Sounds like they *still* haven't managed to get a true offline version working yet.
Previous versions were horribly network dependent. Gradle would pull megs and megs of data whenever you started a new project (and at various other times). If you have a _fast_ network, it isn't too bad. If the end point is slow, or your ISP is typical American sloth service, expect to wait.
The less bad news was that their *offline* switch (which is actually a cached switch) will minimize those occurrences (usually) *after* you've waited through the initial construction.
The sad part is that there is *nothing* inherent in gradle that requires that behaviour. The devs could have chosen to package it to include the needed base libraries and default to a local gradle build.
Actually, the reason they used their own byte code was because the 'official' one is poorly suited to mobile use. One of the major changes between Dalvik and the original Java run time is related to stacks vs heaps. There are others as well.
Google redesigned the run time to work better on mobile. JavaSE wasn't designed for that, JavaME isn't much better.
You shouldn't confuse the byte code/run time with the API's. Google stripped what they felt were unneeded API's and added ones they thought were missing. What Google did was to leverage the existing JavaSE developer knowledge base to create a straight forward path for people to develop for Android.
The alternative, and what Google may end up doing, is to replace Java with Go, Dart, or some other home grown language for primary Android development. While this would have been unthinkable when Android was first released, it's now gotten enough market share that developers are more willing to switch development languages to continue to develop Android applications. Even Apple's now doing it (see Swift).
Oracle open sourced the desktop version of Java (Java SE) after the Google mess, but requires people to pay licensing fees to use the mobile version of Java (Java ME).
There were several alternate Java run times besides the official Sun one; Kaffe, SableVM, gcj, Harmony, etc.
Even for the relatively open/free Java SE, in order to pass the compatibility suite, needed to call your implementation 'Java' you had to agree to 'field of use restrictions'. Including agreeing NOT to use your version of JavaSE on mobile (so as not to threaten Oracle's license stream). It was one of the major sticking point with Apache's Harmony implementation. The 'field of use restriction' was incompatible with Harmony's license.
The Harmony implementation is what Google initially based Android's Java on. Eventually Oracle and Apache came to an 'understanding' when Oracle released the OpenSE JDK and IBM pulled support for Harmony. If you look carefully, you'll notice that there _still_ isn't an open Java ME.
So what Google did was to re-purpose Harmony JavaSE as an unencumbered JavaSE implementation. They didn't have any license agreement with Sun/Oracle, and didn't reuse the name, byte code or run time (as both were poorly suited to running under mobile). Sun's management boasted of their support for Google's actions. Oracle tried to memory-hole that support when they took over.
"The "gotcha" with Uber is what happens when a driver is simultaneously driving for Lyft, Uber, and the Pizza Company? Has he achieved a nexus where he is independent?"
Why would that be any kind of a nexus? That's simply holding down more than one job.
With current wages being as low as they are [and have been for quite some time] lots of people have to hold down multiple jobs just to make ends meet. I can't see why that would magically convert them from W2 employees to 1099 independent contractors.
The looter took the television. Best Buy no longer has the television, that is theft.
"Here is an [in]appropriate analogy- let us say a looter goes into Best Buy and walks out with a flat screen TV he didn't pay for. Now he "gives" the TV to someone else. This is theft."
If you wanted to restate your analogy, so that it was in fact analogous to people trading music on p2p networks it would be more along the lines of:
"- let us say a looter goes into Best Buy with a digital recorder and tapes the music being played in the store that he didn't pay for. Now he "gives" copies of this to someone else. This isn't theft"
Actually I believe that would be legal... Hmm let me try again.
"- let us say a looter goes into Best Buy with a digital camcorder and tapes the movie being played in the store that he didn't pay for. Now he "gives" copies of this to someone else. This isn't theft"
Taping a show (not in a movie theater, that was recently criminalized:( ) is still legal, darn, I guess I'l have to try again.
"- let us say a looter goes into Best Buy with a laptop and rips the music from a music cd-rom (in an already opened package)that was played in the store that he didn't pay for. Now he "gives" copies of this to someone else. This isn't theft"
Finally, a way to make your Best Buy looter analogous to people trading files on p2p networks.... no wait that isn't quite right. I think I can get it right this time.
"- let us say a looter goes into Best Buy with a laptop and rips a CD-ROM containing music that he _paid_ for. Now he "gives" copies of this to someone else. This isn't theft, but it is copyright infringement"
There you go, a proper analogy. The only problem with an example that is truely analogous is that it still doesn't seem all that bad. Makes you wonder why this is illegal. It wasn't always illegal. It still isn't _theft_. Perhaps instead of arresting people for doing what never was, untill recently, either a problem or illegal, we should simply change the law to reflect what people do.
Naw, if we started doing that, how would the RIAA and there ilk make oodles of money? What's next, decriminalizing the growing of plants? Where will the maddness end?!?
You wrote; "If you ARE claiming otherwise, you're saying a Windows developer could freely, minutely examine the Linux kernel, and then, without any degree of fear of legal repercussion, *implement the ideas expressed in that code* without GPL or other legal fallout. To be clear, he doesn't copy a single line of code, just reuses the good ideas, tweaks things based on the insights he gains, etc.
