I can just see flocks of PHBs reading this, and mandating a conversion of their JavaScript to SQL, because JS is going out while SQL is holding steady.
I wonder how many readers here will understand all the things that are wrong with this ranking.
It's also amusing that Fortran, Cobol and RPG still make a top-20 list.
(Who was it that said "We don't know what programming language we'll be using 50 years from now, but we know it'll be called Fortran"?)
and, to answer a phonecall, you have to run a 'server' by that definition...
That's right. By the Internet definition, a traditional phone is a "server". It is always alive and listening on the line for an incoming "ring" signal. When you pick up the handset, it sends an "accept" signal that stops the ringing and completes the connection.
The phone people didn't use Internet terminology, of course.
For starters, this is the government breaking into the corporations' market. Not the other way around.
No, actually it's the other way around.
The Internet was designed and built almost entirely with US government funds. Without the government (actually the military) pushing and funding it, there wouldn't be anything even vaguely like the Internet.
Around 15 years ago, the corporate world finally noticed what the government and academia had been building and using for 30 years. Now they're trying to tell us that they built it (without the help of Al Gore;-).
Then, when a new Internet development comes along, they try to tell us that it's the government that's intruding on a private development. That's a Big Lie of the purest sort.
Public wi-fi is an example of a long tradition: The corporations refuse to provide service to a big chunk of the population (rural, ghetto, whatever). The government steps in, often in the form of a local co-op, and does it. The business folks cry "Foul!" and insist that the government is intruding on business. But it's business that wasn't being provided.
If the business folks want to provide the service, they should provide it. If not, they have no business complaining when someone else does.
Something's terribly wrong when the government is on the cutting edge of technology.
This is something that's been terribly wrong for a long time.
Note that the Internet (nee ARPAnet) was designed and built with about 99% funding from the US government. ARPA, the Advanced Research Projects Agency, has always been an arm of the US Army (and it's now DARPA, since they added "Defense" to the name). They funded it because private industry was unwilling or unable to develop the sort of communication system that the military wanted. What they wanted was for any device from any manufacturer to talk to any other device from any other manufacturer, under battlefield conditions.
This isn't a fluke. Historically, a dominant motive for technological development has always been for warfare. Part of the reason is that research is fairly expensive, and cost-conscious organizations don't want to pay for it. (They want someone else to pay, and then they'll take over the commercial development.;-) The one exception is that when there's a war on, people will spend anything at all to win. So that's when new ideas can be tried.
I'd agree that there is something terribly wrong with this. But it's how we humans behave.
The funny part is... If Microsoft tried to get a law passed giving itself preferential treatment, the howls on/. would be monumental.
The funny part is that we've had a number of such reports here, and while the howls were audible, they were most often howls of laughter. Such things tend to bring out the wags and punsters as well as the oh-so-serious commentators.
For example, a number of reports on anti-spam bills have pointed out that 1) Microsoft has lobbied for them, and 2) The bills somehow exclude Microsoft ads from coverage. Actually, some other big companies have also supported the bills in exchange for an exclusion, too, but of course Microsoft is the one that's most interesting to this crowd, for obvious reasons.
The predominance of humor in many such discussions is probably not irrelevant. Sometimes the best way to kill something is to make it look ridiculous to the general public.
If you look back through this discussion, you'll see that most of the posts have been serious. But some of the most effective have been the ones that got a "Funny" rating.
Now if I could only think of a joke to end this with...
Actually, your definition doesn't matter, because there's already a standard definition of "server" on the internet. A server is a process that calls listen() and accept().
That's the application-layer definition, actually. At a lower level the definition would be in terms of that level's terminology, but not materially different in practical import.
And it's easy for an ISP (or anyone else) to test whether you're running a server on any given port. Just connect() to it. If you get a successful return, there's a server running on that machine, listening on that port.
(Of course, you need to call socket() before any of these - unless your parent process passed you an open socket.;-)
... somehow it's always those in universities with several dozen ISP options that complain...
What university are you in? At most universities with which I'm familiar, there is exactly one ISP available: the university's network. There have been a number of stories lately about universities putting some rather strong constrainst on what their students are allowed to do. These are mostly stories about P2P file sharing, of course. But the message comes across clearly: The university administration asserts absolute control over what can go over their network; the students must follow the university's rules; they aren't allowed to use an independent network that violates the rules.
I often think about the phrase "academic freedom" when I read these stories.
Free speech doesn't even come close to applying here as it is a private network...boo hoo hoo.
