This just describes what the program does, and by placing it in the license, they hope that you don't read it. Kinda like saying something in 4pt-font fine print: ("note: Happy Fun Toy will explode into sharp shards, killing your child"). Shady practice, but not directly related to the real problems with EULAs ("you may not use this program unless...").
Just nitpicking.. But it's true, you should always read your EULAs (prounounced EWWWWWWW-lahz).
I've never seen a "Porsche designed" item that looked nice and made me want to touch it. They are just sculptures that are created simply to make you think of the designer. Ego, not function.
Porsche Design seems to favor large hunks of stainless steel, sharp angles, and whenever possible, exposed rivets and screws, to give things an "industrial" look. Why would you design something for human use that looks mechanical, cold, and uninviting?
If they want to even get near Apple's ballpark, they have to get rid of the angular bevels on the top of the case and the sharp corners (unless of course they don't want people to pick it up).
I see they made the frame around the monitor a little wider than every other laptop these days, probably so they could show off some nice fat screws! Hopefully those screw holes are finished so you don't catch your shirt (or skin) on the edge.
And putting functional buttons on the outside of a closed laptop is dubious. Again, subconciously, you're afraid to pick it up a certain way, because you might start the CD player. It's not closed and protected, even when the top is done.
That two-tone color scheme looks plain awful. Black keyboards are hard to see, and especially on a laptop, some keys are in different places than a full-size keyboard, and you need to see them clearly. Maybe Porsche just designed the top?
Yup, this laptop just screams "look at me. and then leave me right here".
I'll take the thinkpad next to it, thanks. It probably has better specs too.
Well, I've run into this policy a few times, not for my own music, but for music from CD-R-only labels. A lot of independent electronic musicians that I listen to are on small "bedroom labels". And when I sell some extra CDs on eBay I like to sell those too. They are NOT illegal copies, they are legit, original, sometimes with hand-made and hand-numbered inserts.
I've tried all the following:
"This is a CD-R."
"This is a CDR."
"This is a C.D.R."
"This CD is from a CD-R only label!"
"This CD is green on the bottom, if you know what I mean."
"This CD was made in someone's bedroom."
The only one that was pulled was #1. They might've expanded their filter to catch #2 or #3 but that's how it was when I was testing out variations.
Note that in every auction containing "CD-R", I noticed in my logs the next morning that a machine from eBay's netblock came and viewed the auction. Due to variations in the user-agent, and because sometimes they visited twice in the space of a few minutes, I believe they have a Real Live(tm) employee do it. What a wonderful job, eh? And they ONLY pull the auction when it clearly and unambiguously says the item is a CD-R. So I guess if you want to keep them busy, put "THIS IS NOT A CD-R" in all your auctions.
Nowdays, I just don't bother saying it's a CDR or anything. This music is obscure enough that the buyers usually know, and nobody's complained. Great policy, huh? In the meantime, people are selling unauthorized CDRs left and right, and they don't get caught.
I saw this one guy selling CDs without good descriptions or pictures.. I checked his feedback.. full of negatives because he was basically selling homemade "mix CDRs" and not advertising them as such. His feedback was also full of positives saying "great rare CD". So his business was doing all right from the many suckers out there. Shouldn't they shut these guys down first? Not to mention the guys selling 80GB hard drives STUFFED FULL of big-label MP3s. "Delete the ones you don't have CDs for" Yeah right!
So although it is within eBay's legal rights to arbitrarily do shit like this, it's a mind-numbingly stupid, ineffective, and purposeless policy. They just do it to satisfy the big labels. This guy should simply imply what it is, and not write CD-R anyplace in the auction. Or he could do like I did, put a bunch of auctions with subtle variations and learn which get pulled and which don't.
And oh, yeah don't put any "naughty words" in the auctions (I have no idea what the list of naughty words are, except "fuck" and "shit" are on it). They used to allow them in song titles, but now the drones move them to the "Adult" category with the hardcore porn.
And don't even bother writing customer support, they'll send you a syrupy "thanks for your business, but that's how it is" form letter.
It's not just that it tracks relative movements like an optical mouse, it also needs absolute coordinates. For one thing, when you pick up your pen, how does it know where you put it down again? Also, it needs to support stuff like checkboxes on the page that say "EMAIL", "FAX", and so on. Otherwise how would the software know you were putting a mark in the checkbox? How would it know you're using the fax page with checkboxes on the left, rather than on top, etc.?
See, they have a gigantic "map" of every piece of paper and what's on it. Every piece of paper (or maybe just every type of product, rather than individual paper, I'm not sure) is unique. So that's how it knows what you're writing on, how big it is, where the "active" areas are, etc.
