The Real Heroes of Telemark [was] quite interesting
You should also consider reading (if you can find a copy) Skis Against the Atom by Knut Haukelid, who was one of the participants in the attack on the Telemark heavy water plant. I found it a very enlightening book.
Based on what people posted for the Jammie Thomas $1.92 million settlement article, opinions will likely be divided into these different viewpoints:
1. Atari should pay 3x the retail cost of the GPL code. 3 x $0 = $0
Actually, the retail cost of GPL code is "you give us your source code changes back, including a way of building the software and making it run". I think the ScummVM authors would be more than happy with just 1x this.
2. It's only copyright which should be abolished anyways, no harm no foul
This is a fringe opinion on slashdot, held by maybe 1% of users. A lot of us would argue for shorter copyright terms, but few for an absolute abolition.
3. Code wants to be free, man... why is the GPL holding it back?
The code that isn't free is the modified version of ScummVM that runs on the Wii. A lot of would like to have a hold of that, for many reasons. We really want it to be free.
Considering SCUMM is a virtual machine, wouldn't the files being interpreted by SCUMM be considered data rather than code? I'm not aware of any terms in the GPL which require the authors of a data file that's read by GPL'd software to release that data under the terms of the GPL.
That's not really the point. The point is SCUMM must have been ported to the Wii platform. This process will have included adding a step to its build process that signs it with a key authorised to run on the Wii. Under the GPL terms, this _must_ be released along with the rest of the source code.
Nintendo wants to prevent leakage of information about the Wii hardware that people can use to hack the machine. Of course, the Wii has already been throughly hacked and so it's just corporate doublethink to pretend it hasn't.
No, what they want to prevent is more serious than information about hardware. You see, to make code run, you need a signing key. They'll be required to distribute this with the source code under the GPL, because otherwise you can't compile new software.
Horse status: bolted. Would you like me to close the stable door?
(Obviously, the reason for nintendo refusing to distribute open source software on their platform is that it may also _requires_ them to distribute a toolchain for the platform, including signing keys etc as required to get code to run. Anyone who has already purchased one of these games, or who receives a copy from someone who has, has the right to demand this now.)
Last time I checked, Computer Science has been around since way before the 1960's.
Yes, but prior to that the concept of a default was likely unnecessary. At least until the 1950s, most software developed was pretty-much single purpose, and configuration options weren't really necessary. Data entry was typically performed using punched cards/tape, so a user-interface default is something that didn't apply, either.
Doesn't default in English also mean "to go bankrupt"? Someone defaulting on the credit you extend to him means he won't pay it back?
Somehow that usage of "default" always confused me
Think of it this way: a default is what happens if you don't do anything. In terms of credit, you don't pay it back if you don't take steps to pay it. In terms of a computer application you get the programmer's guesses as to what you're most likely to want to happen if you don't set it up to your own requirements.
DMCA can be used to quickly shut down this leech sites
The alternative, in countries that don't have a statutary notification scheme, is a court order. These are relatively easy to get, the only disadvantage being they cost money upfront that you may not be able to get back if you can't trace the identity of the leech. While this is a disadvantage, I am of the opinion that "no punishment without judicial oversight" is a good maxim for how stuff like this should work. DMCA notification is too easy to abuse.
Why store the same data on multiple machines? Just mount a shared drive and read/write to/from it.
Because the performance of this approach leaves a little bit to be desired for some I/O intensive operations. But you can work around this:
- Some such applications can be run on your fileserver - Others may be ideal candidates for a subversion repository stored on the fileserver. Compiling large C/C++ programs is one of these; typically it involves accessing a _lot_ of small files, which has very poor performance over network file shares. But subversion makes it work just fine.
What about running a credit check on yourself (costs ~$12) and presenting them a copy of it (maybe with the non-essential details redacted)?
The carrier may be insuring themselves against losses from non-paying customers. The insurers will probably require them to carry out the credit check themselves as a due diligence requirement.
I'm not convinced it is, actually. My statistics above were from support work my company has done for numerous clients, mostly small/medium enterprises. They present a quite different picture to yours, yet I'd wager the market they're a sample of is a substantially larger one than the market your stats are a sample of; yours are, of course, more reliable for the market segment, as I imagine they're virtually a census of keen windows gamers.
If I had bought the hard copy of the newspaper, I would at least have proof that there was in fact an earlier version of the story, but relying on the net is foolish.
Or you could have subscribed to one of the many web sites that maintain archives of newspaper articles indefinitely.
There is no reason why those same books couldn't be available in a digital format on the internet (except lack of reliable DRM), but you'd still have to pay for them.
