So he created a service that runs with the necessary privileges to do what it needs, which communicates with a non-privileged front-end, and which requires privileges to install.
How is this a "hack"?
Perhaps the author of iReboot didn't see the rational for isolating a piece of code that needs to do something privileged and having it install and run in a user account which has sufficient permissions to allow it to run--but from a security standpoint this is no different than in Linux, where privileged code runs in a separate account from the user, and where IPC is used to communicate with that process.
Oh, I can believe an existing business can make quite a good living selling infrastructure like database software.
However, given existing customer lock-in, the fact that you're more likely to make money with support contracts than you are writing the software (ask RedHat), and given the complexity of writing a database engine from the ground up, it'd be a really tough business to get into. The barrier to entry is mondo-high--and the only way I can see entering that business, ironically enough, is to do it via FOSS, penetrate the market and then sell support contracts.
Another fallacy that is often used in reports like this or reports on software piracy is the idea that every copy that is floating out there for free would have been paid for if the software was somehow not available for free--either legitimately through FOSS or illegitimately through piracy.
That's simply not true.
For example, I can download Apache Derby for free and have a SQL engine for my various projects. Had Derby and MySQL and the like not been available, I wouldn't go out and buy a SQL product--chances are, I'd home grow my own custom database. For many of my projects SQL is overkill, but because its free, I may as well use SQL than a couple of fixed-width flat files--even though fixed-width flat files would probably work just fine.
Back in the 80's I knew a fellow who collected pirated software. He never used the software--he just collected it because he thought it was cool. Realistically, had it been impossible for him to collect software he would have never bothered. So realistically speaking while he had thousands of dollars of pirated software on his computer, because he never used it or had any need for the software he copied (it was just a weird hobby of his), he would never buy the software even if it was impossible for him to otherwise obtain copies. So he never represented a sale to the software makers whose wares he was copying.
One also has to wonder what economic benefit has arisen from FOSS. While its true that, for example, I'd hate to go into the database business--it's a complicated business and there is no money to be made because of MySQL and Derby and other free database engines out there--end-user applications seem to be thriving. "Infrastructure" software--stuff like databases and web servers and the like have become free, and going into a business to sell a $10k software solution to compete against Apache Tomcat would be silly. But on the other hand, how much value has been built on top of that infrastructure that simply wouldn't exist if that infrastructure was expensive and the barrier to entry high?
"But everyone else is doing it!" is a crappy excuse.
<sarcasm>You know, you're absolutely right. And as a representative of the Slashdot community we've all decided that you are now the representative of goodness and moral behavior for the rest of the human race.
Please post all your details in public so we can all monitor your actions so we can make sure your behavior meets our exacting standards to moral behavior, especially in the realms of software development, computer usage, and personal hygiene.
What? No-one else is doing that or even willing to do that? As you said, just because everyone else keeps their information private so we cannot have our morality judged is "a crappy excuse."</sarcasm>
Yeah, it's a pain in the ass that Apple didn't provide some mechanism that allows a developer to install some sort of personal certificate on his own phone so he can upload self-signed applications.
(1) You must have your application signed before it will run on any cell phone, (2) Your application must be delivered via the Apple iTunes store, and (3) Your usage of the beta version of Apple's development kit subjects you to an NDA.
Well, the NDA part of the beta program struck me as a little odd, as it takes about no effort for any idiot to sign up and download the SDK for free--however, this seems to be a standard tactic by Apple for all its beta SDKs. The NDA will be gone, however, by the time the SDK is out of beta--so the whole "you must sign an NDA and that is incompatible with the GPL" thing will be gone by summer.
So what is left is the fact that you have to sign your application before it will run on the iPhone.
As someone who has written cell phone software before, I can tell you that Symbian and Windows Mobile also require application signing before allowing your programs to run on their platforms. It's very common in the cell phone industry to use certificate signing--and at $99/year, Apple is the cheapest to obtain a signing key. Further, from the sounds of it, by the time the SDK goes out of beta, anyone with $99 can get a signing key and sign as many apps as he wishes. (By contrast, for Windows Mobile you pay VeriSign $350 for 10 signing events, meaning you can only sign 10 applications or different versions of the same application. (Actually a signing event means you sign one executable.) Symbian is even more of a pain in the neck. And let's not talk about Android until real Android-based phones start showing up on the market and we learn what sort of package signing requirements the cell phone manufacturers impose on Android applications.
While I appreciate the need for authors to fill column space in order to get paid, it seems to be a little early to start complaining about GPL incompatibility and pointing the fingers solely at Apple because you're too lazy to compare and contrast with the other mobile operating systems out there.
Okay, I understand the legal theory--that the fourth amendment does not apply to military actions, only to civil law enforcement actions. And it strikes me as quite reasonable: when in the battlefield, a soldier does not have time to hold a hearing and arbitrate the validity of executing someone who is shooting at him.
War is a different animal than Law Enforcement, and the current administration (like previous administrations) is asserting that as the Commander in Chief, certain military actions are protected. I understand that--and I approve of the idea that the rules of war must run separate and parallel to the rules of civil law enforcement.
However, and this is where I get very very irritated, while it may be true that the Fourth amendment does not apply to military operations--and thus, by extension, does not apply to domestic military operations, the whole idea becomes moot because Posse Comitatus makes domestic military operations illegal, unless you're dealing with an invading force.
