Because it is a lot easier to develop the software if it can be debugged on the developer's PC.
Not really. Most embedded environments have software and/or hardware emulators, where you can compile the code, load it into the emulator and go. The turn around time is just as fast as a normal development environment, and you can often even debug the code like normal. Furthermore it is often easier to write code for these environments than for Windows because the Windows API sucks.
There are only a couple advantages to using windows in the embedded feild (that I can think of). The first is reuse of code, but you shouldn't be reusing code that was not designed with security in mind for critical programs like this. The second is to provide a familiar interface - but there is no reason to provide a complicated windows-like interface to teller machines. Vending-type interfaces are far simpler, have been around longer, and are more familiar to users than computer interfaces. Another is that there are alot of "programmers" who have never used anything but Visual C++ in their life and can't deal with another programming environment. These people should not be designing critical or embedded systems.
This is pretty much what I do. Also you can get stackable rubbermaid drawers which have the added advantage of being easier to access when you have stuff piled up. Put a peice of packing tape across the front to use use as a label, so it is easy to change the label. Lastly, tackle boxes are great for organizing small things - screws, jumpers, resisters, etc.
Bull. All this "evidence" is mearly circumstantial.
Fact: The Diebold Machines have horrible design and implementation. Fact: Diebold has done some shaddy things to cover their buts when they make a mistake. Fact: The CEO of the company has donated money to the republicans.
How does this imply that there is a great conspiricy? Lots of people give money to the republicans. Lots of people write crappy software. Lots of businesses try to get away with things that they shouldn't. Where is the proof that the reason for their actions is that they want the hand the election over to the republicans? It is just as likely that they are just incompetent and greedy, not conspiratal. Repeat after me: Correlation does not imply Causality.
Now is it possible that Diebold really is doing this to hand the election over to Bush? Sure. Is there any proof? No. But there is proof that some people framing this issue as a conspiricy theory has made the rest of us loose alot of credibility. And doing so is completely uneccisary because there are so many (factual) reasons why we shouldn't use these machines. So do everyone a favor and stick to the facts.
Yay, lets all go sign a petition saying that we think a movie would be better when edited a certain way, when we have not seen either of the options, and have no idea which one really is better! Just like my public education taught me, "An uninformed opinion is better than no opinion at all";)
Seriously, where is the poll for letting Peter Jackson who is a much better director and producer than I will ever be, make the decision based on his expert opinion.
First, the FSF has never attacked Microsoft because they make money and are motivated by profit, or because they write poor quality software, and attempt to dominate their market. I will get back to this later, but right now let me address the issues you brought up.
Morally good? How can software be moral or immoral? It just is. You may not think the method of production is moral (think slave labor in diamond mines) or the use of the product is moral (think use of encryption by drug cartels) or even if it was moral to produce the product in the first place (think TEC-9) but really, those cases are really about the morality of the producer and not the product.
This is just being anal. If I say that Nike tennis shoes are evil, no one thinks that I am implying that the cloth and rubber which physically make up the shoe are evil incarnate. The shoe has more properties than just it's physical makeup. If everyone charges a lot for a shoe then we say the shoe is expensive. If a lot of people like a shoe, then we say the shoe is popular. If the shoe threatens our competing line of business, we say the shoe is a threat. Now it would also be correct to say that company and retailers set an above average price for the shoe, that many people have favorable opinions of the shoe, and that the act of people buying the shoe instead of ours is a threat, but both methods - assigning the attribute to the shoe, and to the people - are perfectly valid.
Likewise the license on a piece of software is a property of the software, just like price is, and any implications of that license are also properties of the software. It is perfectly valid to say that MS Word creates corporate lock-in, and if I think that corporate lock-in is bad, then it is valid to say that MS Word is bad.
Of course, Microsoft's motive was profit. But is that immoral? Microsoft is a company. Companies seek profit. Even more than that, companies want to dominate their markets.... Microsoft was successful at doing what it was supposed to be doing.
