The first thing I thought when I saw steve jobs here was about "IT" and then I saw "It" in the subject line. What do you think the connection is?
Modertors: Please read about "It" before you think this is offtopic.
STATUS UPDATE (31-12-1999):
We are finally in contact with Apple's legal department. However, we'll be
unable to comment our discussion until they take an official position
regarding the patents. This could take some time so don't expect anything
soon.
This page will shortly be updated with more detailed information on
the patented "inventions" and what can be done meanwhile.
-->
STATUS UPDATE (12-mar-2000):
There are sadly no news on the patent front. However, we have started working
on a new auto-hinting module, that will ultimately replace the TrueType
bytecode interpreter for those builds that cannot accept the patent issue.
This page is an attempt to sum up various information which
recently emerged on the FreeType mailing lists after the discovery that
Apple owns several US patents on TrueType. Its purpose is to explain what
the patents are, how they can affect us and what can be done.
Who are we ?
We are the developers of the FreeType engine, a free and portable
TrueType rasterising library. FreeType was written from scratch from the
TrueType specification published by Apple and Microsoft, and thus qualifies
as a "clean room" implementation of this standard. It is distributed with
a BSD-like license, which allows any kind of developers to include it in
their products, be they commercial or not.
What are the TrueType patents involved ?
We recently discovered that Apple owns several patents related to
TrueType. A simple advanced search on IBM's Intellectual Property Network
website (http://www.patents.ibm.com/advquery)
shows that Sampo Kaasila, who were the original TrueType architect at Apple,
was granted 5 patents for Apple related to digital font technology. Three
of them seem to relate directly to the TrueType specification:
Filed on May 28, 1992 which is the continuation of patent
#1. The difference with this patent are extremely subtle, and we fail to
see what it covers which isn't in patent #1.
Do the patents affect FreeType ?:
Apparently yes, it affects the bytecode interpreter used to hint
TrueType outlines. It also affects any other similar engine that
render TrueType fonts per se the specification.
Note that the TrueType specification used to write FreeType
doesn't mention any patent, nor any pending patents. We used
the "TrueType Font Format Specification" document, version 1.0,
published in 1990 and available from Apple under the reference
"ADPA M0825LL/A". None of the successive releases of this paper
document, be they in paper or electronic forms mentioned them
either. (And yes, we're speaking of the documents produced by
both Apple and Microsoft).
In case of violation, how would it affect FreeType ?
It's hard to tell, as this depends mostly on Apple's response
to the situation. We can imagine having to modify some parts of
the code in order to not use the patented "invention". Depending
on the patents' peculiarities, this may come at the price of
inferior rendered quality, if we're unable to find an alternate
algorithm producing the same results.
Another deep question is to know what to do about the currently
released versions of FreeType (from 1.0 to 1.3.1). Because of its
huge success, FreeType has been succesfully used in a great
variety of products like graphics libraries, font servers,
printers, web browser plugins, server-side web plugins and more...
It is also heavily distributed through the Internet, and the
library comes on the latest RedHat and Caldera CDs for example.
We do not reference all the projects that use our library,
simply because there are too much and too changing. Many of
them are open source and freely distributed, updated and
integrated into other products. Clearly, a patent violation
would have more than hairy consequences.
We are very concerned that this affair doesn't become
a PR disaster for both of Apple and FreeType, as nobody would gain from
public backlash.
What are patents ?
Strictly speaking, when a patent is granted, it permits its
owner to excludemembers of the public (those members can be real
people or simply companies) from making, using or selling
the claimed invention.
Note that a common misconception is that the patent gives its owner
the right the make, use or sell its invention. It only gives the owner
the ability to exclude others, though he may himself/herself be
forbidden from using the invention due to the existence of another patent
or other legal restrictions. For example, person A is allowed to patent
an improvement over an invention patented by person B. In order to use
his/her invention, person A will need the permission from person B. If
person C wants to use the improved invention, he/she will need permission
from both person A and B !
In practice, a patent owner usually sells limited rights to the invention
to customers who want to use its invention. The amount of "permission",
i.e. the licensing fees determined by the vendor and customer and can vary
enormously. However, nothing prevents a patent owner from excluding any
use of its invention, wathever the amount of money proposed by the customer.