Yes, this is an argument that we're hearing a lot in the US these days. Along with the trend towards "privatization" everywhere, this of course means the end to free speech, and all the rest of our constitutional rights.
There's really just one good solution: We should ban private ownership of any and all communication media. This appears to be the only way we'll preserve our right to speak freely. Corporations should only be able to rent the access rights, as it used to be. If they aren't allowed to own the comm lines, they won't be above the law.
Alternatively, we could get an agreement with the comm companies that the First Ammendment applies to them through their exclusive license with the government. But this looks unlikely, given the current political climate.
So we just have to make all comm channels legally "public" property, subject to the laws.
This does remind me of a funny story from the early days of search sites. There was an entomologist (studies insects) who put a paper he had written on his web site, and a few days later, it was getting a million hits per day, completely clogging his server. Finally, a colleague explained it by suggesting he go to a search site and type in "explicit sex image". His paper was the first URL returned. And, sure enough, it did contain those three words - in three different paragraphs. This is sometimes used as an example of an important limit to keyword indexing.
Now, people like him will find their server swamped by searches for a set of words that they don't even use. I'm not sure they will necessarily see this as an improvement.
But the idea that "miserable failure" returns www.whitehouse.gov as the first match is pretty funny, and by itself might make the effort worthwhile. Now if it would only return www.whitehouse.org as the second match...
(Right now, it returns a link to Jimmy Carter's bio as the second link, indented below Dubya's. I guess someone else had a similar idea...)
There is no question that some of the open source software that is out there -- such as the Linux kernel itself -- has got patent violations in there.
Well, of course it does. Most of linux is coded in C; it's full of pointers and != tests comparing them. This is a clear before-the-fact violation of Microsoft's ISNOT patent. And they'll pay for this pre-violation of Microsoft's intellectual property.
Moving the mouse over a terminal window makes that window accept key input, it doesn't change the window layer order.
I tried it in a couple of Terminal windows. It had no effect whatsoever. If I move the pointer to a new Terminal window, the previous one still has the solid red cursor, and typed input goes there.
I saw this suggestion in a couple of other replies, and it didn't work then, either. Is there some magic I don't know about that is disabling it? (Do I have to reboot or something?;-)
The command "defaults read com.apple.Terminal FocusFollowsMouse" does say "YES". But focus works as usual, requiring a click, and it raises the window.
Yeah, and what I immediately thought was: Why didn't they do it in 2 lines? They already included a number of huge libraries. Just put the program's code into a library, include the library, and call it's main routine.
Anything can be done in 2 lines, if you don't count the code in libraries.
No, it's not really scary. They just programmed knowledge of one of the most common typing errors: hitting a key adjacent to the one intended. Lots of spelling checkers do this. It merely shows that the google folks looked at the problem reasonably, used known techniques for guessing what was meant, and did a good job of programming it.
Obviously it would be a complete waste of your brain to realize those exist on Windows and OS X as well. Terminals are pretty easy to come by, OS X has one, PuTTY is nice and free on Windows,...
Yeah, and I was expecting to find an explanation of why the common operations in a terminal window are as easy on OS X as on linux (or any X-Windows system). I've been using a Mac for a year or so, and I keep finding that nearly everything that I do is possible, but much slower than on any X-Windows box. It's partly that dumb 1-button "mouse", but there are other problems, too.
I was disappointed that the article only explained why OS X was more productive than Windows. Hell, I knew that. Watching over the shoulder of expert Windows developers is painfully slow. Yeah, you can do everything that you need to do, but it takes so many keystrokes and/or mouse events.
The simplest example is copy-and-paste. You can always do this. But the X-Windows scheme is quick and simple (and doesn't involve the keyboard at all); just three quick clicks or a click-swipe-release-click. OSX is materially slower, though slightly faster sometimes than Windows.
Similarly, linux and other X-Windows systems implements focus-follows-pointer, and doesn't insist on raising a window when it gets focus. This is a huge time saver when you get used to it. As far as I can tell, neither Windows nor OS X permits this. And they don't have a way to lower a window either; in X-Windows it's a single click. This means that you can push a window to the bottom when you're done with it, and get quickly to the next window. With Windows or OS X, you have to go through a real song and dance to locate and raise a hidden window (which you often didn't want to hide).
Now, I know I could put an X server on OS X. I haven't, because I've been trying to avoid falling back to what I know. I wanted to give OS X a chance to show how wondereful it was. So far, frankly, it hasn't been all that wonderful. Nearly everything is slower and clumsier than on my linux box. And when I ask Mac experts what I'm doing wrong, they usually tell me that I'm doing it right.
