You could (very loosely) consider HTML a programming language of macros: all those tags are stand-ins for some behavior that is already defined (as with functions)... when you get down to it, the output of a text file (via cat) and of an executable file that prints that same thing... are indistinguishable. so you could do web pages the easy way, using predefined tags, or you could do it the hard way... uh... involving... i don't know... something less easy. activex? flash? something that could be downloaded directly, and appear filling the browser window?
is your point that "they have reason to fear that the game could influence people's view of history" or that "they're right that this game is a lie"? depending on the precise date, those areas did consider themselves not under chinese rule (at least.)
if your point is only that they should fear such games as intruding on their hard work to make everyone believe the official story of their nation, then i couldn't agree more.
if it's the other... there should be a big debate about the truth of the matter (however postmodern that might need to be) and also a discussion about the responsibility on the part of content creators to either make things "obviously" false/parody/fiction/alternate, or be entirely accurate (well, in the opinion of those who care.)
... sending it to america, where it gets sent back out (in reduced quantities) to india (or wherever they decide to outsource next.) You can probably also trace the money through taxes to the US government where it'll get used to fund other nations, or fund wars against them, or whatever we jolly well please.
Regardless, buying from microsoft does not pay your local IT population directly. Using OSS might let you keep the money, and use it for something more critical than your software, like your farms or industries. And with OSS, there's a greater chance that the locals can pick up the products, and for a fee, adapt them to local needs. With proprietary stuff, they'd get to build from scratch... which is fun, but more expensive for the customer.
And then there's the auditability, security, customizability, knowing-what-the-hell-is-going-on,... making sure there aren't back-doors installed by the vendor... and all that.
But the monetary thing is just... hmmm. Not sure why anybody would believe them when told "no, please don't not spend money!"... ('course, there is the free vs. open-source thing here to talk about.)
Compared to having your ass embedded in a chair during lift-off... yeah, I'd say this would be more family-friendly. With catering all the way up. And down. Then the bulk of your cost is managing the customers, not the hauling itself.
9 days might be a bit long though -- 18 day round-trip? That, and when you get to LEO... are they just going to announce "uh, welcome to LEO. it looks just like it has for a few hours, but we're at the top now. and going back down. slowly." Won't be very impressive in that sense. No "wow" right as you get there.
That article's interesting. No fines have been imposed (note: the maximum fines per incident are not large), there haven't been very many reported violations, and besides... patients have so much trouble reading HIPPA stuff in the first place, they don't know what's a violation. (HIPPA works purely on the reported-problem basis: if nobody, in the course of their daily lives, notices a problem then it just doesn't exist.)
I believe it was NPR a few weeks ago (this reported via girlfriend) that had an interview in which HIPPA officials (please correct me) said they weren't interested in imposing fines of any sort -- they're just there to help people get the big picture and do the nice thing. They really just want to be a support desk / consultants to help hospitals and clinics move forward. For as little teeth as this thing has, it's a wonder people react at all. (Then again, the attitude may be temporary -- they could be planning on having a nice smile for a few years, and then "when everybody should know by now", crack down?)
Maybe we should rejoice that doctors will go on and on and on at us geeky types about how secure our systems need to be? Maybe it shows how much they care about this, without needing to be threatened with hefty fines or worse? Or was it all an excuse to get to talk to our cute and single programmer chick for longer?
Format? Posh. However, they do require security, though you can (as I recall) get by without over-the-wire encryption so long as everything is inside a secured network not shared with people who shouldn't have access. Or some such.
HIPPA is actually more often violated by nurses and doctors who talk too freely -- the best security in the world won't prevent them from talking, leaving charts out, leaving doors open, or just generally not being discrete.
The other thing is that you probably won't find many open-source programmers looking forward to implementing HL7, X12, and other protocols, particularly after designing a database schema of their own (thus you have to translate not only the layout of your database, but also the format of individual fields, etc.) I'm paid, and I still don't look forward to it. But ya gotta do...
So far as I can tell, medical/insurance stuff is scope-creep in action. That lends itself well to projects being handed over from one team to the next over the years, or bits being developed (freely) by parties involved in the scope-creep, but if you like to keep things tidy, it could get messy. You'll want at least a few architects everyone else listens to.
And as a reminder, open-source does NOT mean mysql. Medical data is too important to have wandering around a system not designed around transactions, constraints, and concurrency. Look more in the direction of Postgresql or Firebird for your open-source database needs.
