Actually, I believe mono includes Microsoft's implementation of the Dynamic Language Runtime, so mono does include some Microsoft code. I'm not sure how this affects the patent situation - the DLR is licensed under the Apache license, which does include a patent grant, but I don't know how much this would cover. The Apache license grants rights to use any patents "necessarily infringed" by the software; I'm not sure whether or not the fact that the DLR runs on top of the CLR means that it "necessarily infringes" any patents Microsoft might have on the CLR (in which case the patent grant in the license would apply to all of MS's patents on the CLR).
I don't think that's right; this isn't about GPL vs. the Apache license. The issue isn't the licensing of OpenJDK itself, but about the licensing of the Java Technology Compatibility Kit (the JCK), which is used to test if an implementation is compatible with a given version of the Java spec. The JCK isn't available under an open source license at all. If the JCK were under the GPL, or even if it were under a license that didn't permit you to modify it, but only permitted anyone to run it, then Apache could use it to test their Java implementation, which is what they want to do.
The point of this doesn't seem to be to actually right a NES emulator; there are loads already, after all. Rather, the point of writing the emulator here is to explain the steps in writing an emulator. JavaScript is a fairly clear language which quite a lot of people know, so it's a good choice to use to illustrate the process.
Not only that. It requires rock solid OpenGL support from open source drivers that implement both DRI2 and KMS. Closed source drivers cannot play at all; they're effectively locked out of implementing KMS support.
Huh. I don't really understand how that would work. What's to stop NVIDIA from implementing the same APIs in their closed-source kernel module that are implemented in open source kernel modules?
While I can see that x.org (formerly xfree86) is big, its supposed "bloat" derives from the fact that it has a hell of a lot to do.
This is true, but much of what X11 can do is not used a lot of the time. With recent toolkits (for instance GTK using Cairo for drawing and Freetype for font rendering), the X server mostly just mediates between the application and the compositor. This is kind of backwards, and, indeed, is "inherently inefficient" - the X11 core contains a stuff that isn't always used, while the most frequently used things are outside of X11, with X serving only as a mediator.
If the Wayland developers can present a convincing case for why we need to introduce another process underpinning X11, I'll be interested to hear it.
The idea of Wayland isn't to have another process underpinning X - the idea is to have applications talk directly to Wayland where that makes sense, while the extra features of X can be brought in where they are required.
I remember reading a review of one of the early RTS games that pointed out that they weren't so much strategy games as logistics games; the reviewer predicted the failure of the genre on the basis that everyone wants to play the general, they don't want to play the quartermaster. Obviously, he was wrong, and a lot of people do want to be the quartermaster; but he captured what I've always found so boring about RTSes.
The report linked to here is based on an article in the South China Morning Post - I think it's a fair bet that if a Hong Kong newspaper knows, the Chinese government also knows.
Not 10 years ago it was perfectly common to be able to post something online and restrict access to only a certain group of people, and no one else would ever see it.
Well, you can still do that with Facebook, so nothing's changed.
"There is one thing of which one can say neither that it is one metre long, nor that it is not one metre long, and that is the standard metre in Paris." - Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations
Unless you have enough story for each plot line to fill an episode with only that plot line, your are screwed. Switching between each plot line in a single hour gets old fast.... Think about the X-Files.
That model worked pretty well in the X-Files, and in lots of other shows, but I don't think it's necessary, and it can backfire - consider, for example, Fringe, in which the backstory is really interesting, but the "monster of the week" structure of most episodes is extremely dull. I read an interview with the BSG creators somewhere, in which they said that Syfy wanted them to make BSG more episodic and less focused on the overall arc, but when they tried this they just made the show less interesting to regular viewers without attracting any more casual viewers; so it makes sense that they've largely dropped that episodic structure for Caprica.
I do think that viewers are becoming more interested in and accepting of shows where the focus is the over-arching story arc: BSG would be one example, another would be Mad Men (The Wire would be an even better example, but probably not the best example to give to a network wanting to make a quick buck); I never watched Lost, but everything I heard about it from fans was about the overall story, not individual episodes. This mode of structuring TV probably fits better with the the internet and on demand (so you can easily catch up on missed episodes) and DVD sales (so you can re-watch the show as a complete work); perhaps the problem is that Syfy aren't factoring this into their calculations of the financial return on the show.
No, they aren't. There frequent minor differences - the Android code, for instance tends to prefer "for" over "while" loops, some of the Sun methods have a single return statement where the Android code has multiple returns, and a few other things. Given how straightforward the functionality of the class in question is, these kinds of differences are strong evidence that the implementation was made independently.
