Nonsense. The GPL is intended to do exactly what you say it doesn't: it's intended to make all software free. It's a tool intended to destroy copyright from within.
Saying that it's viral is mere shorthand for that, and you obviously know that (since you define viral in that way).
Now, your prescription to deal with the viralness is quite on-target -- money talks, and coding your own dang solution also works. But this doesn't change the facts about how the GPL works, and how it's intended to work.
Grin... To stretch the analogy, suppose someone claimed that the common cold wasn't viral because you could avoid it by wearing a mask, washing your hands, and staying out of public. I know, it's a stretched analogy...
I'm ambivalent. On the one hand I don't want to slag off the guy who put so much work into Ogg. On the other hand, I don't support the idea behind Ogg at all. Ogg was created to protect us against the evil of software patents, but in doing so, it legitimizes that same evil. I would rather not acknowledge it at all: I'd rather see it die through a massive failure of enforcement (after all, in retrospect, what was all the brouhaha over the GIF patent good for?).
You're a little wrong here -- Ogg wasn't created to fight software patents; it was created to provide an unencumbered multimedia format. If you want to use that sort of thing, Ogg is your choice. It turns out that Ogg Vorbis is also very good, so it's a good choice even if you're fully willing to use encumbered formats.
But your purpose is different; Ogg isn't for you. You want to do civil disobedience to protest a bad law. I'm all for you doing that, even though I can't join you (I'm not capable of infringing on this patent even if I wanted to), but you need one friendly warning: the result that all civil disobedience users need to expect and prepare for is punishment according to the terms of the law. I'm not saying you're *not* expecting that, but it's certainly not what you're advocating when you say that nobody should worry about MP3 licensing terms. No, only those who are willing and prepared to pay the price should set out to battle.
But other than that -- go for it. I'll keep using and developing free alternatives where I can, since I don't want to take something that's not offered freely.
Yes, I would do the same, but the day it's outlawed is the day it becomes possible to arrest anyone using it -- and it's easy to detect use. This is why we agitate against laws to illegalise crypto. It's hard to tell what's being encrypted; but it's easy to tell that crypto is being used.
Yes, it's technically possible to defend against even this; but most people won't be able to, even technically competent ones.
I guess there's a good defence: everybody think of good uses for Freenet and start using it NOW. The more there are, the harder such a law will be to pass and slip by the judges. To be really powerful such a use should REQUIRE Freenet, and I can't think of any such uses (but I trust that others will). BUT... don't let that stop you. Use Freenet instead of Kazaa to publish your legally permissible stuff.
Not according to current legal theory. If you provide a service (in this case, hosting encrypted fragments of files) but you have no control or even visibility of how that service is used, you're not liable for the details of how it's used.
The people who use it are still liable, of course.
I have no idea how this is going to turn out. Freenet sounds like a great idea, but it's so obviously useful for such horrible uses, and there are other tools that handle most of the useful uses... I don't see it surviving legally (I mean that it'll be outlawed anywhere it'll be useful).
How about "The Little Lisper"? That book's got pictures, puzzles, cute excercises, is reasonably interactive... Sounds similar to this.
And it takes you all the way up to Y-combinators. Whew.
-Billy
Re:Scripting + component/subs beats OO
on
Head First Java
·
· Score: 1
Sounds like you're saying that it's possible to write code that's strongly coupled using OO. That's true. But it's the wrong thing to do, and most importantly it's possible to not do it, and possible to measure how you're doing at avoiding it.
Nothing's wrong with procedural programming, but OO isn't evil either. And I think you're just confused about scripting.
Which part, exactly? The bit about freedom of speech, due process, or unreasonable search and seizure?
No, the bit about copyright and patent law, which is what your question was explicitly and implicitly about.
Now you're implying that these lawyers are responsible for violations of the constitution... Well, go ahead and ask them about that, if you think they'll answer. But that wasn't even remotely implied in your original question; all you asked for was a justification of the money they were consuming, and said justification is already present and explicit in the Constitution.
I am honored to stand in the light of your profound and clearly transcendent wisdom and intellect
Either you're WAY too sensitive, or you haven't heard much wisdom and intellect. Let me be specific. You're wasting your time imagining that I'm your enemy here. Your own unclarity is. You want to ask them a question (or possibly you're trying to make a statement). Well, you failed.
