Yeah and all webapps which everyone hated when the iPhone did it but this is Google so be prepared to suddenly have it become brilliant and the wave of the future. Hurrah for hypocrasy.
More interesting (well, to me), is this is essentially a re-hash of the concept of thin client computing which Microsoft tried so hard to get rid of in the 90's.
it will only be available on hardware that meets Google's specifications. Hard disks are banned, for instance, while Google said it will also specify factors such as screen sizes and display resolutions
How do we reconcile this with slamming Apple for trying to maintain 100% control over the OS/hardware combo?
So, it seems like the whole issue is moot unless the new owner wants to blast through a listed policy.
I agree with you in principal -- it should already be precluded.
But, if web-sites can retro-actively change their privacy policy, is there strong enough protection from existing laws to prevent the new owner from simply saying "these are our new terms" and doing it anyway? My guess is it's a sufficiently gray area that by the time you got a court to rule on it, it would simply be too damned late.
Heck, given the propensity for agencies like the CIA to simply buy information from private companies they would not be legally allowed to collect, what's to stop that from happening?
Not to sound too much like a member of the tin-foil-hat brigade, I can see transfer of ownership of this data entering into some pretty murky legal areas.
The BSD License allows proprietary use, and for the software released under the license to be incorporated into proprietary products. Works based on the material may be released under a proprietary license or as closed source software.
Short of getting into a pointless pissing match to sort out all of the minor semantic differences between what we've both said, it's effectively something you can essentially change the license of by only including the statement that it contains some BSD code. Or at least, you can release your software under any license you choose even if it includes BSD code.
You yourself have pointed out several times in this thread that you can do this. The nit-picking is identifying every little way in which one is ever so slightly is semantically different from the other.
Essentially, we're belaboring the point and not really adding much.
To further add you may be confusing this with the fact that you can include BSD code inside other code that is licensed under another license, but this doesn't change the license that the BSD code is under.
Which, other than the need for attribution, doesn't really restrict you much.
But, yes, one occasionally forgets that Slashdot is well populated with semanticists and nit-pickers.;-)
Just because I don't type every single detail about topic X doesn't mean I'm ignorant. It just means I didn't type them. Just a little FYI there.
Chill, dude. If you didn't know, it was intended to enlighten. If you did, it was presumed that you'd understand the reason for the clarification that Ally McBeal wasn't the origin of it.
Consider Ubuntu Linux. Its security updates aren't just packaged preferences & programs you don't want.
Between VMs and physical machines, I've got XP, Vista, Ubuntu, FreeBSD, and Windows 2003. No need to settle on just one. If I cared, I'd get Open Solaris.
All I need is a Mac, and I've got it mostly covered.:-P
I am guessing you don't want to mention the mysterious update for some reason.
Actually, I didn't mention it because I have no idea how/when it got flipped. I just discovered it last weekend, and knew I'd previously had my IE set to use Google. I simply don't know how it happened. I'm not concealing it to be mysterious or anything.:-P The machine in question gets its updates infrequently and in a big batch, and I rarely use IE, so I have no idea when it happened.
Here I will, it was probably IE updating to IE8. That is the only time it goes over your default stuff to get setup, IE8 keeps all your old settings if you want anyways.
Quite possible. Like I said, simply don't know. Your suggestion sounds plausible.
I'm not in favor of most of the things you cite. Slipping in software installs and changes of defaults is a crappy practice all around. It's a bloody nuisance, and I think it's a bad idea. And, yes, I've had to turn off the updates which wanted to give me Safari when my iTunes updated on my Windows box.
I'm merely pointing out that when Microsoft does this stuff, sometimes it's in the guise of a "critical security update" or part of another install. Like that evil.NET framework that got jammed into my Firefox without me asking and couldn't be easily disabled.
Yea, because Google's idiotic toolbar being bundled with everything from the end user Java VM to Adobe PDF Reader is so different a tactic.
Well, MS is pushing out updates via OS updates.
I discovered the other day that IE on my XP box had suddenly decided that Bing was its default search engine, despite the fact that I'd previously set it to be Google.
I'm not saying I agree any more with the bundling of such things when you install other software (I don't), but Microsoft has an even more privileged access to my system in that they can push updates and I don't even get asked (other than agreeing to a cumulative security update with a long number and no real explanation). I certainly wasn't asked if IE could change its default search engine or to become the default browser (which has happened on occasion).
