Since day one. A message is synonymous with a method. An object without methods is merely a record.
Messages/methods, as you define them, aren't usually considered a separate OOL concept beside the other three. Methods, and therefore member variables as well, are a subset of Encapsulation.
Further, after consulting several of the object-oriented textbooks I have lying around my cubical, covering several different languages, not one of them mentions a single thing about messaging/methods as a distinct concept. Further, none of them have this Abstraction idea mentioned in the first post.
They all mention the three tenets of object-oriented programming: Encapsulation (which embodies the notions of Abstraction and Messaging), Polymorphism (hello, first poster...), and Inheritance.
--
Re:KDE/GNOME war hurts developers...
on
KDE Strikes Back
·
· Score: 1
Bonobo is way to fat for a DE.
On the other hand, a CORBA implementation allows any other arbitrary component that supports CORBA (meaning any arbitrary CORBA-supporting component on any arbitrary platform) to interact with a Bonobo component.
AFAIK, KParts is pretty much limited to KDE. That's all well and good for KDE, but KDE seems to be going for the elitist road. Bonobo may be bloated, but it has wide compatability because CORBA is a cross-platform standard.
There are pros and cons to both approaches, but I think it's rather foolish to base your opinion on nothing else but the size of the code.
Since when is messaging a commonly accepted tenet for an OOL?
Messaging is a commonly accepted practice for OOL as they apply to GUIs (Qt/KDE, MFC, BeOS API, to name a few instances[1]), and I'm sure there are some implementations of OOLs that build a method of message-passing in, but messaging certainly isn't a core requirement for a language to be considered object-oriented.
[1] Sorry for the pun.:)
--
Re:His bias blinds him but he does make some point
on
KDE Strikes Back
·
· Score: 1
Brooke's Law states that adding more programmers to a late project will make it later.
I believe, however, that the law stagnates when you have a highly parallel development process. Each project has a maximum number of programmers that it can sustain before they start to interfere with each other. In a monolithic program, when you've reached that limit, you're SOL. In a distributed/parallel development, the limit begins to apply not to the end product, but each piece. Let me explain using GNOME.
GNOME is a fairly abstract concept. Adding more programmers to GNOME itself is like adding ten to infinity - it doesn't mean anything, because GNOME (and infinity) are composed of many smaller segments. Adding more programmers to, say, Bonobo or the desktop/UI is a much more meaningful statement.
Now, let's say Bonobo - as a monolithic project - can sustain ten (10) active software developers. Great, wonderful. When you reach eleven (11), things start to go down hill. However, Bonobo isn't a monolithic project. One piece of Bonobo can get done independently of another piece of Bonobo. Perhaps each piece can only support seven (7) engineers before they interfere with each other. That's still a total of fourteen (14) engineers working on Bonobo now. Brooke's Law is still at work, but when comparing the law's expectations to the overarching project, there appears some disparity because of the parallel development.
To answer your scepticism, adding more programmers to GNOME won't necessarily hinder GNOME outright, because each developer can add his or her strengths to a small portion of GNOME that may not have reached its peak developer potential. Joe Average #1 may be writing components that have no bearing on Bonobo or the out-of-the-box UI, so he doesn't count when taking Brooke's Law into consideration. Joe Average #2 may be an extra programmer working on Bonobo, but if he's working on a sub-portion of Bonobo that hasn't reached it's maximum effective developer total, Brooke's Law hasn't yet begun to matter.
There does get a point where you can't divide a project up any further, and an absolute limit does apply (and, hence, Brooke's Law applies when you start adding developers past that limit). But the blanket notion that "more developers = slower development" ignores the development style of the project.
But if I have those rights, and a corporation does take them away, is there any way I can sue a corporation in order to establish that I still do have those rights?
In other words, we all assume we have the fair right use to copy a DVD. This trial tests whether that is true. In lieu of doing an overt, against-the-law act to test the legality of the statute, is there any way to pre-emptively file a lawsuit against the corporations? (In other words, put the corporations on the defensive, not the offensive?)
This is all discarding the issue of whether it's monetarily viable. I just want to know if it's possible.
I'd say it'd be much easier to protect C source than it would be to protect object code.
