None are kept secret obviously. There are however many kernel functions that are not available to closed source device driver developers because they are implemented as inline functions or macros, and so just by calling them in your code would mean "copying" (via the compiler) GPL code into your closed source, in violation of the GPL.
Linus has also been quite clear that he considers such "calling" of inline functions to be "copying", and so a GPL violation. This is one of the reasons that many companies don't write drivers for Linux.
What should happen in any representative democracy is that corporate donations would be made highly (i.e. serious jail time) illegal. After all, corporations aren't alive, and don't vote. Their legal personhood is just a convenient legal fiction. They should have no influence on government except indirectly through how their individual members vote, since in a democracy, the sum of those votes is exactly how important they are. Individual donations should be limited to $50 anually, or similar token amount, since in a democracy it is not how rich you are that determines your worth. Of course there is not a chance in hell of that happening, but anyway...
One thing that I've been curious about is what happens if Linux becomes a monopoly in a certain niche market. E.g. certain type of specialized embedded systems. Would linux be forced to provide equal access to kernel functions to non-open device drivers, or to implement a device driver ABI, for example? i.e. to allow the same kind of separation that userland enjoys*
I don't think that the usual "noone forces you to use it" answers this case, since it being a monopoly, you are "forced" to use it.
*personally, I think any device driver company would win a dispute over use of kernel functions anyway.
Probably because pro-business politicians have moved to eliminate monopoly restrictions in all sorts of areas. Consolidation of ownership has been allowed to happen in media and telecoms (& sw), eliminating or constraining competition in those markets in the process. It is becasuse many politicians are really only pro-certain-particular-individual-businesses, but not really pro-business in general.
Neither is MS. Hate them though we will, as long as they have competition, they cannot, by definition, have a monopoly.
Most countries define a monopoly as [some large %age] of a particular market. Say 50%, I am sure it varies depending on where you are talking about. While Mircosoft is not an absolute monopoly, as far as the assorted laws are converned, with 95% of the desktop market, they most certainly are a monopoly.
In dictionary-land, maybe not, but in many real countries they are in fact, by (legal) definition, a monopoly.
A phone doesn't make calls, or send sms, connect to the internet by magic. They run a telephony stack, and a tcp/ip or wap stack too. I doubt they would appreciate waiting for the UI to finish in order to do their thing.
Phones run many UI applications, and many 3rd party applications. They shouldn't be allowed to overwrite an important processes' memory in the middle of a call.
Phones are becoming the ultimate networked computer. You'll be able to ssh to/from your phone, or launch an X session to it, if you can't already. TCP/IP, GSM, Bluetooth, with WLAN being next. A security model and concept of user priveleges might come in handy.
Software does not make the world a significantly better place. If you are looking to contribute to he world, there are far better ways.
Even if it did, IBM, RedHat, Novell et al, are not the deserving poor.
Neither are most people who can afford a computer (or multiple computers!).
There is a tiny percentage of open source users who could legitimately say they are poor, and that open source is providing them with deserved charity.
Everyone else is just saving on costs that if they are honest, they could reasonably afford.
I am glad that there are free programs that I can use. Some of them excellent. But as a software developer, I have no intention of ever doing work gratis that RedHat etc., could make money supporting or reselling.
And how much did the developers of "Linux, Apache, MySQL (and other databases), PHP, and others" make from you for developing the software used so profitably by your company?
Ability to easily switch between any file in a project
f4 to go to next compilation error
I use vim for just editing files though. I know you can kind of get a couple of the above points into vim with some extension, but they are really just hacks, and don't yet have the ease of use of an IDE.
THey'd replace the actors with robots if they thought it'd make a buck and save a few more.
The people freed up from this mindless drudgery by automation will become free to pursue more interesting and fulfilling cultural pursu... Oh wait, scratch that.
Did I say I recommended hiring bad programmers? Did all those companies that have ever hired bad programmers deliberately do it?
