Let's not forget we are talking about Europe where many countries issue personal IDs and keep registries of all citizens at several levels with mandatory registration.
That's like taking an article on the USA and saying "let's not forget we are talking about the Americas which have a long history of military dictatorships and one of the world's last remaining communist states".
We're actually talking about Britain, which doesn't issue ID papers or keep compulsory registries of all citizens at several levels... yet. It's the fact that our government is probably going to try to introduce these hitherto unheard-of measures soon that is causing all this controversy. Since we are a multi-party democracy in which both major opposition parties oppose these measures, I wouldn't stake any money on such unpopular measures getting rammed through. It's likely but not inevitable.
i mean, unless they're using a modified GPL or whatever (is the GPL open-source?), they don't really get to dictate the terms. "derivative work", for example, isn't something they get to define.
MySQL AB's interpretation of the terms matches the FSF's interpretation, and has also been supported by courts in various parts of the world. It holds water. Nobody's found a loophole yet, and believe me, there are a hell of a lot of people who have been looking.
if i'm shipping a closed-source app that simply requires MySQL be also installed, and not something that's statically linked to their binaries, where's the "derivative work" come in?
The FSF's interpretation of their own license holds that both static and dynamic linking create a derivative-work relationship. I don't know what their legal argument is, but the advice they issue is that if a binary does not work unless a specific shared library available, it uses that library and is therefore required to respect that library's license. Note that a even dynamically linked executable does generally have specific references to parts of the shared library compiled into it, and on some platforms is even statically linked to an import library, so there is some logic in this position.
Now, if what you had in mind was an application that wasn't linked to MySQL libraries at all, but interacted with MySQL by running the mysql program with specific command-line options and parsing the output, then you would be correct: that does not create a derivative-work relationship, and even RMS himself is of the opinion that a program that works that way would not infringe on the GPL and could be licensed however you please. Of course, there would probably be something of a performance hit.
With each new update, M$ is going to continue to release more and more restrictions in their OS, to the point that before users know it, they end up wrapped in a virtual straightjacket.
Yay, another slippery-slope fallacy! That's my third favourite, right after straw-man arguments and proof-by-analogy-with-Hitler.
Why don't they (the FSF) direct their energy to improving "end user" software on free operating systems like Linux with GUIs like KDE, GNOME, XFCE etc?
We're talking about the perpetrators of emacs here...
I use the thirdparty Omega Drivers on my XP install. I find that they generally perform better then the standard ATI drivers...somehow I don't think the guy producing the Omega Drivers will be able to pay $300-500 per release, considering how it is a spare time project for him...
Had you considered making donations? All the drivers need is 1,000 users, and it would only cost you 30 cents each. If the drivers aren't worth 30 cents to you, then maybe driver signing isn't a problem anyway.
If this smear Vista campaign does anything at all, it will drive consumers away from Windows and towards Mac OSX.
It might have, that is, if Apple's own relentlessly negative and patronising advertising hadn't already driven many wavering PC users to vow never, ever, to Get A Mac(tm).
Sadly, the fact that all Microsoft's competitors are now concentrating all their efforts on attacking Microsoft, rather than on enhancing their own products to provide the features people choose Windows for, is not actually going to harm Vista's uptake at all. Everyone looks at Apple and the FSF and just thinks "man, what sore losers!"
(What features? you may well ask. Well, #1 is "being installed on the computer I just bought". Apple's "throw that expensive new PC away and buy our proprietary hardware instead", and Linux's "it's really easy to install a new OS, honest", just don't cut it. #2 is "running all the software I own"; again, Joe Average doesn't want to faff about with Parallels or Wine/Cedega/Crossover, so better integration is essential.)
Have you looked at the facts behind this campaign?
What facts? The FSF hasn't presented any facts yet. That's why the campaign, so far, might reasonably be described as FUD: they have launched a new site dedicated to convincing people that Vista is bad, and announced that they know all sorts of reasons why nobody should use Vista, but the site does not currently present any actual evidence to support their claims.
