they said oracle. if they don't -actually- need oracle, at least suggest something better than mysql. firebird/interbase, postgresql, SAP-DB,... at least something with well-known transaction support, speed, reliability.
but i know oracle has a -lot- of stuff in it that the others don't have, and you pay for that. firebird may not normally require a DBA, postgresql may be more customizable, and SAP-DB may... errr... be businessy... but oracle has it when it comes to outright speed when correctly configured, with all the bells and whistles still singing.
mysql can't touch that.
but yes. use slackware. simple, effective, clean. and pay someone (like a slashdotter) for support, when you need it. if these machines are all alike, it's like supporting just one box, with lots of repetition, right?
nono, even places that should comply with HIPAA still balk at having to use passwords. they share them, they post them on their monitors... but it doesn't matter. they talk in the hallway, they leave their workstations unlocked, they file papers in areas easily accessed by guests, they leave more than one client's information on their desk during an meeting with a patient...
the first problem in data security is people. everything might have a chance of being fixed, but we can't do anything about humans. they're not trustworthy. they never will be. would it help to have more laws? laws don't prevent people from speeding -- they punish them when they're found out. do laws catch every violation? nope.
the best way to keep a secret forever is not to tell anyone. ever. it won't be a useful secret... but at least it'll be a secret. a step up from this might be to simply not exist -- you'll run less risk of having your personal information stolen.
... it'd have been rather unfair for such people to tell us, after throwing out the brits, that the citizens of the new nation couldn't do the same as they saw fit. how likely is that to happen here, however, when we practically have a cult of our founding fathers and original documents? how could we overthrow our government, when we cherish the constitution so much? (note that we might be overthrowing the government specifically because it does not cherish the constitution as much as the citizens, individually, do!)
in any case, the US government seems to have had quite a bit of fun over time either helping or crushing revolutions and rebellions in various nations... there's more money to be made in selling weapons to both sides of a conflict, and more power to be gained by making a government dependent on us to protect them from their own citizens, than there is in fostering or helping rebellions...
we found our freedom (or so we think) through violent revolution. our farmers, our militia, our mujahideen (effectively) gave us what we now hold dear. i would at least like our country to have a consistent, stated policy when it comes to revolutions at home or abroad.
it is the duty of the citizens to overthrow the government if they can't find any ways of changing it through the processes already provided... but is it the duty of our government to hold on to its power regardless? is it the duty of the government to hold on to land it claims to govern, even if a group (a large majority in a given area) wishes to leave the union / nation?
i think our "founding fathers" believed in the necessity of government, at least on some level. i don't think they believed the one they instituted was perfect, or intrinsically worthy of standing for all eternity: they had changed their world... i think they expected those coming after them to do just as much, each in his own time. should we be required to resort to violence to change our government, even in an "enlightened" society? do we have to wait until it becomes "absolute despotism" before we can act?... open-source law, government, society. source code isn't the only thing that needs to be open, free, and modifiable for your local needs. and i think most governments have failed at the first phase of development: requirements (and scope) determination. our governments are constantly undergoing scope-creep. (note that i don't mind large projects, so size isn't the problem... it's the lack of goals, the lack of vision, the lack of design that bothers me.)
wow... i'm guessing the RIAA / MPAA aren't about to do that? seems like it might help that revenue problem they have... the entities they give their stuff to don't even have to want it, or use it. hmmm...
If you assume that there is no atomic unit of time, then any representation of an "instant" in time actually represents a delta of time.
So, if we take that, and change it to say "space" or value, or somesuch... are you telling me that if we're not using integers, then f(x) doesn't mean anything unless x is an interval, and that therefore f(x) is also an interval?
even if there is no atomic unit of time (as there is no atomic unit of real numbers... look at pi!) there are still such things as exact, non-interval values, even if we can't always write them down (unless you want to spend eternity doing so.) intervals may be more convenient, but they're no more 'true'. the value '3', for example, is 3, even if there is no atomic delta of values. and an interval still relies on exact values at some point (or interval?)...
i had really hoped this would be more interesting, and talk about the variations in space time that make it such that my fingers themselves experience slightly different points in time, along with space... the gravity affecting them isn't exactly the same, etc. such that for any two points in time, the flow of time is likely not the same... and to unite the flow of time, you'd have to unite the space too. at least, that's the sort of direction i was hoping for... this is just pointless.
i'm also not seeing type information on argc and argv, and neither is used (at least a compiler warning)... also bad style (but correct syntax) using an int as an implied boolean...
Yes. I'll buy "made in the USA" products so I can support pre-emptive wars, horrible public education,... you get the idea. Maybe we should seek out "made in Iraq" so we can help rebuild their economy indirectly.