And please, for the love of something holy, don't use magenta and cyan as your base colors. And align things to grids. And don't roll your own file format. Some of us have to come in and clean up after that, and if we can't stand to even -look- at it, we can't emulate it. I mean really... (did I mention that the use of random fonts isn't appreciated either? Nope, looks like I forgot that one too.) Oh, and please design your systems to be multi-user from the start, working well under multi-user loads.
I should get back to work... those billing wizards aren't going to write themselves. Unless... open-source software to write other open-source software automatically? Hmmm.
I seem to recall from the firebird-support (and firebird-architect, for the feature of querying data and getting a tree back) email list that the Compiere people are trying to get support for other db back-ends as well, and firebird/interbase is at least one of them. Firebird's free, so that could help.
Wouldn't that start to fall under truth-in-advertising laws? Commercial vs. personnal speech? (I know that discussion has come up before on slashdot, as to whether or not it's fair to have different rules for each.)
If they're working for their company, posting things in favor of their product and against other products, then it can be seen as equivalent to statements made by the company itself, promoting their software and bashing others. In that case, what's said has to conform to some rules about what's appropriate -- in some countries, you're not allowed to mention the name of the competing product at all: you can talk about yours, you can talk about "everybody else", but you can't say "us good, X bad". You're generally not allowed to outright lie either.
But then it becomes a question of jurisdiction on the internet (along with selling nazi items, etc.) -- laws differing by country are hard to enforce on something like the internet.... as to whether or not the posters are anonymous, that has little bearing on the matter. They could be logged in as SmackThePenguin, posting on behalf of their employer -- the problem would be the same. As we don't associate names with verified certifications, statements of non-entanglement, etc.... even if you had the person's real name, you still wouldn't have any guarantee that what's being posted is at all relevant or accurate or objective. "Don't trust anybody but me"?
I don't mean to be any trouble, but could you explain the relationship between this and "the foaming-mouthed radicals of the right" (by which I assume you mean right-wing politics/politicians or maybe some forms of economic thought)?
That, and OOP isn't particularly well-defined. Each language that has OO features likely has a different set of them (I believe there's a "pick 3 of 4" comment that goes with it). Different combinations of OO features, not to speak of additional less-standard features, exist because they behave differently (sometimes more to your liking, sometimes entirely not.) Nominative vs. Structural typing, etc. are big differences. I'm somewhat surprised we call it all "OO" in the first place. That may also contribute to a lack of "OO" features in some database products (or most) -- which OO features do you want, and why? What makes it conveniently OO for you? And then we realize that C++ OO is just smoke and mirrors around passing an implicit parameter to a function (with some indirection thrown in for good measure,) and we realize it's all... the same. Domain/Set theory anyone?
On second thought, I apologize again, and ask that moderators (if they're still around) kindly moderate me into oblivion. I hadn't meant for the rape analogy to be taken as far as it was, nor had I meant to trivialize it (meaning instead to un-trivialize the other.) It was in bad taste, and I'm an idiot. Trespassing really is a much better analogy, based on consent, and comparatively trivial to copyright violation (in the minds of most.) Again, I'm sorry.
Theft is generally understood to involve removing control of an item from someone who currently controls it. Possession is 9/10 of the law -- once something is stolen, you can claim it's yours, but that doesn't automatically give you physical control back.
Copyright violation involves indistinguishable copies in limitless quantities. Truly, taking one does not reduce the number of available copies. The quantity left is the same as it was when you started. However, copyright itself is the right to control who has access to copies -- by taking copies without permission, you're effectively removing that exclusive right from its owner. You're sort of giving it to yourself, too, because many downloaders are also uploaders -- not only do you give yourself the right to take something, you give yourself the right to give it. Again, this seems to be available in limitless quantities, as millions of people all do this, all taking away an exclusive right and giving it to themselves (which destroys the exclusivity of the item, the copyright.)
From the point of view of consent, rape is still a violation of consent. ("viol" being the french noun.) Theft is also a violation of consent. Copyright is a violation of consent. Most crimes are, except for things like suicide, drugging yourself, conspiring, and where applicable, thought crimes. Yes, rape was chosen for sensationalism. Why? Because most people purposefully equate copyright violation with something trivial, to make it easier. Not because they've thought it through and decided it's qualitatively different, but because they think it's quantitavily different. Then again, doesn't the definition of rape in the US involve something about "sticking any body part of yours into someone else's orifice, of any sort, without their permission"? Such as sticking my finger in your nose? If you want to complain about trivializing something, don't look at me.
To answer your more-or-less ad-hominems, in reverse order... yes, I'm cynical. Yes, I do talk about sex as though between animals, though not because of mysoginy. I'm not religious. You question about the bills made very little sense. Use a linux example, then we'll talk. Very few dealings with WinNT. Ask a "sex worker" if sex is a service or a product; ask the guys who think their women aren't providing enough of it, or the other way around. Analogies aren't meant to show that two things are identical: they're meant to find common ground, and cross-over attributes.