Indeed. While Petzold's book isn't available, this is probably due to it being somewhat outdated now, the last edition having been released in 1998. Few people are programming to the Win32 API these days, but rather using a framework on top of it (e.g. MFC or.NET). The.NET equivalent and the Perl book are both available.
This is simply not true for things like web browsing. How are you going to "recompute" a web page the user visited 10 minutes ago? The only way to make going back to that page fast is to cache it. RAM is a fine way of caching things.
There are a variety of tradeoffs possible. Do we:
1 Just store the original HTML/compressed images? This was Netscape's original solution, and works reasonably well. 2 Store parsed HTML, to prevent a reparse stage being necessary when redisplaying the page? 3 Store uncompressed images, to prevent decompression being necessary when redisplaying the page? 4 Store the DOM and layout information, to prevent relayout being necessary when redisplaying the page? 5 Store an image of the page as it was shown to the user with their browser size/settings as they were when it was last shown?
Each of these successively takes less cpu time but uses more memory than the previous. Firefox does the latter, and I'm not at all convinced that is the right point in the tradeoff. Redrawing the page image from the DOM should take only a few milliseconds. Recalculating the DOM and layout is more intensive, but still not likely to take long. I'm not sure which of 3 or 4 I think is best, but I suspect it is one of those. Although even 2 is worth considering, as it is a substantial memory saving compared to 3, and probably wouldn't take too long.
When I was doing real time stuff many years ago (when memory was a limited as hell and the CPU chugged along like a snail), calculations were never recomputed... given the tradeoff between memory use and CPU use (for recalculations) guess which one (it took a few cycles to check if a value was available to fetch opposed to a few hundred to calculate the value).
Whereas modern desktop CPUs can typically execute somewhere between 2 and 3 instructions per CPU cycle and a single non-cached memory access will likely invoke latencies of around 10 bus cycles, with each bus cycle being somewhere between 6 and 10 CPU cycles -- that few cycles/hundred cycle tradeoff suddenly looks less clear cut.
If you can rely on the cached value being in CPU cache, then it's almost always a win. Otherwise, count how many instructions you need to calculate it: it may actually be faster to run up to about 300 instructions than going out to system memory to read it. You can calculate a lot of stuff in 300 instructions.
I'm also not sure why ram is something that is worried about anymore. I don't find it important that firefox only uses 300mb or so of my 4GB.
That's nice for you.
An average user's system at the moment probably has les than 1GB of RAM; 512MB and 1GB (running on WinXP) are the most common configurations right now. 300MB on a 512MB system is intolerable for something that's basically a background process most people leave running all the time. It's barely acceptable on 1GB. I find that kind of usage tolerable on my 1.5GB system, but I often see Firefox with 500MB usage or even more (and I run flashblock, so I doubt it's flash that's responsible).
Basically, I would rather have faster software that takes advantage of the memory that I use, then slower software that avoids using it.
On a system high-end enough for 4GB RAM (i.e., you're presumably running on a 64 bit processor, and I would hope are using a 64 bit OS to go with it), I sincerely doubt you spend much (if any) time waiting for your browser to calculate stuff that could be readily accelerated by using extra memory. Chances are the only thing you ever wait for with your browser are slow javascripts and/or flash applications to run. It's irrelevant that the browser's cacheing an uncompressed copy of the images from the last 10 pages you viewed, because it would probably take your system less time to uncompress them from its compressed cache than it would for your monitor to update to show them.
Unless you're driving a car that already uses regenerative braking
True. If you're one of the 0.3%* of people who drive an electric vehicle, you may lose out.
*: Estimated based on most recently available sales figures, those for 2006, in which 54,000 electric vehicles were sold in Europe compared to 15.4 million cars overall. Later years may have had higher proportions electric, but earlier years undoubtedly had lower and those cars are mostly still on the road.
the Tata Nano, the world's cheapest car, has a crappy little engine producing 33 horsepower
Yes, but it only manages this at peak output, which is at 5250rpm (i.e. much higher revs than you would use in normal driving). In normal use, even if you put your foot flat to the floor (which you're unlikely to do much of the time) you'll probably only get about 15-20 HP. This is why electric cars are a much better comparison.
Slashdot Mirror
The Real Heroes of Telemark [was] quite interesting
You should also consider reading (if you can find a copy) Skis Against the Atom by Knut Haukelid, who was one of the participants in the attack on the Telemark heavy water plant. I found it a very enlightening book.
Is this free as in beer?
Better than that -- free as in lunch.
Based on what people posted for the Jammie Thomas $1.92 million settlement article, opinions will likely be divided into these different viewpoints:
1. Atari should pay 3x the retail cost of the GPL code. 3 x $0 = $0
Actually, the retail cost of GPL code is "you give us your source code changes back, including a way of building the software and making it run". I think the ScummVM authors would be more than happy with just 1x this.
