Interestingly, Apple is working on a C/C++/ObjC front-end for LLVM so that they can do away with GCC as well. It should be possible to use and develop on an open-source BSD without any GPL code whatsoever in the not-too-distant future.
Exactly. Saying the iPhone can't possibly have a killer app because it's limited to "only" web 2.0 is like saying that there are no possible killer apps left to be invented on the web. I can think of a lot of killer apps one can produce with web 2.0 and a javascript library that gives me access to a 2MP camera, a contact list, the internet, and a telephone.
For example, right now I'm shopping around to buy one house, and sell my current one. Can I think of a hundred ways to use an iPhone in the process? Yes.
"When idealistic principles (such as patents) cause more harm than good (as they are right now) they should be rejected on pragmatic grounds."
No, they should be fixed. It's not coincidence that countries with stronger IP law tend to have stronger economies.
Software patents seem like an extremely valid concept to me, but the bar for "obviousness" has been set far too low. And patent holders should be required to capitalize on their inventions within a certain time period or lose them, so these sleeper patent trolls can't operate so easily.
You are being extremely optimistic (one might say naive). My guess? Every single significant GPLv2 project is going to fork in the coming year and have divergent GPL2 and GPL3 versions which aren't compatible with each other on a license basis. TiVo will continue to develop on the GPLv2 branch of all the projects and continue to do exactly what they've been doing (which few people really seem to actually have a problem with). Companies will have double the number of distributions to choose from, each of which will have their own bugs and vulnerabilities and complicate any FOSS decision. It will make the various versions of Vista seem simple in comparison. In a few years, GPLv3-based software, because of the increased restrictions it places on its users, will become increasingly irrelevant and we'll all be back to where we are today with little to show for the debacle except a few wasted years of effort.
Sort of. Instruction manuals can also be copyrighted, and that has a very close parallel to software (which is essentially an instruction manual for the computer to follow).
You're "truly" paying for both. Claiming otherwise is just useless ranting, and the division of how much of the $0.30 is for DRMlessness versus higher quality is unknown.
Not everywhere. The Army currently has a bit of a split personality here. The "Future Combat Systems" projects are all being developed on linux, and all FCS software is written in C, C++, or Java (no.NET). At the same time, all of the current Army Battle Command Systems are being actively ported to Windows and away from unices, favoring.NET solutions, and requiring Vista compatibility for all the next versions of the software. Doesn't matter to my product, as we use Java and can run on all of it.
If technologies like this and cheap solar become commonplace, the model of the electrical grid that distributes power from one huge generator to a million consumers can be revised. I think that's good not only for carbon emissions, but for the losses due to transmission, the ugly high-tension wires crisscrossing the country, and the likelihood of outages. If we have a hundred thousand tiny generators on the grid, it seems like everyone wins except the power companies.
I agree that the Eolas patent is obvious, but you can't just look at something and say "I could have thought of that!" and expect to overturn a patent. Basically, one can show "non-obviousness" in a few ways, including commercial success, fulfilling a long-standing need, or having succeeded where others failed at the task targeted by the patent. Examples of any of these are admissible evidence in court in support of a patent.
Locks on the cockpit door would not have helped, because the pilots would have invited the hijackers into the cockpit. I know that sounds absurd now, but at the time the conventional wisdom was that hijackers generally wanted to make some political statement before releasing everyone, and obeying their demands was the best way to protect the lives of the passengers and crew.
The only thing that would have helped is better collection, coordination and analysis of information.
Samba could be viewed as a clone product, but so could gedit (clone of notepad). Firefox might be a clone of Internet Explorer 7. What about totem? Looks an awful lot like Windows Media Player, at least the older versions. Nautilus behaves a lot like Windows Explorer, huh?
Firefox brings up an interesting question. It inherits from Netscape which inherits from NCSA Mosaic, so that brings up another question: is the contract written such that if Microsoft's product is the "clone" rather than vice-versa, is the FOSS software still protected?
Samba is pretty obviously a clone product-- that's its only purpose in life. There are countless other FOSS projects which got started when someone said "I wish we had an open source version of X" because they didn't want to pay the original developer for having developed some useful capability. I think Microsoft has every right to protect their inventions from such "predatory open-sourcing". Other FOSS software is fairly innovative, and those should be protected from random big-company patent blind-siding.