On the other hand, patents cover implementations, and not ideas. If
someone comes with a different "apparatus" that produces the same results
than a patented invention, he/she shall not fall under the patent protection
and ask for "permission".
Patents were introduce to encourage inventors to publish their work,
in exchange of increased intellectual property protection. A US patent
runs for 20 years from the date it is filed to the US Patent and Trademark
Office (PTO). A US Patent only applies to making, using
and selling the invention in the US.
Finally, here is an extract from the US PTO brochure on patentability:
In order for an invention to be patentable it must be new
as defined in the patent law, which provides that an invention cannot be
patented if: ?(a) the invention was known or used by others in this country,
or patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign
country, before the invention thereof by the applicant for patent,? or
?(b) the invention was patented or described in a printed publication in
this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country more
than one year prior to the application for patent in the United States
. ..?
If the invention has been described in a printed publication anywhere
in the world, or if it has been in public use or on sale in this country
before the date that the applicant made his/her invention, a patent cannot
be obtained. If the invention has been described in a printed publication
anywhere, or has been in public use or on sale in this country more than
one year before the date on which an application for patent is filed in
this country, a patent cannot be obtained. In this connection it is immaterial
when the invention was made, or whether the printed publication or public
use was by the inventor himself/herself or by someone else. If the inventor
describes the invention in a printed publication or uses the invention
publicly, or places it on sale, he/she must apply for a patent before one
year has gone by, otherwise any right to a patent will be lost.
Even if the subject matter sought to be patented is not exactly shown
by the prior art, and involves one or more differences over the most nearly
similar thing already known, a patent may still be refused if the differences
would be obvious. The subject matter sought to be patented must be sufficiently
different from what has been used or described before that it may be said
to be nonobvious to a person having ordinary skill in the area of technology
related to the invention. For example, the substitution of one material
for another, or changes in size, are ordinarily not patentable.
Note that the second paragraph makes it hard to understand why patent #3
was granted, given that the TrueType specification was fully published
by Apple in 1990, two years before the patent was filed.
What about software patents ?
In the US, software patents are considered as normal patents.
Moreover, it is possible, through careful use of legal language in the
patent application, to patent software algorithms. This is well known from
the infamous LZW compression algorithm used for the GIF graphics file format.
Another case is the RSA algorithm for prime computations used in many security
products.
In Europe, software and algorithms _cannot_ be patented, which
means that a european developer is free to develop, use, distribute and
market in Europe any software he/she wants, even if it uses
algorithms patented under US laws. However, the US patent will apply as
soon as he/she wants to distribute, sell or use its software in the
US. Moreover, any other person who wants to use, distribute or sell
its software in the US will fall under the patent "protection". It is
clear that a US patent is also much an issue for any european developer.
The same applies to other countries where the US patent doesn't apply,
and where the invention wasn't protected under the local patent office
administration, when there is one.
Note that some countries have some aggreements with the US that make
any US patent localy effective. Details of such countries are welcomed
for updates on this page
Lets say Pentium 4 is the biggest blunder Intel made. What would happen next? I for one would think it would be the final nail on the coffin for 32 bit chips from Intel. And yes, Intel wont die:) They are far too huge to die. But their 32 bit plan to extend the life of the Pentium XX chip would have ended. And a very welcome end too. Once that happens, I would feel that they would focus more on their 64 bit architechture (IA64). The 64 bit architecture is a plan that would bear fruit in a significently longer time than Pentium IV would. But it would defintaly be better for consumers, competitors (AMD) and the likes. Intel has the power to eridcate 32bitness from the desktop and replace it with a pure 64 bit machine. Lets hope the Pentium IV really dies:)
Wouldnt Apple be pissed about having the Apple logo on this story? As seen lately they have been asking most of the community not to include any copyrighted or trademarked material and I'm sure the logo falls into that. Could someone from the/. editorial answer. Thx.
