I didn't get into the industry until 10 years ago, and I was amazed at this difference between the windows kids and the mainframe guys. I was a Windows/Oracle developer, but luckily I learned good practices from old MVS/greenscreen guys who taught me things that hold true no matter what kind of computer platform you're working with. I'm blown away to see some of the stupid things that new programmers/admins do. Blown away
I feel the same way whenever I look at the SMTP spec, the MIME spec, the SMTP email format spec, pretty much any on-the-wire specs actually...
At the very least people could prefix strings they're transmitting with the # of bytes in them, so that memory access is efficient.
Look at HTML - all ASCII. ASN.1 was invented so that you didn't have to use all ASCII for this kind of data (look at the SNMP spec if you want more details). But does anyone use it for the on-the-wire format? No.
Unixheads seem to claim that it's perfectly admirable to hack around the ASCII format for everything because it makes it easier to debug, whereas all I see is wasted entropy and bandwidth.
BZZZZT wrong. It actually makes lots of people pirate stuff just for the sake of it, just to stick it to the companies. So the ratio increases. If they wanted to reduce it for real, they would go for something that pleases the user and makes him not want to pirate stuff anymore. Please wake up.
No, actually, it doesn't. Most people don't think like you do, believe it or not.
Am I surprised by any of this? Nope. They fought the VCR, the cassette tape, the eight-track, private ownership of film cameras, etc. Even after repeated court rulings setting down that the people had the right to make archival back-ups of media such as floppies, the software companies still tried to use copy protection that made it impossible to make such an archival or fair-use copy.
You know why they do that, don't you?
It's because for every 1 person who wants to make a backup, there are at least 10 if not more who will just copy it without paying for it. At least copy protection helps reduce that ratio.
However, its value is not created by any author, it's inherent in the information itself. The author provides a service by discovering it in the first place, not by making copies
The author does not discover it. The author creates it.
Think about what you're writing here. When you wrote your response up there... did you discover it?
No, your little trick of ignoring my entire comment and scoffing at something I didn't even write is a lame way to dodge the argument.
So what was your point in the previous comment if not to say that hey, a book is just a specific encoding of symbols, anyone could have randomly discovered it, and therefore it's worthless?
Anyway, for those of you computer establishments that lack your own in-house compiler, there's this cell phone company, called Motorola, which has pretty much ditched their chip fab subdivision, but which retains this little subsidiary called "Metrowerks", a subsidiary which doesn't seem to integrate very well with their forward-looking core strategy of providing the means to share Paris Hilton pr0n over hand-held cellular devices...
Metrowerks write pretty damn shitty buggy compilers though (take a look at their changelists some time). Why would anyone want to buy them?
The content of a book has information value precisely because (and only to the extent that) it can't be generated automatically from something else. If it could, we'd only need to pass that "something else" around instead.
So you agree that it has value? Interesting departure from your stance.
A couple decades ago, you could've said the same thing about RMS. "Developing software and giving the code away for free? There's no money in that. It'll never take off."
The difference being that you're claiming that the work should be free, whereas he's choosing to make his work free. Big difference there. Not subtle at all.
Sometimes a word has multiple definitions and related terms, you know. Try reading past the first one; you'll find it makes your dictionary a lot more useful.
An encoding of data as symbols or impulses? Sure, that's straight out of Shannon - but only in terms of information theory and entropy. It's not talking about the same thing.
BTW: picking the definition which fits your case is not the same as having a solid argument. If you'd like to provide a dictionary definition which matches yours, and explain why, feel free.
I defy you to come up with an algorithmic way of generating the theory of relativity given a database of mathemetical symbols and physics terms.
It's a physical fundamental fact about the universe. It was discovered - not invented. Books are not discovered.
In fact, I also defy you to come up with an algorithmic way of generating a correct listing of telephone numbers, given only a list of names and digits and the format of a valid North American phone number.
I can do it easier than that - I can just dump the database from the phone company's exchanges.
The fact that a particular piece of information took great effort to produce (or discover) does not mean it isn't information, or that the person who expended the effort should be crowned King Of That Information and allowed to dictate who may use or share it. Information is information, no matter where it came from, and it cannot be owned.
Nearly the whole world disagrees with you. And has for several hundred years.
Information, by the way, means "facts or knowledge provided or learned". A novel or other work of literature is not "facts or knowledge provided or learned". It may contain facts or knowledge, provided or learned, but it is not solely that.
