[I]f Apple does fork GPLed components and sticks with Tivoisation, a small minority of customers would tend to view Apple very negatively. There, fixed that for you.
Remember, most people getting iPhones won't care either way about the GPL and the FSF, or even the basic fact that the iPhone is a computing device. It's just not on their radar. (That you and your friends care is beside the point; I'd lay money on the fact that you're not a majority of iPhone purchasers...)
Parent is just so right. In theory, porting to 64-bit on any platform is easy, but I've never seen it work out that way for a non-trivial program. Moreover, the compiler usually won't catch the problems for you; you've got to know how to extensively test your code too, and the ways in which things fail can be very mystifying. (Alignment mismatches are my "favourites"...)
For the desktop? Linux? More mainstream? You dream. Than 64-bit Windows? Yes. Win64 is really not common at all, and there are quite a few Linux desktops about, even though far fewer than the number of Win32 desktops. (In my office room at work, we're about split 3 ways between Windows, Linux and OSX desktops/laptops. Nobody has Win64.)
FYI, porting Win32 code to Win64 is not in general a trivial operation, especially if the code was never ported to any other 64-bit platform before, so most application vendors won't have bothered as there's not much market and it's hard. Curiously, Linux supports 64-bit far better; that's mostly because it went through the pain much longer ago, and there was already existing expertise from even further back (some commercial Unixes have supported 64-bit systems since the early '90s, and most of that experience was transferable.) Windows developers (who are mostly not Unix developers; hardly anyone does both) mostly don't have the right sort of experience to deal with that sort of thing straight off, so they've got to learn and that takes (a lot of) time. Which is why you won't see loads of people switching to Win64; not enough people need it yet, even with Vista's chunkiness.
That's all well and good, but it doesn't change the fact that some GPLed software requires you to click "I agree" to the GPL in the installation process. Having been through this process a few times recently, I agree with your comments on the stupidity of treating the GPL like a click-through EULA. On the other hand, they could fix it by allowing you to proceed on to the next panel whether or not you say that you agree to the GPL, thus capturing the true spirit of it.:-)
But I really just suspect lazy programmers using someone else's installer generator without thinking about it, and that code requires that the "license" be filled in. Still, it's yet another opportunity for subtle messing with people's minds that has missed...
Great, now we gotta go get that POS operating system that SQL Server runs on? So run PostgreSQL (or one of the commercial DBs if you need to scale larger) on a real OS. Duh!
No wonder the companies are concentrating on features such as power usage: there's basically nothing else they can impress us with (and low power usage allows smaller more mobile devices with longer battery life etc.)
Low-power CPUs are also critical for large server farms, because when you have a few thousand processors together in a room, you've got a big heat problem if you haven't got a chunky aircon as well. Pumping all that heat in and out again is expensive, and indeed in many server farms it is the aircon capacity that really limits what they can do...
it's not my fault if you bought a computer that only came with a one or two button mouse.
I don't have a mouse at all on this machine (it's a laptop with touchpad, which is a lot more convenient when I'm on the road). OTOH, a left-right chord click on a tab closes it on Win, which is neat. Wish the documentation made finding such things out easier...
I have heard that some places with public health care have outlawed private health care. If this is indeed the case, why?
Stupid politics probably. Other places have it too.:-(
In the UK, private health care is legal. It tends to be used for elective procedures though; emergency and acute care go through the public system (which also treats those things as higher priority). Most people don't bother with private health care: it's expensive and the premiums have a nasty habit of going up steeply if you actually need care. (Hmm, that's a familiar story...)
Acclerate for 1 G for a year and you reach speed c.
No you don't. Relativity 101. It takes an infinite amount of energy to accelerate a mass (any mass) to the speed of light (because of Lorentz contraction). Indeed, applying a 1g acceleration for a year would only take you up to 215332822 m/s (i.e. a bit under 72%).
(To work this out, compute how much momentum would be transferred to a 1kg object undergoing a 1g acceleration for a year, which I make to be about 309264480 kgm/s, and then solve the Lorentz equations to compute the velocity relative to the initial "rest" frame from the momentum. Trivial really.)
In Europe, you never had to pay for incoming calls but the caller has to pay outrageous rates to call your mobile.
