4dos, from jpsoft. It's got filename completion, command recall (w/ wildcards, so you can type "cd s" and when you hit 'up' you get the commands that start with that substring...), an improved batch langauges, precompiled (to bytecode) batch files for speed, Aliases, and tons more. And it's shareware.
Currently, AFAIK, there are no laws against reverse engineering, and because shrinkwrap licenses aren't valid (except probably in shareware) they couldn't get you to agree to such a stipulation.
Shrinkwrap/@install licenses aren't valid mainly because you already purchased the software before being asked to agree, so in offering you a contract you have to say yes to to proceed, they void the contract. The is probably different in shareware because you haven't bought the software, so you're negotiating the right to use it.
But, even still, I doubt a no-reverse engineering clause would hold because it takes place outside of your usage of the program.
DOS, not requiring protected mode, will run on lower-end CPUs, and with less memory than many other embedded OSes.
Yes, it does do less, but if you don't need preemptive multitasking, or networking, it may be the perfect choice.
A lot of embedded apps don't want the OS for much besides a loader and a filesystem API, and DOS is pretty good at that, especially if you don't need speed.
You give all credit to the difference to their IP laws, not considering that there was modern democratic government with a commitment to industry in one country and a totalitarian government known for oppressive rule in the other.
Ditto with a lot of other countries you mention. India is poor, like China, but has a much more open government and much better human rights history.
And you also ignore the fact that the open IP systems in the leading countries give these non-IP countries a leg up. If China had all the same technology the US did, after sufficient delay to allow for copying it, then your argument might be believable.
You'd have us believe that the whole country is full of people just waiting for an idea to pounce on and steal, yet they can't arrange plane fare to send someone to the USA and bring back books of patents?
And then you point to "history", saying it proves your point. One example does not an argument make. Especially when it has holes. The renaissance started before IP laws were thought of. Much of history in prosperous countries has examples of science being funded by the government and financial concerns.
I'm not saying anything about your ultimate conclusion, that IP laws are important to development, just that your arguments leading up to them are spurious at best.
And what other reason is there to do this, assuming we're not having to work round a whopping great compiler bug?
Because it may be easier than the alternative, or produce faster programs. Given that, why not? A language should make is easy to follow good programing guidelines, but it shouldn't force you to do anything. The compiler/language are a tool, and if that tool doesn't best fit the job, use something else. Ideally the language will have extensions to let you easily use something else for parts instead of having to write a completely external module.
Seriously, how often is that an issue? If you're writing a kernel module, sure. If you're writing a 3D engine, sure. But what percentage of code is actually speed-critical? Pretty low.
Of what I write, nearly 100%. Not the whole thing, of course, but nearly everything has some speed critical routines in it.
For example, write a rot13 filter... A trivial app. But, if you ended up needed to pipe a big file through it, a badly programmed inner loop could cause problems.
A decent API will let you instruct the filesystem on how best to optimize for your application. Reads every few K are more efficient than reads every character. And reading data into a memory buffer then working with it from there will be faster than calling a read function for every character.
Perhaps the conversion is taking too much time, precalculate a transformation array and use that, with the raw characters as array offsets. It's been a while since I've used Pascal but I remember having to call a function to turn characters into numbers...
And this is in a trivial application. Often a minute or two of coding, just picking algorithms you couldn't reasonably accomplish if locked into language constraints, will chop execution time significantly.
IMHO nearly everything written could use a little optimizing. Just because we've got fast computers is no reason to waste cycles, especially since with multitasking, every cycle wasted is one stolen from another app. And with d.net and seti@home, conceivably every cycle can be used.
And, as for the comment about nobody using Pascal... I meant, nobody that I see. Delphi (visual pascal basically) gets some use, but mainly for prototyping of one-off jobs. Everything I see is in C/C++ for speed/portability, Java/Perl for extreme portability and ease of coding, or VB because the coder is clueless. I realize some people do use Pascal, but nowhere near as many as use other languages.
If this is the only problem, then I'll bet you that we see a few computer cd players and mp3 rippers that accept external track info, so that you can get the directory info you can't just read. Then you can trade the file on IRC, or with Napster. There's nothing illegal about a file that just lists offsets into a CD...
But, if it's a real CD and just uses an odd format, it won't be long before programs are written that manually decode it.
Have you, or has anyone else, devised such a generic test? If not, then you are rather hoist on your own petard, are you not?
I'd say not.
Perfect proof requires omniscience. I can't prove something true in all cases, because I can't identify all cases, let alone test them.
But, to be a valid theory, you must be able to disprove it, as in the theory must state something testable, such that if the test returns certain results, the theory is proven to be incorrect.
The proposal was "concepts that don't have words in a language can't be thought of by speakers of that language." (Assuming they speak only that language.)
This is a valid theory because all you have to do to disprove it is find a concept for which there is not a word in some language, yet describe it well enough using other words that a speaker of that language understands you.
You then took this, and threw it back at me reversed. You want me to prove that there are no cases in which the theory could ever be right, not simply to show that there are some cases where it's wrong.
As I said, proof of such a thing is a logical impossibility. If you were a philosopher, or had studied it, you would realize this.
Thus, what you're proposing isn't a valid theory because it can't be disproved.
Now, if it was a suggestion, initially, that it was harder for people to conceptualize ideas for which they don't have convenient words, then I would agree. There wouldn't be a blanket statement of what is not possible. It wouldn't need to be a logically rigorous as a formal theory.
This is like me saying "what goes up, tends to come down," instead of "what goes up ALWAYS comes down." For the first to be true, I just have to show that it's often true, and a useful guide. For the second to be true, there would have to be no cases of anything going up that didn't come down. The first rocket flight that left something on the moon would have been counter-proof.
