A bit of history: Fourier came up with the idea of approximation of quite general functions by trigonometric series (i.e. Fourier series) in the study of heat flow. This was before 1850 and it took many years for the fundamental mathematics to be properly understood. (Cantor was actually looking at point sets on which functions could be discontinuous and still have representations as Fourier series when he formulated his theory of sets.) It was a good idea and it was later generalized to the continuous Fourier transform by others. (Fourier's approach only dealt with periodic functions). The Fourier transform has a discrete analog that is useful for sampled data. In the 1960's Cooley and Tukey came up with a fast O(nlog(n)) algorithm for the discrete Fourier transform. The use of Fourier, Discrete cosine and wavelet transforms for efficient compression is nontrivial and lots of people contributed to it: it wasn't just a direct use of Fourier's work.
This 150+ year development might actually support your broader argument that there is a lot to be said for not patenting fundamental ideas. But you aren't giving credit where credit is due. And, anyway, the MP3 patent doesn't cover anything as fundamental as Fourier transforms, or even the use of Fourier or related transforms for compression. Patenting something as specific as the MP3 algorithm doesn't hinder the development of science.
IMO, some sort of patent system for very specific ideas with direct commercial application would be a good idea if it were fair to the small time inventor. The current system doesn't meet any of these standards. I'm agnostic on whether it can be repaired in principle or should be scrapped; but politically neither is likely to happen.
If the copyright holder later did something that lost them their copyright you might have a right to sue them for not maintaining their end of an offered contract, but you have no copyright on the code and hence no right to permit the code to be given away.
This doesn't make sense to me. Consider the case of a small software company distributing software under a reasonably permissive license. (Or, in fact, selling copies without a license at all). Under these circumstances, you would be allowed to reverse engineer and perhaps do other things not often permitted for proprietary software. Further, suppose that this small software company sells out to Microsoft. They can change terms for later copies that they distribute, but MS can't retroactively change the terms of the license under which you acquired the software. Similarly, even if an author of GPL code sells the copyright to MS, there are still plenty of legally licensed copies that can be modified and redistributed.
Of course, MS might sue you for fraud if you misrepresented the commercial value of the copyright by not telling them that your software had been released under the GPL. But I don't see why you need to hold on to the copyright to meet your contractual obligations: by distributing it once, the software has been legally licensed and the rights granted by the license remain the same, whoever later owns the copyright. What would be illegal would be redistributing a copy distributed under the new license.
In particular, the applications company won't be able to take a loss in the market for applications for a non-Windows OS to keep other operating systems from being viable working platforms and bolster the dominance of Windows. If they did, they could potentially open themselves up to stockholder lawsuits (not to mention the conduct remedies which will ban collusion between the two split-up companies). Also, it will be in the financial interest of the OS company to encourage the development of third party applications by any company; same as above with respect to stockholder lawsuits.
This will potentially result in more applications for other other operating systems and more non-Microsoft applications for windows, increasing competition for both applications and operating systems. Increased competition, might force companies to adopt open standards to ensure interoperability. Personally, I think the break-up is probably going to be a huge benefit to consumers, software companies, free software and probably even to MS stockholders (in the long run).
Don't worry. This all takes place in the context of antitrust law. Antitrust law only kicks in when a company has and abuses monopoly power. These definitions will be relevant to a potential split-up of microsoft, and maybe as a precedent if some other company reaches a similar size and power and uses that power to leverage their way into the domination of the same new markets that Microsoft did. Otherwise this will have no impact on any other company. MS may want you to think that this will impact all companies, but it just ain't so.
You do if you need real applications. Right now, about all you can do is gimp and code. Oh boy. Putz dorks like you sitting in thier underwear thinking how superior they are. I bet you have an AOL account.
Or write using a word processor, or run a spreadsheet, or go out on the web. In fact, the most common uses of windows can be done under Linux as well. What is missing is an array of more specialized applications. And even there, Linux is pretty strong in scientific and mathematical applications.
Regarding the "Why do Linux users emulate the windows interface" troll, I think that views on the Windows interface are rather mixed among Linuxers. Everyone who has used a variety of computers is going to have something to gripe about in just about any interface. But I personally don't think the interface is the big problem with Windows; what I hate is lack of stability, settings that automagically change themselves, relative lack of configurability, closed proprietary file formats that would make exchange of documents with scientific colleagues or journals impossible for me and the business practices of Microsoft. So KDE and Gnome borrowed some ideas from Windows, OS/2, Mac, etc. Big fucking deal. It may not be the latest and greatest in UI design, but it works and it's familiar to most people. IMO an advance in a UI has to be of major importance before it justifies abandoning what's familiar to most people. YMMV.
