my peg leg is bigger then yours, my parrot knows twice as many songs as yours (he learned them from mp3s), and *my* eye patch is jewel encrusted. Please don't use the world pirate as a noun or a verb to describe copying bits. Seriously -- when you use this bullshit terminology -- "they" have already won the first battle.
How about criminal then?
As in "he is a criminal, because he copies and utilizes other people's intellectual property without their permission, and in direct violation of the law".
There should be a standard byte-compiled representation of XML (CXML), which has been flattened into an easily readable data structure. It would be portable, with byte orders indicated in flags (or would just use network byte order, i.e., big-endian), and with fixed-length element start/end headers, and could be used in lieu of XML for machine-machine communications. If a human wants to inspect the data, XCML could be trivially converted to and from XML.
If a good piece of code is art, then a well-designed toilet or well-engineered automobile is art. A building is art. A circuit diagram is art. Tell me, where does this madness end?!
Oh, it comes full circle, back to those artists who think that splattering paint on paper is art, or that a solitary brick in the middle of a room is a sculpture.
Yes, a well designed toilet may be art. The well engineered car may be art. A building may be artistic (if you don't believe me, check out the Experience Music Project in Seattle -- personally, it's not my idea of good art, but there you go). A circuit diagram is indeed art.
The madness ends when you realize that art is all about evoking sensation and emotion in the viewer.
If you are the sole producer for flour in the country, or are colluding with the Big 3 flour producers to hold the price artifically high by refusing to compete, then you are not permitting market forces to work and you (used to) run afoul of antitrust laws.
My argument is actually that you can't perfectly apply this model to copyrighted material because it is a sanctioned monopoly on the material. That's it. Anything else that you get out of these comments about my attitude towards whether or not this is appropriate is an assumption
What kind of different model would you suggest?
Of course the copyright holder has a monopoly on the material! They created it. No one else could have created that same thing. Allowing other people to copy it without them getting something in return completely invalidates the time and work they spend doing it.
How big is the statically liked dir command? Oops, I forgot, dir is part of cmd.exe. How big was the statically linked cmd.exe that you ran on your Tivo? You are comparing apples to apples, aren't you?
CMD.exe is 375kb long. It includes all of the support for batch scripting, as well as the DIR command, plus all of the help text for every single one of those commands, specifically about 60kb of text.
So... you were saying? CMD.exe is about the same size, yet it does a phenomenal amount more.
Why the hell would you statically link your build of 'ls'? Maybe if you were building a rescue disk or something, but even then, I'm sure you could turn things off and trim the fat. If you don't statically link, the executable is only 48k. 'ls' has lot's of options that can be quite usefull. If you don't want the features, just use '/bin/echo'.
Heck, don't ask me; that's the version I downloaded to run on my TiVo (I didn't fancy setting up a cross compiler).
On the Mac OS, when specifying the apps to be used as http/ftp/mailto/etc. helpers, literally *any* app can be specified, just by browsing to it. And yet, now Microsoft is saying that you have to use their APIs to register as a helper, but they've said nothing about how you get access to the documentation for those APIs!
Yes, and the same applies today under Windows. Microsoft are talking about adding ANOTHER layer to make it easier for people who don't know what mailto or MIME types or helper apps actually are, which will do the registration step you describe above automatically.
Otherwise, you have three choices: (1) do it by hand, (2) hope that your app asks you every time you run it whether you want it to be the default or not, or (3) reinstall the app every time you want to make it the default.
Did anyone think that the digital videotaping produced flat images that were very soft? It's especially noticeable on their faces. Real film has a harder, more realistic edge.
AND...
Jagged aliasing in some scenes. Color aberrations in others (the sound of music bit). Yep, everything was in soft focus. He had no choice; it was that or show pixels. Still doesn't make it right though. Oh, and pixellation in the moving-water scene. And pixellation/really nasty aliasing in the scene with the monster with the moustache. Watch the moustache. It twinkles.
Until they start making digital cameras which either have a resolution of about 256 times the current ones, or move away from a grid pixel layout, these problems are going to be there.
