Is it just my perception or are nonsensical judgements like this only being issued in the US? Are similar decisions being handed down in other jurisdictions or is this just the result of electing judges rather than appointing them on the basis of their expertise?
I certainly agree with gfxguy that putting in bells and whistles just because you can is a sure sign of Dispicable, Clueless, Programming Practices. However, there is a place in the Real World for dynamic content.
Example: We have a site on our Intranet where jobs are posted. The practice was the client sent me a WP document from which I would extract the content, format it and then publish. Now, the client goes to a form page where the data is entered into a database. The server then takes that data and constructs the published pages. The savings in work time are (at a minimum) 50%.
Just my 2 cents to remind yez all that there is a place for dynamic content. Just mind what gfxguy was griping about. Don't get so carried away with the Neat Stuff that you screw up the client's experience on your web site.
Tim O'Reilly has written a far better article
on
P2P Piracy? Piffle!
·
· Score: 2
Mr. O'Reilly has just published a book and has an excerpt from it that is 10 times as intelligent and thought provoking than the article referenced above.
The article points out that most of the discussion about peer-to-peer focusses on Napster and Gnutella which pretty well misses the point of P2P entirely.
Well worth the read. (The comparision between the meme-spaces of the Free Software Foundation and the Open Source Initiative are also quite interesting.)
The rule states 4.1.5. The storage and distribution of MP3 format files via the Company network is prohibited. Now IANAL, but if he is only storing and not distributing, then only half of the conditions are there. For the ISP's conditions to be met giving them the legal right to delete the files, they should have to show that distribution is taking place. Without that, I would think that, in nit-picky legal parlance, the owner has a tort.
Unless of course another subclause in the Terms of Service says that mere presence will be taken as proof of distribution.
One thing that is apparent from empiric evidence is that a pre-pubescent human can absorb a new language. But this ability to learn a language instinctively pretty well disappears after puberty hits.
However, if a child has learned more than one language, then the ability to pick up new languages is retained to some extent after puberty.
In other words, if you wish your children to be able to learn new languages, it is best to put them in an immersion class in another language, or get them a foreign nanny while they are still weans. (Sorry, "weans" isn't English, it's Scots for children.;-)
I get a bit exercised about this because as a Canadian, I should be bilingual. However when I was a youth, second language training didn't occur in Manitoba schools until grade 7. My French test scores described an almost perfect parabolic curve - downwards. I don't know why they did this. They also didn't teach anything in mathematics beyond simple addition, subtraction, multiplication and division until grade 8. Then for the next four years algebra, geometry, triginometry, and something else that I cannot for the life of me remember (I think it had something to do with cosines.) was crammed into our poor heads, where it remained only long enough to struggle through the exams.
I think the Dept. of Education (sic) thought children's brains would melt or something if they were overtaxed too soon.
A valid point. However, I remember articles in Analog S&F magazine that one of the advantages of a steam engine over an internal combustion engine was that the former burnt the fuel far more efficiently. IC engines never have a chance to fully burn the fuel because of the short time in the cylynder. The largest problem with the pollution from cars then is all of the wierd byproducts of incomplete combustion.
Hydroelectric power powering the compression engine would, I think, be far less polluting. Not to mention lessening the load on a diminishing, finite fuel supply.
If you spell it 'email', then according to the rules of phonetics, you would pronounce it "ehmayl" (short e). But if you spell it 'e-mail', then, because it is separated, the 'e' is pronounced as a long vowel; thus, "eemayl".
(And please don't complain to me about all the English words that don't follow the rules of phonetics. English is a mongrel language, and some older words bring the phonetics of their source language with them. New words should however follow the phonetic rules so we have a reasonable chance of pronouncing them correctly when we first come across them.)
Unfortunately, school boards in Canada and the US (and for all I know in Great Britain and Oz too) still refuse to teach phonetics it seems, so I'm not surprised to see these tempest-in-a-teacup debates arising now and then.
Now if we could only get the community to discern the difference between "lose" and "loose"!
Everyone seems to think that the objective of this project is to beat a human driver in a normal race. Which has led most slashdotters to correctly assume that it's just too damn dangerous for words because there are too many variables to be able to avoid a crash.
