For those who won't bother to read the article, Fortress was designed by Guy Steele, which gives it a good pedigree in my book. I heard his talk at OOPSLA 2006 on the language design decisions they made for Fortress, and although my Fortran (and math) experience is too shallow to fully appreciate it, I found it fascinating nonetheless.
At the very least, Sun has given people something to think about.
(I thought that was the case, but maybe I misinterpreted that statement)
Is this generally the case? Having never contributed back directly to a project (my contributions have all been along the lines of "look, this is wrong, here is a test case to show what might need fixing"), I realize I have no idea what the norm is. It certainly does seem that requiring copyright assignment makes sense for the long term -- otherwise, your project is effectively at the mercy of any and all developers who contribute. I know some people have seen that as a strength in the past (pointing out, for example, that Linus could never hijack the Linux kernel -- he hasn't "owned" the rights to it for a long time now), but it seems a glaring weakness in this case.
What a complete douche-bag. I hope one of these people he instilled with fatherly "love" develops an Oedipus complex and fucks his boss' wife, then beats the shit out of him. No one deserves a mind-fuck like that.
When the Geek Squad fights the Over-priced Home Automation Corps, we all win.
I mean... seriously. Are we talking Geek Squad ninjas with USB cable garrotes engaging in midnight raids on the Home Automation Camp? Stupid VW bugs with silly stickers being turned into car bombs? Windows Media Center cameras recording Geek Squad insurgents?
I agree. That episode makes me cry, everytime. Anyone who has owned a dog knows how much it sucks that they are loyal to the end, but can't stick around long enough to share all the time they want with us. I know my dog would wait for me too...
The greater part of my original point still stands (even if we disagree on what the facts of the insurgencies success might be). War isn't, for the most part, a matter of destroying the other side so utterly that they simply cannot fight any longer. It is a matter of destroying their will to fight. In that battle, propaganda is the WMD of choice. Now that the front lines are broadcast on the evening news, it's increasingly harder to convince people that they are fighting "the good war".
So, if the original question was... could people in the US really resist the government with civilian firearms? I'd say they sure could. They only have to stir up enough trouble and hold out long enough for the average citizen (and the forces being called upon to prosecute the war) to either come over to their side or decide it's not worth having a shooting conflict over.
The insurgents in Iraq seem to be fighting a quite capable war of attrition using, for the most part, arms quite accessible to the general public here. There are plenty of long arms in the United States in private hands (living in Michigan, I can tell you we have plenty of rifles that seem to kill hefty big deer pretty reliably -- soldiers are much smaller than deer), and it's been shown quite well that cars blow up real good if you want to make them do so.
You don't need howitzers to win a civil resistance campaign. Just willpower and attrition. I don't think the situation in America will ever rise to the point that this sort of thing would be needed, but I'm glad to know it's an option we can all acknowledge is on the table if politicians get cocky.
...and note: I mean, survive completely intact. Including that archive of all changes.
Besides, even if Wikipedia survives that long,/. won't. So if I'm proven wrong, who gives a flying fuck? My comment will be long gone, unless you're so incredibly offended that you seal it in a time capsule.
Oh no. I said something on/. that people didn't like. Oh dear.
I'll live.
Now, please explain to me how my comment is incorrect. Do you really expect Wikipedia to survive 150 years? Really? Because judging from how I can't seem to find Web artifacts from 10 years ago in many cases, 150 years is just plain silly.
I hope the Wikipedia guys don't break their arms patting themselves on the back. Why in the world would they think any sort of meaningful remnants of Wikipedia will survive intact 150 years from now? If anything, Wikipedia's constant change (particularly on the fringe topics) means it is useless as some sort of "set in stone" archive of any time period.
Not affiliated, just a very happy customer of theirs. Works like a charm for me, and bands seem to have complete control over how to setup their business there.
Please, I'll pay you (honest, email me) to never ever use the word "lappie" again. That non-word hurts me to the very core. My mother, the English teacher, would die (and the poor dear, she's 81 already -- do you want to kill her?) if she ever heard that abomination repeated in front of her.