Netscape. Whether they started from scratch or not is irrelevant; it means that they had a whole boatload of signposts and maps with which to plot their course - they didn't have to forge ahead on their own.
I should also point out that the system has been "strip searched";-) for error sources. Even swapped the power supply and installed an UPS with surge protection (summer's coming up here, so a good idea anyway) in desparation... I suppose there's some bad interaction with the BIOS - but all one can do is send in those crash dumps (I always do) and wait for them to get it right - if Windows was Open Source, I could at least find out what the cause is on this system. (I have some 20 years experience now of software engineering, so yes, I could do that).
Well, what does the crash dump look like? What is the stop code? At the very least, you can see which drivers are in the chain, which should give you a good idea of what's going wrong.
I should know, on one system I've been running Windows XP on AMD Athlon XP for six months, and it crashes often. This is supposed to be Microsofts most reliable operating system... yeah right. At least you could start using Windows 3.1 before it crashed, at least most of the time.:-)
Hmmm... check your memory, and check that your BIOS is the latest - including all of your motherboard chipset drivers.
I've been running Windows XP on an AMD Athlon 1.4Ghz since July (possibly August?) 2001, and it has been running perfectly fine.
Nope, if Microsoft would have acted on those ideas, they would have done something like promise to provide support in Windows for AMD's 64-bit architecture instead of a comparable Intel architecture. [theregister.co.uk]
Microsoft already have an IA64 version of Windows available. So... what exactly AREN'T Microsoft doing for Intel in your example?
So you don't mind if we refer to Microsoft as the evil empire, a convicted monopolist or any other derogatory but true term as long as it's correctly spelt? So what new term are you going to coin to replace M$ then? Personally I think it's a very good way of summing up their corporate strategy.;o)
That may well be the case. But it was old when it was Compu$erve getting the '$ in the name' treatment, and it's still old now.
I don't think that was a good move. They had evidence that could have possibly proven Bill G. lied in court and that Windows could be made modular. Any attack would have been better than no attack at all.
Possibly, just possibly, the States realized that they were flat out wrong. Ever considered that as a possibility?
Yeah, it really sucks having to pay for convenience, doesn't it? Everything should be free (beer) and handy and no company should ever prevent you from misusing a service they offer just because they have a right to.
Personally, I subscribe to Safari, and I think it's great. I recognize that the 5 (maybe when you subscribed it was only 3, but now the bottom subscription level is 5) book limit and the "you can only change books once a month" provision and the anti-spidering technology was all to protect O'Reilly's considerable investment in their books and yet still allow me the convenience of reading and searching a selection of their books online.
But yeah, it really sucks when a company tries hard to both cater to internet geeks *and* protect their investments. They should just post all their books online for free and allow me to write everything to my hard drive so I don't have to pay anymore.
You're not paying for convenience.
Since when did you fill your bookshelf with books that expired after a month. Or that you had to pay for continuously?
Just sell me the E-Book version. ONCE. That's all I ask. Embed my name and address in there if you want; just let me buy the book as a file.
Preferably, for the same price as the physical book, minus cost of printing / distribution / retailer markup.
Well, if you want to reason by platitude, I respond by saying that just because an idea is old and established doesn't make it wrong or irrelevant.
There's a real difference between the operating system and the apps. The typical (modern!) engineer is going to say that boundary is somewhere between the kernel/system services and the apps you run. I don't think anyone would consider a media player or web browser a system service or part of the kernel.
It's totally separable, they should be kept separate for a variety of reasons, and Microsoft knows it can be done. Yeah umpteen apps can and should depend on helper dynamically linked helper libraries that aren't really part of the OS. It's perfectly reasonable to embed COM services exposed by another app. That still doesn't make the COM server a part of the OS, just a dependency of your app.
Yes, it is totally separable. The thing is, in the case of Internet Explorer, once you divorce the libraries from the 'app', you get a 64kb wrapper application that does nothing more than set up a few menus and toolbars on the screen.