But suppose the projects definition of "beating a human driver" were to mean only "getting a car around a race track faster than the wetware controller can." If the "race" were separate time trials (i.e. on an empty track), then this prject is not as totally insane as it would appear at first glance.
If anyone wants to take a moral stance, I think "Good for him." -- even if I disagree with him.
However, I think it is a grevious error to think that a function of government is to impose a moral standard on the community. Your morals may clash with my morals. Whose should prevail? And remember one of the most important indicators of the quality of a democracy lies in how it treats its minorities.
On the other hand, I believe that governments may, and should, promot an ethical standard. Some people prefer accepting a moral standard. It's so much easier than ethics where instead of just following the rules, you have to make judgments.
If I read this correctly, only some versions of PGP have this problem with the ADKs. So does anyone know which ones have this problem? Or (better) which ones don't have this problem.
And am I correct in my assumption that PGP remains OK as long as you don't create an ADK? Or am I misreading the message?
As to it being a stupid idea, I have to disagree. There are cases where it is important to allow someone else access to the data. For example, in business affairs. If the holder of say the secret ingredients to Drambuie (nectar of the Gods, yum, yum!) had the recipe encrypted and suddenly dropped dead, what then? If the only copy is encrypted and no-one else has the key, then the recipe is lost and the company folds.
In the report Miguel complains about the lack of reusable code which lead to the wheel being reinvented all the time. "A number of obviously common services (printer configuration and use was a favorite example) had been completely reimplemented for each application."
As I remember the Next OS, badly written as their code was (see the Fuzz report - it's mentioned in ESR's "Halloween Report')(I'd give the URL but our net nanny has blocked Eric's site today. Probably because the word 'hacker; appears.), it had this part right. Printing was provided by the OS. Programs called the printer object to get printing done.
Which reminds me, how is GNUstep - the NeXTlike GUI for Linux - doing? (Opens a browser window and checks.) Hmm. Progressing but not all that fast. Looks like they are working on Mac OSX compatibility. (?!?) Frankly if I could cut code with any facility (last time I was programming, it was dBase IV), I'd be helping there. The Next OS was a boon to programmers as fas as I could tell. All my firends who did programming for it found it a dream, and very quick.
Geez man! "Woz wuz great but what has he done lately?" That attitude irritates me.
Lots of people do something stunning in their lives and then nothing really after that. Take Einstein. His great theory (of which e=Mc^2 is part) was developed in his youth. He himself said that the rest of his life was spent trying unsuccessfully to resolve the problems with the theory.
So, by your standards, Einstein wasn't any great shakes because he never came up with any new ideas after the first one.
If I were Penenburg, I don't think I'd trust Forbes either.
Look at the situation. The government wants him to testify "that his story is true". So they just want him to come in course and testify,"Yup, the story I wrote is true," and then the prosecutor will say, "Thank you Mr. Penenburg. You may step down now."
????!
Is it just me or does anyone else think that this is a highly unlikely scenario? Does anyone else think it far more likely once they have him on the stand that they will be throwing other questions at him? I suspect that Mr. P's mind is running along the same tracks as mine.
As to the Lawyer Thing: Forbes hires a lawyer. Since Forbes is paying him, the lawyer will in a case where the best interests of Mr. P and Forbes differ, the lawyer will act in the interests of
Mr. Penenburg, or
Forbes who pays the bills
Yeah, I thought so too. Mr. Penenburg would be a imbecile not to have a lawyer of his own.
First off, I've been working with computers since punch cards, so I'm not a complete novice.
On the other hand I never learned Assembler, so I'm lost when it gets down among the silicon.
I actually went to the author's site and read a couple of chapters. (Something that most of the people responding to this book review seem not to have done.)
Conclusion I'm a gonna buy the book. Why? Because it does get down into the nitty-gritty of registers, and different types of memory and addressing that, frankly, most books on programming seem to assume that you know all about.
I admit it. I'm ignorant about these thing, and I think this book will help me learn about them.
But I still think The Book To Buy is "The Pragmatic Programmer" recently reviewed here!