The one thing that I'd say is better on OS X is drag-and-drop. But even there, I keep trying it, and it either doesn't do anything at all (most often), or sometimes does something different than what I want. It's better than both Windows and linux, but still not all that good, and I can't find many time that I can actually use it while writing software. Dragging text between windows doesn't much work; you have to use copy-and-paste.
Resizing windows on OS X is a real pain, because you can only do it by adjusting the lower-right corner.
Also, it's not just that I'm a dummy. I do keep trying to watch the experts. Windows experts are agonizingly slow, with lots of extra motions for everything. OS X experts are noticably faster, but it's still painful to watch.
It's always a relief to get back to an X-Windows box, where I don't feel like I'm swimming in molasses whenever I try to do something.
Maybe I should give up and install an X server on my PB. If it's still clumsy after a year of experimenting and asking the experts, I've wasted too much time with it. I'd want to get a 3-button mouse, too; too bad I can't replace the PB's button with 3 little buttons.
They are not the same, and they are both wrong (legally).
Actually, this terminology is a large part of why the discussion continues. If you were to say that copyright infringement is illegal, you'd often be right.
But saying it's "wrong" is something rather different. That's not a legal term; it's a social and moral term. And to most people, sharing something like music or literature or a joke with a friend is not wrong (even when some puritan would find it offensive). Sharing a good tune with a friend is what nice, sociable people do. If the law says it's illegal, well, the law is wrong. Any five-year-old can understand that.
So maybe it'd be better if we stopped talking about whether sharing music is "wrong". That's a hopeless quagmire. Just say it's "illegal". That's something that can actually be determined, at least in principle. The answer may be different in different jurisdictions, and it may cost a lot in legal fees to find the answer. But it's not something that people would dispute because it goes against their social and aesthetic beliefs.
Much of the problem, of course, is that the recording industry has managed to extend copyright into an area that wasn't covered a few years ago. To anyone over 15 years old, it has always been normal, when you hear a good new song, to share it with friends. This used to be legal everywhere, and wasn't even discussed. Now, if you do it, you're a pirate, even if you don't have an eyepatch or a wooden leg. (I do have a parrot, though.;-)
Society is still a long way from catching up with this anti-sharing thing that the RIAA and MPAA have somehow gotten passed into law. We oldsters were all taught back in grade school that nice people shared things with their friends. Anyone who didn't was a bad person. It's going to take decades for this idea to wear off. Society will probably have to wait until we all die before the idea that sharing is wrong is accepted. Maybe longer, because some teachers are still instilling such pro-sharing ideas in young children's heads.
So don't say it's "wrong". Say it's "illegal". That's a much better word in this case.
And we can move on to the debate about how evil the law has become.
(BTW, is it still legal to play a recording for a friend who hasn't bought a license to hear it?)
Artists gennerally dont have to sign a contract. But they still do.
That's mostly because it hasn't yet quite gotten through to many musicians that the situation has changed. They're still living in the old world in which, if you wanted your music to be accessible to the public, you had to sign a contract with the distributors, because they had a stranglehold on the distribution channels. They could demand a signature on a contract that put most musicians into their debt, because it was the only game in town. If you didn't sign, nobody would ever hear you outside your local community.
That day is gone now, and the recording companies are living on borrowed time. In a few years, young musicians will understand that the guys at the local recording studio can do every bit as good a job as a big recording studio, and a friend with a web site can "distribute" the music as well as those big corporations.
The basis of this story is that the recording industry is just now waking up to the fact that they aren't going to kill the online distribution channel. They are working on the idea that they can control it like they did the old distribution channels. Meanwhile, musicians are really hoping that they can't. It's pretty clear that the only way this can happen is if the recording industry can find a way to outlaw the small local shop and privately-run web sites. They are trying this, by attempting to extend "IP" controls into areas that used to be legal. But this will probably be a losing battle. Musicians don't have to sign those contracts any more.
The really funny thing is that the RIAA has spent some years doing everything they could to kill this new distribution channel. Now they're coming along and demanding their "fair share" of the profits, and even trying to impose higher prices. They didn't help build the online music distribution; they tried to kill it; now they want us to pay them so they can use what we built despite their attacks.
It's funny how I never see a whole bunch of people arguing that the term "identity theft" should really be "identity infringement"
Well, under the previous poster's definition, "identity theft" would apply. The original "owner" of the identity loses something rather valuable - their reputation, money, and/or liberty.
This isn't true when you "steal" a copy of music. The original owner still has their copy and can use it exactly as before. In most cases, they'll never know of your copy unless you tell them. They haven't lost anything of value.