Do you really claim that?"
I'm not sure about the original author, but I'll claim that.
The GPL is based on "copyright" law. Copyright, as it applies to software, not to be confused with patents, only covers an expression of an idea, not the original idea itself.
So, if Microsoft wanted to have an army of coders spending long nights studying the Linux kernel in infinitesimal detail, trying to glean that special something and reimplement it in Microsoft's OS, that's perfectly legal. Not only that, but I wish them the best of luck.
If you think otherwise, then anyone who has ever looked at any source code, couldn't code. Every university student who studied Lyons' Unix book wouldn't be able to program for Linux (a.k.a. the SCO Group hypothesis).
Direct copying, bad, reimplementing someone else's idea, good.
Too much flash. Why go for Ebola when Mad Cow would be much more deadly and likely to be mistaken for Alzheimer's.
That's the problem with viruses these days, too much flash. Either it saturates a network spreading itself, or it quickly kills the host. Either way it brings way too much attention to itself to be truly scary.
How's this for a thought experiment;
Write a small, stealthy piece of code that would randomly change a single digit in a single number found in a random Word or Excel etc. file by some small random amount once a day. It propagates by attaching portions of itself to no more than 1 email message/irc chat/telnet/ftp/video conference or other communication application a day. Until all of the pieces are present in memory, all the code does is attach itself to some systems process and look for the rest of itself. When all of it has been received it adds itself to some innocuous systems level process and begins changing values and slowly sending itself out around the world.
So what good would that do? Well it doesn't draw attention to itself, neither in its mode of operation nor the way it spreads itself. Therefore while it would propagate slowly, no one would ever be looking for it. It's payload could cause great amounts of harm without ever giving the user any reason to think that his computer might be infected. What happens if it's on a pharmacy/hospital computer and it changes the dose of a prescription? Most pharmacies these days use numbers as a prescription ID. 20034978 might be a beneficial prescription while 20034879 could be deadly. We lost a Mars probe because someone didn't convert between feet and meters correctly. What if they did and a virus like this deftly changed it behind their back? A million widgets at $1.24 each is a lot different that a million widgets at $1.98. Building a bridge with a support beam that's 84.539 meters long isn't the same as one of 84.639 meters. You see where this is going don't you. Taken by themselves they look like simple user errors.
The computer, or user, is diagnosed with Alzheimer's when it's actually infected with Creutzfeldt-Jakob. Machine's get rebuilt, people loose money, or get killed, and no one ever suspects that a very stealthy virus is the root cause of it all.
Perhaps I'm having a slow moment, but the fix seems to be turning an option from a default of On to a default of Off.
If it's a bug shouldn't the fix involve more that turning off a setting?
Any sufficiently paranoid user could have, and probably would have turned it off themselves two years ago.
Now I'm not saying that it's not a dumb feature to have, so if you are going to have it, for heaven's sake at least default it to off. But I can't really equate this to an IE bug that you need a binary patch from Microsoft to remedy.
Actually, if you install the free "TweakUI" control panel applet from Microsoft you don't need to hack the registry.
Just go to the "Paranoia" tab, under the section marked "Things that happen behind your back" uncheck "Play audio CD's automatically" and uncheck "Play data CD's automatically".
You stated: "However, copying to other formats is not obviously fair use."
Actually, according to most non-RIAA lawyers it is.
See: http://www.eff.org/IP/eff_fair_use_faq.html
"Space-shifting or format-shifting - that is, taking content you own in one format and putting it into another format, for personal, non-commercial use. For instance, "ripping" an audio CD (that is, making an MP3-format version of an audio CD that you already own) is considered fair use by many lawyers, based on the 1984 Betamax decision and the 1999 Rio MP3 player decision (RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia, 180 F. 3d 1072, 1079, 9th Circ. 1999.)"
In fact space-shifting (CD to mp3, LP to audio tape, etc.) and time shifting (recording a show to watch later via VHS, DVD-R, Tivo) are both legal as long as it's for personal, non-commercial use.
Well at least in the US of A. and as long as you don't have to circumvent "copy-protection" to do it. Thank you DMCA. That's the biggest problem with it. Circumvention, even to do something legal is illegal. Hopefully they fix that one soon, or an enlightened Judge throws it out.
"Sitting at a Xerox machine and copying a book, page for page, is wholly infeasable."
Ugggggg....
Since when does easier == illegal?
It doesn't. Never has, never will. Why do people keep bringing this up?
Think about it for a moment. Transcribing a book by hand is hard, taking pictures of all of the pages is easier, therefore, taking pictures of books is illegal, right? Nope.
Using a photocopier is easier than taking pictures, or transcribing it, therefore using a photocopier is even more illegal, right? Wrong again.
Copy a pdf of a book from one location and pasting it in another is easier still, that's got to be sooo illegal we need to apply the death penalty, right? Um, no.
The "how" is, or should be, irrelevent. The "what" is what matters. "Fair-Use" is the same no matter what the material is, regardless of how easy or difficult the process is. The fact that I can legally "space-shift" music (for one example) is still legal no matter how I do it. Copying an LP to another LP, an analog tape to another analog tape, a CD-ROM to analog tape, a CD-ROM to another CD-ROM, an LP or analog cassette, or CD-ROM to a MP3/WMA/Ogg are all equally legal. As long as I keep them to myself the RIAA and the FBI can take a rather long walk off an equally short pier.