2. It's only copyright which should be abolished anyways, no harm no foul
This is a fringe opinion on slashdot, held by maybe 1% of users. A lot of us would argue for shorter copyright terms, but few for an absolute abolition.
3. Code wants to be free, man... why is the GPL holding it back?
The code that isn't free is the modified version of ScummVM that runs on the Wii. A lot of would like to have a hold of that, for many reasons. We really want it to be free.
Considering SCUMM is a virtual machine, wouldn't the files being interpreted by SCUMM be considered data rather than code? I'm not aware of any terms in the GPL which require the authors of a data file that's read by GPL'd software to release that data under the terms of the GPL.
That's not really the point. The point is SCUMM must have been ported to the Wii platform. This process will have included adding a step to its build process that signs it with a key authorised to run on the Wii. Under the GPL terms, this _must_ be released along with the rest of the source code.
Nintendo wants to prevent leakage of information about the Wii hardware that people can use to hack the machine. Of course, the Wii has already been throughly hacked and so it's just corporate doublethink to pretend it hasn't.
No, what they want to prevent is more serious than information about hardware. You see, to make code run, you need a signing key. They'll be required to distribute this with the source code under the GPL, because otherwise you can't compile new software.
Horse status: bolted.
Would you like me to close the stable door?
(Obviously, the reason for nintendo refusing to distribute open source software on their platform is that it may also _requires_ them to distribute a toolchain for the platform, including signing keys etc as required to get code to run. Anyone who has already purchased one of these games, or who receives a copy from someone who has, has the right to demand this now.)
Last time I checked, Computer Science has been around since way before the 1960's.
Yes, but prior to that the concept of a default was likely unnecessary. At least until the 1950s, most software developed was pretty-much single purpose, and configuration options weren't really necessary. Data entry was typically performed using punched cards/tape, so a user-interface default is something that didn't apply, either.
I know this is going to start a brushfire:
ORIGINAL SIN.
Erm... I'm not Christian, but as I understand it Original Sin was an intentional act, and therefore cannot in any way be considered a default.
Doesn't default in English also mean "to go bankrupt"? Someone defaulting on the credit you extend to him means he won't pay it back?
Somehow that usage of "default" always confused me
Think of it this way: a default is what happens if you don't do anything. In terms of credit, you don't pay it back if you don't take steps to pay it. In terms of a computer application you get the programmer's guesses as to what you're most likely to want to happen if you don't set it up to your own requirements.
JX, a java operating system that does what their patent covers, was in development long before they filed that patent application.
DMCA can be used to quickly shut down this leech sites
The alternative, in countries that don't have a statutary notification scheme, is a court order. These are relatively easy to get, the only disadvantage being they cost money upfront that you may not be able to get back if you can't trace the identity of the leech. While this is a disadvantage, I am of the opinion that "no punishment without judicial oversight" is a good maxim for how stuff like this should work. DMCA notification is too easy to abuse.
Offtopic: the underline on your subject line makes it look like a happy cat. That's kind-of cool. :)
Why store the same data on multiple machines? Just mount a shared drive and read/write to/from it.
Because the performance of this approach leaves a little bit to be desired for some I/O intensive operations. But you can work around this:
- Some such applications can be run on your fileserver
- Others may be ideal candidates for a subversion repository stored on the fileserver. Compiling large C/C++ programs is one of these; typically it involves accessing a _lot_ of small files, which has very poor performance over network file shares. But subversion makes it work just fine.
What about running a credit check on yourself (costs ~$12) and presenting them a copy of it (maybe with the non-essential details redacted)?
The carrier may be insuring themselves against losses from non-paying customers. The insurers will probably require them to carry out the credit check themselves as a due diligence requirement.
Its worth more than guessing.
I'm not convinced it is, actually. My statistics above were from support work my company has done for numerous clients, mostly small/medium enterprises. They present a quite different picture to yours, yet I'd wager the market they're a sample of is a substantially larger one than the market your stats are a sample of; yours are, of course, more reliable for the market segment, as I imagine they're virtually a census of keen windows gamers.
WOOSH! Missed the point. What's to stop someone from editing one of those "reliable" archives?
What's to stop somebody faking a copy of an old newspaper? Sure, it's harder, but still possible.
If I had bought the hard copy of the newspaper, I would at least have proof that there was in fact an earlier version of the story, but relying on the net is foolish.
Or you could have subscribed to one of the many web sites that maintain archives of newspaper articles indefinitely.