Sorry, but unless you plan on not growing at all, and not having any turnover of staff, then the profile of your employees will tend towards average over time. A mix, of a few very good, a few more very bad, and a rump of fairly mediocre programmers.
That's why startups are so attractive for many people. There is a somewhat better chance of having a high %age of great programmers, and doing some innovative work in powerful languages. All other companies have to deal with the unfortunate reality that most of their programmers do not fall into the excellent category, and have to plan accordingly.
Or do you have some incredible HR process not thought of by any other company in existance that ensures everyone hired by you will be excellent?
I judge a programming language on the basis of what good programmers can do with it.
Unfortunately that is the exact opposite of what Software Engineering is all about. Any manager or architect worth his salt will judge a language by what bad programmers can do with it. Relying on having good programmers available is a crazy risk to take:-)
I believe that they already sued the Wombles theme writer after he put out a track on his album called "A One Minute Silence", and as a joke credited it to Himself/Cage.
Well, J2ME seems to be the alternative choice for embedded apps, so I don't really see why not. It's not like they are going to implement an RTOS kernel in it. The point of these kind of managed code is to provide a sandbox for 3rd party apps to run on embedded devices, so they don't mess things up, and to provide a cross platform environment so app developers don't need (in theory at least) to have separate products for every single device out there. Sure it's slow, but it's also safe.
Well, they made the jump from 5 minute slot on Tracy Ullman to half hour show with no problem, and were in fact much better as a result. Plenty of people were sceptical of having a cartoon in family prime time. "Not since the Flintstones" was a much bandied about phrase at the time.
Given that much crappier cartoons have made the jump to feature length with success (cf. beavis & butthead huhuhhuh), I am optimistic that any Simpsons Movie will be good.
Re:Would this be any better in an OSS environment?
on
Blackout Cause: Buggy Code
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
People make the comment of the many eyes, but who is really looking at the code?
Probably nobody, especially if you are talking about something as dull as a utility management app. That's why companies pay people to look at these things.
Open source almost certainly would have not prevented the bug. The bug might have been found faster after it happened though, because curious (or under pressure from their boss) engineers engineers in every facility affected would spend at least some time trying to figure out what went wrong.
Having the source is great, and you would be surprised at the number of companies who license the source for what they use. Risk management is important. Free isn't everything, you can get many of the same things by paying:-)
The thing is though, that a whole lot more devices can conceivably contain compact flash cards, than can contain hard disks. I'm sure there are more hard disks than flash cards sold so far, so HD technology is currently well ahead of flash on it's S curve, but flash cards are only going to get bigger (and smaller;) and cheaper and faster. Given the number of devices that will get sold, there will be no shortage of cash to invest in accelerating that trend.
It's entirely possible that compact flash or similar technology will pass out HD in terms of price per GB performance, since a HD has moving parts, and is therefore subject to mechanical limits that don't affect flash. Admittedly it still has some way to go, but here's hoping!
I don't think that Pixar have dropped Disney in the way you say. For sure, they have declined another exclusive contract, and that is a blow for Disney given Pixar's excellent record, but there is nothing stopping Pixar using Disney as a distributor on a picture by picture basis. After all, Disney has an excellent track record in distributing Pixar movies. Pixar just felt they could get a better deal percentage-wise if they weren't tied to a single distributor. Only time will tell if that greater percentage for Pixar translates into greater cash.
I'd imagine it's the back catalog, and overall huge money making infrastructure, of which feature animation is only a small part, that is attractive. Disney despite the recent poor performance of the flagship is still a potential gold mine for any buyer,
Pixar, while undoubtedly more talented at present, has only 6 (?) movies to their name so far, and has a long way to go before they will be in the same league as Disney. Where would Pixar be if they had 6 flops in a row? Disney, after a run like that is still a $66bn company apparently.
Personally I'd buy both, but I'm a little low on cash right now.
Actually episode 4 is a lot of fun though, and more self contained than 5 is. It's cheezy and a bit dated of course, but has almost everything you require in a classic action movie.
