If by your remark you intended to imply and mean that programming in C (as opposed to C++) is insane, then fine, I am Happily insane.
I learned C programming not from the books (though I had both K&R and H&S handy as references to look up stuff) but from actually diving in and doing it. Having started in 1982, I've had quite a bit of time to progress to the point I am today with C programming skills. I also had the foundation of several years of assembly programming before then.
I did not learn C from the books. I didn't read them. They didn't make sense the way they were written. Obviously they were not written for me, a very experienced programmer from the mainframe legacy with already several languages of experience. Those books appeared to be written for someone somewhere between "newbie" and "academic". They were not written for a working programmer.
I have yet to find any programming book for any programming language which is written for an audience with specific experiences to draw on, and specific questions that need to be answered about the new language. I was lucky with C because it became quite clear with a few experiments with pointers, and dumping the generated assembly code, and testing out some kernel calls (in TOPS-20 at the time), that C was just "portable assembly code". Neither K&R nor H&S explained things that way. Nor has any other book explained the basis and concepts of their language in terms all experienced programmers could catch on to quicky.
Learning a new language by the book is for newbies only!
Now how does this affect C++? Unlike my relation between assembly and C, C++ has no already existant basis to learn it from. While I do object oriented design and then code it in assembly (did that even before I learned C) and in C, I do not comprehend that way C++ has approached the OO principles in its language design. I have tried languages like CLU (from back in the early 1980's) and Java, but they were too slow to commit to and I soon abandoned them because by projects were real, not abstract. None of the C++ books I have looked at are oriented to explaining C++'s particular OO language philosophy. Even Stroustrup's own book didn't cover it the way I needed it.
While these books probably would work fine for a "newbie" who can spend the next couple years trying, failing, and learning from failure, they do no good for me. I cannot just stop all programming and spend the time as a "newbie" to learn something new. Every time I might even think of something I could do in C++ (or some other language I might learn) it is so temping to go do it in C because I can whip it right out faster than in the new language, debug it quickly, and have it totally kick ass on the computer.
While I do know of some specific shortcomings of C++ and could use those to say that C++ is not the best choice of language, I also know that shortcomings exist in C as well. But I have worked around them. Specific shortcomings aren't the point, anyway. If you want to know why it is so many people have not transitioned from C to C++, might I suggest surveying C++ programmers and ask them how many years experience they have had programming in C, and compare that with the results of a similar survey of C programmers. You can start with my 18 years experience programming in C.
If you still want to convert C programmers to use C++ then I suggest writing a book... a short one, that explains every concept in C++... not just language syntax, but practical concepts... clearly and concisely. Don't drag it out for newbies; focus on experienced C programmers. Explain how it is that C++ takes basic OO design concepts and puts them into a programming language. Explain how C++ behaves with each concept at higher abstract as well as lower real levels. Include a full reference section. And make sure there are examples of whole programs, not just snippets everywhere. Maybe then you might see more converts. But until someone does this, I doubt you will see very many.
Now if you do want to see an example of how I program in C, visit http://phil.ipal.org/freeware/avlmap/ and take a look. I suppose this merits my "insane" label.
Slashdot Mirror
But is it the very same ports tree for all 3 BSDs? And what would it take to integrate Linux, and even commercial Unices like Solaris? I would really like to see such a collection that would (or could when the platform specific elements are included) put things on all different Unix class systems.
So explain how to make it work on all UNIX systems, not just the big 3 BSD systems. Include Linux, Solaris, and one other UNIX of your choice. Show your work.
Maybe, with enough attempts, someone will eventually come up with a simple packaging system that is fully compatible. Hey, at least they keep trying, though it would be nice if they tried to make it broader than just BSD ... like maybe all of UNIX.
These guys are funded by Microsoft. If you doubt it, check out Net Talk Live, another one of their operations here in Dallas. If anyone does get into a legal process with them, be sure to demand in discovery to see all the agreements they have made with Microsoft to ensure that only Windows gets any support from this device.
Business that do these kinds of patents and other such stuff should be boycotted as much as possible. Obviously that won't directly hurt them. There are ways to make it do so. Those who run (the policy of) DNS servers and block them. Those who run (the policy of) routers can firewall them. And this can be applied even to companies that enthusiastically deal with them.
I use NS 3 (because NS 4 is brain dead) and the site looks fairly decent in NS 3. There is the usual miscalculated table cell problem that most web generators have because they used absolute rather than relative sizes, and assumed the wrong sizes for various objects.
In general dynamically generated web pages are badly done because the programs are intended to be used by artists rather than programmers, and therefore the specs tend to be what artists need. Most web artists come from the print media, and they can't think in terms of different monitor sizes, screen resolutions, fonts, objects, and stuff like that. So the end result is generally bad. You do see pressure to "standardize" to one browser, one screen size, etc. But the IBM Olympics site is definitely better than average with respect to this issue. I remember my first encounter with Domino and it was junk. They've come a long way since then.