And yes, theft isn't theft unless it involves mugging someone, a close-contact crime. Good point. But yes, I did know the reference to rape would cause this reaction -- it always does. Just like bringing up slavery, nazi, or other references. It's so horrible we dare not accept it as a valid analogy for anything. Godwin was sadly right.
Yes, that's the point. I'm glad someone got it... Remember that theories of this sort, dealing with the basics of physics, very often come down to naming a phenomenon, and by naming it, explaining it. We have gravity -- what is gravity? Is it the warping of the universe's fabric? Is it a flow of graviton particles that we can't see? Is it the gods pushing us back down to earth? In most cases, the explanation matters much less than the ability to predict future events based on their input. (Turning the universe into a black-box function whose output can be predicted based on the input.) The explanations are nice, they make us feel good, they give us something to talk about... the real meat is in the predictability though.
Fantasizing involves a lot of creative work on your part. We're talking about using someone else's creative work, without adding anything of our own (not even a derivative work, really.)
Yes, any interpretation (five senses) can be seen (under the right light) as creative. Yes, any non-creative "memory" could be seen as copyright violation. Humming a tune you remember, or just playing it in your head, or, like Cartman, being unable to do anything -but- play it in your head...
You're right. Because nobody has to come out and open the fence for you, to help you trespass, obviously there's no cost on their end and therefore no right for them to tell you not to trespass. I'll remember that argument next time Farmer Maggot comes after me with a pitchfork.
Yes, setting up a toll booth at the gate of someone else's land is considered worse than just crossing for free yourself. That doesn't mean it's considered "right".
It's a question of consent. I don't agree with extending copyright law to keep things from going into the public domain: artists knew, at the time, how long their stuff would be protected. They produced creative works anyway. It's a sort of reverse-copyright-violation for them to try to extend it beyond that -- a violation of their contract with us.
I can't speak to corruption. That's the case regardless, and is a sad state of affairs.
Also note I was writing in the context of our current system: I wasn't arguing against alternate methods. If you want to have artists working for the government, producing their works "in the public domain" from day 1, fine. Art is important. Art is also vague enough that such a system would be abused in ways we can't even imagine yet. But it's worth a try, as are other solutions.
I'm not cheerleading. I'm telling you to either change your laws, or deal with them. Unless you consider copyright violations to be civil disobedience? Even so, you're still liable to be punished if you wind up on the losing side, just like a revolution or a war. It's righteous until the other side wins.
which, in turn, is why there are people going on about multiple universes. don't you know that there's a universe for every possible outcome of every possible probability that isn't 0 or 1? thus you're seeing interference between all possible universes (integral of probabilities) -- it's obvious. sheesh, some people... (the humor of this post also interferes with itself, both being and not being humorous.)
Competition is not theft. Nothing guarantees income to those who make their services available. However, we do have laws in place to make sure that you won't get for free what the rightful owners don't want to give you for free.
An artist starving because nobody likes the music? Tough. An artist starving because some other artist is more popular and fills all the demand? Darn. An artist startving because people like the stuff, take it, but don't pay to have it?
Copyright violation isn't healthy competition between free market agents. Your analogy is flawed.
The supposed victims of copyright law shouldn't be able to ask for taxes on CD's and internet connections, because they have no guarantee of income. You shouldn't get to copy their stuff without permission, because our laws say you don't have the right to. Copyright violation is akin to rape: you take a service without permission, leaving the service more or less intact for others to take with or without permission. It's not theft (as is taking unduplicatable physical items), but it's still not right. It's a violation of established consent. (I apologize to rape victims or their relatives if this comes across as simplistic.)
Implementation-wise, you might first complain about 32-bit memory addresses when dealing with your operating system, hardware, etc. In many languages, the size of a pointer (which in turn generally limits addressable memory and disk space) is based on the architecture. Obviously, in some, it's not. Heck, the size of a byte may vary from system to system. And the size of "int", "long", "long double", "long long" may be defined as "more than the size of..." or as "4 or more bytes" or any other not-quite-useful constraint.
Quite a few database engines have a native 64-bit integer type available (BigInt, Int64, etc.) -- but that won't solve problems for very large blobs, as that's a pointer problem.
So, roll your own? And make it available to the rest of us?
So, code your own 64-bit classes? Large-file-support for filesystems is around, so the database files shouldn't be a problem.
Oh, wait, I forgot: most database vendors don't care much about giving you user-defined-types. Maybe functions, if they're feeling nice.