Han is cool, and Luke perfect as a naive young hero, Vader the perfect villain, Leia the love interest and the droids as comic relief. They are all caught up in an action filled adventure in an exotic location (space) and ends with a happy ending. It's a straight forward good vs evil battle, and that appeals to people.
Episode 5 is a superior film on many levels, but for out and out enjoyment 4 is best. IMHO.
Slashdot Mirror
None are kept secret obviously. There are however many kernel functions that are not available to closed source device driver developers because they are implemented as inline functions or macros, and so just by calling them in your code would mean "copying" (via the compiler) GPL code into your closed source, in violation of the GPL.
Linus has also been quite clear that he considers such "calling" of inline functions to be "copying", and so a GPL violation. This is one of the reasons that many companies don't write drivers for Linux.
What should happen in any representative democracy is that corporate donations would be made highly (i.e. serious jail time) illegal. After all, corporations aren't alive, and don't vote. Their legal personhood is just a convenient legal fiction. They should have no influence on government except indirectly through how their individual members vote, since in a democracy, the sum of those votes is exactly how important they are. Individual donations should be limited to $50 anually, or similar token amount, since in a democracy it is not how rich you are that determines your worth. Of course there is not a chance in hell of that happening, but anyway...
One thing that I've been curious about is what happens if Linux becomes a monopoly in a certain niche market. E.g. certain type of specialized embedded systems. Would linux be forced to provide equal access to kernel functions to non-open device drivers, or to implement a device driver ABI, for example? i.e. to allow the same kind of separation that userland enjoys*
I don't think that the usual "noone forces you to use it" answers this case, since it being a monopoly, you are "forced" to use it.
*personally, I think any device driver company would win a dispute over use of kernel functions anyway.
Probably because pro-business politicians have moved to eliminate monopoly restrictions in all sorts of areas. Consolidation of ownership has been allowed to happen in media and telecoms (& sw), eliminating or constraining competition in those markets in the process. It is becasuse many politicians are really only pro-certain-particular-individual-businesses, but not really pro-business in general.
In dictionary-land, maybe not, but in many real countries they are in fact, by (legal) definition, a monopoly.
I'm sure many businesses would love to be able to only purchase the parts of windows that they wanted.
A phone doesn't make calls, or send sms, connect to the internet by magic. They run a telephony stack, and a tcp/ip or wap stack too. I doubt they would appreciate waiting for the UI to finish in order to do their thing.
Phones run many UI applications, and many 3rd party applications. They shouldn't be allowed to overwrite an important processes' memory in the middle of a call.
Phones are becoming the ultimate networked computer. You'll be able to ssh to/from your phone, or launch an X session to it, if you can't already. TCP/IP, GSM, Bluetooth, with WLAN being next. A security model and concept of user priveleges might come in handy.
Well, it was funny too.
The flaw in the whole "make money from support" argument is that if the software was any good it wouldn't need support, or a book to manage it.
And you can bet that if your software does deliberately need support or a book to manage that someone is working to eliminate the need for it.
Software does not make the world a significantly better place. If you are looking to contribute to he world, there are far better ways.
Even if it did, IBM, RedHat, Novell et al, are not the deserving poor.
Neither are most people who can afford a computer (or multiple computers!).
There is a tiny percentage of open source users who could legitimately say they are poor, and that open source is providing them with deserved charity.
Everyone else is just saving on costs that if they are honest, they could reasonably afford.
I am glad that there are free programs that I can use. Some of them excellent. But as a software developer, I have no intention of ever doing work gratis that RedHat etc., could make money supporting or reselling.
And how much did the developers of "Linux, Apache, MySQL (and other databases), PHP, and others" make from you for developing the software used so profitably by your company?
Class/Function Viewing
F1 for language/library documentation about
Integrated debugger
Ability to easily switch between any file in a project
f4 to go to next compilation error
I use vim for just editing files though. I know you can kind of get a couple of the above points into vim with some extension, but they are really just hacks, and don't yet have the ease of use of an IDE.