My point was that there is no word, in any language, that will adequately do it. English borrows more words, and is more dynamic than most, so is worst when it comes to finding a specific word with only one meaning, but all languages were created this way (by the speakers, over time) and all have context sensitive meaning.
You can either define a word to mean 'free as in speech', xyzzy, for instance, or you can use a phrase of arbitrary precision.
'Libre' might be closer to the ideal than 'free', but both are inaccurate, differing only in degree.
If you use 'libre' to mean 'free as in speech', then MS could call IE 'libre' because you're able to 'speak' with it, without them holding the rights, etc. Any word or short phrase you find will be too generic for nit pickers.
Unfortunately, there are less short words than long ones, so the short ones get more use, and pick up more meanings. It might seem short words should be more precise, but they are in fact the least so.
Abstraction can slow things down, but it can also speed things up.
Not everyone here is an asm guru. I know enough that I could easily write a memset routine for x86 and a few other platforms, but I can't guarantee that it'll be as fast as the library code.
Ditto with, for example, complex numbers. I can (in c++) declare n, i and j as complex numbers, set them, and say n = i * j. I could do the same with structures holding the real and imaginary, or parallel arrays. And theoretically, I could do it faster, if I coded it in ASM. But, the abstract level lets a programmer who majored in math do the actual code, probably squeezing out a few extra cycles by knowing shortcuts, and guarding against any special cases (div by zero type things) that I may not know about.
Abstraction also lets the compiler use the computer to its fullest. I could code vector manipulation, for a 3d engine, in asm, and even if it was provably the fastest code, that wouldn't do me any good with a new cpu. If I write it in C, or better, something more abstract where I can hand off whole matrices, the compiler will (ideally) know the the target CPU has Altivec, or 3dnow, or perhaps some higher-level FPU capable of whole matrix ops. By writing code that attains some reasonable fraction of the best speed, say 90% or so, you write code that attains that speed on all architectures, and uses new features with only a recompile. Hand code the routine in ASM and you only gain 10% or so, which might be important in a critical loop, but you lock yourself into having to recode it later, to get the same speed. And that means having to be an expert on all the target architectures.
And then, there's the argument that you can always give away abstraction, writing some critical code in ASM, if needed. You can't go the other way and use inheritance in ASM (or in typical assemblers.)
Languages that restrict you, that prevent you from being specific when you know something the compiler doesn't, are bad. That's why nobody uses Pascal. But the ideal language lets you ignore all the finicky details until you decide otherwise, it doesn't require anything either way.
Orwell's idea was mainly that with a simplified language you'd have a hard time discussing treasonous thoughts, which you could have.
Big brother was personified and anyone could want that image to be killed.
But, explaining that to enough other people to make it happen... That's where it's tough with a newspeak type language. And that was the idea. Keep conspirators alone, and thus unable to conspire.
The 'problem' is that english is too slippery, and is defined by usage. 'Free' means, liberty, and also, unpriced. That's because we've collectively added to it over time. It means both, depending on context. It's not that english doesn't have a word for 'free as in speech' but that it doesn't have a word exclusively for it.
German doesn't have a short root word for a lot of things, it has compound words that are like our phrases. To complain that english doesn't have a short work for every concept is like complaining that german has long words.
If 'free as in speech' is what you mean to say, then say it. Or say 'legally unencumbered', or 'unrestricted copying', etc. Find a phrase that explains exactly what you're trying to say.
I'd hazard a guess that 'libre' in french doesn't mean 'free as in speech, under USA law'. It probably means 'allowed to exercise it's rights' or something similar, which would lead a purist to ask what rights software has. More correct would be 'available for use in exercising your rights' which illustrates that the software is available for you to use in any way to exercise any of your rights, but which is still a bit vague in defining what rights you think people have.
Philosophy is a study of the non-technical, that which can't be measured. The idea of philosophy is to examine what the limits of knowledge are, not the specific knowledge.
If you can test something, it's no longer philosophy.
If you can devise a test to see if people can't conceptualize an idea without a word for it, then it becomes a testable theory.
I myself think the theory is bunk. A society might not have 'war' in their vocabulary, but they'd understand how something bigger can move something smaller, perhaps hurting the smaller thing in the process. This can easily be extrapolated up to war. They may not understand why you'd go to war, but understanding of the basic concept wouldn't escape them.
If 20th century philosophers have moved into the realms of the testable, then they're not philosophizing.
Doubtful, because for 99% of users, all they'll have to do to comply with his wishes will be put a (tm) by the first mention of Linux on the page, and explain at the bottom that it's a trademark of Linus.
Having a trademark doesn't mean nobody can use it, it just means they have to use it in a way compatible with your business, and with your permission.
The people who run sites that don't support the community, like the cyber squautters, will be squashed, the rest, they help, so they'll be granted permission to use the mark.
UPS didn't have to squash C&H websites, they just had to keep people from using the name without permission. If they had said "You're doing a service to the comic, as long as you properly credit the mark, you're allowed to use it." they'd have been just as legally protected. They just jumped in with lawyers blazing because they're assholes.
I think that Linus having the Linux trademark is a good thing. Or, at least, the least of the evils, assuming we have to have trademarks.
If Linus did get too nasty with it, we could pick up and move on, producing an OS identical to Linux, but with a different name. It wouldn't have the same market forces behind it, but it would be free of those same market forces at the same time.
And, having Linus dictate who can't use the Linux trademark is handy, it keeps MS from labelling one release of Win2k 'Linux', or something.
As free software types, with the GPL protecting us, we can't be hurt, we can just pick up and move on. I don't have any money riding on ANY software companies, let alone any Linux ones, so I'm not supporting this because of any financial reason.