In other words, this administration has just classified a number of activities exempt from constitutional oversight by declaring these activities as something that happens to also be illegal.
While (unlike many others here) I personally have no problems with executive privilege and the powers of the Executive Branch of our government, and while I have no problems with international wiretapping operations carried out by the NSA--and I point this out so y'all know where I'm coming from, not because I wish to debate these points--what I really want to know is where did the White House Lawyers go to get the crack they're smoking?
Because you don't declare something constitutionally exempt by declaring it as an act which happens to also be patently illegal...
We're not talking about an overpriced patented drug here.
And even if we were talking about an overpriced patented drug here, there already is a mechanism to allow the government to declare something a "collective good" and buy it through a forced eminent domain sale. (For our UK friends, 'compulsory purchase'.) To confiscate property that someone developed and is now making a profit over--even an 'overpriced patented drug'--without properly compensating the person for that property is akin to slavery.
Sorry, but I get reeeeel itchy when someone makes a flippant remark about private property which undermines the right of the person who developed that property to then profit from it. And in the case of pharmaceuticals, they're not exactly one of the better companies to buy stock in, in large part because while drugs may be expensive, developing new drugs is also extremely expensive.
To summarize, what we need is a better way to dig cheap holes.
Think of it: with a cheap way to drill a hole we can drill down close to the mantle of the earth for cheap geothermal. With a cheap way to dig a tunnel we can expand our freeway infrastructure by placing new roads below ground. Infrastructure can be run underground more cheaply--if we have a cheap hole to run them through.
Hell, I'd love to go back to doing embedded software development--but as far as I can see, in my area if there are any jobs doing embedded, I haven't heard of them.
But in that same vein, I'm surprised to hear your primary distinction between Islam and Christianity as being the Literal v.s. the inspired word. FAR too many people on the Christian right are proud to affirm that the bible is the Literal word of God; That every word is true. Moreover, entire Christian colleges are founded on the idea that through detailed analysis of the word, you can 'reveal' hidden truths.
As I understand it even the Evangelical movement believes the Bible is the "inspired" word of God. They see the Bible as the primary (and in some cases, the sole) source of religious truth--as opposed to the Catholic movement which uses a number of extra-Biblical sources to define the religious movement. (The Catholic Mass, for example, can be traced back to the pre-Christian Roman Imperial liturgy celebrating Jupiter.) However, even within the Fundamentalist Protestant movement, even though they believe in the inerrancy of the Bible and in Sola Scriptura, the inerrancy of the Bible comes from the belief that the inspiration that drove men to write the Bible was perfect: the scripture itself is entirely without error and without contradiction.
Yet even such a strong statement as this does admit to interpretation: I cannot think of a single Evangelical movement which would support the use of slave concubines for the purpose of reproduction if a man's wife proves to be infertile--despite such behavior being supported time and time again in the Old Testament.
Such a strong statement about the Bible--that it is the sole source of religious knowledge (Sola Scriptura) and it is "perfect"--still doesn't go as far as the Koran, which (Muslims believe) is not just the (perfectly) inspired word of God, but the literal word of Allah. The Koran captures the words spoken by Allah. It's the difference between me writing what you said (and being inspired by you to get the details right) and you writing it yourself.
And as such, the Koran is not open to interpretation.
Well, sure; one could argue that Sura 9 essentially commands violence until the entire world has been subjugated to Islam: it certainly has been interpreted that way countless times. The Verse of the Sword (9:5) has been interpreted as having a greater context than the limited historic battles to which Sura 9 refers.
However, for such a reformation to take place, it is going to have to take place within Islam itself. It is (unfortunately) not up to the West to interpret Islam for Muslim believers.
Until then, the best we can hope is to defend ourselves and to suggest to all clear-minded people around the world that there is a better alternative than violence--if only because the United States can (and will) excel at the game of violence...
Within the context of Christianity, Deuteronomy has been aborgated (overridden) by Christ's discussion of the law in Matthews (Matthews 22:37-40: "Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.") and by Galatians, which is a discussion of living by faith verses living justified by the law. (Short story: the New Testament (testament basically means covinenant or agreement between man and God) delivered us a new agreement which superceeds the old one in the Old Testament.)
It's one of the reasons why Christians using Deuteronomy to justify hatred of homosexuality irritates me deeply: by what word of Paul or of Jesus did we decide to aborigate all laws of the Flesh except the ones we can use to bash each other over the head?
Oh, and your Matthews quote? The Old Testament (agreement between God and man) was indeed fulfilled by Christ--and like any good contract that is fulfilled (and thus no longer relevant) it was time to write a new agreement (contract), which is why we have an Old Testament (for reference and historic value) and a New Testament (to document the current agreement). The deed was in fact "accomplished" with Christ's crucifixion. Which is why Christians today make a big deal at Easter.
The biggest difference between Christianity and Islam is that Christianity has had several moments where the text of the Bible was either reinterpreted (through the delivery of a new Testament, through the reinterpretation of faith by Saint Augustine, through the various interpretations of Galatians by everyone from the Catholics and Protestants to the Gnostics) or outright reframed (such as during the Renaissance): the Bible is simply the "inspired" word of God and not the literal word of God.
