Up in laptop space, Windows ain't a big component of the base price. Plus, they gotta get something back for supporting a nice market. So be glad they don't charge extra!
There's a critical difference between "open source" and "source provided" software. "Open source" means that the user is permitted to modify and redistribute the source, and an obvious corollary is that you can distribute it for free. On the other hand "source provided" doesn't guarantee the right to distribute modifications, so it doesn't have to be free/gratis.
It's not stealing. Theft is when you take something away from someone. But when you get an MP3 from someone, they don't lose anything. "Bootlegging" would be a more appropriate word.
You do have a point. I've grown rather suspicious of the hacker vs cracker thing, because I think the two definitions of "Hacker" are related. Many hackers of yore were "crackers" too. Steve Wozniak was a phreaker, for example.
It's clear that "piracy" is a word coined by software vendors to describe just what they were upset about. Remember, they were on the ropes in the 1980s, when executible code could not be copyrighted.
On the other hand, what were the pirates of yore? They were a small group of people who made their own law, using the superiority of their position to extract gold from others. Sounds more like the RIAA (CD prices, DVD Forum (mandatory advertising) and the creation of the DMCA to me.
There's very little spam out there that doesn't involve someone trying to make money. If they're going to make money, they need some route for receiving money. That route is traceable.
The dissenting opinion is pretty interesting on this point. They said that the contract is formed when the software is offered and payment given. Mention is never made of license agreements at this point. Shrinkwrap agreements would logically be an attempt to force the user to change the contract afterward.
I think something like nice, big, surgeon general warnings should appear on software packages that offer no warranty. That might shame companies into changing their licensing practices, while allowing CheapBytes to continue making a profit.
Let's say we take your advice and limit liability to the price of software. Now let's say I write a cat-scan program that malfunctions and delivers a lethal dose of radiation--but just to 1 in 1000 patients. What do I do?
Obviously, I write it off as a business expense!
This is an extreme case, but my view is that limiting liability limits responsibility.
We are the English Speakers of the World You will be assimilated. Your linguistic and cultural distinctiveness will be added to our own. Resistence is futile.
Yes, it's been said, but only from an "assimilation" point of view. But English is a very rich language because it is a promiscuous language. Like the Borg, it borrows words from everything, especially German, French and Latin, because of its history.
The English were originally German immigrant/conquerors, with the Celts (Welsh, Irish, Scottish) as aboriginals. Then the Normans (French) conquered them, and ruled them. French was the language of the Aristocracy. Latin was the language of the Church.
English was the vulgar tongue, spoken by the ignorant masses. They weren't proud-- if a word was useful, they'd take it. Sometimes twice, like "loyal" and "legal".
In my opinion, the network effects means that English will increase its dominance over time. Since it is already the most common language for international communication and for the entertainment industry, it will be tricky indeed to dethrone. And it will have all the words you could possibly ask for-- from any language you can imagine.
But I don't deny it is possible for a language to become widely used due to deliberate efforts. Before the 20th century, Hebrew was a dead language. But now, because of deliberate human action (specifically that of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and many others), Hebrew is a living language again. It still has bit vocabulary to catch up with, despite the efforts of the Hebrew Academy. So in the meantime, they borrow words from other languages like, well, English.
Realaudio is a defacto standard. You can't argue with that. If you're only going to have one audio file, it'd better be RealAudio. That's the way to reach the broadest audience.
A better question: Why just one file? The Rapidly Changing Face of Computing uses MP3, RealAudio and ToolVox, in addition to the web and email versions.
Finally, MP3 is not a completely open format. If you want to use it, you must license patents. So while it's less proprietary than RealAudio, it's still proprietary.
Well, given that many of Shakespeare's works were based on earlier works, applying this to literature in the 16th century would have impoverished it significantly. Was it Shakespeare who claimed there are only 7 stories?
If the market keeps doing what it has been doing week, the tech industry is going to change a lot. For a while, we had a virtuous circle, in which IPOs did really well, causing people to believe that IPOs are a great way to make money, causing IPOs to do really well.
In a bear market, it will be tougher to get venture capital, and that will sink some companies that would have done fine a few weeks ago.