Why do you think the RIAA the MPAA and their cronnies are trying to prevent you fom exercising your rights? Because it's rather well established that you in fact have those rights. They can't legally stop you from making a copy of the latest album that you have legally purchased. So what they are doing is making it illegal for anyone to make the tools needed to allow you to exercise those rights. The logic assuming there is any, would have prevented the VCR and photocopier if they could have gotten laws like "No Electronic Theft Act" (the NET act that made non-commercial copyright infringment a crime for the first time ever) and the "Digital Millenium Copyright Act" (DMCA - which made the tools used to do the copying illegal, as well as telling anyone else how you managed to exercise your legal rights illegal.)
In the twisted world ofo the RIAA/MPAA etc. All knowledge exists for the sole purpose of making them money. Anything contrary to that is, or should be illegal. The only right you have is to use the music/movie/book, etc. in a manner that maximizes their profits. Any attempt to do otherwise is, or should be illegal. If you come up with a new use for said book/music/movie, then you should have to pay them again for the privilege. Any use that is an easier or more convenient use of a previously existing right, should naturally result in more money in their respective coffers. Since they believe that any use, every utterance should result in more money going to them, all damages will be calculated in terms of money they believe they should have received. Since the courts are making it more difficult (read "expensive") for them to sue consumers, naturally the FBI should be doing it for them.
The fact that the more time the FBI spends chasing eight year olds downloading copies of Hillery Duff, is less time catching kidnappers, or foiling the next 9/11 terrorist conspiracy is irrelevant to the RIAA and their bottom line.
Unfortunately, the current crop of bought congress critters are more interested in pleasing their corporate masters than the citizens that ostensibly elected them, is a failing of our republic. Until enough people get mad enough to actually do anything about it, like voting the bulk of congress out of office. I don't see things changing.
As an aside, a Canadian court recently ruled that people who make files available for sharing on P2P networks aren't guilty of anything. They used the "photocopier in the library" analogy to justify their decision.
Actually I agree with the last AC. BitTorrent is practically useless. > 700K ADSL and BitTorrent has never managed to DL faster than about 3-4K.
Perhaps it's the A in ADSL, >700K down 90~120K up. I've read that BitTorrent throttle the download speed based on how much upload bandwidth you give it. To discourage freeloaders maybe.
The end result is worse than 56K modem downloading. When I can FTP at greater than 90KB, it makes BitTorrent rather pointless.
Debian's jigdo on the other hand, fast and reliable.
"And Bayesian filters can't parse graphics, so a lot of spammers are careful to put words likely to trigger spam filters into graphics."
So that explains why so much spam consists of empty emails. I strip all HTML code, and disable Java/Java script and it's cousins from my email and reader. Often all that's left is a blank email.
Text is for email, HTML is for web pages. The sooner people realize this the sooner most of this nonsense will go away.
You asked; "How many people play PSX games on a PS2?"
Well, not only do the kids play the PSX games as much as they do PS2 games (on the PS2) they have gone out an bought new PSX games nearly a year after we got the PS2.
For myself, if the PS2 didn't play PSX games, we probably wouldn't have bought a PS2. Since Sony is going to build the PS3 with the ability to play PSX and PS2 games, as well as new PS3 games, it'll be a safe purchase.
I was chugging along fine, for a couple of years with my 1Ghz Duron. I was previously using a K6-2 366, but encoding audio to Ogg was taking forever. Now that I'm getting into video encoding, the Duron handles real-time MPEG-1 just fine, but struggles with MPEG-2.
Until I got into audio encoding 366 was fine. Waiting 10-15 minutes to encode a 3 minute.wav at a quality level of 8 was just too much. The Duron can encode it in around a minute, maybe two. Video is to the Duron what audio was to the K6-2.
Sometimes there really is a need for more horsepower.
Well I've been building systems since the x386-16.
Over the years the stablest combination I've found is AOpen motherboards and AMD chips. They aren't the fastest, but they are inexpensive and stable as heck. Currently I'm running with a 1Ghz Duron and hoping to upgrade to a 2Ghz Athlon XP.
I'm leery of the NVidia chipsets and I think I'll be sticking with a VIA600 based board. It seems to be well supported by the stock kernel. Running Slackware/Win2k and I don't let binary vendor drivers pollute my kernel. Using an ATI 7500 instead of an NVidia video card for just that reason.
When NVidia is well supported by the stock kernel, then I'll give them a look-see, not before.
Actually I think it's going to happen sooner as opposed to later. Check out this article over at the Register; (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/33379.html )
"The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) today released a report recommending the introduction of a national road-charging system for the UK, most likely using satellite technology."
Or how about this proposal in Oregon; (http://www.washingtondispatch.com/cgi-bi n/artman/ exec/view.cgi/22/6154)
"Oregon's Road User Fee Task Force (what a name) is proposing that a GPS transponder be installed in every vehicle, and that every vehicle should be tracked and monitored so that "road taxes" may be paid for every mile the car is driven. In other words, for every mile you drive, you'll be taxed. They might as well call it a fee for the privilege of moving about, because that's exactly what it is."