I think we've seen plenty of countries with horrible economies that continue to push forward with "value systems" the rest of the world doesn't like. Embargo the country if you like -- the leaders will just become entrenched with a philosophy of "them vs. us" and continue to rule. If they're idealistic enough (in any direction) then you deciding not to buy their batteries is -not- going to make them change their mind. Is the point to punish, or to reform?
Yup. They save money on their suppliers. But never would they think to do so on their employees, no... Workforce is the most expensive part of a business; no reason to expect they wouldn't try to trim the edges there.
In the U.S., citizens may say the same thing about state-level laws: the federal government should have no say. While the E.U. isn't quite like the U.S. federal government in respect to member countries, the idea is the same. As a -community- of nations, neighboring states get to have a say in the internal affairs of other nations, a bit like my neighbors can tell me to turn down the music when it bothers them: something like video games sales would actually hurt the industries of other E.U. nations. (as I recall, France for example is very proud of a long line of Myst-type games involving their CG studios.) Again, it's also like the U.N. telling nations (members or not) to do -stuff- at the request of other nations. An invasion is always a long way away, but the idea is to remind countries, states, and any other level of government, that they do not act in a vacuum. Although leaving such groups to go "do your own thing" is almost always an option, compromise is preferred. Everyone knows it, and everyone plays by those rules (except the U.S.) Most likely, E.U. countries won't make unreasonable demands of each other, and such demands would undoubtedly eventually come back to haunt them. You elect representatives to listen to you, yes. But you also elect them to keep the world in mind, and keep the peace between nations (whether political, economic, or military.) It's not out of their jurisdiction to compromise on your behalf, even if they originally acted upon citizen request.
You don't have to like it, and you're welcome to complain: a country is perfectly justified in speaking out against the community around it, standing its ground, and making a few enemies. Do I turn down the music? Not always.
(btw: in any nation, every person has a voice, whether they realize it or not. the leaders, the military, the police, the structure designed to keep the population quiet... is entirely run by people like us. any link in the chain can be broken, any voice can eventually be heard. to maintain this myth that they have "no real voice" only helps the system as it is stay in place. don't we want to fight that system?)
perhaps they failed to convey their message? methinks the writers were perhaps trying to convince us that we need to think about the value of any life, not just human (as we understand it.) we argue over abortion... but do we argue over eating beef? sometimes. eating wheat? i don't think i've heard anyone yet tell me -not- to eat plant, fungus, or bacterial life. i believe an episode featured "Q" (was it?) making fun of the use of the phrase "human rights" in a (fictional) universe where even non-humans are recognized as having inate rights.
says the spider before my cat has himself a nice snack. ick... legs dangling. i hate it when he does that.
am i the only one who read the description of these power failures the way you'd expect to hear an actor on a star trek episode rattling off all the systems that have magically blown to pretty little sparks? (over a camp fire made of rocks heated by a phased electromagnectic beam, of course!)
in that line... i'd say "find the escape pod"... or perhaps more cynically, "brace for impact!" 'cause i'm rather sure your clients, investors, etc. aren't going to be happy. good luck!
actually, most of the asteroid games (nowadays) automatically slow you down. but yes, i loved that game. kinda lacking in the area of multiple thrusters though... couldn't exactly be overly creative with it. (strafing?)
The A-wing has a shape that makes me think of "flying wings" -- lifting bodies. Maybe not perfect, but it does seem that way...
Even with technologies like anti-grav thingies (repulsors in the SW universe?) you might still want a wing shape if you'll be flying at any sort of speed in an atmosphere. Maybe not for lift, but at least to stabilize the ship along the axis of the engines/flight-direction. Being the fastest of the set of A/B/X/Y [buttons on the super nintendo] ships, I'd expect the A-wing to need this the most: lifting-ish-body, winglets by the engine, etc.
Star Furies in B5 are a good example of ships that actually seem to respect the rules of thruster-control. I only wish more video games would allow you to make use of those features (coasting in space, turning on a dime, looking behind you, strafing shots, etc.) rather than the Star wars, Wing commander, Freespace,... version where "speed" is everything, with a max-speed, where you automatically slow down in turns (U-turns especially) etc.
on a web-app project i got to play with in mid-devel... image-magick was used to convert from TIFF to GIF (i think) output. the problem was speed -- it loaded the entire image into memory in its own internal format. the problem is that the TIFF files were enormous, but they were black/white scans of documents. the final gif was also low-color, and scaled down... but in-between, it was converting to full 24-bit color (with alpha?) and other overhead.
in the end, (after we had left and done our part of the job) someone else (team lead) changed the code to a customized piece that resized the file as it streamed through, directly from TIFF to whatever output format was being used... MUCH MUCH FASTER.
image magick is neat -- lots of formats. but it's a lot of overhead in situations where you need speed. specialized tools (format_a2format_b) are of great help at that point.