In the bookdealers world, the larger, better quality paperbacks are called "trades" and, yes, they normally sell for a higher price than the more cheaply made paperbacks.
I'm not picking on Alex here, other posters have made this point too: "But it's Slo-o-oow!" "We don't have the time!"
Surely you are all familiar with the mantra, "There's never enough time to make it really right, but there's always time to fix it."
Frankly the Shuttle Group works right is because it plans before it starts to code. Good planning prevents mistakes that have to be fixed later. Note also that unplanned changes normally = introduction of chaos. I've been programming since punched cards and all the good books on programming and system design warn against jumping into the coding before finishing the design. Yet time and again, I've been whacking out the code before the specs are really finished. (We say they are finished, but the number of changes that have to be made prove us to be liars.)
My experience, and from what I've read, proper planning rarely extends the length of the project. The difference is that more time is spent on the planning, and *less* time on coding and a *lot* less time on debugging. Spend enough time on planning too, and you get rid of the bulk of last-minute changes from the client. If you find out what the client wants before you start coding, then you're a lot less likely to receive change requests when you're deep in the code.
It is, of course, a management issue. Managers are generally the ones who set the schedule. But the programming staff have a responsibility - if they really want to think of themselves as competent professionals - to fight against foolish deadlines and a rush to code.
We also don't follow good programming practices IMNSHO. I've just been reading "The Pragmatic Programmer" and I strongly suggest you all *run* out and get your own copy imeedjutment! This is a book I wish to The Maker I'd had to read back in college days. This book talks about good programming practices - which is something that is rarely discussed in any detail.
Which is why there is so much crappy code out there. (And I include my own, alas.)
We support about 350 clients on an NT LAN. We have two sysops, one web developer for the intranet, one chief (a techie), one manager (a suit - but intelligent withal), and 5 support staff.
He said that at the Library of Congress, the focus is to provide "an example of the good." In contrast, if the government gets into "defining the bad, you get onto the slippery slope of defining the bad."
Geez, I thought that was what American government was already in the business of doing? Heck it's what he's doing when he talks about how bad it is to (snicker) read books (Oh, hee, hoo!) online! (BWAAHAHAHAHAH!!)
(Wiping eyes) Oh dearie me! (Hehehe.) Anyway . ..
How about this definition of bad? A bad librarian is one who believes it's his business to restrict the disemination on information.
I can agree with your opinion about "The Cat Who Walks Through Walls" but I wouldn't take it as a good example of his work. His early works are a whale of a lot of fun.
TCWWTW was one of the books written after he'd had a stroke and IMHO, none of the books he wrote after that were much fun. (Although, when SF is being studied in University, they will make great books for someone working on his PhD in Speculative Fiction full of self references as they are.)
For a better view of old Robbie, read "Starship Troopers" or "Glory Road". The latter is a great adult male fairly tale. The first is often misread as a paean to facism. I think that's not fair and a misreading. It is more about the responsibility a voting citizen should exercise, and anyway, it's just *speculative* fiction, i.e. "what if..." People often claim that this book suggested that the only way to get voting privileges was to join the military. Which is an exmple of how people can misread his books. The novel clearly states - on more than one occasion - that all that was required to gain a vote was "Public Service" such as military, fire department, forestry, amulance service, etc.
Which why old Rob often wrote, "I am amazed at how many people are unable to read simple, declarative sentences!" (Anyone who has worked a support desk wouldn't be surprised.)
Anyway, try some of his earlier books before you give up on him. He was occasionaly annoying but I still like to reread the earlier works from time to time.
Secondly, I would suggest that every US voter sends the above URL to every politician that he votes for, with a suggestion that his rep read the story. End your polite message with, "I shall be watching your response to this situation with some interest."
Votes are what count to an office holder. It's the best way for an individual to influence a politician.
Don't know enough about the technology to answer the questions posited. However, it sure looks like his hearts in the right place.
I hope he intends it to be free to any free/Open Source version of Unix.
I can't think of any problems with the concept, but I'd really have to look at the wording before I would make up my mind on whether or not this is really a Good Thing.