Oh, good. Thought it was just me or my crappy hotel-room internet connection. I tried the same "pause and wait" trick, and that didn't work either. How frustrating! I even tried to download the content for viewing off-line -- but I could figure out how to yank down the video, and didn't feel like experimenting further.
I think every presentation I've ever seen with flying graphics, pie charts, bullet points zooming in from the left, and all the other PowerPoint abuses a sales or marketing droid can think up in his voluminous spare time off the golf course, would definitely qualify as "PowerPoint Attacks".
Firefox had something to offer that meant something to users. It was a demonstrably better product.
IceWeasel? Not so much... it offers a lot to the people heading up the Debian project, but I wonder how much value it offers to end-users. I mean, serious value they can point to and say "I'm happy they did this!".
I think this was a hugely bad decision, and should never have happened. It's the typical tempest-in-a-teapot that continually undermines Open Source efforts, the bad side of forking. It's nice to have the power to fork, but to quote Stan "The Man" Lee, "with great power comes great responsibility".
Actually, I appreciate the completely tasteless humor much more than the completely stupid serious comments on this. The humor recognizes and appreciates the absurb quality of all of this, and doesn't even try to propose a serious take on the matter.
Is it really funny? No. But horrible situations are sometimes relieved by nervous titters of black humor.
I agree. Natural enough for people (as people) to ponder that, but a woman is (presumed) dead. Asking how this will affect anything so ephemeral as a piece of software is absurd. That should never have been written.
I mean, besides being crass, it's also obvious -- so why point it out? Sure, we all naturally wonder what might happen to the software, but is it worth actually discussing?
Although I'm not sure if I agree that the average corporate PC is exactly a performance giant, let's look at the real cost of a new PC that fits the requirements:
* Plenty of processor power -- say, an Athlon 3200 or higher? * 256 MB video * 1 Gig RAM * "Large" hard drive -- 160 GB sounds good * Includes MS Office
Well, I just went to Dell's web site and picked "Medium Business", picked the Dimension line, and picked the system in the exact center (we'll call that all "average"). I upgraded the video and basically bumped every other knob up one click so I got all of the requirements outlined above, and just to represent "better" configurations. I added MS Office to the list price, and I ended up at around... $1300. So, yes, that first basic assumption goes out the window.
I think he's basically pulling numbers and assumptions out of his ass. Really, no need to indulge in hyperbole here anyway -- it is obvious that upgrading to Vista will be costly, why inflate that figure? It's a major upgrade, people will treat it like one. Windows XP took a few years to penetrate it's market, why would Vista be any different?
OK, I'll make this quick, because it's really not like I need to convince people I'll never work with that I'm good. I'm confident enough in my own abilities:-)
1) I never said it was my bug 2) This was the first time I had worked that long a day in quite a while. But yes, it does happen. I gave up the 60hr week grinds when I left the dot.com business six years ago, but that doesn't mean that I can't put in an occasional long day when it's called for. 3) I found the bug around 6pm, and because I needed to have something to show people on Monday, I had to nail the bug so the rest of the code didn't take 2 hours to complete. So, at the time I posted that, I had maybe 2.5 hours into the bug-fix. That was still a long time, but this was code that I hadn't even touched for 2 years, so a good hour of that was me recalling how it was all supposed to work and be sure I knew what direction I needed to go in so as not to break the parts that were doing fine. 4) OK, it did turn out to be my bug:-). But I'll write it off more as a misfeature, I had something that scaled well for 100 elements, and now I needed it to work for 10,000. That turned out to make a big difference. Once I saw that, 2 hours went to eight seconds.
Don't be silly. The acquisition has already been publicly announced. I just don't feel like proclaiming who I work for, because I'm not trying to speak for them (but I think their hiring practices support my assertions).
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, yes, that's exactly how they are doing the mathematical notations inside the source code. I thought that actually quite clever!
For those who won't bother to read the article, Fortress was designed by Guy Steele, which gives it a good pedigree in my book. I heard his talk at OOPSLA 2006 on the language design decisions they made for Fortress, and although my Fortran (and math) experience is too shallow to fully appreciate it, I found it fascinating nonetheless.
At the very least, Sun has given people something to think about.