can you give examples of each? (or rather, the last two. 'rotate' is, i think, rather obvious.)
double initializiation? when have you had that? the only case that comes to mind is when you derive B and C from A, then D from B and C... and you're supposed to do that a different way anyway (declaring that A is likely to have this happen and be multiply included later, to avoid namespace problems inside D, trying to reference A.) any examples of this happening?
i'm not sure where you're going with overloading the access controls -- iterators do something similar by overloading the dereferencing operator... but it retains operations on itself. without that, doing my_itr++ might do ++() on the referenced object... and you'd have absolutely no control over the iterator itself. at most it'd be a smart pointer.
if you'd -like- to just use list all over, and cast appropriately... go ahead. as far as i can tell, it's much more efficient at run-time to already know which v-table to be using, etc. so the compiler just goes ahead and finds out. and makes sure the code is optimized for that. the fact that you can override templates with your own, type-specific versions (for storing booleans using individual bits, etc.) makes it even more fun. obviously, i could be wrong. (and yes, i'm fully expecting someone to complain about the efficiency of v-tables. go ahead.)
the only thing that irked me recently about templates was taking code from one compiler to another... specifically, to gcc 3.? and getting the "implicit typename" warning. i'd coded templates with gcc before, and didn't know there had been a change. got overzealous and started putting 'typename' all over the code... even non-template stuff. then i got the other error: "spurious typename" or some such. *sigh*
Don't I recall that the WTO (World Trade Organization) requires all signing parties to accept rather strong versions of each others' copyright/patent systems, such that patents automatically become international the moment they're national... so long as you're in a WTO-signing country? I could easily be mistaken (or misled by reading too much/.?)
i'm not sure how far away we're getting -- "don't fix a problem you can eliminate", "don't fix it if it ain't broke",... i don't like IP law, myself. but we have to know the problem before we can fix it -- the original question assumed that the term "IP" implied too much: that it was intellectual, that it was property, that those two could go together at all... we owe it to ourselves to look at the assumptions first. (we could, i think, easily rename it to "thought control" -- i think that's a logical conclusion from the points i made.)
in the physical sense, i'd say you don't own something unless someone tries to 'steal' it. it's a callback function -- when someone tries to take it, your ownership is manifested. the rest of the time, the rock's just sitting there. do i known it's "owned" by anyone, just by looking at it? unless you paint it all over it, no. (and even then, that's a layer of paint on top of the object -- the object itself, really, doesn't have a marker of ownership.)
unless someone disputes your ownership, you have no reason to control it physically. in fact, it's meaningless to do so. ownership is purely based on action/reaction.
multiple people own an item at the same time if attempts by one person to use/control the item are not countered by others in the group. if a wife uses money from the account without any attempt by the other owner to stop the transaction (if it's known, and not some sort of concealed transaction) then the wife owns the items just as much as everyone else on the account.
that's why you don't get to keep your trademarks, etc. if you don't defend them -- if it's not worth it to you to try to defend your exclusive rights, then it's not worth enough to you for anyone else to care. you no longer own it, basically, because you gave up on defending it.
in the same way, ownership of an idea only manifests itself when someone tries to use it. just thinking it generally does nothing for them. and we don't care. do i care what you think? nope. but if you act on an idea that i control, then my ownership is manifested by me defending my virtual turf.
(when you 'own' the rock, you're just controlling its uses. nobody else owns it until -they- control its use. control is the issue -- ownership, as such, is just a concept. which maybe you can own?)
Re:Mysql and ODBC not supported!
on
PHP 5 Beta 1
·
· Score: 1
vendor lock-in -- while i agree to a certain degree... the fact that we're talking about php kinda makes it that way anyway. it's php. you wrote your code in it. meant to write it in python instead? there's work to be done.
odbc would be fine -- but the lowest-common-denominator (especially when it doesn't work) really sucks efficiency-wise. you wind up not being able to take advantage of the features a different database back-end would give you, which... other than straight performance, makes change database systems pointless.
i'm much more in favor of using a system that knows about the neat things each database knows how to do (that it supports) -- and either emulating that functionality on databases that don't know how, or just telling you to get around it somehow. but at that point... why not just write code for the database you chose to use?
choosing a database system, like choosing a programming language, a platform, or any other parameter of software development, is not a choice that you should expect to randomly change. our problem is that management can be easily swayed to use a different database, and less so a different language. different platforms, when there's a choice, is a large problem too.
i use firebird (the database back-end.) [i get a lot of heat for mentioning it.] it's good, it's fast, it's free. am i locked in? yes. in php, i've used ibase_* functions. i could use older versions of firebird, or even interbase. maybe even newer versions. (i'm still waiting for 1.5 stable.) do i care? no. the software was designed with the intent of being used with firebird -- it's a requirement, not just an option. people using the software shouldn't expect that, just because they like mysql, they should use it. i planned more than just the function calls around it -- the use of generators, transactions, specific sql (regardless of the sql standard, no two database systems support exactly the same sql)... all make it locked-in, regardless of the function calls i used.
