No, software is quite clearly a product. How is it not?
An algorithm is pure mathematics, yes, but a complete software product consists of many separate algorithms, put together in novel ways, along with other content (text, images, sounds, whatever). At that point, it is far removed from the world of pure mathematics.
Re:Leaks? I'll show you LEAKS!
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IE7 Leaked
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· Score: 1
To leak it would have to not return some RAM after the app is closed. I've not seen that behavior in Firefox at all.
Nah. When an app exits, the OS reclaims all its resources. Leaked memory gets cleaned up with the rest of it. Memory leaks cause an app to grow bigger and bigger while it's running, but when it quits, it all gets cleaned up.
And yes, Firefox leaks.
Re:terrific ..... not
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IE7 Leaked
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Except that food doesn't have to be distributed with a recipe telling you when to mix what and how long to bake it for, clothes don't generally come with the patterns and instructions you need to recreate them from whole cloth, beer doesn't tell you how long it's been fermenting, and aside from tar and nicotine, god only knows what's in these Camel Lights I smoke.
My point is, (almost) no product comes with detailed instructions on how to recreate it yourself, modifying it how you please to suit your likes and dislikes. Why should software be any different?
Yes, I agree that in many situations it is beneficial for software to have publicly-availably source code (look at my uid - I've been here a long time, and I've heard all the arguments). But as for the government mandating that I release my source code publicly? Even if it's not practical to do so, as in the case of a multiplayer game, whereby releasing the networking code for all to see is a free pass to all the script-kiddie cheaters? No thanks. Heavy-handed, one-size-fits-all government policy, especially on topics that they don't understand, never benefits anybody.
Sure, that's true - they do apply to Perl. Well, Perl 5 anyway - and that's my point. They're trying to start fresh, and I just don't see it happening.
That's why I specifically said I was talking about software-only implementations. Obviously the game changes if you're talking about hardware-assisted DRM.
Imagine adding in a new DRM codec to mplayer.
That new code loads a license file, decodes the license using Public Key Cryptography to get the real decryption keys to decode the DRM'd media. Or even worse having to talk to a central server to get the decryption keys.
Right. And then since it's open source, instead of playing it in a window, you modify it so it saves the decrypted data to disk. Which was the parent poster's point in the first place.
DRM is fundamentally incompatible with open source software anyway (GPL or otherwise). It is simply impossible to have an open sourced DRM implementation (at least one that's purely software-based) and expect it to work.
Open source encryption works. Why? Because, while the algorithms are known to everybody, the decryption key is only known by the intended recipient. Therefore an attacker cannot (feasibly) read the content because he doesn't have the key.
DRM is different than traditional encryption in one key aspect - the attacker and the recipient are the same person! They must have the key in order to be able to read the protected data, and if the source is open, they can add a hook in to extract the data after it's been decrypted. There is simply no way to implement a secure DRM system if the source code is open, because the decrypted data has to be handled in there somewhere.
Perl 6 is so late that, unless they do something to really make the language attractive (and language features on their own won't do it), nobody is going to use it. What I would do if I were them would be to target the.NET/Mono CLR instead of their own proprietary VM. That would instantly give it interoperability with (almost) every language that actually matters, a high-performance and well-tested runtime environment, and a very complete and well thought-out class library (not to mention the piles of 3rd party libraries that are built on.NET).
Yeah, yeah, Microsoft bad, and so on. Fuck that. They need to be practical instead of dogmatic if they want to get this language accepted and used, and targetting the CLR would be a perfect way to do that.
-Matt (who was excited about Perl 6 half a decade ago)
Because it's their product, and they can charge whatever the hell they want?
Anyway, it's not a bad setup - that way the large companies that use it for thousands of clients get to foot a lot more of the R&D and support costs than the small companies using it for 10 clients. I don't really see the problem here.
I agree - I bought an 8700 a few weeks ago, and I'm already hopelessly addicted to this thing. I've been on a search for a decent smartphone for a year now, starting with the Treo 650, looking at Windows Mobile solutions, going to the old "flip phone + dedicated PDA" route, and finally landing on the BlackBerry. There's no going back (and yeah, OTA sync with a BES is incredible).
The only thing I wish for is a decent Exchange client for OS X (for some reason, Entourage won't connect to my Exchange server - it complains about a bad username or password, when they're both certainly correct).
