And how would you compile thousands of packages that today require make and/or sh (anything requiring autoconf)?
I agree with Mister AC here. Make has huge market share currently and anything that aims to usurp it will ultimately need to support the Makefile syntax, and a way to convert between the two. Otherwise intertia wins the day again. That's not to say that you can't make a niche for yourself with a totally new tool, but you just won't convert everyone else to it.
Most makefile setups are recursive. They should not be (see Recursive Make Considered Harmful for a good explanation). It's a pain to make non-recursive make, because the tools aren't set up for it. SCons is.
This is my biggest (but not only) problem with GNU Make. It does not have support for the theoretically correct way to use it. It's not like the paper is new, or even that the maintainer disagrees with it's findings, but there is no movement at all to add support for the features that would make it easy to use. GNU Make is a project that is totally defined by it's implementation. There is no concept of a "correct" way is should be behaving. There is only the way it behaves.
Not so much the smallness, more the seperateness. They would still be 3 very large companies, but they wouldn't cover the whole market individually.
Office and Windows are cash cows used to subsidise entry into all other markets. If this free cash is withdrawn (due to office and windows being in seperate companies than the rest), then the other microsoft stuff has to compete on something approaching a level playing field.
If Office is not obliged to lock people into Windows it would (possibly) have more interest in being more cross platform. Anyway, the main aim is to break the vertical relationship with the Windows OS. This will allow better competition in both the OS and Office markets, though I have to say I would expect Office to continue to dominate. Windows less surely so as it would run the risk of becoming a comodity without all the other microsoft stuff tied closely to it, and we are approaching a change in the way computers are architected (more parallelism, less Hz), though with 95% of the desktop market it's obviously in a strong starting position.
Microsoft won't comply with anything except in the most meaningless sense until somebody splits into 3, the Office division and the the OS division and the rest. That would be good for microsoft's products, good for consumers, and good for competition.
One caveat (and possible source for your confusion) is that when declaring a true multidimensional array you must know the dimensions at compile time. You cannot for example declare x[width][height], and if you allocate a chunk of memory with malloc, you can access it as a single-dimensional array using the x[i] notation,
but there is no notation for treating it as a multidimensional array. I have had to manually index dynamically allocated chunks of data using *(&x + 10i + j) before, and I agree it is a pain.
There is a way around this. Write a function: void *multidimensionalarray(int numdimensions,...);
It's quite easy to make that function malloc enough space for both the data area and assorted levels of pointers in a single block. Then you set up all the pointers, so that they all point to the correct place. From there you can index the array as if it were truly multidimensional. int ***my3darray = 0;
Monarchy - Again, not so good. This time the right to rule is typically passed down to people. Under a good (or powerless) ruler, the nation can thrive (see modern-day britain - you did know they had a queen, right?); under a bad one the nation can suffer.
Actually I think a monarchy like Britian has is bad for democracy (beyond the obvious fact that a monarchy is inherently anti-democratic). The head of state has no legitimacy, and so never uses her power to counter balance the executive power of the Prime Minister. It is only through tradition that a balance is maintained. If someone moves to do away with governmental tradition, as Tony Blair has done through his governmental reforms, the balance becomes lost. A democratic non-executive head of state with a clearly defined role and power is a more effective guarantee of the executive not getting too far out of line.
If you are wrongfully jailed you'll get compensation. BUT they'll subtract "housing and food", i.e. the value of the bed and the food in prison from your compensation. Which lead some journalists to report that you're supposed to "pay for jail".
How else would they report it? It seems like paying for jail is exactly what is happening.
Thanks to the strong leadership of President Bush, we have a real plan for space, as opposed to mostly circling around Earth currently.
Unfortunately, because it's been announced by President Bush, many people who oppose his other policies (for good reason) will also tend to oppose his space policy, even if they would support it if it were proposed by somebody else.
Luckily, thanks to lack of funding by President Bush, all disagreements will become academic anyway.
Well, there is no clear list of patents, but I think they are not licencing the patents for general OSS use unless you use the CDDL. You can use them in so far as they are already implemented in the CDDL licensed code, or implemented in CDDL licence code that you modify or write. Obviously you can't copy the code into a GPL program, but you also can't reimplement the patents in a piece of new GPL code. (or at least no more or less than you could before). I may be wrong of course:*)
Well, Helix is available under an (OSI certified) open source licence. Only the Real Audio/Video codecs are binary only. Parts of it are also available under the GPL. See https://helixcommunity.org/content/licenses
Except the way that such things are typically engineered in nature is by all those who don't have any genes for such adaptations dying off (perhaps rather dramatically). Humanity might be fine. A majority of individual Humans might experience terrible suffering, and death.
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So I should be able to put Linux into my own proprietary OS if I fix something in their scheduler? Everyone benefits. That's basically your argument.
Not so much the smallness, more the seperateness. They would still be 3 very large companies, but they wouldn't cover the whole market individually.
Office and Windows are cash cows used to subsidise entry into all other markets. If this free cash is withdrawn (due to office and windows being in seperate companies than the rest), then the other microsoft stuff has to compete on something approaching a level playing field.
If Office is not obliged to lock people into Windows it would (possibly) have more interest in being more cross platform. Anyway, the main aim is to break the vertical relationship with the Windows OS. This will allow better competition in both the OS and Office markets, though I have to say I would expect Office to continue to dominate. Windows less surely so as it would run the risk of becoming a comodity without all the other microsoft stuff tied closely to it, and we are approaching a change in the way computers are architected (more parallelism, less Hz), though with 95% of the desktop market it's obviously in a strong starting position.
Microsoft won't comply with anything except in the most meaningless sense until somebody splits into 3, the Office division and the the OS division and the rest. That would be good for microsoft's products, good for consumers, and good for competition.
Where is the abuse of power?
And people rag on perl for being unreadable. Sheesh!
void *multidimensionalarray(int numdimensions,
It's quite easy to make that function malloc enough space for both the data area and assorted levels of pointers in a single block. Then you set up all the pointers, so that they all point to the correct place. From there you can index the array as if it were truly multidimensional.
int ***my3darray = 0;
my3darray = multidimensionalarray (3, 10, 20, 30);
my3darray[1][4][9] = 1;
Of course it consumes quite a bit more memory than a real array, but it does work.
No doubt that Real sucked in the past, but Real player is now open source. You can change it how you like.
No, crippled is when something deliberately doesn't work as well as it could. From a music users point of view the songs plainly are crippled.
More than £10,000? That better be one hell of a dishwasher.
With all due respect to our animal cousins, we are significantly more than a little smarter than even the most intelligent of them.
Because you are not creating a smart dog in that case. A smart dog would have a dog's brain.
What about 2.2(b)? Doesn't that cover modifications (so long as they are contributed to Sun)?
Well, there is no clear list of patents, but I think they are not licencing the patents for general OSS use unless you use the CDDL. You can use them in so far as they are already implemented in the CDDL licensed code, or implemented in CDDL licence code that you modify or write. Obviously you can't copy the code into a GPL program, but you also can't reimplement the patents in a piece of new GPL code. (or at least no more or less than you could before). I may be wrong of course :*)
The dodo was bloated, and had numerous security vulnerabilities.
Well, Helix is available under an (OSI certified) open source licence. Only the Real Audio/Video codecs are binary only. Parts of it are also available under the GPL. See https://helixcommunity.org/content/licenses
Except the way that such things are typically engineered in nature is by all those who don't have any genes for such adaptations dying off (perhaps rather dramatically). Humanity might be fine. A majority of individual Humans might experience terrible suffering, and death.