The point of course is that if you base your product around a closed source item, when the company that provides the item either discontinues that item or the company goes under, you are unable to provide support for your own product.
It doesn't necessarily mean that open source is the only option. Windows CE (god forbid) can be an option as well AS LONG AS Microsoft provides GM with both the source code, build utilities, and most importantly, the LICENSE that allows GM to fix and modify and support their installations of Windows CE without needing Microsoft at all.
There are MANY hardware products out there that have been killed because of software issues like this.
What about the case a few years ago in Texas where the lost japanese student was trying to find his way to the halloween party, rings the doorbell of a neighbour, and gets shot. The person who shot him was cleared of any wrong doing, right?
--jeff++
Re:Wouldn't this be patenting the alphabet?
on
Palm Kills Off Graffiti
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
But.... Wouldn't JOT, when recognizing the letter O, be in violation of the patent as well? The letter O is a uni-stroke!
I agree with all your points. However I have found debug logging more useful than debuggers on a few occasions. Specifically, to trace the actions of code during a hardware interrupt routine. In this case, a debugger doesn't cut it and if you want something better than prints then you have to get a hadware cpu emulator hooked up - Or a cpu with a JTAG interface.
Of course, I'm not speaking of normal prints here, I devised a priority level logging system that was efficient enough to call during an ISR, and then only when a specific trigger condition was encountered.
However, being involved in porting linux 2.4.20 to a custom powerpc board made me REALLY appreciate the power of the JTAG interface connected to a gdb running remotely to do source level debugging of the kernel!
I for one care more about the content of the video than I do for the image quality. There are surprisingly few TV shows worth watching. Making the image better doesn't change that. I'd rather go out for a walk than watch HDTV.
The biggest reason why I hate embedded movies on a website is that I can not select 'Double Size' for the movie. Those movies are very tiny with my preferred resolution and I hate having to change my monitor resolution just to watch a movie in a web page.
I end up sifting through the html and javascript and grabbing the raw url anyways.
A suspected Internet Terrorist Hacker has been arrested yesterday as he was photographing potential terrorists targets. He was postinng messages to the hacker website called 'slashdot' and distributing photos of previous targets such as http://derekarnold.net/archives/00000048.php and http://derekarnold.net/archives/00000045.php - He goes by the name of a very popular destructive computer virus W32.Klez.H
When he was detained he said 'I did not do any crime', but under the USA PATRIOT law he will be held for interrogation without a lawyer or a court hearing until he confesses the names of his fellow terrorist cell contacts.
W32.Klez.H was caught because of the new Total Information Awareness program which monitors internet activity for suspicious content 24 hours a day.
This is a win for America and the USA PATRIOT law as the FBI has successfully used this law to pre-emptively stop a terrorist attack in the future.
Microsoft may prohibit self-modifying code and code on the stack. You don't get any performance gain with either technique any more, since processors went superscalar.
Detours intercepts Win32 functions by re-writing target function images....
These tools, which are only useful because of the closed-source nature of Win32 systems and their apps, is a Microsoft recommended way of extending API's and applications. Microsoft themselves do this to their own systems - Self Modifying code! And it isn't going to change very soon.
Clue: With Windows it is effectively
unlimited. With Linux, it is measured in
microseconds. With Mach it is measured in
milliseconds.
Actually, no. Win 2000 can schedule a real time thread in kernel space, triggered by a hardware interrupt, much faster than the current stock linux kernels can.
With RTLinux, Low-Latency Linux, and the O(1) linux scheduler patches, linux becomes usable for hard-real-time uses. Without them, it is not! Real-time is what I do, and until these patches came out, Linux was very dissapointed for people wanting to use Linux in embedded systems.
Not only that, the Kurds that Saddam gassed were fundamentalist muslims that are now in full support of Osama Bin Laden!!! We dropped bombs on supporters of Bin Laden in Afghanistan. What's the difference?
It's time that the Lisp people admit to themselves that they lost and move on.
Actually, the reverse is true, my friend.
XML and XSLT are dirty tricks made by bitter lispers on the rest of the computer world! XML is just a way to do "LISP sexps" in a worse syntax. Everyone accepted it because it looked kinda like HTML! They were tricked!