As for ALT tags, that's obviously something they missed.
What would you do if a building was constructed that omitted wheelchair ramps, and due to the way it was built will require as much money as the building itself just to add the ramps? I'd say some architects failed.
If we were still using analog, that is, LPs, cassettes, and maybe even 8-tracks, and MP3 came along with the Internet, I believe it would be substantially more popular than it is now. It would in such a case be the ONLY medium that does NOT introduce significant wear per use and the ONLY medium that does not degrade in quality per copy (not counting the first transcription into MP3).
The higher quality of CDs has reduced much of the need for copying. I used to copy LPs to cassette because the cassette format had less wear than LP did. The reason I now copy CDs to MP3 is because it is more convenient. The loss in audio quality is there, but it is one we accept in most cases, and many people can't even hear it at all.
If it becomes impossible to extract raw digital data from CDs and DVDs, people will just digitize the analog form. That's way easier to do today than a couple decades ago when analog ruled. But once the initial loss of quality is done, there is no more loss as the digitized bits are now copied further perfectly.
Will most people know how to digitize analog? NO! But they won't need to. Music/movie piracy is about a few people making originals and a distribution of perfect digital copies.
Then there's the issue of whether the guy who has 30 gigs of MP3's on a $200 harddrive downloaded with $200 worth of DSL time would have been willing to ever pay $5000 for that same music. I believe most of those "stolen" MP3s are things he never would have purchased at the rate the music industry rips people and artists off.
I haven't actually done it headless (as in no video card), yet, but I have completely re-installed without using the keyboard, mouse, video, or any serial port. The way I did this was the way I layed out the system in the first place. Partition 1 has a 63meg self-contained rescue/maintenance system. The remainder of the drive is partitioned for the primary OS. Scripts included in the rescue/maintenance system can do the partitioning, reboot to see the new partitions, format the new partitions, and load the new OS file tree from over the network.
Unfortunately, this isn't helpful for your existing Redhat system. But it shows some ideas for things that can be done.
If I have just one task at a time, such as programming one project, then a computer or 2 on a table, with or near a fridge, and I'm also good to go.
However, I think jobs with one task are boring. I like to multitask. But the side effect is a cluttered desk. It needs walls to prevent collapse. Strong walls sometimes. And I usually need 3 computers or more. A real walled office space is necessary. Window preferred (but my new job doesn't have the window).
Oh, you beat me. I've only had it for 7 years, the last 3 of which has been at 100 mbps.
Why do you say it is impossible with Windows? How well have you tried it?
Quality is ubiquitous. We already use compression to "ruin" quality and people are still happy with it. Nth generation VHS duplicates had, and probably still have, a huge underground market. The digital age changes that even if you have to capture it from the analog video outputs. You have one generation of quality reduction there, but no more after that.
I do not have to reverse engineer anything to access. The reverse engineering was done where no law against it exists. What we have in the USA is a tool. That tool allows me to examine what I own. Through its infinite ignorance, the DMCA omitted this and fair use still applies.
Read the DMCA in the context of other laws, not in isolation.
The special hardware is available. It just isn't cheap. Those involved in mass production operations have it. I've heard some lower cost figures on this, but don't have a way to verify it at the time. So far we have heard nothing about the DeCSS pursuing these "pirates".
It is air. But it is also a sense and feeling of the pulse of the community. It is typical for semi-legal and illegal activities to be driven underground when there is a crack-down in enforcement. This ruling does not directly change enough of the internet (it prohibits 2600 and some related sites from offering or linking to offers to provide DeCSS) to have any effect on reducing or eliminating the availability of DeCSS or the motion pictures that are the legitimate concern of the MPAA. It's all available domestically and beyond, and still will be. It will hide. It will move. But there will be more looking for it. And that won't be enforcement (because they don't have enough of a clue to go find it).
The judge was, however, confused by MPAA rhetoric about the distinction between copying and merely accessing. There is no law against accessing what you already own. DeCSS is a tool for accessing, not copying. When used for accessing the information you already own a legitimate copy of, then its use is legal in that no law exists to prohibit it.
The MPAA is relying on misinformation to win this. You can see the misinformation in every statement they make where they claim DeCSS allows copying. As you should know, DeCSS allows access to bypass the encryption. But a DVD player does that, too, with very slightly less quality.
The mere fact that we accept lossy compression means we accept less that perfect reproduction as long as that reproduction does not continue to degrade. I could frame capture a DVD movie from a DVD player, re-digitize it, and it will be somewhat less quality than the original, but the digital copy will not degrade any further. That copy could then be illegally distributed and it would remain at that quality level throughout the entire tree of distribution.