Being successful at what you do is not the same thing as being moral. The reason that the FSF believes that proprietary software is immoral is because it thinks it is wrong to hoard something when it cost you nothing to give away. Yes there is an opportunity cost, as there is in every decision we make. There is also an opportunity cost in choosing to hoard the source. The Open Source people will argue that the opportunity cost of hoarding software is greater than the opportunity cost of sharing it. In this argument proprietary software is not immoral, just non-optimal. That is not the FSF's position. They say that it is immoral regardless of the opportunity cost, just like extortion is immoral regardless of the opportunity cost of deciding not to extort people.
Damn, I need to go, I will finish this post later.
A couple of asides: Microsoft came to dominate [early software] areas through quality software and marketing savvy. No, it came to dominate those areas by a partnership with IBM, barely adequate software and marketing savvy. Microsoft clearly achieved [market dominance] and not through anti-competitive practices The united states government and several states would disagree with you there.
It could only look 12-20 moves into the future, and Kasparov played in a manner to limit what the computer could see by looking ahead. Since the computer had no strategy, but rather always took the best move he could see at the moment, Kasparov could keep him blind and cornered so it didn't see anything usefull to do in the short term, so it ended up flailing about somewhat (notice where it moved a peice and then moved it right back). Then all the meanwhile he was slowly playing out a much longer strategy.
How is that any different than any other language? If spelling proper names is the only thing that foreign ASL speakers have a problem with, then they are much better off than someone that only knows a single spoken lanuguage.
Free means no restrictions, ironic the FSF's GPL forces restrictions, isn't it? What's your definition of free?
Not quite, you having freedom always requires me to give up some freedom, so it's about everyone having the same freedoms. For example, the only way to gain the freedom to live is if we all give up the freedom to kill. Likewise the only way we can have freedom from proprietary restrictions is if we all give up the freedom to restrict others. That is what the GPL is about. It is a social contract, that exchanges one freedom for another (presumably more desirable) one.
That is a "straw man" argument. For every less dollar spent by business on the products of a proprietary software company, a dollar will be saved by that business. That business will pay taxes on that additional dollar of profit.
Yes I agree completely, hence my comment:
Nevermind the millions of dollars that are saved by free software, and the thousands of jobs created in IT deploying and improving free software.
The problem is that accounting for millions of small boosts spread out over thousands of companies is more difficult than say Microsoft who can give solid numbers on how many jobs will be lost, and how much the economy will be hurt by them going out of business. And every word of it will be true, it will just not be the full truth. I'm not saying that free software isn't better in the long run, I'm saying that those currently in power will fight tooth and nail to stay there, and they may have a good deal of influence on our leaders. The question is whether they will let the market decide or play favorites.
I have more than a couple programmer friends who like free software but are very concerned that it will threaten their livelyhood if it becomes too sucessful. Even equiped with arguements like the one you gave I have not been able to convince them that open source just moves the jobs out of software companies and into the companies actually using the software. These are not unintelligent people, and as I mentioned would like to like free software. Imagine what it will be like when the full FUD machine starts rolling, and developers across the country become more and more fearfull. I'm just happy that IBM is aligned with us, and really want to make as many silent inroads as we can before this time comes.
Except that the US can't own open source and thus can't leverage it. The only thing that the success of open source can do is kill proprietary software companies that put alot of money into the economy and pay lots of taxes. These big American companies do not like open source, and I garrentee you that once open source gets widespread to where there is a real chance of them going out of business there will be huge lobbying and propoganda attacks against it. (Nevermind the millions of dollars that are saved by free software, and the thousands of jobs created in IT deploying and improving free software.) So if anything widespread use of open source software by the Chinese will influence the government to crack down on free software in support of current companies, not fund it.
Really bad example. Almost all psycologists consider Freuds work to be completely bogus, except for the parts that were already well founded before he came along.
I agree. This is disrespectful, and there is nothing to be gained from doing it, other than the academic knowledge that we do know where Billy's bones are. Honestly, is knowing where someone is buried really valuable historical knowledge? And if we find out that one grave really does have the body of Billy the Kid, that town will not get any more tourism because of it, and the other town will likely get less. As a New Mexican I have to agree with another post below that this was not brought up because of money, or truth, but town pride, which is a pretty stupid reason in my opinion. Anyway back to what I was getting at in my original post, leaving this as a mystery is not lying - it is the decent thing to do.