Similarly (but less so) with Windows Media Player -- once you get rid of the libraries, you're left with some visualization stuff (sound-to-light displays), and 70% of the UI. Everything else is system components.
Flip through a computer science text book on operating systems some time, and see if it says anything about Media Players, Internet Browsers, Solitaire Games, etc
Just because you read it in a textbook, doesn't mean it's right.
By the Computer Science definition, the BIOS on your computer is an OS.
Is it enough to do all the things you want to with a computer? No? Then if an OS isn't sufficient, what do you actually need?
A bigger OS? But an OS is only supposed to support the HARDWARE!
Maybe if you extended the definition of an OS the other way, you might get somewhere:
An Operating System is a piece of software which provides applications with guaranteed interfaces to the hardware of the system and provides applications with support functionality.
Surely this makes a lot more sense?
Stop using the 60's definition of an OS. It is no longer relevant.
That's not the stupid example on his part. The Really Stupid Example is that we all CAN have the specs on a ford engine. Just go to the dealership and buy one. Then take it apart, while modeling every piece.
You can do that with Windows too. Machine code *is* readable by humans you know.
Slashdot Mirror
my peg leg is bigger then yours, my parrot knows twice as many songs as yours (he learned them from mp3s), and *my* eye patch is jewel encrusted.
Please don't use the world pirate as a noun or a verb to describe copying bits. Seriously -- when you use this bullshit terminology -- "they" have already won the first battle.
How about criminal then?
As in "he is a criminal, because he copies and utilizes other people's intellectual property without their permission, and in direct violation of the law".
Simon
Some of us might even prefer to use a positive term such as ``sharing information with your neighbor.''
Redacted for accuracy:
"Sharing someone else's legal intellectual property with someone who doesn't have the right to use it, therefore breaking the law"
Simon
There should be a standard byte-compiled representation of XML (CXML), which has been flattened into an easily readable data structure. It would be portable, with byte orders indicated in flags (or would just use network byte order, i.e., big-endian), and with fixed-length element start/end headers, and could be used in lieu of XML for machine-machine communications. If a human wants to inspect the data, XCML could be trivially converted to and from XML.
There is one. It's called ASN.1
Simon
If a good piece of code is art, then a well-designed toilet or well-engineered automobile is art. A building is art. A circuit diagram is art.
Tell me, where does this madness end?!
Oh, it comes full circle, back to those artists who think that splattering paint on paper is art, or that a solitary brick in the middle of a room is a sculpture.
Yes, a well designed toilet may be art. The well engineered car may be art. A building may be artistic (if you don't believe me, check out the Experience Music Project in Seattle -- personally, it's not my idea of good art, but there you go). A circuit diagram is indeed art.
The madness ends when you realize that art is all about evoking sensation and emotion in the viewer.
Simon
If you are the sole producer for flour in the country, or are colluding with the Big 3 flour producers to hold the price artifically high by refusing to compete, then you are not permitting market forces to work and you (used to) run afoul of antitrust laws.
My argument is actually that you can't perfectly apply this model to copyrighted material because it is a sanctioned monopoly on the material. That's it. Anything else that you get out of these comments about my attitude towards whether or not this is appropriate is an assumption
What kind of different model would you suggest?
Of course the copyright holder has a monopoly on the material! They created it. No one else could have created that same thing. Allowing other people to copy it without them getting something in return completely invalidates the time and work they spend doing it.
Simon
How big is the statically liked dir command? Oops, I forgot, dir is part of cmd.exe. How big was the statically linked cmd.exe that you ran on your Tivo? You are comparing apples to apples, aren't you?
CMD.exe is 375kb long. It includes all of the support for batch scripting, as well as the DIR command, plus all of the help text for every single one of those commands, specifically about 60kb of text.
So... you were saying? CMD.exe is about the same size, yet it does a phenomenal amount more.
Simon
Why the hell would you statically link your build of 'ls'? Maybe if you were building a rescue disk or something, but even then, I'm sure you could turn things off and trim the fat. If you don't statically link, the executable is only 48k. 'ls' has lot's of options that can be quite usefull. If you don't want the features, just use '/bin/echo'.