As a nerd, I'm always interested in good hardware and good software. We've been blessed with good software for a while:) And now with the excellent Apple hardware, I think we have a winner. If your a videophile, then I think this is the best place to start messing. I've done some coding on the video encoding/decoding side for mpeg and would really like an excellent firewire implmentation worked out. The current kernel has some really nice hooks and latches for firewire and soon this would go into PPC's. I know a number of mac users who would jump onto Linux just as soon as the video software on it gets better. Right now, with gimp, coreldraw and so on we do have a pretty good image editing collection. One other media related improvement would be something to do with sound (which seems to be totally ignored). I would help if I understood the many qualms in coding sound software. Wont it be nice if SoundForge dudes ported their software to a free OS? (Probably to i386 Linux:( ).
As a co-author of several XML FAQ's and HOWTO's I should say without doubt that the code I saw there is not XML in any way. It's pure bullshit. Just a bunch of tags that would never run through any parser. Not even non validating parsers such as my good friend James Clark's expat. If you still insist it is XML, feel free to run it through expat and let me know the results:)
Oops just saw http://www.rocklyte.com/images/screenshots/spacewa lk1024x768.html and finally got the DML stuff (Their site is/.ed).
Looking through the DML stuff, I'd say it's a bastardized version HTML. It's ugly as hell and not as XML languages are ment to be. Nothing here describes things as XML is ment to be. If they ment to get a clean XML language out, at least they should given the effort to make a convincing one.
Also notice the <render/> tags in the screen shot. One render is nested inside another render. Now that is a big nono. Which </render> would be the right one?
Also <winstate restore/> is purely wrong in XML instead it should be <winstate restore="restore"/> ok, I take it back, this is not a pure XML language:)
"Finally, our proprietary scripting language, the Dynamic Markup Language (DML)
features as the "glue" that links both products together. Based on XML and HTML
technologies, you can use DML to build complex applications, user interfaces and
interactive documents using the same methods that pioneered the development of the
Internet"
That implies that DML is based on XML and HTML. Traditional HTML is not XML based. Thus this leads to the conclusion that DML is a XML and HTML like language and not a XML language as implied there. Also it's proprietary (smirk).
This question was most probably asked the most during M$ trials. Along comes Athena (oh pls, MIT's Athena is an established name in the industry) and gets a story up here with it being refered as an Operating system. Now, if I understand it correctly, rocklyte's work is along the similar line as the GGI project or X or maybe even along the lines of Gnome/KDE. Why would they then wish to call it an Operating System? Has it gone so far that the meaning of operating sytem has been clouded? Shouldnt we call KDE/Gnome operating systems by itself? What term should we give them? Window managers? (Surly not). Shells? (Maybe a bit more technically correct). But opearting systems? Sure it does IO, but at IO at what level should be concidered to be worthy of the operating system title?
Unix and Windows use completely different paradigms for run-time loading of code. Before you try to build a module that can be
dynamically loaded, be aware of how your system works.
In Unix, a shared object (.so) file contains code to be used by the program, and also the names of functions and data that it expects
to find in the program. When the file is joined to the program, all references to those functions and data in the file's code are changed
to point to the actual locations in the program where the functions and data are placed in memory. This is basically a link operation.
In Windows, a dynamic-link library (.dll) file has no dangling references. Instead, an access to functions or data goes through a
lookup table. So the DLL code does not have to be fixed up at runtime to refer to the program's memory; instead, the code already
uses the DLL's lookup table, and the lookup table is modified at runtime to point to the functions and data.
In Unix, there is only one type of library file (.a) which contains code from several object files (.o). During the link step to create a.so, the linker may find that it doesn't know where an identifier is defined. The linker will look for it in the object files in the libraries;
if it finds it, it will include all the code from that object file.
In Windows, there are two types of library, a static library and an import library (both called.lib). A static library is like a Unix.a
file; it contains code to be included as necessary. An import library is basically used only to reassure the linker that a certain identifier
is legal, and will be present in the program when the.dll is loaded. So the linker uses the information from the import library to build
the lookup table for using identifiers that aren't included in the.dll. When an application or a.dll is linked, an import library may be
generated, which will need to be used for all future.dll's that depend on the symbols in the application or.dll.
Suppose you're building two dynamic-load modules, B and C, which should share another block of code A. In Unix, you would
*not* pass A.a to the linker for B.so and C.so; that would cause it to be included twice, so that B and C would each have their own
copy. In Windows, building A.dll will also build A.lib. You *do* pass A.lib to the linker for B and C. A.lib does not contain code; it
just contains information which will be used at runtime to access A's code.