That's misleading. Every particle has a single state, described by its wave function. It's just that the wave function doesn't necessarily correspond to a definite value of an observable quantity.
When you aren't looking at it, the state evolves deterministically according to the Schroedinger equation (classically) or Dirac's equation (if you take special relativity into account). For any given measurement you might make, most wave functions don't correspond to a definite value of whatever you are trying to measure: instead the wave function is a sum of states, each corresponding to states which do have definite values of the measurement. Given two observables, the wave function can be decompsed as a sum of states with definite values for either observable---but in general not both at the same time.
To expand on that last bit, many measurements are incommensurable. (i.e. the states that have a definite value for one measurement don't correspond to states that have a definite value of the other---this is the case with position and momentum in Heisenberg's uncertainty principle). Although the wave function evolves deterministically when you aren't looking, when you do look, it randomly collapses into a wave function that has a definite value of whatever you are trying to measure (i.e. into one of the component states for the observable you are looking at). The probability of collapse into a particular state depends on the extent to which that state was a component in the original wave function---dominant components are more likely. This, in a nutshell, is a formal description of how observations affect the state of the system.
Disclaimer: I'm a mathematician and not a physicist. This is my best attempt at explaining Von Neumann's approach to QM as I understand it, but it's simplified and I think physicists prefer different language. If I've messed up, I'm sure any physicists here will correct me.
ok...I've used mandrake (7.0) and I did for a while, but when it came around to re-compiling my kernal...HA....the thing was about as helpful as Lucy
How helpful is it supposed to be? I recently recompiled my kernel for Mandrake 7.0 and it seemed as simple as it has been on any linux distro I've used since I started on an early slackware. (i.e. it's makefiles, a bunch of yes/no questions, and copying the kernel to where it needs to go---about as easy as I'd expect something most ordinary users don't need to do to be.) Is there some kernel compile utility provided by some distros other than the usual makefiles?
The term is "symplectic integrator." You can check out the book "Dynamical Systems and Numerical Analysis" by A.M. Stuart and A.R. Humphries for an introduction and some references. The term refers to an ordinary differential equation solver that preserves the symplectic structure of the evolution semigroup of a Hamiltonian system. (Compare with Hamiltonian conserving methods). Such methods can be more accurate than general ODE solvers applied to a Hamiltonian system.
So, as far as I can tell, the poster made a typo but he isn't bullshitting. But you are probably a troll, so I'm not sure why I'm bothering.
Is this a troll? Object orientation isn't the only way to re-use code. Check out the paper "Why Functional Programming Matters" that someone else cited in this discussion. It deals mostly with toy problems, but it does succesfully point out that functional programming (whether in Lisp or a purely functional language) offers some very flexible methods for code re-use.
Publishing rants by people as popular as JC about this is really just a way of pressurising them to take a path they are not willing to take.
Perhaps I'm old-fashioned, but I happen to think that majority stock holders should be able to decide what a company does and doesn't do. id is no exception, no matter how cool a new DOOM sounds like -- after all, we can't be sure what the other development alternatives are.
Perhaps. And maybe they should fire JC for bucking the system. But the laws do protect minority share-holders as well. So, not only are you old-fashioned, but you are legally on thin ice with such a broad assertion: a company has a legal obligation to look after stock value, even if the majority share-holders want to take a hit on stock value to maintain control; selling shares under any other pretence would amount to fraud. To protect value of shares held by all share-holders, you have to please customers. If/. wants to apply pressure, maybe id should listen. I'm sure I'm old-fashioned, but dealing with potentially critical consumer views in a way that doesn't defraud minority shareholders sounds like a free and fair market to me.
How many of you have filled out Form SR, PA, or TX and sent your check and tape/sheet music/lyrics to the Register of Copyrights, Library of Congress, Washington D.C., 20559?
Not to be to picky, but under international copyright treaties, it's not necessary to file anything (or even give a copyright notice in the work) to hold a copyright. The average/. poster holds a copyright on their post. How many of you know that this is but one step in turning an idea into an expression that can be distributed in the marketplace?
One necessary step if you can't otherwise document the origins of the work when you want to sue someone for copyright violation. If you can, then it's not a necessary step. Who read the article on page one of today's Boston Globe and wondered why they interviewed two programmers, a lawyer, a lobbyist, and Stallman but no musicians?