When SCO did that to Linux, everyone cried foul, rightly as it turned out. Maybe the FSF, unlike SCO, actually has some substantial arguments waiting in the wings, but if so, they should really have prepared them for public perusal before launching the campaign, don't you think?
The problem is the mismatch between the freedoms people want and the freedoms the FSF champions. The "freedoms" Vista is going to take away simply are not freedoms that most people care about. For example, the freedom to install unsigned device drivers is hardly comparable with skipping ads on DVDs.
Even very obvious and irritating restrictions like forced reactivation will not actually affect the average user, for whom hardware upgrades stop with buying a new printer.
That's why the FSF faces an uphill battle convincing people that Vista is bad. Heck, I'm a regular user of free software who is considering switching to GNU/Linux for my primary desktop, and even I'm not convinced that Vista is actually a bad thing; I don't have any pressing urge to switch to it myself, but nor do I see any particular reason to warn other people off it.
A Free OS is wide open with possibility; anything you can code, you can do. I know, most users aren't coders, but the possibility is still there.
I'm a coder. Given the free time and the motivation, I reckon I could probably write pretty much any user-space software I would ever need (though I wouldn't vouch for its performance). That already places me among a tiny, tiny minority of computer users. But if I found I needed a feature that was absent from the Linux or *BSD kernel, I wouldn't even have a clue where to begin implementing that feature.
So the fact that "the possibility is there" is meaningless, because despite being one of the minority who can code, I am not one of the even smaller minority who can code on bare metal. And for the coding I know I'm capable of, free OSes don't actually offer any advantage. There is no user-space software that I can write on Linux but not on Windows.
Therefore, given that the number of people worldwide who are interested in customising their OS kernel is likely to be incredibly small, it's unclear that the "advantage" you cite has any real-world relevance at all.
With Windows, the OS does what Microsoft programs it to do. Period.
The kernel does, perhaps. But people don't care about the kernel. In areas people care about, Microsoft has no control.
For example, if Microsoft controlled what people did on Windows, do you think OpenOffice.org would be the viable choice it is? Would Firefox have been able to force people to stop designing exclusively for Internet Explorer if Windows could only be used in the way that Microsoft dictated?
What's more, Google literally can't delete your mail without permission.
Why not? Because when you created an account, you explicitly agreed to their terms of use, which grant them permission to delete your mail at any time and for any reason whatsoever. (They also have your permission to lock you out of your account permanently, at any time and for any reason, and to give your email address to someone else without even bothering to tell you.)
People who just installed the OS and would like to read the stuff they got in e-mail? This is especially pathetic since MS does have a Word viewer
So, uh, what's the problem? People who just installed the OS (and have for some inexplicable reason decided to read word documents they were sent in emails before they install Office) can just use MS's Word viewer. It's not like they could ever edit a document decently with Wordpad, so they're not losing any significant capability.
I store a notebook in a desk drawer for seven months and then go to attend an offsite lecture where I would like to take notes and where I don't have access to corporate Intranet. What right does Microsoft have to lock me out of my own files on a system with legally licensed software?
I wish I worked for an organisation that didn't object to my hogging a corporate notebook for 7 months without using it. Frankly, if you only use it to take notes at offsite lectures once or twice a year, why not use a pencil and paper? Or, I dunno, maybe switch it on for five minutes before you go offsite?
BTW, if the license says you have to reactivate every 6 months, then once you go past 6 months without reactivating, the system isn't legally licensed anymore. You choose to have a Vista notebook? You chose to obey the restrictive license. Disobey it and Microsoft has every right in the world to lock you out of those oh-so-important files that are so critical to your business that you leave them untouched in a desk drawer for 7 months at a stretch.
with a decent black theme, XP can look pretty awesome.;) But of course if your interested in being stuck in your gray, boring world, feel free.;)
Because, of course, black is far more exciting than grey...?
Look, even Apple has been increasing the grey content of OS X steadily since the very start. Now half the applications are brushed metal, which is, uh, kind of grey. And remember the "graphite" theme they introduced after their graphic artist customer base complained that Aqua was too distracting? You know, the one that turns the entire OS grey?