That's true, but RSS and HTML are 2 different things - while a lot of people hand-write their HTML, especially in the early days of the web, RSS is rarely (if ever) hand-written. It's generated by software and read by software, and therefore there's no excuse or reason for malformed XML, especially when it makes parsing that much more difficult.
Heh. there are so many incompatible and somewhat-compatible versions and implementations of RSS out there that they can't make the situation worse (actually, they're actively trying to clean up the RSS scene by making IE7 reject malformed XML... that'll make a whole lot of people fix their shit real quick).
The PPC version of 10.4.3 is NOT a 64-bit OS as several commenters claim. It's a 32-bit OS with some 64-bit math libraries.
That's not true. It's certainly a 64-bit OS, and there are 64-bit libraries for the entire BSD layer, not just math stuff. It's just the GUI libraries that are 32-bit only, so you can't write a GUI application that's 64-bit. The kernel is certainly a 64-bit kernel though.
I understand what you meant, but there is a constant amount of energy in the world: we can't produce it or destroy it.
Erm, no. There's a constant amount of energy in the universe. Energy is constantly entering and leaving this planet via sunlight, radiated heat, and so on.
The article says that this phone features Wi-Fi connectivity. Does that mean it is (or might soon be) possible to connect via something like Skype and make free calls to other Skype users (or cheap calls to actual phones) without consuming airtime?
That's the idea. That's also why the wireless carriers have been dragging their feet on supporting phones with built-in WiFi.
Wow, I didn't know that Dell supported Apples OS X, or is that Microsoft which provided the sync solution for OS X?
Neither, I use Missing Sync from Mark/Space (which, incidentally, is also what I used to sync my Treo, since the Treo has shitty native OS X support too). You're right, Microsoft doesn't provide any native OS X support, but that doesn't mean it can't be done.
The only problem with it (and it is a big one) is the large number of programs that are distributed as Win32 executables rather than CAB files, and so can't be installed without Windows. But (at least for me) it isn't a huge deal, because I sync it with my XP box as well.
The problem I have with this is that Microsoft lost ~$8 billion so far on that OS and it's taken over 8 years to get to this point. Atleast the Palm product generated profits and there were some nice hardware add-ons for awhile.
Irrelevant. All I want is something that works well for me, and Windows Mobile is that product.
Instead, we settle for something from Microsoft which is kinda better than an aging PalmOS and works with only Microsoft desktop and serve software.
Er. I sync my Axim with OS X every day. In fact, it syncs with OS X much better than my Treo ever did, since it supports 2-way syncing of categories for contacts and calendar/tasks, whereas with the Treo, any items created on the Treo were put into Unfiled on the desktop.
Palm's real problem is that PalmOS is still stuck where it was when it first came out - no memory protection, no multitasking, memory/storage limitations, and on and on. I've been a Palm user from the Palm III through the Treo 650, and the whole way I've been happy with the hardware but frustrated with the OS and the software. There's nothing more aggravating than having your cell phone ring and then crash and reboot when you hit the answer button.
Um, no thanks. I sold my 650 and bought a regular flip phone (Motorola V551) and a Windows Mobile PDA (Dell Axim x50v). I couldn't be happier - Windows Mobile has won the PDA war not because of Microsoft's stranglehold on the desktop market, but because they simply have a superior product (and I'm saying that as someone who has been using Linux on both the desktop and server side since before the kernel hit 1.0).
Windows Mobile is just better, end of story. It's much more stable (although not perfect - I still have to reboot my Axim from time to time, mostly due to Bluetooth quirkiness), much more usable (even the PIM functionality is more functional), and much more feature-rich. It's better from a development standpoint as well - instead of having to write in C with an outdated API and ridiculous memory constaints, you can write in C# using the.NET compact framework (again, I'm an old-school Unix guy and a longtime C developer). I'm just tired of Microsoft-bashing when there's no reason for it.
And I'm really looking forward to Windows Mobile 5, which should be released as an upgrade for my Axim real soon.
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No, software is quite clearly a product. How is it not?
An algorithm is pure mathematics, yes, but a complete software product consists of many separate algorithms, put together in novel ways, along with other content (text, images, sounds, whatever). At that point, it is far removed from the world of pure mathematics.
To leak it would have to not return some RAM after the app is closed. I've not seen that behavior in Firefox at all.
