They have screens, some even have proper keyboards, are these really embedded systems? I always thought that an embedded system was one in which the user wasn't aware what kind of software was in it, it just did the job without command prompts, windows, or dialog boxes. As soon as you expose the operating system, you aren't embedded any more.
or have deeper religious convictions about right and wrong
They don't have to be religious. I firmly believe that people can be deeply moral and courageous while knowing that existence is fleeting. To a large extent I agree with Richard Dawkins' POV.
Excuse my ignorance of the finer points of U.S. politics, but I always thought the reason that Republicans oppose big government was that it generally means big taxes and big restrictions on business. "Freedom to work" indeed. Freedom to bend over and take it, more like.
Simple. The more comfortable your life is, the more you haev to lose. Poor, oppressed people will sacrifice their lives for their beliefs, because they feel that they have nothing to lose. Also, technologically advanced nations seem to be less religious, and if you believe that this life is all you get, you're not going to want to give it up. For this reason, I don't understand why Communist states suppress(ed) religion; sometimes the masses need their opiate. Obviously there are exceptions such as OBL and those two British chaps that atacked in Israel recently, but the trend is there. 'Advanced' nations will always be on the back foot in the fight against terrorism and oppression.
Re:If you don't read anything else, read this...
on
OSI vs SCO
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· Score: 1
GPL is not the virus. GPL is the cure.
Gosh, that helps so much, it's all clear now!
Re:If you don't read anything else, read this...
on
OSI vs SCO
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· Score: 1
But SCO did not merely mirror the kernel, they actively distributed it -
Yes I know, but inferences can easily be drawn, extrapolations made, and FUD spread from tiny acorns like this.
How about another analogy - Lets say a big agribusiness like Monsanto owns the rights to some GM plant or other, and they also own a subsidiary that makes energy bars. The subsidiary buys a load of glucose that is made from ripped-off Monsanto seeds, and sells it in their energy bars. Have Monsanto now lost their IP? I don't think so. Bring in the GPL, and this intuitive no-brainer comes in danger of being a big loser for big business. That's bad for GPL adoption, even if the arguement has been twisted to fit an agenda.
Re:If you don't read anything else, read this...
on
OSI vs SCO
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· Score: 1
I agree, but it's still fantastic ammunition for Microsoft to use in scaring companies, universities, and governments away from the GPL.
Re:If you don't read anything else, read this...
on
OSI vs SCO
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Furthermore, SCO is barred by the terms of the GNU General Public License from making copyright or patent-infringement claims...
I'm not sure I like where that line might lead. By that logic, if someone decides to mirror a Linux distro on their servers as a public service, not knowing that it contains code that has been stolen from them, they lose all redress. If I were a large organisation offering free mirroring space, such as, say, The University of Manchester (I got that from gnu.org's list of mirrors), I might think twice about continuing to do so. It gives credence to what I previously disregarded as Microsoft's FUD about the 'viral' GPL.
Three of my friends were playing it all week-end, and they seem to like it. Looked pretty cool to me, although the replay value didn't look as good as something more free-ranging like Halo or the Tom Clancy game. The levels all seem very scripted.
Ever hear the expression "Salting the earth"? That's one thing waring tribes did to eachother's land... because you can't grow crops in salty dirt!
Not just tribes, but nations. We salted the fields of France only a few hundred years ago. And salt was expensive then, but they didn't appreciate it, oh no.
One of the first game designers to make the move to computer game design was Sandy Petersen. He had worked at Chaosium on Call of Cthulhu and teh Glorantha game world, and had a lot of experience running and designing both roleplaying and board games. He really knew what makes a good game, and saw that the IT industry was mainly producing fairly predictable platform games. So he teamed up with some fairly obscure game programmers calling themselves Id, and helped create Doom. After Quake he went to Ensemble Studios.
Even if he wasn't one of the first to make the move, I remember doing an article or interview in the late 80's lamenting the poor state of computer game design.
Consider a situation where a C programmer passes everything (even large structs etc.) by value.