This "grey is for boring people" thing is getting seriously old. Themes are for people who have nothing better to do than play with themes; "dull" colours like grey (and Ubuntu's beige) are for people who are doing interesting things with their computers, and want the interface to get out of the way when they're not interacting with it. Maybe you spend all your time salivating over your awesomely pretty menus and scrollbars, but some of us are too busy enjoying our interesting and fulfilling work to care what the menus look like.
On Windows upgrade starts with disk format. Whatever you had on your system needs to be installed from scratch. Years of customization go to hell and you start with a blank harddrive with new system, to which you must install all the software, all the data sources, all the configuration.
Pray tell, are you trolling, or merely ignorant?
The upgrade from Win2k to WinXP damn well does not require a reformat. You pop the XP disc in the drive, it upgrades Windows (leaving everything else just how it found it), you reboot and the system starts up.
Some people claim that it works better with a clean install, but these are by and large the same people who make the nonsensical claim that Windows computers need reformatting on a regular basis, which is complete and utter bullshit.
Sounds good, but the luser on the tech support line won't know the tech that installed it checked "OK" when it was installed. When that luser happens to be a corporate VP, then the fun starts.
Huh? Are there many corporate VPs who phone external tech support themselves, instead of just telling their PA to send an angry email to their corporation's internal IT department -- you know, where that tech that checked "OK" works? How many corporate-VP-type users who don't install their own software even know which company wrote it, let alone the phone number of that company's tech support line?
Get off the high horse and realize that just because we refuse to support your usage of an ancient OS, and we refuse to spend millions in man-hours QA'ing for it when you represent an infinitesimal portion of our customer base, doesn't mean we're evil.
If the number of users of the ancient OS is that infinitesimally small, then even if it's broken you'll only get a handful of support calls. Force people to jump through a little hoop to install the program, like running the installer with a special "/skiposcheck" switch, and inexperienced users who don't understand the meaning of "at your own risk" won't be able to install it anyway. Thirty seconds' work, with the result that nobody bitches that you blocked them using your software for no reason. But I guess it's easier to get on a patronising high horse of your own than to recognise that not all your potential users are still wearing nappies.
For cryin' out loud the damn thing is 7 years old!
So? The damn Windows XP is 5 years old. It's not like we're talking about Windows 3.0 here. The differences between 2k and XP, from a programmer's perspective, are frankly minuscule.
You don't expect Doom 3 to run on your Nvidia TNT2 do you?
Well, yes, actually I'd be quite surprised if it couldn't be run on a TNT2, given that it's famous for being playable on a Voodoo2 (which is a considerably older and less capable card).
This code is not pure shellscript : it uses awk and wget to get the job done...
That's what a pure shellscript is! The whole point of shell scripting is that you use the shell script as glue to tie together simple single-purpose utilities that come as standard with every flavour of Unix ever.*
To me, the *only* advantage of shellscript is that it's the only language that you are sure to find on any Unix system.
No shit, Sherlock! You have clearly never worked in a large organisation, where - believe it or not - you, as a standard user, do not actually get to insist that the already-overworked IT department jump through bureaucratic hoops to install your favourite bloated scripting language, unless you have a damn good business case for it. And probably not even then.
Hint: if the task you want that scripting language to accomplish is trivial to achieve with a simple shell script, you don't have a good business case.
* This doesn't apply to wget, obviously, but if your platform really has no standard alternative, you are more likely to persuade IT to install something small and simple like wget, fetch, curl, etc. than a complete programming environment like Python.
Which leaves us with only one reason why the UK government would make such a noise around this fantasy: to raise the terror feeling in the general population in order to pass more restrictive laws and embed the police state a little deeper.
I keep wondering why nobody stands up to these clowns. There isn't a shred of evidence to support the current rules that prevent people from bringing soda pops and baby bottles in airplanes. Quite the contrary. Yet people seem to accept this. It's 1984 unfolding before our very eyes in Britain and in the US and that makes me sad...
Orwell's 1984: a totalitarian state that disappears its own citizens into brutal torture chambers at the merest suspicion of dissident thoughts, apparently launches missiles at its own cities to keep its citizens in check, and is trying to brainwash its entire population into being literally incapable of understanding the very concept of freedom.