Eventually they'll stop trying to track us by our vehicle, cell phone, or computer, and just start implanting tags in us at birth. Uggg....
Actually, my son used to play Blizzard games on their Battle.Net service. Warcraft and Diablo I believe, I'm not sure of the versions. It was actually their service I was thinking about when I wrote my original post. I'm not sure how they run things now, but I remember when he would log on to play Diablo after not playing it on Battle.Net for a while, it would tell him that his version was out of date and offer to upgrade him to the latest version. If he said no, it didn't upgrade him, but it didn't let him log on to Battle.Net either. No forced upgrade. Trying to log onto Battle.Net didn't upgrade his computer whether he wanted to or not.
Blizzard; Play on Battle.Net upgrade computer, don't upgrade don't play. Microsoft; accidentally click on XBox Live, auto-upgrade, to fuss, no muss, no choice.
It's like walking into a fancy restaurant. Usually the Maitre de at the door tells you if there is a dress code to enter. Coat and tie establishment, you wear a coat and tie, you can enter, you don't you can't. Some of the better places will offer you a coat to wear while you are there if you don't have one of your own. Microsoft is like the maitre de from hell. When you show up, he rips off your jacket and hands you another one whether you wanted it or not, whether you even wanted to go in or not. Just because you bought a blue Microsoft jacket and Microsoft now requires all dinner's to wear red Microsoft jackets to enter. What if you really liked your blue jacket? What if were looking for a public bathroom, or made a left instead of a right and ended up here instead of the Chinese restaurant across the street. Anywhere else and you would be told the conditions for entering. You could trade your old jacket for a new one and enter, or keep your old one and go somewhere else. Microsoft simply rips the jacket from your back and hands you another one, no fuss, no muss, no fair.
Just because you bought your old jacket from Microsoft doesn't give them the right to "update" it at their whim.
GameX doesn't exist. It's an illustrative example.
I "made shit up" yep, I admit it. That's what you do when you are positing a hypothetical situation. Just because it may not have happened yet, doesn't mean it won't in the future.
How many people thought patching a Windows install was safe, until it wacked a few thousand boxes. But those were "hot fixes" Microsoft said, you need to wait for a service pack if you want to be safe, until installing a service pack wacked a few thousand installs. Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 6 remember that one? I'm running Sp6a on all of my NT 4.0 boxes.... Why did Microsoft have to release 6a?
Google around if you are curious about all of the various Microsoft fixes, patches, service packs that either didn't correct what they were supposed to, opened up bigger holes than they fixed, or cause completely unrelated apps, or even the OS to crash. Imagine the carnage if everyone of those were "forced" updates.
Just because it hasn't happened yet, doesn't mean it can't. Just because the dashboard shouldn't effect running games, doesn't mean that a windows update won't cause something completely unrelated to suddenly have problems. It's happened to every other Microsoft OS that they've patched/or upgraded, all the way back to DOS.
Forced updates, without user consent, without rollback, is just asking for trouble.
Actually, the polite or proper thing to do would be to ask.
Microsoft is within its rights to only allow certain versions of software to play on XBox Live. It's a value-add and your XBox will play games fine without it. The problem is when it auto-updates without a choice, without the owner of the XBox having a say.
Microsoft should have had the XBox Live servers check which version of software an XBox is running when it tries to connect to the XBox Live servers. If it isn't the required version, give the user a choice. Either allow the XBox Live server to update your software, or disconnect that particular box from the Live network. No fuss, no muss, the user explicitly gives permission to Microsoft to update their console. If they really wanted to do it correctly, they should include the option of rolling back patches to the version the console shipped with. In case an "auto-update" broke something else, the user could roll back that patch, until Microsoft released a patch for the patch.
You really like playing GameX it works great. You go to XBox Live, the servers tell you you need to be running version x+1 to connect. You agree to let Microsoft upgrade your XBox. XBox Live works great. A couple of days later you fire up GameX, it stutters, squeals, locks up your XBox requiring a power cycle. Contact the publisher of GameX, they tell you that there is an "issue" with XBox Live software x+1. Your choices are; don't play GameX until Microsoft releases upgrade x+2 and keep playing XBox Live, roll back your software to version x play GameX and don't play XBox Live, or roll back when you want to play GameX, let Microsoft upgrade your box to x+1 to play on XBox Live, and roll your software back and forth, depending on the game you want to play today.
But that would be if Microsoft played nice, respected other people's property, and refrained from its usual heavy handed methodology.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like they *still* haven't managed to get a true offline version working yet.
Previous versions were horribly network dependent. Gradle would pull megs and megs of data whenever you started a new project (and at various other times). If you have a _fast_ network, it isn't too bad. If the end point is slow, or your ISP is typical American sloth service, expect to wait.
The less bad news was that their *offline* switch (which is actually a cached switch) will minimize those occurrences (usually) *after* you've waited through the initial construction.
The sad part is that there is *nothing* inherent in gradle that requires that behaviour. The devs could have chosen to package it to include the needed base libraries and default to a local gradle build.