Of course, not everyone lives in Silicon Valley. Personally, I work for a small startup whose only investment has come from its two founders. I can't see it affecting me personally.
But big changes can have far-reaching effects. If this goes on, it's definitely "stuff that matters".
Re:how good is the human eye?
on
Carmack Speaks
·
· Score: 1
That's just a strobe effect. Let's say your eyes can see ten frames per second. Let's say your monitor refreshes at 100 frames per second. Now let's say you move your hand across the monitor.
For one human-eye-frame, there will be 10 monitor frames, each going on and off very quickly.
So in that one frame, you will see 10 silhouettes of your hand. In 1 second, you will see 100 silhouettes of your hand. In other words, the framerate of the eye doesn't matter. Only the monitor frequency matters.
If you increase the monitor refresh rate to 1000 Hz, you'll probably just see a blur. That's because you can't move your hand fast enough to generate significantly different silhouettes.
That 5% thing is a myth. It's based on the worst kind of bad science: "Well, we've lopped off this part, and the monkey seems fine. Let's lop off this part." We use much more than 5% of the brain. But the brain can adapt to damage, so perhaps only 5% of it is crucial.
OT:I always heard 10%.
Indentical twins deliberately differentiate
on
Linux on the Brain
·
· Score: 2
I'm not surprised that identical twins have distinct brain patterns. And that they differ in personality.
But it seems like you're forgetting about a none-too-surprising social phenomenon. People like to consider themselves unique. So identical twins will differentiate themselves.
Studies on separated twins have discovered spooky similarities between them, from job to house to significant other. The assumption is that separated twins don't need to differentiate, and so take the path they would naturally have taken, had they been singles.
Pretty well all Java VMs have varying speeds and degrees of optimization for a given CPU. If Java performance is important to you, then by all means, use a Java benchmark. Otherwise, you've got an open-source program whose performance is significantly affected by a non-essential program.
Slashdot Mirror
Does this mean they've solved their little Winmodem problem?
Up in laptop space, Windows ain't a big component of the base price. Plus, they gotta get something back for supporting a nice market. So be glad they don't charge extra!
I think the first thing I would do with such a program is modify it so the "module" was no longer required.
There's a critical difference between "open source" and "source provided" software.
"Open source" means that the user is permitted to modify and redistribute the source, and an obvious corollary is that you can distribute it for free. On the other hand "source provided" doesn't guarantee the right to distribute modifications, so it doesn't have to be free/gratis.
TV sucks for text. The iOpener has a sharp screen going for it, plus it is much closer to the person using it than your typical television set.
Actually, Sendmail has a long history of security-related bugs.
It's not stealing. Theft is when you take something away from someone. But when you get an MP3 from someone, they don't lose anything. "Bootlegging" would be a more appropriate word.
You do have a point. I've grown rather suspicious of the hacker vs cracker thing, because I think the two definitions of "Hacker" are related. Many hackers of yore were "crackers" too. Steve Wozniak was a phreaker, for example.
It's clear that "piracy" is a word coined by software vendors to describe just what they were upset about. Remember, they were on the ropes in the 1980s, when executible code could not be copyrighted.
On the other hand, what were the pirates of yore? They were a small group of people who made their own law, using the superiority of their position to extract gold from others. Sounds more like the RIAA (CD prices, DVD Forum (mandatory advertising) and the creation of the DMCA to me.
There's very little spam out there that doesn't involve someone trying to make money. If they're going to make money, they need some route for receiving money. That route is traceable.
Most people don't want to take the time, though.
Hasn't Slashdot already covered this?
Oh, and I recently read that GNU code is actually among the least buggy. . .
The dissenting opinion is pretty interesting on this point. They said that the contract is formed when the software is offered and payment given. Mention is never made of license agreements at this point. Shrinkwrap agreements would logically be an attempt to force the user to change the contract afterward.
I think something like nice, big, surgeon general warnings should appear on software packages that offer no warranty. That might shame companies into changing their licensing practices, while allowing CheapBytes to continue making a profit.
Let's say we take your advice and limit liability to the price of software. Now let's say I write a cat-scan program that malfunctions and delivers a lethal dose of radiation--but just to 1 in 1000 patients. What do I do?
Obviously, I write it off as a business expense!
This is an extreme case, but my view is that limiting liability limits responsibility.