I work with Interbase/Firebird (on-topic: plenty of SP, trigger stuff available, though I rarely use it) -- I know they say that, well, basically, you can do this yourself as a BLOB (hey, it's binary data, right?) and massage your own stuff however you like. You define a new BLOB type/subtype for new datatypes, so you can tell the difference in the metadata, and off you go. A bit messy, but I hear it works.
I know the firebird-architect list has been buzzing with decision-making related to making it easier to extend Firebird with the language/platform "du jour" whether it be Java or.Net -- particularly to make it easy to reuse client code in the server (or the other way around)... and because people don't want to code for the C api directly if they can avoid it.
Relational database theory in no way prevents you from having any types you like in the database (current maintainers of the academic theory would point out that "object/relational" databases are just relational databases working the way they should.) Vendors, on the other hand... well, you have to remember they hacked the first relational database together in a hurry when they realized the hierarchical stuff wasn't going to do it anymore. And the hacking never stopped...
You're right. This habit of adding digits to the front of numbers to get more possible value representations... that's just awful. Who knows? Maybe someone will mock us for, say, not using 64-bit ints for dates to start with. Would have saved us some trouble, until the next time... 8, 16, 32, 64, 128 -- oops, our civilization is wiped out before we needed to add another 128 bits. (At least we take big leaps each time, eh?)
Well, you can't beat MySQL for its cheapness facor. Let's face it, most people don't need some professional job, myself included.
By that, do you mean most people don't need more features, as in PostgreSQL and Firebird? Both are free (in fact, more free, if you consider MySQL's licensing requirements for businesses)... and both are supported by interface layers like jdbc/odbc, as well as perl, php, and so forth...
The compatibility issue is really sad to me. So you've got a bunch of programmers willing to make something neat and useful, and everybody's single concern is to make it compatible with the one piece of software they want to stop using, so they can let everyone else continue to use the software that they themselves don't want to use anymore.
If you ever wanted to find a definition of 'monopoly', 'strangle-hold', etc.... look no further. And it's all because of those easily-influenced, rule-the-world secretaries who refuse to change their ways and believe their expensive vendor must know best because they have a support contract...
Personally, I think it'd be better for OOo to stop trying to be compatible (or at least stop advertising it,) and "do its own thing" -- people would stop judging it as a "fake MS office". You might not convert as many businesses, but you might convince more start-ups to go with it from day 1.
The point of open-source software shouldn't be "hey, stop buying from vendor X" -- so long as it stays this way, FOSS will stay in the shadow(s) of existing vendors, constantly following their footsteps. And we wonder why someone might consider it fake/rip-off? Current vendors get away with changing features, dropping features, breaking compatibility, and raising prices at random -- customers keep buying. If they can do that, don't you think FOSS can get away with writing good, solid software and making it available for free, without trying to copy features and make itself as cozy with existing products as possible?
uhm, no. "Jive", as per your same dictionary reference, is a style of jazz, and can also mean to "dance to" or "dance with"... therefore, two things not "jiving" means "not going well together, not dancing together" -- in this case, it means that the two concepts, two phrases, are incompatible, which is precisely what i meant. maybe you were trying to be funny by being wrong?
Re:Picking the right tool for the job
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Why MySQL Grew So Fast
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Looks like someone never used the feature of other databases of deferring restoring constraints until after the tables are uploaded... and something about the word "integrity" just doesn't jive with the phrase "you usually... in the right order, anyway".
The locking aspect is interesting -- we use Firebird (the database) at work. We've got several dozen people online at any given time, doing updates. We rarely delete rows. Users can't delete -- they can mark things as deleted, but that only affects listviews' default behavior. Firebird will prevent you from updating a record that has a FK to a row also being updated by someone else -- the reasoning being that the other connection could just as well be deleting the parent row, or planning to. It's first-come, first-served, which prevents quite a few problems. Except we use pessimistic locking when users go to edit a record (it doesn't lock when you view.) So this happens often.
I can't express how often that's gotten in the way, because I know that -usually-, we don't delete. It gives my users hell, because the server won't tell me -who- has the lock, to let me tell my users "uh, go down the hall and beat X senseless for being in your way."
But boy am I glad the feature's there. Because sometimes we do delete. Integrity can't be guaranteed anywhere other than at the database level, because you have no guarantees about the client program accessing the database. Transactions can't normally see into each other to determine if a conflict might happen. E.F. Codd said, a long time ago, that the RDBMS itself had to be able to keep everything clean. And he's still right. It's not just a data-store.