So try again. And think of me as an early editor, not a debate opponent. If they answered your question they wouldn't give it the answer you wanted. So post another question.
I am confused by your lack of mentioning the time limitation of that monopoly. Since it is the time limitation that establishes the public good of protecting copyrights and patents, it would seem to me that it is somewhat more than a negligible detail, but rather the other side of the IP law coin.
I agree entirely. But you'll notice that none of your prior posts have yet to mention the time limitation; that's because it has _nothing_ to do with your original question. You didn't ask them if they felt bad about enforcing any of their cases (especially the longer-term ones); you didn't ask them if one of them would ever _refuse_ to prosecute a case which they personally felt was stretching out of the public good in that way.
All you did was ask them to justify their existance and funding, a question which is already amply answered.
So try again.
Please. You have a good point, you need to MAKE IT!
An excellent question which should be repeated somewhere where it makes a difference (in the Supreme Court and before Congress). Here, the answer has to be "See the constitution." The justification for what they do is to enforce the laws, which are (supposed to be) made in accordance with and in support of the Constitution.
Oh, the Constitution's justification, in case you've forgotten or haven't read it (which is fine if you're not a USAian) is that progress in arts and sciences is encouraged by offering and enforcing a monopoly on creations.
The job of these people is to enforce that monopoly. I think that's a reasonable job, worth the effort. I do agree with you that the terms of that monopoly are far to onerous, and need to be reduced; but this isn't their concern, nor is it something that they can do anything about.
Here's a cut'n'paste from a post above you. Which one of you is lying?
-Billy
From Fiscal Year 1981 through Fiscal Year 1981, only once did the Reagan administration propose more spending than Congress approved; for the other eight years, Congress spent more money than Reagan proposed. Here are the actual figures Reagan proposed, and the actual amount Congress authorized (in billions of dollars):
Python is actually simpler than Perl -- it's designed to be so. HOWEVER, Perl is also designed to do many specific things very simply, so when you need to do one of those specific things it's the fastest way to get it done -- assuming, of course, that you already knew Perl could do it:-).
I'm a Python fan, but I doubt Python will ever surpass Perl -- especially not by adding a "more logical parse tree", since it already has a very simple, consistent, and logical parse tree whereas Perl has more of a parse forest. Python and Perl are just too different; they compete in many areas, but their real strengths are far enough apart to keep them both viable in each other's presence.
Could you clarify what you mean? Python is already fully object-oriented (although it doesn't _force_ you to write object-oriented code, but then neither does VB).
And are you joking about Perl? Perl is widely known for having MUCH messier-looking code than Python, but running slightly faster on certain tasks.
Now my beef with flash, on the other hand, could fill up your screen
Me too -- but at the same time I always liked the *potential* of Flash to produce nice interfaces (a pity it was an _unrealised_ potential, i.e. people used it to produce ads and nasty interfaces, but I digress).
But then I found the Flash Click To Play extension for Moz Firebird, and now I'm happy with Flash again. I _never_ will have to see another flash ad (unless I want to), and I can watch flash movies whenever I want to. And someday, who knows? I might even find that someone's finally coded up a decent UI in flash:-).
I find this all crazy, though. Yeah, I *like* the idea of free music, but I won't take something against the wishes of its author.
I love the new PD bill that's going before Congress, though. Finally a way to require the author to *actively* insist that something be protected, not merely assuming insistence. It's amazing the sheer quantity of stuff that's illegal to distribute, yet nobody would complain if you did.
I don't know how the word originated, but the definitions I've read agree that it refers to any system where the hardware is cheaper than what it would cost if the hardware failed.
This leads to a lot of money spent making sure that everything is right about the system -- hence often the bureaucracy the following poster identifies with the word.
If there are enough Joe Born Agains then this can become a problem./What/ can become a problem? Too many JBAs? JBA not buying something he doesn't like?
Keep in mind that JBA/already/ doesn't like the movie; this "automatic fast forwarding" is actually giving him a second chance to watch it. If the movie can't stand up to the fast-forwarding -- well, it _definitely_ wasn't made for him.
If the director on the other hand voluntarily edits the films, as they do already for television, then it has a better shot of not losing its quality.
