That depends on where you live. In the US you're probably OK for the moment, but see the EFF privacy archive for information about crypto law in other jurisdictions.
You still have to try the exercise of imagining the value of software innovation would be without patents. Your response shows you haven't done that yet.
I remember the 1980s, before software patents. There was plenty of innovative software back then.
As an individual or small company, you (a) will find it difficult to afford a patent and (b) will unknowingly infringe on dozens of patents held by other companies. When they sue you, you might be able to licence those patents, or they may just put you out of business. Your patent portfolio may protect you a little since you can cross-licence with companies that were (knowingly or otherwise) infringing on your patents. You probably won't et any royalties from them, because they own more patents than you. If you're sued by parasites like Eolas or PanIP then you will just have to pay up since you can't afford the court costs.
Unfortunately the Parliament is not as powerful as the Commission and Council. After they are finished reversing the Parliament's amendments, the Parliament will have a chance to change it back. However, at this stage amendments must be approved by a majority of all members of the Parliament, not just a majority of those voting. (See rule 80, paragraph 4 of the Rules of Procedure.) So far this year average attendance has been 510/622 (better than I thought) so amendments would require support from at least around 60% of attending members.
It isn't that difficult for most common cases. You just put mutex semaphores or locks on shared data structures.
Semaphores are difficult to use correctly in the general case, but mutexes are fine. However, Java, Win32, and I suspect.NET (but I really don't know about that) provide recursive mutexes which provide easily enough rope to hang yourself - particularly since waiting undoes all the locks in Java.
You need programmers with a good background in real-time and concurrent programming, who understand the hazards and how to avoid them.
Yup. Unfortunately, while modern programming environments like Java encourage or require the use of multi-threading and many server applications require it for scalability, most programmers really don't have a good grasp of these things. They write lock-free code because they either (a) don't consider competing threads at all or (b) don't understand that memory access can be reordered in unexpected ways in the absence of explicit synchronisation.
In places like France, it's just too expensive to have air-conditioning.
According to the US DoE the domestic electricity prices ($/kWh) in 2000 were 0.102 in France and 0.082 in the US, not counting state taxes in the latter case. That doesn't seem like a sufficiently large price difference to explain the lower use of AC in France.
75 gallons of water?! Shit, that's more than my wife and I use in an average day for everything. (We have a water meter, and yes, we do wash properly.)
It got C2 certification, which basically means it has accounts, passwords, auditing and so on. The certification process doesn't include a code audit; only a design audit is required.
We experience a high rate of user turnover.... [O]n average, only approximately one-half of these new installations will remain active after the initial 30-day period. New users can comprise a material percentage of our user base at any given time... Software products that include our GAIN AdServer software are designed to be easy to uninstall and, even after the initial period of peak user turnover, each month many users uninstall the software product that includes our GAIN AdServer software.
Easy to uninstall? *snort*
We currently acquire a substantial portion of our new users through downloads of the KaZaA Media Desktop.... We may be unable to maintain our existing user base and attract new users if there is a decline in the downloading or use of the KaZaA Media Desktop for any reason, including as a result of regulatory actions or litigation, such as the lawsuits brought by the Recording Industry Association of America against certain users of the KaZaA Media Desktop and other actions brought against Sharman Networks.
No comment needed.
The online behavioral marketing industry in general, and our business in particular, is vulnerable to the negative public perception associated with other forms of downloadable software known as spyware. Negative perception of our business practices or press reports linking our GAIN AdServer software to spyware could damage our reputation, cause new users not to install or existing users to uninstall the software products that include our GAIN AdServer software or cause consumers to use technologies that impede our ability to deliver ads.
Apparently this isn't spyware for some reason. The reason isn't stated but I imagine this is like the spammers arguments that what they send isn't spam because it isn't porn/doesn't have a forged address/has an opt-out link/advertises something legal.
Unfortunately this won't help people using 32-bit x86 processors, which are the vast majority of PC users. It only works on IA64 and x86-64 (in 64-bit mode or 32-bit mode with PAE enabled).
You don't know what you're talking about. Unix was ludicrously insecure initially, with design flaws like the mkdir race condition. It took many years to reach the level of security it has today. Even 6 or 7 years ago sendmail was still full of holes.
Y Tu Mamá También was unrated in the US due to its sexual content, drug use and language (there is an R-rated cut version though). As a special feature, the DVD version has a mock PG-13 cut which consists of the titles, the last scene of a man sitting in a restaurant, and the end credits.