I think this might show the real problem -- copyright assignment. It appears the FSF requires copyright assignment:
g al-Matters
http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/maintain.html#Le
(I thought that was the case, but maybe I misinterpreted that statement)
Is this generally the case? Having never contributed back directly to a project (my contributions have all been along the lines of "look, this is wrong, here is a test case to show what might need fixing"), I realize I have no idea what the norm is. It certainly does seem that requiring copyright assignment makes sense for the long term -- otherwise, your project is effectively at the mercy of any and all developers who contribute. I know some people have seen that as a strength in the past (pointing out, for example, that Linus could never hijack the Linux kernel -- he hasn't "owned" the rights to it for a long time now), but it seems a glaring weakness in this case.
What a complete douche-bag. I hope one of these people he instilled with fatherly "love" develops an Oedipus complex and fucks his boss' wife, then beats the shit out of him. No one deserves a mind-fuck like that.
When the Geek Squad fights the Over-priced Home Automation Corps, we all win.
I mean... seriously. Are we talking Geek Squad ninjas with USB cable garrotes engaging in midnight raids on the Home Automation Camp? Stupid VW bugs with silly stickers being turned into car bombs? Windows Media Center cameras recording Geek Squad insurgents?
In other words:
A new low in hype and slashvertisments. Bah.
I agree. That episode makes me cry, everytime. Anyone who has owned a dog knows how much it sucks that they are loyal to the end, but can't stick around long enough to share all the time they want with us. I know my dog would wait for me too...
:-(
Oh man, now my keyboard is all wet.
*shakes fist* Damn you, David X. Cohen!!!
"Because they're the bomb, baby!!!"
(I agree it's thread drift. Oh well.)
The greater part of my original point still stands (even if we disagree on what the facts of the insurgencies success might be). War isn't, for the most part, a matter of destroying the other side so utterly that they simply cannot fight any longer. It is a matter of destroying their will to fight. In that battle, propaganda is the WMD of choice. Now that the front lines are broadcast on the evening news, it's increasingly harder to convince people that they are fighting "the good war".
So, if the original question was... could people in the US really resist the government with civilian firearms? I'd say they sure could. They only have to stir up enough trouble and hold out long enough for the average citizen (and the forces being called upon to prosecute the war) to either come over to their side or decide it's not worth having a shooting conflict over.
The insurgents in Iraq seem to be fighting a quite capable war of attrition using, for the most part, arms quite accessible to the general public here. There are plenty of long arms in the United States in private hands (living in Michigan, I can tell you we have plenty of rifles that seem to kill hefty big deer pretty reliably -- soldiers are much smaller than deer), and it's been shown quite well that cars blow up real good if you want to make them do so.
You don't need howitzers to win a civil resistance campaign. Just willpower and attrition. I don't think the situation in America will ever rise to the point that this sort of thing would be needed, but I'm glad to know it's an option we can all acknowledge is on the table if politicians get cocky.
...and note: I mean, survive completely intact. Including that archive of all changes.
/. won't. So if I'm proven wrong, who gives a flying fuck? My comment will be long gone, unless you're so incredibly offended that you seal it in a time capsule.
Besides, even if Wikipedia survives that long,
Or, you know, better yet, post it on Wikipedia.
Oh no. I said something on /. that people didn't like. Oh dear.
I'll live.
Now, please explain to me how my comment is incorrect. Do you really expect Wikipedia to survive 150 years? Really? Because judging from how I can't seem to find Web artifacts from 10 years ago in many cases, 150 years is just plain silly.
Right... sure.
I hope the Wikipedia guys don't break their arms patting themselves on the back. Why in the world would they think any sort of meaningful remnants of Wikipedia will survive intact 150 years from now? If anything, Wikipedia's constant change (particularly on the fringe topics) means it is useless as some sort of "set in stone" archive of any time period.
You want this site. Completely addresses your problems, so far as I can tell:
http://www.mperia.com/
Not affiliated, just a very happy customer of theirs. Works like a charm for me, and bands seem to have complete control over how to setup their business there.
Please, I'll pay you (honest, email me) to never ever use the word "lappie" again. That non-word hurts me to the very core. My mother, the English teacher, would die (and the poor dear, she's 81 already -- do you want to kill her?) if she ever heard that abomination repeated in front of her.