Islam, in contrast, has had no such reformation or reinterpretation: the Quran is not just the "inspired" word of God, it is the literal word of God--and worse, it is a third covenant which seeks to replace the Old and New Testament (which Islam teaches was rewritten by people jealous that it's (the Bible's) prophicies of Mohammed were fulfilled), and which ends with Sura 9--which demands that infidels should be subjugated by the sword until they convert or are turned into second-class servants.
In the West if you see local terrorism (such as people killing others or blowing shit up), it's environment terrorism or anti-abortion fanatics or just plain nutbars: killing others for a cause is simply not seen in the West as justified by the Bible. In Arabia, however, local terrorism is religious--and seen as scriptually justified--and not justified in a round-about way, but pointedly justified by Sura 9 Verse 5.
Note that by repenting and establishing regular prayers and the like, "Pagans" (translated elsewhere as "idolaters" or non-Muslims) have converted to Islam.
In other words, it's us (the brotherhood of Islam) verses them (the "Pagans" or "infidels"--not believers in Islam)--and if you side with your non-believing family over your fellow followers in faith, you're screwed.
Keep in mind as well that Sura 9 is the last Sura to be dictated by Allah, and so aborigates all other verses to the contrary.
Why, yes: the Quran does indeed say to wage war against the infidels. It says it several times in Sura 9: in the verse of the sword (9:5) and in the passage exhorting war against the non-believers (9:29). Verses 9:5 and 9:29 are oft cited by those who launch bombs at non-believers and those "of the book", and who step onto busses and blow themselves to kingdom-come, along with the children and innocent parents on that bus.
The Quran damned well demands of its believers to overcome the non-believers until they feel subjugated or until they convert, no matter how many aborgated (Meccan) verses of "love" you wish to dig up.
Now whether or not individual Muslims believe this themselves is a completely different matter: I'm not suggesting that those who pick up a Quran and confess that it may have value are about to go hijack a plane and fly it into another skyscraper. Nor does all of this deny how beautiful it is to see the opening lines "God is greatest" of prayer sung in Arabic. But let's not fall into the delusion that there is any moral equivalency between the Bible and the Quran, simply because you either are a believer in the illusion of multiculturalism or think anyone who is religious is axiomatically a nutbar and morally equivalent to the other God-fearing nutbars out there.
Basically, the problem is, when you're speaking DIGITALLY, there is no difference between "copying a recording" (ie download for the purposes of saving a file) and "performing a recording" (download eg streaming, for the purposes of audio playback in the physical world).
For This Reason, New Media Players (Apple, Yahoo, Napster, etc) argue that the "mechanical royalty for copyright" should be lowered significantly on digital downloads (specifically, to 4%).
No.
Or at least, while from a technical standpoint without DRM there is no difference between streaming and downloading--aside from the fact that when streaming the entire file image isn't permanently stored to disk--from a legal perspective the DiMA believes there is a big difference. That is the position the DiMA has taken: since they assert streaming isn't downloading, streaming music (say, via Internet Radio) doesn't qualify as the delivery of a song, and thus shouldn't trigger a Section 115 mechanical royalty payment. To quote their position:
Streaming represents the digital equivalent of radio broadcasting, whereby musical works are transmitted in form that is simultaneously rendered (or intended to be rendered) perceptible to the recipient. In constrast, a digital phonorecord delivery ("DPD") is the digital equivalent of a phonograph record, compact disk or other "material objects in which souunds... are fixed." See 17 USC 101.... For the reasons briefly set forth above, DiMA believes that "interactive streaming" of a sound recording does not constitute a Digital Phonograph Delivery under Section 115 of the Copyright Act. In their written direct cases, by contrast, both NMPA and RIAA have proposed rates and terms to apply to interactive streaming, arguing that Section 115 is triggered by such activities."
Because they are arguing there is a legal difference--a legal difference, of course, which can only be enforced using some sort of digital rights management system to prevent you from permanently saving an audio stream to disk for later replay--the mechanical royalty payment for delivering such an audio stream should be the same as for radio playback.
In other words, it's the DiMA trying to save Internet Radio, not Apple trying to figure out how to stiff artists so they can make more money selling music through iTunes.
For the reasons briefly set forth above, DiMA believes that "interactive streaming" of a sound recording does not constitute a Digital Photograph Delivery under Section 115 of the Copyright Act. In their written direct cases, by contrast, both NMPA and RIAA have proposed rates and terms to apply to internet streaming, arguing that Section 115 is triggered by such activities.
This assumption, made by the RIAA and NMPA, that streaming is the same as selling a music track, is what triggered a whole stream of Slashdot stories about how the RIAA was trying to destroy Internet radio, such as: Webcasters Call Bunk on SoundExchange DRM Ploy.
This would have nothing to do with Apple iTunes Music Store sales of music, which are considered the electronic delivery of an album.
As a side note, I'm astonished how quickly so many otherwise intelligent Slashdot readers seem to pile up on one side or another of an issue, such as Internet Radio royalties, depending on how the winds happen to be blowing--because they fail to think for themselves. If supposedly more intelligent than average Slashdot readers are this easily manipulated, then God help us during tomorrow's Super Tuesday elections...
