It's not *exactly* the same, in the browser-dependent-on-the-os sense.
But there ARE similarities from the OS perspective itself. Red Hat stops supporting releases of their distro (their OS, for all intents and purposes) after a certain timeframe. I'm just saying you can't demonize MS for doing likewise.
The argument that "you can just patch it since it's Open Source" *does not cut it*. That's only true for the HOPEFULLY small set of OS *users* that are also capable of being OS *developers*. Since we're talking about OS's in the consumer and (somewhat) corporate senses, that's just not valid. Consumers don't want to maintain their OS, and most companies aren't going to shoulder that burden when they could pay an outside company to do
Whether it's Red Hat, MS, or Apple - that consumer and that company will stop beinng supported eventually unless they upgrade along the way.
If the judge thought that MS should have to provide free upgrades of the next OS as a penalty for their practices, he could have ordered that. His penalties don't seem to have included this, so the legal authority on the matter apparently doesn't consider such a "remedy" necessary.
You can disagree with his ruling, of course. The state and/or federal AG's can haul MS back in court if they consider *MS* forcing upgrades -- like any other software company -- is somehow monopolistic.
You and JPelorat are arguing "when", not "if", if that makes sense.
I can see arguments against this being too soon, I was just saying that some people seem to think discontinuing upgrades AT ALL is wrong, and I disagree with that.
And I *will* argue that merely being all-but-disused is not necessarily the earliest you should discontinue. The more platform configurations that are "officially" supported, the harder it is for *any* vendor using the platform - device driver writers, application writers, etc. - anyone who wants mass-market acceptance has to support the set of platforms that covers some majority of their target users, and if that means 98/ME/2k/XP when it COULD mean XP, I can see MS being only one of many companies interested in people upgrading.
The corporate argument is a little different, and I agree with others that have said this may be sufficient for MS to come back and delay this posture change awhile longer. I know other vendors can be worse - I know there are a ton of Solaris 2.x and installs out there, for example, even though the latest version is far behind that. Anyone know where Sun stands on updates to those versions?
I'm a little annoyed (But not exactly surprised) that there's so much fuss about this.
I can understand companies needing time to upgrade to a new version of the OS in particular, and software in general.
But XP is the newest major version of the desktop OS. There is, AND SHOULD BE, and end-of-life for the older versions. Who's still running a 1.x kernel of Linux? What percentage are even running 2.2x? Does Apple still patch Mac OS 8 or 9 (I'm asking, I don't actually know the answer)?
I see all this "MS forcing you to upgrade" talk - well they're HARDLY the only company out there that does this, how else will a company that makes software for profit stay alive? This includes every gaming company out there, Oracle, Peoplesoft, etc. etc., in addition to the other OS vendors (Apple, Sun, RED HAT...you get the drift).
I guess maybe the sentiment is that 2000 isn't old enough "yet" to be back-burnered like this? That's at least debatable. But the notion that MS is wrong to wean people off of the older versions over time is folly.
This may come across as a troll or flamebait, but it's not.
To some extent (for better or worse), a I wonder if a candidate with a last name like "Badnarik" can win.
I mean, it's got "BAD" in it, and it's what I'll call "vaguely foreign sounding". Not that you can really point at a name and call it "American sounding".
Most celebrities seem to either have easy-to-handle names, or choose stage names that are easier to wrap your head around. And let's face it, a candidate has to be *popular* if they're to be elected, so there ARE some parallels there.
Someone will undoubtedly point to Arnold (heck, I can't even spell his last name) as a counterexample. But, remember that he and his name gained fame before he entered the political arena; Mike Badnarik has to try to get brand recognition along the way, rather than having some already availble to cash in on.
I agree with you but only up to a point. Remember, by 75 games, we're basically talking about his whole life for... what, a year or so, counting season breaks, etc.?
Balanced against that, there are several factors. Maybe he doesn't want to be a celebrity; it might be too late for that, but the longer he stays in the game and the more he earns, the harder it will be to fade back into obscurity.
Maybe he's rigged the game somehow to come so far (I *highly* doubt this), and he knows he needs to quit before someone figures him out.
Maybe he's going to go do who wants to be a millionaire next. Why settle for 30 grand a day when he can get a bunch more in a day or two?
He'll come back for a tournament of champions, almost surely, pick up another quarter or half million (pre-tax) there.