Just to clarify, profit may be the only reason you are working, but it isn't the reason that a business succeeds.
A business exists in order to serve the needs or desires of a market segment. (First year any Bus. Admin. course) Nobody buys your product because they want to help you make money. They couldn't care less if you go bankrupt provided it doesn't cause them any problems.
So, IMNSHO I would agree with the previous poster, "If profit is your sole goal, do not open a business" because if you do, then your first competitor who cares more than you do about how to serve the market segment is gonna wipe yer ass big time!
Umm, the way I've read history was that the first real impetus (impetii?) to colonization of the Americas were beaver hats (i.e. the fur trade), gold (Central and South America) and Sugar (Carribean) and spices. Or, in a single word, profit!
To a large extent, the Americas were to the 16th and 18th century European the equivalent of our Dot Com madness. And, I suspect we will see much the same pattern. Early birds - many of whom lose their shirts/lives. Then comes the Fad and everybody buys in. The Bubble(s) Burst - see last year. Compare to the South Sea Bubble or Scotland's Darien Adventure. After which things shake out and the real business commences - which doesn't after all have such huge profit margins as first imagined.
So the way to space is to make people think that there is Lots of Moolah to be Made by the First Ones There!!
Maybe the discovery of five pound diamonds on Mars?
Slashdot Mirror
Is it just my perception or are nonsensical judgements like this only being issued in the US? Are similar decisions being handed down in other jurisdictions or is this just the result of electing judges rather than appointing them on the basis of their expertise?
Example: We have a site on our Intranet where jobs are posted. The practice was the client sent me a WP document from which I would extract the content, format it and then publish. Now, the client goes to a form page where the data is entered into a database. The server then takes that data and constructs the published pages. The savings in work time are (at a minimum) 50%.
Just my 2 cents to remind yez all that there is a place for dynamic content. Just mind what gfxguy was griping about. Don't get so carried away with the Neat Stuff that you screw up the client's experience on your web site.
The article points out that most of the discussion about peer-to-peer focusses on Napster and Gnutella which pretty well misses the point of P2P entirely.
Well worth the read. (The comparision between the meme-spaces of the Free Software Foundation and the Open Source Initiative are also quite interesting.)
Unless of course another subclause in the Terms of Service says that mere presence will be taken as proof of distribution.
However, if a child has learned more than one language, then the ability to pick up new languages is retained to some extent after puberty.
In other words, if you wish your children to be able to learn new languages, it is best to put them in an immersion class in another language, or get them a foreign nanny while they are still weans. (Sorry, "weans" isn't English, it's Scots for children. ;-)
I get a bit exercised about this because as a Canadian, I should be bilingual. However when I was a youth, second language training didn't occur in Manitoba schools until grade 7. My French test scores described an almost perfect parabolic curve - downwards. I don't know why they did this. They also didn't teach anything in mathematics beyond simple addition, subtraction, multiplication and division until grade 8. Then for the next four years algebra, geometry, triginometry, and something else that I cannot for the life of me remember (I think it had something to do with cosines.) was crammed into our poor heads, where it remained only long enough to struggle through the exams.
I think the Dept. of Education (sic) thought children's brains would melt or something if they were overtaxed too soon.
Sigh, sigh.
Hydroelectric power powering the compression engine would, I think, be far less polluting. Not to mention lessening the load on a diminishing, finite fuel supply.
I not from The Universal Currency Converter(TM) that the selling price of 65,000 rand is only Cdn$12,960.82.
I want one!
(And please don't complain to me about all the English words that don't follow the rules of phonetics. English is a mongrel language, and some older words bring the phonetics of their source language with them. New words should however follow the phonetic rules so we have a reasonable chance of pronouncing them correctly when we first come across them.)
Unfortunately, school boards in Canada and the US (and for all I know in Great Britain and Oz too) still refuse to teach phonetics it seems, so I'm not surprised to see these tempest-in-a-teacup debates arising now and then.
Now if we could only get the community to discern the difference between "lose" and "loose"!