Heck, don't ask me; that's the version I downloaded to run on my TiVo (I didn't fancy setting up a cross compiler).
Simon
How fax machines work
Hmm. Its only a one bit ADC but I guess thats true.
Uncompressed printout to Compressed digital fax data to Analog phone signal to Compressed digital fax data to uncompressed printout.
Note the Analog Phone Signal to Compressed Digital Fax Data stage. That's an ADC.
Simon
On the Mac OS, when specifying the apps to be used as http/ftp/mailto/etc. helpers, literally *any* app can be specified, just by browsing to it. And yet, now Microsoft is saying that you have to use their APIs to register as a helper, but they've said nothing about how you get access to the documentation for those APIs!
Yes, and the same applies today under Windows. Microsoft are talking about adding ANOTHER layer to make it easier for people who don't know what mailto or MIME types or helper apps actually are, which will do the registration step you describe above automatically.
Otherwise, you have three choices: (1) do it by hand, (2) hope that your app asks you every time you run it whether you want it to be the default or not, or (3) reinstall the app every time you want to make it the default.
Pick one.
Simon
So, in an effort to make windows more modifiable, they add more bloated software?
Hey, if you want to see bloated, statically link LS to glibc. 314kb for a directory lister? Give me a frickken break.
Simon
Did anyone think that the digital videotaping produced flat images that were very soft? It's especially noticeable on their faces. Real film has a harder, more realistic edge.
AND...
Jagged aliasing in some scenes.
Color aberrations in others (the sound of music bit).
Yep, everything was in soft focus. He had no choice; it was that or show pixels. Still doesn't make it right though.
Oh, and pixellation in the moving-water scene.
And pixellation/really nasty aliasing in the scene with the monster with the moustache. Watch the moustache. It twinkles.
Until they start making digital cameras which either have a resolution of about 256 times the current ones, or move away from a grid pixel layout, these problems are going to be there.
*sigh*
Simon
Simon
And which existing codebase would that be?
Netscape. Whether they started from scratch or not is irrelevant; it means that they had a whole boatload of signposts and maps with which to plot their course - they didn't have to forge ahead on their own.
Simon
Not that this affects me at all as I only use mozilla now.
... which has been in progress for the last 4 years, with an existing codebase to work from, and still isn't officially at a 1.0 RTM release.
Simon
The AREN'T NOT making a version of windows for AMD. Isn't this rather obvious? Did you even read ANYTHING about the trial?
Yeah, but isn't that a good thing for everyone?
Where's the problem here?
I should also point out that the system has been "strip searched" ;-) for error sources. Even swapped the power supply and installed an UPS with surge protection (summer's coming up here, so a good idea anyway) in desparation... I suppose there's some bad interaction with the BIOS - but all one can do is send in those crash dumps (I always do) and wait for them to get it right - if Windows was Open Source, I could at least find out what the cause is on this system. (I have some 20 years experience now of software engineering, so yes, I could do that).
Well, what does the crash dump look like? What is the stop code? At the very least, you can see which drivers are in the chain, which should give you a good idea of what's going wrong.
I should know, on one system I've been running Windows XP on AMD Athlon XP for six months, and it crashes often. This is supposed to be Microsofts most reliable operating system... yeah right. At least you could start using Windows 3.1 before it crashed, at least most of the time. :-)
Hmmm... check your memory, and check that your BIOS is the latest - including all of your motherboard chipset drivers.
I've been running Windows XP on an AMD Athlon 1.4Ghz since July (possibly August?) 2001, and it has been running perfectly fine.
Simon
Nope, if Microsoft would have acted on those ideas, they would have done something like promise to provide support in Windows for AMD's 64-bit architecture instead of a comparable Intel architecture. [theregister.co.uk]
Microsoft already have an IA64 version of Windows available. So... what exactly AREN'T Microsoft doing for Intel in your example?
