"Software" patents aren't magical; it's just that a piece of software is a phenomenon in the Universe that can be constructed with little capital.
In the not so distant future, when everyone has access to cheap custom-fabrication machines and labor (for CPUs, metal parts, whole devices, whatever your mind can come up with), people like you will be saying: "Another point against <insert some type> patents!"
Hmmm... One purpose of the patent system is to protect the little guy from having his hard work stolen by those who already have the massive capital that is required to produce the idea as a product; perhaps the solution is to define a phenomenon as patentable based on the capital requirements for producing that phenomenon.
It's not the Desktop paradigm that is important. Rather, it's the freedom to tinker with one's machine, something that Android not only allows but promotes (at least fundamentally, given its FOSS/open-source nature).
They're capitalists, with all the dirty trappings and failings of western businessmen
No, they're central planners,with all the dirty trappings of a centralized power structure.
manipulating prices like this can get burned badly in the end.
That's because it makes no sense; what they call a "healthy price" is actually an artificially inflated price, which causes strife and can therefore lead to violence.
Please provide links to downloadable files for future videos; please don't force your users to suffer some terribly inefficient and limited player like that of an embedded flash player—not only does, say, mplayer use far fewer cycles to play the same damn video, but I can also speed up playback to nearly 2x the rate (without comical effect!), which greatly reduces the time it takes to watch a video, thereby allowing me to spend more time viewing slashdot advertisements.:-P
We happen to have a GPU which exposes a comparatively high level (GL-like) interface, such that many of our userland functions are message passing shims. You are dealing with a GPU which exposes a lower-level interface, so LIMA driver functions often boil down to writing registers directly. These are design decisions on the part of the respective GPU teams, which have wide-ranging implications for the software and hardware structure of the devices which use the resulting cores. The VideoCore driver isn’t structured this way to pull the wool over your eyes[;] it’s structured this way because of a genuine judgment that this is the best structure given the resources we have on the chip, which includes a vector DSP to which we can offload much of the low-level register access.
There is going to be a debate at 21:00 EDT on October 23, hosted by Larry King. The candidates taking part are the Libertarian Party's Gary Johnson, the Green Party's Jill Stein, the Constitution Party's Virgil Goode, and the Justice Party's Rocky Anderson.
A robust Free Market, which implies decentralization and localization of the power structure, implies voluntary contracts between each pair of individuals; this is the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP). The acts you describe are in contravention of this principle—they have nothing to do with the Free Market; in fact, they are more aligned with the nature of central planning (indeed, they sound like something the Chinese Government would readily do).
Any organization—any organization at all—that confiscates resources by threat of strike-first violence is a "governmental" organization. When one such organization becomes a monopoly, we call that organization "Government".
Government is simply a bad company that doesn't go out of business because it is able to confiscate your resources by threat of violence; it doesn't give you the goods and services for which you personally think you are paying, but you have to pay them anyway—it's totally absurd and unconscionable.
It is not a modern value to coerce resources from people by threat of violence. So, in fact, governments are actually the last barbaric vestige of a pre-modern civilization—they are the last vestige of those corrupt companies to which you allude.
The key to progress in society with as little strife as possible is evolution, not revolution.
As with every other system of complexity, society can most effectively evolve (that is, adapt to the needs at hand) when there are robust processes of variation and selection (what some call the "Free Market"), which implies the localization and decentralization of the power structure; centralized power—by its very nature—inhibits the process of evolution by quashing variation and stifling selective forces. There is no such thing as an Intelligent Designer; it is foolish to put your faith in a "noble" bureaucrat, who gazes into his crystal ball and then—at everyone else's expense—pushes and pulls naive levers and buttons based on what he thinks he sees.
* straw man: a fabricated or conveniently weak or innocuous person, object, matter, etc., used as a seeming adversary or argument: The issue she railed about was no more than a straw man.
* A straw man, also known in the UK as an Aunt Sally,[1][2] is a type of argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.[3] To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by replacing it with a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.
You were attacking a superficially similar yet unequivalent comment that I didn't make, creating the illusion of a successful refutation. Remeber this the next time you hear the term "straw man".
Please provide links to downloadable files for future videos; please don't force your users to suffer some terribly inefficient and limited player like that of an embedded flash player—not only does, say, mplayer use far fewer cycles to play the same damn video, but I can also speed up playback to nearly 2x the rate (without comical effect!), which saves me time, thereby allowing me to spend more time viewing slashdot advertisements.
We're seeing exactly what we want: Big Government is curtailed when bureaucrats cannot just print money to fake wealth (or, if you like, to create a secret tax).
Slashdot Mirror
"Software" patents aren't magical; it's just that a piece of software is a phenomenon in the Universe that can be constructed with little capital.
In the not so distant future, when everyone has access to cheap custom-fabrication machines and labor (for CPUs, metal parts, whole devices, whatever your mind can come up with), people like you will be saying: "Another point against <insert some type> patents!"
Hmmm... One purpose of the patent system is to protect the little guy from having his hard work stolen by those who already have the massive capital that is required to produce the idea as a product; perhaps the solution is to define a phenomenon as patentable based on the capital requirements for producing that phenomenon.
price.
It's not the Desktop paradigm that is important. Rather, it's the freedom to tinker with one's machine, something that Android not only allows but promotes (at least fundamentally, given its FOSS/open-source nature).
They're capitalists, with all the dirty trappings and failings of western businessmen
No, they're central planners,with all the dirty trappings of a centralized power structure.
manipulating prices like this can get burned badly in the end.
That's because it makes no sense; what they call a "healthy price" is actually an artificially inflated price, which causes strife and can therefore lead to violence.