Of course, both of these OSes got a huge boost by being included with 95% of the hardware they run on...
I don't think you could ever buy a Mac without MacOS (maybe in the short-lived clone days) and we all know about MS and their predatory packaging schemes.
Using these as examples of OSes that have succeeded may be good from the point of view of investors, but not users. Both of these OSes are terribly unstable, and the companies that sold them aren't known for service.
BeOS is just another OS in a crowded market. Open source isn't needed, but if I was selecting an OS to run servers at work, open source is a feature I'd look for, just like journalling FS support, strong memory protection, and pre-emptive multitasking. By being closed source it'll have to be not just as good as Linux or BSD in all ways, but better, to be worth my while.
Even my friends who can't program at all are into the open source aspect, because it can be modified, even if not by them. It's like buying an easily repairable car, even if you never open the hood yourself.
Many businesses (ISPs mainly, but a few others) that I know of are using Linux because it's open source, and if they ever need a feature that doesn't exist, or a patch, it'll be possible to hire a programmer and have it implemented.
The freedom to be able to do something is often more important that actually ever doing it.
My point is that the GPL only prevents the distro of a closed source branch, and as such, doesn't really prevent much.
If someone is upset with the GPL killing software, they're missing the point. Open source OSes exist as competition to closed source ones without the GPL, the GPL doesn't cause these OSes to spring into being. The only thing the GPL does is prevent the proprietization (is that a word?) of the OS. You could take a BSD branch, rename it, and sell it as closed source. You can't do that with Linux, you'd need to distribute the source. That's the only difference.
To me, the network effect applied to an open source operating system is a feature that adds value. Linux or BSD as yet another proprietary OS would be just another *nix clone... Consider the open source aspect, and they're suddenly worth much more.
Some software doesn't really need to be open source, but IMHO OSes do, and as such, the openness of an OS is worth much more than the polish of Be, or the number of apps for Windows.
Whining about the GPL is just proof that you don't "get it". Would the situation be better if some company could step in, fork the OS, rename it, close the source to that branch, toss a WM on it, and sell it? That's all the GPL prevents. The main OS would still be there, free, as an alternative.
Should users be prevented from writing software on their own if it would conflict with a possible commercial market? It's like saying people shouldn't be allowed to clean their houses, because it puts maids out of work.
If a proprietary OS is so great, people will be willing to pay for it. If it's not better than the free alternatives, they won't. No reason to expect people to refrain from ever innovating because it might cut into the ability of someone else to milk the users for some money...
Perhaps it's destroyed anyone's chance of selling an OS in this market, or perhaps it's just destroyed the chance of selling an OS that's not at least as good as the free ones.
Why should anyone pay for an OS when there's a free one, and why should anyone expect to get paid for an OS until they can provide something better than the free one?
You could just as easily say that the release of Quake1 under GPL destroyed the market for companies selling Wolf 3d-era games.
I think a quote says it best...
"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or a corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back, for their private benefit. That is all."
-- Robert A. Heinlein ("Life-Line")
If a company can't beat the free products, made by the users themselves, they don't deserve sympathy.
This particular AC is gone, so let me suggets a Beowulf cluster of them...:)
Actually, a cluster could use senses like smell in a much more advanced way, building a map of the smells in an area, not just as one specific sampling point.
Ditto with noise, you'd have a lot more samples.
A high bandwidth link and a sound-chip dedicated to finding better 3d cues with the info, and modifying your perceptions so that you 'hear' the sound as coming from where all units agree it is...
The big question now is "What do we want?" I want what the founders wanted: vigorous rights protection {snip]
The problem is that we disagree about where rights come in. I can't see how some basic layout in a GUI is something you should have a right to.
So Apple doesn't get to protect its new GUI because someone invented jello? Come on.
But it isn't GUIs to Jello, it's GUI to GUI, and Aqua from what I've seen doesn't have any groundbreaking new innovation, it's tweaked to offer features that show off the G4 (moving windows while displaying movies in them, etc), to show that Apple is a 'hip' company, with the weird colors and lack of straight lines (Apealing to the iMac type), and to differentiate it from the prior versions.
Nothing there is original. I've seen replacement window managers for Win9x where the design is similar (organic shapes, pastels, etc), you can do the same sort of things, draging a window, or it's outline, by a config option, in most OSes, etc.
I can't think of a single thing about Aqua that is original enough that they should be able to protect it.
People are copying it to give Aqua users a more comfortable time on other machines, to put menus in familiar places, an such. That it's so easy to copy the look of should mean that it's not a terribly complex or original idea.
I think IP laws are a good thing in general, but I don't see why they should be strict enough to grant protection to this. It's like letting a home owner sue someone for Look and Feel because he used an interesting combo of colors painting his house.
Apparently apple feels that protecting its GUI is a part of that revenue stream.
Sure they do. They'd patent dirt if you let them. It's not unreasonable that they think of using the laws for their gain.
We need to decide though, if we think this is a valid use of the IP laws, or if it's just posturing and legal threats. Apple *is* known for attacking other companies with (imho) spurious lawsuits.
They traveled down that road once before and Microsoft won. Mindshare does not equal market share. You are failing to learn from history here.
I beg to differ. In the Apple 2 days, Apple had a very large market share, and they made open, expandable computers, and shared information with customers. Then they made the Mac, killed the Apple// by abandoning it, made the Mac a less programmer-friendly system, an started attacking other companies for Look and Feel, etc. Apple's market share plummeted, especially considering they held 98% of the GUI market and it took years for their competitors to catch up, but by their inconsistent and rude actions, they drove away all but the most loyal customers.