If you read the trial transcript (which I did, in excruciating detail...), that was part of what's-his-name testimony. He went through a very detailed explanation of what exactly it means to be source code (such as writing it in English, writing it is psuedo-code, etc.). Part of his testimony was that there was fundamentally no difference between C code and object code, because C compilers generate object code! A skilled human could translate between C and object code.
So, while this didn't go towards illustrating that code is protected speech (that was the second half of his testimony), it did illustrate that banning the C code of DeCSS was useless, because you could distribute it in dozens of other forms and be able to get the same information back.
In other words, what good will a victory here do us if IP owners like the MPAA simply protect their materials with strong encryption that isn't likely to be broken by sloppy redistributors?
Here's a legal question, then, for anybody capable of answering.
Is it possible to sue a corporation, person, and/or entity for unlawfully restricting fair use rights?
On the other hand, it was testified at the trial that programming languages are just as much an expression of free speech as spoken languages are. They are used for communication, discussion, and demonstration.
Once that idea is accepted, that computer instructions are not ONLY functional, but also carry some expressive capability, then what you have is a viral condition. You're right, computer instructions are no different from an English version. So if the English version is protected, or the C code is protected... then the object code must, almost by necessity, be protected as well.
One interesting way in which C# deals with the performance issues involved with automatic garbage collection is that of allowing you to define classes whose objects always copy by value, instead of the default copy by reference, which means there is no need to garbage- collect such objects. This is done, confusingly enough, by defining classes instead as structs. This is very different from C++ structs, which are defined in exactly the same way; C++ structs are just classes where members are public by default, instead of privately.
One new feature that I mentioned already was that of copy-by-value objects. This seemingly small improvement is a potentially huge performance saver! With C++, one is regularly tempted to describe the simplest constructs as classes, and in so doing make it safer and simpler to use them. For example, a phone directory program might define a phone record as a class, and would maintain one PhoneRecord object per actual record. In Java, each and every one of those objects would be garbage collected! [snip] In C#, you'd be able to avoid all this by defining PhoneRecord as a struct instead of a class.
I'm a bit confused.
If I follow this correctly, it's implying that C# is faster (in this instance) because you don't have to mark/sweep through all of the objects allocated in order to garbage collect all of the objects. They've been copied by value, not by reference, so you don't need to hunt down all of the references.
Doesn't this only work, however, if you're actually copying the objects? If I allocate several thousand PhoneRecord objects, but don't assign one to another, wouldn't C# and Java be equivalent in the speed of garbage collection?
It seems like this particular benefit of C# is only useful in a limited number of situations. I can't honestly say that I've ever really needed to create many thousands of objects in Java or C++ by allocating/cloning an existing object each and every time.
Can somebody confirm that this is, indeed, the correct understanding, and perhaps provide a situation where this would be genuinely useful?
using the numbers to say that linux is not less secure than, and therefore more secure than nt.
No, that's not actually what he's saying. He is simply saying, "These numbers don't provide enough foundation for you to conclude that NT is any more secure than Linux is." He isn't implying that Linux is more secure than NT is - he is simply saying that you can't argue NT is more secure than Linux based on the numbers Moody used. That isn't to say you can't make arguments that NT is more secure than Linux, only that misusing a set of BugTraq statistics isn't good proof to back up your claims with.
It's sort of like a court trial - being found "not guilty" is NOT the same as being found "innocent." Being found "not guilty" simply means the evidence didn't meet the burden of proof. Being found "innocent" means you are completely exonerated and that the evidence shows that there is unequivocably no way you could have committed the crime (you were out of the country, in jail, physically incapable of committing the crime, etc.).
Haven't we already run afoul of that, though? Don't physical porn shops have to obey special zoning laws about where they can be? Don't they have restrictions as to what hours they can be open? Or that they can't show their wares in the window (in fact, most of the porn shops I've seen have all of the windows covered up completely, so that you can't tell it's a porn shop unless you peek inside).
Given the existing restrictions on real-world porn shops, I think a case can be made that putting them in a.sex TLD is simply like a special zoning permit and/or brown-paper-bagging the front windows.
I don't really agree with it, but I think a reasonable case can be made.
Well...smashing or breaking a lock would be destruction of property, as the lock does have a physical value.
Look at this another way.