In Windows, using an import library is sort of like using "import spam"; it gives you access to spam's names, but does not create a
separate copy. In Unix, linking with a library is more like "from spam import *"; it does create a separate copy.
According to this times of india story and Cnet story, June sued Netzeo in summer over the advertisments that are displayed when the customer is offline.
Here it is, since they have slashdotted and closed down:)
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Why didnt anyone ask this question? These look like the same stuff that was posted 1 year ago here. If you look at the Winning Entries you'd notice that it ends in 1998 (Which was the 14th contest), and thus by the magic of mathematics, the 15th contest would be on 1999. 16th on 2000 and the 2001 contest would be the 17th. Also if you hadnt noticed, there was no contest in 1997. Could someone clarify this?
Actually Clarke wrote an essay on 2001 in his early years. He changed it a lot from input by Kurbrick before the movie was made. The book was influenced by the movie, but that doesnt mean his name should be left out in the slashdot story:) Both deserve the credits.
Isn't this like the Islamic calendar? 28 days calcuated by the moon. Which also plays a role in women's menstruation cycle and other stuff. (Tides and so on).
I think all praise should be redirected to Dean Pannell (a.k.a. dinotrac), the orginal author of that excellent piece. I had it bookmarked for a while and then saw this slashdot story, both clicked and thus the post.
Slashdot Mirror
Whoa there, I think you got the wrong pocketlinux over there :) Or.. hmm you used pocket linux on an Athlon box 2 years ago? Now that's a troll :)
Enjoy
Drag and Drop.
The first thing I thought when I saw steve jobs here was about "IT" and then I saw "It" in the subject line. What do you think the connection is? Modertors: Please read about "It" before you think this is offtopic.
See the source code on this page Someone seem to have commented it out but my source cut and paste go it. Weird.
STATUS UPDATE (31-12-1999):
We are finally in contact with Apple's legal department. However, we'll be unable to comment our discussion until they take an official position regarding the patents. This could take some time so don't expect anything soon.
This page will shortly be updated with more detailed information on the patented "inventions" and what can be done meanwhile.
--> STATUS UPDATE (12-mar-2000):
What is this page about ?There are sadly no news on the patent front. However, we have started working on a new auto-hinting module, that will ultimately replace the TrueType bytecode interpreter for those builds that cannot accept the patent issue.
Please go to the FreeType Auto-Hinting Resources Page for more information.
This page is an attempt to sum up various information which recently emerged on the FreeType mailing lists after the discovery that Apple owns several US patents on TrueType. Its purpose is to explain what the patents are, how they can affect us and what can be done.
Who are we ?We are the developers of the FreeType engine, a free and portable TrueType rasterising library. FreeType was written from scratch from the TrueType specification published by Apple and Microsoft, and thus qualifies as a "clean room" implementation of this standard. It is distributed with a BSD-like license, which allows any kind of developers to include it in their products, be they commercial or not.
What are the TrueType patents involved ?We recently discovered that Apple owns several patents related to TrueType. A simple advanced search on IBM's Intellectual Property Network website (http://www.patents.ibm.com/advquery) shows that Sampo Kaasila, who were the original TrueType architect at Apple, was granted 5 patents for Apple related to digital font technology. Three of them seem to relate directly to the TrueType specification :
Patent #1 : US5155805: Method and apparatus for moving control points in displaying digital typeface on raster output devices
Filed on May, 8 1989
Patent #2 : US5159668: Method and apparatus for manipulating outlines in improving digital typeface on raster output devices
Filed on May, 8 1989 too. Actually, the two patents were filed and granted concurrently.
-
Do the patents affect FreeType ?:Patent #3 : US5325479: Method and apparatus for moving control points in displaying digital typeface on raster output devices
Filed on May 28, 1992 which is the continuation of patent #1. The difference with this patent are extremely subtle, and we fail to see what it covers which isn't in patent #1.
Apparently yes, it affects the bytecode interpreter used to hint TrueType outlines. It also affects any other similar engine that render TrueType fonts per se the specification.