It gets even better if you read further into the patent:
The new computing paradigm of the present invention starts from a new kind of world view: A global economy is emerging with rapid flows of capital, knowledge, products, and competitive pressures. A growing number of companies and industries face new needs to leapfrog their limits and become effective competitors on a global level, transforming their performance, productivity, adaptation, and innovation capabilities. Is it possible for a single leverage point to help fill part of these needs?
This new type of software is defined by its novel purposes: the improvement or fabrication of reality based on its users' ideas and imaginations.
I think someone managed to submit Timecube as a patent application, which is kind of awesome, although it still doesn't explain what it has to do with rollovers.
So the proper analogy here would be the cop pretending to be an old high school buddy to look in your car's trunk, follow you around town all day to see where you go, and gain entrance to your home. All of which is illegal without a warrant, and damn well should be.
No it isn't. The police don't need a warrant to undertake undercover work, which is effectively what this is.
They could use JavaSE without paying licensing fees. I'm not entirely sure whether this was true when Android was first being developed, though; Wikipedia says the Android was initially developed by a separate company which was bought by Google in 2005, and at that time JavaSE wasn't open source.
Well, Harmony is released under the Apache license, while OpenJDK is released under the GPL. I don't know if that would make a difference - Android already includes GPLed software, so Google clearly have no objection to the license in general.
But Oracle is claiming that these patents apply to whatever Android is doing now, using Harmony, so I don't see how it would make any difference if Android switched to using OpenJDK instead, as the OP suggests.
With the sheer amount of all the pointless stuff there I imagine it's really hard to find those few meaningful tweets unless you know exactly what you're trying to find.
That's a really nice program. A lot of these minimal text editors are too minimal, dropping genuinely useful semantic styling (italics, block quotes, lists) along with the formatting distractions of word processors; Wordgrinder looks like it gets the balance pretty much right.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I believe mono includes Microsoft's implementation of the Dynamic Language Runtime, so mono does include some Microsoft code. I'm not sure how this affects the patent situation - the DLR is licensed under the Apache license, which does include a patent grant, but I don't know how much this would cover. The Apache license grants rights to use any patents "necessarily infringed" by the software; I'm not sure whether or not the fact that the DLR runs on top of the CLR means that it "necessarily infringes" any patents Microsoft might have on the CLR (in which case the patent grant in the license would apply to all of MS's patents on the CLR).
I don't think that's right; this isn't about GPL vs. the Apache license. The issue isn't the licensing of OpenJDK itself, but about the licensing of the Java Technology Compatibility Kit (the JCK), which is used to test if an implementation is compatible with a given version of the Java spec. The JCK isn't available under an open source license at all. If the JCK were under the GPL, or even if it were under a license that didn't permit you to modify it, but only permitted anyone to run it, then Apache could use it to test their Java implementation, which is what they want to do.
Not to mention that Kraft's big selling point in that ad is that their cheese is made from milk.
The point of this doesn't seem to be to actually right a NES emulator; there are loads already, after all. Rather, the point of writing the emulator here is to explain the steps in writing an emulator. JavaScript is a fairly clear language which quite a lot of people know, so it's a good choice to use to illustrate the process.
Not only that. It requires rock solid OpenGL support from open source drivers that implement both DRI2 and KMS. Closed source drivers cannot play at all; they're effectively locked out of implementing KMS support.
Huh. I don't really understand how that would work. What's to stop NVIDIA from implementing the same APIs in their closed-source kernel module that are implemented in open source kernel modules?
While I can see that x.org (formerly xfree86) is big, its supposed "bloat" derives from the fact that it has a hell of a lot to do.
This is true, but much of what X11 can do is not used a lot of the time. With recent toolkits (for instance GTK using Cairo for drawing and Freetype for font rendering), the X server mostly just mediates between the application and the compositor. This is kind of backwards, and, indeed, is "inherently inefficient" - the X11 core contains a stuff that isn't always used, while the most frequently used things are outside of X11, with X serving only as a mediator.
If the Wayland developers can present a convincing case for why we need to introduce another process underpinning X11, I'll be interested to hear it.
The idea of Wayland isn't to have another process underpinning X - the idea is to have applications talk directly to Wayland where that makes sense, while the extra features of X can be brought in where they are required.
I remember reading a review of one of the early RTS games that pointed out that they weren't so much strategy games as logistics games; the reviewer predicted the failure of the genre on the basis that everyone wants to play the general, they don't want to play the quartermaster. Obviously, he was wrong, and a lot of people do want to be the quartermaster; but he captured what I've always found so boring about RTSes.