This way you don't have to learn any special symbols, and the pen knows exactly what you're writing on without you telling it.
Of course, if you're suitably paranoid, you might come up with some "unintended consequences".. does this mean each page is unique and can be ID'd? etc...
Well, okay, but the more important thing is to actually write out abbreviations the first time, even if the writer thinks the audience knows them.
The first thing I thought when I saw PLC was "public limited company", for whatever reason.. even though I know what a programmable logic controller is.
It didn't make sense for me at first why *either* of those things would be in a carnival ride car, but after a few hundred milliseconds of brain activity I decided it must be the programmable logic controller, or maybe some special "carnival lingo" (Hey Joe! We're all out of Pyrotechnic Lumbar Cartridges on car #3).
At no point during this time did I take any notice of the apostrophe. (Or the fact that there were no periods, throw that into your grammar mix: P.L.C.)
Now, I want those milliseconds back. Nearly a second of my time, gone forever! Think of the places I could've gone, the things I could've accomplished! Damn you slashdot!!
So not only did Microsoft use one of their contracted workers for a pseudo-Switch campaign, they actually used a worker who was working on the campaign itself!! That's X-TRA LAME(tm)!
"My name is Steve Jobs, and I'm the CEO of a large fruit company."
Apple: spends the better part of a year looking for interesting, off-beat, photogenic people. Then they read hundreds of emails. They hand-pick a bunch of folks and pay money to fly them out, coach them, then tape them. They put the ads on nationwide TV.
Microsoft: Somebody at Microsoft's PR firm picks up the phone and says "Hey, remember that writer, Valerie? And remember how the screen on her Mac Centris 610 finally died and she got that Windows laptop?.. What's that?.. Yeah that was funny.. though I probably I did the same thing the first time I used a CD-ROM.. But anyway, track her down and give her $500 to finish some copy for our new campaign. I've already got most of it written.... what?.. No, just put a stock photo like usual.. okay.. bye!"
How easy! That's why Apple will always be a "niche" player. They give a shit about stuff like this. Like the guy in college who actually wrote all his lab reports while everybody else just copied one from last year.
Cuz I have some of his tunes on CD. He's also done stuff with Invisibl Skratch Piklz I used to have a CD of.
I've an interview with him where he goes on about how handy it is to carry a Mac laptop with Pro Tools on it and listen to stuff. In fact I think this interview as on the Pro Tools web site. He's making the rounds for product endoresements I guess.:-)
Holy shit man, I was just on the photodisc page and I was just going to post the same thing. Great minds think alike.
It sure looked like a photographer took the picture, didn't it? Notice the warmer fill light on one side of her face, no way that was just some snapshot.
Photodisc has a great search feature.. just type in words like "content young woman sitting looking at camera" and you'll find it.
Most of those goofy pictures you see of people talking or using their computer or something are stock photos.
That's one of the real strengths of Linux - ideology takes a back seat to getting the job done, and IMO it explains why Linux has been one of the most successful Unix variants.
How does a license that says "you can't use this if you compete with me" help you "get the job done"? Such a clause has nothing to do with the technical aspect of the software, and only serves to take away your ability to do your work.
Seems to me, if you want to be sure you can get the job done, you AVOID any software that tells you when you can and can't use it, no matter how little it costs. Because tomorrow, it might tell you can't use it any more.
2) The software is not open source because the open source business model doesn't have a prayer of supporting the development costs.
So... if the open source "business model" (I think he means licensing model) can't support the costs of a BitKeeper-type program, then why is that clause there? What's he afraid of?
By his own assertion, it will not be able to cover its own development costs, therefore he doesn't need the clause to avoid the competition.
Unless of course, he's lying, and he knows BitKeeper could be replaced by a free version, and he's trying to use the license as an anti-competitive measure, using that unique government-enforced power that copyright holders have. "Rent-seeking" in the 21st century....
But this is all pissing in the wind, the best solution is to simply get as far away from BitKeeper and McVoy as possible, and don't use the product, and try and convince those people with their "best tool for the job" blinders on that the type of license is an integral part of the tool.
I think if you put the RMS-haters and the RMS-lovers in one room, they'd agree on this: don't use it if you don't like it!
I just started programming Mac OS X (I did a little Mac programming in the System 7 days and HATED it, since I was programming Unix at the time). But OS X is great.