If I go out and buy a copy of the latest Harry Potter book, I am legally allowed to draw on the pages with colored markers, tear pages out, rebind the book with tinfoil, use it as kindling to start a fire, pour acid all over it until it dissolves into a puddle of viscous goo, and so on. I can disassemble the book to find out the composition of the ink used, figure out the binding process used, etc.
As long as I have legally purchased the book, the doctrine of first sale applies. As long as I don't infringe on the copyright of the work itself, I'm legally entitled to (basically) do what I want with the work.
Beg root to make a new group every time some situation like this comes up?
Frankly, yes.
The concept of groups has no clearer demonstration of purpose than the example you've cited. Groups exist so that you can assemble a list of people who should be allowed access to a certain resource or set of resources (in this case, a file), and will deny access for anyone not in that group.
Adding new groups is not a workaround for your problem, it is the solution to your problem.
If you want to debate the merits of having one centralized group list that only the superuser has access to, that's another issue entirely.
The whole point of SETI@Home is raw data-crunching for spikes. Most spikes can be very easily attributed to earth-based or standard astronomical phenomena, which means most of the data is tossed. That's simply the rule of the game.
To put this into perspective, d.Net is raw data-crunching for a particular phrase. All but one of the cracked data blocks will match the predetermined phrase, which means the rest of the cracked blocks are thrown out. Does that mean d.Net is waste of time? Hardly.
Let's put this into perspective. SETI@Home might have a distant pay-off, but it's not inherently any less "wasteful" than d.Net.
I agree. How can you prove that time had a starting point? That's like trying to prove how the world began.
Of course, the standard response is, "How can you prove that time didn't have a starting point?"
At best, the proposition is a draw. If I wanted to defend the original post, about time having a definite starting point, my best starting place would probably be with entropy. You can only go from high entropy to low entropy, and never in reverse (which is why you don't see shattered glasses magically reforming). If you accept that the universe has a limited size, and is truly not infinite in nature (regardless of how big that limited size is), and that the universe is expanding, then it implies that the universe is moving from a high entropy to low entropy state. Logically, it follows that at some point a finite-size universe would have had a moment of highest entropy and smallest size - a.k.a., the moment before the Big Bang.
As far as most people are concerned, measurable time in the universe starts with the Big Bang, because that is the moment of highest entropy.
"Antimatter" is a misnomer. It isn't a different form of matter, really, and it isn't a true mirror image of "normal" matter. What makes antimatter different is that an antiproton simply has the opposite charge from a proton. A proton has a charge of +1, an antiproton has a charge of -1. In most other respects, protons and antiprotons are identical. Certainly, they are both massed objects.
What happens to all the energy that is released in a matter-antimatter collision? Since mass cannot just appear out of nowhere, (1st Law of Thermodynamics?) and can only be converted from energy or energy to matter, wouldn't it stand to reason that since the matter got converted to energy, that the anti-matter got converted to anti-energy?
No. All the energy that is released in a matter-antimatter collision is given off in a burst of light and heat (mostly heat).
The weird thing is is that if there is no such thing as anti-energy, what happened to the antimatter?
It is simply destroyed, with the mass of the antimatter and the matter (the antiproton and the proton) being converted into the light and heat energy given off by their collision. The first law of thermodynamics.
The real odd question is that gravity is only weak at large distances, such as that which we see in every day life. Down on the subatomic scale, everything gets flipped over. Gravity becomes stronger than all of the other forces.
This presents a problem for those who want to find what lies at the heart of matter (what comprises quarks, for instances) because no useful theory for how gravity behaves at those levels has been developed yet.
The earth is holding back millions of pins plus everthing else as well. It also doesn't seem to get any weaker however many things you put on the earth, or indeed how "heavy" they are.
The problem is, you can't "concentrate" gravity on any one particular object. By its very nature, gravity is a distributed force. Furthermore, because of that distributed nature, gravity won't get weak no matter how much you throw at it. It may be holding down ten pins, or ten trillion pins - at any given distance from the center of mass, the force of gravity will be the same for the former amount of pins as it for the latter.
For this instance, gravity is the same everywhere on the surface of the planet (oversimplifying). So whether you take that pin to Guatemala, Madrid, Tokyo, or Minneapolis, gravity will still exert the same amount of force. Hence, it can be said that the entire force of the planet is holding that pin on the surface (as much force as Earth is going to exercise at any other point on Earth). So you have to consider the thought: an object the size of Earth, with it's hundreds or thousands of billions of tons (I don't know the figure off the top of my head), is holding a piece of paper. Yet, with a little rubbing on carpet, a balloon weighing maybe several grams, or a few dozen grams, can hold that paper up against the pull of the mass of the Earth.