Actually, the reason they used their own byte code was because the 'official' one is poorly suited to mobile use. One of the major changes between Dalvik and the original Java run time is related to stacks vs heaps. There are others as well.
Google redesigned the run time to work better on mobile. JavaSE wasn't designed for that, JavaME isn't much better.
You shouldn't confuse the byte code/run time with the API's. Google stripped what they felt were unneeded API's and added ones they thought were missing. What Google did was to leverage the existing JavaSE developer knowledge base to create a straight forward path for people to develop for Android.
The alternative, and what Google may end up doing, is to replace Java with Go, Dart, or some other home grown language for primary Android development. While this would have been unthinkable when Android was first released, it's now gotten enough market share that developers are more willing to switch development languages to continue to develop Android applications. Even Apple's now doing it (see Swift).
Oracle open sourced the desktop version of Java (Java SE) after the Google mess, but requires people to pay licensing fees to use the mobile version of Java (Java ME).
There were several alternate Java run times besides the official Sun one; Kaffe, SableVM, gcj, Harmony, etc.
Even for the relatively open/free Java SE, in order to pass the compatibility suite, needed to call your implementation 'Java' you had to agree to 'field of use restrictions'. Including agreeing NOT to use your version of JavaSE on mobile (so as not to threaten Oracle's license stream). It was one of the major sticking point with Apache's Harmony implementation. The 'field of use restriction' was incompatible with Harmony's license.
The Harmony implementation is what Google initially based Android's Java on. Eventually Oracle and Apache came to an 'understanding' when Oracle released the OpenSE JDK and IBM pulled support for Harmony. If you look carefully, you'll notice that there _still_ isn't an open Java ME.
So what Google did was to re-purpose Harmony JavaSE as an unencumbered JavaSE implementation. They didn't have any license agreement with Sun/Oracle, and didn't reuse the name, byte code or run time (as both were poorly suited to running under mobile). Sun's management boasted of their support for Google's actions. Oracle tried to memory-hole that support when they took over.
"The "gotcha" with Uber is what happens when a driver is simultaneously driving for Lyft, Uber, and the Pizza Company? Has he achieved a nexus where he is independent?"
Why would that be any kind of a nexus? That's simply holding down more than one job.
With current wages being as low as they are [and have been for quite some time] lots of people have to hold down multiple jobs just to make ends meet. I can't see why that would magically convert them from W2 employees to 1099 independent contractors.
Ummm, no. Employers started offering health insurance in large numbers during WW II.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_insurance_in_the_United_States#The_rise_of_employer-sponsored_coverage/
Last time I checked Windows Phone 7 _does_not_ support "the full .NET CF". In fact it supports very little of what we have come to expect in .Net CF.
It's only a crime because corrupt politicians were bought by even more corrupt corporations making it so.
It was once illegal to drink alcohol. That didn't make it _wrong_ just illegal.
Copying our culture is the same, while it may _currently_ be illegal, that doesn't make it wrong.
Not even close.
:( ) is still legal, darn, I guess I'l have to try again.
The looter took the television. Best Buy no longer has the television, that is theft.
"Here is an [in]appropriate analogy- let us say a looter goes into Best Buy and walks out with a flat screen TV he didn't pay for. Now he "gives" the TV to someone else. This is theft."
If you wanted to restate your analogy, so that it was in fact analogous to people trading music on p2p networks it would be more along the lines of:
"- let us say a looter goes into Best Buy with a digital recorder and tapes the music being played in the store that he didn't pay for. Now he "gives" copies of this to someone else. This isn't theft"
Actually I believe that would be legal... Hmm let me try again.
"- let us say a looter goes into Best Buy with a digital camcorder and tapes the movie being played in the store that he didn't pay for. Now he "gives" copies of this to someone else. This isn't theft"
Taping a show (not in a movie theater, that was recently criminalized
"- let us say a looter goes into Best Buy with a laptop and rips the music from a music cd-rom (in an already opened package)that was played in the store that he didn't pay for. Now he "gives" copies of this to someone else. This isn't theft"
Finally, a way to make your Best Buy looter analogous to people trading files on p2p networks.... no wait that isn't quite right. I think I can get it right this time.
"- let us say a looter goes into Best Buy with a laptop and rips a CD-ROM containing music that he _paid_ for. Now he "gives" copies of this to someone else. This isn't theft, but it is copyright infringement"
There you go, a proper analogy. The only problem with an example that is truely analogous is that it still doesn't seem all that bad. Makes you wonder why this is illegal. It wasn't always illegal. It still isn't _theft_. Perhaps instead of arresting people for doing what never was, untill recently, either a problem or illegal, we should simply change the law to reflect what people do.
Naw, if we started doing that, how would the RIAA and there ilk make oodles of money? What's next, decriminalizing the growing of plants? Where will the maddness end?!?
someone247356
Um, shouldn't SHA-1 be considered "broken" for all intents and purposes?
Can you use SHA-(something else)?
or even a non-SHA hash?
You wrote;
"If you ARE claiming otherwise, you're saying a Windows developer could freely, minutely examine the Linux kernel, and then, without any degree of fear of legal repercussion, *implement the ideas expressed in that code* without GPL or other legal fallout. To be clear, he doesn't copy a single line of code, just reuses the good ideas, tweaks things based on the insights he gains, etc.