I'm focusing on Cocoa myself, but here are some data points for you:
Objective-C is a lovely language. I looked it at back in the NeXT days and thought "cute, but it'll disappear and be replaced by a better version of C++". Well, Objective-C is still here, and C++ never got any "better". So you ought to learn Objective-C, it's very much like Smalltalk mixed with C, very elegant. I might start writing Linux and BSD programs in it. Also, it interfaces easily with the BSD side of Mac OS X. For instance, you want math libraries? You just use the standard math.h stuff! That's nice.
Don't use the Java Cocoa stuff. It STINKS. I think they just added it for a "bullet point". The documentation isn't as complete. It's very slow. Objective-C is a nicer language anyway, since it is dynamic. With Java you have to use a lot of reflection hacks to get the same results, not nearly as elegant.
Java DOES NOT (correct me if I'm wrong) compile to native code with ProjectBuilder. ProjectBuilder simply wraps a launcher around the java bytecode. If you drill down into the application package, you'll find the regular jar files.
The use of the Java Swing (non-Cocoa) stuff is simply to get your existing Java apps up and running fast. It took me just a few minutes to turn a Java program I wrote on Linux with Forte into a double-clickable (but slow) Mac OS application. Don't bother using this for new stuff. Your program might LOOK like an Aqua app, but it's really Swing.
Carbon let's you use C/C++. But it isn't a "compatibility layer".. it's not obsolete or "going away". It's simply a cleaned-up version of the original Mac API. So if you choose this route, don't feel like you'll have to stop using it one day or something. I think Apple will support it indefinitely, alongside Cocoa.
Cocoa is a little slower than Carbon, because Objective-C is a dynamic language, and it has to decide things at run-time (like, say, Perl). Not a big deal these days, but raw speed is not a selling point of Cocoa GUIs.
AppleScript Studio: if you like applescript, you can write full applications in it. Just like on Linux you might want to throw together a simple Python script, etc., with a GUI. It doesn't hurt to learn applescript, especially if your Cocoa apps will be scriptable.
Interface Builder is just soil-your-pants awesome and let's you create, instantiate, and hook together non-GUI objects, right along with GUI objects. Also note that IB actually creates the GUI and other objects and serializes them to a disk file. It doesn't create any code or do any other tricks. And XML is used throughout for properties, etc..
So IMO your best choices are: Cocoa/Objective-C, or Carbon/C (or C++, blech). And I think everyone should learn Objective-C.. I'd like to see it used more for non-Mac stuff too.
Everything you need, including books and tutorials, comes on the Developer CD. Go through the Cocoa/ObjC tutorial.
Also note that if you sign up for the Apple Developer stuff, you have to agree to some pretty disgusting terms, including giving Apple the right to search your place of business on 24 hours notice. I shit you not.
It's 5.5 million CDs (if it's still on Google News you can find articles that use the # of CDs instead of the dollar amount).
If you do the math, that's nearly $14 per CD.
They took a page right out of Microsoft's playbook for that one.
They probably just told one of their factories to stamp 5.5 million copies of Your Favorite Polkas and drop-ship them to some schools with lots of brown-skinned kids. Actually they probably have 5.5 million CDs rotting in a warehouse someplace, and this is an easy way to get rid of them and clean up the balance sheet.
Ahh, well the AFL seems to imply that you need the license to use the software, but the OSL (which is what I was looking at) only talks about using the software under the Patent section. But then again it doesn't specifically limit the language to patents in the last sentence, which is confusing. Now that I see it again, perhaps both licenses really do claim to take away your right to use the software after patent litigation.
It would be best if the licenses just said up front that you can use the software under any circumstances, and that no license including this one could ever take that right away. Much like the GPL claims that use is outside its scope.
But I guess that's just a dream until some enlightened court says that a license can never limit use. (Copyright law already explicitly says that using software is not infringement, but it's the application of contract law that we're all fuzzy about).
Isn't Lawrence Rosen the lawyerdude who wrote in Linux Journal?
Heh, the license itself has a license:
This license is Copyright (C) 2002 Lawrence E. Rosen. All rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted to copy and distribute this license without modification. This license may not be modified without the express written permission of its copyright owner.
At first glance, this license doesn't seem bad, and doesn't seem terribly different than the GPL in spirit. It does have a more "lawyerly" tone to it (for instance the section defining "You" in the license).
One glaring difference is the "External Deployment" clause, which is much clearer than the GPL on the subject. But personally, I'm not sure if I would want to limit the "use" of software in this way. I strongly believe that licenses should not even pretend to restrict your use of the software in any way. On the other hand, it closes off a way for people to circumvent the GPL by modifying the software and then deploying it as a service "at arm's length".
Another difference is the patent clause: "This license will self destruct in the presence of patent litigation." I actually think this is clever. I'd like to see more analysis of this clause.