Did I say I recommended hiring bad programmers? Did all those companies that have ever hired bad programmers deliberately do it?
Sorry, but unless you plan on not growing at all, and not having any turnover of staff, then the profile of your employees will tend towards average over time. A mix, of a few very good, a few more very bad, and a rump of fairly mediocre programmers.
That's why startups are so attractive for many people. There is a somewhat better chance of having a high %age of great programmers, and doing some innovative work in powerful languages. All other companies have to deal with the unfortunate reality that most of their programmers do not fall into the excellent category, and have to plan accordingly.
Or do you have some incredible HR process not thought of by any other company in existance that ensures everyone hired by you will be excellent?
I believe that they already sued the Wombles theme writer after he put out a track on his album called "A One Minute Silence", and as a joke credited it to Himself/Cage.
Well, J2ME seems to be the alternative choice for embedded apps, so I don't really see why not. It's not like they are going to implement an RTOS kernel in it. The point of these kind of managed code is to provide a sandbox for 3rd party apps to run on embedded devices, so they don't mess things up, and to provide a cross platform environment so app developers don't need (in theory at least) to have separate products for every single device out there. Sure it's slow, but it's also safe.
Well, they made the jump from 5 minute slot on Tracy Ullman to half hour show with no problem, and were in fact much better as a result. Plenty of people were sceptical of having a cartoon in family prime time. "Not since the Flintstones" was a much bandied about phrase at the time.
Given that much crappier cartoons have made the jump to feature length with success (cf. beavis & butthead huhuhhuh), I am optimistic that any Simpsons Movie will be good.
Open source almost certainly would have not prevented the bug. The bug might have been found faster after it happened though, because curious (or under pressure from their boss) engineers engineers in every facility affected would spend at least some time trying to figure out what went wrong.
Having the source is great, and you would be surprised at the number of companies who license the source for what they use. Risk management is important. Free isn't everything, you can get many of the same things by paying
The thing is though, that a whole lot more devices can conceivably contain compact flash cards, than can contain hard disks. I'm sure there are more hard disks than flash cards sold so far, so HD technology is currently well ahead of flash on it's S curve, but flash cards are only going to get bigger (and smaller ;) and cheaper and faster. Given the number of devices that will get sold, there will be no shortage of cash to invest in accelerating that trend.
It's entirely possible that compact flash or similar technology will pass out HD in terms of price per GB performance, since a HD has moving parts, and is therefore subject to mechanical limits that don't affect flash. Admittedly it still has some way to go, but here's hoping!
I don't think that Pixar have dropped Disney in the way you say. For sure, they have declined another exclusive contract, and that is a blow for Disney given Pixar's excellent record, but there is nothing stopping Pixar using Disney as a distributor on a picture by picture basis. After all, Disney has an excellent track record in distributing Pixar movies. Pixar just felt they could get a better deal percentage-wise if they weren't tied to a single distributor. Only time will tell if that greater percentage for Pixar translates into greater cash.
I'd imagine it's the back catalog, and overall huge money making infrastructure, of which feature animation is only a small part, that is attractive. Disney despite the recent poor performance of the flagship is still a potential gold mine for any buyer,
Pixar, while undoubtedly more talented at present, has only 6 (?) movies to their name so far, and has a long way to go before they will be in the same league as Disney. Where would Pixar be if they had 6 flops in a row? Disney, after a run like that is still a $66bn company apparently.
Personally I'd buy both, but I'm a little low on cash right now.
to stop page widening attacks
Actually episode 4 is a lot of fun though, and more self contained than 5 is. It's cheezy and a bit dated of course, but has almost everything you require in a classic action movie.
Han is cool, and Luke perfect as a naive young hero, Vader the perfect villain, Leia the love interest and the droids as comic relief. They are all caught up in an action filled adventure in an exotic location (space) and ends with a happy ending. It's a straight forward good vs evil battle, and that appeals to people.
Episode 5 is a superior film on many levels, but for out and out enjoyment 4 is best. IMHO.