Depending on the political power your region of the country holds, you may be out of luck. It's not the market (number of sick people) which determines where these devices are installed. It's pure politics, and the resulting distribution is not even remotely fair.
In order to get my employer-subsidized insurance, I have to waive my HIPPA rights. (Why is this even possible?) The insurance company can thus do damn near anything with my most private health information. I think they could post it on the front page of their web site, bulk mail it to everybody, and so on. At the very least, they could leave it on a password-free server for every employee to see.
Meanwhile...
My kids can't examine my records for inheritable defects. My wife can't ask about the billing records. My wife can't ask about STD treatment. People living with me can't ask about tuberculosis.
This is absurd. The law hurts people more than it helps them.
My quick count shows 7 surviving probes on the surface. They got pictures (see wikipedia), a soil probe, gas measurements, temperature measurements, pressure measurements, and spectrometer measurements.
It's been 26 years since the last landing, and a few more since the technology was chosen. Don't you think technology has gotten better in the past 30 years?
At the very minimum, we could set down landers with modern cameras in a few diverse areas.
In some ways, Venus is easy. The atmosphere is so thick that you can skip the parachute and air bags; the USSR just picked a non-aerodynamic shape and put shock absorbers on the bottom.
How about landers on Venus, Mercury, or any of the dozen interesting moons around Jupiter and Saturn? How about trying the Mars Polar Lander again, getting it right this time, so that we can study the frost?
We might learn quite a bit if we did any of that. But no. We go back to the SAME DAMN PLACE. It's familiar and easy.
Really, we don't get good science payback from YET ANOTHER toy driving around on the warmer/flatter part of Mars. Exploring is about going to NEW places. Going back to the same place, when there are reachable unexplored places remaining, is only excusable after a couple decades of technology advancement.
That area of the country, for the time period of the games, will be treated differently. It'll look great. You'll be able to sit in your hotel room and view all the stuff you want. (pro-Tibetian Falon Gong porn, whatever...)
The rest of the country? No.
A month later? No.
BTW, don't check your business email or log in to the corporate VPN from China. You know the story: "all your trade secrets are blong to us".
Come on you scientist nerds. Keep examining photographs until you find a face -- no, water. That's it, we must find images that match our preconcieved notion of what it'll take to get a bigger budget, more subordinates, etc.
There are 4 distinct code points here. Two are uppercase, and two are lowercase. Two have dots on top, and two do not.
On a case-sensitive filesystem, all 4 are distinct. (they happen to look different too) This is very simple, easy, reliable, etc.
On a case-insensitive filesystem, some of these code points get confused. Worse yet, it varies by locale.
The obvious thing would be to preserve the presense/absense of the dot when changing case. We don't do this, even in English. In English, we match up the dotted lowercase with the undotted uppercase. That leaves the other things with one-way case transitions to cause trouble.
So, are the dotted and undotted lowercase letters the same? No, but in English they both are the same as the uppercase undotted one! So this isn't transitive. Dotted lowercase is undotted uppercase, and undotted uppercase is undotted lowercase, but dotted lowercase is not undotted lowercase!
Way back when, in a time when few judges used computers and the web didn't exist, a particularly slimey lawyer convinced a particularly clueless judge that you copy the software when you run it.
It's true at some level. You copy it from disk into RAM, and then into the CPU. Arrrrgh!!!!
(Plus there is the whole install-to-harddisk thing going on, but I think the decision is old enough that this could have been running a program from a floppy.)
So yeah, you need a license just to run the program.
Perhaps you'd better define "glyphing". I spend a damn lot of time at the unicode web site, and I've never seen a verb form of the word glyph.
I assume you mean the graphical representation of a Unicode code point. In that case, NO.
Unicode has an "i" without dot. It has a distinct code point from the regular "i". Unicode has an "I" with a dot. It has a distinct code point from the regular "I".
In one locale, the lowercase of "I" is the same as the lowercase of "I" with a dot. Both have dots. In another locale, they are distinct.
In one locale, the uppercase of "i" is the same as the uppercase of "i" without a dot. Both are a plain "I". In another locale, they are distinct.
Thus:
In one locale, two filenames are distinct. In another locale, they are not distinct. Oh crap. Now try sharing removable media or a network filesystem between the two locales.
You'll probably be hashing filenames. I guess you can do that all lowercased, which may be OK for Apple.
That doesn't work for Windows, which supports both Win32 and POSIX. You need something two-level, first case-insensitive then case-sensitive. (there are worse alternatives) Ugh.