It won't happen. You cannot factor death and destruction out of war. No matter how 'ethical' your robots are, no matter how many international treaties you establish, no matter which party you elect, so long as human beings are (a) imperfect and (b) stopped by death, you will need to use deadly force and you will have wars.
And God help us if human beings are no longer stopped by death.
That's the part that really worries me about robots in war: by eliminating the need for human beings, you make it almost certain that one day one party will be able to continue conducting a war after everyone on that side is dead. Imagine a fanatical group of people who have decided that the universe would be better if everyone is dead than if the other side existed: the only thing that prevents the entire world from being destroyed is their inability to kill everyone. But with robots--shit, this honestly scares me a lot more than Bill Joy's nanotech "gray goo" scenario...
I went poking around AT&T's investor relations site, and it seems to me (though I didn't spend a whole lot of time there) that the 2 million number is the number of new AT&T customers who switched to AT&T wireless because of the iPhone. This does not count customers (such as myself) who kept my existing service but switched devices (in my case, from a Motorola RAZR to an iPhone).
If this is the case, it would explain a large amount of that gap.
I think part of the problem here is that the major media would like to report that the iPhone is a dismal failure somehow--and channel stuffing (a'la Microsoft's channel stuffing of the Zune) is one way to paint this picture. However, given the number of units I've seen on the shelves at the various stores I've gone to, I cannot imagine that 30% of Apple's iPhone stock was stuffed into the channel: that would mean that every Apple and AT&T store would have a mountain of iPhones sitting in the corner, and I'm not seeing it.
At several places where I worked management was always happy to allow cycles to be spent on the process of 'refactoring' the code.
Unfortunately, in my experience, the process of 'refactoring' involved making code more complex by adding to it. In one case, I saw the product of the 'refactoring' process wrap two pieces of functionality into two separate EJBs (with a whole 'dto-pojo' conversion scheme for data "isolation"). In another, I saw some functionality wrapped into a collection of beans--which was later wrapped in another layer of beans, and so forth, until 20 lines of code which set up a call into the javax.xml.translate package (for performing an XSLT transformation) into something like 8 bean layers. The 20 lines of code was at the heart of an 8-layer onion, each layer added by someone else's "refactoring" operation.
In Java, because modern IDEs allow you to write code without thinking, the problem with code is not that there isn't enough code (to prevent incestuous classes from being overly familiar with each other), but that there is too much code as programmers unfamiliar with the problem decided to add beans and interprocess communication and multiple threads without properly sizing the problem. (Right now I'm looking at an internal system which may need to process 1 transaction a second, tops, built in an inter-cooperating network of 8 EJBs, which someone thought would help improve transactional performance. Eight? A second system essentially replicates an in-memory SQL system rolled in-house: the system has been buggy because the reverse index processing had a race condition. Um, why wasn't that built in a dozen classes on top of MySQL instead of built with a couple of hundred classes that reinvent the wheel poorly?)
While I'm glad someone wrote a book on refactoring methodology, in my experience what we need is a book which describes how to write "simple" code: code that is just as complicated as it needs to be, and no more. And a book which also describes how to simplify overly-complicated code, how to pick simpler techniques, and how to manage programmers who have an "itch" so they go scratch it somewhere else--I think that would be a much more useful book.
It's easy to add complexity. It's hard to simplify.
The problem is there are only three 'core' energy generation technologies: technologies which can be 'always on' and which can at a moments notice fill the gaps where hydro, tidal, wind and solar collapse (because of a water shortage, tide is out, wind ain't blowing or the sun sets): coal, gas and nuclear. Until we figure out a way to dig a hole in a cost effective way to make geothermal power anywhere in the world (rather than at the thin spots where geothermal is close to the surface), that's going to be it: gas, coal and nuclear.
And of those three core generation technologies, nuclear is the cleanest.
I have both the Sony Reader and the Amazon Kindle.
1. The Sony Reader displays PDFs natively. The small screen makes this nearly useless except for especially formatted PDFs. PDFs can be converted for the Amazon Kindle and the results are generally not all that bad, except for complex formatted PDFs. (But most PDFs are formatted as 8 1/2x11 inch paper; to read that properly you'd need a 14" diagonal screen--and instead of a handheld device the size of a small book, you'd need something the size of a laptop.
And guess what? A cheap laptop fits that bill perfectly.
2. The Amazon Kindle in fact does allow you to annotate a page. Select the line using the menu scroll wheel, then select "Add Note". You can then enter a note that then stays associated with the line. On the main page a small 'note' icon shows up on the page. You can also browse your notes by selecting "Menu" at the bottom of the page, then select "My Notes & Marks"; this shows a list of all the notes that you've taken. Selecting the note allows you to go directly to the page where the note was set; you can then read your note. (The Sony Reader doesn't allow you to do this because it has no keyboard.) Both devices allow you to bookmark a page.
3. You can browse web pages; use the menu wheel to select the line where the link is on, then select the line. A pop-up menu will then show a list of the links on that line, as well as give you the option to look up the meaning of any of the words on that line. Not exactly as elegant as using a pen or mouse input device to click on the line, but it does work.
4. Sprint EVDO is more than fast enough and has wider coverage than a hodge-podge of WiFi hotspots. The price to surf using the Sprint cell network is built into the device--meaning that it is effectively "free."