Note that the TrueType specification used to write FreeType doesn't mention any patent, nor any pending patents. We used the "TrueType Font Format Specification" document, version 1.0, published in 1990 and available from Apple under the reference "ADPA M0825LL/A". None of the successive releases of this paper document, be they in paper or electronic forms mentioned them either. (And yes, we're speaking of the documents produced by both Apple and Microsoft).
In case of violation, how would it affect FreeType ?It's hard to tell, as this depends mostly on Apple's response to the situation. We can imagine having to modify some parts of the code in order to not use the patented "invention". Depending on the patents' peculiarities, this may come at the price of inferior rendered quality, if we're unable to find an alternate algorithm producing the same results.
Another deep question is to know what to do about the currently released versions of FreeType (from 1.0 to 1.3.1). Because of its huge success, FreeType has been succesfully used in a great variety of products like graphics libraries, font servers, printers, web browser plugins, server-side web plugins and more... It is also heavily distributed through the Internet, and the library comes on the latest RedHat and Caldera CDs for example.
We do not reference all the projects that use our library, simply because there are too much and too changing. Many of them are open source and freely distributed, updated and integrated into other products. Clearly, a patent violation would have more than hairy consequences.
We are very concerned that this affair doesn't become a PR disaster for both of Apple and FreeType, as nobody would gain from public backlash. What are patents ?Strictly speaking, when a patent is granted, it permits its owner to excludemembers of the public (those members can be real people or simply companies) from making, using or selling the claimed invention.
Note that a common misconception is that the patent gives its owner the right the make, use or sell its invention. It only gives the owner the ability to exclude others, though he may himself/herself be forbidden from using the invention due to the existence of another patent or other legal restrictions. For example, person A is allowed to patent an improvement over an invention patented by person B. In order to use his/her invention, person A will need the permission from person B. If person C wants to use the improved invention, he/she will need permission from both person A and B !
In practice, a patent owner usually sells limited rights to the invention to customers who want to use its invention. The amount of "permission", i.e. the licensing fees determined by the vendor and customer and can vary enormously. However, nothing prevents a patent owner from excluding any use of its invention, wathever the amount of money proposed by the customer.
On the other hand, patents cover implementations, and not ideas. If someone comes with a different "apparatus" that produces the same results than a patented invention, he/she shall not fall under the patent protection and ask for "permission".
Patents were introduce to encourage inventors to publish their work, in exchange of increased intellectual property protection. A US patent runs for 20 years from the date it is filed to the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO). A US Patent only applies to making, using and selling the invention in the US .
Finally, here is an extract from the US PTO brochure on patentability :
In order for an invention to be patentable it must be new as defined in the patent law, which provides that an invention cannot be patented if: ?(a) the invention was known or used by others in this country, or patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country, before the invention thereof by the applicant for patent,? or ?(b) the invention was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country more than one year prior to the application for patent in the United States . . .?
If the invention has been described in a printed publication anywhere in the world, or if it has been in public use or on sale in this country before the date that the applicant made his/her invention, a patent cannot be obtained. If the invention has been described in a printed publication anywhere, or has been in public use or on sale in this country more than one year before the date on which an application for patent is filed in this country, a patent cannot be obtained. In this connection it is immaterial when the invention was made, or whether the printed publication or public use was by the inventor himself/herself or by someone else. If the inventor describes the invention in a printed publication or uses the invention publicly, or places it on sale, he/she must apply for a patent before one year has gone by, otherwise any right to a patent will be lost.
Even if the subject matter sought to be patented is not exactly shown by the prior art, and involves one or more differences over the most nearly similar thing already known, a patent may still be refused if the differences would be obvious. The subject matter sought to be patented must be sufficiently different from what has been used or described before that it may be said to be nonobvious to a person having ordinary skill in the area of technology related to the invention. For example, the substitution of one material for another, or changes in size, are ordinarily not patentable.
Note that the second paragraph makes it hard to understand why patent #3 was granted, given that the TrueType specification was fully published by Apple in 1990, two years before the patent was filed.
What about software patents ?In the US, software patents are considered as normal patents. Moreover, it is possible, through careful use of legal language in the patent application, to patent software algorithms. This is well known from the infamous LZW compression algorithm used for the GIF graphics file format. Another case is the RSA algorithm for prime computations used in many security products.