Hopefully because it was a story about a not-very-widely-known subculture and the recording industry is doing a satisfactory job of representing itself. Even if you aren't anti-copyright, a story about how a blunderbuss approach to copyright enforcement can affect fair use rights and technologies for the distribution of free media or speech is a story that isn't told often enough outside of slashdot. Granted, the journalist who wrote the story you cite didn't deal with those issues. But they are commonly raised by the sort of people you are trying to smear by implication as being biased. The story was crap, but I doubt it was the fault of the interview subjects.
Slashdot Mirror
A bit of history: Fourier came up with the idea of approximation of quite general functions by trigonometric series (i.e. Fourier series) in the study of heat flow. This was before 1850 and it took many years for the fundamental mathematics to be properly understood. (Cantor was actually looking at point sets on which functions could be discontinuous and still have representations as Fourier series when he formulated his theory of sets.) It was a good idea and it was later generalized to the continuous Fourier transform by others. (Fourier's approach only dealt with periodic functions). The Fourier transform has a discrete analog that is useful for sampled data. In the 1960's Cooley and Tukey came up with a fast O(nlog(n)) algorithm for the discrete Fourier transform. The use of Fourier, Discrete cosine and wavelet transforms for efficient compression is nontrivial and lots of people contributed to it: it wasn't just a direct use of Fourier's work.
This 150+ year development might actually support your broader argument that there is a lot to be said for not patenting fundamental ideas. But you aren't giving credit where credit is due. And, anyway, the MP3 patent doesn't cover anything as fundamental as Fourier transforms, or even the use of Fourier or related transforms for compression. Patenting something as specific as the MP3 algorithm doesn't hinder the development of science.
IMO, some sort of patent system for very specific ideas with direct commercial application would be a good idea if it were fair to the small time inventor. The current system doesn't meet any of these standards. I'm agnostic on whether it can be repaired in principle or should be scrapped; but politically neither is likely to happen.
This doesn't make sense to me. Consider the case of a small software company distributing software under a reasonably permissive license. (Or, in fact, selling copies without a license at all). Under these circumstances, you would be allowed to reverse engineer and perhaps do other things not often permitted for proprietary software. Further, suppose that this small software company sells out to Microsoft. They can change terms for later copies that they distribute, but MS can't retroactively change the terms of the license under which you acquired the software. Similarly, even if an author of GPL code sells the copyright to MS, there are still plenty of legally licensed copies that can be modified and redistributed.
Of course, MS might sue you for fraud if you misrepresented the commercial value of the copyright by not telling them that your software had been released under the GPL. But I don't see why you need to hold on to the copyright to meet your contractual obligations: by distributing it once, the software has been legally licensed and the rights granted by the license remain the same, whoever later owns the copyright. What would be illegal would be redistributing a copy distributed under the new license.
In particular, the applications company won't be able to take a loss in the market for applications for a non-Windows OS to keep other operating systems from being viable working platforms and bolster the dominance of Windows. If they did, they could potentially open themselves up to stockholder lawsuits (not to mention the conduct remedies which will ban collusion between the two split-up companies). Also, it will be in the financial interest of the OS company to encourage the development of third party applications by any company; same as above with respect to stockholder lawsuits.
This will potentially result in more applications for other other operating systems and more non-Microsoft applications for windows, increasing competition for both applications and operating systems. Increased competition, might force companies to adopt open standards to ensure interoperability. Personally, I think the break-up is probably going to be a huge benefit to consumers, software companies, free software and probably even to MS stockholders (in the long run).
Don't worry. This all takes place in the context of antitrust law. Antitrust law only kicks in when a company has and abuses monopoly power. These definitions will be relevant to a potential split-up of microsoft, and maybe as a precedent if some other company reaches a similar size and power and uses that power to leverage their way into the domination of the same new markets that Microsoft did. Otherwise this will have no impact on any other company. MS may want you to think that this will impact all companies, but it just ain't so.
Or write using a word processor, or run a spreadsheet, or go out on the web. In fact, the most common uses of windows can be done under Linux as well. What is missing is an array of more specialized applications. And even there, Linux is pretty strong in scientific and mathematical applications.
Regarding the "Why do Linux users emulate the windows interface" troll, I think that views on the Windows interface are rather mixed among Linuxers. Everyone who has used a variety of computers is going to have something to gripe about in just about any interface. But I personally don't think the interface is the big problem with Windows; what I hate is lack of stability, settings that automagically change themselves, relative lack of configurability, closed proprietary file formats that would make exchange of documents with scientific colleagues or journals impossible for me and the business practices of Microsoft. So KDE and Gnome borrowed some ideas from Windows, OS/2, Mac, etc. Big fucking deal. It may not be the latest and greatest in UI design, but it works and it's familiar to most people. IMO an advance in a UI has to be of major importance before it justifies abandoning what's familiar to most people. YMMV.