And it's built from the same Carbon, Oxygen, Nitrogen, and Hydrogen that everything else is built from, too! Jeez, can't Microsoft come up with some original atoms to use???
"Since this discussion has been going on for over three decades with little progress in terms of widespread change"
Actually, there has been huge progress in the last 5-10 years. Before Java, there were no mass-market programming languages that included explicit support for threading primitives. Now that Java is dominant, or at least widespread, in all areas of software except the desktop and game consoles, multithreading has become much more ubiquitous. And game consoles have their own brand of multithreading-- look at the Cell in the PS3.
There are a lot of ideas for what will be the next generation of tools, which will lead to the next generation of capabilities. It's really all about the tools that make these things easier, more than the developers who just do whatever's the easiest way to fulfill their contract.
Dangit, and my mod points just expired. One of the more "Insightful" posts. At this point the FSF seems to be intent on destroying FOSS quicker than Microsoft could possibly accomplish it.
Another poster reported that Dragonskin is almost twice as heavy as the other vests, too. Did Dateline try putting Dragonskin against two regular vests?
My apparent "anger"? Yes, anyone who disagrees with you is an angry mis-informed blockhead. I'm more amused than angry at your vehemence on re-naming Linus' operating system. And I'm familiar with my facts. The FSF operating system was called "Hurd" (later "GNU/Hurd" when Stallman became more explicit about the separation of "OS" and kernel after Linux got popular)... and it was a dismal failure.
As for whether people should call the Linux operating system "GNU/Linux", I guess this sums it up pretty well. But the long and short of it is that Linux is not an FSF project. FSF has no control over it, and certainly wouldn't have encouraged it to go into all the places that Linus encourages it to go (TiVo, etc). FSF contributed a bunch of command-line tools, compilers, daemons, etc. Good for them! Hurrah, that's what FOSS is all about. They don't get to name someone else's product, though.
And to imply that Richard Stallman "politely asks" people to call it GNU/Linux is inaccurate. He rants and raves about it, and basically calls anyone who refers it by the name Linus gave it (ie. "Linux") bad people.
" Don't botter replying with a repetition of your arguments, I likely won't reply back."
Heh, yeah... LALALALALALA I can't hear you or anyone else who disagrees with me, either.
The product is called Linux. The fact that GNU contributed some technology that they had lying around to Linus' product doesn't give them naming rights. In fact, that's the WHOLE POINT of open source software-- If Stallman had wanted to keep marketing control over his invention, he shouldn't have open-sourced it. Anyone can take GPL software and create a product and call it whatever they want, no matter what Stallman says or thinks. No one is forced to prepend "GNU/" to their product name.
Thus, calling it GNU/Linux without written permission is diluting the Linux trademark and implying a business relationship with the Free Software Foundation, isn't it?
Comcast here has new boxes that DELETE the firewire port, it's not even an option.
FCC mandate Title 47, Chapter 1, Subchapter C, Part 76, Subpart K requires that all cable operators that have not received an explicit exemption from the FCC offer any customer who requests it a high-definition cable box with an operational firewire port.
It's actually the law that there has to be an HD box option that includes Firewire.
I don't know anyone with a "US" driver's license. I have a Virginia driver's license. Hopefully it will stay that way.
You haven't been paying attention, have you? The role of a driver's license to simply prove that someone has the requisite expertise to operate a motor vehicle are long gone. Now the federal Department of Homeland Security mandates what states put in the cards, and you'll be required to show your national ID whenever you fly or enter a federal building.
I doubt very much that there was a master plan to stop soldiers from voting by the party who would benefit from them the most.
You are naive. During the big recount fiasco, the Bush camp's stated directions to the lawyers was to push to get military votes invalidated in the heavily Democratic-leaning areas, and counted in the heavily Republican-leaning areas. Gore tried to just get them all counted.
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That is, of course, unless the probability is 0 or 100%.
There is always a margin of error whenever any computation meets the real world.
Interestingly, Apple is working on a C/C++/ObjC front-end for LLVM so that they can do away with GCC as well. It should be possible to use and develop on an open-source BSD without any GPL code whatsoever in the not-too-distant future.