i've watched my brother port Oracle code to MS SQL Server, because management changed their collective mind. (i am unanimous.) they had used ODBC -- but it still took work. later, they needed the system to work with either database: at that point, you wind up still having to write with two different codebases, switching back and forth -- odbc itself won't fix that problem. and once you have that... you might as well have used the specific libraries to start with.
you mean like when man and wife own the same money, same house... ? it's not uncommon for several entities to own the same item at the same time -- thus, your argument is wrong.
as to owning ides: you can also be the "one" person to own the idea by being strong (having lots of money and lawyers) and beating to shit anyone who attempts to make use of the idea (it's hard to tell they have it until they make some attempt to use it.) therefore, you may retain control of the item -- which is the basis for 'ownership.'
you're right, ideas, unlike objects, are easy to spread. we don't have star-trek replication technology yet, but it could happen as well. when we own an item, we generally own the right to decide whether or not someone else can have it -- by copy or not. you would consider you have the right to decide if someone can clone you, right? that's because you feel you have the right to control who copies your DNA -- inherently copiable information. it won't hurt you to let someone else have it, now will it? but you're still concerned about it? hmmm.
when it comes to things like ideas, the value of 'owning' that idea goes away if it can be freely copied and used by others. you can't sell it, because it has no value. that which -did- have value, at first, by virtue of selling the right to own it and control its copying, is now gone. by letting an item that is copiable be easily copied, its value is diminished to nothing.
there is meaning to owning things like ideas -- it is not the physical control of the item (you can't put it in a box) -- it's the (similarly) intellectual control over it: not letting it be copied without your consent.
as to several people coming up with the same idea at the same time: i completely agree this is a problem. the reason for granting patents (limited-time monopoly) was so that inventors could recoup their R&D costs, without letting other people free-load off of the idea. but if you're the second one to come up with it, you're out of luck entirely. you won't recoup your costs; in fact, you can't make any money at all off of it without the permission of the 'winner' in the race, even if you didn't know there was a race. -that- is a problem. (it's much less likely that two artists will create the same painting, same song, or other artistic expression simultaneously, or even apart in time. copyrights don't have quite the same mutex-problem. trademarks, because they are based mostly on words, and our dictionary is limited, run a higher risk of this -- but they're a system designed to help avoid collisions in a namespace, not really designed to give you an 'edge' on the market. your product can be just as good, whether you're called 'whatsit's stuff' or 'megastuff'.)
i'm not sure that i would say that "real property" is "real", outside of government choices. we implement it because it's been a long-standing tradition... and without the law, i might just resort to cludgeoning the next guy who steps on my land, rather than having him arrested. the point is, governments ordain all laws of the land -- everything else is just a result of anarchy. murder bad? sure -- you commit murder, and i'll have you thrown off a cliff. is that law? does that make it moral? gosh no.
when the government says that people have the "right"/"privilege" to "own" that which they invented/created/scribbled out of boredom, it's asserting a new rule, on the same level as all other law. the fact that we see how artificial it is doesn't help: i mean, look at some religions... artificial? perhaps. fun and entertaining to some people? that can be enough. in the same way, this law may be artificial, but it's profitable to a portion of the country, and that's good enough.
all law is arbitrary. therefore, intellectual property exists on the same level as any other property, though its origins differ. the government could also repeal laws about real property, or murder tomorrow -- and that'd be just as legitimate as repealing copyright/patent/trademark laws.
(i would argue, though, that there's no reason for companies that develop new products using government money to get to retain a copyright or patent -- if the people pay for it, the people should own it. works made for hire? lots of new drugs these days, which pharmaceutical companies claim cost them tons of money to develop, are partially/mostly/entirely funded by the government -- i don't need to be paying higher prices for drugs to pay back the R&D costs i already paid for with tax dollars...)
Welcome to the world of the DMCA -- making eavesdropping illegal, if it takes any effort. Just listening in? That's fine. Gotta think about it, decrypt it, otherwise analyze it? Dude, that'd better not be copyrighted material... oh, wait, DirectTV doesn't own those copyrights, now do they... hunh...
And SETI? What if aliens broadcast their sitcoms in encrypted format, and we figure it out? Eeep? That death-ray could really suck...
Slashdot Mirror
slackware rocks. i love it. however ...
... at least something with well-known transaction support, speed, reliability.