But all in all, I don't see this license as being particularly obnoxious. What did I miss?
The Microsoft EULAs say you can't USE the software if you violate the license. Most of the Open Source licenses only cover DISTRIBUTING the software (Apple's license is one of the exceptions). I think it's okay to restrict people's actions (only as far as the actions directly relate the software itself, obviously), as a prerequisite to distributing the software.
This is okay to me because I don't really care about redistributing software so much as being able to USE the stuff they let me download or buy.
Check out some pictures of the new Kodak at dpreview.
It looks pretty nice. I like big cameras that fill my hands, have a nice solid feel, and weigh a few pounds.
Of course my dream camera is 4-6 megapixel SLR that has a full-35mm-size *interchangeable* sensor (in case I want to upgrade to more pixels), low noise, good color, and takes EOS lenses. All for $500 or less. Just a few more years....
you'd never have to frame a shot again. just point the camera in the general direction of whatever you want to picture, and then you can crop out a nice shot. Want a close-up of the same thing? No problem, just crop it closer. See a cool looking bug on a leaf in the corner of the shot? Just zoom right in, and still have enough pixels for an 8x10 glossy.
I dunno.. I remember when I was looking to buy a camera a few years ago, for fun and to do some copywork.. it was me and this older dude at the counter. I settled on on a cheap Canon EOS Rebel and a the best lenses they had (the total was around $1000). The dude was going through every high-end EOS there was, the ones with eye-controlled focus, the ones with attachments for high-speed 7+ fps shooting, etc. He bought the most expensive camera and lenses, and easily put away $8000 or so.
I was asking him advice on the cameras, thinking he was some hot shot photographer. Finally I asked him if he was indeed a photographer, and what he photographed.
Turns out he was a doctor and he was buying the camera "to take on trips" and take photos of "the dog and kids".
So, yeah, there are people who just walk into the camera store and say "Give me the best". These people also do this in electronics/computer/stereo shops.
Introducing the North Carolina Ladies of Liberty Calendar!
Their turn-ons are long walks on the beach, candlelit dinners and free-market economies. Yes, the Libertarian party has some righteous BABES!
Are all libertarians this attractive and intelligent or is there something in the water in NC?
Hell I'm just waiting for someone to (re)invent a centralized bookmarks/cookies database for web browsing. I use Konq, Mozilla, and Lynx across two Linux machines, and Chimera, OmniWeb, and Lynx on a Mac OS X machine. I want them to share cookies, bookmarks, and wherever possible, auto form fill-ins, cookie blocking preferences, etc. Right now, I have one be the "master" browser (konq) and a bunch of homemade scripts duplicate the data on demand. How awful! What if I'm on Chimera and I want to add a bookmark?
I remember Netscape's roaming profiles but who knows where that is now. And I hear a future version of Mac OS X is going to use LDAP heavily throughout (dropping NetInfo), but that's uncertain. I think OmniWeb on OS X lets you use an arbitrary URL for your bookmarks file (but I haven't tried it, and it's probably read-only).
Maybe now that the browser wars seem to be starting up again, someone will think this through. I definitely DON'T want it on somebody else's machine, I just want to click a "share with other browsers" button somewhere on my own machine(s), and I want it to work across architectures and browsers.
It's funny you mention The Lord's Prayer, because someone has actually created a shorter-than-160 chars SMS version, here it is:
dad@hvn, urspshl. we want wot u want &urth2b like hvn. giv us food &4giv r
sins lyk we 4giv uvaz. don't test us! save us! bcos we kno ur boss ur tuf
&ur cool 4 eva! ok?
Add that to your list and imagine the future scholars who will read it and study it. It does capture the essence of the Lord's Prayer, the same as the others.
I read about this in a newsletter I get, here's a page about it. He also makes a good point about how we shouldn't have to change our behavior for machines, it should be the other way around.
Patterns are named solutions to problems, which resolve constraints in a a given context. They aren't rigid (like, say, a template), they are abstractions of commonly occuring problems and solutions that occur in programming. For instance, "one object needs to do something to another group of objects" might be a problem, and the Visitor pattern might help you find the solution. The code you use to implement the pattern might be radically different than the code someone else uses, but underneath the pattern is the same.
They come from Christopher Alexander's work in architecture, where he saw the same recurring patterns in architecture and felt that they arose from deeper truths about people and societies. An example of Alexander's architectural patterns: "Intimacy Gradient", which is a pattern that describes how the front of a home is less personal and intimate than the back of a home. For instance you might leave your stuff laying out in a back room, but you keep the front room neat for guests.