True. And more, the director can add materiel, or film a slightly different scene (together with slight changes to other scenes to make it all fit together).
So until the director does it, why shouldn't JBA be able to do it?
If I created a device that flips burgers, and cost less then maintaining a staff, people will buy it, and it will replaces millions of workes, far more then it would take to build the things.
That's absolutely correct, and in general it's always true. Think about it -- if it takes more skill/people/time to make the machine than it does to do the job without the machine, why build the machine in the first place?
It's a fundamental principle of ALL economic exchange: you don't invest in capital (i.e. machines) if you're not going to wind up saving money (i.e. using fewer worker-hours). You don't buy a burger if doing so would use more of your time and energy than making it at home would.
And there's your answer: we build these machines BECAUSE they eliminate our jobs. Yes, we want to be paid; but we want to be paid to do something _fun_, not something boring, painful, risky, and difficult.
So let the machines take away jackhammer jobs, and car-assembly jobs, and spreadsheet jobs. We'll find new things to do that the machines can't (yet). Someday the machines will be able to do them too -- that's also okay, we'll keep moving.
This process has an end, of course: eventually all jobs will conceivably be doable by a machine (more efficiently than they can be by a human). Nothing more for humans to do! What happens next depends on how we approach that time; but that's so far in the future speculation is simply wild.
Okay, here's what happens. The slang for it is "selling short".
You borrow some stock from someone else; the stockbroker will choose who donates the stock. You immediately sell the stock, and the broker puts the money from the sale into an account.
You then wait. One of two things will happen:
1. The original owner of the stock will decide to sell, and will therefore demand his shares back; or 2. You'll decide to cover your short.
Either way, you tell the stockbroker; he uses the money in the account to buy as many shares as you'd borrowed originally, and gives them to the original owner.
Then he gives you the leftover money.
This works GREAT when the stock price falls.
Now, what happens if the company goes bellyup? Well, in that case the stock is officially worthless; the owner will never ask for the shares. The entire short account -- all the money you made from selling the stock -- goes to you, with NO investment of your own money.
Now, what happens when the stock price goes up? Well, you still have to buy as many shares as you sold! So pay up, buddy.
The benefit of shorting is that you don't have to pay your own money; the risk is that there's no maximum amount you can lose, and there's always a maximum amount you can win. The stock could in theory increase forever; but it can never decrease below 0.
It's Bell Lab's design for the successor to Unix, learning from Unix's successes and failures.
Instead of everything being a file, everything's a file system. Instead of processes communicating through pipes, everything communicates through plumbing (like a cross between pipes and an email system).
It's tiny, coherent, and elegant. I really hope we see more of it.
VSTa is a free software OS inspired by QNX and Plan 9. Very nice looking, although when you run it very disappointing (it's slow).
Much more interesting to me is the concept of exokernels, a completely different OS organization which allows for/extremely/ fast operation. Some have suggested that Linux be refactored into an exokernel-like arrangement for multiprocessing: rather than trying to build a 256-processor single memory image Linux kernel (with all the horrid locking issues that implies), just build a 4 processor kernel, and when more processors are available, run multiple instances of it under an exokernel.
(The most significant person who's pushing for this plan for Linux, by the way, is Larry McVoy, notorious author of BitKeeper.)
I mean seriously, you can have peer to peer wireless networks, but they ultimately piggyback on peoples' flat rate DSL line.
Not in this scheme. Economics 101 again: the ultimate charges are what the owners of the physical media choose to charge for it. In this case the media include mainly people's own cell phones, the wireless spectrum allotment, and in some cases a wire/satellite/fibre link. If people tend to give away bandwidth, then this scheme will be mostly free, or will seem so.
As soon as everything is metered the possibilities dry up.
Actually, on the contrary -- as soon as we can arrange micropayments which can be made peer-to-peer (as in the now-defunct MojoNation, the payments don't have to be any currently recognised currency, but could instead be bandwitch on a specific router), this system will become viable on a large scale.
Is to build a Tesla turbine. That way you can harness energy AND eventually watch them fly to pieces.
Seriously, the tesla turbine design is worth a look from any hobbyist. Since it's bladeless, it can handle a lot nastier conditions than a typical bladed turbine can, and is also much simpler to build (my friend's built several breath-powered models out of paper and cardboard).