... errr ... be businessy ... but oracle has it when it comes to outright speed when correctly configured, with all the bells and whistles still singing.
they said oracle. if they don't -actually- need oracle, at least suggest something better than mysql. firebird/interbase, postgresql, SAP-DB,
but i know oracle has a -lot- of stuff in it that the others don't have, and you pay for that. firebird may not normally require a DBA, postgresql may be more customizable, and SAP-DB may
mysql can't touch that.
but yes. use slackware. simple, effective, clean. and pay someone (like a slashdotter) for support, when you need it. if these machines are all alike, it's like supporting just one box, with lots of repetition, right?
nono, even places that should comply with HIPAA still balk at having to use passwords. they share them, they post them on their monitors ... but it doesn't matter. they talk in the hallway, they leave their workstations unlocked, they file papers in areas easily accessed by guests, they leave more than one client's information on their desk during an meeting with a patient ...
... but at least it'll be a secret. a step up from this might be to simply not exist -- you'll run less risk of having your personal information stolen.
the first problem in data security is people. everything might have a chance of being fixed, but we can't do anything about humans. they're not trustworthy. they never will be. would it help to have more laws? laws don't prevent people from speeding -- they punish them when they're found out. do laws catch every violation? nope.
the best way to keep a secret forever is not to tell anyone. ever. it won't be a useful secret
... it'd have been rather unfair for such people to tell us, after throwing out the brits, that the citizens of the new nation couldn't do the same as they saw fit. how likely is that to happen here, however, when we practically have a cult of our founding fathers and original documents? how could we overthrow our government, when we cherish the constitution so much? (note that we might be overthrowing the government specifically because it does not cherish the constitution as much as the citizens, individually, do!)
... there's more money to be made in selling weapons to both sides of a conflict, and more power to be gained by making a government dependent on us to protect them from their own citizens, than there is in fostering or helping rebellions ...
... but is it the duty of our government to hold on to its power regardless? is it the duty of the government to hold on to land it claims to govern, even if a group (a large majority in a given area) wishes to leave the union / nation?
... i think they expected those coming after them to do just as much, each in his own time. should we be required to resort to violence to change our government, even in an "enlightened" society? do we have to wait until it becomes "absolute despotism" before we can act? ... open-source law, government, society. source code isn't the only thing that needs to be open, free, and modifiable for your local needs. and i think most governments have failed at the first phase of development: requirements (and scope) determination. our governments are constantly undergoing scope-creep. (note that i don't mind large projects, so size isn't the problem ... it's the lack of goals, the lack of vision, the lack of design that bothers me.)
in any case, the US government seems to have had quite a bit of fun over time either helping or crushing revolutions and rebellions in various nations
we found our freedom (or so we think) through violent revolution. our farmers, our militia, our mujahideen (effectively) gave us what we now hold dear. i would at least like our country to have a consistent, stated policy when it comes to revolutions at home or abroad.
it is the duty of the citizens to overthrow the government if they can't find any ways of changing it through the processes already provided
i think our "founding fathers" believed in the necessity of government, at least on some level. i don't think they believed the one they instituted was perfect, or intrinsically worthy of standing for all eternity: they had changed their world
[may the karma-bashing begin!]
wow ... i'm guessing the RIAA / MPAA aren't about to do that? seems like it might help that revenue problem they have ... the entities they give their stuff to don't even have to want it, or use it. hmmm...
If you assume that there is no atomic unit of time, then any representation of an "instant" in time actually represents a delta of time.
... are you telling me that if we're not using integers, then f(x) doesn't mean anything unless x is an interval, and that therefore f(x) is also an interval?
... look at pi!) there are still such things as exact, non-interval values, even if we can't always write them down (unless you want to spend eternity doing so.) intervals may be more convenient, but they're no more 'true'. the value '3', for example, is 3, even if there is no atomic delta of values. and an interval still relies on exact values at some point (or interval?) ...
... the gravity affecting them isn't exactly the same, etc. such that for any two points in time, the flow of time is likely not the same ... and to unite the flow of time, you'd have to unite the space too. at least, that's the sort of direction i was hoping for ... this is just pointless.
So, if we take that, and change it to say "space" or value, or somesuch
even if there is no atomic unit of time (as there is no atomic unit of real numbers
i had really hoped this would be more interesting, and talk about the variations in space time that make it such that my fingers themselves experience slightly different points in time, along with space
i'm also not seeing type information on argc and argv, and neither is used (at least a compiler warning) ... also bad style (but correct syntax) using an int as an implied boolean ...
and what about retirement, dang it?
Yes. I'll buy "made in the USA" products so I can support pre-emptive wars, horrible public education, ... you get the idea. Maybe we should seek out "made in Iraq" so we can help rebuild their economy indirectly.