The report linked to here is based on an article in the South China Morning Post - I think it's a fair bet that if a Hong Kong newspaper knows, the Chinese government also knows.
Where's the "Allow people to tag me in photos" privacy option?
Under "Privacy Settings" > "Customize" > "Things others share" > "Photos and videos I'm tagged in"
Not 10 years ago it was perfectly common to be able to post something online and restrict access to only a certain group of people, and no one else would ever see it.
Well, you can still do that with Facebook, so nothing's changed.
"There is one thing of which one can say neither that it is one metre long, nor that it is not one metre long, and that is the standard metre in Paris." - Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations
Unless you have enough story for each plot line to fill an episode with only that plot line, your are screwed. Switching between each plot line in a single hour gets old fast.... Think about the X-Files.
That model worked pretty well in the X-Files, and in lots of other shows, but I don't think it's necessary, and it can backfire - consider, for example, Fringe, in which the backstory is really interesting, but the "monster of the week" structure of most episodes is extremely dull. I read an interview with the BSG creators somewhere, in which they said that Syfy wanted them to make BSG more episodic and less focused on the overall arc, but when they tried this they just made the show less interesting to regular viewers without attracting any more casual viewers; so it makes sense that they've largely dropped that episodic structure for Caprica.
I do think that viewers are becoming more interested in and accepting of shows where the focus is the over-arching story arc: BSG would be one example, another would be Mad Men (The Wire would be an even better example, but probably not the best example to give to a network wanting to make a quick buck); I never watched Lost, but everything I heard about it from fans was about the overall story, not individual episodes. This mode of structuring TV probably fits better with the the internet and on demand (so you can easily catch up on missed episodes) and DVD sales (so you can re-watch the show as a complete work); perhaps the problem is that Syfy aren't factoring this into their calculations of the financial return on the show.
The two implementations are identical.
No, they aren't. There frequent minor differences - the Android code, for instance tends to prefer "for" over "while" loops, some of the Sun methods have a single return statement where the Android code has multiple returns, and a few other things. Given how straightforward the functionality of the class in question is, these kinds of differences are strong evidence that the implementation was made independently.
The relevant citation would be Theodore Jennings's work, particularly The Man Jesus Loved.
The figures are pretty sweet too.
It gets even better if you read further into the patent:
The new computing paradigm of the present invention starts from a new kind of world view: A global economy is emerging with rapid flows of capital, knowledge, products, and competitive pressures. A growing number of companies and industries face new needs to leapfrog their limits and become effective competitors on a global level, transforming their performance, productivity, adaptation, and innovation capabilities. Is it possible for a single leverage point to help fill part of these needs?
This new type of software is defined by its novel purposes: the improvement or fabrication of reality based on its users' ideas and imaginations.
I think someone managed to submit Timecube as a patent application, which is kind of awesome, although it still doesn't explain what it has to do with rollovers.
So the proper analogy here would be the cop pretending to be an old high school buddy to look in your car's trunk, follow you around town all day to see where you go, and gain entrance to your home. All of which is illegal without a warrant, and damn well should be.
No it isn't. The police don't need a warrant to undertake undercover work, which is effectively what this is.
Most of Java SE is now available under the GPL. There is no Java trap any more, and hasn't been for about four years.
They could use JavaSE without paying licensing fees. I'm not entirely sure whether this was true when Android was first being developed, though; Wikipedia says the Android was initially developed by a separate company which was bought by Google in 2005, and at that time JavaSE wasn't open source.
Well, Harmony is released under the Apache license, while OpenJDK is released under the GPL. I don't know if that would make a difference - Android already includes GPLed software, so Google clearly have no objection to the license in general.
But Oracle is claiming that these patents apply to whatever Android is doing now, using Harmony, so I don't see how it would make any difference if Android switched to using OpenJDK instead, as the OP suggests.
Well, try the definition from the OED (temporary link):
PC n. (also pc) personal computer; spec. one that is IBM-compatible.
It's right there at the top of your own link. "For computers generally referred to as 'PCs', see IBM PC compatible."
With the sheer amount of all the pointless stuff there I imagine it's really hard to find those few meaningful tweets unless you know exactly what you're trying to find.
Welcome to the internet.
That's a really nice program. A lot of these minimal text editors are too minimal, dropping genuinely useful semantic styling (italics, block quotes, lists) along with the formatting distractions of word processors; Wordgrinder looks like it gets the balance pretty much right.