I'm in favor of this, if only because starting at the start (or, at least, a reasonable middle point) seems like the right sort of launch-point.
Oh, good. Thought it was just me or my crappy hotel-room internet connection. I tried the same "pause and wait" trick, and that didn't work either. How frustrating! I even tried to download the content for viewing off-line -- but I could figure out how to yank down the video, and didn't feel like experimenting further.
Too bad. Sounded like it was a funny video.
or they're out of their minds.
You may be on to something here.
I think every presentation I've ever seen with flying graphics, pie charts, bullet points zooming in from the left, and all the other PowerPoint abuses a sales or marketing droid can think up in his voluminous spare time off the golf course, would definitely qualify as "PowerPoint Attacks".
Firefox had something to offer that meant something to users. It was a demonstrably better product.
IceWeasel? Not so much... it offers a lot to the people heading up the Debian project, but I wonder how much value it offers to end-users. I mean, serious value they can point to and say "I'm happy they did this!".
I think this was a hugely bad decision, and should never have happened. It's the typical tempest-in-a-teapot that continually undermines Open Source efforts, the bad side of forking. It's nice to have the power to fork, but to quote Stan "The Man" Lee, "with great power comes great responsibility".
Actually, I would say a single life (on the conceptual level, not picking a particular person) is more valuable than the U.S.S. Eisenhower.
*shrug* Just my POV, I guess. Kind of scares me to think people would even question that, though.
Actually, I appreciate the completely tasteless humor much more than the completely stupid serious comments on this. The humor recognizes and appreciates the absurb quality of all of this, and doesn't even try to propose a serious take on the matter.
Is it really funny? No. But horrible situations are sometimes relieved by nervous titters of black humor.
I agree. Natural enough for people (as people) to ponder that, but a woman is (presumed) dead. Asking how this will affect anything so ephemeral as a piece of software is absurd. That should never have been written.
I mean, besides being crass, it's also obvious -- so why point it out? Sure, we all naturally wonder what might happen to the software, but is it worth actually discussing?
Although I'm not sure if I agree that the average corporate PC is exactly a performance giant, let's look at the real cost of a new PC that fits the requirements:
* Plenty of processor power -- say, an Athlon 3200 or higher?
* 256 MB video
* 1 Gig RAM
* "Large" hard drive -- 160 GB sounds good
* Includes MS Office
Well, I just went to Dell's web site and picked "Medium Business", picked the Dimension line, and picked the system in the exact center (we'll call that all "average"). I upgraded the video and basically bumped every other knob up one click so I got all of the requirements outlined above, and just to represent "better" configurations. I added MS Office to the list price, and I ended up at around... $1300. So, yes, that first basic assumption goes out the window.
I think he's basically pulling numbers and assumptions out of his ass. Really, no need to indulge in hyperbole here anyway -- it is obvious that upgrading to Vista will be costly, why inflate that figure? It's a major upgrade, people will treat it like one. Windows XP took a few years to penetrate it's market, why would Vista be any different?
OK, I'll make this quick, because it's really not like I need to convince people I'll never work with that I'm good. I'm confident enough in my own abilities :-)
:-). But I'll write it off more as a misfeature, I had something that scaled well for 100 elements, and now I needed it to work for 10,000. That turned out to make a big difference. Once I saw that, 2 hours went to eight seconds.
:-)
1) I never said it was my bug
2) This was the first time I had worked that long a day in quite a while. But yes, it does happen. I gave up the 60hr week grinds when I left the dot.com business six years ago, but that doesn't mean that I can't put in an occasional long day when it's called for.
3) I found the bug around 6pm, and because I needed to have something to show people on Monday, I had to nail the bug so the rest of the code didn't take 2 hours to complete. So, at the time I posted that, I had maybe 2.5 hours into the bug-fix. That was still a long time, but this was code that I hadn't even touched for 2 years, so a good hour of that was me recalling how it was all supposed to work and be sure I knew what direction I needed to go in so as not to break the parts that were doing fine.
4) OK, it did turn out to be my bug
Anyway, that's my defense
Don't be silly. The acquisition has already been publicly announced. I just don't feel like proclaiming who I work for, because I'm not trying to speak for them (but I think their hiring practices support my assertions).