Likewise, the originally encrypted version can be duplicated, and you end up with a perfect copy with the encryption intact. The encryption still means you have to decrypt it, but you now have a mechanism whereby the movie producers are not rewarded for their efforts, and DeCSS is not even involved in this. Copying can be done without DeCSS.
DeCSS has a legitimate purpose (viewing what one already owns by having legally purchased it and rewarded the movie producers), and does not significantly contribute to illegitimate purposes (since it is possible to access acceptable clear copies, as well as make duplicates of the encrypted copy, all without DeCSS). The facts of this case are that the facts have been manipulated by the MPAA.
I am not a supporter of piracy. If the MPAA had a legitimate desire to prevent piracy, they would focus on the piracy that takes place, rather than focusing on a tool that allows them to discriminate against me because I choose to not use crappy software from Redmond Washington. Sadly, the court victory means nothing because it won't stop or even reduce piracy. Mostly likely piracy will go up, and I would not be surprised if it triples or more. And in the mean time lots of people like myself will be boycotting not only DVD movies, but all movies produced by MPAA members. It's time to check out your local art theatre or maybe even a real stage play.
Build your own cable monopoly.
Specific contracts (which are nothing more than attempts to stifle usage) aside, there is nothing wrong with using the bandwidth you pay for for any purpose you want. If I want to exchange random numbers with a friend, it should be no business of the upstream provider. If those computers doing the exchange are deeper in LANs, that doesn't change anything. If those computers are dialed up to my LAN's dialup server, again, it's none of their business. If I get paid for that bandwidth, either more or less than I pay for it, it is still none of their business.
I'm buying BANDWIDTH and a (dynamic) IP address to use it with. Any company wanting to offer less than that is offering less than Internet service. Any contract establishing that is a contract to deny service.
I'm still reading. I do understand what I wrote, but I don't know if everyone else does. I've never read Marcel Proust. But that might happen in my personal time.
That reminds of me of a time when I asked a programmer who did all his application development in C++ and remarked that everything he did was object oriented, "what is object oriented?". He was stumped. He knew he was doing it, because he was using an OO language (which isn't true). But he couldn't define exactly what it was.
That's not to say that all C++ programmers don't know what OO is. But it does say that some don't, and worse, are using the language as a crutch to cover them from ineffective design.
The sad thing about OO design is that there are no "OO whiteboards" to make sure you do it right.
Since you are at university, you are in early learning mentality. You are spending less time using what you do know, because there is less that you know. This isn't a bad thing, and in fact it is an advantage. But I do wonder if your cgi app project included full and complete documentation on the administration and maintenance of the system. Did it account for future upgrade needs? Is it scalable? Can it be run effectively in a "five 9's" environment? You'll find there are a whole lot of new things to learn in the world beyond academia. Don't misunderstand me; what you learn there is important. But it is not everything.
For me to invest time time is significantly different than for you to invest the same time. In a sense, you may be right as I don't have any great burning desired to learn C++ but I don't have any reason to shun it besides those I have mentioned. Where I am in life is entirely different than where you are. If C++ was there when I was in school, I have no doubt I would be coding in it today, unless something had replaced it (the time since I was in school way exceeds the lifetime of C++ so far). And by the time I did learn C, which I learned only because I was desperately seeking an alternative to assembly, I had already written over 800 apps, programs, utilities, or tool kits, in assembly, Fortran, and PL/1.
I prefer OO for larger projects. But the OO I learned is rather different than the way it is expressed in C++ based on the fact that the two different schemes didn't mesh. Don't be foolish to assume that just because someone doesn't code in an OO language that they didn't design the project using OO methodologies. Now I don't always do OO, but for larger things I do because it helps organize things. But from so much practice, I can code the OO design into C quite effectively, and don't have any big need to acquire a new language just to be able to code the same design a different way.
I do look forward to finding, some day, a clean yet effective object oriented language. C++ isn't it for me. Java could have been and it was quite close, but the run time environment, and political/legal issues, ruled it out for me. For all I know C# might well be, but I won't be interested in it until it is at least available in a standard form on Unix (not likely by Microsoft). Or maybe it won't be. If it has an obese run time environment, I will walk away from it quite happily.
As I said, the books are written specifically for a certain kind of learning style which I no longer (and will never again) do. The sad thing is they could be written in the style I would need. Indeed another reply to my post suggested a book that may have potential.
I got you to read it :-)
It's not an issue of could not learn something; it's an issue of making effective use of time and deciding when it is ineffective to learn something that doesn't present itself with enough apparent benefit to be worth the cost in time to acquire that knowledge. I could spend all my life learning new stuff, and there is plenty out there to learn. But I would have accomplished nothing more than learning, and most certainly given nothing back in that process. I prefer the balance I have already taken by learning what is effective to learn, and using what I do learn, and being creative in the process.