Very interesting from a philosophical point of view as well, and helps you to better understand why some programs/houses/objects are pleasant to work with, and others are a chore.
Slashdot Mirror
This just describes what the program does, and by placing it in the license, they hope that you don't read it. Kinda like saying something in 4pt-font fine print: ("note: Happy Fun Toy will explode into sharp shards, killing your child"). Shady practice, but not directly related to the real problems with EULAs ("you may not use this program unless...").
Just nitpicking.. But it's true, you should always read your EULAs (prounounced EWWWWWWW-lahz).
I've never seen a "Porsche designed" item that looked nice and made me want to touch it. They are just sculptures that are created simply to make you think of the designer. Ego, not function.
Porsche Design seems to favor large hunks of stainless steel, sharp angles, and whenever possible, exposed rivets and screws, to give things an "industrial" look. Why would you design something for human use that looks mechanical, cold, and uninviting?
If they want to even get near Apple's ballpark, they have to get rid of the angular bevels on the top of the case and the sharp corners (unless of course they don't want people to pick it up).
I see they made the frame around the monitor a little wider than every other laptop these days, probably so they could show off some nice fat screws! Hopefully those screw holes are finished so you don't catch your shirt (or skin) on the edge.
And putting functional buttons on the outside of a closed laptop is dubious. Again, subconciously, you're afraid to pick it up a certain way, because you might start the CD player. It's not closed and protected, even when the top is done.
That two-tone color scheme looks plain awful. Black keyboards are hard to see, and especially on a laptop, some keys are in different places than a full-size keyboard, and you need to see them clearly. Maybe Porsche just designed the top?
Yup, this laptop just screams "look at me. and then leave me right here".
I'll take the thinkpad next to it, thanks. It probably has better specs too.
Well, I've run into this policy a few times, not for my own music, but for music from CD-R-only labels. A lot of independent electronic musicians that I listen to are on small "bedroom labels". And when I sell some extra CDs on eBay I like to sell those too. They are NOT illegal copies, they are legit, original, sometimes with hand-made and hand-numbered inserts.
I've tried all the following:
The only one that was pulled was #1. They might've expanded their filter to catch #2 or #3 but that's how it was when I was testing out variations.
Note that in every auction containing "CD-R", I noticed in my logs the next morning that a machine from eBay's netblock came and viewed the auction. Due to variations in the user-agent, and because sometimes they visited twice in the space of a few minutes, I believe they have a Real Live(tm) employee do it. What a wonderful job, eh? And they ONLY pull the auction when it clearly and unambiguously says the item is a CD-R. So I guess if you want to keep them busy, put "THIS IS NOT A CD-R" in all your auctions.
Nowdays, I just don't bother saying it's a CDR or anything. This music is obscure enough that the buyers usually know, and nobody's complained. Great policy, huh? In the meantime, people are selling unauthorized CDRs left and right, and they don't get caught.
I saw this one guy selling CDs without good descriptions or pictures.. I checked his feedback.. full of negatives because he was basically selling homemade "mix CDRs" and not advertising them as such. His feedback was also full of positives saying "great rare CD". So his business was doing all right from the many suckers out there. Shouldn't they shut these guys down first? Not to mention the guys selling 80GB hard drives STUFFED FULL of big-label MP3s. "Delete the ones you don't have CDs for" Yeah right!
So although it is within eBay's legal rights to arbitrarily do shit like this, it's a mind-numbingly stupid, ineffective, and purposeless policy. They just do it to satisfy the big labels. This guy should simply imply what it is, and not write CD-R anyplace in the auction. Or he could do like I did, put a bunch of auctions with subtle variations and learn which get pulled and which don't.
And oh, yeah don't put any "naughty words" in the auctions (I have no idea what the list of naughty words are, except "fuck" and "shit" are on it). They used to allow them in song titles, but now the drones move them to the "Adult" category with the hardcore porn.
And don't even bother writing customer support, they'll send you a syrupy "thanks for your business, but that's how it is" form letter.
It's not just that it tracks relative movements like an optical mouse, it also needs absolute coordinates. For one thing, when you pick up your pen, how does it know where you put it down again? Also, it needs to support stuff like checkboxes on the page that say "EMAIL", "FAX", and so on. Otherwise how would the software know you were putting a mark in the checkbox? How would it know you're using the fax page with checkboxes on the left, rather than on top, etc.?
See, they have a gigantic "map" of every piece of paper and what's on it. Every piece of paper (or maybe just every type of product, rather than individual paper, I'm not sure) is unique. So that's how it knows what you're writing on, how big it is, where the "active" areas are, etc.
This way you don't have to learn any special symbols, and the pen knows exactly what you're writing on without you telling it.