And even if none of that applies, I think if you took a survey, you'd find a LOT of people who'd be perfectly happy to live, work-free, on 80k a year (assuming your math works out). Lots of people work 40+ hours a week to make a lot less than that.
Most of us like to joke about the "problems" wealthy people have, but maybe he's already gotten a taste of those and decided he doesn't want to go there, and the more he wins, the more of that he'll have to deal with.
Xentax
It had to end sometime
on
They Killed Ken!
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Assuming this speculation is true, the real question is "how".
I mean, I'm sure even Ken would/will/did get tired of playing sooner or later. 75 games sounds like a nice round number to stop on; he set the single-game score record with something right around 75,000, as I recall (maybe even 75k even?).
So, it'll be interesting (to me) to see if he more or less quit on purpose - either just not coming back by choice, or obviously throwing the game to lose.
FWIW (hehe), I tend to agree with you - both that Merriam-Webster is at least reasonably authoritative, and (to put it in my own terms), the common *understanding* these days seems to include both ones you can pronounce as well as those you can't (NATO and FBI, to choose random examples of each respectively).
I like "initialism" as a *subset* of acronyms - those that can't be pronounced - rather than a disjoint set. But that's strictly my personal feeling.
The whole word thing sort of came out of left-field to me. But I have to agree to the extent that a term's etymology may have very little to do with it's modern, common usage and meaning (see geek and virus among other terms whose meanings have changed substantially over time).
Of course, people get bent out of shape about how common usage corrupts the 'true' meaning ("irony" being the current flame-inducing term of choice). I try not to encourage that kind of thing in my personal communication, but I'm not gonna be one of those who fights to the last ditch to save "The Queen's English", either.
Xentax ps. I have been known to tee off on people who say "irregardless" though;)
Uh...because you said so, or what? Did you even read my post?
It started with something to the effect of "I haven't been able to find a truly authoritative source" as to whether an acronym MUST be prounceable or not. And I *have* looked.
If you're going to take a stand on the subject, let's at least hear about why you think so - cite a reason, a source you consider authoritative, something.
Yeah. Which is funny considering I think of three-letter-acronyms when I write/say "TLA", despite the fact that my post was about NX, a two-letter-acronym.
With apologies to CCR (hah!), who will stop the [madness]?
That's certainly one way an author can try to avoid the confusion. It was a "strongly suggested" practice when I was in the academic habit of writing essays.
In general, though, it seems like you operate in a... subculture, environment, whatever... where, HOPEFULLY, only one meaning at a time would be likely (especially given any sort of meaningful context).
This has come up in debates several times where I work.
I have yet to find what I'd consider an *authoritative* statement on exactly what constitutes an Abbreviation vs. an Acronym, vs. an "initialism".
First, AFAICT, an abbreviation is always a shortening of a single word. Please correct with a counter-example if I'm being a 'tard there.
Second, to *most* people, again AFAICT, an acronym is a mostly-first-letters-shortening of a phrase or group of words.
Whether this is limited to "pronounce-able" shortenings (NATO, LASER, RADAR, MODEM) is pretty debatable, though I've seen "initialism" defined as a term describing those that *can't* be pronounced (USA, XML), thus either separating or at least distinguishing them from those that can.
Of course, the waters are muddy even outside of that. For example, must they only be first letters? RADAR (RAdio Detection And Ranging), MODEM (MODulator/DEModulator) would suggest otherwise. Need every (non-trivial) word be included? "Interpol" (International Criminal Police Organization) has been listed as a sample acronym online, so maybe not. Even "start of word" isn't *always* apparently required - consider DNA (DeoxyriboNucleic Acid) and eXtensible Markup Language. These seem to be handy exceptions to a general rule, but they're still pretty popular.
Finally, there are the ones that, depending on who you ask, are either pronounce-able or not. SQL (is it "S-Q-L" or "sequel"?) and URL (U-R-L or "earl") are two examples of this.
Like I said, it's something I've discussed/debated/Google/Wiki-Pedia'd over before.
The scary thing for me was seeing the "No Va" urban legend in a *college textbook* on 'Organizational Psychology' I think it was? You'd think I'd remember the last college class I took.
Oh well. I guess including an acronym or initialism in your brand is just part of modern 'buzzword compliance'...