Sounds like the C++ version of Plauger's like book for C. Something very useful.
I have D&E and read some of it. It didn't seem to be useful for learning C++ at all. I saw LSC++SD in a "brick and mortor" bookstore, but wasn't impressed enough to hold on to it for more than about 20 seconds. However, Inside the C++ Object Model sounds from the title like it might be worth looking into.
I've rarely ever found magazine articles to be much helpful in things.
That I can write C in C++ is probably one of the big negatives for C++ for me. I would be so tempted to just do what I know. Why do I need to "get" encapsulation when I already have it in the abstract sense of the design? C is just the vehicle I use to bridge the abstraction-to-reality gap. Don't assume that because I code in C, that I didn't do anything object oriented in the design (I do to varying degrees in many projects).
That would be great. Now if I can just find the time (besides what gets wasted on /. ) for it.
Sounds like a lot of man pages and texinfo files I know :-)
Most of the documentation out there for so much stuff is written with the idea of sequential reading in mind. I don't have the time to do that in most cases, so documentation that gives an introductory concept explanation (without the usual sales talk that most use as introductions), and has all the rest as a well indexed reference, would do better for me (and a lot of people I know).
I still think of what is being compiled to the machine level (carefully thinking about diverse machines) even as I write code in C. I was able to write a set of functions to write and read arbitrary sized chunks of bits (up to the size of a long) and made it not only work on both big endian and small endian platforms with no tests for endianess anywhere, but the two different platforms could even exchange data between them correctly. Sometimes abstractions just get in the way, especially when dealing with a real world.
There's always more than one way to code it in just about any language, especially assembly.
If by your remark you intended to imply and mean that programming in C (as opposed to C++) is insane, then fine, I am Happily insane.
I learned C programming not from the books (though I had both K&R and H&S handy as references to look up stuff) but from actually diving in and doing it. Having started in 1982, I've had quite a bit of time to progress to the point I am today with C programming skills. I also had the foundation of several years of assembly programming before then.
I did not learn C from the books. I didn't read them. They didn't make sense the way they were written. Obviously they were not written for me, a very experienced programmer from the mainframe legacy with already several languages of experience. Those books appeared to be written for someone somewhere between "newbie" and "academic". They were not written for a working programmer.
I have yet to find any programming book for any programming language which is written for an audience with specific experiences to draw on, and specific questions that need to be answered about the new language. I was lucky with C because it became quite clear with a few experiments with pointers, and dumping the generated assembly code, and testing out some kernel calls (in TOPS-20 at the time), that C was just "portable assembly code". Neither K&R nor H&S explained things that way. Nor has any other book explained the basis and concepts of their language in terms all experienced programmers could catch on to quicky.
Learning a new language by the book is for newbies only!
Now how does this affect C++? Unlike my relation between assembly and C, C++ has no already existant basis to learn it from. While I do object oriented design and then code it in assembly (did that even before I learned C) and in C, I do not comprehend that way C++ has approached the OO principles in its language design. I have tried languages like CLU (from back in the early 1980's) and Java, but they were too slow to commit to and I soon abandoned them because by projects were real, not abstract. None of the C++ books I have looked at are oriented to explaining C++'s particular OO language philosophy. Even Stroustrup's own book didn't cover it the way I needed it.
While these books probably would work fine for a "newbie" who can spend the next couple years trying, failing, and learning from failure, they do no good for me. I cannot just stop all programming and spend the time as a "newbie" to learn something new. Every time I might even think of something I could do in C++ (or some other language I might learn) it is so temping to go do it in C because I can whip it right out faster than in the new language, debug it quickly, and have it totally kick ass on the computer.
While I do know of some specific shortcomings of C++ and could use those to say that C++ is not the best choice of language, I also know that shortcomings exist in C as well. But I have worked around them. Specific shortcomings aren't the point, anyway. If you want to know why it is so many people have not transitioned from C to C++, might I suggest surveying C++ programmers and ask them how many years experience they have had programming in C, and compare that with the results of a similar survey of C programmers. You can start with my 18 years experience programming in C.
If you still want to convert C programmers to use C++ then I suggest writing a book ... a short one, that explains every concept in C++ ... not just language syntax, but practical concepts ... clearly and concisely. Don't drag it out for newbies; focus on experienced C programmers. Explain how it is that C++ takes basic OO design concepts and puts them into a programming language. Explain how C++ behaves with each concept at higher abstract as well as lower real levels. Include a full reference section. And make sure there are examples of whole programs, not just snippets everywhere. Maybe then you might see more converts. But until someone does this, I doubt you will see very many.
Now if you do want to see an example of how I program in C, visit http://phil.ipal.org/freeware/avlmap/ and take a look. I suppose this merits my "insane" label.