Of course, if you're suitably paranoid, you might come up with some "unintended consequences".. does this mean each page is unique and can be ID'd? etc...
Well, okay, but the more important thing is to actually write out abbreviations the first time, even if the writer thinks the audience knows them.
The first thing I thought when I saw PLC was "public limited company", for whatever reason.. even though I know what a programmable logic controller is.
It didn't make sense for me at first why *either* of those things would be in a carnival ride car, but after a few hundred milliseconds of brain activity I decided it must be the programmable logic controller, or maybe some special "carnival lingo" (Hey Joe! We're all out of Pyrotechnic Lumbar Cartridges on car #3).
At no point during this time did I take any notice of the apostrophe. (Or the fact that there were no periods, throw that into your grammar mix: P.L.C.)
Now, I want those milliseconds back. Nearly a second of my time, gone forever! Think of the places I could've gone, the things I could've accomplished! Damn you slashdot!!
So not only did Microsoft use one of their contracted workers for a pseudo-Switch campaign, they actually used a worker who was working on the campaign itself!! That's X-TRA LAME(tm)!
"My name is Steve Jobs, and I'm the CEO of a large fruit company."
I mean, look at the difference:
Apple: spends the better part of a year looking for interesting, off-beat, photogenic people. Then they read hundreds of emails. They hand-pick a bunch of folks and pay money to fly them out, coach them, then tape them. They put the ads on nationwide TV.
Microsoft: Somebody at Microsoft's PR firm picks up the phone and says "Hey, remember that writer, Valerie? And remember how the screen on her Mac Centris 610 finally died and she got that Windows laptop? .. What's that? .. Yeah that was funny.. though I probably I did the same thing the first time I used a CD-ROM .. But anyway, track her down and give her $500 to finish some copy for our new campaign. I've already got most of it written.. .. what?.. No, just put a stock photo like usual .. okay .. bye!"
How easy! That's why Apple will always be a "niche" player. They give a shit about stuff like this. Like the guy in college who actually wrote all his lab reports while everybody else just copied one from last year.
Cuz I have some of his tunes on CD. He's also done stuff with Invisibl Skratch Piklz I used to have a CD of.
:-)
I've an interview with him where he goes on about how handy it is to carry a Mac laptop with Pro Tools on it and listen to stuff. In fact I think this interview as on the Pro Tools web site. He's making the rounds for product endoresements I guess.
Holy shit man, I was just on the photodisc page and I was just going to post the same thing. Great minds think alike.
.. just type in words like "content young woman sitting looking at camera" and you'll find it.
It sure looked like a photographer took the picture, didn't it? Notice the warmer fill light on one side of her face, no way that was just some snapshot.
Photodisc has a great search feature
Most of those goofy pictures you see of people talking or using their computer or something are stock photos.
Good ol' microsoft!
That's one of the real strengths of Linux - ideology takes a back seat to getting the job done, and IMO it explains why Linux has been one of the most successful Unix variants.
How does a license that says "you can't use this if you compete with me" help you "get the job done"? Such a clause has nothing to do with the technical aspect of the software, and only serves to take away your ability to do your work.
Seems to me, if you want to be sure you can get the job done, you AVOID any software that tells you when you can and can't use it, no matter how little it costs. Because tomorrow, it might tell you can't use it any more.
2) The software is not open source because the open source business model doesn't have a prayer of supporting the development costs.
So... if the open source "business model" (I think he means licensing model) can't support the costs of a BitKeeper-type program, then why is that clause there? What's he afraid of?
By his own assertion, it will not be able to cover its own development costs, therefore he doesn't need the clause to avoid the competition.
Unless of course, he's lying, and he knows BitKeeper could be replaced by a free version, and he's trying to use the license as an anti-competitive measure, using that unique government-enforced power that copyright holders have. "Rent-seeking" in the 21st century ....
But this is all pissing in the wind, the best solution is to simply get as far away from BitKeeper and McVoy as possible, and don't use the product, and try and convince those people with their "best tool for the job" blinders on that the type of license is an integral part of the tool.
I think if you put the RMS-haters and the RMS-lovers in one room, they'd agree on this: don't use it if you don't like it!
I just started programming Mac OS X (I did a little Mac programming in the System 7 days and HATED it, since I was programming Unix at the time). But OS X is great.
I'm focusing on Cocoa myself, but here are some data points for you:
Objective-C is a lovely language. I looked it at back in the NeXT days and thought "cute, but it'll disappear and be replaced by a better version of C++". Well, Objective-C is still here, and C++ never got any "better". So you ought to learn Objective-C, it's very much like Smalltalk mixed with C, very elegant. I might start writing Linux and BSD programs in it. Also, it interfaces easily with the BSD side of Mac OS X. For instance, you want math libraries? You just use the standard math.h stuff! That's nice.