I know we're running out of possible acronyms that don't already stand for something, but releasing two new 'overloads' for an acronym almost at the same time sucks.
(If you're wondering, we have this NX client software, and the NX 'No-eXecute' flag on CPU's to help contain the threat posted by stack and heap overflow vulnerabilities)
We're running out of TLA space a lot faster than IPv4 space. Not as big a deal, I know, but just wait until companies start trying to brand/trademark acronyms or initialisms (for the purists out there) when there's already existing meanings for their choices...
The key difference is that you can make a much more substantial claim with available evidence.
If you have code that acts substantially similar, and claim it's because you copied, but only copied ideas based on viewing the code, that's (Arguably) hard to distinguish from less-legal copying.
Your kitten-killing claim is different. Maybe if kittens near MS campus were disappearing and MS claimed they were 'just adopting them all' or something.
My claim is that it is (or may be claimed) that distinguishing between literal and non-literal copying, without access to both sets of sources, is difficult. Since MS isn't keen on giving away their source, that could spell trouble. Given that, I can see why MS would insist on a policy of not even looking at code, so that a claim of copying must be weighed against the notion that NO copying is going on, not just non-literal copying.
To have a claim with merit, you'd have to show that there are similarities such that *at least* non-literal, and possibly literal, copying is going on.
The reason this *does not* happen is the legal mess I pointed to.
If some Windows devs DID do this, you're right that it *ought* to be fine.
But what *could* (and I really mean "could", I don't mean Linus would, should, or even 'might' do this) happen is that the authors of that code COULD turn around and claim MORE happened - ie, that copying occurred. You'd have MS saying no, we just LOOKED AT the code, and used the good ideas, etc. - while (whoever) says there MUST be copying. They'd want their lawyers to do discovery on the Windows sources to see that there's no copying, they'd want to depose the MS devs in question under oath to ensure they're telling the truth, etc.
Even if you factor the likelihood of such a thing (low to not-bloody-likely), the cost if it DID happen (millions of dollars, thousands of man-hours of wasted time, PR nightmare) is such that the RISK IS NOT WORTH IT.
That's all I'm really saying, guys. It's one thing when both sets of sources are Open. It's another thing when one is protected by trade secret status.
Do you really think NOONE would accuse MS of copying (in the copyright-violating sense, or the GPL-violating sense, NOT the "good idea reused" sense) if MS said they were doing the "good idea" version? Even if none of the Linux copyright holders made a fuss, or a legal fuss, plenty of OTHER people *would* make a fuss, and the PR flak from that would probably be hassle enough to be worth avoiding.
You're right and you're wrong (IMHO), to various degrees.
You're right in that anything short of a 'clean room' approach is, to some degree, tainted, so it must not be THAT hard-and-fast, or you could never hire anyone that ever worked for your competition.
But you're wrong in that tainting is completely unheard of or a boogeyman that has no force.
It's really more of a *general* trade-secret issue that Microsoft (and probably others) is playing safe by including GPL'd source as well as other competitor's product internals.
I think it's a no brainer that an MS employee who gained access to a competitors source via some means (legal or otherwise) would be risking legal issues if he also has access (however indirect) to MS source of a competing product.
The fact that the GPL makes that competing source publicly and legally accessible doesn't change that. You *could* try to argue that, if I see the source for the kernel, and work on the Windows core, that I'm potentially lifting things that are SUPPOSED to be protected by the GPL, without abiding by the GPL. I don't see how you can argue otherwise.
To put it another way: If you ARE claiming otherwise, you're saying a Windows developer could freely, minutely examine the Linux kernel, and then, without any degree of fear of legal repercussion, *implement the ideas expressed in that code* without GPL or other legal fallout. To be clear, he doesn't copy a single line of code, just reuses the good ideas, tweaks things based on the insights he gains, etc.
Do you really claim that?
Among the arguments against it is a natural claim that lines of code WERE copied, then there's a big mess to try to prove that direct copying happened, or didn't, etc. Basically, a big mess. The mess is reason enough to avoid such an entanglement, even if it would 'in theory' be ok.
Because it was his first time playing it - while everyone (or nearly) everyone else in the game has been in the beta for some non-trivial amount of time.
You know how it is. FPS games don't exactly have a steep learning curve, but boy, watch out for that FIRST step. First time in a game, first time on a map - both supress your 'normal' abilities substantially.