5. The resolution is 600x800x2bits/pixel, for 4 levels of gray, which is the current limitation of e-Paper. What makes e-Paper cool is that in direct sunlight or in a bright room, the e-Paper is extremely easy to ready. The downside is that it is unusable without a nightlight in the dark, and it is much lower resolution (and has no color resolution) compared to LCD.
The Newton (which I also had) had a smaller screen, shorter battery life, did not have the ability to surf the 'net and had no content.
(As a footnote, this is the thing that fascinates me about Slashdot: if a post sounds informative, it gets marked informative--even if the content was clearly pulled out of the poster's ass...)
Slashdot Mirror
So he created a service that runs with the necessary privileges to do what it needs, which communicates with a non-privileged front-end, and which requires privileges to install.
How is this a "hack"?
Perhaps the author of iReboot didn't see the rational for isolating a piece of code that needs to do something privileged and having it install and run in a user account which has sufficient permissions to allow it to run--but from a security standpoint this is no different than in Linux, where privileged code runs in a separate account from the user, and where IPC is used to communicate with that process.
Can we kill two birds with one stone and extract gasoline from Kudzu?
Oh, I can believe an existing business can make quite a good living selling infrastructure like database software.
However, given existing customer lock-in, the fact that you're more likely to make money with support contracts than you are writing the software (ask RedHat), and given the complexity of writing a database engine from the ground up, it'd be a really tough business to get into. The barrier to entry is mondo-high--and the only way I can see entering that business, ironically enough, is to do it via FOSS, penetrate the market and then sell support contracts.
Another fallacy that is often used in reports like this or reports on software piracy is the idea that every copy that is floating out there for free would have been paid for if the software was somehow not available for free--either legitimately through FOSS or illegitimately through piracy.
That's simply not true.
For example, I can download Apache Derby for free and have a SQL engine for my various projects. Had Derby and MySQL and the like not been available, I wouldn't go out and buy a SQL product--chances are, I'd home grow my own custom database. For many of my projects SQL is overkill, but because its free, I may as well use SQL than a couple of fixed-width flat files--even though fixed-width flat files would probably work just fine.
Back in the 80's I knew a fellow who collected pirated software. He never used the software--he just collected it because he thought it was cool. Realistically, had it been impossible for him to collect software he would have never bothered. So realistically speaking while he had thousands of dollars of pirated software on his computer, because he never used it or had any need for the software he copied (it was just a weird hobby of his), he would never buy the software even if it was impossible for him to otherwise obtain copies. So he never represented a sale to the software makers whose wares he was copying.
One also has to wonder what economic benefit has arisen from FOSS. While its true that, for example, I'd hate to go into the database business--it's a complicated business and there is no money to be made because of MySQL and Derby and other free database engines out there--end-user applications seem to be thriving. "Infrastructure" software--stuff like databases and web servers and the like have become free, and going into a business to sell a $10k software solution to compete against Apache Tomcat would be silly. But on the other hand, how much value has been built on top of that infrastructure that simply wouldn't exist if that infrastructure was expensive and the barrier to entry high?
Please post all your details in public so we can all monitor your actions so we can make sure your behavior meets our exacting standards to moral behavior, especially in the realms of software development, computer usage, and personal hygiene.
What? No-one else is doing that or even willing to do that? As you said, just because everyone else keeps their information private so we cannot have our morality judged is "a crappy excuse."</sarcasm>
Yeah, it's a pain in the ass that Apple didn't provide some mechanism that allows a developer to install some sort of personal certificate on his own phone so he can upload self-signed applications.
There are three points of contention:
(1) You must have your application signed before it will run on any cell phone,
(2) Your application must be delivered via the Apple iTunes store, and
(3) Your usage of the beta version of Apple's development kit subjects you to an NDA.
Well, the NDA part of the beta program struck me as a little odd, as it takes about no effort for any idiot to sign up and download the SDK for free--however, this seems to be a standard tactic by Apple for all its beta SDKs. The NDA will be gone, however, by the time the SDK is out of beta--so the whole "you must sign an NDA and that is incompatible with the GPL" thing will be gone by summer.
So what is left is the fact that you have to sign your application before it will run on the iPhone.
As someone who has written cell phone software before, I can tell you that Symbian and Windows Mobile also require application signing before allowing your programs to run on their platforms. It's very common in the cell phone industry to use certificate signing--and at $99/year, Apple is the cheapest to obtain a signing key. Further, from the sounds of it, by the time the SDK goes out of beta, anyone with $99 can get a signing key and sign as many apps as he wishes. (By contrast, for Windows Mobile you pay VeriSign $350 for 10 signing events, meaning you can only sign 10 applications or different versions of the same application. (Actually a signing event means you sign one executable.) Symbian is even more of a pain in the neck. And let's not talk about Android until real Android-based phones start showing up on the market and we learn what sort of package signing requirements the cell phone manufacturers impose on Android applications.
While I appreciate the need for authors to fill column space in order to get paid, it seems to be a little early to start complaining about GPL incompatibility and pointing the fingers solely at Apple because you're too lazy to compare and contrast with the other mobile operating systems out there.
Okay, I understand the legal theory--that the fourth amendment does not apply to military actions, only to civil law enforcement actions. And it strikes me as quite reasonable: when in the battlefield, a soldier does not have time to hold a hearing and arbitrate the validity of executing someone who is shooting at him.