Don't use the Java Cocoa stuff. It STINKS. I think they just added it for a "bullet point". The documentation isn't as complete. It's very slow. Objective-C is a nicer language anyway, since it is dynamic. With Java you have to use a lot of reflection hacks to get the same results, not nearly as elegant.
Java DOES NOT (correct me if I'm wrong) compile to native code with ProjectBuilder. ProjectBuilder simply wraps a launcher around the java bytecode. If you drill down into the application package, you'll find the regular jar files.
The use of the Java Swing (non-Cocoa) stuff is simply to get your existing Java apps up and running fast. It took me just a few minutes to turn a Java program I wrote on Linux with Forte into a double-clickable (but slow) Mac OS application. Don't bother using this for new stuff. Your program might LOOK like an Aqua app, but it's really Swing.
Carbon let's you use C/C++. But it isn't a "compatibility layer" .. it's not obsolete or "going away". It's simply a cleaned-up version of the original Mac API. So if you choose this route, don't feel like you'll have to stop using it one day or something. I think Apple will support it indefinitely, alongside Cocoa.
Cocoa is a little slower than Carbon, because Objective-C is a dynamic language, and it has to decide things at run-time (like, say, Perl). Not a big deal these days, but raw speed is not a selling point of Cocoa GUIs.
AppleScript Studio: if you like applescript, you can write full applications in it. Just like on Linux you might want to throw together a simple Python script, etc., with a GUI. It doesn't hurt to learn applescript, especially if your Cocoa apps will be scriptable.
Interface Builder is just soil-your-pants awesome and let's you create, instantiate, and hook together non-GUI objects, right along with GUI objects. Also note that IB actually creates the GUI and other objects and serializes them to a disk file. It doesn't create any code or do any other tricks. And XML is used throughout for properties, etc..
So IMO your best choices are: Cocoa/Objective-C, or Carbon/C (or C++, blech). And I think everyone should learn Objective-C .. I'd like to see it used more for non-Mac stuff too.
Everything you need, including books and tutorials, comes on the Developer CD. Go through the Cocoa/ObjC tutorial.
Also note that if you sign up for the Apple Developer stuff, you have to agree to some pretty disgusting terms, including giving Apple the right to search your place of business on 24 hours notice. I shit you not.
It's 5.5 million CDs (if it's still on Google News you can find articles that use the # of CDs instead of the dollar amount).
If you do the math, that's nearly $14 per CD.
They took a page right out of Microsoft's playbook for that one.
They probably just told one of their factories to stamp 5.5 million copies of Your Favorite Polkas and drop-ship them to some schools with lots of brown-skinned kids. Actually they probably have 5.5 million CDs rotting in a warehouse someplace, and this is an easy way to get rid of them and clean up the balance sheet.
Ahh, well the AFL seems to imply that you need the license to use the software, but the OSL (which is what I was looking at) only talks about using the software under the Patent section. But then again it doesn't specifically limit the language to patents in the last sentence, which is confusing. Now that I see it again, perhaps both licenses really do claim to take away your right to use the software after patent litigation.
It would be best if the licenses just said up front that you can use the software under any circumstances, and that no license including this one could ever take that right away. Much like the GPL claims that use is outside its scope.
But I guess that's just a dream until some enlightened court says that a license can never limit use. (Copyright law already explicitly says that using software is not infringement, but it's the application of contract law that we're all fuzzy about).
Isn't Lawrence Rosen the lawyerdude who wrote in Linux Journal?
Heh, the license itself has a license:
At first glance, this license doesn't seem bad, and doesn't seem terribly different than the GPL in spirit. It does have a more "lawyerly" tone to it (for instance the section defining "You" in the license).
One glaring difference is the "External Deployment" clause, which is much clearer than the GPL on the subject. But personally, I'm not sure if I would want to limit the "use" of software in this way. I strongly believe that licenses should not even pretend to restrict your use of the software in any way. On the other hand, it closes off a way for people to circumvent the GPL by modifying the software and then deploying it as a service "at arm's length".
Another difference is the patent clause: "This license will self destruct in the presence of patent litigation." I actually think this is clever. I'd like to see more analysis of this clause.
But all in all, I don't see this license as being particularly obnoxious. What did I miss?