We are the English Speakers of the World
You will be assimilated.
Your linguistic and cultural distinctiveness will be added to our own.
Resistence is futile.
Yes, it's been said, but only from an "assimilation" point of view. But English is a very rich language because it is a promiscuous language. Like the Borg, it borrows words from everything, especially German, French and Latin, because of its history.
The English were originally German immigrant/conquerors, with the Celts (Welsh, Irish, Scottish) as aboriginals. Then the Normans (French) conquered them, and ruled them. French was the language of the Aristocracy. Latin was the language of the Church.
English was the vulgar tongue, spoken by the ignorant masses. They weren't proud-- if a word was useful, they'd take it. Sometimes twice, like "loyal" and "legal".
In my opinion, the network effects means that English will increase its dominance over time. Since it is already the most common language for international communication and for the entertainment industry, it will be tricky indeed to dethrone. And it will have all the words you could possibly ask for-- from any language you can imagine.
But I don't deny it is possible for a language to become widely used due to deliberate efforts. Before the 20th century, Hebrew was a dead language. But now, because of deliberate human action (specifically that of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and many others), Hebrew is a living language again. It still has bit vocabulary to catch up with, despite the efforts of the Hebrew Academy. So in the meantime, they borrow words from other languages like, well, English.
Realaudio is a defacto standard. You can't argue with that. If you're only going to have one audio file, it'd better be RealAudio. That's the way to reach the broadest audience.
A better question: Why just one file? The Rapidly Changing Face of Computing uses MP3, RealAudio and ToolVox, in addition to the web and email versions.
Finally, MP3 is not a completely open format. If you want to use it, you must license patents. So while it's less proprietary than RealAudio, it's still proprietary.
Well, given that many of Shakespeare's works were based on earlier works, applying this to literature in the 16th century would have impoverished it significantly. Was it Shakespeare who claimed there are only 7 stories?
I think you mean Hanlon's Razor.
Well, yeah. But that graphics processing involves some serious SIMD action, and I reckon SIMD instructions are also used in image recognition.
If the market keeps doing what it has been doing week, the tech industry is going to change a lot. For a while, we had a virtuous circle, in which IPOs did really well, causing people to believe that IPOs are a great way to make money, causing IPOs to do really well.
In a bear market, it will be tougher to get venture capital, and that will sink some companies that would have done fine a few weeks ago.
Of course, not everyone lives in Silicon Valley. Personally, I work for a small startup whose only investment has come from its two founders. I can't see it affecting me personally.
But big changes can have far-reaching effects. If this goes on, it's definitely "stuff that matters".
That's just a strobe effect. Let's say your eyes can see ten frames per second. Let's say your monitor refreshes at 100 frames per second. Now let's say you move your hand across the monitor.
For one human-eye-frame, there will be 10 monitor frames, each going on and off very quickly.
So in that one frame, you will see 10 silhouettes of your hand. In 1 second, you will see 100 silhouettes of your hand. In other words, the framerate of the eye doesn't matter. Only the monitor frequency matters.
If you increase the monitor refresh rate to 1000 Hz, you'll probably just see a blur. That's because you can't move your hand fast enough to generate significantly different silhouettes.
Yes, but early indications are that Voodoo's motion-blur sucks.
That 5% thing is a myth. It's based on the worst kind of bad science:
"Well, we've lopped off this part, and the monkey seems fine. Let's lop off this part."
We use much more than 5% of the brain. But the brain can adapt to damage, so perhaps only 5% of it is crucial.
OT:I always heard 10%.
I'm not surprised that identical twins have distinct brain patterns. And that they differ in personality.
But it seems like you're forgetting about a none-too-surprising social phenomenon. People like to consider themselves unique. So identical twins will differentiate themselves.
Studies on separated twins have discovered spooky similarities between them, from job to house to significant other. The assumption is that separated twins don't need to differentiate, and so take the path they would naturally have taken, had they been singles.
Pretty well all Java VMs have varying speeds and degrees of optimization for a given CPU. If Java performance is important to you, then by all means, use a Java benchmark. Otherwise, you've got an open-source program whose performance is significantly affected by a non-essential program.
Monty Python
Strap-on brains for stupid people!