I don't see the problem. After five/ten years, GPL'ed software will go to the public domain, for anyone to use for whatever purpose. This together with books/music/whatever for which a copyright renewal is not profitable. With a five year copyright: do you think that it will be a problem to make linux kernel 2.2.7 public domain today? All later versions are still under copyright.
"there's only a 5% chance that your election results will be wrong"
You can even do better: set bounds on the number of vote difference that is considered to be minimal for the difference to be decisive. In France for instance, the presidential election needs to show a 5% difference between the two remaining candidates for the election to be decided. If not, new elections. This is a marked contrast with the 537 votes that differed between B and G. Combine this with random sampling, and you can easily get into the 5 9's for significance of the election result.
As is usual with analogies, we can work around this easily. I buy a car, don't like the Microsoft steering wheel that comes with the car and replace it with a steering wheel that is quite popular for heavy duty driving. Suddenly I'm no longer allowed to listen to my car radio because the Microsoft steering wheel had some licensed software inside, and my linux steering wheel hasn't? And even if this software existed, why the hell would I have to pay for it again?
Well, as far as I know, my dvd-player is indeed licensed. It is just that the damned software that comes with the licensed player does not run under linux. I assume I paid for the license by buying the player, so what's the deal with not being allowed to watch a dvd from my licensed player?
Actually, the maker of the DVD-player I use under linux has already paid the MPAA their movie tax for the windows software that comes with the drive. They just couldn't be bothered with writing a driver for linux. I don't blame the dvd-manufacturer, as why should he cater for linux, bsd, or all other operating systems that can use his hardware. The fact of the matter remains that I did pay the MPAA for a license, simply by buying the drive, it is just that it is worthless on my machine. If there's a free driver, they will not lose out on any money, as the tax has been paid already. Even if there are commercial linux drivers, why should I pay twice, simply because I choose to run a non-dominant OS?
Another possibility: a tribesman climbed a mountain way back in the past, found (like Darwin did) fossils of fish and seashells on top of the mountain, and made the (correct) inductive leap that the mountain was covered with water at some point in history. Unfortunately, the tribesman wasn't aware that mountains can actually grow due to tectonic movements, and that this particular mountain might have started out at the bottom of a sea. He came back from the mountain to his tribe with the story that obviously the entire earth was flooded at some point. A few generations down the line it was God's wrath that flooded the earth, and obviously some guy survived the flood by building a big boat. Without the guy, there's no explanation how anyone but the fish could have survived the experience. And another myth is born.
Correlation does not imply causation indeed. Thing is, with the greenhouse gasses, the causal relationship has been hypothesized years before the correlation started to appear. Now guys like you appear and start to say that this does not imply causation. However, the causation was already hypothesized, the correlation seems to corroborate it.
No the causal relationship has not been proven in something as large as the earth, though a small-scale model does show this effect, namely a simple greenhouse. So there's some evidence that the effect is there, if it scales up is a question indeed, but chances are that it will. This together with the correlation leaves the greenhouse hypothesis with some very strong evidence: both causal and observational. Given the potential consequences of neglecting this effect, it is bordering on the criminal to ignore it.
Sun's java compiler is indeed written in Java. That's why many people prefer to use jikes: a java compiler written in C, about 10 times faster than the one from Sun.
The article might be six years old, but Sun hasn't fixed it in that time. Indeed, one of the guys now works for Sun, but still we will have to wait for java 1.6,7,8,9? to see these problems addressed. No, 1.5 does not address it.
If you concur that this code is bug-free (in the case that the specs say that this program should, in effect, write 'Hello world' to the screen, ending with a newline), it constitutes a counter example of your assertion. QED.
Just wars. Afghanistan was a just war, you will find the majority of Europeans agreeing with that. Iraq wasn't: even with the WMD threat many people considered it a tight call and mostly a smoke-screen to avoid tackling worldwide terrorism. Now that it turns out that even the WMD threat was a bunch of lies, the 'just' war has been unmasked for what it really was: a plan to get a an extra few billion bucks in the hands of the unneedy (read Dick Cheney and friends).
Meanwhile, the Iraqi population is headed towards a few decades of civil war, and muslim terrorism has found a new safe haven. Thanks US, your war on terror has certainly struck at the right place.
So this magical 'java' program you speak of is capable of fixing programming errors? All I can do in C is put a signal handler for a segfault and do some damage control, but you say that this magical stuff called an exception can actually fix such errors in running code?
Right, so how would your java-ssl handle this null-pointer exception that gets thrown due to poor coding? C can handle SIGSEGV as well, but that doesn't mean that there's a recovery path from it.
From my point of view, bundling a media player is not a big deal at all. It's just servicing their customers (albeit at the small price of an extra buck or two for their windows system). What does make a difference is the proprietary formats they ship with the player. No other player gets the specs for that format, so it can become another monopoly for Microsoft: this time in the format at which music is delivered electronically.
So, it's not about media-players, it's about the medium itself: in what format are we going to enjoy our music: Microsoft's?
You're perfectly wrong here: preventing stealing, patent laws, copyright laws, etc. all are completely in contradiction with capitalism. Capitalism in its raw form is wild, completely destructive and will only benefit the strongest arm. For a taste of it, Russia beginning nineties was a good example.
That's why there's a circle of laws around capitalism to prevent the worst abuses: you don't think large corporations wouldn't enforce their own laws at gunpoint if there wasn't a government to contain them? Think again. Anti-trust laws are simply a part of this circle of law that prevents the capitalist companies from actually doing irreparable harm. Capitalism is a wild force that has a couple of good points, yet is completely destructive because it allows the power to flow to the single most successful element. There are no such things as individual rights in a pure capitalist society. Individual rights are socialist babble: a true capitalist only has eye for the capital. You are a commie!