Unless you're roaming in another country that is, when you also pay to receive calls. The amount you pay though is an excess that is supposed to cover the cost of routing the call from your provider over the 3rd-party network to your phone. (OK, the amount they've been charging for this has been far too high, and there was a crackdown by the EC recently.)
[Congress] have to justify their existence SOMEHOW!
No they don't. They're just an emergent carbuncle who unfortunately just happen to be one of the few checks on the other dysfunctional parts of government. I'd argue for getting rid of them, but I doubt that what would replace them would be better and I suspect it might even be a lot worse.
Most US cities, however, are designed around highways
But this can be changed. Take traffic off of some streets in the center of your cities - make them spaces for people, not motor vehicles - and require other streets to have sidewalks, even out into the 'burbs. Without such basic steps, fixing the other problems will remain difficult.
FWIW, the place where European city design really differs is in the much smaller fraction of trade that happens in malls. Instead, there are more small stores that serve just their local community. But without the basic infrastructure to allow to get to such stores without using a car, you're left with having to put in lots of parking lots, which in turn push stores further from customer not coming by car... A vicious circle.
Yes and no. Higher fuel costs still hurt (especially business) but the percentage change is smaller so the relative impact is less. Overall, they were much less of a shock, and the depreciation of the dollar w.r.t. the European currencies lessened the disruption further.
That sounds jolly good, except our country is more than 3000 miles wide.
And everyone drives all the way back and forth across it continually? No? Guess that doesn't count for all that much after all. Europe's not enormously smaller overall, but guess what? Most people don't drive all over the place, and that's true on both sides of the Atlantic. (If you're going to the other side of the continent, flying makes a bunch of sense.)
We have public transit in the megalopoli, however many parts of our country have [low density] populations.
So what? I can assure you that there's not that much public transport of any kind out in the backwoods in Europe either. Like anyone cares. You put the various forms of mass transit in where there is reasonable population to support it. Except in the US. Case in point: in most US cities with an international airport, there is no mass transit from the airport to the city. Maybe there are buses, but you're really expected to get a taxi or (more likely) hire a car. Why aren't American's proud of their cities? Why don't they want to encourage travellers from out of town to come? (I ask because that's what it looks like to me.) By contrast, every airport of even middling size in Europe (and I've seen too many of them) has a decent high-speed transit route to the city it serves.
Can Apple push Safari via iTunes the same way as iTunes and iPod firmware updates?
I'd guess it is unlikely unless they want to greatly annoy lots of existing iTunes users. Sure, it's theoretically possible that they might be able to use incompatibility stuff to encourage people to switch, but it's more likely that they'd get people to switch away from iTunes.
If the percentage of web connections from Safari builds up to the 5-10% level, then start looking for subtle incompatibilities. Until then, Apple's best overall strategy involves staying out of that sort of game.
1. Can I do it with Linux today (GPL2) and tomorrow (GPL3)?
You certainly can with GPL2. Many people are doing just that.
2. Can I statically link the code with Linux libraries? (My own experience shows that dynamic linking is too much to bear.)
Don't static link (for distribution) with GPL or LGPL code unless you are willing to use a Free license for your code. Not that static linking is a particularly good idea if you've got the system locked down properly (wastes space).
3. Can I obfuscate my code (e.g. encode it)?
I'm sure you can write code that any sane programmer would rather gouge their eyes out with a rusty spork than read. It's a bad idea, but it's your code. Be aware that you can't prevent someone determined enough from taking your code apart anyway; you can only make things hard so they don't bother.
4. Could I be forced to publish this code by some 3-d party?
For releasing a binary that runs on Linux? No. For fouling up your licensing? Yes. For annoying a court? Yes. Seek legal advice on this if you're worried (but if you don't link against the wrong things, you should be OK).
5. Am I correct that programming in and selling BSD-based boxes won't raise any of the above problems?
I don't see them as being big problems anyway, but you right in that BSD-based boxes won't have them at all. Whether you can live with the smaller community developing for that platform (and consequences like less broad hardware support, etc.) is your call.
The frontend's just flash, javascript and html, but they've got things on the backend you're not going to be able to do with a scripting language.
Hmm, so we're not going to be able to run the YouTube backend on an iPhone? I'm shocked, truly shocked!