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You could (very loosely) consider HTML a programming language of macros: all those tags are stand-ins for some behavior that is already defined (as with functions) ... when you get down to it, the output of a text file (via cat) and of an executable file that prints that same thing ... are indistinguishable. so you could do web pages the easy way, using predefined tags, or you could do it the hard way ... uh ... involving ... i don't know ... something less easy. activex? flash? something that could be downloaded directly, and appear filling the browser window?
i didn't say it was a rigorous proof.
is your point that "they have reason to fear that the game could influence people's view of history" or that "they're right that this game is a lie"? depending on the precise date, those areas did consider themselves not under chinese rule (at least.)
... there should be a big debate about the truth of the matter (however postmodern that might need to be) and also a discussion about the responsibility on the part of content creators to either make things "obviously" false/parody/fiction/alternate, or be entirely accurate (well, in the opinion of those who care.)
if your point is only that they should fear such games as intruding on their hard work to make everyone believe the official story of their nation, then i couldn't agree more.
if it's the other
... sending it to america, where it gets sent back out (in reduced quantities) to india (or wherever they decide to outsource next.) You can probably also trace the money through taxes to the US government where it'll get used to fund other nations, or fund wars against them, or whatever we jolly well please.
... which is fun, but more expensive for the customer.
... making sure there aren't back-doors installed by the vendor ... and all that.
... hmmm. Not sure why anybody would believe them when told "no, please don't not spend money!" ... ('course, there is the free vs. open-source thing here to talk about.)
Regardless, buying from microsoft does not pay your local IT population directly. Using OSS might let you keep the money, and use it for something more critical than your software, like your farms or industries. And with OSS, there's a greater chance that the locals can pick up the products, and for a fee, adapt them to local needs. With proprietary stuff, they'd get to build from scratch
And then there's the auditability, security, customizability, knowing-what-the-hell-is-going-on,
But the monetary thing is just
Compared to having your ass embedded in a chair during lift-off ... yeah, I'd say this would be more family-friendly. With catering all the way up. And down. Then the bulk of your cost is managing the customers, not the hauling itself.
... are they just going to announce "uh, welcome to LEO. it looks just like it has for a few hours, but we're at the top now. and going back down. slowly." Won't be very impressive in that sense. No "wow" right as you get there.
9 days might be a bit long though -- 18 day round-trip? That, and when you get to LEO
That article's interesting. No fines have been imposed (note: the maximum fines per incident are not large), there haven't been very many reported violations, and besides ... patients have so much trouble reading HIPPA stuff in the first place, they don't know what's a violation. (HIPPA works purely on the reported-problem basis: if nobody, in the course of their daily lives, notices a problem then it just doesn't exist.)
I believe it was NPR a few weeks ago (this reported via girlfriend) that had an interview in which HIPPA officials (please correct me) said they weren't interested in imposing fines of any sort -- they're just there to help people get the big picture and do the nice thing. They really just want to be a support desk / consultants to help hospitals and clinics move forward. For as little teeth as this thing has, it's a wonder people react at all. (Then again, the attitude may be temporary -- they could be planning on having a nice smile for a few years, and then "when everybody should know by now", crack down?)
Maybe we should rejoice that doctors will go on and on and on at us geeky types about how secure our systems need to be? Maybe it shows how much they care about this, without needing to be threatened with hefty fines or worse? Or was it all an excuse to get to talk to our cute and single programmer chick for longer?
Format? Posh. However, they do require security, though you can (as I recall) get by without over-the-wire encryption so long as everything is inside a secured network not shared with people who shouldn't have access. Or some such.
...
... (did I mention that the use of random fonts isn't appreciated either? Nope, looks like I forgot that one too.) Oh, and please design your systems to be multi-user from the start, working well under multi-user loads.
... those billing wizards aren't going to write themselves. Unless ... open-source software to write other open-source software automatically? Hmmm.
HIPPA is actually more often violated by nurses and doctors who talk too freely -- the best security in the world won't prevent them from talking, leaving charts out, leaving doors open, or just generally not being discrete.
The other thing is that you probably won't find many open-source programmers looking forward to implementing HL7, X12, and other protocols, particularly after designing a database schema of their own (thus you have to translate not only the layout of your database, but also the format of individual fields, etc.) I'm paid, and I still don't look forward to it. But ya gotta do
So far as I can tell, medical/insurance stuff is scope-creep in action. That lends itself well to projects being handed over from one team to the next over the years, or bits being developed (freely) by parties involved in the scope-creep, but if you like to keep things tidy, it could get messy. You'll want at least a few architects everyone else listens to.
And as a reminder, open-source does NOT mean mysql. Medical data is too important to have wandering around a system not designed around transactions, constraints, and concurrency. Look more in the direction of Postgresql or Firebird for your open-source database needs.