Nah. When an app exits, the OS reclaims all its resources. Leaked memory gets cleaned up with the rest of it. Memory leaks cause an app to grow bigger and bigger while it's running, but when it quits, it all gets cleaned up.
And yes, Firefox leaks.
Except that food doesn't have to be distributed with a recipe telling you when to mix what and how long to bake it for, clothes don't generally come with the patterns and instructions you need to recreate them from whole cloth, beer doesn't tell you how long it's been fermenting, and aside from tar and nicotine, god only knows what's in these Camel Lights I smoke.
My point is, (almost) no product comes with detailed instructions on how to recreate it yourself, modifying it how you please to suit your likes and dislikes. Why should software be any different?
Yes, I agree that in many situations it is beneficial for software to have publicly-availably source code (look at my uid - I've been here a long time, and I've heard all the arguments). But as for the government mandating that I release my source code publicly? Even if it's not practical to do so, as in the case of a multiplayer game, whereby releasing the networking code for all to see is a free pass to all the script-kiddie cheaters? No thanks. Heavy-handed, one-size-fits-all government policy, especially on topics that they don't understand, never benefits anybody.
Sure, that's true - they do apply to Perl. Well, Perl 5 anyway - and that's my point. They're trying to start fresh, and I just don't see it happening.
That's why I specifically said I was talking about software-only implementations. Obviously the game changes if you're talking about hardware-assisted DRM.
Imagine adding in a new DRM codec to mplayer. That new code loads a license file, decodes the license using Public Key Cryptography to get the real decryption keys to decode the DRM'd media. Or even worse having to talk to a central server to get the decryption keys.
Right. And then since it's open source, instead of playing it in a window, you modify it so it saves the decrypted data to disk. Which was the parent poster's point in the first place.
DRM is fundamentally incompatible with open source software anyway (GPL or otherwise). It is simply impossible to have an open sourced DRM implementation (at least one that's purely software-based) and expect it to work.
Open source encryption works. Why? Because, while the algorithms are known to everybody, the decryption key is only known by the intended recipient. Therefore an attacker cannot (feasibly) read the content because he doesn't have the key.
DRM is different than traditional encryption in one key aspect - the attacker and the recipient are the same person! They must have the key in order to be able to read the protected data, and if the source is open, they can add a hook in to extract the data after it's been decrypted. There is simply no way to implement a secure DRM system if the source code is open, because the decrypted data has to be handled in there somewhere.
Then enlighten me. What's the difference?
Perl 6 is so late that, unless they do something to really make the language attractive (and language features on their own won't do it), nobody is going to use it. What I would do if I were them would be to target the .NET/Mono CLR instead of their own proprietary VM. That would instantly give it interoperability with (almost) every language that actually matters, a high-performance and well-tested runtime environment, and a very complete and well thought-out class library (not to mention the piles of 3rd party libraries that are built on .NET).
Yeah, yeah, Microsoft bad, and so on. Fuck that. They need to be practical instead of dogmatic if they want to get this language accepted and used, and targetting the CLR would be a perfect way to do that.
-Matt (who was excited about Perl 6 half a decade ago)
I give Office one more realease on Apple at the most, but even that release will be annoying
Microsoft just committed to Office Mac for at least 5 more years earlier this week.
Office for OSX already sucks
How so? Entourage blows, yeah, but the rest of the package seems fine to me.
Because it's their product, and they can charge whatever the hell they want?
Anyway, it's not a bad setup - that way the large companies that use it for thousands of clients get to foot a lot more of the R&D and support costs than the small companies using it for 10 clients. I don't really see the problem here.
I agree - I bought an 8700 a few weeks ago, and I'm already hopelessly addicted to this thing. I've been on a search for a decent smartphone for a year now, starting with the Treo 650, looking at Windows Mobile solutions, going to the old "flip phone + dedicated PDA" route, and finally landing on the BlackBerry. There's no going back (and yeah, OTA sync with a BES is incredible).
The only thing I wish for is a decent Exchange client for OS X (for some reason, Entourage won't connect to my Exchange server - it complains about a bad username or password, when they're both certainly correct).
That's true, but RSS and HTML are 2 different things - while a lot of people hand-write their HTML, especially in the early days of the web, RSS is rarely (if ever) hand-written. It's generated by software and read by software, and therefore there's no excuse or reason for malformed XML, especially when it makes parsing that much more difficult.