I think we've seen plenty of countries with horrible economies that continue to push forward with "value systems" the rest of the world doesn't like. Embargo the country if you like -- the leaders will just become entrenched with a philosophy of "them vs. us" and continue to rule. If they're idealistic enough (in any direction) then you deciding not to buy their batteries is -not- going to make them change their mind. Is the point to punish, or to reform?
Wal-Mart Wages Don't Support Wal-Mart Workers, Stan Cox, AlterNet, June 10, 2003
... Workforce is the most expensive part of a business; no reason to expect they wouldn't try to trim the edges there.
Yup. They save money on their suppliers. But never would they think to do so on their employees, no
In the U.S., citizens may say the same thing about state-level laws: the federal government should have no say. While the E.U. isn't quite like the U.S. federal government in respect to member countries, the idea is the same. As a -community- of nations, neighboring states get to have a say in the internal affairs of other nations, a bit like my neighbors can tell me to turn down the music when it bothers them: something like video games sales would actually hurt the industries of other E.U. nations. (as I recall, France for example is very proud of a long line of Myst-type games involving their CG studios.) Again, it's also like the U.N. telling nations (members or not) to do -stuff- at the request of other nations. An invasion is always a long way away, but the idea is to remind countries, states, and any other level of government, that they do not act in a vacuum. Although leaving such groups to go "do your own thing" is almost always an option, compromise is preferred. Everyone knows it, and everyone plays by those rules (except the U.S.) Most likely, E.U. countries won't make unreasonable demands of each other, and such demands would undoubtedly eventually come back to haunt them. You elect representatives to listen to you, yes. But you also elect them to keep the world in mind, and keep the peace between nations (whether political, economic, or military.) It's not out of their jurisdiction to compromise on your behalf, even if they originally acted upon citizen request.
... is entirely run by people like us. any link in the chain can be broken, any voice can eventually be heard. to maintain this myth that they have "no real voice" only helps the system as it is stay in place. don't we want to fight that system?)
You don't have to like it, and you're welcome to complain: a country is perfectly justified in speaking out against the community around it, standing its ground, and making a few enemies. Do I turn down the music? Not always.
(btw: in any nation, every person has a voice, whether they realize it or not. the leaders, the military, the police, the structure designed to keep the population quiet
luckily for us, Spock's logic remains the same ... anti-logic? bah!
perhaps they failed to convey their message? methinks the writers were perhaps trying to convince us that we need to think about the value of any life, not just human (as we understand it.) we argue over abortion ... but do we argue over eating beef? sometimes. eating wheat? i don't think i've heard anyone yet tell me -not- to eat plant, fungus, or bacterial life. i believe an episode featured "Q" (was it?) making fun of the use of the phrase "human rights" in a (fictional) universe where even non-humans are recognized as having inate rights.
... legs dangling. i hate it when he does that.
says the spider before my cat has himself a nice snack. ick
yes. by now, this is -way- off-topic.
am i the only one who read the description of these power failures the way you'd expect to hear an actor on a star trek episode rattling off all the systems that have magically blown to pretty little sparks? (over a camp fire made of rocks heated by a phased electromagnectic beam, of course!)
... i'd say "find the escape pod" ... or perhaps more cynically, "brace for impact!" 'cause i'm rather sure your clients, investors, etc. aren't going to be happy. good luck!
in that line
actually, most of the asteroid games (nowadays) automatically slow you down. but yes, i loved that game. kinda lacking in the area of multiple thrusters though ... couldn't exactly be overly creative with it. (strafing?)
The A-wing has a shape that makes me think of "flying wings" -- lifting bodies. Maybe not perfect, but it does seem that way ...
... version where "speed" is everything, with a max-speed, where you automatically slow down in turns (U-turns especially) etc.
Even with technologies like anti-grav thingies (repulsors in the SW universe?) you might still want a wing shape if you'll be flying at any sort of speed in an atmosphere. Maybe not for lift, but at least to stabilize the ship along the axis of the engines/flight-direction. Being the fastest of the set of A/B/X/Y [buttons on the super nintendo] ships, I'd expect the A-wing to need this the most: lifting-ish-body, winglets by the engine, etc.
Star Furies in B5 are a good example of ships that actually seem to respect the rules of thruster-control. I only wish more video games would allow you to make use of those features (coasting in space, turning on a dime, looking behind you, strafing shots, etc.) rather than the Star wars, Wing commander, Freespace,
on a web-app project i got to play with in mid-devel ... image-magick was used to convert from TIFF to GIF (i think) output. the problem was speed -- it loaded the entire image into memory in its own internal format. the problem is that the TIFF files were enormous, but they were black/white scans of documents. the final gif was also low-color, and scaled down ... but in-between, it was converting to full 24-bit color (with alpha?) and other overhead.