Britain in 2006: a democratic state where people enjoy freedoms that most of the world can only dream of, and where the worst thing you can think of to complain about is that your coke might be confiscated at an airport.
US politics encompasses the entire world. Try having a discussion about terrorist plots without having the USA come into play.
Notice to egotistical Americans with no concept of "the outside world": terrorism didn't begin in 2001. Please learn some history and international politics before you embarrass yourselves further. Where does US politics come into the terrorist plots of the IRA,* or ETA, or November 17, or Aum Shinrikyo, or any of the many, many other current and historical terrorists who have or had absolutely zero interest in the USA?
* I guess it's often claimed that a lot of the IRA's funding and support came from the USA, but that's a slightly different matter.
You've made a good point about why ignoring the supreme law of the land when we feel like it is a great idea, but ignoring laws that are less important is not.
The difference between acting in an "unconstitutional" fashion and stealing is quite simple: it is obvious to most right-minded human beings that theft is wrong, but the importance of the specific rights enumerated in your constitution is not so self-evident.
This can be demonstrated simply by looking at the laws of other free and democratic countries. There is no country where the rule of law is respected where theft is legal, but the specific human rights that any democracy considers inviolable vary wildly. For example, in the USA it is believed that total freedom of speech is paramount, while in parts of Europe people are imprisoned for expressing the belief that the Holocaust has been exaggerated. Meanwhile, in the EU it is taken for granted that the right to life should be considered absolute, while the USA regularly denies people this right by its use of capital punishment.
Why do Americans get so worked up over their constitution? It is, after all, just a bunch of words, written admittedly by some very intelligent men, but by humans, not by some all-wise deity. That it is flawed is obvious from the fact that it has had to be amended so many times, and from the number of further amendments that are constantly being suggested. Here in Britain we remain just as free as you, despite the fact that our own constitution has no single written form and is regularly changed at the whim of the government of the day. Perhaps America would benefit from a similar system. Insisting on legalistically following the letter of a constitution that no longer reflects the will of the people is not democracy.
F.E. winhoze sucks rotten eggz as far as Layer 3 based HA, anicast and routing and this will allow you to bolt on that on top of a Winhoze application by running a routing protocol stack on the embedded engine.
That's fascinating, but I use Windows, not Winhoze. Will this affect performance for me?
1) Code does move, especially when interactively debugging. Having watched machine instructions be executed command by command I will testify to this one. It just might not move as fast as it does in the movies
The fact that it is possible, in certain limited circumstances, for computer screens to display scrolling text, does not excuse the Hollywood convention that all text scrolls at incredible speed.
2) Alot of Code "WAS" green text on a black background and I even have some of my current IDE's configured that way (preference plus easier on the eyes), when I'm not using white on blue that is.
You are in a tiny minority. The fact that it is possible to configure a modern system to mimic ancient technology does not excuse the Hollywood convention that supposedly-ultra-modern-high-tech computer systems should be configured that way, when generally speaking they are not.
3) Code has Structure. The only thing I can do about this one is Laugh. Most code might have structure but not one most people, developers included, could ever understand.
And this excuses the Hollywood presentation of computer code as not even having line breaks, or in many cases not even consisting of words and numbers... uh... precisely how?
5) Code "can" make blip noises and can actually make coding easier because it is easier to know if you hit multiple keys at once by accident, or skipped a key press.
The fact that it is theoretically possible does not alter the fact that in practice it is practically unknown for computer systems to go "blip" every time a character appears on the screen.
6) Code "can" be broken by an eight year old in seconds, would you like to meet some.
The fact that there exist certain rare combinations of very poor security systems and very bright 8-year-olds does not alter the fact that the vast majority of security systems could not be broken in seconds even by a supergenius 8-year-old with a PhD in computer science.
8) I think we already covered binary representations of code
I don't. While looking at hexadecimal representations of code is very common, looking at binary is extremely rare.
9) Good developers avoid the mouse at all costs. It's slow and mostly useless.