It is trivial to make a program that converts XML to and from LISP sexps.
Quite often it is very worthwhile to convert the XML to sexps, do your processing algorithm in lisp, and convert the resulting sexps back into XML.
Hey, you should count your lucky stars! The last thing you want is for this guy to be actually interacting with a computer! Then you'd probably be stuck trying to teach him. Some people ought not to use computers!!!!
A few sound designers for live theatre that I know would play back a sample of a cell phone ringing over the P.A. System, 15 minutes before curtain. It helps trigger people to remember to shut off their OWN cell phone. And it works, too.
Interesting... But your analogy does not work very well because there IS 'software/firmware' involved in the Hard Disk, the Bios, and the Video Card. I would suggest that the engineering and investment costs required to design the Pentium 3 etc and the hard disk drives now, are MUCH larger than the engineering and investment costs required to design the office suite software.
So is it just a case of te office suite software being overpriced? Or is it that the office suite software must be priced high because of the lower volume?
No I did NOT imply that Cocoa can't handle a complex GUI application! My comment was not ridiculous! I have found that most applications are often eventually desired to be easily portable to other platforms. Hence the suggestion - Write the core code in a portable c++ library, and do the simple gui on Cocoa. Then for windows, use the same c++ core code library and a win32 gui. For linux, use the same c++ core code library and a gtk or qt gui.
Most applications that I have written have been requested for platforms other than I wrote them for. Either write your code with a portable gui toolkit, or cleanly seperate your core code from the gui so you can port the application easier!
Slashdot Mirror
I dont understand the other replies to your post.
The point of course is that if you base your product around a closed source item, when the company that provides the item either discontinues that item or the company goes under, you are unable to provide support for your own product.
It doesn't necessarily mean that open source is the only option. Windows CE (god forbid) can be an option as well AS LONG AS Microsoft provides GM with both the source code, build utilities, and most importantly, the LICENSE that allows GM to fix and modify and support their installations of Windows CE without needing Microsoft at all.
There are MANY hardware products out there that have been killed because of software issues like this.
--jeff++
Hey! I saw Rollins on Jan 11th! Henry rocks, and he always has very interesting things to say. Too bad more people don't listen.
--jeff++
What about the case a few years ago in Texas where the lost japanese student was trying to find his way to the halloween party, rings the doorbell of a neighbour, and gets shot. The person who shot him was cleared of any wrong doing, right?
--jeff++
But.... Wouldn't JOT, when recognizing the letter O, be in violation of the patent as well? The letter O is a uni-stroke!
--jeff++
I agree with all your points. However I have found debug logging more useful than debuggers on a few occasions. Specifically, to trace the actions of code during a hardware interrupt routine. In this case, a debugger doesn't cut it and if you want something better than prints then you have to get a hadware cpu emulator hooked up - Or a cpu with a JTAG interface.
Of course, I'm not speaking of normal prints here, I devised a priority level logging system that was efficient enough to call during an ISR, and then only when a specific trigger condition was encountered.
However, being involved in porting linux 2.4.20 to a custom powerpc board made me REALLY appreciate the power of the JTAG interface connected to a gdb running remotely to do source level debugging of the kernel!
--jeff++
The leaders of the free world would not do that! ... right?
I for one care more about the content of the video than I do for the image quality. There are surprisingly few TV shows worth watching. Making the image better doesn't change that. I'd rather go out for a walk than watch HDTV.
--jeff++
I swear that the U.S. is becoming more and more Communist every day. In a free market society, the government would not do this.
--jeff++
Unfortunately too true. However you forgot about the porn surfing as well.
Long ago, the Internet was widely believed to be the bringer of new social change and freedom to the world.
Anyone who still believes this now is misguided.
--jeff++
The biggest reason why I hate embedded movies on a website is that I can not select 'Double Size' for the movie. Those movies are very tiny with my preferred resolution and I hate having to change my monitor resolution just to watch a movie in a web page.
I end up sifting through the html and javascript and grabbing the raw url anyways.
Oh well,
--jeff++
Cool information.... But isn't it usually sufficient (and easier) to just stick squid in front of the web server?