Bart: Don't be a sap, Dad. These are just crappy knock-offs.
Homer: Pfft. I know a genuine Panaphonics when I see it. And look, there's Magnetbox and Sorny.
I've worked on Boehm's garbage collector at two employers, with their blessing. The changes I contributed back while at Roundpoint, are also usable in the code I'm working on at Business Web Software. A former colleague at Roundpoint also sent me some incomplete changes I made there that hadn't yet been contributed back. Since my managers had a clue about FLOSS, this reuse was all perfectly OK with them.
Games come with warnings about the possibility of seizures and can be paused. TV programmes and films normally carry warnings if they include rapid flashing. I don't expect to see many rapidly flashing lights while walking down the street.
I don't think that helps much. Windows doesn't recognise file types solely by extension, and executables are one of the exceptions that are recognised by their header. A recent version of Outlook will probably block you from opening an executable whatever its name is, but once you've saved it there is no such protection against disguised executables.
I just tried out gcombust. Oh my god, it's pitiful! It popped up a main window, an error message box, and a preferences window over the top of the message. That could be the fault of my window manager, but it's still unhelpful of the application to pop up so many windows.
The message says "Could not open config file. Please configure gcombust in the File/Preferences menu. (Preferences window opened, at least the path to mkisofs need to be filled in)". The message is ungrammatical, contradicts itself (prompting me to select a menu item but then telling me that's unnecessary) and uses wrong terminology (one doesn't configure things in the menu; one selects a menu item to get to a configuration dialog).
Now I have this cramped Preferences dialog evidently designed by someone that never read a HIG where I'm supposed to enter paths to a bunch of commands. Thankfully they are pre-filled from $PATH, but some of the fields say "NOT_FOUND". Is that an important error? I suppose not, since the message told me only mkisofs was really important, but I still wonder why a text entry field is being overloaded to report errors. There are a bunch of buttons that open up file selectors for the commands, but they have the command names on them rather than standard labels (should be "Browse...", I think). I hit OK and now I get an error message box: "NOT_FOUND does not exist, some of gcombusts operations will not work". Again it's ungrammatical, and further it's an error condition that was created by the program itself! I hit OK again to dismiss this.
Now I have another huge page of options in the main window. Surely the "Data Files" tab should be the default, unless I really have to think about all the options every time? I'm going to give up now. The command line interface is easier to use than this.
I believe there are better CD burning GUIs out there, but this is a terrible option.
Slashdot Mirror
That depends on where you live. In the US you're probably OK for the moment, but see the EFF privacy archive for information about crypto law in other jurisdictions.
In France I believe the normal procedure is to claim total security and then sue your detractors.
I remember the 1980s, before software patents. There was plenty of innovative software back then.
As an individual or small company, you (a) will find it difficult to afford a patent and (b) will unknowingly infringe on dozens of patents held by other companies. When they sue you, you might be able to licence those patents, or they may just put you out of business. Your patent portfolio may protect you a little since you can cross-licence with companies that were (knowingly or otherwise) infringing on your patents. You probably won't et any royalties from them, because they own more patents than you. If you're sued by parasites like Eolas or PanIP then you will just have to pay up since you can't afford the court costs.
Unfortunately the Parliament is not as powerful as the Commission and Council. After they are finished reversing the Parliament's amendments, the Parliament will have a chance to change it back. However, at this stage amendments must be approved by a majority of all members of the Parliament, not just a majority of those voting. (See rule 80, paragraph 4 of the Rules of Procedure.) So far this year average attendance has been 510/622 (better than I thought) so amendments would require support from at least around 60% of attending members.
There was no shortage of power, but Enron had cornered the market and was scamming CA.
Semaphores are difficult to use correctly in the general case, but mutexes are fine. However, Java, Win32, and I suspect .NET (but I really don't know about that) provide recursive mutexes which provide easily enough rope to hang yourself - particularly since waiting undoes all the locks in Java.
Yup. Unfortunately, while modern programming environments like Java encourage or require the use of multi-threading and many server applications require it for scalability, most programmers really don't have a good grasp of these things. They write lock-free code because they either (a) don't consider competing threads at all or (b) don't understand that memory access can be reordered in unexpected ways in the absence of explicit synchronisation.