They're starting to win fans again, with their more standardized designs, where you can use the same cards as PCs, with PCI and AGP, with IDE HDs as an option, for the non-rich, with OpenGL support, and so much effort put towards supporting an open platform.
But if they pull stupid lawyer tricks, they'll lose this generation of users just like they lost people 10-15 years ago.
I watched it happen before, and I recognize a lot of their moves.
If someone develops a clean, fast, bugfree environment then there's only one thing that can be directly copied, the cleanliness of design...
Copying Aqua's look won't give you a computer or OS capable of doing the task management, and copying the look won't give you a bugfree GUI. Those are both part of Apple's implementation, and the protected code that Aqua's look is part of.
The best innovations are the ones that customers think they need, hence bench-marketing. The problem is that these innovations are just ideas, the customers don't care about the tech behind them. Apple has to come up with great tech that they can copyright (or, ick, patent) underneath Aqua if they want it to be protectable. As it is now, it's just a copy of other GUIs with a slightly nicer polish.
And then why should they have protection other companies don't? That task bar at the bottom... That's derivative. I mean, they're stealing from whoever MS stole from. etc. The whole thing is pieces from someone else's GUIs.
The law, as passed by the people (via government) is designed to help the people, and it does so by offering a compromise to corporations such that in most cases, both benefit.
Nope. The purpose of IP laws is to protect the owner of the IP. The US founders knew that making the information public would help spur
innovation and industry. They also knew that people would not innovate if there was no reasonable chance of profit.
Actually, no.
The purpose of IP laws *is* to help the public.
If the whole idea of patents were to help companies there wouldn't be this pesky disclosure thing, a company would simply have legal rights to an idea while keepingit a trade secret. Best of both worlds as far as a company is concerned.
But laws are a contract between the people, via the government, and others, be they inividuals or companies.
The law was enacted to help people by giving companies a way to release ideas and stimulate development, and in trade for this concession, the company was granted a privellage it wouldn't have otherwise, a legally enforcable monopoly on that idea.
Patents do help companies, but (with the exception of bribes) companies don't make laws. Thus laws get passed to help/protect the people. If a law helps a company then it either is a failed law, which makes it unlikely it'll be a nearly-global law, or it helps both companies and people, as is the case with IP laws. Ditto with copyrights, etc.
You must understand that there was a time before IP laws, that IP is fundamentally different from property and needs different protection.
Imagine a hungry hunter with a club, he sees a hunter with a spear and thinks "Wow, that'll let me kill wild pigs, which are plentiful". Is he going to try to offer this other hunter something in trade for the right to use the idea, or will he simply sharpen a long stick and make himself a spear? At some point after this it was decided that it helped society to making IP laws, in the same way it helped to make traffic laws, but that doesn't mean that either are an inalienable right, or that they have always existed.
That said, IP laws are good only as long as they stimulate growth. When they retard progress, they are no longer in society's best interest and should be phased out or changed. And as IP laws aren't an inherent right, companies don't have the right, or ability, to protect any idea, just certain small classes of ideas.
Letting Apple protect the desktop would be like letting FedEx protect the idea of next-day parcel delivery by preventing anyone from doing so for a certain number of years. Judging by the low costs and large number of courier companies, it appears to me that letting it evolve naturally worked better than by granting exclusive rights to one company.
All I know is that given the current state of IP law and precident, what Apple is doing is legal.
If the desktop theme is patentable, or copyrightable.
Copyright are only on the representation, so the fact the the themes are merely similar, not exact, should mean they can't use a copyright.
Patents protect whole ideas, but (with a sane PTO) are only applicable on a novell implementation of the idea, not on the overall idea.
I don't really think Apple can protect their GUI, or should be able to.
But, throw enough lawyers at it...
Apple doesn't participate in the so called "gift culture". I would note that the "gift culture" has gained far more from proprietary culture than vice versa.
Not at all. The specific gift culture we call Open Source, maybe. But Apple has thousands of years of discoveries, much research into usability, the networking knowledge of the people who developed the internet, etc. You couldn't write an exhaustive list of what Apple got for free from the world at large.
They deserve...[snip]
They deserve the same things any other company does, the right to use the laws as appropriate. *If* any laws help them in this case, they deserve to be allowed to use them. But, I doubt there are, because the GUI isn't easily patentable, copyrightable, or trademarkable, except as a whole unmodified unit, or only in small pieces, not as a cohesive idea in any form.
They are after two things: money and mind-share. Just because you are focused on "status points" as the measure of how to "win" doesn't mean that they are as well.
Sure, money means more to them than status. Does to me too. I'd rather be as rich as Gates than as famous as ESR.
But, you can't make money off of everything. They don't have the right to profit from something just because they're a company. If they're can't make a profit, they can't make a profit. They could kick and scream, like babies, and get everyone to hate them again... not long ago if you said "Apple" around 98% of hackers, they'd spit. They could bring that image back, or they could realize that a look-alike design garners mind-share, if nothing else, and share gracefully, thus not pissing everyone off.
They are a business, not a movement.
And this just means they're a movement concerned with getting money. But there is such a thing as delayed gratification... doing something for mind-share now, to get market-share later.
Well, then you are certainly qualified to comment on it, now aren't you.
Why wouldn't he be? The issue is what should be patentable, not thoughts about what the article says. You're just using something unrelated to attack him with. Ditto with your later comment about gambling (Though I do agree that gambling is exploitation of the stupid.)
DNA is not encrypted.
Perhaps not, as in cyphered, but it is encoded, which is a form of encryption. The idea is solid though, that DNA is instructions for the cells that make up our bodies, but we don't have a clue of how it does that.