Indeed, this is C++, but can you prove from this snippet that i does not refer to a global variable that g() might tinker with? This is what a compiler has to figure out, and the aliasing problem (which is what the point was about) does not render itself to easy analysis.
Slashdot Mirror
Foolproof way to generate 100% random numbers? Does a geigerteller count?
I don't see the problem. After five/ten years, GPL'ed software will go to the public domain, for anyone to use for whatever purpose. This together with books/music/whatever for which a copyright renewal is not profitable. With a five year copyright: do you think that it will be a problem to make linux kernel 2.2.7 public domain today? All later versions are still under copyright.
Funny guy. Come back when you programmed your GUI program using a GUI. Face it, for complex stuff, nothing beats a (programming) language.
You can even do better: set bounds on the number of vote difference that is considered to be minimal for the difference to be decisive. In France for instance, the presidential election needs to show a 5% difference between the two remaining candidates for the election to be decided. If not, new elections. This is a marked contrast with the 537 votes that differed between B and G. Combine this with random sampling, and you can easily get into the 5 9's for significance of the election result.
As is usual with analogies, we can work around this easily. I buy a car, don't like the Microsoft steering wheel that comes with the car and replace it with a steering wheel that is quite popular for heavy duty driving. Suddenly I'm no longer allowed to listen to my car radio because the Microsoft steering wheel had some licensed software inside, and my linux steering wheel hasn't? And even if this software existed, why the hell would I have to pay for it again?
Well, as far as I know, my dvd-player is indeed licensed. It is just that the damned software that comes with the licensed player does not run under linux. I assume I paid for the license by buying the player, so what's the deal with not being allowed to watch a dvd from my licensed player?
Actually, the maker of the DVD-player I use under linux has already paid the MPAA their movie tax for the windows software that comes with the drive. They just couldn't be bothered with writing a driver for linux. I don't blame the dvd-manufacturer, as why should he cater for linux, bsd, or all other operating systems that can use his hardware.
The fact of the matter remains that I did pay the MPAA for a license, simply by buying the drive, it is just that it is worthless on my machine. If there's a free driver, they will not lose out on any money, as the tax has been paid already. Even if there are commercial linux drivers, why should I pay twice, simply because I choose to run a non-dominant OS?
Another possibility: a tribesman climbed a mountain way back in the past, found (like Darwin did) fossils of fish and seashells on top of the mountain, and made the (correct) inductive leap that the mountain was covered with water at some point in history. Unfortunately, the tribesman wasn't aware that mountains can actually grow due to tectonic movements, and that this particular mountain might have started out at the bottom of a sea. He came back from the mountain to his tribe with the story that obviously the entire earth was flooded at some point. A few generations down the line it was God's wrath that flooded the earth, and obviously some guy survived the flood by building a big boat. Without the guy, there's no explanation how anyone but the fish could have survived the experience. And another myth is born.
No the causal relationship has not been proven in something as large as the earth, though a small-scale model does show this effect, namely a simple greenhouse. So there's some evidence that the effect is there, if it scales up is a question indeed, but chances are that it will. This together with the correlation leaves the greenhouse hypothesis with some very strong evidence: both causal and observational. Given the potential consequences of neglecting this effect, it is bordering on the criminal to ignore it.
So what were you saying about speed again?
Hmmm, on second thought, scrap the above.
Please: find for me the mathematical proof that airplanes can actually fly.
The article might be six years old, but Sun hasn't fixed it in that time. Indeed, one of the guys now works for Sun, but still we will have to wait for java 1.6,7,8,9? to see these problems addressed. No, 1.5 does not address it.
If you concur that this code is bug-free (in the case that the specs say that this program should, in effect, write 'Hello world' to the screen, ending with a newline), it constitutes a counter example of your assertion. QED.
Meanwhile, the Iraqi population is headed towards a few decades of civil war, and muslim terrorism has found a new safe haven. Thanks US, your war on terror has certainly struck at the right place.
Switzerland is not part of the EU. Until last year, Switzerland was not even part of the UN!
Guess they're trying, sigh.
So this magical 'java' program you speak of is capable of fixing programming errors? All I can do in C is put a signal handler for a segfault and do some damage control, but you say that this magical stuff called an exception can actually fix such errors in running code?
Right, so how would your java-ssl handle this null-pointer exception that gets thrown due to poor coding? C can handle SIGSEGV as well, but that doesn't mean that there's a recovery path from it.
So, it's not about media-players, it's about the medium itself: in what format are we going to enjoy our music: Microsoft's?
Ha! Can you imagine the headlines: Microsoft decides to pull out of Europe, stock collapses! Gates and Ballmer in hiding from the SEC..
I would like to hear you again when all content that you can get only runs on WMP.
That's why there's a circle of laws around capitalism to prevent the worst abuses: you don't think large corporations wouldn't enforce their own laws at gunpoint if there wasn't a government to contain them? Think again. Anti-trust laws are simply a part of this circle of law that prevents the capitalist companies from actually doing irreparable harm. Capitalism is a wild force that has a couple of good points, yet is completely destructive because it allows the power to flow to the single most successful element. There are no such things as individual rights in a pure capitalist society. Individual rights are socialist babble: a true capitalist only has eye for the capital. You are a commie!
Indeed, this is C++, but can you prove from this snippet that i does not refer to a global variable that g() might tinker with? This is what a compiler has to figure out, and the aliasing problem (which is what the point was about) does not render itself to easy analysis.