No they are not. They both have historical reason to believe that Billy the Kid is buried there. Are they 100% certain about this? No. But that's not lying thats history - there is always uncertainty about the records and recollections of the past. There is no reason to think that these small town people, who have made nice museums and done their part to keep history alive, are a bunch of fraudulent scum. They are just uncertian.
Oh, and I don't know who framed that truth vs. tourism question but it is pretty stupid.
Yeeah! I'm looking forward to the IP lecture, but he probably won't get around to the GNU/Linux lecture since it is indeed Linux the kernal that they are talking about, not GNU/Linux the system.
It means it can be recharged an "infinate" number of times. Ie charging and draining the capacitor does not cause it to wear out, like most rechargable batteries do.
Yeah, I agree. And so does Hans Reiser BTW, it is on his list of things to put into the Reiser file system at some point. (And if you want to make it a high priority item pay him to do it:)
Exactly. The most telling quotes are the attitude that the author took on the subject:
The agency's move to allow encryption-like protection for digital shows takes away one more excuse from the broadcasters to delay the rollout of high-definition TV... If consumers want their HDTV, they have to accept limits on the ability to redistribute TV shows on the Web.
At what point did move from "companies competing to win the business of their customers" to "you consumers better fall in line with the wishes of the companies or no goods for you" ?
Oh, that's right, when the government decided (as it has in the past) that competition isn't necisarry in capitalism and started looking out for the good of large (illegal) monopolies and trade groups, instead of the good of the market.
\begin{rant} If this continues indefinately we will end up approaching a system simular to Soviet Russia but from the opposite direction. There the government and corporations were merged by the government taking control of the corporations. Here they are being merged by the corporations merging and then asserting control of the government. Either way there is no democracy, but rather all economic, political, and military power are centralized into a very small number of hands who have no reason to act in the interest of the population. \end{rant}
Is it a step back for a company which is currently running 100% proprietary software to be able to switch over to 90% free software? Or should I tell them that unless they are willing to sell their soul to the movement they do not deserve to enjoy any freedom from proprietary entrapment?
There are not free alternatives to every peice of software in existence. Heck even RMS used proprietary software inorder to create GNU software. I agree that it is good for members of the free software movement to choose to not use proprietary software since it removes motivation to produce and improve alternatives (cf Netscape 4.7). But if a company can be free from Microsoft but still needs oracle, well then at least they are better off than they were before, and someday maybee one of our free databases will be good enough that he can be free from oracle as well. So what is it? Are we producing this software to give all users more freedom, or just members of the movement?
On the contrary, the military is great for research. That's half the purpose of large defense spending; to drive technical progress. Why do you think the US was closing down bases at the same time it was increasing spending for creating high tech equipment? And if you think about it, since alot of research does not have immediate applications, it is not profitable for corporations to do the research unless you give them extremely heavy handed "IP" rights, which end up retarding research. So the only place for this research are in universities and state run laboratories, and is funded largly by the DoD and DoE. I much prefer Defense sponsered research to private "IP" encumbered research.
Now could we (the people, the government) fund this research through a different means? Sure, but it would be harder to justify to the tax payers, and it would be more difficult to determine criteria for spending. And what is the difference? - the research is still done in both cases, and both the military and the private sector are free to develop applications off of the research in both cases.
I'm look forward to the question and answer segment. We already know that crappy AI can pass as mindless AIM monkeys, now we get to see if it also passes the super-model turing test:)
Slashdot Mirror
Because it is a lot easier to develop the software if it can be debugged on the developer's PC.
Not really. Most embedded environments have software and/or hardware emulators, where you can compile the code, load it into the emulator and go. The turn around time is just as fast as a normal development environment, and you can often even debug the code like normal. Furthermore it is often easier to write code for these environments than for Windows because the Windows API sucks.