The content of a book, on the other hand, is information--not in the sense of dry facts like a phone book, but in the philosophical sense, the one we know from the phrase "information technology". A book's content can be described by a sequence of numbers, and sending those numbers to someone is equivalent to giving them a copy of the book. But a sequence of numbers is not property.
However, here's the problem:
Information - as in dry facts like telephone numbers - should be free. They're raw facts, axioms, indivisible units of information. Like words in a dictionary.
Now, while you can indeed encode a book as numbers, I defy anyone to come up with an algorithmic way of generating the contents of that exact book, given a dictionary of words inside it.
That's why *that* information shouldn't be free - it's not some random collection of words. It has structure, which took great effort on the part of the author to impose. It's no longer just words on a page - it is more than the sum of its parts.
Ideas and information will never be "property", no matter how long people who have something to gain from restricting them keep repeating the mantra intellectual property, intellectual property...
Books aren't just ideas and information. They're more than that.
You'd be right if you were talking about a telephone book.
Re:The programmer as an artist, not as a technicia
on
Is Programming Art?
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· Score: 1
When was the last time you read a tiny little bit of code, a really small function that did just one lousy little thing, but not only it did the job, but it took you a split second to figure out what the hell the programmer was thinking when he/she wrote it? That's art.
No, it's a puzzle or a riddle. If it's elegant, clean, and crafty, that's art.
If it's just hacky for the sake of it, it's either a puzzle, or it's the programmer publicly masturbating.
Has been available in windows since 2000 (perhaps earlier, I don't know). It's just that a lot of windows developers don't take "advantage" of it. It also consumes a lot of cpu to us the transparency in "neat" ways.
Shouldn't this read "you're not entitled to their work without fair compensation if it is requested"? Are we making it wrong unintentionally to download freeware/open source, and independent artist with this statement?
No.
Fair compensation is compensation that the seller/owner of the work decides is fair. Not what you decide. And if that person decides that zero is fair, you get it for zero.
I'm not trying to argue that all IP should be free; I'm just pointing out how much the entitlemeht attitude of people nowadays is annoying. I'm sure many/.ers will agree.
People tend to get pretty loud when the rights they are entitled to are trampled on.
Like, you know, the rights provided to them by law. The other people tread on because they're too lazy / selfish / ignorant / criminally minded to follow them. What kind of response do you expect?
Is this too late? I mean blogger is already the place to do blogging for 90% of all blogs out there. RSS is already very well defined and there are literally hundreds of apps that spit out RSS. Will microsoft's enhancements be doomed to second place? I would think even the most agressive "embrace and extend" campaign would fail here. Of course you can't fault them for trying!
My Mac? Drop the CD/DVD in, hold down C, click install, and I'm done. Ahh.... simple. Linux? Same thing, boot the disc, walk through the install dialog, and we're happy. Debian based? apt-get upgrade the entire thing without even a CD. Heck, even Solaris installs and assumes it's legit and doesn't mind. (This was before the whole it's free for you and open now too thing)
Mac OS X - they're selling you the hardware. Selling you another OS is just skimming money off the top where they can - they already got most of your cash for the machine.
Linux? It's a free as in beer OS. Why would you need a key or registration?
Windows? They don't sell you hardware. They only sell you software. That's where their money comes from - they're going to protect it.
Unless Microsoft start selling PCs themselves, and write an OS that only runs on their systems, don't expect it to change any time soon.
It is NOT "hackers" causing all those problems with the internets that Dumbfuck McCumstain so laments. (Yes, I AM being really insulting and offensive to Marcus Ranum! He's been really insulting and offensive towards me and my fellow hackers.)
It is thieves and vandals causing all those problems.
Hackers invented the micro/home/personal computer. Hackers invented the diverse protocols that allowed these machines to talk to one another. Hackers invented the operating systems. Hackers invented the Internet. A hacker invented the World Wide Web.
Thieves and vandals merely took advantage of what hackers have invented and shared with the world. Took advantage and turned these tools to an evil purpose. Not hackers, THIEVES & VANDALS!
The language changed some time around the early to mid eighties, when Hackers became synonymous with Crackers.
If you can't handle a 20 year old change to the English language, you shouldn't be allowed near computers. Unless you're only planning on programming in Cobol.