It even seems to be able to hold the moon in place too! In fact, it seems to me that it could hold lots of moons in place.
But that has less to do with the force of gravity. I can put an arbitrary number of objects in orbit around the Earth. All I have to do is make sure that the rate at which gravity pulls them towards Earth is balanced by their motion around the Earth. At close distances, the object has to go really fast. At far distances, the object can go really slow. The strength of the gravity has nothing to do with how many objects can orbit around Earth, only with how far away those objects have to be.
Re:Slashdot Users and Spam
on
MAPS vs. ORBS
·
· Score: 1
I wonder what the first spam ever sent out was?
If I remember correctly, the "spam" that touched off the now-familiar deluge was for a legal service offering green cards, posted on Usenet back in... oh, now my memory fails.
As for the dual-platform thing, I don't think it's possible (and certainly thing it *shouldn't* be possible) to call it open-source if you're discriminating against users of a particular platform. It is possible to "discriminate" and still be open source. You just have to be specific. In this particular case, Tripwire is not open source. Tripwire for Linux is open source. There's a difference that needs to be specified, so that users know which one is open. As far as the "shouldn't be called open source," I would have to respectfully disagree with you. As long as you make it clear that you are referring to the Linux version, it is open source software. The GPL makes provisions, too, for a vendor/author to publish his software under more than one license. Those other licenses don't necessarily have to be open-source licenses, and in fact they can be as non-open-source as any other commercial license out there. As long as the Linux and non-Linux versions are kept separate once it goes open source, there's nothing legally, morally, or ethically requiring them to restrict their licensing to a single, open source license.
Slashdot Mirror
So in other words, "messaging" is really a subset of Polymorphism and not a distinct and separate OOP concept of its own.
--
Since day one. A message is synonymous with a method. An object without methods is merely a record.
Messages/methods, as you define them, aren't usually considered a separate OOL concept beside the other three. Methods, and therefore member variables as well, are a subset of Encapsulation.
Further, after consulting several of the object-oriented textbooks I have lying around my cubical, covering several different languages, not one of them mentions a single thing about messaging/methods as a distinct concept. Further, none of them have this Abstraction idea mentioned in the first post.
They all mention the three tenets of object-oriented programming: Encapsulation (which embodies the notions of Abstraction and Messaging), Polymorphism (hello, first poster...), and Inheritance.
--
Bonobo is way to fat for a DE.
On the other hand, a CORBA implementation allows any other arbitrary component that supports CORBA (meaning any arbitrary CORBA-supporting component on any arbitrary platform) to interact with a Bonobo component.
AFAIK, KParts is pretty much limited to KDE. That's all well and good for KDE, but KDE seems to be going for the elitist road. Bonobo may be bloated, but it has wide compatability because CORBA is a cross-platform standard.
There are pros and cons to both approaches, but I think it's rather foolish to base your opinion on nothing else but the size of the code.
--
Messaging
:)
Since when is messaging a commonly accepted tenet for an OOL?
Messaging is a commonly accepted practice for OOL as they apply to GUIs (Qt/KDE, MFC, BeOS API, to name a few instances[1]), and I'm sure there are some implementations of OOLs that build a method of message-passing in, but messaging certainly isn't a core requirement for a language to be considered object-oriented.
[1] Sorry for the pun.
--
Brooke's Law states that adding more programmers to a late project will make it later.
I believe, however, that the law stagnates when you have a highly parallel development process. Each project has a maximum number of programmers that it can sustain before they start to interfere with each other. In a monolithic program, when you've reached that limit, you're SOL. In a distributed/parallel development, the limit begins to apply not to the end product, but each piece. Let me explain using GNOME.
GNOME is a fairly abstract concept. Adding more programmers to GNOME itself is like adding ten to infinity - it doesn't mean anything, because GNOME (and infinity) are composed of many smaller segments. Adding more programmers to, say, Bonobo or the desktop/UI is a much more meaningful statement.