There are only a couple advantages to using windows in the embedded feild (that I can think of). The first is reuse of code, but you shouldn't be reusing code that was not designed with security in mind for critical programs like this. The second is to provide a familiar interface - but there is no reason to provide a complicated windows-like interface to teller machines. Vending-type interfaces are far simpler, have been around longer, and are more familiar to users than computer interfaces. Another is that there are alot of "programmers" who have never used anything but Visual C++ in their life and can't deal with another programming environment. These people should not be designing critical or embedded systems.
This is pretty much what I do. Also you can get stackable rubbermaid drawers which have the added advantage of being easier to access when you have stuff piled up. Put a peice of packing tape across the front to use use as a label, so it is easy to change the label. Lastly, tackle boxes are great for organizing small things - screws, jumpers, resisters, etc.
I presume igor had some bugs when you were writing it. Was it able to find it's own problems? :)
Right now it's Fifty Cent.
God, I'm sorry. Perhaps one of these could help. If not you could always try one of these . But then you would need on of these . Well, good day.
Bull. All this "evidence" is mearly circumstantial.
Fact: The Diebold Machines have horrible design and implementation.
Fact: Diebold has done some shaddy things to cover their buts when they make a mistake.
Fact: The CEO of the company has donated money to the republicans.
How does this imply that there is a great conspiricy? Lots of people give money to the republicans. Lots of people write crappy software. Lots of businesses try to get away with things that they shouldn't. Where is the proof that the reason for their actions is that they want the hand the election over to the republicans? It is just as likely that they are just incompetent and greedy, not conspiratal. Repeat after me: Correlation does not imply Causality.
Now is it possible that Diebold really is doing this to hand the election over to Bush? Sure. Is there any proof? No. But there is proof that some people framing this issue as a conspiricy theory has made the rest of us loose alot of credibility. And doing so is completely uneccisary because there are so many (factual) reasons why we shouldn't use these machines. So do everyone a favor and stick to the facts.
Yay, lets all go sign a petition saying that we think a movie would be better when edited a certain way, when we have not seen either of the options, and have no idea which one really is better! Just like my public education taught me, "An uninformed opinion is better than no opinion at all" ;)
Seriously, where is the poll for letting Peter Jackson who is a much better director and producer than I will ever be, make the decision based on his expert opinion.
First, the FSF has never attacked Microsoft because they make money and are motivated by profit, or because they write poor quality software, and attempt to dominate their market. I will get back to this later, but right now let me address the issues you brought up.
... Microsoft was successful at doing what it was supposed to be doing.
Morally good? How can software be moral or immoral? It just is. You may not think the method of production is moral (think slave labor in diamond mines) or the use of the product is moral (think use of encryption by drug cartels) or even if it was moral to produce the product in the first place (think TEC-9) but really, those cases are really about the morality of the producer and not the product.
This is just being anal. If I say that Nike tennis shoes are evil, no one thinks that I am implying that the cloth and rubber which physically make up the shoe are evil incarnate. The shoe has more properties than just it's physical makeup. If everyone charges a lot for a shoe then we say the shoe is expensive. If a lot of people like a shoe, then we say the shoe is popular. If the shoe threatens our competing line of business, we say the shoe is a threat. Now it would also be correct to say that company and retailers set an above average price for the shoe, that many people have favorable opinions of the shoe, and that the act of people buying the shoe instead of ours is a threat, but both methods - assigning the attribute to the shoe, and to the people - are perfectly valid.
Likewise the license on a piece of software is a property of the software, just like price is, and any implications of that license are also properties of the software. It is perfectly valid to say that MS Word creates corporate lock-in, and if I think that corporate lock-in is bad, then it is valid to say that MS Word is bad.
Of course, Microsoft's motive was profit. But is that immoral? Microsoft is a company. Companies seek profit. Even more than that, companies want to dominate their markets.