The Microsoft EULAs say you can't USE the software if you violate the license. Most of the Open Source licenses only cover DISTRIBUTING the software (Apple's license is one of the exceptions). I think it's okay to restrict people's actions (only as far as the actions directly relate the software itself, obviously), as a prerequisite to distributing the software.
This is okay to me because I don't really care about redistributing software so much as being able to USE the stuff they let me download or buy.
No, but there'll definitely be a sign on the firing end with the words "THIS SIDE TOWARD ENEMY".
On OS X and Linux (and occasionaly FreeBSD) I've used: Mac Explorer, Chimera, OmniWeb, Mozilla, Konquerer, Lynx, and now playing with Phoenix..
If only they could share bookmarks, cookie preferences, and site passwords. Across machines! Securely! Is anybody working on this? Is LDAP the answer?
Check out some pictures of the new Kodak at dpreview. It looks pretty nice. I like big cameras that fill my hands, have a nice solid feel, and weigh a few pounds.
Of course my dream camera is 4-6 megapixel SLR that has a full-35mm-size *interchangeable* sensor (in case I want to upgrade to more pixels), low noise, good color, and takes EOS lenses. All for $500 or less. Just a few more years....
you'd never have to frame a shot again. just point the camera in the general direction of whatever you want to picture, and then you can crop out a nice shot. Want a close-up of the same thing? No problem, just crop it closer. See a cool looking bug on a leaf in the corner of the shot? Just zoom right in, and still have enough pixels for an 8x10 glossy.
I dunno .. I remember when I was looking to buy a camera a few years ago, for fun and to do some copywork.. it was me and this older dude at the counter. I settled on on a cheap Canon EOS Rebel and a the best lenses they had (the total was around $1000). The dude was going through every high-end EOS there was, the ones with eye-controlled focus, the ones with attachments for high-speed 7+ fps shooting, etc. He bought the most expensive camera and lenses, and easily put away $8000 or so.
I was asking him advice on the cameras, thinking he was some hot shot photographer. Finally I asked him if he was indeed a photographer, and what he photographed.
Turns out he was a doctor and he was buying the camera "to take on trips" and take photos of "the dog and kids".
So, yeah, there are people who just walk into the camera store and say "Give me the best". These people also do this in electronics/computer/stereo shops.
A nice demographic to target...
Don't forget to pick up a copy of your Ladies of Liberty Calendar...
Are all libertarians this attractive and intelligent or is there something in the water in NC?
Hell I'm just waiting for someone to (re)invent a centralized bookmarks/cookies database for web browsing. I use Konq, Mozilla, and Lynx across two Linux machines, and Chimera, OmniWeb, and Lynx on a Mac OS X machine. I want them to share cookies, bookmarks, and wherever possible, auto form fill-ins, cookie blocking preferences, etc. Right now, I have one be the "master" browser (konq) and a bunch of homemade scripts duplicate the data on demand. How awful! What if I'm on Chimera and I want to add a bookmark?
I remember Netscape's roaming profiles but who knows where that is now. And I hear a future version of Mac OS X is going to use LDAP heavily throughout (dropping NetInfo), but that's uncertain. I think OmniWeb on OS X lets you use an arbitrary URL for your bookmarks file (but I haven't tried it, and it's probably read-only).
Maybe now that the browser wars seem to be starting up again, someone will think this through. I definitely DON'T want it on somebody else's machine, I just want to click a "share with other browsers" button somewhere on my own machine(s), and I want it to work across architectures and browsers.
It's funny you mention The Lord's Prayer, because someone has actually created a shorter-than-160 chars SMS version, here it is:
Add that to your list and imagine the future scholars who will read it and study it. It does capture the essence of the Lord's Prayer, the same as the others.
I read about this in a newsletter I get, here's a page about it. He also makes a good point about how we shouldn't have to change our behavior for machines, it should be the other way around.
Here is a FAQ.
Patterns are named solutions to problems, which resolve constraints in a a given context. They aren't rigid (like, say, a template), they are abstractions of commonly occuring problems and solutions that occur in programming. For instance, "one object needs to do something to another group of objects" might be a problem, and the Visitor pattern might help you find the solution. The code you use to implement the pattern might be radically different than the code someone else uses, but underneath the pattern is the same.
They come from Christopher Alexander's work in architecture, where he saw the same recurring patterns in architecture and felt that they arose from deeper truths about people and societies. An example of Alexander's architectural patterns: "Intimacy Gradient", which is a pattern that describes how the front of a home is less personal and intimate than the back of a home. For instance you might leave your stuff laying out in a back room, but you keep the front room neat for guests.
Very interesting from a philosophical point of view as well, and helps you to better understand why some programs/houses/objects are pleasant to work with, and others are a chore.