Do you really claim that?"
I'm not sure about the original author, but I'll claim that.
The GPL is based on "copyright" law. Copyright, as it applies to software, not to be confused with patents, only covers an expression of an idea, not the original idea itself.
So, if Microsoft wanted to have an army of coders spending long nights studying the Linux kernel in infinitesimal detail, trying to glean that special something and reimplement it in Microsoft's OS, that's perfectly legal. Not only that, but I wish them the best of luck.
If you think otherwise, then anyone who has ever looked at any source code, couldn't code. Every university student who studied Lyons' Unix book wouldn't be able to program for Linux (a.k.a. the SCO Group hypothesis).
Direct copying, bad, reimplementing someone else's idea, good.
I hope that helps.
I think it was a typo, but somehow oddly appropriate, when you wrote;
"Also Pyramid schemes are illeagle [sic] in the United States and many other companies ."
someone247356
Too much flash. Why go for Ebola when Mad Cow would be much more deadly and likely to be mistaken for Alzheimer's.
That's the problem with viruses these days, too much flash. Either it saturates a network spreading itself, or it quickly kills the host. Either way it brings way too much attention to itself to be truly scary.
How's this for a thought experiment;
Write a small, stealthy piece of code that would randomly change a single digit in a single number found in a random Word or Excel etc. file by some small random amount once a day. It propagates by attaching portions of itself to no more than 1 email message/irc chat/telnet/ftp/video conference or other communication application a day. Until all of the pieces are present in memory, all the code does is attach itself to some systems process and look for the rest of itself. When all of it has been received it adds itself to some innocuous systems level process and begins changing values and slowly sending itself out around the world.
So what good would that do? Well it doesn't draw attention to itself, neither in its mode of operation nor the way it spreads itself. Therefore while it would propagate slowly, no one would ever be looking for it. It's payload could cause great amounts of harm without ever giving the user any reason to think that his computer might be infected. What happens if it's on a pharmacy/hospital computer and it changes the dose of a prescription? Most pharmacies these days use numbers as a prescription ID. 20034978 might be a beneficial prescription while 20034879 could be deadly. We lost a Mars probe because someone didn't convert between feet and meters correctly. What if they did and a virus like this deftly changed it behind their back? A million widgets at $1.24 each is a lot different that a million widgets at $1.98. Building a bridge with a support beam that's 84.539 meters long isn't the same as one of 84.639 meters. You see where this is going don't you. Taken by themselves they look like simple user errors.
The computer, or user, is diagnosed with Alzheimer's when it's actually infected with Creutzfeldt-Jakob. Machine's get rebuilt, people loose money, or get killed, and no one ever suspects that a very stealthy virus is the root cause of it all.
That my friends is what I would call truly scary.
someone247356
Perhaps I'm having a slow moment, but the fix seems to be turning an option from a default of On to a default of Off.
If it's a bug shouldn't the fix involve more that turning off a setting?
Any sufficiently paranoid user could have, and probably would have turned it off themselves two years ago.
Now I'm not saying that it's not a dumb feature to have, so if you are going to have it, for heaven's sake at least default it to off. But I can't really equate this to an IE bug that you need a binary patch from Microsoft to remedy.
Actually, if you install the free "TweakUI" control panel applet from Microsoft you don't need to hack the registry.
Just go to the "Paranoia" tab, under the section marked "Things that happen behind your back" uncheck "Play audio CD's automatically" and uncheck "Play data CD's automatically".
Problem solved.
You stated:
"However, copying to other formats is not obviously fair use."
Actually, according to most non-RIAA lawyers it is.
See: http://www.eff.org/IP/eff_fair_use_faq.html
"Space-shifting or format-shifting - that is, taking content you own in one format and putting it into another format, for personal, non-commercial use. For instance, "ripping" an audio CD (that is, making an MP3-format version of an audio CD that you already own) is considered fair use by many lawyers, based on the 1984 Betamax decision and the 1999 Rio MP3 player decision (RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia, 180 F. 3d 1072, 1079, 9th Circ. 1999.)"
In fact space-shifting (CD to mp3, LP to audio tape, etc.) and time shifting (recording a show to watch later via VHS, DVD-R, Tivo) are both legal as long as it's for personal, non-commercial use.
Well at least in the US of A. and as long as you don't have to circumvent "copy-protection" to do it. Thank you DMCA. That's the biggest problem with it. Circumvention, even to do something legal is illegal. Hopefully they fix that one soon, or an enlightened Judge throws it out.
someone247356
"Sitting at a Xerox machine and copying a book, page for page, is wholly infeasable."
Ugggggg....
Since when does easier == illegal?
It doesn't. Never has, never will. Why do people keep bringing this up?
Think about it for a moment. Transcribing a book by hand is hard, taking pictures of all of the pages is easier, therefore, taking pictures of books is illegal, right? Nope.
Using a photocopier is easier than taking pictures, or transcribing it, therefore using a photocopier is even more illegal, right? Wrong again.
Copy a pdf of a book from one location and pasting it in another is easier still, that's got to be sooo illegal we need to apply the death penalty, right? Um, no.