Hrm, someone hasn't been paying attention. In order for a patent to be a patent, it has to be public knowledge.
Sure, patents make the process public, but they don't make it available until the patent ends. And given the trend in copyrights, patent terms could end up getting longer.
It'd suck if the cure for Alzheimers (to use a common example) was based on a patent help by a bankrupt company, and unavailable because its creditors, upon hearing of potential money, held up the bankruptcy litigation for years. It could happen. It has happened before with lesser technologies.
Patents have a purpose, but they aren't universally applicable, or appropriate in the same form for all markets. Why is the same patent term that is used in the slowly-innovating auto industry also appropriate in the rapidly advancing drug industry? You could argue it should be longer or shorter, but you can't think both are similar enough that the same term is completely appropriate.
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4dos, from jpsoft. It's got filename completion, command recall (w/ wildcards, so you can type "cd s" and when you hit 'up' you get the commands that start with that substring...), an improved batch langauges, precompiled (to bytecode) batch files for speed, Aliases, and tons more. And it's shareware.
www.jpsoft.com
Currently, AFAIK, there are no laws against reverse engineering, and because shrinkwrap licenses aren't valid (except probably in shareware) they couldn't get you to agree to such a stipulation.
Shrinkwrap/@install licenses aren't valid mainly because you already purchased the software before being asked to agree, so in offering you a contract you have to say yes to to proceed, they void the contract. The is probably different in shareware because you haven't bought the software, so you're negotiating the right to use it.
But, even still, I doubt a no-reverse engineering clause would hold because it takes place outside of your usage of the program.
DOS, not requiring protected mode, will run on lower-end CPUs, and with less memory than many other embedded OSes.
Yes, it does do less, but if you don't need preemptive multitasking, or networking, it may be the perfect choice.
A lot of embedded apps don't want the OS for much besides a loader and a filesystem API, and DOS is pretty good at that, especially if you don't need speed.
Your comparisons are very flawed.
East Germany vs West Germany...
You give all credit to the difference to their IP laws, not considering that there was modern democratic government with a commitment to industry in one country and a totalitarian government known for oppressive rule in the other.
Ditto with a lot of other countries you mention. India is poor, like China, but has a much more open government and much better human rights history.
And you also ignore the fact that the open IP systems in the leading countries give these non-IP countries a leg up. If China had all the same technology the US did, after sufficient delay to allow for copying it, then your argument might be believable.
You'd have us believe that the whole country is full of people just waiting for an idea to pounce on and steal, yet they can't arrange plane fare to send someone to the USA and bring back books of patents?
And then you point to "history", saying it proves your point. One example does not an argument make. Especially when it has holes. The renaissance started before IP laws were thought of. Much of history in prosperous countries has examples of science being funded by the government and financial concerns.
I'm not saying anything about your ultimate conclusion, that IP laws are important to development, just that your arguments leading up to them are spurious at best.
Because it may be easier than the alternative, or produce faster programs. Given that, why not? A language should make is easy to follow good programing guidelines, but it shouldn't force you to do anything. The compiler/language are a tool, and if that tool doesn't best fit the job, use something else. Ideally the language will have extensions to let you easily use something else for parts instead of having to write a completely external module.
Of what I write, nearly 100%. Not the whole thing, of course, but nearly everything has some speed critical routines in it.
For example, write a rot13 filter... A trivial app. But, if you ended up needed to pipe a big file through it, a badly programmed inner loop could cause problems.
A decent API will let you instruct the filesystem on how best to optimize for your application. Reads every few K are more efficient than reads every character. And reading data into a memory buffer then working with it from there will be faster than calling a read function for every character.
Perhaps the conversion is taking too much time, precalculate a transformation array and use that, with the raw characters as array offsets. It's been a while since I've used Pascal but I remember having to call a function to turn characters into numbers...
And this is in a trivial application. Often a minute or two of coding, just picking algorithms you couldn't reasonably accomplish if locked into language constraints, will chop execution time significantly.
IMHO nearly everything written could use a little optimizing. Just because we've got fast computers is no reason to waste cycles, especially since with multitasking, every cycle wasted is one stolen from another app. And with d.net and seti@home, conceivably every cycle can be used.
And, as for the comment about nobody using Pascal... I meant, nobody that I see. Delphi (visual pascal basically) gets some use, but mainly for prototyping of one-off jobs. Everything I see is in C/C++ for speed/portability, Java/Perl for extreme portability and ease of coding, or VB because the coder is clueless. I realize some people do use Pascal, but nowhere near as many as use other languages.
If this is the only problem, then I'll bet you that we see a few computer cd players and mp3 rippers that accept external track info, so that you can get the directory info you can't just read. Then you can trade the file on IRC, or with Napster. There's nothing illegal about a file that just lists offsets into a CD...
But, if it's a real CD and just uses an odd format, it won't be long before programs are written that manually decode it.
I'd say not.
Perfect proof requires omniscience. I can't prove something true in all cases, because I can't identify all cases, let alone test them.
But, to be a valid theory, you must be able to disprove it, as in the theory must state something testable, such that if the test returns certain results, the theory is proven to be incorrect.
The proposal was "concepts that don't have words in a language can't be thought of by speakers of that language." (Assuming they speak only that language.)
This is a valid theory because all you have to do to disprove it is find a concept for which there is not a word in some language, yet describe it well enough using other words that a speaker of that language understands you.
You then took this, and threw it back at me reversed. You want me to prove that there are no cases in which the theory could ever be right, not simply to show that there are some cases where it's wrong.
As I said, proof of such a thing is a logical impossibility. If you were a philosopher, or had studied it, you would realize this.
Thus, what you're proposing isn't a valid theory because it can't be disproved.