I seem to recall reading something on/. years ago about computing that recycles the contents of registers to lower waste heat.
Almost. Reversible computing builds all of its primitives to prevent losing information -- evidently, this directly causes it to produce less heat. See Baker's papers for more information.
Am I on drugs?
Um... Hard to say. Perhaps this would make a good Ask Slashdot question?:-)
You build a crystal of Si using the same methods documented originally until it's exactly as big around as the original turned out to be (using the SI definition of the meter).
Personally, I like the watt scale definition, but the Si crystal isn't terrible. Either one takes a LOT of equipment and setup, but at least they're all independantly reproducible.
Surely if the *other* guy ought to be using BSD, *you* should too--but that's basically all the GPL says; it gives you all the rights the BSD does, *except* the right to reduce the next guy's freedom.
I hope you'll license that argument to me -- I'm going to use it the next time I'm defending the GPL or LGPL (my personal favorite).:-) Seriously, very well said.
However, it's not pertinent in this case, for two reasons:
First, I can't reduce anyone else's freedom if they're already using open-licensed software; all I can do is set the level of freedom they have to use the changes *I* make. I don't have the right to take back their license.
Second, the GPL doesn't only apply to the software protected by it; it also applies to other stuff. Your argument is a perfect defence of the LGPL (a licence which I like and use), though, since the LGPL protects ONLY the software itself, not anything connected to it. So like I said, I'll be using it.
More rights than what? The GPL grants the same rights as many other licenses, but the GPL also makes some of them conditional on circumstances the other licenses don't care about.
If you need to use code in one of those circumstances, the GPL definitely limits your freedom to do so.
Slashdot Mirror
Nonsense. The GPL is intended to do exactly what you say it doesn't: it's intended to make all software free. It's a tool intended to destroy copyright from within.
Saying that it's viral is mere shorthand for that, and you obviously know that (since you define viral in that way).
Now, your prescription to deal with the viralness is quite on-target -- money talks, and coding your own dang solution also works. But this doesn't change the facts about how the GPL works, and how it's intended to work.
Grin... To stretch the analogy, suppose someone claimed that the common cold wasn't viral because you could avoid it by wearing a mask, washing your hands, and staying out of public. I know, it's a stretched analogy...
-Billy
I'm ambivalent. On the one hand I don't want to slag off the guy who put so much work into Ogg. On the other hand, I don't support the idea behind Ogg at all. Ogg was created to protect us against the evil of software patents, but in doing so, it legitimizes that same evil. I would rather not acknowledge it at all: I'd rather see it die through a massive failure of enforcement (after all, in retrospect, what was all the brouhaha over the GIF patent good for?).
You're a little wrong here -- Ogg wasn't created to fight software patents; it was created to provide an unencumbered multimedia format. If you want to use that sort of thing, Ogg is your choice. It turns out that Ogg Vorbis is also very good, so it's a good choice even if you're fully willing to use encumbered formats.
But your purpose is different; Ogg isn't for you. You want to do civil disobedience to protest a bad law. I'm all for you doing that, even though I can't join you (I'm not capable of infringing on this patent even if I wanted to), but you need one friendly warning: the result that all civil disobedience users need to expect and prepare for is punishment according to the terms of the law. I'm not saying you're *not* expecting that, but it's certainly not what you're advocating when you say that nobody should worry about MP3 licensing terms. No, only those who are willing and prepared to pay the price should set out to battle.
But other than that -- go for it. I'll keep using and developing free alternatives where I can, since I don't want to take something that's not offered freely.
-Billy
Yes, I would do the same, but the day it's outlawed is the day it becomes possible to arrest anyone using it -- and it's easy to detect use. This is why we agitate against laws to illegalise crypto. It's hard to tell what's being encrypted; but it's easy to tell that crypto is being used.
... don't let that stop you. Use Freenet instead of Kazaa to publish your legally permissible stuff.
Yes, it's technically possible to defend against even this; but most people won't be able to, even technically competent ones.
I guess there's a good defence: everybody think of good uses for Freenet and start using it NOW. The more there are, the harder such a law will be to pass and slip by the judges. To be really powerful such a use should REQUIRE Freenet, and I can't think of any such uses (but I trust that others will). BUT
If only I had anything to publish...