I have no doubt that a significant amount of their new-found market share was automatically set for users without their knowledge.
Lots of chefs are using cutting edge technology to do really exotic things with food both in technique and results. And, they've been doing it for a long time.
So here's an example of a comment that does an excellent (I assume) job of explaining why the code is doing what it's doing, yet the whole thing is so complicated that Ritchie even needed to acknowledge that the comment probably wasn't going to be of much help either with an amusing, and now somewhat famous, statement.
In fairness to Ritchie, he was programming on bare metal and breaking new ground. OS level code talking directly to hardware can get pretty grotty because of all of the vagaries that can be going on that aren't readily apparent without the device manual and some experience.
At least he did comment it, and there was enough information in there to at least give context for what he was doing.
This is a good practice. Comments very seldom keep up with changes in the code base, so more often than not, they end up being misleading at some point in the future.
That is not the fault of the practice of commenting code. That is the fault of lazy-assed developers who don't maintain the comments.
The reason people think they need to cluster bomb their code with comments is generally because they have a degree in CS, and CS classes often require such code.
That's like saying engineering is rigorous because the profs insisted on it so it has become a habit. It is rigorous for another reason -- in this case, a lot of experience has shown that overall, commented code is easier to maintain. It is exceedingly rare to see code which is only ever maintained by one person over its lifetime; if you've ever tried to fix a Steaming Heap of Innovative Technology which is utterly un-commented you might see why people insist on it.
I've worked on a lot of different code bases over the years, and most of the originally written by other people. I've seen developers let go because they didn't/wouldn't comment their code (well, that was part of the reason). The manager was a former coder, and expected that if you're working in his code base, you're going to adhere to his rules. Those included commenting code and adhering to standards. Failure to comment meant you were only doing about half of the job.
Not commenting code, and not keeping the comments up to date as the code changes is a very good indicator that the coder in question isn't doing his job as thoroughly as required. If you write software for a living, it really is a weak excuse to say that comments aren't helpful and tend to be out of date over time -- that's pretty much a circular argument since the reason the comments aren't helpful/accurate is because people haven't maintained them.
Slashdot Mirror
Breast implants already control many normal brains now.
We don't need to wait until 2025. :-P
Cheers
More interesting (well, to me), is this is essentially a re-hash of the concept of thin client computing which Microsoft tried so hard to get rid of in the 90's.
Everything old is new again.
Cheers
How do we reconcile this with slamming Apple for trying to maintain 100% control over the OS/hardware combo?
Norman ... coordinate.
Cheers
Or B (branch), depending on your architecture.
Cheers
Well, if we're going with joke operations, I'm changing my vote to HCF. ;-)
Cheers
I vote for GOTO as the only instruction.
That would be hilarious.
Cheers
Congratulations, there may be no need for further comments in this thread. I think you've summed up what we were all thinking. ;-)
Cheers
I agree with you in principal -- it should already be precluded.
But, if web-sites can retro-actively change their privacy policy, is there strong enough protection from existing laws to prevent the new owner from simply saying "these are our new terms" and doing it anyway? My guess is it's a sufficiently gray area that by the time you got a court to rule on it, it would simply be too damned late.
Heck, given the propensity for agencies like the CIA to simply buy information from private companies they would not be legally allowed to collect, what's to stop that from happening?
Not to sound too much like a member of the tin-foil-hat brigade, I can see transfer of ownership of this data entering into some pretty murky legal areas.
Cheers
Yeah, that's it. Nobody thought of death rays and the like before EA. ;-)
Cheers
Bravo, sir.
Cheers
From wikipedia ...
Short of getting into a pointless pissing match to sort out all of the minor semantic differences between what we've both said, it's effectively something you can essentially change the license of by only including the statement that it contains some BSD code. Or at least, you can release your software under any license you choose even if it includes BSD code.
You yourself have pointed out several times in this thread that you can do this. The nit-picking is identifying every little way in which one is ever so slightly is semantically different from the other.
Essentially, we're belaboring the point and not really adding much.
Cheers
In Soviet Russia, joke ruins you. ;-)
Cheers
Which, other than the need for attribution, doesn't really restrict you much.