Now, if it was a suggestion, initially, that it was harder for people to conceptualize ideas for which they don't have convenient words, then I would agree. There wouldn't be a blanket statement of what is not possible. It wouldn't need to be a logically rigorous as a formal theory.
This is like me saying "what goes up, tends to come down," instead of "what goes up ALWAYS comes down." For the first to be true, I just have to show that it's often true, and a useful guide. For the second to be true, there would have to be no cases of anything going up that didn't come down. The first rocket flight that left something on the moon would have been counter-proof.
My point was that there is no word, in any language, that will adequately do it. English borrows more words, and is more dynamic than most, so is worst when it comes to finding a specific word with only one meaning, but all languages were created this way (by the speakers, over time) and all have context sensitive meaning.
You can either define a word to mean 'free as in speech', xyzzy, for instance, or you can use a phrase of arbitrary precision.
'Libre' might be closer to the ideal than 'free', but both are inaccurate, differing only in degree.
If you use 'libre' to mean 'free as in speech', then MS could call IE 'libre' because you're able to 'speak' with it, without them holding the rights, etc. Any word or short phrase you find will be too generic for nit pickers.
Unfortunately, there are less short words than long ones, so the short ones get more use, and pick up more meanings. It might seem short words should be more precise, but they are in fact the least so.
Abstraction can slow things down, but it can also speed things up.
Not everyone here is an asm guru. I know enough that I could easily write a memset routine for x86 and a few other platforms, but I can't guarantee that it'll be as fast as the library code.
Ditto with, for example, complex numbers. I can (in c++) declare n, i and j as complex numbers, set them, and say n = i * j. I could do the same with structures holding the real and imaginary, or parallel arrays. And theoretically, I could do it faster, if I coded it in ASM. But, the abstract level lets a programmer who majored in math do the actual code, probably squeezing out a few extra cycles by knowing shortcuts, and guarding against any special cases (div by zero type things) that I may not know about.
Abstraction also lets the compiler use the computer to its fullest. I could code vector manipulation, for a 3d engine, in asm, and even if it was provably the fastest code, that wouldn't do me any good with a new cpu. If I write it in C, or better, something more abstract where I can hand off whole matrices, the compiler will (ideally) know the the target CPU has Altivec, or 3dnow, or perhaps some higher-level FPU capable of whole matrix ops. By writing code that attains some reasonable fraction of the best speed, say 90% or so, you write code that attains that speed on all architectures, and uses new features with only a recompile. Hand code the routine in ASM and you only gain 10% or so, which might be important in a critical loop, but you lock yourself into having to recode it later, to get the same speed. And that means having to be an expert on all the target architectures.
And then, there's the argument that you can always give away abstraction, writing some critical code in ASM, if needed. You can't go the other way and use inheritance in ASM (or in typical assemblers.)
Languages that restrict you, that prevent you from being specific when you know something the compiler doesn't, are bad. That's why nobody uses Pascal. But the ideal language lets you ignore all the finicky details until you decide otherwise, it doesn't require anything either way.
Orwell's idea was mainly that with a simplified language you'd have a hard time discussing treasonous thoughts, which you could have.
Big brother was personified and anyone could want that image to be killed.
But, explaining that to enough other people to make it happen... That's where it's tough with a newspeak type language. And that was the idea. Keep conspirators alone, and thus unable to conspire.
The 'problem' is that english is too slippery, and is defined by usage. 'Free' means, liberty, and also, unpriced. That's because we've collectively added to it over time. It means both, depending on context. It's not that english doesn't have a word for 'free as in speech' but that it doesn't have a word exclusively for it.
German doesn't have a short root word for a lot of things, it has compound words that are like our phrases. To complain that english doesn't have a short work for every concept is like complaining that german has long words.
If 'free as in speech' is what you mean to say, then say it. Or say 'legally unencumbered', or 'unrestricted copying', etc. Find a phrase that explains exactly what you're trying to say.
I'd hazard a guess that 'libre' in french doesn't mean 'free as in speech, under USA law'. It probably means 'allowed to exercise it's rights' or something similar, which would lead a purist to ask what rights software has. More correct would be 'available for use in exercising your rights' which illustrates that the software is available for you to use in any way to exercise any of your rights, but which is still a bit vague in defining what rights you think people have.
Sorry, but you're wrong.
Philosophy is a study of the non-technical, that which can't be measured. The idea of philosophy is to examine what the limits of knowledge are, not the specific knowledge.
If you can test something, it's no longer philosophy.
If you can devise a test to see if people can't conceptualize an idea without a word for it, then it becomes a testable theory.
I myself think the theory is bunk. A society might not have 'war' in their vocabulary, but they'd understand how something bigger can move something smaller, perhaps hurting the smaller thing in the process. This can easily be extrapolated up to war. They may not understand why you'd go to war, but understanding of the basic concept wouldn't escape them.
If 20th century philosophers have moved into the realms of the testable, then they're not philosophizing.
Doubtful, because for 99% of users, all they'll have to do to comply with his wishes will be put a (tm) by the first mention of Linux on the page, and explain at the bottom that it's a trademark of Linus.
Having a trademark doesn't mean nobody can use it, it just means they have to use it in a way compatible with your business, and with your permission.
The people who run sites that don't support the community, like the cyber squautters, will be squashed, the rest, they help, so they'll be granted permission to use the mark.
UPS didn't have to squash C&H websites, they just had to keep people from using the name without permission. If they had said "You're doing a service to the comic, as long as you properly credit the mark, you're allowed to use it." they'd have been just as legally protected. They just jumped in with lawyers blazing because they're assholes.