-Billy
Not according to current legal theory. If you provide a service (in this case, hosting encrypted fragments of files) but you have no control or even visibility of how that service is used, you're not liable for the details of how it's used.
The people who use it are still liable, of course.
I have no idea how this is going to turn out. Freenet sounds like a great idea, but it's so obviously useful for such horrible uses, and there are other tools that handle most of the useful uses... I don't see it surviving legally (I mean that it'll be outlawed anywhere it'll be useful).
-Billy
How about "The Little Lisper"? That book's got pictures, puzzles, cute excercises, is reasonably interactive... Sounds similar to this.
And it takes you all the way up to Y-combinators. Whew.
-Billy
Sounds like you're saying that it's possible to write code that's strongly coupled using OO. That's true. But it's the wrong thing to do, and most importantly it's possible to not do it, and possible to measure how you're doing at avoiding it.
Nothing's wrong with procedural programming, but OO isn't evil either. And I think you're just confused about scripting.
-Billy
Which part, exactly? The bit about freedom of speech, due process, or unreasonable search and seizure?
No, the bit about copyright and patent law, which is what your question was explicitly and implicitly about.
Now you're implying that these lawyers are responsible for violations of the constitution... Well, go ahead and ask them about that, if you think they'll answer. But that wasn't even remotely implied in your original question; all you asked for was a justification of the money they were consuming, and said justification is already present and explicit in the Constitution.
I am honored to stand in the light of your profound and clearly transcendent wisdom and intellect
Either you're WAY too sensitive, or you haven't heard much wisdom and intellect. Let me be specific. You're wasting your time imagining that I'm your enemy here. Your own unclarity is. You want to ask them a question (or possibly you're trying to make a statement). Well, you failed.
So try again. And think of me as an early editor, not a debate opponent. If they answered your question they wouldn't give it the answer you wanted. So post another question.
I am confused by your lack of mentioning the time limitation of that monopoly. Since it is the time limitation that establishes the public good of protecting copyrights and patents, it would seem to me that it is somewhat more than a negligible detail, but rather the other side of the IP law coin.
I agree entirely. But you'll notice that none of your prior posts have yet to mention the time limitation; that's because it has _nothing_ to do with your original question. You didn't ask them if they felt bad about enforcing any of their cases (especially the longer-term ones); you didn't ask them if one of them would ever _refuse_ to prosecute a case which they personally felt was stretching out of the public good in that way.
All you did was ask them to justify their existance and funding, a question which is already amply answered.
So try again.
Please. You have a good point, you need to MAKE IT!
-Billy
An excellent question which should be repeated somewhere where it makes a difference (in the Supreme Court and before Congress). Here, the answer has to be "See the constitution." The justification for what they do is to enforce the laws, which are (supposed to be) made in accordance with and in support of the Constitution.
Oh, the Constitution's justification, in case you've forgotten or haven't read it (which is fine if you're not a USAian) is that progress in arts and sciences is encouraged by offering and enforcing a monopoly on creations.
The job of these people is to enforce that monopoly. I think that's a reasonable job, worth the effort. I do agree with you that the terms of that monopoly are far to onerous, and need to be reduced; but this isn't their concern, nor is it something that they can do anything about.
-Billy
Here's a cut'n'paste from a post above you. Which one of you is lying?
-Billy
From Fiscal Year 1981 through Fiscal Year 1981, only once did the Reagan administration propose more spending than Congress approved; for the other eight years, Congress spent more money than Reagan proposed. Here are the actual figures Reagan proposed, and the actual amount Congress authorized (in billions of dollars):
FY1981 Reagan: $655.2 Congress: $678.2
FY1982 Reagan: $695.3 Congress: $745.8
FY1983 Reagan: $773.3 Congress: $808.4
FY1984 Reagan: $862.5 Congress: $851.8
FY1985 Reagan: $940.3 Congress: $946.4
FY1986 Reagan: $873.7 Congress: $990.3
FY1987 Reagan: $994.0 Congress: $1003.9
FY1988 Reagan: $1024.3 Congress: $1064.1
FY1989 Reagan: $1094.2 Congress: $1144.2
Python is actually simpler than Perl -- it's designed to be so. HOWEVER, Perl is also designed to do many specific things very simply, so when you need to do one of those specific things it's the fastest way to get it done -- assuming, of course, that you already knew Perl could do it :-).