--jeff++
The Raelians are even more fun than that.
l
Ask your fellow Raelian about 'Sensual Meditation'.
See: http://www.gospelcom.net/apologeticsindex/r12.htm
Have orgies while thinking about Jesus as an Alien.
--jeff++
Also see AirSnort:
http://airsnort.shmoo.com/
--jeff++
It was not a waste of effort, as primarily the patches done were done to improve gcj and classpath.
--jeff++
Coming up on CNN.com:
A suspected Internet Terrorist Hacker has been arrested yesterday as he was photographing potential terrorists targets. He was postinng messages to the hacker website called 'slashdot' and distributing photos of previous targets such as http://derekarnold.net/archives/00000048.php and http://derekarnold.net/archives/00000045.php - He goes by the name of a very popular destructive computer virus W32.Klez.H
When he was detained he said 'I did not do any crime', but under the USA PATRIOT law he will be held for interrogation without a lawyer or a court hearing until he confesses the names of his fellow terrorist cell contacts.
W32.Klez.H was caught because of the new Total Information Awareness program which monitors internet activity for suspicious content 24 hours a day.
This is a win for America and the USA PATRIOT law as the FBI has successfully used this law to pre-emptively stop a terrorist attack in the future.
Unfortunately, not very likely. From :
Microsoft Research's Detours Library:
These tools, which are only useful because of the closed-source nature of Win32 systems and their apps, is a Microsoft recommended way of extending API's and applications. Microsoft themselves do this to their own systems - Self Modifying code! And it isn't going to change very soon.
Who woulda thunk it? (ha ha)
--jeff++
Actually, no. Win 2000 can schedule a real time thread in kernel space, triggered by a hardware interrupt, much faster than the current stock linux kernels can.
With RTLinux, Low-Latency Linux, and the O(1) linux scheduler patches, linux becomes usable for hard-real-time uses. Without them, it is not! Real-time is what I do, and until these patches came out, Linux was very dissapointed for people wanting to use Linux in embedded systems.
--jeff++
Not only that, the Kurds that Saddam gassed were fundamentalist muslims that are now in full support of Osama Bin Laden!!! We dropped bombs on supporters of Bin Laden in Afghanistan. What's the difference?
--jeff++
Actually, the reverse is true, my friend.
XML and XSLT are dirty tricks made by bitter lispers on the rest of the computer world! XML is just a way to do "LISP sexps" in a worse syntax. Everyone accepted it because it looked kinda like HTML! They were tricked!
It is trivial to make a program that converts XML to and from LISP sexps.
Quite often it is very worthwhile to convert the XML to sexps, do your processing algorithm in lisp, and convert the resulting sexps back into XML.
--jeff++
Hey, you should count your lucky stars! The last thing you want is for this guy to be actually interacting with a computer! Then you'd probably be stuck trying to teach him. Some people ought not to use computers!!!!
--jeff++
A few sound designers for live theatre that I know would play back a sample of a cell phone ringing over the P.A. System, 15 minutes before curtain. It helps trigger people to remember to shut off their OWN cell phone. And it works, too.
--jeff++
Interesting... But your analogy does not work very well because there IS 'software/firmware' involved in the Hard Disk, the Bios, and the Video Card. I would suggest that the engineering and investment costs required to design the Pentium 3 etc and the hard disk drives now, are MUCH larger than the engineering and investment costs required to design the office suite software.
So is it just a case of te office suite software being overpriced? Or is it that the office suite software must be priced high because of the lower volume?
Does anyone know?
--jeff++
Yeah, my original message wasn't that clear! Sorry.
--jeff++
No I did NOT imply that Cocoa can't handle a complex GUI application! My comment was not ridiculous! I have found that most applications are often eventually desired to be easily portable to other platforms. Hence the suggestion - Write the core code in a portable c++ library, and do the simple gui on Cocoa. Then for windows, use the same c++ core code library and a win32 gui. For linux, use the same c++ core code library and a gtk or qt gui.
Most applications that I have written have been requested for platforms other than I wrote them for. Either write your code with a portable gui toolkit, or cleanly seperate your core code from the gui so you can port the application easier!
--jeff++
Thanks for the info, that is very useful to know.
--jeff++