But suppose the projects definition of "beating a human driver" were to mean only "getting a car around a race track faster than the wetware controller can." If the "race" were separate time trials (i.e. on an empty track), then this prject is not as totally insane as it would appear at first glance.
However, I think it is a grevious error to think that a function of government is to impose a moral standard on the community. Your morals may clash with my morals. Whose should prevail? And remember one of the most important indicators of the quality of a democracy lies in how it treats its minorities.
On the other hand, I believe that governments may, and should, promot an ethical standard. Some people prefer accepting a moral standard. It's so much easier than ethics where instead of just following the rules, you have to make judgments.
And am I correct in my assumption that PGP remains OK as long as you don't create an ADK? Or am I misreading the message?
As to it being a stupid idea, I have to disagree. There are cases where it is important to allow someone else access to the data. For example, in business affairs. If the holder of say the secret ingredients to Drambuie (nectar of the Gods, yum, yum!) had the recipe encrypted and suddenly dropped dead, what then? If the only copy is encrypted and no-one else has the key, then the recipe is lost and the company folds.
As I remember the Next OS, badly written as their code was (see the Fuzz report - it's mentioned in ESR's "Halloween Report')(I'd give the URL but our net nanny has blocked Eric's site today. Probably because the word 'hacker; appears.), it had this part right. Printing was provided by the OS. Programs called the printer object to get printing done.
Which reminds me, how is GNUstep - the NeXTlike GUI for Linux - doing? (Opens a browser window and checks.) Hmm. Progressing but not all that fast. Looks like they are working on Mac OSX compatibility. (?!?) Frankly if I could cut code with any facility (last time I was programming, it was dBase IV), I'd be helping there. The Next OS was a boon to programmers as fas as I could tell. All my firends who did programming for it found it a dream, and very quick.
So why didn't it fly?
Lots of people do something stunning in their lives and then nothing really after that. Take Einstein. His great theory (of which e=Mc^2 is part) was developed in his youth. He himself said that the rest of his life was spent trying unsuccessfully to resolve the problems with the theory.
So, by your standards, Einstein wasn't any great shakes because he never came up with any new ideas after the first one.
Sheesh!
E-Bay is being totally daft as are all the other litigants who go running to the courts to cut off competition.
Look at the situation. The government wants him to testify "that his story is true". So they just want him to come in course and testify,"Yup, the story I wrote is true," and then the prosecutor will say, "Thank you Mr. Penenburg. You may step down now."
????!
Is it just me or does anyone else think that this is a highly unlikely scenario? Does anyone else think it far more likely once they have him on the stand that they will be throwing other questions at him? I suspect that Mr. P's mind is running along the same tracks as mine.
As to the Lawyer Thing:
Forbes hires a lawyer. Since Forbes is paying him, the lawyer will in a case where the best interests of Mr. P and Forbes differ, the lawyer will act in the interests of
- Mr. Penenburg, or
- Forbes who pays the bills
Yeah, I thought so too. Mr. Penenburg would be a imbecile not to have a lawyer of his own.- First off, I've been working with computers since punch cards, so I'm not a complete novice.
- On the other hand I never learned Assembler, so I'm lost when it gets down among the silicon.
- I actually went to the author's site and read a couple of chapters. (Something that most of the people responding to this book review seem not to have done.)
ConclusionI'm a gonna buy the book. Why? Because it does get down into the nitty-gritty of registers, and different types of memory and addressing that, frankly, most books on programming seem to assume that you know all about.
I admit it. I'm ignorant about these thing, and I think this book will help me learn about them.
But I still think The Book To Buy is "The Pragmatic Programmer" recently reviewed here!
There was a typo in the URL. The site (which is a British company) is QuietPC
In the bookdealers world, the larger, better quality paperbacks are called "trades" and, yes, they normally sell for a higher price than the more cheaply made paperbacks.
Surely you are all familiar with the mantra, "There's never enough time to make it really right, but there's always time to fix it."
Frankly the Shuttle Group works right is because it plans before it starts to code. Good planning prevents mistakes that have to be fixed later. Note also that unplanned changes normally = introduction of chaos. I've been programming since punched cards and all the good books on programming and system design warn against jumping into the coding before finishing the design. Yet time and again, I've been whacking out the code before the specs are really finished. (We say they are finished, but the number of changes that have to be made prove us to be liars.)