... MUCH MUCH FASTER.
in the end, (after we had left and done our part of the job) someone else (team lead) changed the code to a customized piece that resized the file as it streamed through, directly from TIFF to whatever output format was being used
image magick is neat -- lots of formats. but it's a lot of overhead in situations where you need speed. specialized tools (format_a2format_b) are of great help at that point.
can you give examples of each? (or rather, the last two. 'rotate' is, i think, rather obvious.)
... and you're supposed to do that a different way anyway (declaring that A is likely to have this happen and be multiply included later, to avoid namespace problems inside D, trying to reference A.) any examples of this happening?
... but it retains operations on itself. without that, doing my_itr++ might do ++() on the referenced object ... and you'd have absolutely no control over the iterator itself. at most it'd be a smart pointer.
double initializiation? when have you had that? the only case that comes to mind is when you derive B and C from A, then D from B and C
i'm not sure where you're going with overloading the access controls -- iterators do something similar by overloading the dereferencing operator
i'm open to examples!
if you'd -like- to just use list all over, and cast appropriately ... go ahead. as far as i can tell, it's much more efficient at run-time to already know which v-table to be using, etc. so the compiler just goes ahead and finds out. and makes sure the code is optimized for that. the fact that you can override templates with your own, type-specific versions (for storing booleans using individual bits, etc.) makes it even more fun. obviously, i could be wrong. (and yes, i'm fully expecting someone to complain about the efficiency of v-tables. go ahead.)
... specifically, to gcc 3.? and getting the "implicit typename" warning. i'd coded templates with gcc before, and didn't know there had been a change. got overzealous and started putting 'typename' all over the code ... even non-template stuff. then i got the other error: "spurious typename" or some such. *sigh*
the only thing that irked me recently about templates was taking code from one compiler to another
Don't I recall that the WTO (World Trade Organization) requires all signing parties to accept rather strong versions of each others' copyright/patent systems, such that patents automatically become international the moment they're national ... so long as you're in a WTO-signing country? I could easily be mistaken (or misled by reading too much /.?)
or slackware! (yes, gang up on the newbie with distribution-wars ...)
i'm not sure how far away we're getting -- "don't fix a problem you can eliminate", "don't fix it if it ain't broke", ... i don't like IP law, myself. but we have to know the problem before we can fix it -- the original question assumed that the term "IP" implied too much: that it was intellectual, that it was property, that those two could go together at all ... we owe it to ourselves to look at the assumptions first. (we could, i think, easily rename it to "thought control" -- i think that's a logical conclusion from the points i made.)
thanks for the discussion -- it was fun.
in the physical sense, i'd say you don't own something unless someone tries to 'steal' it. it's a callback function -- when someone tries to take it, your ownership is manifested. the rest of the time, the rock's just sitting there. do i known it's "owned" by anyone, just by looking at it? unless you paint it all over it, no. (and even then, that's a layer of paint on top of the object -- the object itself, really, doesn't have a marker of ownership.)
unless someone disputes your ownership, you have no reason to control it physically. in fact, it's meaningless to do so. ownership is purely based on action/reaction.
multiple people own an item at the same time if attempts by one person to use/control the item are not countered by others in the group. if a wife uses money from the account without any attempt by the other owner to stop the transaction (if it's known, and not some sort of concealed transaction) then the wife owns the items just as much as everyone else on the account.
that's why you don't get to keep your trademarks, etc. if you don't defend them -- if it's not worth it to you to try to defend your exclusive rights, then it's not worth enough to you for anyone else to care. you no longer own it, basically, because you gave up on defending it.
in the same way, ownership of an idea only manifests itself when someone tries to use it. just thinking it generally does nothing for them. and we don't care. do i care what you think? nope. but if you act on an idea that i control, then my ownership is manifested by me defending my virtual turf.
(when you 'own' the rock, you're just controlling its uses. nobody else owns it until -they- control its use. control is the issue -- ownership, as such, is just a concept. which maybe you can own?)
vendor lock-in -- while i agree to a certain degree ... the fact that we're talking about php kinda makes it that way anyway. it's php. you wrote your code in it. meant to write it in python instead? there's work to be done.
... other than straight performance, makes change database systems pointless.
... why not just write code for the database you chose to use?
... all make it locked-in, regardless of the function calls i used.
... you might as well have used the specific libraries to start with.