Exactly. Saying the iPhone can't possibly have a killer app because it's limited to "only" web 2.0 is like saying that there are no possible killer apps left to be invented on the web. I can think of a lot of killer apps one can produce with web 2.0 and a javascript library that gives me access to a 2MP camera, a contact list, the internet, and a telephone.
For example, right now I'm shopping around to buy one house, and sell my current one. Can I think of a hundred ways to use an iPhone in the process? Yes.
"When idealistic principles (such as patents) cause more harm than good (as they are right now) they should be rejected on pragmatic grounds."
No, they should be fixed. It's not coincidence that countries with stronger IP law tend to have stronger economies.
Software patents seem like an extremely valid concept to me, but the bar for "obviousness" has been set far too low. And patent holders should be required to capitalize on their inventions within a certain time period or lose them, so these sleeper patent trolls can't operate so easily.
You are being extremely optimistic (one might say naive). My guess? Every single significant GPLv2 project is going to fork in the coming year and have divergent GPL2 and GPL3 versions which aren't compatible with each other on a license basis. TiVo will continue to develop on the GPLv2 branch of all the projects and continue to do exactly what they've been doing (which few people really seem to actually have a problem with). Companies will have double the number of distributions to choose from, each of which will have their own bugs and vulnerabilities and complicate any FOSS decision. It will make the various versions of Vista seem simple in comparison. In a few years, GPLv3-based software, because of the increased restrictions it places on its users, will become increasingly irrelevant and we'll all be back to where we are today with little to show for the debacle except a few wasted years of effort.
Sort of. Instruction manuals can also be copyrighted, and that has a very close parallel to software (which is essentially an instruction manual for the computer to follow).
You're "truly" paying for both. Claiming otherwise is just useless ranting, and the division of how much of the $0.30 is for DRMlessness versus higher quality is unknown.
Not everywhere. The Army currently has a bit of a split personality here. The "Future Combat Systems" projects are all being developed on linux, and all FCS software is written in C, C++, or Java (no .NET). At the same time, all of the current Army Battle Command Systems are being actively ported to Windows and away from unices, favoring .NET solutions, and requiring Vista compatibility for all the next versions of the software. Doesn't matter to my product, as we use Java and can run on all of it.
"This revolutionary power system contains an array of solid-state tubes"
Remember: it's a bunch of tubes, not a big truck!
I don't see a price on that page, by the way...
If technologies like this and cheap solar become commonplace, the model of the electrical grid that distributes power from one huge generator to a million consumers can be revised. I think that's good not only for carbon emissions, but for the losses due to transmission, the ugly high-tension wires crisscrossing the country, and the likelihood of outages. If we have a hundred thousand tiny generators on the grid, it seems like everyone wins except the power companies.
I agree that the Eolas patent is obvious, but you can't just look at something and say "I could have thought of that!" and expect to overturn a patent. Basically, one can show "non-obviousness" in a few ways, including commercial success, fulfilling a long-standing need, or having succeeded where others failed at the task targeted by the patent. Examples of any of these are admissible evidence in court in support of a patent.
Locks on the cockpit door would not have helped, because the pilots would have invited the hijackers into the cockpit. I know that sounds absurd now, but at the time the conventional wisdom was that hijackers generally wanted to make some political statement before releasing everyone, and obeying their demands was the best way to protect the lives of the passengers and crew.
The only thing that would have helped is better collection, coordination and analysis of information.
Samba could be viewed as a clone product, but so could gedit (clone of notepad). Firefox might be a clone of Internet Explorer 7. What about totem? Looks an awful lot like Windows Media Player, at least the older versions. Nautilus behaves a lot like Windows Explorer, huh?
Firefox brings up an interesting question. It inherits from Netscape which inherits from NCSA Mosaic, so that brings up another question: is the contract written such that if Microsoft's product is the "clone" rather than vice-versa, is the FOSS software still protected?
Samba is pretty obviously a clone product-- that's its only purpose in life. There are countless other FOSS projects which got started when someone said "I wish we had an open source version of X" because they didn't want to pay the original developer for having developed some useful capability. I think Microsoft has every right to protect their inventions from such "predatory open-sourcing". Other FOSS software is fairly innovative, and those should be protected from random big-company patent blind-siding.