But "identity theft" usually refers to a case where someone uses info about you to get money out of your account, or get a credit card in your name and use it. These can have a serious impact on your financial situation. The result is very similar to a robbery, because you lose money. If they commit a crime and leave your id info behind, you can end up jailed for their crimes, and most people consider their freedom to be something of value.
And note that, if I merely have your id info, that's usually not called "identity theft". I have such info about my wife and children, for example, and that's not considered a crime. It's only when someone uses your info to deprive you of something valuable that the term "identity theft" is used.
Hmmm... Sounds like exactly the sort of "election" that Kerry and Clinton are trying to prevent. It sure sounds like the sort of situation that would make the hypothetical "reasonable man" extremely skeptical of the outcome.
Well, yeah; that sounds like the sort of reasonable precaution that one might expect. But the proposed law doesn't say that at all. What it says is "The manufacturer shall ensure that any software used in connection with the voting system is not transferred over the Internet."
There's no mention here of transfers to/from the voting equipment. And it doesn't mention who is doing the transfer. As written, it applies to copying the software between any machines at all by anyone. It covers a transfer between two random machines by two random people. They need not have anything to do with the voting equipment.
This could have been written by someone incredibly stupid. But the writer seems to have good command of the English language (unlike many/. writers;-), so they're probably not that stupid. The alternative is that they intend it to cover some such unrelated transfers.
Maybe it's a "poison pill"? Maybe they're hoping that the Senate won't spot this bizarre clause, and will pass it without much inspection. This happens fairly often, after all. Then, after it's passed, this clause can be used in some strange scenario with the intent of sabotaging the use of the voting equipment.
Possibly the intent could be to use this clause to deny public access to the code. "If we let people look at it, they'll have to get it into their computers somehow, and then we can't stop them from transmitting copies over the internet, in violation of the law." Or maybe they could restrict access to only printed copies, to prevent us software people from using any sort of software tools to analyze it.
''(iii) The manufacturer shall ensure that any software used in connection with the voting system is not transferred over the Internet."
Hmmm... So if I want to examing the software, I can't download it over the internet. OK, I suppose they'll have to have it available on CD.
But this clause seems to say that, if I read that CD on my computer and email you a copy of part of the software, that software instantly becomes illegal to use. The manufacturer did fail to prevent me from transferring a copy to you over the internet.
So if I want to sabotage some voting software, all I need to do is find a copy and email it to a friend. I present evidence to a court that I did this, and the court will issue an order that the software may not be used in a voting machine.
Why would these senators want me (or anyone else with internet access) to be able to do this?
Hey, what country do you live in? I'm here in the US, which only bombs countries that don't have nukes.
Has any government ever attacked another that has nukes? Terrorists have, of course, but nuclear weapons do seem to be a good deterrent against other governments.
Granted, the sample size isn't all that large. And the US did bomb a Chinese embassy a few years ago.
Note that Scott is mostly back up again. His new site thanks the folks here at slashdot for giving him the kick in the pants needed to move to a better web host. And he actually got the space donated for free, presumably by people at his new hosting site that approve of what he's done.
So anyone still following this story might wait a few days, and check back with his site. And send him some nice support messages. We want to encourage him.
In any case, there's probably little chance that the RIAA will be dumb enough to harrass him. They can probably figure out that they'd just make him the poster boy for the fact that there is such a thing as bad publicity.
Sorta like when the Girl Scouts got sued for singing copyrighted songs around their campfires.
Actually, I did something a bit similar to Scott's violation back in the 80's. I discovered the AT&T version of the/bin/true program (google for it), which consisted of simply a blank line and a copyright notice. I posted the program in its entirety to several newsgroups and mailing lists, and publicly challenged AT&T's lawyers to sue me for the copyright violation. I never heard for them, of course. This remains one of the better examples of the absurdities that can arise in this subject area. Breaking the copyright protection on a recording of silence is pretty much in the same class. I'd guess that anyone smart enough to get a law degree would also be smart enough to know the results of pressing charges in such a case (Mike Batt notwithstanding;-).
Slashdot Mirror
I can just see flocks of PHBs reading this, and mandating a conversion of their JavaScript to SQL, because JS is going out while SQL is holding steady.
I wonder how many readers here will understand all the things that are wrong with this ranking.
It's also amusing that Fortran, Cobol and RPG still make a top-20 list.
(Who was it that said "We don't know what programming language we'll be using 50 years from now, but we know it'll be called Fortran"?)