All of this is with per-filesystem case conversion, because filesystems can come from different locales.
The GPL is not a contract (***in the USA***), but that's not the contract I mean.
The GPLv3 tivoization clause says that you can't use DRM to prevent changing the GPLv3 code on a consumer device.
What makes a consumer device special? Ever wonder why GPLv3 has a hole?
This is to allow various types of devices where the customer (usually a business) actually wants the DRM being used against them. Typically this is for legal reasons. The device might be safety-critical stuff: a medical implant, aircraft flight control software, nuclear reactor core monitoring equipment, etc.
The proper distinction here is that the customer actively participated in writing the contract. (freely offered to dig his own grave) Normal customers don't get to do that; you don't get a tivo if you demand that tivo executives first sign something your lawyer wrote.
So this is a minor inaccuracy in the GPLv3. It covers both more and less than it ideally ought to. Yuck.
First, the filesystem looks it up. This operation takes time proportional to the log of the directory size. Maybe you do better with hashes.
On a case-sensitive (POSIX-compliant) filesystem, you're done. You have the file, or you can return an error code.
On a case-insensitive filesystem, your done if you're lucky. If not lucky, you need to do a linear scan of the whole damn directory. Many places have a directory with some insane amount of files. Intentionally or not, it's common to go into the tens of thousands. A few places (running XFS mainly, sometimes Reiserfs) get into the millions.
Because of the way directory listings are done (read then look up stats) you can generally square the above numbers. Ouch.
I18N:
Then there is the issue of internationalization. For example, consider "I" and "i". Some places have an uppercase with the dot, and other places have a lowercase without the dot. The rules for uppercasing and lowercasing differ from what most people are used to. Oh crap! This issue doesn't exist on a case-sensitive filesystem.
Safety:
App needs to make a file. App sees that file does not seem to exist. App writes file. Complex international case rules mean that no, the file DOES exist, and it gets clobbered.
I really only have a few things to complain about:
* license proliferation and incompatibility (can't change Linux)
* that selfish anti-Linux ("GNU/Linux") rant in the preamble
* the stupid gname! "GNU" isn't gnice, it's moronic
* "consumer product" definition doesn't involve a fair chance to negotiate a contract
I wish we could move everything to GPLv3. Right now, every downloadable ISO image with GPLv2 binaries is in violation unless that site is also supplying the source. It's not enough to point people to the original source. This sucks; lots of projects are technically in violation. GPLv3 fixes this.
People screw up when they use this. Oh, maybe you're a genius who gets it right (just like you're a better than average driver) but have some pity on the other developers.
You get leaks that aren't leaks. The memory gets freed when the app exits. That's useless, because the OS will free it then. What failed to happen was freeing while the app was busy doing stuff. It's not OK to have objects just hanging around, all tied to each other, until the app exits.
You get bad interactions with regular pointers. Regular stuff gets leaked because you relied on the dumb pointers. Regular stuff gets double freed. Note: the regular stuff need not be pointers. It could be database connections, file handles, etc.
When most people say "device independent", they mean that the color space is tied to CIE-XYZ or (rarely) some other scientificly measured determination of color. The colors can be replicated on any device, subject only to the limitations of gamut and bit depth.
Since sRGB is defined in terms of CIE-XYZ, it is device-independent.
Web standards specify sRGB. Firefox and IE both expect sRGB for input and output. The display is supposed to be set to sRGB by default by the manufacturer. Thus, color management on the web works OK. (yeah, somebody could play with monitor settings or have a monitor that is going bad)
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Need a fancy medical scan? (MRI, PET, etc.)
Depending on the political power your region of the country holds, you may be out of luck. It's not the market (number of sick people) which determines where these devices are installed. It's pure politics, and the resulting distribution is not even remotely fair.
That's not really an improvement.
Nah, but they will have to set the evil bit.
That would be you, with your whaling permit. What a lucky ungrateful bastard you are, with your racially discriminatory special rights.
Take HIPPA for example.
In order to get my employer-subsidized insurance, I have to waive my HIPPA rights. (Why is this even possible?) The insurance company can thus do damn near anything with my most private health information. I think they could post it on the front page of their web site, bulk mail it to everybody, and so on. At the very least, they could leave it on a password-free server for every employee to see.
Meanwhile...
My kids can't examine my records for inheritable defects.
My wife can't ask about the billing records.
My wife can't ask about STD treatment.
People living with me can't ask about tuberculosis.
This is absurd. The law hurts people more than it helps them.