Being successful at what you do is not the same thing as being moral. The reason that the FSF believes that proprietary software is immoral is because it thinks it is wrong to hoard something when it cost you nothing to give away. Yes there is an opportunity cost, as there is in every decision we make. There is also an opportunity cost in choosing to hoard the source. The Open Source people will argue that the opportunity cost of hoarding software is greater than the opportunity cost of sharing it. In this argument proprietary software is not immoral, just non-optimal. That is not the FSF's position. They say that it is immoral regardless of the opportunity cost, just like extortion is immoral regardless of the opportunity cost of deciding not to extort people.
Damn, I need to go, I will finish this post later.
A couple of asides:
Microsoft came to dominate [early software] areas through quality software and marketing savvy.
No, it came to dominate those areas by a partnership with IBM, barely adequate software and marketing savvy.
Microsoft clearly achieved [market dominance] and not through anti-competitive practices
The united states government and several states would disagree with you there.
It could only look 12-20 moves into the future, and Kasparov played in a manner to limit what the computer could see by looking ahead. Since the computer had no strategy, but rather always took the best move he could see at the moment, Kasparov could keep him blind and cornered so it didn't see anything usefull to do in the short term, so it ended up flailing about somewhat (notice where it moved a peice and then moved it right back). Then all the meanwhile he was slowly playing out a much longer strategy.
How is that any different than any other language? If spelling proper names is the only thing that foreign ASL speakers have a problem with, then they are much better off than someone that only knows a single spoken lanuguage.
Free means no restrictions, ironic the FSF's GPL forces restrictions, isn't it? What's your definition of free?
Not quite, you having freedom always requires me to give up some freedom, so it's about everyone having the same freedoms. For example, the only way to gain the freedom to live is if we all give up the freedom to kill. Likewise the only way we can have freedom from proprietary restrictions is if we all give up the freedom to restrict others. That is what the GPL is about. It is a social contract, that exchanges one freedom for another (presumably more desirable) one.
That is a "straw man" argument. For every less dollar spent by business on the products of a proprietary software company, a dollar will be saved by that business. That business will pay taxes on that additional dollar of profit.
Yes I agree completely, hence my comment:
Nevermind the millions of dollars that are saved by free software, and the thousands of jobs created in IT deploying and improving free software.
The problem is that accounting for millions of small boosts spread out over thousands of companies is more difficult than say Microsoft who can give solid numbers on how many jobs will be lost, and how much the economy will be hurt by them going out of business. And every word of it will be true, it will just not be the full truth. I'm not saying that free software isn't better in the long run, I'm saying that those currently in power will fight tooth and nail to stay there, and they may have a good deal of influence on our leaders. The question is whether they will let the market decide or play favorites.
I have more than a couple programmer friends who like free software but are very concerned that it will threaten their livelyhood if it becomes too sucessful. Even equiped with arguements like the one you gave I have not been able to convince them that open source just moves the jobs out of software companies and into the companies actually using the software. These are not unintelligent people, and as I mentioned would like to like free software. Imagine what it will be like when the full FUD machine starts rolling, and developers across the country become more and more fearfull. I'm just happy that IBM is aligned with us, and really want to make as many silent inroads as we can before this time comes.
Except that the US can't own open source and thus can't leverage it. The only thing that the success of open source can do is kill proprietary software companies that put alot of money into the economy and pay lots of taxes. These big American companies do not like open source, and I garrentee you that once open source gets widespread to where there is a real chance of them going out of business there will be huge lobbying and propoganda attacks against it. (Nevermind the millions of dollars that are saved by free software, and the thousands of jobs created in IT deploying and improving free software.) So if anything widespread use of open source software by the Chinese will influence the government to crack down on free software in support of current companies, not fund it.
Really bad example. Almost all psycologists consider Freuds work to be completely bogus, except for the parts that were already well founded before he came along.
Unfortunately for the world, that leaves only one option - it must be Virtual Boy II!
Just the thought of it leaves me seeing red.
I agree. This is disrespectful, and there is nothing to be gained from doing it, other than the academic knowledge that we do know where Billy's bones are. Honestly, is knowing where someone is buried really valuable historical knowledge? And if we find out that one grave really does have the body of Billy the Kid, that town will not get any more tourism because of it, and the other town will likely get less. As a New Mexican I have to agree with another post below that this was not brought up because of money, or truth, but town pride, which is a pretty stupid reason in my opinion. Anyway back to what I was getting at in my original post, leaving this as a mystery is not lying - it is the decent thing to do.