Heh. there are so many incompatible and somewhat-compatible versions and implementations of RSS out there that they can't make the situation worse (actually, they're actively trying to clean up the RSS scene by making IE7 reject malformed XML... that'll make a whole lot of people fix their shit real quick).
Uh. Microsoft has said you'll be able to plug your iPod in and it'll work.
The PPC version of 10.4.3 is NOT a 64-bit OS as several commenters claim. It's a 32-bit OS with some 64-bit math libraries.
That's not true. It's certainly a 64-bit OS, and there are 64-bit libraries for the entire BSD layer, not just math stuff. It's just the GUI libraries that are 32-bit only, so you can't write a GUI application that's 64-bit. The kernel is certainly a 64-bit kernel though.
My perfect phone would be the above+bluetooth, since it allows you to connect with your other high end devices if you wish later
Not to mention sync your phone numbers with your computer.
I understand what you meant, but there is a constant amount of energy in the world: we can't produce it or destroy it.
Erm, no. There's a constant amount of energy in the universe. Energy is constantly entering and leaving this planet via sunlight, radiated heat, and so on.
The article says that this phone features Wi-Fi connectivity. Does that mean it is (or might soon be) possible to connect via something like Skype and make free calls to other Skype users (or cheap calls to actual phones) without consuming airtime?
That's the idea. That's also why the wireless carriers have been dragging their feet on supporting phones with built-in WiFi.
Not true. Halo is a good example - when you first load a level, its slowwww (remember the blue bar moving across the screen). Next load, its fast.
That's a perfect example of a feature that developers can still implement, because if there's no hard drive, they can just turn it off.
An RSS reader (maybe as a screensaver the way Tiger does it).
Wow, I didn't know that Dell supported Apples OS X, or is that Microsoft which provided the sync solution for OS X?
Neither, I use Missing Sync from Mark/Space (which, incidentally, is also what I used to sync my Treo, since the Treo has shitty native OS X support too). You're right, Microsoft doesn't provide any native OS X support, but that doesn't mean it can't be done.
The only problem with it (and it is a big one) is the large number of programs that are distributed as Win32 executables rather than CAB files, and so can't be installed without Windows. But (at least for me) it isn't a huge deal, because I sync it with my XP box as well.
The problem I have with this is that Microsoft lost ~$8 billion so far on that OS and it's taken over 8 years to get to this point. Atleast the Palm product generated profits and there were some nice hardware add-ons for awhile.
Irrelevant. All I want is something that works well for me, and Windows Mobile is that product.
Instead, we settle for something from Microsoft which is kinda better than an aging PalmOS and works with only Microsoft desktop and serve software.
Er. I sync my Axim with OS X every day. In fact, it syncs with OS X much better than my Treo ever did, since it supports 2-way syncing of categories for contacts and calendar/tasks, whereas with the Treo, any items created on the Treo were put into Unfiled on the desktop.
Palm's real problem is that PalmOS is still stuck where it was when it first came out - no memory protection, no multitasking, memory/storage limitations, and on and on. I've been a Palm user from the Palm III through the Treo 650, and the whole way I've been happy with the hardware but frustrated with the OS and the software. There's nothing more aggravating than having your cell phone ring and then crash and reboot when you hit the answer button.
.NET compact framework (again, I'm an old-school Unix guy and a longtime C developer). I'm just tired of Microsoft-bashing when there's no reason for it.
Um, no thanks. I sold my 650 and bought a regular flip phone (Motorola V551) and a Windows Mobile PDA (Dell Axim x50v). I couldn't be happier - Windows Mobile has won the PDA war not because of Microsoft's stranglehold on the desktop market, but because they simply have a superior product (and I'm saying that as someone who has been using Linux on both the desktop and server side since before the kernel hit 1.0).
Windows Mobile is just better, end of story. It's much more stable (although not perfect - I still have to reboot my Axim from time to time, mostly due to Bluetooth quirkiness), much more usable (even the PIM functionality is more functional), and much more feature-rich. It's better from a development standpoint as well - instead of having to write in C with an outdated API and ridiculous memory constaints, you can write in C# using the
And I'm really looking forward to Windows Mobile 5, which should be released as an upgrade for my Axim real soon.
Now where's the damn PocketPC version already?