Now, let's say Bonobo - as a monolithic project - can sustain ten (10) active software developers. Great, wonderful. When you reach eleven (11), things start to go down hill. However, Bonobo isn't a monolithic project. One piece of Bonobo can get done independently of another piece of Bonobo. Perhaps each piece can only support seven (7) engineers before they interfere with each other. That's still a total of fourteen (14) engineers working on Bonobo now. Brooke's Law is still at work, but when comparing the law's expectations to the overarching project, there appears some disparity because of the parallel development.
To answer your scepticism, adding more programmers to GNOME won't necessarily hinder GNOME outright, because each developer can add his or her strengths to a small portion of GNOME that may not have reached its peak developer potential. Joe Average #1 may be writing components that have no bearing on Bonobo or the out-of-the-box UI, so he doesn't count when taking Brooke's Law into consideration. Joe Average #2 may be an extra programmer working on Bonobo, but if he's working on a sub-portion of Bonobo that hasn't reached it's maximum effective developer total, Brooke's Law hasn't yet begun to matter.
There does get a point where you can't divide a project up any further, and an absolute limit does apply (and, hence, Brooke's Law applies when you start adding developers past that limit). But the blanket notion that "more developers = slower development" ignores the development style of the project.
--
But if I have those rights, and a corporation does take them away, is there any way I can sue a corporation in order to establish that I still do have those rights?
In other words, we all assume we have the fair right use to copy a DVD. This trial tests whether that is true. In lieu of doing an overt, against-the-law act to test the legality of the statute, is there any way to pre-emptively file a lawsuit against the corporations? (In other words, put the corporations on the defensive, not the offensive?)
This is all discarding the issue of whether it's monetarily viable. I just want to know if it's possible.
I'd say it'd be much easier to protect C source than it would be to protect object code.
If you read the trial transcript (which I did, in excruciating detail...), that was part of what's-his-name testimony. He went through a very detailed explanation of what exactly it means to be source code (such as writing it in English, writing it is psuedo-code, etc.). Part of his testimony was that there was fundamentally no difference between C code and object code, because C compilers generate object code! A skilled human could translate between C and object code.
So, while this didn't go towards illustrating that code is protected speech (that was the second half of his testimony), it did illustrate that banning the C code of DeCSS was useless, because you could distribute it in dozens of other forms and be able to get the same information back.
In other words, what good will a victory here do us if IP owners like the MPAA simply protect their materials with strong encryption that isn't likely to be broken by sloppy redistributors?
Here's a legal question, then, for anybody capable of answering.
Is it possible to sue a corporation, person, and/or entity for unlawfully restricting fair use rights?
On the other hand, it was testified at the trial that programming languages are just as much an expression of free speech as spoken languages are. They are used for communication, discussion, and demonstration.
Once that idea is accepted, that computer instructions are not ONLY functional, but also carry some expressive capability, then what you have is a viral condition. You're right, computer instructions are no different from an English version. So if the English version is protected, or the C code is protected... then the object code must, almost by necessity, be protected as well.
One interesting way in which C# deals with the performance issues involved with automatic garbage collection is that of allowing you to define classes whose objects always copy by value, instead of the default copy by reference, which means there is no need to garbage- collect such objects. This is done, confusingly enough, by defining classes instead as structs. This is very different from C++ structs, which are defined in exactly the same way; C++ structs are just classes where members are public by default, instead of privately.
One new feature that I mentioned already was that of copy-by-value objects. This seemingly small improvement is a potentially huge performance saver! With C++, one is regularly tempted to describe the simplest constructs as classes, and in so doing make it safer and simpler to use them. For example, a phone directory program might define a phone record as a class, and would maintain one PhoneRecord object per actual record. In Java, each and every one of those objects would be garbage collected! [snip] In C#, you'd be able to avoid all this by defining PhoneRecord as a struct instead of a class.
I'm a bit confused.
If I follow this correctly, it's implying that C# is faster (in this instance) because you don't have to mark/sweep through all of the objects allocated in order to garbage collect all of the objects. They've been copied by value, not by reference, so you don't need to hunt down all of the references.
Doesn't this only work, however, if you're actually copying the objects? If I allocate several thousand PhoneRecord objects, but don't assign one to another, wouldn't C# and Java be equivalent in the speed of garbage collection?