And please, for the love of something holy, don't use magenta and cyan as your base colors. And align things to grids. And don't roll your own file format. Some of us have to come in and clean up after that, and if we can't stand to even -look- at it, we can't emulate it. I mean really
I should get back to work
I seem to recall from the firebird-support (and firebird-architect, for the feature of querying data and getting a tree back) email list that the Compiere people are trying to get support for other db back-ends as well, and firebird/interbase is at least one of them. Firebird's free, so that could help.
Wouldn't that start to fall under truth-in-advertising laws? Commercial vs. personnal speech? (I know that discussion has come up before on slashdot, as to whether or not it's fair to have different rules for each.)
... as to whether or not the posters are anonymous, that has little bearing on the matter. They could be logged in as SmackThePenguin, posting on behalf of their employer -- the problem would be the same. As we don't associate names with verified certifications, statements of non-entanglement, etc. ... even if you had the person's real name, you still wouldn't have any guarantee that what's being posted is at all relevant or accurate or objective. "Don't trust anybody but me"?
If they're working for their company, posting things in favor of their product and against other products, then it can be seen as equivalent to statements made by the company itself, promoting their software and bashing others. In that case, what's said has to conform to some rules about what's appropriate -- in some countries, you're not allowed to mention the name of the competing product at all: you can talk about yours, you can talk about "everybody else", but you can't say "us good, X bad". You're generally not allowed to outright lie either.
But then it becomes a question of jurisdiction on the internet (along with selling nazi items, etc.) -- laws differing by country are hard to enforce on something like the internet.
I don't mean to be any trouble, but could you explain the relationship between this and "the foaming-mouthed radicals of the right" (by which I assume you mean right-wing politics/politicians or maybe some forms of economic thought)?
That, and OOP isn't particularly well-defined. Each language that has OO features likely has a different set of them (I believe there's a "pick 3 of 4" comment that goes with it). Different combinations of OO features, not to speak of additional less-standard features, exist because they behave differently (sometimes more to your liking, sometimes entirely not.) Nominative vs. Structural typing, etc. are big differences. I'm somewhat surprised we call it all "OO" in the first place. That may also contribute to a lack of "OO" features in some database products (or most) -- which OO features do you want, and why? What makes it conveniently OO for you? And then we realize that C++ OO is just smoke and mirrors around passing an implicit parameter to a function (with some indirection thrown in for good measure,) and we realize it's all ... the same. Domain/Set theory anyone?
On second thought, I apologize again, and ask that moderators (if they're still around) kindly moderate me into oblivion. I hadn't meant for the rape analogy to be taken as far as it was, nor had I meant to trivialize it (meaning instead to un-trivialize the other.) It was in bad taste, and I'm an idiot. Trespassing really is a much better analogy, based on consent, and comparatively trivial to copyright violation (in the minds of most.) Again, I'm sorry.
Theft is generally understood to involve removing control of an item from someone who currently controls it. Possession is 9/10 of the law -- once something is stolen, you can claim it's yours, but that doesn't automatically give you physical control back.
... yes, I'm cynical. Yes, I do talk about sex as though between animals, though not because of mysoginy. I'm not religious. You question about the bills made very little sense. Use a linux example, then we'll talk. Very few dealings with WinNT. Ask a "sex worker" if sex is a service or a product; ask the guys who think their women aren't providing enough of it, or the other way around. Analogies aren't meant to show that two things are identical: they're meant to find common ground, and cross-over attributes.
Copyright violation involves indistinguishable copies in limitless quantities. Truly, taking one does not reduce the number of available copies. The quantity left is the same as it was when you started. However, copyright itself is the right to control who has access to copies -- by taking copies without permission, you're effectively removing that exclusive right from its owner. You're sort of giving it to yourself, too, because many downloaders are also uploaders -- not only do you give yourself the right to take something, you give yourself the right to give it. Again, this seems to be available in limitless quantities, as millions of people all do this, all taking away an exclusive right and giving it to themselves (which destroys the exclusivity of the item, the copyright.)
From the point of view of consent, rape is still a violation of consent. ("viol" being the french noun.) Theft is also a violation of consent. Copyright is a violation of consent. Most crimes are, except for things like suicide, drugging yourself, conspiring, and where applicable, thought crimes. Yes, rape was chosen for sensationalism. Why? Because most people purposefully equate copyright violation with something trivial, to make it easier. Not because they've thought it through and decided it's qualitatively different, but because they think it's quantitavily different. Then again, doesn't the definition of rape in the US involve something about "sticking any body part of yours into someone else's orifice, of any sort, without their permission"? Such as sticking my finger in your nose? If you want to complain about trivializing something, don't look at me.