As a side note, it's quite possible to intermix scripting languages (for flexible control) and C++ components (for the heavy lifting) in the same app. Indeed, a great many apps are written exactly that way. Doing everything in one language, while almost always possible, is hard work and more than a little silly.
I'm feeling kindly today. It's an acronym that originated in award-winning literature, and if you've not read that book, it's a good day to change that.
If the local distributor decides that the most cost-effective way of dealing with the problem is to ship the stuff back to the nation of origin for recycling, that's fine with me. But that's their problem, not mine. (The real problem comes when the local distributor (or manufacturer) goes out of business between when the object was made and when it needs disposal. Which happens quite a lot...)
Step 3: Write it up. Hello, interwebz. Let's move some ads!
Except the only link in the whole story (including the "Tablizer writes:" preamble) is to an ad-free site and there's no link concealing or other sorts of nefarious stuff either. Nice theory of yours, but the facts don't support it. Looks instead exactly like a good story spoilt by a potty-mouthed submitter. Like that's never happened before...
Slashdot Mirror
Remember, most people getting iPhones won't care either way about the GPL and the FSF, or even the basic fact that the iPhone is a computing device. It's just not on their radar. (That you and your friends care is beside the point; I'd lay money on the fact that you're not a majority of iPhone purchasers...)
Parent is just so right. In theory, porting to 64-bit on any platform is easy, but I've never seen it work out that way for a non-trivial program. Moreover, the compiler usually won't catch the problems for you; you've got to know how to extensively test your code too, and the ways in which things fail can be very mystifying. (Alignment mismatches are my "favourites"...)
FYI, porting Win32 code to Win64 is not in general a trivial operation, especially if the code was never ported to any other 64-bit platform before, so most application vendors won't have bothered as there's not much market and it's hard. Curiously, Linux supports 64-bit far better; that's mostly because it went through the pain much longer ago, and there was already existing expertise from even further back (some commercial Unixes have supported 64-bit systems since the early '90s, and most of that experience was transferable.) Windows developers (who are mostly not Unix developers; hardly anyone does both) mostly don't have the right sort of experience to deal with that sort of thing straight off, so they've got to learn and that takes (a lot of) time. Which is why you won't see loads of people switching to Win64; not enough people need it yet, even with Vista's chunkiness.
But I really just suspect lazy programmers using someone else's installer generator without thinking about it, and that code requires that the "license" be filled in. Still, it's yet another opportunity for subtle messing with people's minds that has missed...
In the UK, private health care is legal. It tends to be used for elective procedures though; emergency and acute care go through the public system (which also treats those things as higher priority). Most people don't bother with private health care: it's expensive and the premiums have a nasty habit of going up steeply if you actually need care. (Hmm, that's a familiar story...)
(To work this out, compute how much momentum would be transferred to a 1kg object undergoing a 1g acceleration for a year, which I make to be about 309264480 kgm/s, and then solve the Lorentz equations to compute the velocity relative to the initial "rest" frame from the momentum. Trivial really.)
FWIW, the place where European city design really differs is in the much smaller fraction of trade that happens in malls. Instead, there are more small stores that serve just their local community. But without the basic infrastructure to allow to get to such stores without using a car, you're left with having to put in lots of parking lots, which in turn push stores further from customer not coming by car... A vicious circle.
Yes and no. Higher fuel costs still hurt (especially business) but the percentage change is smaller so the relative impact is less. Overall, they were much less of a shock, and the depreciation of the dollar w.r.t. the European currencies lessened the disruption further.
If the percentage of web connections from Safari builds up to the 5-10% level, then start looking for subtle incompatibilities. Until then, Apple's best overall strategy involves staying out of that sort of game.
As a side note, it's quite possible to intermix scripting languages (for flexible control) and C++ components (for the heavy lifting) in the same app. Indeed, a great many apps are written exactly that way. Doing everything in one language, while almost always possible, is hard work and more than a little silly.
I'm feeling kindly today. It's an acronym that originated in award-winning literature, and if you've not read that book, it's a good day to change that.
If the local distributor decides that the most cost-effective way of dealing with the problem is to ship the stuff back to the nation of origin for recycling, that's fine with me. But that's their problem, not mine. (The real problem comes when the local distributor (or manufacturer) goes out of business between when the object was made and when it needs disposal. Which happens quite a lot...)