The "how" is, or should be, irrelevent. The "what" is what matters. "Fair-Use" is the same no matter what the material is, regardless of how easy or difficult the process is. The fact that I can legally "space-shift" music (for one example) is still legal no matter how I do it. Copying an LP to another LP, an analog tape to another analog tape, a CD-ROM to analog tape, a CD-ROM to another CD-ROM, an LP or analog cassette, or CD-ROM to a MP3/WMA/Ogg are all equally legal. As long as I keep them to myself the RIAA and the FBI can take a rather long walk off an equally short pier.
Why do you think the RIAA the MPAA and their cronnies are trying to prevent you fom exercising your rights? Because it's rather well established that you in fact have those rights. They can't legally stop you from making a copy of the latest album that you have legally purchased. So what they are doing is making it illegal for anyone to make the tools needed to allow you to exercise those rights. The logic assuming there is any, would have prevented the VCR and photocopier if they could have gotten laws like "No Electronic Theft Act" (the NET act that made non-commercial copyright infringment a crime for the first time ever) and the "Digital Millenium Copyright Act" (DMCA - which made the tools used to do the copying illegal, as well as telling anyone else how you managed to exercise your legal rights illegal.)
In the twisted world ofo the RIAA/MPAA etc. All knowledge exists for the sole purpose of making them money. Anything contrary to that is, or should be illegal. The only right you have is to use the music/movie/book, etc. in a manner that maximizes their profits. Any attempt to do otherwise is, or should be illegal. If you come up with a new use for said book/music/movie, then you should have to pay them again for the privilege. Any use that is an easier or more convenient use of a previously existing right, should naturally result in more money in their respective coffers. Since they believe that any use, every utterance should result in more money going to them, all damages will be calculated in terms of money they believe they should have received. Since the courts are making it more difficult (read "expensive") for them to sue consumers, naturally the FBI should be doing it for them.
The fact that the more time the FBI spends chasing eight year olds downloading copies of Hillery Duff, is less time catching kidnappers, or foiling the next 9/11 terrorist conspiracy is irrelevant to the RIAA and their bottom line.
Unfortunately, the current crop of bought congress critters are more interested in pleasing their corporate masters than the citizens that ostensibly elected them, is a failing of our republic. Until enough people get mad enough to actually do anything about it, like voting the bulk of congress out of office. I don't see things changing.
As an aside, a Canadian court recently ruled that people who make files available for sharing on P2P networks aren't guilty of anything. They used the "photocopier in the library" analogy to justify their decision.
someone247356
Actually I agree with the last AC. BitTorrent is practically useless. > 700K ADSL and BitTorrent has never managed to DL faster than about 3-4K.
Perhaps it's the A in ADSL, >700K down 90~120K up. I've read that BitTorrent throttle the download speed based on how much upload bandwidth you give it. To discourage freeloaders maybe.
The end result is worse than 56K modem downloading. When I can FTP at greater than 90KB, it makes BitTorrent rather pointless.
Debian's jigdo on the other hand, fast and reliable.
someone247356
Hmmm, you said;
"And Bayesian filters can't parse graphics, so a lot of spammers are careful to put words likely to trigger spam filters into graphics."
So that explains why so much spam consists of empty emails. I strip all HTML code, and disable Java/Java script and it's cousins from my email and reader. Often all that's left is a blank email.
Text is for email, HTML is for web pages. The sooner people realize this the sooner most of this nonsense will go away.
You asked; "How many people play PSX games on a PS2?"
Well, not only do the kids play the PSX games as much as they do PS2 games (on the PS2) they have gone out an bought new PSX games nearly a year after we got the PS2.
For myself, if the PS2 didn't play PSX games, we probably wouldn't have bought a PS2. Since Sony is going to build the PS3 with the ability to play PSX and PS2 games, as well as new PS3 games, it'll be a safe purchase.
At least after the first price drop....
But sometimes they are....
.wav at a quality level of 8 was just too much. The Duron can encode it in around a minute, maybe two. Video is to the Duron what audio was to the K6-2.
I was chugging along fine, for a couple of years with my 1Ghz Duron. I was previously using a K6-2 366, but encoding audio to Ogg was taking forever. Now that I'm getting into video encoding, the Duron handles real-time MPEG-1 just fine, but struggles with MPEG-2.
Until I got into audio encoding 366 was fine. Waiting 10-15 minutes to encode a 3 minute
Sometimes there really is a need for more horsepower.
someone247356
Well I've been building systems since the x386-16.
Over the years the stablest combination I've found is AOpen motherboards and AMD chips. They aren't the fastest, but they are inexpensive and stable as heck. Currently I'm running with a 1Ghz Duron and hoping to upgrade to a 2Ghz Athlon XP.
I'm leery of the NVidia chipsets and I think I'll be sticking with a VIA600 based board. It seems to be well supported by the stock kernel. Running Slackware/Win2k and I don't let binary vendor drivers pollute my kernel. Using an ATI 7500 instead of an NVidia video card for just that reason.
When NVidia is well supported by the stock kernel, then I'll give them a look-see, not before.
