"Not anymore. Schools replaced "Civics" with "Social Studies," which is basically a preparatory course in Political Correctness, a long time ago."
Given the wide use of the term RTFM and the popularity of nasty reality shows in recent years, there's little danger of the country being taken over by "politically correct" forces for the foreseeable future.
Re:If your looking for logic in coding conventions
on
Are 80 Columns Enough?
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· Score: 1
"Yes, and the 80 column line length convention derives directly from the hardware arrangement I explain above."
Sure, that's true historically, but the issue under discussion is whether this convention makes any sense today. You could make the case that 80 columns weren't even a real coding convention at the begining, just an obvious adjustment to a hardware design limitation.
Re:If your looking for logic in coding conventions
on
Are 80 Columns Enough?
·
· Score: 1
You realize that I was talking about the logic of coding conventions, right?
Yeah, I haven't followed the details on the SCO case. Assuming your summary is accurate, the Novell/oldSCO agreement didn't contain provisions to give oldSCO exclusive rights to UNIX source code. Thus the contract can stand on it's own.
The problem with relying on the external history of an agreement to determine what was actually agreed on, is much like the problem of relying on external documentation to determine what your software is really doing. They may be a lot of abandoned ideas and proposals along the way. The contract or the code is the embodiment of the intent, even if it has bugs.
"You make it sound as if '95 was a bad time to be a word processor user. GUI-based word processing was just starting to take off with MSWord."
MSWord was already the market leader in 1995. WordPerfect corporation had already given up on WordPerfect, selling it to Novell in 1994 who turned around and sold it to Corel about a year and a half later.
Some of us had already been doing GUI-based word processing for a decade by that time.
"I'm assuming nothing. I'm going by the applicants I have evaluated while working at different companies."
So what percentage of total US applicants have you evaluated? How do we know that you judgment is good in these matters? I think it's clear that you are assuming a lot.
"The "$echo" newsletter article doesn't change or extend the contract. It clarifies that a licensee's wholly original add-ons to UNIX belong soley to the licensee. In short, it is evidence of AT&T's intent in executing their UNIX contracts. Why wouldn't a judge consider it?"
Any limitations in the rights SCO obtained from AT&T should have been spelled out as part of the agreement (I have no idea if they were or not). If they weren't, then it's AT&T's fault for not protecting their rights. Given AT&T's historical sloppy legal work with regard to UNIX, it wouldn't surprise me. I think the legal situation with regard to UNIX is so convoluted that it would be dangerous to draw any general conclusions. You should also keep in mind that SCO's loss won't prove that extra-contractual documents can be used to narrow the scope of a contract unless a court specifically declares it is so.
"..then at some point, it would hardly matter which OS you run them on."
Yes, because they would all be dumbed-down to run on the weakest system and they'd all be slower than native apps. I think for most people the ability to switch OS's is less important than having the best possible applications.
"I think in 3 - 5 years windows won't matter that much to most people - the main use will be to provide hardware driver support and launch rich client internet aware apps. "
As opposed to a few years ago when it just provided hardware driver support and launched rich client non-internet-aware apps? So now it supports both kinds of rich client applications. That sounds like an expansion of use, not a reduction.
So your assumption is that all the US programmers who aren't hired are bad. What do you base this on? Are you assuming that hiring practices always result in the best candidates being hired? That would be quite remarkable given that those practices are radically different at different companies.
"Transmeta had an interesting idea with the dynamic recompilation stuff, but it never really panned out. Their chips were light on power consumption, but they were dog slow the first couple of times you ran a program, and then they only crawled up to barely acceptable."
The amazing thing to me is that people who were smart enough to make their own processor that can "emulate" another, weren't smart enough to realize that the performance would suck. Perhaps the original founders and investors got rich anyway.
"You may sneer, but there are a competent security experts outside of govt and DoD who don't fall into your "RMS and his followers" category."
Sure, but how many of them are stating that open source code is always more secure than closed? Fore example, in the case of military encryption, the algorithms used are classified, not just the implementation. Does any real security expert claim that making the algorithm and implementation public would make military communications more secure?
"Find me some provisions in the GPL that could be struck out without violating the clear intent of the license that would accomplish anything that GPL violators would like."
I don't need to do that to prove my point. This is what the GPL says:
"If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under any particular circumstance, the balance of the section is intended to apply and the section as a whole is intended to apply in other circumstances."