According to the US DoE the domestic electricity prices ($/kWh) in 2000 were 0.102 in France and 0.082 in the US, not counting state taxes in the latter case. That doesn't seem like a sufficiently large price difference to explain the lower use of AC in France.
75 gallons of water?! Shit, that's more than my wife and I use in an average day for everything. (We have a water meter, and yes, we do wash properly.)
It got C2 certification, which basically means it has accounts, passwords, auditing and so on. The certification process doesn't include a code audit; only a design audit is required.
The mremap() bug(s) were around for several years before being fixed. Something subtle like that might well slip through vetting.
Windows XP does have that option. Windows 2000 also supports NTP synchronisation but it's only available from the command line.
Easy to uninstall? *snort*
No comment needed.
Apparently this isn't spyware for some reason. The reason isn't stated but I imagine this is like the spammers arguments that what they send isn't spam because it isn't porn/doesn't have a forged address/has an opt-out link/advertises something legal.
I meant the no-execute (NX) feature and not the whole of SP2. Are you saying NX works on a 32-bit Athlon? If so that's not a documented feature.
Unfortunately this won't help people using 32-bit x86 processors, which are the vast majority of PC users. It only works on IA64 and x86-64 (in 64-bit mode or 32-bit mode with PAE enabled).
You don't know what you're talking about. Unix was ludicrously insecure initially, with design flaws like the mkdir race condition. It took many years to reach the level of security it has today. Even 6 or 7 years ago sendmail was still full of holes.
Y Tu Mamá También was unrated in the US due to its sexual content, drug use and language (there is an R-rated cut version though). As a special feature, the DVD version has a mock PG-13 cut which consists of the titles, the last scene of a man sitting in a restaurant, and the end credits.
Bart: Don't be a sap, Dad. These are just crappy knock-offs.
Homer: Pfft. I know a genuine Panaphonics when I see it. And look, there's Magnetbox and Sorny.
d) Only with permission
I've worked on Boehm's garbage collector at two employers, with their blessing. The changes I contributed back while at Roundpoint, are also usable in the code I'm working on at Business Web Software. A former colleague at Roundpoint also sent me some incomplete changes I made there that hadn't yet been contributed back. Since my managers had a clue about FLOSS, this reuse was all perfectly OK with them.
I was browsing through a CVS repository on Sourceforge and got adverts for services relating to "CVs" (curricula vitae, like resumes).
Games come with warnings about the possibility of seizures and can be paused. TV programmes and films normally carry warnings if they include rapid flashing. I don't expect to see many rapidly flashing lights while walking down the street.
I don't think that helps much. Windows doesn't recognise file types solely by extension, and executables are one of the exceptions that are recognised by their header. A recent version of Outlook will probably block you from opening an executable whatever its name is, but once you've saved it there is no such protection against disguised executables.
I just tried out gcombust. Oh my god, it's pitiful! It popped up a main window, an error message box, and a preferences window over the top of the message. That could be the fault of my window manager, but it's still unhelpful of the application to pop up so many windows.
The message says "Could not open config file. Please configure gcombust in the File/Preferences menu. (Preferences window opened, at least the path to mkisofs need to be filled in)". The message is ungrammatical, contradicts itself (prompting me to select a menu item but then telling me that's unnecessary) and uses wrong terminology (one doesn't configure things in the menu; one selects a menu item to get to a configuration dialog).
Now I have this cramped Preferences dialog evidently designed by someone that never read a HIG where I'm supposed to enter paths to a bunch of commands. Thankfully they are pre-filled from $PATH, but some of the fields say "NOT_FOUND". Is that an important error? I suppose not, since the message told me only mkisofs was really important, but I still wonder why a text entry field is being overloaded to report errors. There are a bunch of buttons that open up file selectors for the commands, but they have the command names on them rather than standard labels (should be "Browse...", I think). I hit OK and now I get an error message box: "NOT_FOUND does not exist, some of gcombusts operations will not work". Again it's ungrammatical, and further it's an error condition that was created by the program itself! I hit OK again to dismiss this.
Now I have another huge page of options in the main window. Surely the "Data Files" tab should be the default, unless I really have to think about all the options every time? I'm going to give up now. The command line interface is easier to use than this.
I believe there are better CD burning GUIs out there, but this is a terrible option.
Much of the London Underground was built by cut-and-cover too. "The Tube" is something of a misnomer for the LU as a whole.
It's not all that funny. Osama's old line of work was running a construction company.