Actually I think it's going to happen sooner as opposed to later. Check out this article over at the Register; (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/33379.html )
i n/artman/ exec/view.cgi/22/6154)
"The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) today released a report recommending the introduction of a national road-charging system for the UK, most likely using satellite technology."
Or how about this proposal in Oregon;
(http://www.washingtondispatch.com/cgi-b
"Oregon's Road User Fee Task Force (what a name) is proposing that a GPS transponder be installed in every vehicle, and that every vehicle should be tracked and monitored so that "road taxes" may be paid for every mile the car is driven. In other words, for every mile you drive, you'll be taxed. They might as well call it a fee for the privilege of moving about, because that's exactly what it is."
Eventually they'll stop trying to track us by our vehicle, cell phone, or computer, and just start implanting tags in us at birth. Uggg....
someone247356
Actually, my son used to play Blizzard games on their Battle.Net service. Warcraft and Diablo I believe, I'm not sure of the versions. It was actually their service I was thinking about when I wrote my original post. I'm not sure how they run things now, but I remember when he would log on to play Diablo after not playing it on Battle.Net for a while, it would tell him that his version was out of date and offer to upgrade him to the latest version. If he said no, it didn't upgrade him, but it didn't let him log on to Battle.Net either. No forced upgrade. Trying to log onto Battle.Net didn't upgrade his computer whether he wanted to or not.
Blizzard; Play on Battle.Net upgrade computer, don't upgrade don't play.
Microsoft; accidentally click on XBox Live, auto-upgrade, to fuss, no muss, no choice.
It's like walking into a fancy restaurant. Usually the Maitre de at the door tells you if there is a dress code to enter. Coat and tie establishment, you wear a coat and tie, you can enter, you don't you can't. Some of the better places will offer you a coat to wear while you are there if you don't have one of your own. Microsoft is like the maitre de from hell. When you show up, he rips off your jacket and hands you another one whether you wanted it or not, whether you even wanted to go in or not. Just because you bought a blue Microsoft jacket and Microsoft now requires all dinner's to wear red Microsoft jackets to enter. What if you really liked your blue jacket? What if were looking for a public bathroom, or made a left instead of a right and ended up here instead of the Chinese restaurant across the street. Anywhere else and you would be told the conditions for entering. You could trade your old jacket for a new one and enter, or keep your old one and go somewhere else. Microsoft simply rips the jacket from your back and hands you another one, no fuss, no muss, no fair.
Just because you bought your old jacket from Microsoft doesn't give them the right to "update" it at their whim.
someone247356
GameX doesn't exist. It's an illustrative example.
I "made shit up" yep, I admit it. That's what you do when you are positing a hypothetical situation. Just because it may not have happened yet, doesn't mean it won't in the future.
How many people thought patching a Windows install was safe, until it wacked a few thousand boxes. But those were "hot fixes" Microsoft said, you need to wait for a service pack if you want to be safe, until installing a service pack wacked a few thousand installs. Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 6 remember that one? I'm running Sp6a on all of my NT 4.0 boxes.... Why did Microsoft have to release 6a?
Google around if you are curious about all of the various Microsoft fixes, patches, service packs that either didn't correct what they were supposed to, opened up bigger holes than they fixed, or cause completely unrelated apps, or even the OS to crash. Imagine the carnage if everyone of those were "forced" updates.
Just because it hasn't happened yet, doesn't mean it can't. Just because the dashboard shouldn't effect running games, doesn't mean that a windows update won't cause something completely unrelated to suddenly have problems. It's happened to every other Microsoft OS that they've patched/or upgraded, all the way back to DOS.
Forced updates, without user consent, without rollback, is just asking for trouble.
someone247356
Actually, the polite or proper thing to do would be to ask.
Microsoft is within its rights to only allow certain versions of software to play on XBox Live. It's a value-add and your XBox will play games fine without it. The problem is when it auto-updates without a choice, without the owner of the XBox having a say.
Microsoft should have had the XBox Live servers check which version of software an XBox is running when it tries to connect to the XBox Live servers. If it isn't the required version, give the user a choice. Either allow the XBox Live server to update your software, or disconnect that particular box from the Live network. No fuss, no muss, the user explicitly gives permission to Microsoft to update their console. If they really wanted to do it correctly, they should include the option of rolling back patches to the version the console shipped with. In case an "auto-update" broke something else, the user could roll back that patch, until Microsoft released a patch for the patch.
You really like playing GameX it works great. You go to XBox Live, the servers tell you you need to be running version x+1 to connect. You agree to let Microsoft upgrade your XBox. XBox Live works great. A couple of days later you fire up GameX, it stutters, squeals, locks up your XBox requiring a power cycle. Contact the publisher of GameX, they tell you that there is an "issue" with XBox Live software x+1. Your choices are; don't play GameX until Microsoft releases upgrade x+2 and keep playing XBox Live, roll back your software to version x play GameX and don't play XBox Live, or roll back when you want to play GameX, let Microsoft upgrade your box to x+1 to play on XBox Live, and roll your software back and forth, depending on the game you want to play today.
But that would be if Microsoft played nice, respected other people's property, and refrained from its usual heavy handed methodology.
For now, I'll stick with a PlayStation 2.
someone247356