This is one of those moments where you have to reflect on what TRULY free TRULY means.
For example, Free Speech means you can say something that I absolutely, 100% disagree with, or even despise you as a person for, yet you are acting within the law (whether I is joe citizen or the US government).
Or, as has been mis-attributed to Voltaire a few times, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
If you truly believe your software, or ALL software should be free, that means ANYONE, including Microsoft, MUST be allowed to use it (within the terms of the particular "Free-compatible" license, of course).
I wouldn't expect to see MS modifying and sharing any GPL code anytime soon, but they have used BSD code in the past, and I have no doubt they do use binaries of GPL'd projects (but would naturally avoid tainting themselves by looking, let along modifying, sources).
You can't pick and choose and still call it 'Free'.
I recognize your knee-jerk tag - so just consider this the second part of a knee-jerk chain reaction:)
They're called OPTIONS for a reason - they are OPTIONALLY exercised.
So, if the value is less than the strike price, leave them to rot - they'll either become valuable again or (usually) expire in due time, unexercised.
Noone doubts the existence of this guy's Non-Compete. What's debatable - highly debatable - is whether it's enforceable.
The clause is designed to prevent you from being poached by a competitor for your knowledge of trade secrets. I've never heard of one being enforced against someone who was laid off or fired for cause. I didn't RTFA (naturally), so I don't know if that's the case here or not.
If he quit to work for WD directly, it's definitely a potential industrial espionage case, which is what the Non-Compete is designed to prevent.
I think he was making an argument about signal strength (or, perhaps, signal-to-noise ratio), not an argument about *existence* of radiation to detect.
Or, to put it another way, imagine for a moment you're standing 10 light years from Earth - present day earth.
What level of technology would be required to distinguish the EM radiation we emit from random background radiation in the same frequency ranges? What technology would be required to distinguish it such that it can be localized (these may be the same or virtually the same for all I know, just tossing it out there).
I don't know that anyone's done solid work on just how detectable WE are. I'm sure it depends on which frequencies you're talking about, which directions (anyone directly downrange of the Voyager/Pioneer probes is a lot more likely to pick us up, for example), but it also depends on what other (natural) emissions occur on those same frequencies and from our neck of the woods (our star, nearby stars, etc.)
I agree, X-Com1 rocked. I'll concede that the original release didn't age well *technically* - try to get it running on XP - but the "Gold" release alleviated that.
As far as the gameplay and replayability itself, XCOM is my hands-down favorite.
I play UFO:AM instead, sometimes, because the geoscape mode is much prettier and the paused realtime is a great compromise between turn-based and realtime (sort of like Baldur's Gate). It's more fun in some ways, less in others (like, you can't design your bases, or shoot guided missiles, but there's a wider variety of realistic weapons, mind-control doesn't make the end-game a walk in the park, and the AI on the hardest setting is downright scary.
For the record, my other oldie-but-goody favorites are Betrayal at Krondor (aged horribly at this point, but the best RPG I've played), and Master of Magic. I'm not sure if anything newer than 1998 or so really qualifies for "Classic" yet...what's the cutoff?
I'll tip my hat to Total Annihilation, Starcraft, and Q3 if we're including more recent but still dated games.
True. I think his point was that abstract math tends to be interesting - like your example, where what was considered abstract math turns out to have practical applications when you're talking about space-time.
But abstract *physics* is probably less interesting, since (so far) trying to wrap your head around some contrived alternate set of physical axioms and constants is much harder than (to reuse our running example) wrapping a plane around a sphere or a cone and seeing how that changes your perspective.
Things like string theory and the n-dimensions theories are examples of this I guess, but anyone who's tried to wrap their head around a 4-dimensional "hypercube", where each "side" is itself a cube, can tell you how much less approachable that is compared to imagining a plane with various graphs on it, and then wrapping that plane around some 3-d shape.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not *exactly* the same, in the browser-dependent-on-the-os sense.
But there ARE similarities from the OS perspective itself. Red Hat stops supporting releases of their distro (their OS, for all intents and purposes) after a certain timeframe. I'm just saying you can't demonize MS for doing likewise.