It's bad enough with the big vendors, who might discontinue a product without warning.
With a small vendor, there's all that PLUS a very real chance of bankruptcy.
Of course, Open Source software almost entirely eliminates the worry.
Now, how do you plan to make your customers feel safe?
These things are worth a lot. Spammers, governments, mobsters... all will pay. You even get your choice of payment method:
*euros
*credit card numbers
*yuan
*underage virgins
*dollars
*shekels
*death to your enemies
*rubles
*pounds, British money
*pounds, crack cocaine
Just be sure to not rip off the buyer. Most of the buyers have nasty ways to kill you. Some of them have polonium. Some of them have penis pills.
unless it's in Europe.
Germany? Genocide.
Serbia? Genocide.
Some village full of uncivilized savages? Nah, that's just them being normal.
If you can't figure out the captcha, and you don't have a friend willing to help, then you are both:
1. dumb (bad) or blind (sorry)
2. unfriendly, hostile, anti-social, etc.
All smart people with good eyes pass. All friendly people pass.
If you are neither smart nor friendly... gee, our loss, huh? So sad, we'll miss you!!!
My quick count shows 7 surviving probes on the surface. They got pictures (see wikipedia), a soil probe, gas measurements, temperature measurements, pressure measurements, and spectrometer measurements.
It's been 26 years since the last landing, and a few more since the technology was chosen. Don't you think technology has gotten better in the past 30 years?
At the very minimum, we could set down landers with modern cameras in a few diverse areas.
In some ways, Venus is easy. The atmosphere is so thick that you can skip the parachute and air bags; the USSR just picked a non-aerodynamic shape and put shock absorbers on the bottom.
Well, sadly, war is often useful, but anyway...
How about landers on Venus, Mercury, or any of the dozen interesting moons around Jupiter and Saturn? How about trying the Mars Polar Lander again, getting it right this time, so that we can study the frost?
We might learn quite a bit if we did any of that. But no. We go back to the SAME DAMN PLACE. It's familiar and easy.
Really, we don't get good science payback from YET ANOTHER toy driving around on the warmer/flatter part of Mars. Exploring is about going to NEW places. Going back to the same place, when there are reachable unexplored places remaining, is only excusable after a couple decades of technology advancement.
That area of the country, for the time period of the games, will be treated differently. It'll look great. You'll be able to sit in your hotel room and view all the stuff you want. (pro-Tibetian Falon Gong porn, whatever...)
The rest of the country? No.
A month later? No.
BTW, don't check your business email or log in to the corporate VPN from China. You know the story: "all your trade secrets are blong to us".
Come on you scientist nerds. Keep examining photographs until you find a face -- no, water. That's it, we must find images that match our preconcieved notion of what it'll take to get a bigger budget, more subordinates, etc.
Huh?
There are 4 distinct code points here. Two are uppercase, and two are lowercase. Two have dots on top, and two do not.
On a case-sensitive filesystem, all 4 are distinct. (they happen to look different too) This is very simple, easy, reliable, etc.
On a case-insensitive filesystem, some of these code points get confused. Worse yet, it varies by locale.
The obvious thing would be to preserve the presense/absense of the dot when changing case. We don't do this, even in English. In English, we match up the dotted lowercase with the undotted uppercase. That leaves the other things with one-way case transitions to cause trouble.
So, are the dotted and undotted lowercase letters the same? No, but in English they both are the same as the uppercase undotted one! So this isn't transitive. Dotted lowercase is undotted uppercase, and undotted uppercase is undotted lowercase, but dotted lowercase is not undotted lowercase!
Way back when, in a time when few judges used computers and the web didn't exist, a particularly slimey lawyer convinced a particularly clueless judge that you copy the software when you run it.
It's true at some level. You copy it from disk into RAM, and then into the CPU. Arrrrgh!!!!
(Plus there is the whole install-to-harddisk thing going on, but I think the decision is old enough that this could have been running a program from a floppy.)
So yeah, you need a license just to run the program.
Perhaps you'd better define "glyphing". I spend a damn lot of time at the unicode web site, and I've never seen a verb form of the word glyph.
I assume you mean the graphical representation of a Unicode code point. In that case, NO.
Unicode has an "i" without dot. It has a distinct code point from the regular "i".
Unicode has an "I" with a dot. It has a distinct code point from the regular "I".
In one locale, the lowercase of "I" is the same as the lowercase of "I" with a dot. Both have dots. In another locale, they are distinct.
In one locale, the uppercase of "i" is the same as the uppercase of "i" without a dot. Both are a plain "I". In another locale, they are distinct.