Most good developers use a combination of mouse and keyboard input, switching between them as appropriate. It is true that good programmers will on average make greater use of the keyboard for things that other users might use the mouse for, but it is nonsense to say that any but a handful actively refuse to use the mouse for anything.
10) Good code can be compiled to many different machine codes, you just have to assume the wrote a good C compiler for the alien technology in Independents Day I mean they had the ship long enough.
Aside from trivial programs, even the best and most portable code is invariably tied to a single platform, whether that be POSIX, the JVM, Win32, or whatever. (I can't be bothered to read up on ID4 and find out exactly what the fictional scenario was, so I shan't bother arguing this point in detail.)
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We're actually talking about Britain, which doesn't issue ID papers or keep compulsory registries of all citizens at several levels... yet. It's the fact that our government is probably going to try to introduce these hitherto unheard-of measures soon that is causing all this controversy. Since we are a multi-party democracy in which both major opposition parties oppose these measures, I wouldn't stake any money on such unpopular measures getting rammed through. It's likely but not inevitable.
The FSF's interpretation of their own license holds that both static and dynamic linking create a derivative-work relationship. I don't know what their legal argument is, but the advice they issue is that if a binary does not work unless a specific shared library available, it uses that library and is therefore required to respect that library's license. Note that a even dynamically linked executable does generally have specific references to parts of the shared library compiled into it, and on some platforms is even statically linked to an import library, so there is some logic in this position.
Now, if what you had in mind was an application that wasn't linked to MySQL libraries at all, but interacted with MySQL by running the mysql program with specific command-line options and parsing the output, then you would be correct: that does not create a derivative-work relationship, and even RMS himself is of the opinion that a program that works that way would not infringe on the GPL and could be licensed however you please. Of course, there would probably be something of a performance hit.
Sadly, the fact that all Microsoft's competitors are now concentrating all their efforts on attacking Microsoft, rather than on enhancing their own products to provide the features people choose Windows for, is not actually going to harm Vista's uptake at all. Everyone looks at Apple and the FSF and just thinks "man, what sore losers!"
(What features? you may well ask. Well, #1 is "being installed on the computer I just bought". Apple's "throw that expensive new PC away and buy our proprietary hardware instead", and Linux's "it's really easy to install a new OS, honest", just don't cut it. #2 is "running all the software I own"; again, Joe Average doesn't want to faff about with Parallels or Wine/Cedega/Crossover, so better integration is essential.)
When SCO did that to Linux, everyone cried foul, rightly as it turned out. Maybe the FSF, unlike SCO, actually has some substantial arguments waiting in the wings, but if so, they should really have prepared them for public perusal before launching the campaign, don't you think?
The problem is the mismatch between the freedoms people want and the freedoms the FSF champions. The "freedoms" Vista is going to take away simply are not freedoms that most people care about. For example, the freedom to install unsigned device drivers is hardly comparable with skipping ads on DVDs.
Even very obvious and irritating restrictions like forced reactivation will not actually affect the average user, for whom hardware upgrades stop with buying a new printer.
That's why the FSF faces an uphill battle convincing people that Vista is bad. Heck, I'm a regular user of free software who is considering switching to GNU/Linux for my primary desktop, and even I'm not convinced that Vista is actually a bad thing; I don't have any pressing urge to switch to it myself, but nor do I see any particular reason to warn other people off it.
So the fact that "the possibility is there" is meaningless, because despite being one of the minority who can code, I am not one of the even smaller minority who can code on bare metal. And for the coding I know I'm capable of, free OSes don't actually offer any advantage. There is no user-space software that I can write on Linux but not on Windows.
Therefore, given that the number of people worldwide who are interested in customising their OS kernel is likely to be incredibly small, it's unclear that the "advantage" you cite has any real-world relevance at all.
The kernel does, perhaps. But people don't care about the kernel. In areas people care about, Microsoft has no control.
For example, if Microsoft controlled what people did on Windows, do you think OpenOffice.org would be the viable choice it is?
Would Firefox have been able to force people to stop designing exclusively for Internet Explorer if Windows could only be used in the way that Microsoft dictated?