Well exactly - they have the choice of either compling with the Chinese govt's wishes and censoring content that the regime doesn't like or giving up a potentially very lucrative market to their competitors. Would Microsoft do that? It appears not
Er... it has nothing to do with market. If you don't do what the Chinese government tells you to do, your international office there has its employees arrested.
This has happened before when there have been localization snafus / maps which aren't politically correct / etc. The Chinese police go around, arrest all of the directors of Microsoft China, and don't let them out until it's changed. Last happened in 1998, to my knowledge.
Thank you for wasting more than a half hour of my life. I reconnected a Win98 box that was on its way out, opened notepad and the MS-DOS Prompt. I typed and selected text in notepad with ^C then tried pasting it into the DOS Prompt with right-click and ^V: nothing. Right-clicking in the prompt window does nothing. I did ^V in notepad, and the text was copied in again. I'm not responding to any more bogus "Oh, yeah, it works, try it" trolls.
Alt+Space, Edit, Paste.
Or click on the icon in the titlebar, then select the appropriate options.
You need to remember that Windows uses a GUI CLI, which can accept mouse input, but most apps don't use it, so it's not on a normal context menu - it's on the system menu. That, and Ctrl+C to copy causes problems on some unix systems - it'll cancel your session.
You can't paste something copied from somewhere else in the Windows world (clipboard), or vice versa. Right-click is natural for *nix users, it's the first thing tried to paste. I haven't tried it since Win98, nor do I want to. Next.
Yes you can, and you always have been able to. Try it and see. Unless you're talking about bitmaps, in which case the problem isn't in Windows, but in the chair sitting in front of it.
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't get into the industry until 10 years ago, and I was amazed at this difference between the windows kids and the mainframe guys. I was a Windows/Oracle developer, but luckily I learned good practices from old MVS/greenscreen guys who taught me things that hold true no matter what kind of computer platform you're working with. I'm blown away to see some of the stupid things that new programmers/admins do. Blown away
I feel the same way whenever I look at the SMTP spec, the MIME spec, the SMTP email format spec, pretty much any on-the-wire specs actually...
At the very least people could prefix strings they're transmitting with the # of bytes in them, so that memory access is efficient.
Look at HTML - all ASCII. ASN.1 was invented so that you didn't have to use all ASCII for this kind of data (look at the SNMP spec if you want more details). But does anyone use it for the on-the-wire format? No.
Unixheads seem to claim that it's perfectly admirable to hack around the ASCII format for everything because it makes it easier to debug, whereas all I see is wasted entropy and bandwidth.
Anyway...
Deployment
2005/07/13: RSS 2.0 is widely deployed and Atom 1.0 not at all.
Er... blogger.com (Google's blog service) uses Atom. I think that might count as having been deployed, just maybe...
I'm sure you have a cite for this figure, published in an accredited, peer-reviewed journal? Something not sponsored by the RIAA or MPAA?
No? Imagine my surprise.
How about something based on tech support calls where I worked?
The Mac version of Caesar 3 sold approximately three times less copies than unique people called in for tech support help.
That should tell you something.
BZZZZT wrong. It actually makes lots of people pirate stuff just for the sake of it, just to stick it to the companies. So the ratio increases. If they wanted to reduce it for real, they would go for something that pleases the user and makes him not want to pirate stuff anymore. Please wake up.
No, actually, it doesn't. Most people don't think like you do, believe it or not.
Am I surprised by any of this? Nope. They fought the VCR, the cassette tape, the eight-track, private ownership of film cameras, etc. Even after repeated court rulings setting down that the people had the right to make archival back-ups of media such as floppies, the software companies still tried to use copy protection that made it impossible to make such an archival or fair-use copy.
You know why they do that, don't you?
It's because for every 1 person who wants to make a backup, there are at least 10 if not more who will just copy it without paying for it. At least copy protection helps reduce that ratio.
However, its value is not created by any author, it's inherent in the information itself. The author provides a service by discovering it in the first place, not by making copies
The author does not discover it. The author creates it.
Think about what you're writing here. When you wrote your response up there... did you discover it?
I think not.
No, your little trick of ignoring my entire comment and scoffing at something I didn't even write is a lame way to dodge the argument.
So what was your point in the previous comment if not to say that hey, a book is just a specific encoding of symbols, anyone could have randomly discovered it, and therefore it's worthless?