Simon
Well seeing as I was born in 1980 and lived in the U.K. that'll be why!
:)
I was born in 1975 in the UK, and stayed there until 1997. Then I moved to the US
The first time I've seen Compuserve written like that is by you - mind you I don't often see the word Compuserve at all!
Well, it was really common in the late 80s, early 90s. *grins*
Si
So you don't mind if we refer to Microsoft as the evil empire, a convicted monopolist or any other derogatory but true term as long as it's correctly spelt? So what new term are you going to coin to replace M$ then? Personally I think it's a very good way of summing up their corporate strategy. ;o)
That may well be the case. But it was old when it was Compu$erve getting the '$ in the name' treatment, and it's still old now.
I don't think that was a good move. They had evidence that could have possibly proven Bill G. lied in court and that Windows could be made modular. Any attack would have been better than no attack at all.
Possibly, just possibly, the States realized that they were flat out wrong. Ever considered that as a possibility?
Simon
Yeah, it really sucks having to pay for convenience, doesn't it? Everything should be free (beer) and handy and no company should ever prevent you from misusing a service they offer just because they have a right to.
Personally, I subscribe to Safari, and I think it's great. I recognize that the 5 (maybe when you subscribed it was only 3, but now the bottom subscription level is 5) book limit and the "you can only change books once a month" provision and the anti-spidering technology was all to protect O'Reilly's considerable investment in their books and yet still allow me the convenience of reading and searching a selection of their books online.
But yeah, it really sucks when a company tries hard to both cater to internet geeks *and* protect their investments. They should just post all their books online for free and allow me to write everything to my hard drive so I don't have to pay anymore.
You're not paying for convenience.
Since when did you fill your bookshelf with books that expired after a month. Or that you had to pay for continuously?
Just sell me the E-Book version. ONCE. That's all I ask. Embed my name and address in there if you want; just let me buy the book as a file.
Preferably, for the same price as the physical book, minus cost of printing / distribution / retailer markup.
Simon
Well, if you want to reason by platitude, I respond by saying that just because an idea is old and established doesn't make it wrong or irrelevant.
There's a real difference between the operating system and the apps. The typical (modern!) engineer is going to say that boundary is somewhere between the kernel/system services and the apps you run. I don't think anyone would consider a media player or web browser a system service or part of the kernel.
It's totally separable, they should be kept separate for a variety of reasons, and Microsoft knows it can be done. Yeah umpteen apps can and should depend on helper dynamically linked helper libraries that aren't really part of the OS. It's perfectly reasonable to embed COM services exposed by another app. That still doesn't make the COM server a part of the OS, just a dependency of your app.
Yes, it is totally separable. The thing is, in the case of Internet Explorer, once you divorce the libraries from the 'app', you get a 64kb wrapper application that does nothing more than set up a few menus and toolbars on the screen.
Similarly (but less so) with Windows Media Player -- once you get rid of the libraries, you're left with some visualization stuff (sound-to-light displays), and 70% of the UI. Everything else is system components.
So where do you draw that line?
Simon
Flip through a computer science text book on operating systems some time, and see if it says anything about Media Players, Internet Browsers, Solitaire Games, etc
Just because you read it in a textbook, doesn't mean it's right.
By the Computer Science definition, the BIOS on your computer is an OS.
Is it enough to do all the things you want to with a computer? No? Then if an OS isn't sufficient, what do you actually need?
A bigger OS? But an OS is only supposed to support the HARDWARE!
Maybe if you extended the definition of an OS the other way, you might get somewhere:
An Operating System is a piece of software which provides applications with guaranteed interfaces to the hardware of the system and provides applications with support functionality.
Surely this makes a lot more sense?
Stop using the 60's definition of an OS. It is no longer relevant.
Simon
That's not the stupid example on his part. The Really Stupid Example is that we all CAN have the specs on a ford engine. Just go to the dealership and buy one. Then take it apart, while modeling every piece.
You can do that with Windows too. Machine code *is* readable by humans you know.
It will just take you a Very Long Time.
Simon