But, yes, one occasionally forgets that Slashdot is well populated with semanticists and nit-pickers. ;-)
Cheers
Actually, being BSD licensed, you can release a fork under a new license I believe since BSD is a permissive license.
The reverse, however, would not be true.
Cheers
Chill, dude. If you didn't know, it was intended to enlighten. If you did, it was presumed that you'd understand the reason for the clarification that Ally McBeal wasn't the origin of it.
Cheers
That's pretty ambitious. ;-)
So, a Buddhist walks up to a hot dog vendor, and says "make me one with everything". :-P
Cheers
Between VMs and physical machines, I've got XP, Vista, Ubuntu, FreeBSD, and Windows 2003. No need to settle on just one. If I cared, I'd get Open Solaris.
All I need is a Mac, and I've got it mostly covered. :-P
Cheers
Just FYI, that animation predated Ally McBeal by around a year. My boss used to use it as his screen saver before that show started.
I always found it to be a particularly disturbing animation myself.
Cheers
Actually, I didn't mention it because I have no idea how/when it got flipped. I just discovered it last weekend, and knew I'd previously had my IE set to use Google. I simply don't know how it happened. I'm not concealing it to be mysterious or anything. :-P The machine in question gets its updates infrequently and in a big batch, and I rarely use IE, so I have no idea when it happened.
Quite possible. Like I said, simply don't know. Your suggestion sounds plausible.
I'm not in favor of most of the things you cite. Slipping in software installs and changes of defaults is a crappy practice all around. It's a bloody nuisance, and I think it's a bad idea. And, yes, I've had to turn off the updates which wanted to give me Safari when my iTunes updated on my Windows box.
I'm merely pointing out that when Microsoft does this stuff, sometimes it's in the guise of a "critical security update" or part of another install. Like that evil .NET framework that got jammed into my Firefox without me asking and couldn't be easily disabled.
Cheers
Well, MS is pushing out updates via OS updates.
I discovered the other day that IE on my XP box had suddenly decided that Bing was its default search engine, despite the fact that I'd previously set it to be Google.
I'm not saying I agree any more with the bundling of such things when you install other software (I don't), but Microsoft has an even more privileged access to my system in that they can push updates and I don't even get asked (other than agreeing to a cumulative security update with a long number and no real explanation). I certainly wasn't asked if IE could change its default search engine or to become the default browser (which has happened on occasion).
I have no doubt that a significant amount of their new-found market share was automatically set for users without their knowledge.
Cheers
Or Wylie Dufresne, or Homaro Cantu, or the field of Molecular Gastronomy.
Lots of chefs are using cutting edge technology to do really exotic things with food both in technique and results. And, they've been doing it for a long time.
Cheers
Wait, zombies are explosive too? :-P
Cheers
Sooner or later, reality gets wackier than fiction. Happens all of the time.
Cheers
In fairness to Ritchie, he was programming on bare metal and breaking new ground. OS level code talking directly to hardware can get pretty grotty because of all of the vagaries that can be going on that aren't readily apparent without the device manual and some experience.
At least he did comment it, and there was enough information in there to at least give context for what he was doing.
Cheers
That is not the fault of the practice of commenting code. That is the fault of lazy-assed developers who don't maintain the comments.
That's like saying engineering is rigorous because the profs insisted on it so it has become a habit. It is rigorous for another reason -- in this case, a lot of experience has shown that overall, commented code is easier to maintain. It is exceedingly rare to see code which is only ever maintained by one person over its lifetime; if you've ever tried to fix a Steaming Heap of Innovative Technology which is utterly un-commented you might see why people insist on it.
I've worked on a lot of different code bases over the years, and most of the originally written by other people. I've seen developers let go because they didn't/wouldn't comment their code (well, that was part of the reason). The manager was a former coder, and expected that if you're working in his code base, you're going to adhere to his rules. Those included commenting code and adhering to standards. Failure to comment meant you were only doing about half of the job.
Not commenting code, and not keeping the comments up to date as the code changes is a very good indicator that the coder in question isn't doing his job as thoroughly as required. If you write software for a living, it really is a weak excuse to say that comments aren't helpful and tend to be out of date over time -- that's pretty much a circular argument since the reason the comments aren't helpful/accurate is because people haven't maintained them.
Cheers