That's misleading. Every particle has a single state, described by its wave function. It's just that the wave function doesn't necessarily correspond to a definite value of an observable quantity.
When you aren't looking at it, the state evolves deterministically according to the Schroedinger equation (classically) or Dirac's equation (if you take special relativity into account). For any given measurement you might make, most wave functions don't correspond to a definite value of whatever you are trying to measure: instead the wave function is a sum of states, each corresponding to states which do have definite values of the measurement. Given two observables, the wave function can be decompsed as a sum of states with definite values for either observable---but in general not both at the same time.
To expand on that last bit, many measurements are incommensurable. (i.e. the states that have a definite value for one measurement don't correspond to states that have a definite value of the other---this is the case with position and momentum in Heisenberg's uncertainty principle). Although the wave function evolves deterministically when you aren't looking, when you do look, it randomly collapses into a wave function that has a definite value of whatever you are trying to measure (i.e. into one of the component states for the observable you are looking at). The probability of collapse into a particular state depends on the extent to which that state was a component in the original wave function---dominant components are more likely. This, in a nutshell, is a formal description of how observations affect the state of the system.
Disclaimer: I'm a mathematician and not a physicist. This is my best attempt at explaining Von Neumann's approach to QM as I understand it, but it's simplified and I think physicists prefer different language. If I've messed up, I'm sure any physicists here will correct me.
How helpful is it supposed to be? I recently recompiled my kernel for Mandrake 7.0 and it seemed as simple as it has been on any linux distro I've used since I started on an early slackware. (i.e. it's makefiles, a bunch of yes/no questions, and copying the kernel to where it needs to go---about as easy as I'd expect something most ordinary users don't need to do to be.) Is there some kernel compile utility provided by some distros other than the usual makefiles?
The term is "symplectic integrator." You can check out the book "Dynamical Systems and Numerical Analysis" by A.M. Stuart and A.R. Humphries for an introduction and some references. The term refers to an ordinary differential equation solver that preserves the symplectic structure of the evolution semigroup of a Hamiltonian system. (Compare with Hamiltonian conserving methods). Such methods can be more accurate than general ODE solvers applied to a Hamiltonian system.
So, as far as I can tell, the poster made a typo but he isn't bullshitting. But you are probably a troll, so I'm not sure why I'm bothering.
Is this a troll? Object orientation isn't the only way to re-use code. Check out the paper "Why Functional Programming Matters" that someone else cited in this discussion. It deals mostly with toy problems, but it does succesfully point out that functional programming (whether in Lisp or a purely functional language) offers some very flexible methods for code re-use.
Perhaps I'm old-fashioned, but I happen to think that majority stock holders should be able to decide what a company does and doesn't do. id is no exception, no matter how cool a new DOOM sounds like -- after all, we can't be sure what the other development alternatives are.
Perhaps. And maybe they should fire JC for bucking the system. But the laws do protect minority share-holders as well. So, not only are you old-fashioned, but you are legally on thin ice with such a broad assertion: a company has a legal obligation to look after stock value, even if the majority share-holders want to take a hit on stock value to maintain control; selling shares under any other pretence would amount to fraud. To protect value of shares held by all share-holders, you have to please customers. If /. wants to apply pressure, maybe id should listen. I'm sure I'm old-fashioned, but dealing with potentially critical consumer views in a way that doesn't defraud minority shareholders sounds like a free and fair market to me.
Not to be to picky, but under international copyright treaties, it's not necessary to file anything (or even give a copyright notice in the work) to hold a copyright. The average /. poster holds a copyright on their post. How many of you know that this is but one step in turning an idea into an expression that can be distributed in the marketplace?
One necessary step if you can't otherwise document the origins of the work when you want to sue someone for copyright violation. If you can, then it's not a necessary step. Who read the article on page one of today's Boston Globe and wondered why they interviewed two programmers, a lawyer, a lobbyist, and Stallman but no musicians?
Hopefully because it was a story about a not-very-widely-known subculture and the recording industry is doing a satisfactory job of representing itself. Even if you aren't anti-copyright, a story about how a blunderbuss approach to copyright enforcement can affect fair use rights and technologies for the distribution of free media or speech is a story that isn't told often enough outside of slashdot. Granted, the journalist who wrote the story you cite didn't deal with those issues. But they are commonly raised by the sort of people you are trying to smear by implication as being biased. The story was crap, but I doubt it was the fault of the interview subjects.