Clearly the FSF wanted to protect against a court action that rendered portions of the GPL unenforceable. If the FSF thought it impossible that such a partial judgment "would accomplish anything that GPL violators would like", than they had no reason to put such a statement in the license. If it's just boiler-plate, then that argues against your theory that the GPL is particularly "clear in simple" compared to other licenses.
".. that is clearly stated in the preamble and in the many documents the FSF has published. When there's any lack of clarity in the plain language of a contract or license, the next place the court looks is the intent of the parties."
So your legal theory is that what the FSF has published about the GPL can be used as evidence to explain what the license "really" says? That would render contracts rather meaningless if one party can hold the other party responsible for things outside the contract. I think the most likely outcome would be a judge admonishing the first party for not including all of the terms in the contract itself.
In any case, a contract can be perfectly understandable and still be declared partially or fully unenforceable. As I've said before, I doubt such a thing would happen to the GPL, but that doesn't mean it's impossible.
"The reason no one wants to try to invalidate it is very simple: If you successfully invalidate the GPL, all you've achieved is to prove yourself guilty of copyright infringement."
This is based on the faulty assumption that the GPL has to be either found fully valid or thrown out completely. Although it's not likely, a court could render a verdict that strikes out only some provisions of the GPL. The language of the GPL itself recognizes this possibility.
Of course, it would be very bad for the free software movement if the GPL was thrown out completely because all the companies that distribute GPL'd software would be guilty of copyright infringement. Perhaps that's the real reason the FSF doesn't take people to court.
Sure, the collective security knowledge gained over the last 50 years by the government and the defense industry is nothing compared to the knowledge of security that RMS and his followers have.
Google's not interested in assisting anything. Like the other companies involved in the MS antitrust case, they simply want the court to help them compete.
I think your speaking to somebody else's argument.
I only mentioned a lottery because I don't think we could accommodate everybody who wants to come here all at once. I think most of the unfettered immigration took place when there was clearly more room and opportunity than there is today. In any case, I didn't specify how many people could "win" the lottery; it could be a lot of people.
What I object to in today's immigration policy is letting people in simply because we don't like the government of their country (e.g. Cuba) or because they have skills that powerful corporations want to take advantage of, or because they are tall and know how to throw a ball into a hoop. I think a farm worker has as much right to become a citizen as a PhD.
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Thanks for your personal and innovative definition of PC.
"Not anymore. Schools replaced "Civics" with "Social Studies," which is basically a preparatory course in Political Correctness, a long time ago."
Given the wide use of the term RTFM and the popularity of nasty reality shows in recent years, there's little danger of the country being taken over by "politically correct" forces for the foreseeable future.
Sure, but are you holding it up?
"Yes, and the 80 column line length convention derives directly from the hardware arrangement I explain above."
Sure, that's true historically, but the issue under discussion is whether this convention makes any sense today. You could make the case that 80 columns weren't even a real coding convention at the begining, just an obvious adjustment to a hardware design limitation.
You realize that I was talking about the logic of coding conventions, right?
so you can wag more dogs.
shouldn't we be holding up our display at arms length rather than have it sitting on our desks?
at least I followed the same philosophy as many coding conventions that say that consistency is the prime directive.
your looking in the wrong place.
Yeah, I haven't followed the details on the SCO case. Assuming your summary is accurate, the Novell/oldSCO agreement didn't contain provisions to give oldSCO exclusive rights to UNIX source code. Thus the contract can stand on it's own.
The problem with relying on the external history of an agreement to determine what was actually agreed on, is much like the problem of relying on external documentation to determine what your software is really doing. They may be a lot of abandoned ideas and proposals along the way. The contract or the code is the embodiment of the intent, even if it has bugs.
"You make it sound as if '95 was a bad time to be a word processor user. GUI-based word processing was just starting to take off with MSWord."
MSWord was already the market leader in 1995. WordPerfect corporation had already given up on WordPerfect, selling it to Novell in 1994 who turned around and sold it to Corel about a year and a half later.
Some of us had already been doing GUI-based word processing for a decade by that time.
become 1997?
"I'm assuming nothing. I'm going by the applicants I have evaluated while working at different companies."
So what percentage of total US applicants have you evaluated? How do we know that you judgment is good in these matters? I think it's clear that you are assuming a lot.
"The "$echo" newsletter article doesn't change or extend the contract. It clarifies that a licensee's wholly original add-ons to UNIX belong soley to the licensee. In short, it is evidence of AT&T's intent in executing their UNIX contracts. Why wouldn't a judge consider it?"