War is a different animal than Law Enforcement, and the current administration (like previous administrations) is asserting that as the Commander in Chief, certain military actions are protected. I understand that--and I approve of the idea that the rules of war must run separate and parallel to the rules of civil law enforcement.
However, and this is where I get very very irritated, while it may be true that the Fourth amendment does not apply to military operations--and thus, by extension, does not apply to domestic military operations, the whole idea becomes moot because Posse Comitatus makes domestic military operations illegal, unless you're dealing with an invading force.
In other words, this administration has just classified a number of activities exempt from constitutional oversight by declaring these activities as something that happens to also be illegal.
While (unlike many others here) I personally have no problems with executive privilege and the powers of the Executive Branch of our government, and while I have no problems with international wiretapping operations carried out by the NSA--and I point this out so y'all know where I'm coming from, not because I wish to debate these points--what I really want to know is where did the White House Lawyers go to get the crack they're smoking?
Because you don't declare something constitutionally exempt by declaring it as an act which happens to also be patently illegal...
And even if we were talking about an overpriced patented drug here, there already is a mechanism to allow the government to declare something a "collective good" and buy it through a forced eminent domain sale. (For our UK friends, 'compulsory purchase'.) To confiscate property that someone developed and is now making a profit over--even an 'overpriced patented drug'--without properly compensating the person for that property is akin to slavery.
Sorry, but I get reeeeel itchy when someone makes a flippant remark about private property which undermines the right of the person who developed that property to then profit from it. And in the case of pharmaceuticals, they're not exactly one of the better companies to buy stock in, in large part because while drugs may be expensive, developing new drugs is also extremely expensive.
I'm with Scott Adams: Holes.
To summarize, what we need is a better way to dig cheap holes.
Think of it: with a cheap way to drill a hole we can drill down close to the mantle of the earth for cheap geothermal. With a cheap way to dig a tunnel we can expand our freeway infrastructure by placing new roads below ground. Infrastructure can be run underground more cheaply--if we have a cheap hole to run them through.
Holes are the future.
I have to concur.
Hell, I'd love to go back to doing embedded software development--but as far as I can see, in my area if there are any jobs doing embedded, I haven't heard of them.
As they say on Usenet, when it turns into a spelling flame war, the thread is over.
Yet even such a strong statement as this does admit to interpretation: I cannot think of a single Evangelical movement which would support the use of slave concubines for the purpose of reproduction if a man's wife proves to be infertile--despite such behavior being supported time and time again in the Old Testament.
Such a strong statement about the Bible--that it is the sole source of religious knowledge (Sola Scriptura) and it is "perfect"--still doesn't go as far as the Koran, which (Muslims believe) is not just the (perfectly) inspired word of God, but the literal word of Allah. The Koran captures the words spoken by Allah. It's the difference between me writing what you said (and being inspired by you to get the details right) and you writing it yourself.
And as such, the Koran is not open to interpretation.
Well, sure; one could argue that Sura 9 essentially commands violence until the entire world has been subjugated to Islam: it certainly has been interpreted that way countless times. The Verse of the Sword (9:5) has been interpreted as having a greater context than the limited historic battles to which Sura 9 refers.
However, for such a reformation to take place, it is going to have to take place within Islam itself. It is (unfortunately) not up to the West to interpret Islam for Muslim believers.
Until then, the best we can hope is to defend ourselves and to suggest to all clear-minded people around the world that there is a better alternative than violence--if only because the United States can (and will) excel at the game of violence...
Within the context of Christianity, Deuteronomy has been aborgated (overridden) by Christ's discussion of the law in Matthews (Matthews 22:37-40: "Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.") and by Galatians, which is a discussion of living by faith verses living justified by the law. (Short story: the New Testament (testament basically means covinenant or agreement between man and God) delivered us a new agreement which superceeds the old one in the Old Testament.)
It's one of the reasons why Christians using Deuteronomy to justify hatred of homosexuality irritates me deeply: by what word of Paul or of Jesus did we decide to aborigate all laws of the Flesh except the ones we can use to bash each other over the head?
Oh, and your Matthews quote? The Old Testament (agreement between God and man) was indeed fulfilled by Christ--and like any good contract that is fulfilled (and thus no longer relevant) it was time to write a new agreement (contract), which is why we have an Old Testament (for reference and historic value) and a New Testament (to document the current agreement). The deed was in fact "accomplished" with Christ's crucifixion. Which is why Christians today make a big deal at Easter.
The biggest difference between Christianity and Islam is that Christianity has had several moments where the text of the Bible was either reinterpreted (through the delivery of a new Testament, through the reinterpretation of faith by Saint Augustine, through the various interpretations of Galatians by everyone from the Catholics and Protestants to the Gnostics) or outright reframed (such as during the Renaissance): the Bible is simply the "inspired" word of God and not the literal word of God.
Islam, in contrast, has had no such reformation or reinterpretation: the Quran is not just the "inspired" word of God, it is the literal word of God--and worse, it is a third covenant which seeks to replace the Old and New Testament (which Islam teaches was rewritten by people jealous that it's (the Bible's) prophicies of Mohammed were fulfilled), and which ends with Sura 9--which demands that infidels should be subjugated by the sword until they convert or are turned into second-class servants.