Sorry, but I'm not persuaded.
Why not? Because when you created an account, you explicitly agreed to their terms of use, which grant them permission to delete your mail at any time and for any reason whatsoever. (They also have your permission to lock you out of your account permanently, at any time and for any reason, and to give your email address to someone else without even bothering to tell you.)
I wish I worked for an organisation that didn't object to my hogging a corporate notebook for 7 months without using it. Frankly, if you only use it to take notes at offsite lectures once or twice a year, why not use a pencil and paper? Or, I dunno, maybe switch it on for five minutes before you go offsite?
BTW, if the license says you have to reactivate every 6 months, then once you go past 6 months without reactivating, the system isn't legally licensed anymore. You choose to have a Vista notebook? You chose to obey the restrictive license. Disobey it and Microsoft has every right in the world to lock you out of those oh-so-important files that are so critical to your business that you leave them untouched in a desk drawer for 7 months at a stretch.
with a decent black theme, XP can look pretty awesome. ;) But of course if your interested in being stuck in your gray, boring world, feel free. ;)
Because, of course, black is far more exciting than grey...?
Look, even Apple has been increasing the grey content of OS X steadily since the very start. Now half the applications are brushed metal, which is, uh, kind of grey. And remember the "graphite" theme they introduced after their graphic artist customer base complained that Aqua was too distracting? You know, the one that turns the entire OS grey?
This "grey is for boring people" thing is getting seriously old. Themes are for people who have nothing better to do than play with themes; "dull" colours like grey (and Ubuntu's beige) are for people who are doing interesting things with their computers, and want the interface to get out of the way when they're not interacting with it. Maybe you spend all your time salivating over your awesomely pretty menus and scrollbars, but some of us are too busy enjoying our interesting and fulfilling work to care what the menus look like.
The upgrade from Win2k to WinXP damn well does not require a reformat. You pop the XP disc in the drive, it upgrades Windows (leaving everything else just how it found it), you reboot and the system starts up.
Some people claim that it works better with a clean install, but these are by and large the same people who make the nonsensical claim that Windows computers need reformatting on a regular basis, which is complete and utter bullshit.
Sounds good, but the luser on the tech support line won't know the tech that installed it checked "OK" when it was installed. When that luser happens to be a corporate VP, then the fun starts.
Huh? Are there many corporate VPs who phone external tech support themselves, instead of just telling their PA to send an angry email to their corporation's internal IT department -- you know, where that tech that checked "OK" works? How many corporate-VP-type users who don't install their own software even know which company wrote it, let alone the phone number of that company's tech support line?
So? The damn Windows XP is 5 years old. It's not like we're talking about Windows 3.0 here. The differences between 2k and XP, from a programmer's perspective, are frankly minuscule.
Well, yes, actually I'd be quite surprised if it couldn't be run on a TNT2, given that it's famous for being playable on a Voodoo2 (which is a considerably older and less capable card).
You may be thinking of GNU tar. I suggest you look up what the acronym GNU stands for, with particular reference to the N.
(This is not to dispute that the example given in the article is broken.)
No shit, Sherlock! You have clearly never worked in a large organisation, where - believe it or not - you, as a standard user, do not actually get to insist that the already-overworked IT department jump through bureaucratic hoops to install your favourite bloated scripting language, unless you have a damn good business case for it. And probably not even then.
Hint: if the task you want that scripting language to accomplish is trivial to achieve with a simple shell script, you don't have a good business case.
* This doesn't apply to wget, obviously, but if your platform really has no standard alternative, you are more likely to persuade IT to install something small and simple like wget, fetch, curl, etc. than a complete programming environment like Python.
Britain in 2006: a democratic state where people enjoy freedoms that most of the world can only dream of, and where the worst thing you can think of to complain about is that your coke might be confiscated at an airport.
Help! Help! I'm being oppressed!
* I guess it's often claimed that a lot of the IRA's funding and support came from the USA, but that's a slightly different matter.
I didn't know that, and I wonder how many of my less 'techy' friends knew that.
I suspect you do not have many fellows in the set of find-as-you-type users who are unfamiliar with standard keyboard shortcuts.