... slashdotted already. And it's only been about 20 minutes.
and, to answer a phonecall, you have to run a 'server' by that definition...
That's right. By the Internet definition, a traditional phone is a "server". It is always alive and listening on the line for an incoming "ring" signal. When you pick up the handset, it sends an "accept" signal that stops the ringing and completes the connection.
The phone people didn't use Internet terminology, of course.
For starters, this is the government breaking into the corporations' market. Not the other way around.
;-).
No, actually it's the other way around.
The Internet was designed and built almost entirely with US government funds. Without the government (actually the military) pushing and funding it, there wouldn't be anything even vaguely like the Internet.
Around 15 years ago, the corporate world finally noticed what the government and academia had been building and using for 30 years. Now they're trying to tell us that they built it (without the help of Al Gore
Then, when a new Internet development comes along, they try to tell us that it's the government that's intruding on a private development. That's a Big Lie of the purest sort.
Public wi-fi is an example of a long tradition: The corporations refuse to provide service to a big chunk of the population (rural, ghetto, whatever). The government steps in, often in the form of a local co-op, and does it. The business folks cry "Foul!" and insist that the government is intruding on business. But it's business that wasn't being provided.
If the business folks want to provide the service, they should provide it. If not, they have no business complaining when someone else does.
Something's terribly wrong when the government is on the cutting edge of technology.
;-) The one exception is that when there's a war on, people will spend anything at all to win. So that's when new ideas can be tried.
This is something that's been terribly wrong for a long time.
Note that the Internet (nee ARPAnet) was designed and built with about 99% funding from the US government. ARPA, the Advanced Research Projects Agency, has always been an arm of the US Army (and it's now DARPA, since they added "Defense" to the name). They funded it because private industry was unwilling or unable to develop the sort of communication system that the military wanted. What they wanted was for any device from any manufacturer to talk to any other device from any other manufacturer, under battlefield conditions.
This isn't a fluke. Historically, a dominant motive for technological development has always been for warfare. Part of the reason is that research is fairly expensive, and cost-conscious organizations don't want to pay for it. (They want someone else to pay, and then they'll take over the commercial development.
I'd agree that there is something terribly wrong with this. But it's how we humans behave.
The funny part is... If Microsoft tried to get a law passed giving itself preferential treatment, the howls on /. would be monumental.
...
The funny part is that we've had a number of such reports here, and while the howls were audible, they were most often howls of laughter. Such things tend to bring out the wags and punsters as well as the oh-so-serious commentators.
For example, a number of reports on anti-spam bills have pointed out that 1) Microsoft has lobbied for them, and 2) The bills somehow exclude Microsoft ads from coverage. Actually, some other big companies have also supported the bills in exchange for an exclusion, too, but of course Microsoft is the one that's most interesting to this crowd, for obvious reasons.
The predominance of humor in many such discussions is probably not irrelevant. Sometimes the best way to kill something is to make it look ridiculous to the general public.
If you look back through this discussion, you'll see that most of the posts have been serious. But some of the most effective have been the ones that got a "Funny" rating.
Now if I could only think of a joke to end this with
Actually, your definition doesn't matter, because there's already a standard definition of "server" on the internet. A server is a process that calls listen() and accept().
;-)
That's the application-layer definition, actually. At a lower level the definition would be in terms of that level's terminology, but not materially different in practical import.
And it's easy for an ISP (or anyone else) to test whether you're running a server on any given port. Just connect() to it. If you get a successful return, there's a server running on that machine, listening on that port.
(Of course, you need to call socket() before any of these - unless your parent process passed you an open socket.
... somehow it's always those in universities with several dozen ISP options that complain ...
What university are you in? At most universities with which I'm familiar, there is exactly one ISP available: the university's network. There have been a number of stories lately about universities putting some rather strong constrainst on what their students are allowed to do. These are mostly stories about P2P file sharing, of course. But the message comes across clearly: The university administration asserts absolute control over what can go over their network; the students must follow the university's rules; they aren't allowed to use an independent network that violates the rules.
I often think about the phrase "academic freedom" when I read these stories.
Free speech doesn't even come close to applying here as it is a private network...boo hoo hoo.
Yes, this is an argument that we're hearing a lot in the US these days. Along with the trend towards "privatization" everywhere, this of course means the end to free speech, and all the rest of our constitutional rights.
There's really just one good solution: We should ban private ownership of any and all communication media. This appears to be the only way we'll preserve our right to speak freely. Corporations should only be able to rent the access rights, as it used to be. If they aren't allowed to own the comm lines, they won't be above the law.