Yes.
Please provide links to downloadable files for future videos; please don't force your users to suffer some terribly inefficient and limited player like that of an embedded flash player—not only does, say, mplayer use far fewer cycles to play the same damn video, but I can also speed up playback to nearly 2x the rate (without comical effect!), which greatly reduces the time it takes to watch a video, thereby allowing me to spend more time viewing slashdot advertisements. :-P
some universities (including - from memory - MIT?) use Nand2Tetris as their CS101 course.
No, MIT doesn't. I believe you are thinking of the fact that the Nand2Tetris book is published by MIT Press; that's the extent of the relationship.
This is why inventions are designed in the West and manufactured in the East.
Eben Upton has a pretty good response to this:
We happen to have a GPU which exposes a comparatively high level (GL-like) interface, such that many of our userland functions are message passing shims. You are dealing with a GPU which exposes a lower-level interface, so LIMA driver functions often boil down to writing registers directly. These are design decisions on the part of the respective GPU teams, which have wide-ranging implications for the software and hardware structure of the devices which use the resulting cores. The VideoCore driver isn’t structured this way to pull the wool over your eyes[;] it’s structured this way because of a genuine judgment that this is the best structure given the resources we have on the chip, which includes a vector DSP to which we can offload much of the low-level register access.
As Luc Verhaegen points out in the blog comments, the code they just released is doesn't do any real, interesting work; for instance, the real work of glClear is done by making a "remote procedure call" to the presumably proprietary glClear_impl:
GL_API void GL_APIENTRY glClear (GLbitfield mask)
{
CLIENT_THREAD_STATE_T *thread = CLIENT_GET_THREAD_STATE();
if (IS_OPENGLES_11_OR_20(thread)) {
GLXX_CLIENT_STATE_T *state = GLXX_GET_CLIENT_STATE(thread);
if (state->render_callback)
state->render_callback();
RPC_CALL1(glClear_impl,
thread,
GLCLEAR_ID,
RPC_BITFIELD(mask));
}
}
Nevertheless, I suppose that what they did release will be helpful to most higher-level projects.
Are you on the ballot in at least 48 states? Is your debate being hosted by Larry King?
I agree: For those who could indeed care less
There is going to be a debate at 21:00 EDT on October 23, hosted by Larry King. The candidates taking part are the Libertarian Party's Gary Johnson, the Green Party's Jill Stein, the Constitution Party's Virgil Goode, and the Justice Party's Rocky Anderson.
So the only good government is anarchy, and that's a little too far, so we'll call anarchy-lite "libertarianism" to make it more palatable?
The limit and natural consequence of applying libertarian principles is anarcho-capitalism.
I've not heard anyone argue that the mob and gangs are government.
It's just a matter of scale.
A robust Free Market, which implies decentralization and localization of the power structure, implies voluntary contracts between each pair of individuals; this is the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP). The acts you describe are in contravention of this principle—they have nothing to do with the Free Market; in fact, they are more aligned with the nature of central planning (indeed, they sound like something the Chinese Government would readily do).
Any organization—any organization at all—that confiscates resources by threat of strike-first violence is a "governmental" organization. When one such organization becomes a monopoly, we call that organization "Government".
Government is simply a bad company that doesn't go out of business because it is able to confiscate your resources by threat of violence; it doesn't give you the goods and services for which you personally think you are paying, but you have to pay them anyway—it's totally absurd and unconscionable.
It is not a modern value to coerce resources from people by threat of violence. So, in fact, governments are actually the last barbaric vestige of a pre-modern civilization—they are the last vestige of those corrupt companies to which you allude.
Central Planning does NOT work.
The key to progress in society with as little strife as possible is evolution, not revolution.
As with every other system of complexity, society can most effectively evolve (that is, adapt to the needs at hand) when there are robust processes of variation and selection (what some call the "Free Market"), which implies the localization and decentralization of the power structure; centralized power—by its very nature—inhibits the process of evolution by quashing variation and stifling selective forces. There is no such thing as an Intelligent Designer; it is foolish to put your faith in a "noble" bureaucrat, who gazes into his crystal ball and then—at everyone else's expense—pushes and pulls naive levers and buttons based on what he thinks he sees.
Nuh uh!
Electric car batteries are physically HUGE. Swapping batteries sounds reasonable only when you neglect reality.
* straw man, strawman (a weak or sham argument set up to be easily refuted)
* straw man: a fabricated or conveniently weak or innocuous person, object, matter, etc., used as a seeming adversary or argument: The issue she railed about was no more than a straw man.
* A straw man, also known in the UK as an Aunt Sally,[1][2] is a type of argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.[3] To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by replacing it with a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.
You were attacking a superficially similar yet unequivalent comment that I didn't make, creating the illusion of a successful refutation. Remeber this the next time you hear the term "straw man".
I'm amazed that your comment is getting modded up, even though it has basically nothing to do with my point.
This is a straw man argument.
I'm talking about slashdot, not youtube, for which there do indeed exist simple tools.
I have flash version 11.2.202.243.
There are tools for downloading youtube's videos.
Care to try again?
Please provide links to downloadable files for future videos; please don't force your users to suffer some terribly inefficient and limited player like that of an embedded flash player—not only does, say, mplayer use far fewer cycles to play the same damn video, but I can also speed up playback to nearly 2x the rate (without comical effect!), which saves me time, thereby allowing me to spend more time viewing slashdot advertisements.
We're seeing exactly what we want: Big Government is curtailed when bureaucrats cannot just print money to fake wealth (or, if you like, to create a secret tax).
so-called: (adj) alleged, supposed (doubtful or suspect) "these so-called experts are no help"