I'm a Python fan, but I doubt Python will ever surpass Perl -- especially not by adding a "more logical parse tree", since it already has a very simple, consistent, and logical parse tree whereas Perl has more of a parse forest. Python and Perl are just too different; they compete in many areas, but their real strengths are far enough apart to keep them both viable in each other's presence.
For info on what projects are being done in Python, see the lists at www.python.org (Success Stories, Python Users, and Python Projects)).
Remarkable language, Python. Lovely plumage!
-Billy
Could you clarify what you mean? Python is already fully object-oriented (although it doesn't _force_ you to write object-oriented code, but then neither does VB).
And are you joking about Perl? Perl is widely known for having MUCH messier-looking code than Python, but running slightly faster on certain tasks.
-Billy
Now my beef with flash, on the other hand, could fill up your screen
:-).
Me too -- but at the same time I always liked the *potential* of Flash to produce nice interfaces (a pity it was an _unrealised_ potential, i.e. people used it to produce ads and nasty interfaces, but I digress).
But then I found the Flash Click To Play extension for Moz Firebird, and now I'm happy with Flash again. I _never_ will have to see another flash ad (unless I want to), and I can watch flash movies whenever I want to. And someday, who knows? I might even find that someone's finally coded up a decent UI in flash
-Billy
That's Freenet. No need to reinvent it.
I find this all crazy, though. Yeah, I *like* the idea of free music, but I won't take something against the wishes of its author.
I love the new PD bill that's going before Congress, though. Finally a way to require the author to *actively* insist that something be protected, not merely assuming insistence. It's amazing the sheer quantity of stuff that's illegal to distribute, yet nobody would complain if you did.
-Billy
I don't know how the word originated, but the definitions I've read agree that it refers to any system where the hardware is cheaper than what it would cost if the hardware failed.
This leads to a lot of money spent making sure that everything is right about the system -- hence often the bureaucracy the following poster identifies with the word.
-Billy
If there are enough Joe Born Agains then this can become a problem. /What/ can become a problem? Too many JBAs? JBA not buying something he doesn't like?
/already/ doesn't like the movie; this "automatic fast forwarding" is actually giving him a second chance to watch it. If the movie can't stand up to the fast-forwarding -- well, it _definitely_ wasn't made for him.
Keep in mind that JBA
If the director on the other hand voluntarily edits the films, as they do already for television, then it has a better shot of not losing its quality.
True. And more, the director can add materiel, or film a slightly different scene (together with slight changes to other scenes to make it all fit together).
So until the director does it, why shouldn't JBA be able to do it?
-Billy
If I created a device that flips burgers, and cost less then maintaining a staff, people will buy it, and it will replaces millions of workes, far more then it would take to build the things.
That's absolutely correct, and in general it's always true. Think about it -- if it takes more skill/people/time to make the machine than it does to do the job without the machine, why build the machine in the first place?
It's a fundamental principle of ALL economic exchange: you don't invest in capital (i.e. machines) if you're not going to wind up saving money (i.e. using fewer worker-hours). You don't buy a burger if doing so would use more of your time and energy than making it at home would.
And there's your answer: we build these machines BECAUSE they eliminate our jobs. Yes, we want to be paid; but we want to be paid to do something _fun_, not something boring, painful, risky, and difficult.
So let the machines take away jackhammer jobs, and car-assembly jobs, and spreadsheet jobs. We'll find new things to do that the machines can't (yet). Someday the machines will be able to do them too -- that's also okay, we'll keep moving.
This process has an end, of course: eventually all jobs will conceivably be doable by a machine (more efficiently than they can be by a human). Nothing more for humans to do! What happens next depends on how we approach that time; but that's so far in the future speculation is simply wild.
Tempting, but wild.
-Billy
Okay, here's what happens. The slang for it is "selling short".
You borrow some stock from someone else; the stockbroker will choose who donates the stock. You immediately sell the stock, and the broker puts the money from the sale into an account.
You then wait. One of two things will happen:
1. The original owner of the stock will decide to sell, and will therefore demand his shares back;
or
2. You'll decide to cover your short.
Either way, you tell the stockbroker; he uses the money in the account to buy as many shares as you'd borrowed originally, and gives them to the original owner.