No they are not. They both have historical reason to believe that Billy the Kid is buried there. Are they 100% certain about this? No. But that's not lying thats history - there is always uncertainty about the records and recollections of the past. There is no reason to think that these small town people, who have made nice museums and done their part to keep history alive, are a bunch of fraudulent scum. They are just uncertian.
Oh, and I don't know who framed that truth vs. tourism question but it is pretty stupid.
Funny you should mention elephants. The first thing I thought of when I saw this article was "time to queue the Barnum and Bailey music".
:)
Maybe slashdot could play is as a midi in the background of all the SCO articles; that would rock
Yeeah! I'm looking forward to the IP lecture, but he probably won't get around to the GNU/Linux lecture since it is indeed Linux the kernal that they are talking about, not GNU/Linux the system.
It means it can be recharged an "infinate" number of times. Ie charging and draining the capacitor does not cause it to wear out, like most rechargable batteries do.
Yeah, I agree. And so does Hans Reiser BTW, it is on his list of things to put into the Reiser file system at some point. (And if you want to make it a high priority item pay him to do it :)
Exactly. The most telling quotes are the attitude that the author took on the subject:
... If consumers want their HDTV, they have to accept limits on the ability to redistribute TV shows on the Web.
The agency's move to allow encryption-like protection for digital shows takes away one more excuse from the broadcasters to delay the rollout of high-definition TV
At what point did move from
"companies competing to win the business of their customers"
to
"you consumers better fall in line with the wishes of the companies or no goods for you"
?
Oh, that's right, when the government decided (as it has in the past) that competition isn't necisarry in capitalism and started looking out for the good of large (illegal) monopolies and trade groups, instead of the good of the market.
\begin{rant}
If this continues indefinately we will end up approaching a system simular to Soviet Russia but from the opposite direction. There the government and corporations were merged by the government taking control of the corporations. Here they are being merged by the corporations merging and then asserting control of the government. Either way there is no democracy, but rather all economic, political, and military power are centralized into a very small number of hands who have no reason to act in the interest of the population.
\end{rant}
Is it a step back for a company which is currently running 100% proprietary software to be able to switch over to 90% free software? Or should I tell them that unless they are willing to sell their soul to the movement they do not deserve to enjoy any freedom from proprietary entrapment?
There are not free alternatives to every peice of software in existence. Heck even RMS used proprietary software inorder to create GNU software. I agree that it is good for members of the free software movement to choose to not use proprietary software since it removes motivation to produce and improve alternatives (cf Netscape 4.7). But if a company can be free from Microsoft but still needs oracle, well then at least they are better off than they were before, and someday maybee one of our free databases will be good enough that he can be free from oracle as well. So what is it? Are we producing this software to give all users more freedom, or just members of the movement?
On the contrary, the military is great for research. That's half the purpose of large defense spending; to drive technical progress. Why do you think the US was closing down bases at the same time it was increasing spending for creating high tech equipment? And if you think about it, since alot of research does not have immediate applications, it is not profitable for corporations to do the research unless you give them extremely heavy handed "IP" rights, which end up retarding research. So the only place for this research are in universities and state run laboratories, and is funded largly by the DoD and DoE. I much prefer Defense sponsered research to private "IP" encumbered research.
Now could we (the people, the government) fund this research through a different means? Sure, but it would be harder to justify to the tax payers, and it would be more difficult to determine criteria for spending. And what is the difference? - the research is still done in both cases, and both the military and the private sector are free to develop applications off of the research in both cases.
But, you can't beat the waffle house songs !
Ah, nothing brings back memories of vacationing in the industrial side of a city like grits and disco on the jukebox.
I'm look forward to the question and answer segment. We already know that crappy AI can pass as mindless AIM monkeys, now we get to see if it also passes the super-model turing test :)