To answer your more-or-less ad-hominems, in reverse order
And yes, theft isn't theft unless it involves mugging someone, a close-contact crime. Good point. But yes, I did know the reference to rape would cause this reaction -- it always does. Just like bringing up slavery, nazi, or other references. It's so horrible we dare not accept it as a valid analogy for anything. Godwin was sadly right.
Yes, that's the point. I'm glad someone got it ... Remember that theories of this sort, dealing with the basics of physics, very often come down to naming a phenomenon, and by naming it, explaining it. We have gravity -- what is gravity? Is it the warping of the universe's fabric? Is it a flow of graviton particles that we can't see? Is it the gods pushing us back down to earth? In most cases, the explanation matters much less than the ability to predict future events based on their input. (Turning the universe into a black-box function whose output can be predicted based on the input.) The explanations are nice, they make us feel good, they give us something to talk about ... the real meat is in the predictability though.
Fantasizing involves a lot of creative work on your part. We're talking about using someone else's creative work, without adding anything of our own (not even a derivative work, really.)
...
Yes, any interpretation (five senses) can be seen (under the right light) as creative. Yes, any non-creative "memory" could be seen as copyright violation. Humming a tune you remember, or just playing it in your head, or, like Cartman, being unable to do anything -but- play it in your head
You're right. Because nobody has to come out and open the fence for you, to help you trespass, obviously there's no cost on their end and therefore no right for them to tell you not to trespass. I'll remember that argument next time Farmer Maggot comes after me with a pitchfork.
Yes, setting up a toll booth at the gate of someone else's land is considered worse than just crossing for free yourself. That doesn't mean it's considered "right".
It's a question of consent. I don't agree with extending copyright law to keep things from going into the public domain: artists knew, at the time, how long their stuff would be protected. They produced creative works anyway. It's a sort of reverse-copyright-violation for them to try to extend it beyond that -- a violation of their contract with us.
I can't speak to corruption. That's the case regardless, and is a sad state of affairs.
Also note I was writing in the context of our current system: I wasn't arguing against alternate methods. If you want to have artists working for the government, producing their works "in the public domain" from day 1, fine. Art is important. Art is also vague enough that such a system would be abused in ways we can't even imagine yet. But it's worth a try, as are other solutions.
I'm not cheerleading. I'm telling you to either change your laws, or deal with them. Unless you consider copyright violations to be civil disobedience? Even so, you're still liable to be punished if you wind up on the losing side, just like a revolution or a war. It's righteous until the other side wins.
which, in turn, is why there are people going on about multiple universes. don't you know that there's a universe for every possible outcome of every possible probability that isn't 0 or 1? thus you're seeing interference between all possible universes (integral of probabilities) -- it's obvious. sheesh, some people ... (the humor of this post also interferes with itself, both being and not being humorous.)
The sarcasm was fine. The rest wasn't.
Competition is not theft. Nothing guarantees income to those who make their services available. However, we do have laws in place to make sure that you won't get for free what the rightful owners don't want to give you for free.
An artist starving because nobody likes the music? Tough. An artist starving because some other artist is more popular and fills all the demand? Darn. An artist startving because people like the stuff, take it, but don't pay to have it?
Copyright violation isn't healthy competition between free market agents. Your analogy is flawed.
The supposed victims of copyright law shouldn't be able to ask for taxes on CD's and internet connections, because they have no guarantee of income. You shouldn't get to copy their stuff without permission, because our laws say you don't have the right to. Copyright violation is akin to rape: you take a service without permission, leaving the service more or less intact for others to take with or without permission. It's not theft (as is taking unduplicatable physical items), but it's still not right. It's a violation of established consent. (I apologize to rape victims or their relatives if this comes across as simplistic.)
Implementation-wise, you might first complain about 32-bit memory addresses when dealing with your operating system, hardware, etc. In many languages, the size of a pointer (which in turn generally limits addressable memory and disk space) is based on the architecture. Obviously, in some, it's not. Heck, the size of a byte may vary from system to system. And the size of "int", "long", "long double", "long long" may be defined as "more than the size of ..." or as "4 or more bytes" or any other not-quite-useful constraint.
Quite a few database engines have a native 64-bit integer type available (BigInt, Int64, etc.) -- but that won't solve problems for very large blobs, as that's a pointer problem.
So, roll your own? And make it available to the rest of us?
So, code your own 64-bit classes? Large-file-support for filesystems is around, so the database files shouldn't be a problem.