Why would they take away a self explanatory feature and replace it with an obscure one with the same function?
How can it be "replacing" anything when it's been there all along?
You've made a good point about why ignoring the supreme law of the land when we feel like it is a great idea, but ignoring laws that are less important is not.
The difference between acting in an "unconstitutional" fashion and stealing is quite simple: it is obvious to most right-minded human beings that theft is wrong, but the importance of the specific rights enumerated in your constitution is not so self-evident.
This can be demonstrated simply by looking at the laws of other free and democratic countries. There is no country where the rule of law is respected where theft is legal, but the specific human rights that any democracy considers inviolable vary wildly. For example, in the USA it is believed that total freedom of speech is paramount, while in parts of Europe people are imprisoned for expressing the belief that the Holocaust has been exaggerated. Meanwhile, in the EU it is taken for granted that the right to life should be considered absolute, while the USA regularly denies people this right by its use of capital punishment.
Why do Americans get so worked up over their constitution? It is, after all, just a bunch of words, written admittedly by some very intelligent men, but by humans, not by some all-wise deity. That it is flawed is obvious from the fact that it has had to be amended so many times, and from the number of further amendments that are constantly being suggested. Here in Britain we remain just as free as you, despite the fact that our own constitution has no single written form and is regularly changed at the whim of the government of the day. Perhaps America would benefit from a similar system. Insisting on legalistically following the letter of a constitution that no longer reflects the will of the people is not democracy.
F.E. winhoze sucks rotten eggz as far as Layer 3 based HA, anicast and routing and this will allow you to bolt on that on top of a Winhoze application by running a routing protocol stack on the embedded engine.
That's fascinating, but I use Windows, not Winhoze. Will this affect performance for me?
Hey, way to miss the point, genius.
1) Code does move, especially when interactively debugging. Having watched machine instructions be executed command by command I will testify to this one. It just might not move as fast as it does in the movies
The fact that it is possible, in certain limited circumstances, for computer screens to display scrolling text, does not excuse the Hollywood convention that all text scrolls at incredible speed.
2) Alot of Code "WAS" green text on a black background and I even have some of my current IDE's configured that way (preference plus easier on the eyes), when I'm not using white on blue that is.
You are in a tiny minority. The fact that it is possible to configure a modern system to mimic ancient technology does not excuse the Hollywood convention that supposedly-ultra-modern-high-tech computer systems should be configured that way, when generally speaking they are not.
3) Code has Structure. The only thing I can do about this one is Laugh. Most code might have structure but not one most people, developers included, could ever understand.
And this excuses the Hollywood presentation of computer code as not even having line breaks, or in many cases not even consisting of words and numbers... uh... precisely how?
5) Code "can" make blip noises and can actually make coding easier because it is easier to know if you hit multiple keys at once by accident, or skipped a key press.
The fact that it is theoretically possible does not alter the fact that in practice it is practically unknown for computer systems to go "blip" every time a character appears on the screen.
6) Code "can" be broken by an eight year old in seconds, would you like to meet some.
The fact that there exist certain rare combinations of very poor security systems and very bright 8-year-olds does not alter the fact that the vast majority of security systems could not be broken in seconds even by a supergenius 8-year-old with a PhD in computer science.
8) I think we already covered binary representations of code
I don't. While looking at hexadecimal representations of code is very common, looking at binary is extremely rare.
9) Good developers avoid the mouse at all costs. It's slow and mostly useless.
Most good developers use a combination of mouse and keyboard input, switching between them as appropriate. It is true that good programmers will on average make greater use of the keyboard for things that other users might use the mouse for, but it is nonsense to say that any but a handful actively refuse to use the mouse for anything.
10) Good code can be compiled to many different machine codes, you just have to assume the wrote a good C compiler for the alien technology in Independents Day I mean they had the ship long enough.
Aside from trivial programs, even the best and most portable code is invariably tied to a single platform, whether that be POSIX, the JVM, Win32, or whatever. (I can't be bothered to read up on ID4 and find out exactly what the fictional scenario was, so I shan't bother arguing this point in detail.)