My experience, and from what I've read, proper planning rarely extends the length of the project. The difference is that more time is spent on the planning, and *less* time on coding and a *lot* less time on debugging. Spend enough time on planning too, and you get rid of the bulk of last-minute changes from the client. If you find out what the client wants before you start coding, then you're a lot less likely to receive change requests when you're deep in the code.
It is, of course, a management issue. Managers are generally the ones who set the schedule. But the programming staff have a responsibility - if they really want to think of themselves as competent professionals - to fight against foolish deadlines and a rush to code.
We also don't follow good programming practices IMNSHO. I've just been reading "The Pragmatic Programmer" and I strongly suggest you all *run* out and get your own copy imeedjutment! This is a book I wish to The Maker I'd had to read back in college days. This book talks about good programming practices - which is something that is rarely discussed in any detail.
Which is why there is so much crappy code out there. (And I include my own, alas.)
We support about 350 clients on an NT LAN. We have two sysops, one web developer for the intranet, one chief (a techie), one manager (a suit - but intelligent withal), and 5 support staff.
Geez, I thought that was what American government was already in the business of doing? Heck it's what he's doing when he talks about how bad it is to (snicker) read books (Oh, hee, hoo!) online! (BWAAHAHAHAHAH!!)
(Wiping eyes) Oh dearie me! (Hehehe.) Anyway . . .
How about this definition of bad? A bad librarian is one who believes it's his business to restrict the disemination on information.
TCWWTW was one of the books written after he'd had a stroke and IMHO, none of the books he wrote after that were much fun. (Although, when SF is being studied in University, they will make great books for someone working on his PhD in Speculative Fiction full of self references as they are.)
For a better view of old Robbie, read "Starship Troopers" or "Glory Road". The latter is a great adult male fairly tale. The first is often misread as a paean to facism. I think that's not fair and a misreading. It is more about the responsibility a voting citizen should exercise, and anyway, it's just *speculative* fiction, i.e. "what if..." People often claim that this book suggested that the only way to get voting privileges was to join the military. Which is an exmple of how people can misread his books. The novel clearly states - on more than one occasion - that all that was required to gain a vote was "Public Service" such as military, fire department, forestry, amulance service, etc.
Which why old Rob often wrote, "I am amazed at how many people are unable to read simple, declarative sentences!" (Anyone who has worked a support desk wouldn't be surprised.)
Anyway, try some of his earlier books before you give up on him. He was occasionaly annoying but I still like to reread the earlier works from time to time.
http://www.andovernews.com/cgi-bin/news_column.pl? 533
Secondly, I would suggest that every US voter sends the above URL to every politician that he votes for, with a suggestion that his rep read the story. End your polite message with, "I shall be watching your response to this situation with some interest."
Votes are what count to an office holder. It's the best way for an individual to influence a politician.
I hope he intends it to be free to any free/Open Source version of Unix.
I can't think of any problems with the concept, but I'd really have to look at the wording before I would make up my mind on whether or not this is really a Good Thing.
A business exists in order to serve the needs or desires of a market segment. (First year any Bus. Admin. course) Nobody buys your product because they want to help you make money. They couldn't care less if you go bankrupt provided it doesn't cause them any problems.
So, IMNSHO I would agree with the previous poster, "If profit is your sole goal, do not open a business" because if you do, then your first competitor who cares more than you do about how to serve the market segment is gonna wipe yer ass big time!
To a large extent, the Americas were to the 16th and 18th century European the equivalent of our Dot Com madness. And, I suspect we will see much the same pattern. Early birds - many of whom lose their shirts/lives. Then comes the Fad and everybody buys in. The Bubble(s) Burst - see last year. Compare to the South Sea Bubble or Scotland's Darien Adventure. After which things shake out and the real business commences - which doesn't after all have such huge profit margins as first imagined.
So the way to space is to make people think that there is Lots of Moolah to be Made by the First Ones There!!
Maybe the discovery of five pound diamonds on Mars?