Anyway, for those of you computer establishments that lack your own in-house compiler, there's this cell phone company, called Motorola, which has pretty much ditched their chip fab subdivision, but which retains this little subsidiary called "Metrowerks", a subsidiary which doesn't seem to integrate very well with their forward-looking core strategy of providing the means to share Paris Hilton pr0n over hand-held cellular devices...
Metrowerks write pretty damn shitty buggy compilers though (take a look at their changelists some time). Why would anyone want to buy them?
Information theory is exactly what I'm talking about
Kind of a stupid argument then, really, isn't it.
You can't say "literature is covered by information theory, therefore it has no value".
That's just a lame way to dodge the argument.
The content of a book has information value precisely because (and only to the extent that) it can't be generated automatically from something else. If it could, we'd only need to pass that "something else" around instead.
So you agree that it has value? Interesting departure from your stance.
A couple decades ago, you could've said the same thing about RMS. "Developing software and giving the code away for free? There's no money in that. It'll never take off."
The difference being that you're claiming that the work should be free, whereas he's choosing to make his work free. Big difference there. Not subtle at all.
Sometimes a word has multiple definitions and related terms, you know. Try reading past the first one; you'll find it makes your dictionary a lot more useful.
An encoding of data as symbols or impulses? Sure, that's straight out of Shannon - but only in terms of information theory and entropy. It's not talking about the same thing.
BTW: picking the definition which fits your case is not the same as having a solid argument. If you'd like to provide a dictionary definition which matches yours, and explain why, feel free.
I defy you to come up with an algorithmic way of generating the theory of relativity given a database of mathemetical symbols and physics terms.
It's a physical fundamental fact about the universe. It was discovered - not invented. Books are not discovered.
In fact, I also defy you to come up with an algorithmic way of generating a correct listing of telephone numbers, given only a list of names and digits and the format of a valid North American phone number.
I can do it easier than that - I can just dump the database from the phone company's exchanges.
The fact that a particular piece of information took great effort to produce (or discover) does not mean it isn't information, or that the person who expended the effort should be crowned King Of That Information and allowed to dictate who may use or share it. Information is information, no matter where it came from, and it cannot be owned.
Nearly the whole world disagrees with you. And has for several hundred years.
Information, by the way, means "facts or knowledge provided or learned". A novel or other work of literature is not "facts or knowledge provided or learned". It may contain facts or knowledge, provided or learned, but it is not solely that.
The content of a book, on the other hand, is information--not in the sense of dry facts like a phone book, but in the philosophical sense, the one we know from the phrase "information technology". A book's content can be described by a sequence of numbers, and sending those numbers to someone is equivalent to giving them a copy of the book. But a sequence of numbers is not property.
However, here's the problem:
Information - as in dry facts like telephone numbers - should be free. They're raw facts, axioms, indivisible units of information. Like words in a dictionary.
Now, while you can indeed encode a book as numbers, I defy anyone to come up with an algorithmic way of generating the contents of that exact book, given a dictionary of words inside it.
That's why *that* information shouldn't be free - it's not some random collection of words. It has structure, which took great effort on the part of the author to impose. It's no longer just words on a page - it is more than the sum of its parts.
Ideas and information will never be "property", no matter how long people who have something to gain from restricting them keep repeating the mantra intellectual property, intellectual property...
Books aren't just ideas and information. They're more than that.
You'd be right if you were talking about a telephone book.
When was the last time you read a tiny little bit of code, a really small function that did just one lousy little thing, but not only it did the job, but it took you a split second to figure out what the hell the programmer was thinking when he/she wrote it? That's art.
No, it's a puzzle or a riddle. If it's elegant, clean, and crafty, that's art.
If it's just hacky for the sake of it, it's either a puzzle, or it's the programmer publicly masturbating.
One of the two anyway...
Has been available in windows since 2000 (perhaps earlier, I don't know). It's just that a lot of windows developers don't take "advantage" of it. It also consumes a lot of cpu to us the transparency in "neat" ways.
Windows 98 Second Edition... possibly Windows 98.
If you read the post, that is EXACTLY what I stated
Not quite. Your "if requested" part was redundant.
Shouldn't this read "you're not entitled to their work without fair compensation if it is requested"? Are we making it wrong unintentionally to download freeware/open source, and independent artist with this statement?
No.
Fair compensation is compensation that the seller/owner of the work decides is fair. Not what you decide. And if that person decides that zero is fair, you get it for zero.