In Europe, software and algorithms _cannot_ be patented, which means that a european developer is free to develop, use, distribute and market in Europe any software he/she wants, even if it uses algorithms patented under US laws. However, the US patent will apply as soon as he/she wants to distribute, sell or use its software in the US. Moreover, any other person who wants to use, distribute or sell its software in the US will fall under the patent "protection". It is clear that a US patent is also much an issue for any european developer.
The same applies to other countries where the US patent doesn't apply, and where the invention wasn't protected under the local patent office administration, when there is one.
Note that some countries have some aggreements with the US that make any US patent localy effective. Details of such countries are welcomed for updates on this page
LinksFreePatents.org
IBM's Intellectual Property Network
US Patent and Trademark Office Brochure on Patents
Lets say Pentium 4 is the biggest blunder Intel made. What would happen next? I for one would think it would be the final nail on the coffin for 32 bit chips from Intel. And yes, Intel wont die :) They are far too huge to die. But their 32 bit plan to extend the life of the Pentium XX chip would have ended. And a very welcome end too. Once that happens, I would feel that they would focus more on their 64 bit architechture (IA64). The 64 bit architecture is a plan that would bear fruit in a significently longer time than Pentium IV would. But it would defintaly be better for consumers, competitors (AMD) and the likes. Intel has the power to eridcate 32bitness from the desktop and replace it with a pure 64 bit machine. Lets hope the Pentium IV really dies :)
Wouldnt Apple be pissed about having the Apple logo on this story? As seen lately they have been asking most of the community not to include any copyrighted or trademarked material and I'm sure the logo falls into that. Could someone from the /. editorial answer. Thx.
As a nerd, I'm always interested in good hardware and good software. We've been blessed with good software for a while :) And now with the excellent Apple hardware, I think we have a winner. If your a videophile, then I think this is the best place to start messing. I've done some coding on the video encoding/decoding side for mpeg and would really like an excellent firewire implmentation worked out. The current kernel has some really nice hooks and latches for firewire and soon this would go into PPC's. I know a number of mac users who would jump onto Linux just as soon as the video software on it gets better. Right now, with gimp, coreldraw and so on we do have a pretty good image editing collection. One other media related improvement would be something to do with sound (which seems to be totally ignored). I would help if I understood the many qualms in coding sound software. Wont it be nice if SoundForge dudes ported their software to a free OS? (Probably to i386 Linux :( ).
As a co-author of several XML FAQ's and HOWTO's I should say without doubt that the code I saw there is not XML in any way. It's pure bullshit. Just a bunch of tags that would never run through any parser. Not even non validating parsers such as my good friend James Clark's expat. If you still insist it is XML, feel free to run it through expat and let me know the results :)
This is their DTD.
...content...
http://www.rocklyte.com/dtd/dml_1_0.xml
XML Document Type Defintion
Dynamic Markup Language (DML)
Version 1.0
June 2000
Copyright Rocklyte Systems (c) 2000. All rights reserved.
Standard DML usage for XML compliancy is as follows:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE dml PUBLIC "-//ROCKLYTE//DTD DML 1.0//EN"
"http://www.rocklyte.com/dtd/dml_1_0.xml">
<dml>
</dml>
Please refer to http://www.rocklyte.com/dml_whitepaper.html for
details regarding the usage of the Dynamic Markup Language.
Note: This DTD is incomplete - you'll have to wait for the
public release of DML for the definition to be finalised.
I read it. You should look at this instead of getting exited. I still say it's not XML.
Oops just saw http://www.rocklyte.com/images/screenshots/spacewa lk1024x768.html and finally got the DML stuff (Their site is /.ed).
/> tags in the screen shot. One render is nested inside another render. Now that is a big nono. Which </render> would be the right one?
:)
Looking through the DML stuff, I'd say it's a bastardized version HTML. It's ugly as hell and not as XML languages are ment to be. Nothing here describes things as XML is ment to be. If they ment to get a clean XML language out, at least they should given the effort to make a convincing one.