In the West if you see local terrorism (such as people killing others or blowing shit up), it's environment terrorism or anti-abortion fanatics or just plain nutbars: killing others for a cause is simply not seen in the West as justified by the Bible. In Arabia, however, local terrorism is religious--and seen as scriptually justified--and not justified in a round-about way, but pointedly justified by Sura 9 Verse 5.
Ahem.
9:5: "But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, an seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war); but if they repent, and establish regular prayers and practise regular charity, then open the way for them: for Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful."
Note that by repenting and establishing regular prayers and the like, "Pagans" (translated elsewhere as "idolaters" or non-Muslims) have converted to Islam.
9:13-14: "Will ye not fight people who violated their oaths [and failed to convert to Islam as promised, verse 9:7-12], plotted to expel the Messenger, and took the aggressive by being the first (to assult) you? Do ye fear them? Nay, it is Allah Whom ye should more justly fear, if ye believe! Fight them, and Allah will punish them by your hands, cover them with shame, help you (to victory) over them, heal the breasts of Believers,"
9:23-24: "O ye who believe! take not for protectors your fathers and your brothers if they love infidelity above Faith [that is, if they are not believers in Islam]: if any of you do so, they do wrong. Say: If it be that your fathers, your sons, your brothers, your mates, or your kindred; the wealth that ye have gained; the commerce in which ye fiear a decline: or the dwellings in which ye delight -- are dearer to you than Allah, or His Messenger, or the striving [Jihad] in His cause;- then wait until Allah brings about His decision: and Allah guides not the rebellious."
In other words, it's us (the brotherhood of Islam) verses them (the "Pagans" or "infidels"--not believers in Islam)--and if you side with your non-believing family over your fellow followers in faith, you're screwed.
And so now we've set up the sides:
9:29: "Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued."
Keep in mind as well that Sura 9 is the last Sura to be dictated by Allah, and so aborigates all other verses to the contrary.
Why, yes: the Quran does indeed say to wage war against the infidels. It says it several times in Sura 9: in the verse of the sword (9:5) and in the passage exhorting war against the non-believers (9:29). Verses 9:5 and 9:29 are oft cited by those who launch bombs at non-believers and those "of the book", and who step onto busses and blow themselves to kingdom-come, along with the children and innocent parents on that bus.
The Quran damned well demands of its believers to overcome the non-believers until they feel subjugated or until they convert, no matter how many aborgated (Meccan) verses of "love" you wish to dig up.
Now whether or not individual Muslims believe this themselves is a completely different matter: I'm not suggesting that those who pick up a Quran and confess that it may have value are about to go hijack a plane and fly it into another skyscraper. Nor does all of this deny how beautiful it is to see the opening lines "God is greatest" of prayer sung in Arabic. But let's not fall into the delusion that there is any moral equivalency between the Bible and the Quran, simply because you either are a believer in the illusion of multiculturalism or think anyone who is religious is axiomatically a nutbar and morally equivalent to the other God-fearing nutbars out there.
Or at least, while from a technical standpoint without DRM there is no difference between streaming and downloading--aside from the fact that when streaming the entire file image isn't permanently stored to disk--from a legal perspective the DiMA believes there is a big difference. That is the position the DiMA has taken: since they assert streaming isn't downloading, streaming music (say, via Internet Radio) doesn't qualify as the delivery of a song, and thus shouldn't trigger a Section 115 mechanical royalty payment. To quote their position:Because they are arguing there is a legal difference--a legal difference, of course, which can only be enforced using some sort of digital rights management system to prevent you from permanently saving an audio stream to disk for later replay--the mechanical royalty payment for delivering such an audio stream should be the same as for radio playback.
In other words, it's the DiMA trying to save Internet Radio, not Apple trying to figure out how to stiff artists so they can make more money selling music through iTunes.
To quote from the brief:
This assumption, made by the RIAA and NMPA, that streaming is the same as selling a music track, is what triggered a whole stream of Slashdot stories about how the RIAA was trying to destroy Internet radio, such as: Webcasters Call Bunk on SoundExchange DRM Ploy.
This would have nothing to do with Apple iTunes Music Store sales of music, which are considered the electronic delivery of an album.
As a side note, I'm astonished how quickly so many otherwise intelligent Slashdot readers seem to pile up on one side or another of an issue, such as Internet Radio royalties, depending on how the winds happen to be blowing--because they fail to think for themselves. If supposedly more intelligent than average Slashdot readers are this easily manipulated, then God help us during tomorrow's Super Tuesday elections...
It won't happen. You cannot factor death and destruction out of war. No matter how 'ethical' your robots are, no matter how many international treaties you establish, no matter which party you elect, so long as human beings are (a) imperfect and (b) stopped by death, you will need to use deadly force and you will have wars.
And God help us if human beings are no longer stopped by death.
That's the part that really worries me about robots in war: by eliminating the need for human beings, you make it almost certain that one day one party will be able to continue conducting a war after everyone on that side is dead. Imagine a fanatical group of people who have decided that the universe would be better if everyone is dead than if the other side existed: the only thing that prevents the entire world from being destroyed is their inability to kill everyone. But with robots--shit, this honestly scares me a lot more than Bill Joy's nanotech "gray goo" scenario...