I think that Linus having the Linux trademark is a good thing. Or, at least, the least of the evils, assuming we have to have trademarks.
If Linus did get too nasty with it, we could pick up and move on, producing an OS identical to Linux, but with a different name. It wouldn't have the same market forces behind it, but it would be free of those same market forces at the same time.
And, having Linus dictate who can't use the Linux trademark is handy, it keeps MS from labelling one release of Win2k 'Linux', or something.
As free software types, with the GPL protecting us, we can't be hurt, we can just pick up and move on. I don't have any money riding on ANY software companies, let alone any Linux ones, so I'm not supporting this because of any financial reason.
Re: MacOS and Windows succeeding...
Of course, both of these OSes got a huge boost by being included with 95% of the hardware they run on...
I don't think you could ever buy a Mac without MacOS (maybe in the short-lived clone days) and we all know about MS and their predatory packaging schemes.
Using these as examples of OSes that have succeeded may be good from the point of view of investors, but not users. Both of these OSes are terribly unstable, and the companies that sold them aren't known for service.
BeOS is just another OS in a crowded market. Open source isn't needed, but if I was selecting an OS to run servers at work, open source is a feature I'd look for, just like journalling FS support, strong memory protection, and pre-emptive multitasking. By being closed source it'll have to be not just as good as Linux or BSD in all ways, but better, to be worth my while.
Actually, a fair number of users are, I think.
Even my friends who can't program at all are into the open source aspect, because it can be modified, even if not by them. It's like buying an easily repairable car, even if you never open the hood yourself.
Many businesses (ISPs mainly, but a few others) that I know of are using Linux because it's open source, and if they ever need a feature that doesn't exist, or a patch, it'll be possible to hire a programmer and have it implemented.
The freedom to be able to do something is often more important that actually ever doing it.
I know.
My point is that the GPL only prevents the distro of a closed source branch, and as such, doesn't really prevent much.
If someone is upset with the GPL killing software, they're missing the point. Open source OSes exist as competition to closed source ones without the GPL, the GPL doesn't cause these OSes to spring into being. The only thing the GPL does is prevent the proprietization (is that a word?) of the OS. You could take a BSD branch, rename it, and sell it as closed source. You can't do that with Linux, you'd need to distribute the source. That's the only difference.
To me, the network effect applied to an open source operating system is a feature that adds value. Linux or BSD as yet another proprietary OS would be just another *nix clone... Consider the open source aspect, and they're suddenly worth much more.
Some software doesn't really need to be open source, but IMHO OSes do, and as such, the openness of an OS is worth much more than the polish of Be, or the number of apps for Windows.
Whining about the GPL is just proof that you don't "get it". Would the situation be better if some company could step in, fork the OS, rename it, close the source to that branch, toss a WM on it, and sell it? That's all the GPL prevents. The main OS would still be there, free, as an alternative.
Should users be prevented from writing software on their own if it would conflict with a possible commercial market? It's like saying people shouldn't be allowed to clean their houses, because it puts maids out of work.
If a proprietary OS is so great, people will be willing to pay for it. If it's not better than the free alternatives, they won't. No reason to expect people to refrain from ever innovating because it might cut into the ability of someone else to milk the users for some money...
Why should anyone pay for an OS when there's a free one, and why should anyone expect to get paid for an OS until they can provide something better than the free one?
You could just as easily say that the release of Quake1 under GPL destroyed the market for companies selling Wolf 3d-era games.
I think a quote says it best...
If a company can't beat the free products, made by the users themselves, they don't deserve sympathy.
Wow, think of the options...
:)
:)
This particular AC is gone, so let me suggets a Beowulf cluster of them...
Actually, a cluster could use senses like smell in a much more advanced way, building a map of the smells in an area, not just as one specific sampling point.
Ditto with noise, you'd have a lot more samples.
A high bandwidth link and a sound-chip dedicated to finding better 3d cues with the info, and modifying your perceptions so that you 'hear' the sound as coming from where all units agree it is...
And, then there's simply RC5 or CSC cracking.
The problem is that we disagree about where rights come in. I can't see how some basic layout in a GUI is something you should have a right to.
But it isn't GUIs to Jello, it's GUI to GUI, and Aqua from what I've seen doesn't have any groundbreaking new innovation, it's tweaked to offer features that show off the G4 (moving windows while displaying movies in them, etc), to show that Apple is a 'hip' company, with the weird colors and lack of straight lines (Apealing to the iMac type), and to differentiate it from the prior versions.
Nothing there is original. I've seen replacement window managers for Win9x where the design is similar (organic shapes, pastels, etc), you can do the same sort of things, draging a window, or it's outline, by a config option, in most OSes, etc.
I can't think of a single thing about Aqua that is original enough that they should be able to protect it.
People are copying it to give Aqua users a more comfortable time on other machines, to put menus in familiar places, an such. That it's so easy to copy the look of should mean that it's not a terribly complex or original idea.
I think IP laws are a good thing in general, but I don't see why they should be strict enough to grant protection to this. It's like letting a home owner sue someone for Look and Feel because he used an interesting combo of colors painting his house.
Sure they do. They'd patent dirt if you let them. It's not unreasonable that they think of using the laws for their gain.
We need to decide though, if we think this is a valid use of the IP laws, or if it's just posturing and legal threats. Apple *is* known for attacking other companies with (imho) spurious lawsuits.
I beg to differ. In the Apple 2 days, Apple had a very large market share, and they made open, expandable computers, and shared information with customers. Then they made the Mac, killed the Apple
They're starting to win fans again, with their more standardized designs, where you can use the same cards as PCs, with PCI and AGP, with IDE HDs as an option, for the non-rich, with OpenGL support, and so much effort put towards supporting an open platform.