The argument that "you can just patch it since it's Open Source" *does not cut it*. That's only true for the HOPEFULLY small set of OS *users* that are also capable of being OS *developers*. Since we're talking about OS's in the consumer and (somewhat) corporate senses, that's just not valid. Consumers don't want to maintain their OS, and most companies aren't going to shoulder that burden when they could pay an outside company to do
Whether it's Red Hat, MS, or Apple - that consumer and that company will stop beinng supported eventually unless they upgrade along the way.
Xentax
No.
If the judge thought that MS should have to provide free upgrades of the next OS as a penalty for their practices, he could have ordered that. His penalties don't seem to have included this, so the legal authority on the matter apparently doesn't consider such a "remedy" necessary.
You can disagree with his ruling, of course. The state and/or federal AG's can haul MS back in court if they consider *MS* forcing upgrades -- like any other software company -- is somehow monopolistic.
Xentax
You and JPelorat are arguing "when", not "if", if that makes sense.
I can see arguments against this being too soon, I was just saying that some people seem to think discontinuing upgrades AT ALL is wrong, and I disagree with that.
And I *will* argue that merely being all-but-disused is not necessarily the earliest you should discontinue. The more platform configurations that are "officially" supported, the harder it is for *any* vendor using the platform - device driver writers, application writers, etc. - anyone who wants mass-market acceptance has to support the set of platforms that covers some majority of their target users, and if that means 98/ME/2k/XP when it COULD mean XP, I can see MS being only one of many companies interested in people upgrading.
The corporate argument is a little different, and I agree with others that have said this may be sufficient for MS to come back and delay this posture change awhile longer. I know other vendors can be worse - I know there are a ton of Solaris 2.x and installs out there, for example, even though the latest version is far behind that. Anyone know where Sun stands on updates to those versions?
Xentax
I'm a little annoyed (But not exactly surprised) that there's so much fuss about this.
I can understand companies needing time to upgrade to a new version of the OS in particular, and software in general.
But XP is the newest major version of the desktop OS. There is, AND SHOULD BE, and end-of-life for the older versions. Who's still running a 1.x kernel of Linux? What percentage are even running 2.2x? Does Apple still patch Mac OS 8 or 9 (I'm asking, I don't actually know the answer)?
I see all this "MS forcing you to upgrade" talk - well they're HARDLY the only company out there that does this, how else will a company that makes software for profit stay alive? This includes every gaming company out there, Oracle, Peoplesoft, etc. etc., in addition to the other OS vendors (Apple, Sun, RED HAT...you get the drift).
I guess maybe the sentiment is that 2000 isn't old enough "yet" to be back-burnered like this? That's at least debatable. But the notion that MS is wrong to wean people off of the older versions over time is folly.
Xentax
This may come across as a troll or flamebait, but it's not.
To some extent (for better or worse), a I wonder if a candidate with a last name like "Badnarik" can win.
I mean, it's got "BAD" in it, and it's what I'll call "vaguely foreign sounding". Not that you can really point at a name and call it "American sounding".
Most celebrities seem to either have easy-to-handle names, or choose stage names that are easier to wrap your head around. And let's face it, a candidate has to be *popular* if they're to be elected, so there ARE some parallels there.
Someone will undoubtedly point to Arnold (heck, I can't even spell his last name) as a counterexample. But, remember that he and his name gained fame before he entered the political arena; Mike Badnarik has to try to get brand recognition along the way, rather than having some already availble to cash in on.
Xentax
I agree with you but only up to a point. Remember, by 75 games, we're basically talking about his whole life for ... what, a year or so, counting season breaks, etc.?
Balanced against that, there are several factors. Maybe he doesn't want to be a celebrity; it might be too late for that, but the longer he stays in the game and the more he earns, the harder it will be to fade back into obscurity.
Maybe he's rigged the game somehow to come so far (I *highly* doubt this), and he knows he needs to quit before someone figures him out.
Maybe he's going to go do who wants to be a millionaire next. Why settle for 30 grand a day when he can get a bunch more in a day or two?
He'll come back for a tournament of champions, almost surely, pick up another quarter or half million (pre-tax) there.
And even if none of that applies, I think if you took a survey, you'd find a LOT of people who'd be perfectly happy to live, work-free, on 80k a year (assuming your math works out). Lots of people work 40+ hours a week to make a lot less than that.
Most of us like to joke about the "problems" wealthy people have, but maybe he's already gotten a taste of those and decided he doesn't want to go there, and the more he wins, the more of that he'll have to deal with.