It seems like this particular benefit of C# is only useful in a limited number of situations. I can't honestly say that I've ever really needed to create many thousands of objects in Java or C++ by allocating/cloning an existing object each and every time.
Can somebody confirm that this is, indeed, the correct understanding, and perhaps provide a situation where this would be genuinely useful?
Thanks.
using the numbers to say that linux is not less secure than, and therefore more secure than nt.
No, that's not actually what he's saying. He is simply saying, "These numbers don't provide enough foundation for you to conclude that NT is any more secure than Linux is." He isn't implying that Linux is more secure than NT is - he is simply saying that you can't argue NT is more secure than Linux based on the numbers Moody used. That isn't to say you can't make arguments that NT is more secure than Linux, only that misusing a set of BugTraq statistics isn't good proof to back up your claims with.
It's sort of like a court trial - being found "not guilty" is NOT the same as being found "innocent." Being found "not guilty" simply means the evidence didn't meet the burden of proof. Being found "innocent" means you are completely exonerated and that the evidence shows that there is unequivocably no way you could have committed the crime (you were out of the country, in jail, physically incapable of committing the crime, etc.).
Haven't we already run afoul of that, though? Don't physical porn shops have to obey special zoning laws about where they can be? Don't they have restrictions as to what hours they can be open? Or that they can't show their wares in the window (in fact, most of the porn shops I've seen have all of the windows covered up completely, so that you can't tell it's a porn shop unless you peek inside).
.sex TLD is simply like a special zoning permit and/or brown-paper-bagging the front windows.
Given the existing restrictions on real-world porn shops, I think a case can be made that putting them in a
I don't really agree with it, but I think a reasonable case can be made.
Well...smashing or breaking a lock would be destruction of property, as the lock does have a physical value.
Look at this another way.
If I go out and buy a copy of the latest Harry Potter book, I am legally allowed to draw on the pages with colored markers, tear pages out, rebind the book with tinfoil, use it as kindling to start a fire, pour acid all over it until it dissolves into a puddle of viscous goo, and so on. I can disassemble the book to find out the composition of the ink used, figure out the binding process used, etc.
As long as I have legally purchased the book, the doctrine of first sale applies. As long as I don't infringe on the copyright of the work itself, I'm legally entitled to (basically) do what I want with the work.
Beg root to make a new group every time some situation like this comes up?
Frankly, yes.
The concept of groups has no clearer demonstration of purpose than the example you've cited. Groups exist so that you can assemble a list of people who should be allowed access to a certain resource or set of resources (in this case, a file), and will deny access for anyone not in that group.
Adding new groups is not a workaround for your problem, it is the solution to your problem.
If you want to debate the merits of having one centralized group list that only the superuser has access to, that's another issue entirely.
oooh... nice beaver!
"Thank you. I just had it stuffed..."
It effectively blocks 68% of all pictures (explicit or mundane).
Yeah, I can just hear the defense of that statement.
"It can too distinguish between art and pornography! It just so happens that, coincidentally, 68% of what you call art I call pornography!"
Is this a legitimate question/argument, or are you just trolling for suckers?
I'd like to comment, but I'd rather not be bait.
Well, *duh.*
The whole point of SETI@Home is raw data-crunching for spikes. Most spikes can be very easily attributed to earth-based or standard astronomical phenomena, which means most of the data is tossed. That's simply the rule of the game.
To put this into perspective, d.Net is raw data-crunching for a particular phrase. All but one of the cracked data blocks will match the predetermined phrase, which means the rest of the cracked blocks are thrown out. Does that mean d.Net is waste of time? Hardly.
Let's put this into perspective. SETI@Home might have a distant pay-off, but it's not inherently any less "wasteful" than d.Net.
I'm sorry, today is apparently backwards day for me.
Everywhere you see "high entropy to low entropy," replace with "low entropy to high entropy." Entropy always increases, never decreases.
I agree. How can you prove that time had a starting point? That's like trying to prove how the world began.
Of course, the standard response is, "How can you prove that time didn't have a starting point?"
At best, the proposition is a draw. If I wanted to defend the original post, about time having a definite starting point, my best starting place would probably be with entropy. You can only go from high entropy to low entropy, and never in reverse (which is why you don't see shattered glasses magically reforming). If you accept that the universe has a limited size, and is truly not infinite in nature (regardless of how big that limited size is), and that the universe is expanding, then it implies that the universe is moving from a high entropy to low entropy state. Logically, it follows that at some point a finite-size universe would have had a moment of highest entropy and smallest size - a.k.a., the moment before the Big Bang.