There is no reason why those same books couldn't be available in a digital format on the internet (except lack of reliable DRM), but you'd still have to pay for them.
Indeed. While Petzold's book isn't available, this is probably due to it being somewhat outdated now, the last edition having been released in 1998. Few people are programming to the Win32 API these days, but rather using a framework on top of it (e.g. MFC or .NET). The .NET equivalent and the Perl book are both available.
This is simply not true for things like web browsing. How are you going to "recompute" a web page the user visited 10 minutes ago? The only way to make going back to that page fast is to cache it. RAM is a fine way of caching things.
There are a variety of tradeoffs possible. Do we:
1 Just store the original HTML/compressed images? This was Netscape's original solution, and works reasonably well.
2 Store parsed HTML, to prevent a reparse stage being necessary when redisplaying the page?
3 Store uncompressed images, to prevent decompression being necessary when redisplaying the page?
4 Store the DOM and layout information, to prevent relayout being necessary when redisplaying the page?
5 Store an image of the page as it was shown to the user with their browser size/settings as they were when it was last shown?
Each of these successively takes less cpu time but uses more memory than the previous. Firefox does the latter, and I'm not at all convinced that is the right point in the tradeoff. Redrawing the page image from the DOM should take only a few milliseconds. Recalculating the DOM and layout is more intensive, but still not likely to take long. I'm not sure which of 3 or 4 I think is best, but I suspect it is one of those. Although even 2 is worth considering, as it is a substantial memory saving compared to 3, and probably wouldn't take too long.
When I was doing real time stuff many years ago (when memory was a limited as hell and the CPU chugged along like a snail), calculations were never recomputed... given the tradeoff between memory use and CPU use (for recalculations) guess which one (it took a few cycles to check if a value was available to fetch opposed to a few hundred to calculate the value).
Whereas modern desktop CPUs can typically execute somewhere between 2 and 3 instructions per CPU cycle and a single non-cached memory access will likely invoke latencies of around 10 bus cycles, with each bus cycle being somewhere between 6 and 10 CPU cycles -- that few cycles/hundred cycle tradeoff suddenly looks less clear cut.
If you can rely on the cached value being in CPU cache, then it's almost always a win. Otherwise, count how many instructions you need to calculate it: it may actually be faster to run up to about 300 instructions than going out to system memory to read it. You can calculate a lot of stuff in 300 instructions.
I'm also not sure why ram is something that is worried about anymore. I don't find it important that firefox only uses 300mb or so of my 4GB.
That's nice for you.
An average user's system at the moment probably has les than 1GB of RAM; 512MB and 1GB (running on WinXP) are the most common configurations right now. 300MB on a 512MB system is intolerable for something that's basically a background process most people leave running all the time. It's barely acceptable on 1GB. I find that kind of usage tolerable on my 1.5GB system, but I often see Firefox with 500MB usage or even more (and I run flashblock, so I doubt it's flash that's responsible).
Basically, I would rather have faster software that takes advantage of the memory that I use, then slower software that avoids using it.
On a system high-end enough for 4GB RAM (i.e., you're presumably running on a 64 bit processor, and I would hope are using a 64 bit OS to go with it), I sincerely doubt you spend much (if any) time waiting for your browser to calculate stuff that could be readily accelerated by using extra memory. Chances are the only thing you ever wait for with your browser are slow javascripts and/or flash applications to run. It's irrelevant that the browser's cacheing an uncompressed copy of the images from the last 10 pages you viewed, because it would probably take your system less time to uncompress them from its compressed cache than it would for your monitor to update to show them.
Wow! FF3 must be a fantastic piece of software if it can make Burn Notice watchable.
I find playing _any_ version of Final Fantasy while something plays in the background makes it at least tolerable.
Unless you're driving a car that already uses regenerative braking
True. If you're one of the 0.3%* of people who drive an electric vehicle, you may lose out.
*: Estimated based on most recently available sales figures, those for 2006, in which 54,000 electric vehicles were sold in Europe compared to 15.4 million cars overall. Later years may have had higher proportions electric, but earlier years undoubtedly had lower and those cars are mostly still on the road.
So when you drive in, it drains your battery to power their market. How the fuck is this 'green'?
Actually, it's position in a place where you're usually slowing down anyway, so what it does is "steal" waste heat from your brakes.
the Tata Nano, the world's cheapest car, has a crappy little engine producing 33 horsepower
Yes, but it only manages this at peak output, which is at 5250rpm (i.e. much higher revs than you would use in normal driving). In normal use, even if you put your foot flat to the floor (which you're unlikely to do much of the time) you'll probably only get about 15-20 HP. This is why electric cars are a much better comparison.