.Net -- particularly to make it easy to reuse client code in the server (or the other way around) ... and because people don't want to code for the C api directly if they can avoid it.
... well, you have to remember they hacked the first relational database together in a hurry when they realized the hierarchical stuff wasn't going to do it anymore. And the hacking never stopped ...
Oh, wait, I forgot: most database vendors don't care much about giving you user-defined-types. Maybe functions, if they're feeling nice.
I work with Interbase/Firebird (on-topic: plenty of SP, trigger stuff available, though I rarely use it) -- I know they say that, well, basically, you can do this yourself as a BLOB (hey, it's binary data, right?) and massage your own stuff however you like. You define a new BLOB type/subtype for new datatypes, so you can tell the difference in the metadata, and off you go. A bit messy, but I hear it works.
I know the firebird-architect list has been buzzing with decision-making related to making it easier to extend Firebird with the language/platform "du jour" whether it be Java or
Relational database theory in no way prevents you from having any types you like in the database (current maintainers of the academic theory would point out that "object/relational" databases are just relational databases working the way they should.) Vendors, on the other hand
You're right. This habit of adding digits to the front of numbers to get more possible value representations ... that's just awful. Who knows? Maybe someone will mock us for, say, not using 64-bit ints for dates to start with. Would have saved us some trouble, until the next time ... 8, 16, 32, 64, 128 -- oops, our civilization is wiped out before we needed to add another 128 bits. (At least we take big leaps each time, eh?)
Well, you can't beat MySQL for its cheapness facor. Let's face it, most people don't need some professional job, myself included.
... and both are supported by interface layers like jdbc/odbc, as well as perl, php, and so forth ...
By that, do you mean most people don't need more features, as in PostgreSQL and Firebird? Both are free (in fact, more free, if you consider MySQL's licensing requirements for businesses)
The compatibility issue is really sad to me. So you've got a bunch of programmers willing to make something neat and useful, and everybody's single concern is to make it compatible with the one piece of software they want to stop using, so they can let everyone else continue to use the software that they themselves don't want to use anymore.
... look no further. And it's all because of those easily-influenced, rule-the-world secretaries who refuse to change their ways and believe their expensive vendor must know best because they have a support contract ...
If you ever wanted to find a definition of 'monopoly', 'strangle-hold', etc.
Personally, I think it'd be better for OOo to stop trying to be compatible (or at least stop advertising it,) and "do its own thing" -- people would stop judging it as a "fake MS office". You might not convert as many businesses, but you might convince more start-ups to go with it from day 1.
The point of open-source software shouldn't be "hey, stop buying from vendor X" -- so long as it stays this way, FOSS will stay in the shadow(s) of existing vendors, constantly following their footsteps. And we wonder why someone might consider it fake/rip-off? Current vendors get away with changing features, dropping features, breaking compatibility, and raising prices at random -- customers keep buying. If they can do that, don't you think FOSS can get away with writing good, solid software and making it available for free, without trying to copy features and make itself as cozy with existing products as possible?
You've been trolled like nobody's business. ...
previously, on slashdot
uhm, no. "Jive", as per your same dictionary reference, is a style of jazz, and can also mean to "dance to" or "dance with" ... therefore, two things not "jiving" means "not going well together, not dancing together" -- in this case, it means that the two concepts, two phrases, are incompatible, which is precisely what i meant. maybe you were trying to be funny by being wrong?
Looks like someone never used the feature of other databases of deferring restoring constraints until after the tables are uploaded ... and something about the word "integrity" just doesn't jive with the phrase "you usually ... in the right order, anyway".
The locking aspect is interesting -- we use Firebird (the database) at work. We've got several dozen people online at any given time, doing updates. We rarely delete rows. Users can't delete -- they can mark things as deleted, but that only affects listviews' default behavior. Firebird will prevent you from updating a record that has a FK to a row also being updated by someone else -- the reasoning being that the other connection could just as well be deleting the parent row, or planning to. It's first-come, first-served, which prevents quite a few problems. Except we use pessimistic locking when users go to edit a record (it doesn't lock when you view.) So this happens often.
I can't express how often that's gotten in the way, because I know that -usually-, we don't delete. It gives my users hell, because the server won't tell me -who- has the lock, to let me tell my users "uh, go down the hall and beat X senseless for being in your way."
But boy am I glad the feature's there. Because sometimes we do delete. Integrity can't be guaranteed anywhere other than at the database level, because you have no guarantees about the client program accessing the database. Transactions can't normally see into each other to determine if a conflict might happen. E.F. Codd said, a long time ago, that the RDBMS itself had to be able to keep everything clean. And he's still right. It's not just a data-store.