Alternatively, we could get an agreement with the comm companies that the First Ammendment applies to them through their exclusive license with the government. But this looks unlikely, given the current political climate.
So we just have to make all comm channels legally "public" property, subject to the laws.
This does remind me of a funny story from the early days of search sites. There was an entomologist (studies insects) who put a paper he had written on his web site, and a few days later, it was getting a million hits per day, completely clogging his server. Finally, a colleague explained it by suggesting he go to a search site and type in "explicit sex image". His paper was the first URL returned. And, sure enough, it did contain those three words - in three different paragraphs. This is sometimes used as an example of an important limit to keyword indexing.
...
...)
Now, people like him will find their server swamped by searches for a set of words that they don't even use. I'm not sure they will necessarily see this as an improvement.
But the idea that "miserable failure" returns www.whitehouse.gov as the first match is pretty funny, and by itself might make the effort worthwhile. Now if it would only return www.whitehouse.org as the second match
(Right now, it returns a link to Jimmy Carter's bio as the second link, indented below Dubya's. I guess someone else had a similar idea
There is no question that some of the open source software that is out there -- such as the Linux kernel itself -- has got patent violations in there.
Well, of course it does. Most of linux is coded in C; it's full of pointers and != tests comparing them. This is a clear before-the-fact violation of Microsoft's ISNOT patent. And they'll pay for this pre-violation of Microsoft's intellectual property.
Open the terminal and run:
;-)
defaults write com.apple.Terminal FocusFollowsMouse -string YES
Moving the mouse over a terminal window makes that window accept key input, it doesn't change the window layer order.
I tried it in a couple of Terminal windows. It had no effect whatsoever. If I move the pointer to a new Terminal window, the previous one still has the solid red cursor, and typed input goes there.
I saw this suggestion in a couple of other replies, and it didn't work then, either. Is there some magic I don't know about that is disabling it? (Do I have to reboot or something?
The command "defaults read com.apple.Terminal FocusFollowsMouse" does say "YES". But focus works as usual, requiring a click, and it raises the window.
This is on a PB with 10.3.8.
Yeah, and what I immediately thought was: Why didn't they do it in 2 lines? They already included a number of huge libraries. Just put the program's code into a library, include the library, and call it's main routine.
Anything can be done in 2 lines, if you don't count the code in libraries.
No, it's not really scary. They just programmed knowledge of one of the most common typing errors: hitting a key adjacent to the one intended. Lots of spelling checkers do this. It merely shows that the google folks looked at the problem reasonably, used known techniques for guessing what was meant, and did a good job of programming it.
Obviously it would be a complete waste of your brain to realize those exist on Windows and OS X as well. Terminals are pretty easy to come by, OS X has one, PuTTY is nice and free on Windows, ...
Yeah, and I was expecting to find an explanation of why the common operations in a terminal window are as easy on OS X as on linux (or any X-Windows system). I've been using a Mac for a year or so, and I keep finding that nearly everything that I do is possible, but much slower than on any X-Windows box. It's partly that dumb 1-button "mouse", but there are other problems, too.
I was disappointed that the article only explained why OS X was more productive than Windows. Hell, I knew that. Watching over the shoulder of expert Windows developers is painfully slow. Yeah, you can do everything that you need to do, but it takes so many keystrokes and/or mouse events.
The simplest example is copy-and-paste. You can always do this. But the X-Windows scheme is quick and simple (and doesn't involve the keyboard at all); just three quick clicks or a click-swipe-release-click. OSX is materially slower, though slightly faster sometimes than Windows.
Similarly, linux and other X-Windows systems implements focus-follows-pointer, and doesn't insist on raising a window when it gets focus. This is a huge time saver when you get used to it. As far as I can tell, neither Windows nor OS X permits this. And they don't have a way to lower a window either; in X-Windows it's a single click. This means that you can push a window to the bottom when you're done with it, and get quickly to the next window. With Windows or OS X, you have to go through a real song and dance to locate and raise a hidden window (which you often didn't want to hide).
Now, I know I could put an X server on OS X. I haven't, because I've been trying to avoid falling back to what I know. I wanted to give OS X a chance to show how wondereful it was. So far, frankly, it hasn't been all that wonderful. Nearly everything is slower and clumsier than on my linux box. And when I ask Mac experts what I'm doing wrong, they usually tell me that I'm doing it right.
The one thing that I'd say is better on OS X is drag-and-drop. But even there, I keep trying it, and it either doesn't do anything at all (most often), or sometimes does something different than what I want. It's better than both Windows and linux, but still not all that good, and I can't find many time that I can actually use it while writing software. Dragging text between windows doesn't much work; you have to use copy-and-paste.