I went poking around AT&T's investor relations site, and it seems to me (though I didn't spend a whole lot of time there) that the 2 million number is the number of new AT&T customers who switched to AT&T wireless because of the iPhone. This does not count customers (such as myself) who kept my existing service but switched devices (in my case, from a Motorola RAZR to an iPhone).
If this is the case, it would explain a large amount of that gap.
I think part of the problem here is that the major media would like to report that the iPhone is a dismal failure somehow--and channel stuffing (a'la Microsoft's channel stuffing of the Zune) is one way to paint this picture. However, given the number of units I've seen on the shelves at the various stores I've gone to, I cannot imagine that 30% of Apple's iPhone stock was stuffed into the channel: that would mean that every Apple and AT&T store would have a mountain of iPhones sitting in the corner, and I'm not seeing it.
At several places where I worked management was always happy to allow cycles to be spent on the process of 'refactoring' the code.
Unfortunately, in my experience, the process of 'refactoring' involved making code more complex by adding to it. In one case, I saw the product of the 'refactoring' process wrap two pieces of functionality into two separate EJBs (with a whole 'dto-pojo' conversion scheme for data "isolation"). In another, I saw some functionality wrapped into a collection of beans--which was later wrapped in another layer of beans, and so forth, until 20 lines of code which set up a call into the javax.xml.translate package (for performing an XSLT transformation) into something like 8 bean layers. The 20 lines of code was at the heart of an 8-layer onion, each layer added by someone else's "refactoring" operation.
In Java, because modern IDEs allow you to write code without thinking, the problem with code is not that there isn't enough code (to prevent incestuous classes from being overly familiar with each other), but that there is too much code as programmers unfamiliar with the problem decided to add beans and interprocess communication and multiple threads without properly sizing the problem. (Right now I'm looking at an internal system which may need to process 1 transaction a second, tops, built in an inter-cooperating network of 8 EJBs, which someone thought would help improve transactional performance. Eight? A second system essentially replicates an in-memory SQL system rolled in-house: the system has been buggy because the reverse index processing had a race condition. Um, why wasn't that built in a dozen classes on top of MySQL instead of built with a couple of hundred classes that reinvent the wheel poorly?)
While I'm glad someone wrote a book on refactoring methodology, in my experience what we need is a book which describes how to write "simple" code: code that is just as complicated as it needs to be, and no more. And a book which also describes how to simplify overly-complicated code, how to pick simpler techniques, and how to manage programmers who have an "itch" so they go scratch it somewhere else--I think that would be a much more useful book.
It's easy to add complexity. It's hard to simplify.
The problem is there are only three 'core' energy generation technologies: technologies which can be 'always on' and which can at a moments notice fill the gaps where hydro, tidal, wind and solar collapse (because of a water shortage, tide is out, wind ain't blowing or the sun sets): coal, gas and nuclear. Until we figure out a way to dig a hole in a cost effective way to make geothermal power anywhere in the world (rather than at the thin spots where geothermal is close to the surface), that's going to be it: gas, coal and nuclear.
And of those three core generation technologies, nuclear is the cleanest.
I have both the Sony Reader and the Amazon Kindle.
1. The Sony Reader displays PDFs natively. The small screen makes this nearly useless except for especially formatted PDFs. PDFs can be converted for the Amazon Kindle and the results are generally not all that bad, except for complex formatted PDFs. (But most PDFs are formatted as 8 1/2x11 inch paper; to read that properly you'd need a 14" diagonal screen--and instead of a handheld device the size of a small book, you'd need something the size of a laptop.
And guess what? A cheap laptop fits that bill perfectly.
2. The Amazon Kindle in fact does allow you to annotate a page. Select the line using the menu scroll wheel, then select "Add Note". You can then enter a note that then stays associated with the line. On the main page a small 'note' icon shows up on the page. You can also browse your notes by selecting "Menu" at the bottom of the page, then select "My Notes & Marks"; this shows a list of all the notes that you've taken. Selecting the note allows you to go directly to the page where the note was set; you can then read your note. (The Sony Reader doesn't allow you to do this because it has no keyboard.) Both devices allow you to bookmark a page.
3. You can browse web pages; use the menu wheel to select the line where the link is on, then select the line. A pop-up menu will then show a list of the links on that line, as well as give you the option to look up the meaning of any of the words on that line. Not exactly as elegant as using a pen or mouse input device to click on the line, but it does work.
4. Sprint EVDO is more than fast enough and has wider coverage than a hodge-podge of WiFi hotspots. The price to surf using the Sprint cell network is built into the device--meaning that it is effectively "free."
5. The resolution is 600x800x2bits/pixel, for 4 levels of gray, which is the current limitation of e-Paper. What makes e-Paper cool is that in direct sunlight or in a bright room, the e-Paper is extremely easy to ready. The downside is that it is unusable without a nightlight in the dark, and it is much lower resolution (and has no color resolution) compared to LCD.
The Newton (which I also had) had a smaller screen, shorter battery life, did not have the ability to surf the 'net and had no content.
(As a footnote, this is the thing that fascinates me about Slashdot: if a post sounds informative, it gets marked informative--even if the content was clearly pulled out of the poster's ass...)
So, are cell phones the advanced scouts for the upcoming and inevitable Robot Wars?