And it's built from the same Carbon, Oxygen, Nitrogen, and Hydrogen that everything else is built from, too! Jeez, can't Microsoft come up with some original atoms to use???
"Since this discussion has been going on for over three decades with little progress in terms of widespread change"
Actually, there has been huge progress in the last 5-10 years. Before Java, there were no mass-market programming languages that included explicit support for threading primitives. Now that Java is dominant, or at least widespread, in all areas of software except the desktop and game consoles, multithreading has become much more ubiquitous. And game consoles have their own brand of multithreading-- look at the Cell in the PS3.
There are a lot of ideas for what will be the next generation of tools, which will lead to the next generation of capabilities. It's really all about the tools that make these things easier, more than the developers who just do whatever's the easiest way to fulfill their contract.
Dangit, and my mod points just expired. One of the more "Insightful" posts. At this point the FSF seems to be intent on destroying FOSS quicker than Microsoft could possibly accomplish it.
Another poster reported that Dragonskin is almost twice as heavy as the other vests, too. Did Dateline try putting Dragonskin against two regular vests?
My apparent "anger"? Yes, anyone who disagrees with you is an angry mis-informed blockhead. I'm more amused than angry at your vehemence on re-naming Linus' operating system. And I'm familiar with my facts. The FSF operating system was called "Hurd" (later "GNU/Hurd" when Stallman became more explicit about the separation of "OS" and kernel after Linux got popular)... and it was a dismal failure.
As for whether people should call the Linux operating system "GNU/Linux", I guess this sums it up pretty well. But the long and short of it is that Linux is not an FSF project. FSF has no control over it, and certainly wouldn't have encouraged it to go into all the places that Linus encourages it to go (TiVo, etc). FSF contributed a bunch of command-line tools, compilers, daemons, etc. Good for them! Hurrah, that's what FOSS is all about. They don't get to name someone else's product, though.
And to imply that Richard Stallman "politely asks" people to call it GNU/Linux is inaccurate. He rants and raves about it, and basically calls anyone who refers it by the name Linus gave it (ie. "Linux") bad people.
" Don't botter replying with a repetition of your arguments, I likely won't reply back."
Heh, yeah... LALALALALALA I can't hear you or anyone else who disagrees with me, either.
The product is called Linux. The fact that GNU contributed some technology that they had lying around to Linus' product doesn't give them naming rights. In fact, that's the WHOLE POINT of open source software-- If Stallman had wanted to keep marketing control over his invention, he shouldn't have open-sourced it. Anyone can take GPL software and create a product and call it whatever they want, no matter what Stallman says or thinks. No one is forced to prepend "GNU/" to their product name.
Thus, calling it GNU/Linux without written permission is diluting the Linux trademark and implying a business relationship with the Free Software Foundation, isn't it?
Does this mean that Richard Stallman trying to shove "GNU/Linux" down people's throats is really a misappropriation of a trademark?
Comcast here has new boxes that DELETE the firewire port, it's not even an option.
FCC mandate Title 47, Chapter 1, Subchapter C, Part 76, Subpart K requires that all cable operators that have not received an explicit exemption from the FCC offer any customer who requests it a high-definition cable box with an operational firewire port.
It's actually the law that there has to be an HD box option that includes Firewire.
It's pretty simple, really: almost no one needs 64-bits yet.
Masswise Venus is a near twin of earth but the surface conditions are straight out of Dante's Inferno.
I think you mean that Mars is out of Dante's Inferno... those in the ninth circle of hell were encased in ice.
I don't know anyone with a "US" driver's license. I have a Virginia driver's license. Hopefully it will stay that way.
You haven't been paying attention, have you? The role of a driver's license to simply prove that someone has the requisite expertise to operate a motor vehicle are long gone. Now the federal Department of Homeland Security mandates what states put in the cards, and you'll be required to show your national ID whenever you fly or enter a federal building.
I doubt very much that there was a master plan to stop soldiers from voting by the party who would benefit from them the most.
You are naive. During the big recount fiasco, the Bush camp's stated directions to the lawyers was to push to get military votes invalidated in the heavily Democratic-leaning areas, and counted in the heavily Republican-leaning areas. Gore tried to just get them all counted.