Resizing windows on OS X is a real pain, because you can only do it by adjusting the lower-right corner.
Also, it's not just that I'm a dummy. I do keep trying to watch the experts. Windows experts are agonizingly slow, with lots of extra motions for everything. OS X experts are noticably faster, but it's still painful to watch.
It's always a relief to get back to an X-Windows box, where I don't feel like I'm swimming in molasses whenever I try to do something.
Maybe I should give up and install an X server on my PB. If it's still clumsy after a year of experimenting and asking the experts, I've wasted too much time with it. I'd want to get a 3-button mouse, too; too bad I can't replace the PB's button with 3 little buttons.
They are not the same, and they are both wrong (legally).
;-)
Actually, this terminology is a large part of why the discussion continues. If you were to say that copyright infringement is illegal, you'd often be right.
But saying it's "wrong" is something rather different. That's not a legal term; it's a social and moral term. And to most people, sharing something like music or literature or a joke with a friend is not wrong (even when some puritan would find it offensive). Sharing a good tune with a friend is what nice, sociable people do. If the law says it's illegal, well, the law is wrong. Any five-year-old can understand that.
So maybe it'd be better if we stopped talking about whether sharing music is "wrong". That's a hopeless quagmire. Just say it's "illegal". That's something that can actually be determined, at least in principle. The answer may be different in different jurisdictions, and it may cost a lot in legal fees to find the answer. But it's not something that people would dispute because it goes against their social and aesthetic beliefs.
Much of the problem, of course, is that the recording industry has managed to extend copyright into an area that wasn't covered a few years ago. To anyone over 15 years old, it has always been normal, when you hear a good new song, to share it with friends. This used to be legal everywhere, and wasn't even discussed. Now, if you do it, you're a pirate, even if you don't have an eyepatch or a wooden leg. (I do have a parrot, though.
Society is still a long way from catching up with this anti-sharing thing that the RIAA and MPAA have somehow gotten passed into law. We oldsters were all taught back in grade school that nice people shared things with their friends. Anyone who didn't was a bad person. It's going to take decades for this idea to wear off. Society will probably have to wait until we all die before the idea that sharing is wrong is accepted. Maybe longer, because some teachers are still instilling such pro-sharing ideas in young children's heads.
So don't say it's "wrong". Say it's "illegal". That's a much better word in this case.
And we can move on to the debate about how evil the law has become.
(BTW, is it still legal to play a recording for a friend who hasn't bought a license to hear it?)
Artists gennerally dont have to sign a contract. But they still do.
That's mostly because it hasn't yet quite gotten through to many musicians that the situation has changed. They're still living in the old world in which, if you wanted your music to be accessible to the public, you had to sign a contract with the distributors, because they had a stranglehold on the distribution channels. They could demand a signature on a contract that put most musicians into their debt, because it was the only game in town. If you didn't sign, nobody would ever hear you outside your local community.
That day is gone now, and the recording companies are living on borrowed time. In a few years, young musicians will understand that the guys at the local recording studio can do every bit as good a job as a big recording studio, and a friend with a web site can "distribute" the music as well as those big corporations.
The basis of this story is that the recording industry is just now waking up to the fact that they aren't going to kill the online distribution channel. They are working on the idea that they can control it like they did the old distribution channels. Meanwhile, musicians are really hoping that they can't. It's pretty clear that the only way this can happen is if the recording industry can find a way to outlaw the small local shop and privately-run web sites. They are trying this, by attempting to extend "IP" controls into areas that used to be legal. But this will probably be a losing battle. Musicians don't have to sign those contracts any more.
The really funny thing is that the RIAA has spent some years doing everything they could to kill this new distribution channel. Now they're coming along and demanding their "fair share" of the profits, and even trying to impose higher prices. They didn't help build the online music distribution; they tried to kill it; now they want us to pay them so they can use what we built despite their attacks.
Yeah, right.
It's funny how I never see a whole bunch of people arguing that the term "identity theft" should really be "identity infringement"
Well, under the previous poster's definition, "identity theft" would apply. The original "owner" of the identity loses something rather valuable - their reputation, money, and/or liberty.
This isn't true when you "steal" a copy of music. The original owner still has their copy and can use it exactly as before. In most cases, they'll never know of your copy unless you tell them. They haven't lost anything of value.