But if they pull stupid lawyer tricks, they'll lose this generation of users just like they lost people 10-15 years ago.
I watched it happen before, and I recognize a lot of their moves.
If someone develops a clean, fast, bugfree environment then there's only one thing that can be directly copied, the cleanliness of design...
Copying Aqua's look won't give you a computer or OS capable of doing the task management, and copying the look won't give you a bugfree GUI. Those are both part of Apple's implementation, and the protected code that Aqua's look is part of.
The best innovations are the ones that customers think they need, hence bench-marketing. The problem is that these innovations are just ideas, the customers don't care about the tech behind them. Apple has to come up with great tech that they can copyright (or, ick, patent) underneath Aqua if they want it to be protectable. As it is now, it's just a copy of other GUIs with a slightly nicer polish.
And then why should they have protection other companies don't? That task bar at the bottom... That's derivative. I mean, they're stealing from whoever MS stole from. etc. The whole thing is pieces from someone else's GUIs.
Exactly (asside from the italic thing)...
The law, as passed by the people (via government) is designed to help the people, and it does so by offering a compromise to corporations such that in most cases, both benefit.
Actually, no.
The purpose of IP laws *is* to help the public.
If the whole idea of patents were to help companies there wouldn't be this pesky disclosure thing, a company would simply have legal rights to an idea while keepingit a trade secret. Best of both worlds as far as a company is concerned.
But laws are a contract between the people, via the government, and others, be they inividuals or companies.
The law was enacted to help people by giving companies a way to release ideas and stimulate development, and in trade for this concession, the company was granted a privellage it wouldn't have otherwise, a legally enforcable monopoly on that idea.
Patents do help companies, but (with the exception of bribes) companies don't make laws. Thus laws get passed to help/protect the people. If a law helps a company then it either is a failed law, which makes it unlikely it'll be a nearly-global law, or it helps both companies and people, as is the case with IP laws. Ditto with copyrights, etc.
You must understand that there was a time before IP laws, that IP is fundamentally different from property and needs different protection.
Imagine a hungry hunter with a club, he sees a hunter with a spear and thinks "Wow, that'll let me kill wild pigs, which are plentiful". Is he going to try to offer this other hunter something in trade for the right to use the idea, or will he simply sharpen a long stick and make himself a spear? At some point after this it was decided that it helped society to making IP laws, in the same way it helped to make traffic laws, but that doesn't mean that either are an inalienable right, or that they have always existed.
That said, IP laws are good only as long as they stimulate growth. When they retard progress, they are no longer in society's best interest and should be phased out or changed. And as IP laws aren't an inherent right, companies don't have the right, or ability, to protect any idea, just certain small classes of ideas.
Letting Apple protect the desktop would be like letting FedEx protect the idea of next-day parcel delivery by preventing anyone from doing so for a certain number of years. Judging by the low costs and large number of courier companies, it appears to me that letting it evolve naturally worked better than by granting exclusive rights to one company.
If the desktop theme is patentable, or copyrightable.
Copyright are only on the representation, so the fact the the themes are merely similar, not exact, should mean they can't use a copyright.
Patents protect whole ideas, but (with a sane PTO) are only applicable on a novell implementation of the idea, not on the overall idea.
I don't really think Apple can protect their GUI, or should be able to.
But, throw enough lawyers at it...
Not at all. The specific gift culture we call Open Source, maybe. But Apple has thousands of years of discoveries, much research into usability, the networking knowledge of the people who developed the internet, etc. You couldn't write an exhaustive list of what Apple got for free from the world at large.
They deserve the same things any other company does, the right to use the laws as appropriate. *If* any laws help them in this case, they deserve to be allowed to use them. But, I doubt there are, because the GUI isn't easily patentable, copyrightable, or trademarkable, except as a whole unmodified unit, or only in small pieces, not as a cohesive idea in any form.
Sure, money means more to them than status. Does to me too. I'd rather be as rich as Gates than as famous as ESR.
But, you can't make money off of everything. They don't have the right to profit from something just because they're a company. If they're can't make a profit, they can't make a profit. They could kick and scream, like babies, and get everyone to hate them again... not long ago if you said "Apple" around 98% of hackers, they'd spit. They could bring that image back, or they could realize that a look-alike design garners mind-share, if nothing else, and share gracefully, thus not pissing everyone off.
And this just means they're a movement concerned with getting money. But there is such a thing as delayed gratification... doing something for mind-share now, to get market-share later.
Well, then you are certainly qualified to comment on it, now aren't you.
Why wouldn't he be? The issue is what should be patentable, not thoughts about what the article says. You're just using something unrelated to attack him with. Ditto with your later comment about gambling (Though I do agree that gambling is exploitation of the stupid.)
DNA is not encrypted.
Perhaps not, as in cyphered, but it is encoded, which is a form of encryption. The idea is solid though, that DNA is instructions for the cells that make up our bodies, but we don't have a clue of how it does that.
Hrm, someone hasn't been paying attention. In order for a patent to be a patent, it has to be public knowledge.
Sure, patents make the process public, but they don't make it available until the patent ends. And given the trend in copyrights, patent terms could end up getting longer.
It'd suck if the cure for Alzheimers (to use a common example) was based on a patent help by a bankrupt company, and unavailable because its creditors, upon hearing of potential money, held up the bankruptcy litigation for years. It could happen. It has happened before with lesser technologies.
Patents have a purpose, but they aren't universally applicable, or appropriate in the same form for all markets. Why is the same patent term that is used in the slowly-innovating auto industry also appropriate in the rapidly advancing drug industry? You could argue it should be longer or shorter, but you can't think both are similar enough that the same term is completely appropriate.