...
odbc would be fine -- but the lowest-common-denominator (especially when it doesn't work) really sucks efficiency-wise. you wind up not being able to take advantage of the features a different database back-end would give you, which
i'm much more in favor of using a system that knows about the neat things each database knows how to do (that it supports) -- and either emulating that functionality on databases that don't know how, or just telling you to get around it somehow. but at that point
choosing a database system, like choosing a programming language, a platform, or any other parameter of software development, is not a choice that you should expect to randomly change. our problem is that management can be easily swayed to use a different database, and less so a different language. different platforms, when there's a choice, is a large problem too.
i use firebird (the database back-end.) [i get a lot of heat for mentioning it.] it's good, it's fast, it's free. am i locked in? yes. in php, i've used ibase_* functions. i could use older versions of firebird, or even interbase. maybe even newer versions. (i'm still waiting for 1.5 stable.) do i care? no. the software was designed with the intent of being used with firebird -- it's a requirement, not just an option. people using the software shouldn't expect that, just because they like mysql, they should use it. i planned more than just the function calls around it -- the use of generators, transactions, specific sql (regardless of the sql standard, no two database systems support exactly the same sql)
i've watched my brother port Oracle code to MS SQL Server, because management changed their collective mind. (i am unanimous.) they had used ODBC -- but it still took work. later, they needed the system to work with either database: at that point, you wind up still having to write with two different codebases, switching back and forth -- odbc itself won't fix that problem. and once you have that
maybe if people respected standards
you mean like when man and wife own the same money, same house ... ? it's not uncommon for several entities to own the same item at the same time -- thus, your argument is wrong.
as to owning ides: you can also be the "one" person to own the idea by being strong (having lots of money and lawyers) and beating to shit anyone who attempts to make use of the idea (it's hard to tell they have it until they make some attempt to use it.) therefore, you may retain control of the item -- which is the basis for 'ownership.'
you're right, ideas, unlike objects, are easy to spread. we don't have star-trek replication technology yet, but it could happen as well. when we own an item, we generally own the right to decide whether or not someone else can have it -- by copy or not. you would consider you have the right to decide if someone can clone you, right? that's because you feel you have the right to control who copies your DNA -- inherently copiable information. it won't hurt you to let someone else have it, now will it? but you're still concerned about it? hmmm.
when it comes to things like ideas, the value of 'owning' that idea goes away if it can be freely copied and used by others. you can't sell it, because it has no value. that which -did- have value, at first, by virtue of selling the right to own it and control its copying, is now gone. by letting an item that is copiable be easily copied, its value is diminished to nothing.
there is meaning to owning things like ideas -- it is not the physical control of the item (you can't put it in a box) -- it's the (similarly) intellectual control over it: not letting it be copied without your consent.
as to several people coming up with the same idea at the same time: i completely agree this is a problem. the reason for granting patents (limited-time monopoly) was so that inventors could recoup their R&D costs, without letting other people free-load off of the idea. but if you're the second one to come up with it, you're out of luck entirely. you won't recoup your costs; in fact, you can't make any money at all off of it without the permission of the 'winner' in the race, even if you didn't know there was a race. -that- is a problem. (it's much less likely that two artists will create the same painting, same song, or other artistic expression simultaneously, or even apart in time. copyrights don't have quite the same mutex-problem. trademarks, because they are based mostly on words, and our dictionary is limited, run a higher risk of this -- but they're a system designed to help avoid collisions in a namespace, not really designed to give you an 'edge' on the market. your product can be just as good, whether you're called 'whatsit's stuff' or 'megastuff'.)
i'm not sure that i would say that "real property" is "real", outside of government choices. we implement it because it's been a long-standing tradition ... and without the law, i might just resort to cludgeoning the next guy who steps on my land, rather than having him arrested. the point is, governments ordain all laws of the land -- everything else is just a result of anarchy. murder bad? sure -- you commit murder, and i'll have you thrown off a cliff. is that law? does that make it moral? gosh no.
... artificial? perhaps. fun and entertaining to some people? that can be enough. in the same way, this law may be artificial, but it's profitable to a portion of the country, and that's good enough.
when the government says that people have the "right"/"privilege" to "own" that which they invented/created/scribbled out of boredom, it's asserting a new rule, on the same level as all other law. the fact that we see how artificial it is doesn't help: i mean, look at some religions
all law is arbitrary. therefore, intellectual property exists on the same level as any other property, though its origins differ. the government could also repeal laws about real property, or murder tomorrow -- and that'd be just as legitimate as repealing copyright/patent/trademark laws.
(i would argue, though, that there's no reason for companies that develop new products using government money to get to retain a copyright or patent -- if the people pay for it, the people should own it. works made for hire? lots of new drugs these days, which pharmaceutical companies claim cost them tons of money to develop, are partially/mostly/entirely funded by the government -- i don't need to be paying higher prices for drugs to pay back the R&D costs i already paid for with tax dollars...)
Welcome to the world of the DMCA -- making eavesdropping illegal, if it takes any effort. Just listening in? That's fine. Gotta think about it, decrypt it, otherwise analyze it? Dude, that'd better not be copyrighted material ... oh, wait, DirectTV doesn't own those copyrights, now do they ... hunh ...
...
And SETI? What if aliens broadcast their sitcoms in encrypted format, and we figure it out? Eeep? That death-ray could really suck