As far as most people are concerned, measurable time in the universe starts with the Big Bang, because that is the moment of highest entropy.
Does antimatter have negative mass?
No, antimatter has normal mass.
"Antimatter" is a misnomer. It isn't a different form of matter, really, and it isn't a true mirror image of "normal" matter. What makes antimatter different is that an antiproton simply has the opposite charge from a proton. A proton has a charge of +1, an antiproton has a charge of -1. In most other respects, protons and antiprotons are identical. Certainly, they are both massed objects.
What happens to all the energy that is released in a matter-antimatter collision? Since mass cannot just appear out of nowhere, (1st Law of Thermodynamics?) and can only be converted from energy or energy to matter, wouldn't it stand to reason that since the matter got converted to energy, that the anti-matter got converted to anti-energy?
No. All the energy that is released in a matter-antimatter collision is given off in a burst of light and heat (mostly heat).
The weird thing is is that if there is no such thing as anti-energy, what happened to the antimatter?
It is simply destroyed, with the mass of the antimatter and the matter (the antiproton and the proton) being converted into the light and heat energy given off by their collision. The first law of thermodynamics.
The real odd question is that gravity is only weak at large distances, such as that which we see in every day life. Down on the subatomic scale, everything gets flipped over. Gravity becomes stronger than all of the other forces.
This presents a problem for those who want to find what lies at the heart of matter (what comprises quarks, for instances) because no useful theory for how gravity behaves at those levels has been developed yet.
The earth is holding back millions of pins plus everthing else as well. It also doesn't seem to get any weaker however many things you put on the earth, or indeed how "heavy" they are.
The problem is, you can't "concentrate" gravity on any one particular object. By its very nature, gravity is a distributed force. Furthermore, because of that distributed nature, gravity won't get weak no matter how much you throw at it. It may be holding down ten pins, or ten trillion pins - at any given distance from the center of mass, the force of gravity will be the same for the former amount of pins as it for the latter.
For this instance, gravity is the same everywhere on the surface of the planet (oversimplifying). So whether you take that pin to Guatemala, Madrid, Tokyo, or Minneapolis, gravity will still exert the same amount of force. Hence, it can be said that the entire force of the planet is holding that pin on the surface (as much force as Earth is going to exercise at any other point on Earth). So you have to consider the thought: an object the size of Earth, with it's hundreds or thousands of billions of tons (I don't know the figure off the top of my head), is holding a piece of paper. Yet, with a little rubbing on carpet, a balloon weighing maybe several grams, or a few dozen grams, can hold that paper up against the pull of the mass of the Earth.
It even seems to be able to hold the moon in place too! In fact, it seems to me that it could hold lots of moons in place.
But that has less to do with the force of gravity. I can put an arbitrary number of objects in orbit around the Earth. All I have to do is make sure that the rate at which gravity pulls them towards Earth is balanced by their motion around the Earth. At close distances, the object has to go really fast. At far distances, the object can go really slow. The strength of the gravity has nothing to do with how many objects can orbit around Earth, only with how far away those objects have to be.
I wonder what the first spam ever sent out was?
If I remember correctly, the "spam" that touched off the now-familiar deluge was for a legal service offering green cards, posted on Usenet back in... oh, now my memory fails.
As for the dual-platform thing, I don't think it's possible (and certainly thing it *shouldn't* be possible) to call it open-source if you're discriminating against users of a particular platform. It is possible to "discriminate" and still be open source. You just have to be specific. In this particular case, Tripwire is not open source. Tripwire for Linux is open source. There's a difference that needs to be specified, so that users know which one is open. As far as the "shouldn't be called open source," I would have to respectfully disagree with you. As long as you make it clear that you are referring to the Linux version, it is open source software. The GPL makes provisions, too, for a vendor/author to publish his software under more than one license. Those other licenses don't necessarily have to be open-source licenses, and in fact they can be as non-open-source as any other commercial license out there. As long as the Linux and non-Linux versions are kept separate once it goes open source, there's nothing legally, morally, or ethically requiring them to restrict their licensing to a single, open source license.