Then he gives you the leftover money.
This works GREAT when the stock price falls.
Now, what happens if the company goes bellyup? Well, in that case the stock is officially worthless; the owner will never ask for the shares. The entire short account -- all the money you made from selling the stock -- goes to you, with NO investment of your own money.
Now, what happens when the stock price goes up? Well, you still have to buy as many shares as you sold! So pay up, buddy.
The benefit of shorting is that you don't have to pay your own money; the risk is that there's no maximum amount you can lose, and there's always a maximum amount you can win. The stock could in theory increase forever; but it can never decrease below 0.
-Billy
It's Bell Lab's design for the successor to Unix, learning from Unix's successes and failures.
Instead of everything being a file, everything's a file system. Instead of processes communicating through pipes, everything communicates through plumbing (like a cross between pipes and an email system).
It's tiny, coherent, and elegant. I really hope we see more of it.
-Billy
VSTa is a free software OS inspired by QNX and Plan 9. Very nice looking, although when you run it very disappointing (it's slow).
/extremely/ fast operation. Some have suggested that Linux be refactored into an exokernel-like arrangement for multiprocessing: rather than trying to build a 256-processor single memory image Linux kernel (with all the horrid locking issues that implies), just build a 4 processor kernel, and when more processors are available, run multiple instances of it under an exokernel.
Much more interesting to me is the concept of exokernels, a completely different OS organization which allows for
(The most significant person who's pushing for this plan for Linux, by the way, is Larry McVoy, notorious author of BitKeeper.)
-Billy
I mean seriously, you can have peer to peer wireless networks, but they ultimately piggyback on peoples' flat rate DSL line.
Not in this scheme. Economics 101 again: the ultimate charges are what the owners of the physical media choose to charge for it. In this case the media include mainly people's own cell phones, the wireless spectrum allotment, and in some cases a wire/satellite/fibre link. If people tend to give away bandwidth, then this scheme will be mostly free, or will seem so.
As soon as everything is metered the possibilities dry up.
Actually, on the contrary -- as soon as we can arrange micropayments which can be made peer-to-peer (as in the now-defunct MojoNation, the payments don't have to be any currently recognised currency, but could instead be bandwitch on a specific router), this system will become viable on a large scale.
-Billy
Is to build a Tesla turbine. That way you can harness energy AND eventually watch them fly to pieces.
Seriously, the tesla turbine design is worth a look from any hobbyist. Since it's bladeless, it can handle a lot nastier conditions than a typical bladed turbine can, and is also much simpler to build (my friend's built several breath-powered models out of paper and cardboard).
-Billy
I seem to recall reading something on /. years ago about computing that recycles the contents of registers to lower waste heat.
:-)
Almost. Reversible computing builds all of its primitives to prevent losing information -- evidently, this directly causes it to produce less heat. See Baker's papers for more information.
Am I on drugs?
Um... Hard to say. Perhaps this would make a good Ask Slashdot question?
-Billy
You build a crystal of Si using the same methods documented originally until it's exactly as big around as the original turned out to be (using the SI definition of the meter).
Personally, I like the watt scale definition, but the Si crystal isn't terrible. Either one takes a LOT of equipment and setup, but at least they're all independantly reproducible.
-Billy
Surely if the *other* guy ought to be using BSD, *you* should too--but that's basically all the GPL says; it gives you all the rights the BSD does, *except* the right to reduce the next guy's freedom.
:-) Seriously, very well said.
I hope you'll license that argument to me -- I'm going to use it the next time I'm defending the GPL or LGPL (my personal favorite).
However, it's not pertinent in this case, for two reasons:
First, I can't reduce anyone else's freedom if they're already using open-licensed software; all I can do is set the level of freedom they have to use the changes *I* make. I don't have the right to take back their license.
Second, the GPL doesn't only apply to the software protected by it; it also applies to other stuff. Your argument is a perfect defence of the LGPL (a licence which I like and use), though, since the LGPL protects ONLY the software itself, not anything connected to it. So like I said, I'll be using it.
-Billy
More rights than what? The GPL grants the same rights as many other licenses, but the GPL also makes some of them conditional on circumstances the other licenses don't care about.
If you need to use code in one of those circumstances, the GPL definitely limits your freedom to do so.
-Billy