Also notice the <render
Also <winstate restore/> is purely wrong in XML instead it should be <winstate restore="restore"/> ok, I take it back, this is not a pure XML language
"Finally, our proprietary scripting language, the Dynamic Markup Language (DML) features as the "glue" that links both products together. Based on XML and HTML technologies, you can use DML to build complex applications, user interfaces and interactive documents using the same methods that pioneered the development of the Internet"
That implies that DML is based on XML and HTML. Traditional HTML is not XML based. Thus this leads to the conclusion that DML is a XML and HTML like language and not a XML language as implied there. Also it's proprietary (smirk).
This question was most probably asked the most during M$ trials. Along comes Athena (oh pls, MIT's Athena is an established name in the industry) and gets a story up here with it being refered as an Operating system. Now, if I understand it correctly, rocklyte's work is along the similar line as the GGI project or X or maybe even along the lines of Gnome/KDE. Why would they then wish to call it an Operating System? Has it gone so far that the meaning of operating sytem has been clouded? Shouldnt we call KDE/Gnome operating systems by itself? What term should we give them? Window managers? (Surly not). Shells? (Maybe a bit more technically correct). But opearting systems? Sure it does IO, but at IO at what level should be concidered to be worthy of the operating system title?
Actually that's from the python documentation, here is the link
In Unix, a shared object (.so) file contains code to be used by the program, and also the names of functions and data that it expects to find in the program. When the file is joined to the program, all references to those functions and data in the file's code are changed to point to the actual locations in the program where the functions and data are placed in memory. This is basically a link operation.
In Windows, a dynamic-link library (.dll) file has no dangling references. Instead, an access to functions or data goes through a lookup table. So the DLL code does not have to be fixed up at runtime to refer to the program's memory; instead, the code already uses the DLL's lookup table, and the lookup table is modified at runtime to point to the functions and data.
In Unix, there is only one type of library file (.a) which contains code from several object files (.o). During the link step to create a .so, the linker may find that it doesn't know where an identifier is defined. The linker will look for it in the object files in the libraries;
if it finds it, it will include all the code from that object file.
In Windows, there are two types of library, a static library and an import library (both called .lib). A static library is like a Unix .a
file; it contains code to be included as necessary. An import library is basically used only to reassure the linker that a certain identifier
is legal, and will be present in the program when the .dll is loaded. So the linker uses the information from the import library to build
the lookup table for using identifiers that aren't included in the .dll. When an application or a .dll is linked, an import library may be
generated, which will need to be used for all future .dll's that depend on the symbols in the application or .dll.
Suppose you're building two dynamic-load modules, B and C, which should share another block of code A. In Unix, you would *not* pass A.a to the linker for B.so and C.so; that would cause it to be included twice, so that B and C would each have their own copy. In Windows, building A.dll will also build A.lib. You *do* pass A.lib to the linker for B and C. A.lib does not contain code; it just contains information which will be used at runtime to access A's code.
In Windows, using an import library is sort of like using "import spam"; it gives you access to spam's names, but does not create a separate copy. In Unix, linking with a library is more like "from spam import *"; it does create a separate copy.
According to this times of india story and Cnet story, June sued Netzeo in summer over the advertisments that are displayed when the customer is offline.
Oh but this would fall under scheduled maintance :)
Here it is, since they have slashdotted and closed down :)
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Why didnt anyone ask this question? These look like the same stuff that was posted 1 year ago here. If you look at the Winning Entries you'd notice that it ends in 1998 (Which was the 14th contest), and thus by the magic of mathematics, the 15th contest would be on 1999. 16th on 2000 and the 2001 contest would be the 17th. Also if you hadnt noticed, there was no contest in 1997. Could someone clarify this?
Actually Clarke wrote an essay on 2001 in his early years. He changed it a lot from input by Kurbrick before the movie was made. The book was influenced by the movie, but that doesnt mean his name should be left out in the slashdot story :) Both deserve the credits.
If I seem to recall it correctly it was Sir Arthur C. Clarke's vision.
Isn't this like the Islamic calendar? 28 days calcuated by the moon. Which also plays a role in women's menstruation cycle and other stuff. (Tides and so on).
Agree! I have it mentioned here. Sorry about that! :)
I think all praise should be redirected to Dean Pannell (a.k.a. dinotrac), the orginal author of that excellent piece. I had it bookmarked for a while and then saw this slashdot story, both clicked and thus the post.