Xentax
Assuming this speculation is true, the real question is "how".
I mean, I'm sure even Ken would/will/did get tired of playing sooner or later. 75 games sounds like a nice round number to stop on; he set the single-game score record with something right around 75,000, as I recall (maybe even 75k even?).
So, it'll be interesting (to me) to see if he more or less quit on purpose - either just not coming back by choice, or obviously throwing the game to lose.
Xentax
FWIW (hehe), I tend to agree with you - both that Merriam-Webster is at least reasonably authoritative, and (to put it in my own terms), the common *understanding* these days seems to include both ones you can pronounce as well as those you can't (NATO and FBI, to choose random examples of each respectively).
;)
I like "initialism" as a *subset* of acronyms - those that can't be pronounced - rather than a disjoint set. But that's strictly my personal feeling.
The whole word thing sort of came out of left-field to me. But I have to agree to the extent that a term's etymology may have very little to do with it's modern, common usage and meaning (see geek and virus among other terms whose meanings have changed substantially over time).
Of course, people get bent out of shape about how common usage corrupts the 'true' meaning ("irony" being the current flame-inducing term of choice). I try not to encourage that kind of thing in my personal communication, but I'm not gonna be one of those who fights to the last ditch to save "The Queen's English", either.
Xentax
ps. I have been known to tee off on people who say "irregardless" though
An acronym does not have to be pronouncable
Uh...because you said so, or what? Did you even read my post?
It started with something to the effect of "I haven't been able to find a truly authoritative source" as to whether an acronym MUST be prounceable or not. And I *have* looked.
If you're going to take a stand on the subject, let's at least hear about why you think so - cite a reason, a source you consider authoritative, something.
Xentax
Actually, even my "language requirement" level of Spanish comprehension was sufficient to show the fallacy behind the "no va" urban legend.
And I find the idea of elevating that book to "board-reviewed" and thus implying some sort of infallibility to be downright *hilarious*.
Anyone who doesn't realize that nearly everything anyone ever "teaches" you is WRONG and/or not so cut-and-dry, has a lot of growing up left to do.
Xentax
Yeah. Which is funny considering I think of three-letter-acronyms when I write/say "TLA", despite the fact that my post was about NX, a two-letter-acronym.
With apologies to CCR (hah!), who will stop the [madness]?
Xentax
That's certainly one way an author can try to avoid the confusion. It was a "strongly suggested" practice when I was in the academic habit of writing essays.
... subculture, environment, whatever ... where, HOPEFULLY, only one meaning at a time would be likely (especially given any sort of meaningful context).
In general, though, it seems like you operate in a
Xentax
This has come up in debates several times where I work.
I have yet to find what I'd consider an *authoritative* statement on exactly what constitutes an Abbreviation vs. an Acronym, vs. an "initialism".
First, AFAICT, an abbreviation is always a shortening of a single word. Please correct with a counter-example if I'm being a 'tard there.
Second, to *most* people, again AFAICT, an acronym is a mostly-first-letters-shortening of a phrase or group of words.
Whether this is limited to "pronounce-able" shortenings (NATO, LASER, RADAR, MODEM) is pretty debatable, though I've seen "initialism" defined as a term describing those that *can't* be pronounced (USA, XML), thus either separating or at least distinguishing them from those that can.
Of course, the waters are muddy even outside of that. For example, must they only be first letters? RADAR (RAdio Detection And Ranging), MODEM (MODulator/DEModulator) would suggest otherwise. Need every (non-trivial) word be included? "Interpol" (International Criminal Police Organization) has been listed as a sample acronym online, so maybe not. Even "start of word" isn't *always* apparently required - consider DNA (DeoxyriboNucleic Acid) and eXtensible Markup Language. These seem to be handy exceptions to a general rule, but they're still pretty popular.
Finally, there are the ones that, depending on who you ask, are either pronounce-able or not. SQL (is it "S-Q-L" or "sequel"?) and URL (U-R-L or "earl") are two examples of this.
Like I said, it's something I've discussed/debated/Google/Wiki-Pedia'd over before.
Xentax
The scary thing for me was seeing the "No Va" urban legend in a *college textbook* on 'Organizational Psychology' I think it was? You'd think I'd remember the last college class I took.