I'm not trying to argue that all IP should be free; I'm just pointing out how much the entitlemeht attitude of people nowadays is annoying. I'm sure many /.ers will agree.
People tend to get pretty loud when the rights they are entitled to are trampled on.
Like, you know, the rights provided to them by law. The other people tread on because they're too lazy / selfish / ignorant / criminally minded to follow them. What kind of response do you expect?
Is this too late? I mean blogger is already the place to do blogging for 90% of all blogs out there. RSS is already very well defined and there are literally hundreds of apps that spit out RSS. Will microsoft's enhancements be doomed to second place? I would think even the most agressive "embrace and extend" campaign would fail here. Of course you can't fault them for trying!
Blogger doesn't use RSS. It uses Atom.
My Mac? Drop the CD/DVD in, hold down C, click install, and I'm done. Ahh .... simple. Linux? Same thing, boot the disc, walk through the install dialog, and we're happy. Debian based? apt-get upgrade the entire thing without even a CD. Heck, even Solaris installs and assumes it's legit and doesn't mind. (This was before the whole it's free for you and open now too thing)
Mac OS X - they're selling you the hardware. Selling you another OS is just skimming money off the top where they can - they already got most of your cash for the machine.
Linux? It's a free as in beer OS. Why would you need a key or registration?
Windows? They don't sell you hardware. They only sell you software. That's where their money comes from - they're going to protect it.
Unless Microsoft start selling PCs themselves, and write an OS that only runs on their systems, don't expect it to change any time soon.
Now go back and kiss Ranum's ass some more. You missed a spot.
Who's Ranum?
ANd no, it's not a badge of honor, or a term of distinction any more. Whether you like it or not.
The meaning of the word has changed. The usage you're trying to cling to is archaic. But hey, whatever makes you gay*, go for it.
Si
*Think about it some more before you post.
It is NOT "hackers" causing all those problems with the internets that Dumbfuck McCumstain so laments. (Yes, I AM being really insulting and offensive to Marcus Ranum! He's been really insulting and offensive towards me and my fellow hackers.)
It is thieves and vandals causing all those problems.
Hackers invented the micro/home/personal computer. Hackers invented the diverse protocols that allowed these machines to talk to one another. Hackers invented the operating systems. Hackers invented the Internet. A hacker invented the World Wide Web.
Thieves and vandals merely took advantage of what hackers have invented and shared with the world. Took advantage and turned these tools to an evil purpose. Not hackers, THIEVES & VANDALS!
The language changed some time around the early to mid eighties, when Hackers became synonymous with Crackers.
If you can't handle a 20 year old change to the English language, you shouldn't be allowed near computers. Unless you're only planning on programming in Cobol.
Get over it.
Well exactly - they have the choice of either compling with the Chinese govt's wishes and censoring content that the regime doesn't like or giving up a potentially very lucrative market to their competitors. Would Microsoft do that? It appears not
Er... it has nothing to do with market. If you don't do what the Chinese government tells you to do, your international office there has its employees arrested.
This has happened before when there have been localization snafus / maps which aren't politically correct / etc. The Chinese police go around, arrest all of the directors of Microsoft China, and don't let them out until it's changed. Last happened in 1998, to my knowledge.
Thank you for wasting more than a half hour of my life. I reconnected a Win98 box that was on its way out, opened notepad and the MS-DOS Prompt. I typed and selected text in notepad with ^C then tried pasting it into the DOS Prompt with right-click and ^V: nothing. Right-clicking in the prompt window does nothing. I did ^V in notepad, and the text was copied in again. I'm not responding to any more bogus "Oh, yeah, it works, try it" trolls.
Alt+Space, Edit, Paste.
Or click on the icon in the titlebar, then select the appropriate options.
You need to remember that Windows uses a GUI CLI, which can accept mouse input, but most apps don't use it, so it's not on a normal context menu - it's on the system menu. That, and Ctrl+C to copy causes problems on some unix systems - it'll cancel your session.
You can't paste something copied from somewhere else in the Windows world (clipboard), or vice versa. Right-click is natural for *nix users, it's the first thing tried to paste. I haven't tried it since Win98, nor do I want to. Next.
Yes you can, and you always have been able to. Try it and see. Unless you're talking about bitmaps, in which case the problem isn't in Windows, but in the chair sitting in front of it.