Any limitations in the rights SCO obtained from AT&T should have been spelled out as part of the agreement (I have no idea if they were or not). If they weren't, then it's AT&T's fault for not protecting their rights. Given AT&T's historical sloppy legal work with regard to UNIX, it wouldn't surprise me. I think the legal situation with regard to UNIX is so convoluted that it would be dangerous to draw any general conclusions. You should also keep in mind that SCO's loss won't prove that extra-contractual documents can be used to narrow the scope of a contract unless a court specifically declares it is so.
"..then at some point, it would hardly matter which OS you run them on."
Yes, because they would all be dumbed-down to run on the weakest system and they'd all be slower than native apps. I think for most people the ability to switch OS's is less important than having the best possible applications.
"I think in 3 - 5 years
windows won't matter that much to most people - the main use will be to provide hardware
driver support and launch rich client internet aware apps. "
As opposed to a few years ago when it just provided hardware driver support and launched rich client non-internet-aware apps? So now it supports both kinds of rich client applications. That sounds like an expansion of use, not a reduction.
So your assumption is that all the US programmers who aren't hired are bad. What do you base this on? Are you assuming that hiring practices always result in the best candidates being hired? That would be quite remarkable given that those practices are radically different at different companies.
without seeing the actual porn involved. Any links?
"Transmeta had an interesting idea with the dynamic recompilation stuff, but it never really panned out. Their chips were light on power consumption, but they were dog slow the first couple of times you ran a program, and then they only crawled up to barely acceptable."
The amazing thing to me is that people who were smart enough to make their own processor that can "emulate" another, weren't smart enough to realize that the performance would suck. Perhaps the original founders and investors got rich anyway.
"You may sneer, but there are a competent security experts outside of govt and DoD who don't fall into your "RMS and his followers" category."
Sure, but how many of them are stating that open source code is always more secure than closed? Fore example, in the case of military encryption, the algorithms used are classified, not just the implementation. Does any real security expert claim that making the algorithm and implementation public would make military communications more secure?
"Find me some provisions in the GPL that could be struck out without violating the clear intent of the license that would accomplish anything that GPL violators would like."
.. that is clearly stated in the preamble and in the many documents the FSF has published. When there's any lack of clarity in the plain language of a contract or license, the next place the court looks is the intent of the parties."
I don't need to do that to prove my point. This is what the GPL says:
"If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under any particular circumstance, the balance of the section is intended to apply and the section as a whole is intended to apply in other circumstances."
Clearly the FSF wanted to protect against a court action that rendered portions of the GPL unenforceable. If the FSF thought it impossible that such a partial judgment "would accomplish anything that GPL violators would like", than they had no reason to put such a statement in the license. If it's just boiler-plate, then that argues against your theory that the GPL is particularly "clear in simple" compared to other licenses.
"
So your legal theory is that what the FSF has published about the GPL can be used as evidence to explain what the license "really" says? That would render contracts rather meaningless if one party can hold the other party responsible for things outside the contract. I think the most likely outcome would be a judge admonishing the first party for not including all of the terms in the contract itself.
In any case, a contract can be perfectly understandable and still be declared partially or fully unenforceable. As I've said before, I doubt such a thing would happen to the GPL, but that doesn't mean it's impossible.
"The reason no one wants to try to invalidate it is very simple: If you successfully invalidate the GPL, all you've achieved is to prove yourself guilty of copyright infringement."
This is based on the faulty assumption that the GPL has to be either found fully valid or thrown out completely. Although it's not likely, a court could render a verdict that strikes out only some provisions of the GPL. The language of the GPL itself recognizes this possibility.
Of course, it would be very bad for the free software movement if the GPL was thrown out completely because all the companies that distribute GPL'd software would be guilty of copyright infringement. Perhaps that's the real reason the FSF doesn't take people to court.
Sure, the collective security knowledge gained over the last 50 years by the government and the defense industry is nothing compared to the knowledge of security that RMS and his followers have.
"The judge has declined Google's assistance."
Google's not interested in assisting anything. Like the other companies involved in the MS antitrust case, they simply want the court to help them compete.
I think your speaking to somebody else's argument.
I only mentioned a lottery because I don't think we could accommodate everybody who wants to come here all at once. I think most of the unfettered immigration took place when there was clearly more room and opportunity than there is today. In any case, I didn't specify how many people could "win" the lottery; it could be a lot of people.
What I object to in today's immigration policy is letting people in simply because we don't like the government of their country (e.g. Cuba) or because they have skills that powerful corporations want to take advantage of, or because they are tall and know how to throw a ball into a hoop. I think a farm worker has as much right to become a citizen as a PhD.