But "identity theft" usually refers to a case where someone uses info about you to get money out of your account, or get a credit card in your name and use it. These can have a serious impact on your financial situation. The result is very similar to a robbery, because you lose money. If they commit a crime and leave your id info behind, you can end up jailed for their crimes, and most people consider their freedom to be something of value.
And note that, if I merely have your id info, that's usually not called "identity theft". I have such info about my wife and children, for example, and that's not considered a crime. It's only when someone uses your info to deprive you of something valuable that the term "identity theft" is used.
Hmmm ... Sounds like exactly the sort of "election" that Kerry and Clinton are trying to prevent. It sure sounds like the sort of situation that would make the hypothetical "reasonable man" extremely skeptical of the outcome.
"The fix is in" comes to mind.
You wouldn't be in Florida, by any chance?
Well, yeah; that sounds like the sort of reasonable precaution that one might expect. But the proposed law doesn't say that at all. What it says is "The manufacturer shall ensure that any software used in connection with the voting system is not transferred over the Internet."
/. writers ;-), so they're probably not that stupid. The alternative is that they intend it to cover some such unrelated transfers.
There's no mention here of transfers to/from the voting equipment. And it doesn't mention who is doing the transfer. As written, it applies to copying the software between any machines at all by anyone. It covers a transfer between two random machines by two random people. They need not have anything to do with the voting equipment.
This could have been written by someone incredibly stupid. But the writer seems to have good command of the English language (unlike many
Maybe it's a "poison pill"? Maybe they're hoping that the Senate won't spot this bizarre clause, and will pass it without much inspection. This happens fairly often, after all. Then, after it's passed, this clause can be used in some strange scenario with the intent of sabotaging the use of the voting equipment.
Possibly the intent could be to use this clause to deny public access to the code. "If we let people look at it, they'll have to get it into their computers somehow, and then we can't stop them from transmitting copies over the internet, in violation of the law." Or maybe they could restrict access to only printed copies, to prevent us software people from using any sort of software tools to analyze it.
The Democratic nominee for Supervisor of elections for our County even ran (and lost) with the motto "Get a paper trail".
... It sounds like he/she lost in an election that didn't have a paper trail.
;-)
Hmmm
Was this a pure coincidence?
''(iii) The manufacturer shall ensure that any software used in connection with the voting system is not transferred over the Internet."
... So if I want to examing the software, I can't download it over the internet. OK, I suppose they'll have to have it available on CD.
Hmmm
But this clause seems to say that, if I read that CD on my computer and email you a copy of part of the software, that software instantly becomes illegal to use. The manufacturer did fail to prevent me from transferring a copy to you over the internet.
So if I want to sabotage some voting software, all I need to do is find a copy and email it to a friend. I present evidence to a court that I did this, and the court will issue an order that the software may not be used in a voting machine.
Why would these senators want me (or anyone else with internet access) to be able to do this?
... we bomb others who have nukes ...
Hey, what country do you live in? I'm here in the US, which only bombs countries that don't have nukes.
Has any government ever attacked another that has nukes? Terrorists have, of course, but nuclear weapons do seem to be a good deterrent against other governments.
Granted, the sample size isn't all that large. And the US did bomb a Chinese embassy a few years ago.
Note that Scott is mostly back up again. His new site thanks the folks here at slashdot for giving him the kick in the pants needed to move to a better web host. And he actually got the space donated for free, presumably by people at his new hosting site that approve of what he's done.
/bin/true program (google for it), which consisted of simply a blank line and a copyright notice. I posted the program in its entirety to several newsgroups and mailing lists, and publicly challenged AT&T's lawyers to sue me for the copyright violation. I never heard for them, of course. This remains one of the better examples of the absurdities that can arise in this subject area. Breaking the copyright protection on a recording of silence is pretty much in the same class. I'd guess that anyone smart enough to get a law degree would also be smart enough to know the results of pressing charges in such a case (Mike Batt notwithstanding ;-).
So anyone still following this story might wait a few days, and check back with his site. And send him some nice support messages. We want to encourage him.
In any case, there's probably little chance that the RIAA will be dumb enough to harrass him. They can probably figure out that they'd just make him the poster boy for the fact that there is such a thing as bad publicity.
Sorta like when the Girl Scouts got sued for singing copyrighted songs around their campfires.
Actually, I did something a bit similar to Scott's violation back in the 80's. I discovered the AT&T version of the
the courts found that such attribution proved that Batt's minute of silence was derived from Cage's silent work.
Actually, the courts found no such thing, because they were never consulted. It was settled out of court.
Rather a pity, IMHO. It might have been useful to have an actual decision.