No single rule of thumb can save the world from an incompetent programmer. "saving optimizations where it is needed" is somewhere around numebr three or four in my rules of programming:
1. Choose the most appropriate language/platform for the job 2. Adhere to common good practice 3. Test it 4. Optimise where necessary
Always passing large structs by value in C or C++ is cut out by Rule 2.
No, I don't think so. They might be let off penalties for past usage, but they could be hit with fines or royalties for not stopping distribution and use immediately.
If my stereo is stolen, and buy it back at a second hand store, am I guilty of handling stolen goods? If I am not because it is mine, then that doesn't mean that nobody else would be. This is an analogy, and therefore imperfect, and copyright violation isn't theft, but it's a similar situation.
Maybe you're right, I hope so. I was just replying to the specific point that Symbian is designed to run on low-resource systems (small devices, small screens). These restrictions will go away, leaving Symbian with one less advantage. Maybe it will still win.
Please, someone, bring Permanent Death and more risky idea to the world of MMORPG and then, maybe, maybe I'll actually play one.
I think this could be addressed in a different way. The main problem is that resurrection is so close as to be impossible in Middle Earth, so allowing it in-game would be disappointing. So, what you need is a more appropriate solution to dying. What happens in the books? A heavy-hitting NPC swoops in and saves the hero. Bombadil, Aragorn, Glorfindel, Treebeard, all turn up in the nick of time and save the heroes from doom. So, the game needs to spawn an NPC nearby that comes and drags the bleeding near-corpse of the character to the nearest friendly location. The player should have to butter up the important characters in the world (Gandalf, Strider, any Elf) in order to earn these rescues. If you go round killing Hobbits, your chances will diminish... or you might get 'rescued' by one of the more unsavoury characters.
Slashdot attracts a much more broad audience than you imply - not all nerds are open source advocates. For instance, at work I use Windows 2000 and NT exclusively. My friends all run Windows 98 on their gaming machines. Therefore we are all familiar with Windows and its shortcomings, and enjoy bitching about it. I think open source is a great idea, I use Mozilla whenever I can (tabbed browsing rocks), and I'm working hard on kicking the MS habit in other areas.
Caution when dealing with neo-Nazis and fascists. BBC interviewers are (rightly) savage when dealing with regular politicians, but they put on the kid gloves when dealing with the BNP and NF.
I think what's happening here is that many people question the NF and BNP's very right to exist, and criticise the BBC for not taking the same stance. You do see robust criticism of the BNP for being no good at their job (local councillors not turning up to any meetings), but that doesn't go far enough for many. They would prefer to see the BBC undermine the party's very existence, which would be anti-democratic in my opinion. The old 'I disagree with what you say, but blah blah blah' stance.
I was actually meaning Silvio Berlusconi, who personally owns the top three TV channels in Italy, but yes, the BBC is something that we have to be careful with. It often seems to have a Labour government bias, but that's just because journalists tend towards the left, as that is the natural home for free speech beliefs. This tendency (and that's all it is) is often overridden by the proprietor's political leanings, though, so don't read too much into that last point.
So really, I need to know whether MI5 are spying on me with a laser microphone on my bathroom window. They have a legal responsibility to tell me, so I can avoid breaking the law!
There must be some physical difference then. On UK notes, there is a small shape that is of a different texture than the rest of the note - the £5 has a circle, £10 has a diamond, £20 has a square, and the £50 has a triangle.
Slashdot Mirror
They have screens, some even have proper keyboards, are these really embedded systems? I always thought that an embedded system was one in which the user wasn't aware what kind of software was in it, it just did the job without command prompts, windows, or dialog boxes. As soon as you expose the operating system, you aren't embedded any more.
#define private public
#define protected public
#include
Excuse my ignorance of the finer points of U.S. politics, but I always thought the reason that Republicans oppose big government was that it generally means big taxes and big restrictions on business. "Freedom to work" indeed. Freedom to bend over and take it, more like.