Thus:
In one locale, two filenames are distinct. In another locale, they are not distinct. Oh crap. Now try sharing removable media or a network filesystem between the two locales.
You'll probably be hashing filenames. I guess you can do that all lowercased, which may be OK for Apple.
That doesn't work for Windows, which supports both Win32 and POSIX. You need something two-level, first case-insensitive then case-sensitive. (there are worse alternatives) Ugh.
All of this is with per-filesystem case conversion, because filesystems can come from different locales.
NTFS filesystems actually have a case translation table stored on the disk. The one for the USA does not match the one for Turkey.
Apple might not give a shit, in which case HFS+ behaves wrongly in Turkey.
Tough shit. I'm a Linux developer, not a GNU developer. I don't even support GNU Hurd. Quit trying to forcibly rename my OS to something tacky.
The GPL is not a contract (***in the USA***), but that's not the contract I mean.
The GPLv3 tivoization clause says that you can't use DRM to prevent changing the GPLv3 code on a consumer device.
What makes a consumer device special? Ever wonder why GPLv3 has a hole?
This is to allow various types of devices where the customer (usually a business) actually wants the DRM being used against them. Typically this is for legal reasons. The device might be safety-critical stuff: a medical implant, aircraft flight control software, nuclear reactor core monitoring equipment, etc.
The proper distinction here is that the customer actively participated in writing the contract. (freely offered to dig his own grave) Normal customers don't get to do that; you don't get a tivo if you demand that tivo executives first sign something your lawyer wrote.
So this is a minor inaccuracy in the GPLv3. It covers both more and less than it ideally ought to. Yuck.
Performance:
Suppose I want to access a file.
First, the filesystem looks it up. This operation takes time proportional to the log of the directory size. Maybe you do better with hashes.
On a case-sensitive (POSIX-compliant) filesystem, you're done. You have the file, or you can return an error code.
On a case-insensitive filesystem, your done if you're lucky. If not lucky, you need to do a linear scan of the whole damn directory. Many places have a directory with some insane amount of files. Intentionally or not, it's common to go into the tens of thousands. A few places (running XFS mainly, sometimes Reiserfs) get into the millions.
Because of the way directory listings are done (read then look up stats) you can generally square the above numbers. Ouch.
I18N:
Then there is the issue of internationalization. For example, consider "I" and "i". Some places have an uppercase with the dot, and other places have a lowercase without the dot. The rules for uppercasing and lowercasing differ from what most people are used to. Oh crap! This issue doesn't exist on a case-sensitive filesystem.
Safety:
App needs to make a file. App sees that file does not seem to exist. App writes file. Complex international case rules mean that no, the file DOES exist, and it gets clobbered.
They do not use the GPL except when forced by the GPL.
They haven't written anything original, new, fresh, unencumbered by prior licenses... and then decided to use the GPL.
I really only have a few things to complain about:
* license proliferation and incompatibility (can't change Linux)
* that selfish anti-Linux ("GNU/Linux") rant in the preamble
* the stupid gname! "GNU" isn't gnice, it's moronic
* "consumer product" definition doesn't involve a fair chance to negotiate a contract
I wish we could move everything to GPLv3. Right now, every downloadable ISO image with GPLv2 binaries is in violation unless that site is also supplying the source. It's not enough to point people to the original source. This sucks; lots of projects are technically in violation. GPLv3 fixes this.
People screw up when they use this. Oh, maybe you're a genius who gets it right (just like you're a better than average driver) but have some pity on the other developers.
You get leaks that aren't leaks. The memory gets freed when the app exits. That's useless, because the OS will free it then. What failed to happen was freeing while the app was busy doing stuff. It's not OK to have objects just hanging around, all tied to each other, until the app exits.
You get bad interactions with regular pointers. Regular stuff gets leaked because you relied on the dumb pointers. Regular stuff gets double freed. Note: the regular stuff need not be pointers. It could be database connections, file handles, etc.
When most people say "device independent", they mean that the color space is tied to CIE-XYZ or (rarely) some other scientificly measured determination of color. The colors can be replicated on any device, subject only to the limitations of gamut and bit depth.
Since sRGB is defined in terms of CIE-XYZ, it is device-independent.
Web standards specify sRGB. Firefox and IE both expect sRGB for input and output. The display is supposed to be set to sRGB by default by the manufacturer. Thus, color management on the web works OK. (yeah, somebody could play with monitor settings or have a monitor that is going bad)