Oh well. I guess including an acronym or initialism in your brand is just part of modern 'buzzword compliance'...
Xentax
I know we're running out of possible acronyms that don't already stand for something, but releasing two new 'overloads' for an acronym almost at the same time sucks.
(If you're wondering, we have this NX client software, and the NX 'No-eXecute' flag on CPU's to help contain the threat posted by stack and heap overflow vulnerabilities)
We're running out of TLA space a lot faster than IPv4 space. Not as big a deal, I know, but just wait until companies start trying to brand/trademark acronyms or initialisms (for the purists out there) when there's already existing meanings for their choices...
Xentax
I disagree.
The key difference is that you can make a much more substantial claim with available evidence.
If you have code that acts substantially similar, and claim it's because you copied, but only copied ideas based on viewing the code, that's (Arguably) hard to distinguish from less-legal copying.
Your kitten-killing claim is different. Maybe if kittens near MS campus were disappearing and MS claimed they were 'just adopting them all' or something.
My claim is that it is (or may be claimed) that distinguishing between literal and non-literal copying, without access to both sets of sources, is difficult. Since MS isn't keen on giving away their source, that could spell trouble. Given that, I can see why MS would insist on a policy of not even looking at code, so that a claim of copying must be weighed against the notion that NO copying is going on, not just non-literal copying.
To have a claim with merit, you'd have to show that there are similarities such that *at least* non-literal, and possibly literal, copying is going on.
Make sense?
Xentax
The reason this *does not* happen is the legal mess I pointed to.
If some Windows devs DID do this, you're right that it *ought* to be fine.
But what *could* (and I really mean "could", I don't mean Linus would, should, or even 'might' do this) happen is that the authors of that code COULD turn around and claim MORE happened - ie, that copying occurred. You'd have MS saying no, we just LOOKED AT the code, and used the good ideas, etc. - while (whoever) says there MUST be copying. They'd want their lawyers to do discovery on the Windows sources to see that there's no copying, they'd want to depose the MS devs in question under oath to ensure they're telling the truth, etc.
Even if you factor the likelihood of such a thing (low to not-bloody-likely), the cost if it DID happen (millions of dollars, thousands of man-hours of wasted time, PR nightmare) is such that the RISK IS NOT WORTH IT.
That's all I'm really saying, guys. It's one thing when both sets of sources are Open. It's another thing when one is protected by trade secret status.
Do you really think NOONE would accuse MS of copying (in the copyright-violating sense, or the GPL-violating sense, NOT the "good idea reused" sense) if MS said they were doing the "good idea" version? Even if none of the Linux copyright holders made a fuss, or a legal fuss, plenty of OTHER people *would* make a fuss, and the PR flak from that would probably be hassle enough to be worth avoiding.
Xentax
You're right and you're wrong (IMHO), to various degrees.
You're right in that anything short of a 'clean room' approach is, to some degree, tainted, so it must not be THAT hard-and-fast, or you could never hire anyone that ever worked for your competition.
But you're wrong in that tainting is completely unheard of or a boogeyman that has no force.
It's really more of a *general* trade-secret issue that Microsoft (and probably others) is playing safe by including GPL'd source as well as other competitor's product internals.
I think it's a no brainer that an MS employee who gained access to a competitors source via some means (legal or otherwise) would be risking legal issues if he also has access (however indirect) to MS source of a competing product.
The fact that the GPL makes that competing source publicly and legally accessible doesn't change that. You *could* try to argue that, if I see the source for the kernel, and work on the Windows core, that I'm potentially lifting things that are SUPPOSED to be protected by the GPL, without abiding by the GPL. I don't see how you can argue otherwise.
To put it another way: If you ARE claiming otherwise, you're saying a Windows developer could freely, minutely examine the Linux kernel, and then, without any degree of fear of legal repercussion, *implement the ideas expressed in that code* without GPL or other legal fallout. To be clear, he doesn't copy a single line of code, just reuses the good ideas, tweaks things based on the insights he gains, etc.
Do you really claim that?
Among the arguments against it is a natural claim that lines of code WERE copied, then there's a big mess to try to prove that direct copying happened, or didn't, etc. Basically, a big mess. The mess is reason enough to avoid such an entanglement, even if it would 'in theory' be ok.
Xentax
Because it was his first time playing it - while everyone (or nearly) everyone else in the game has been in the beta for some non-trivial amount of time.