Simple. The more comfortable your life is, the more you haev to lose. Poor, oppressed people will sacrifice their lives for their beliefs, because they feel that they have nothing to lose. Also, technologically advanced nations seem to be less religious, and if you believe that this life is all you get, you're not going to want to give it up. For this reason, I don't understand why Communist states suppress(ed) religion; sometimes the masses need their opiate. Obviously there are exceptions such as OBL and those two British chaps that atacked in Israel recently, but the trend is there. 'Advanced' nations will always be on the back foot in the fight against terrorism and oppression.
How about another analogy - Lets say a big agribusiness like Monsanto owns the rights to some GM plant or other, and they also own a subsidiary that makes energy bars. The subsidiary buys a load of glucose that is made from ripped-off Monsanto seeds, and sells it in their energy bars. Have Monsanto now lost their IP? I don't think so. Bring in the GPL, and this intuitive no-brainer comes in danger of being a big loser for big business. That's bad for GPL adoption, even if the arguement has been twisted to fit an agenda.
I agree, but it's still fantastic ammunition for Microsoft to use in scaring companies, universities, and governments away from the GPL.
Three of my friends were playing it all week-end, and they seem to like it. Looked pretty cool to me, although the replay value didn't look as good as something more free-ranging like Halo or the Tom Clancy game. The levels all seem very scripted.
One of the first game designers to make the move to computer game design was Sandy Petersen. He had worked at Chaosium on Call of Cthulhu and teh Glorantha game world, and had a lot of experience running and designing both roleplaying and board games. He really knew what makes a good game, and saw that the IT industry was mainly producing fairly predictable platform games. So he teamed up with some fairly obscure game programmers calling themselves Id, and helped create Doom. After Quake he went to Ensemble Studios.
Even if he wasn't one of the first to make the move, I remember doing an article or interview in the late 80's lamenting the poor state of computer game design.
1. Choose the most appropriate language/platform for the job
2. Adhere to common good practice
3. Test it
4. Optimise where necessary
Always passing large structs by value in C or C++ is cut out by Rule 2.
No, I don't think so. They might be let off penalties for past usage, but they could be hit with fines or royalties for not stopping distribution and use immediately.
If my stereo is stolen, and buy it back at a second hand store, am I guilty of handling stolen goods? If I am not because it is mine, then that doesn't mean that nobody else would be. This is an analogy, and therefore imperfect, and copyright violation isn't theft, but it's a similar situation.
Maybe you're right, I hope so. I was just replying to the specific point that Symbian is designed to run on low-resource systems (small devices, small screens). These restrictions will go away, leaving Symbian with one less advantage. Maybe it will still win.
Slashdot attracts a much more broad audience than you imply - not all nerds are open source advocates. For instance, at work I use Windows 2000 and NT exclusively. My friends all run Windows 98 on their gaming machines. Therefore we are all familiar with Windows and its shortcomings, and enjoy bitching about it. I think open source is a great idea, I use Mozilla whenever I can (tabbed browsing rocks), and I'm working hard on kicking the MS habit in other areas.
I was actually meaning Silvio Berlusconi, who personally owns the top three TV channels in Italy, but yes, the BBC is something that we have to be careful with. It often seems to have a Labour government bias, but that's just because journalists tend towards the left, as that is the natural home for free speech beliefs. This tendency (and that's all it is) is often overridden by the proprietor's political leanings, though, so don't read too much into that last point.
Set up a cron job that posts "Patent system still fucked" once a week.
Oh, and something that automatically mods as "Redundant" all the "I think I'll patent " comments. Maybe a bayesian filter would do the job.
Think yourselves lucky your president doesn't own most of your commercial media.
You could buy your music from FatChucks, where all the proceeds go to the artist... oh, hang on, their catalog is still empty.
So really, I need to know whether MI5 are spying on me with a laser microphone on my bathroom window. They have a legal responsibility to tell me, so I can avoid breaking the law!
There must be some physical difference then. On UK notes, there is a small shape that is of a different texture than the rest of the note - the £5 has a circle, £10 has a diamond, £20 has a square, and the £50 has a triangle.