You know how it is. FPS games don't exactly have a steep learning curve, but boy, watch out for that FIRST step. First time in a game, first time on a map - both supress your 'normal' abilities substantially.
Xentax
"No Microsoft" is still "Not Free".
:)
This is one of those moments where you have to reflect on what TRULY free TRULY means.
For example, Free Speech means you can say something that I absolutely, 100% disagree with, or even despise you as a person for, yet you are acting within the law (whether I is joe citizen or the US government).
Or, as has been mis-attributed to Voltaire a few times, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
If you truly believe your software, or ALL software should be free, that means ANYONE, including Microsoft, MUST be allowed to use it (within the terms of the particular "Free-compatible" license, of course).
I wouldn't expect to see MS modifying and sharing any GPL code anytime soon, but they have used BSD code in the past, and I have no doubt they do use binaries of GPL'd projects (but would naturally avoid tainting themselves by looking, let along modifying, sources).
You can't pick and choose and still call it 'Free'.
I recognize your knee-jerk tag - so just consider this the second part of a knee-jerk chain reaction
Xentax
They're called OPTIONS for a reason - they are OPTIONALLY exercised.
So, if the value is less than the strike price, leave them to rot - they'll either become valuable again or (usually) expire in due time, unexercised.
Noone doubts the existence of this guy's Non-Compete. What's debatable - highly debatable - is whether it's enforceable.
The clause is designed to prevent you from being poached by a competitor for your knowledge of trade secrets. I've never heard of one being enforced against someone who was laid off or fired for cause. I didn't RTFA (naturally), so I don't know if that's the case here or not.
If he quit to work for WD directly, it's definitely a potential industrial espionage case, which is what the Non-Compete is designed to prevent.
Xentax
They're called OPTIONS for a reason - you need not ever exercise them.
If the value goes below the strike price, leave em to rot.
Xentax
I think he was making an argument about signal strength (or, perhaps, signal-to-noise ratio), not an argument about *existence* of radiation to detect.
Or, to put it another way, imagine for a moment you're standing 10 light years from Earth - present day earth.
What level of technology would be required to distinguish the EM radiation we emit from random background radiation in the same frequency ranges? What technology would be required to distinguish it such that it can be localized (these may be the same or virtually the same for all I know, just tossing it out there).
I don't know that anyone's done solid work on just how detectable WE are. I'm sure it depends on which frequencies you're talking about, which directions (anyone directly downrange of the Voyager/Pioneer probes is a lot more likely to pick us up, for example), but it also depends on what other (natural) emissions occur on those same frequencies and from our neck of the woods (our star, nearby stars, etc.)
Xentax
I agree, X-Com1 rocked. I'll concede that the original release didn't age well *technically* - try to get it running on XP - but the "Gold" release alleviated that.
As far as the gameplay and replayability itself, XCOM is my hands-down favorite.
I play UFO:AM instead, sometimes, because the geoscape mode is much prettier and the paused realtime is a great compromise between turn-based and realtime (sort of like Baldur's Gate). It's more fun in some ways, less in others (like, you can't design your bases, or shoot guided missiles, but there's a wider variety of realistic weapons, mind-control doesn't make the end-game a walk in the park, and the AI on the hardest setting is downright scary.
For the record, my other oldie-but-goody favorites are Betrayal at Krondor (aged horribly at this point, but the best RPG I've played), and Master of Magic. I'm not sure if anything newer than 1998 or so really qualifies for "Classic" yet...what's the cutoff?
I'll tip my hat to Total Annihilation, Starcraft, and Q3 if we're including more recent but still dated games.
Xentax
True. I think his point was that abstract math tends to be interesting - like your example, where what was considered abstract math turns out to have practical applications when you're talking about space-time.
But abstract *physics* is probably less interesting, since (so far) trying to wrap your head around some contrived alternate set of physical axioms and constants is much harder than (to reuse our running example) wrapping a plane around a sphere or a cone and seeing how that changes your perspective.
Things like string theory and the n-dimensions theories are examples of this I guess, but anyone who's tried to wrap their head around a 4-dimensional "hypercube", where each "side" is itself a cube, can tell you how much less approachable that is compared to imagining a plane with various graphs on it, and then wrapping that plane around some 3-d shape.
Xentax