GCC wasn't the first or only free and portable C compiler. While it is extremely useful, I don't think it was absolutely essential to the development of free software.
Mutexes can be used between processes (though the old LinuxThreads didn't support this). It helps if they're stored in shared memory as well, rather than static storage, though...
This is not about the period of detention without trial (which can, unfortunately, be a very long time already). It's about detention without charge. Suspects can currently be held for 14 days without any explanation of what offence they are believed to have committed and the government wanted to extend that to 90 days.
what on Earth kind of data do they anticipate will take a petabyte of contiguous storage????
The applications I can think of are (1) uncompressed or losslessly compressed digital video or film (2) large compressed video archive (think Internet Archive) (3) 3D medical images.
It's arguable whether distribution of an executable that merely uses interface definitions and dynamically links to a library requires permission from the library's copyright holder; if not, then the LGPL provisions are moot. Having said that, if the executable incorporates inline functions or macro-expanded code from the library, I can see that that may well create a derived work (in US law) and so require permission. (Regrettably the term "derived work" is not defined in UK law, which might present a problem for enforcement of copyright on GPL'd or LGPL'd software here.)
Note that while the C library (glibc) is under LGPL, "runtime libraries" normally refers to more fundamental libraries that compiled programs may implicitly depend on. The C and C++ runtime libraries for GCC are licenced under the "Runtime GPL" which basically allows unrestricted binary distribution while maintaining copyleft on source distribution.
No offence but you havent a clue what youre talking about.
I admit that's possible.
Putting local farmers on the internet will not make one whit of difference to finding customers, and knowing what the market price is doesnt help either. Why? Farmers cant ship their goods to their customers - its too costly.
By customers I mean of course the companies they sell to. If I'd meant consumers I would have said consumers.
Therefore they are dependent on their local bulk supplier - of which there is usually only one. Knowing what the going price on the internet of your carrots should be is useless if your co-op will only pay you half that. What do you do? You can complain all you like - or not sell your vegetables and bury them.
Ah, well, maybe the farmers could get together and form a new co-op. Or maybe this was just a bad example.
You missed a really important one: telecommunications can help small business owners like farmers to find customers and to get a better idea of the market so they know what sort of price to sell at (probably higher than they've been paid in the past).
True, but whereas in the US HD is a mandatory part of the digital terrestrial TV specification, there isn't the same linkage here. Most DTV receivers, even Sky ones, can't handle HD signals.
US DTV receivers might be a bit more expensive as they'll need to be capable of decoding (and then scaling down) high-definition pictures. I don't think they'll need to support MHEG (interactive content) though.
I don't think that's likely, as DAB uses a completely different band from analogue radio whereas DVB-T shares spectrum with analogue TV broadcasts. Anyway, you seem to be having problems with low received power, which won't be solved by increasing bandwidth.
You need to sign an NDA to get hold of it, so it won't be redistributable and most users are going to have to just disable its use when building the program. It probably only includes binaries for Windows/x86, anyway.
I had an Optiplex desktop at work once. After I moved office back to my home country someone decided to send that PC over with another employee, who put it in the hold. Now this wouldn't be a great idea with any PC, but this one had an almost entirely plastic case that just broke apart at the edges. Thankfully the HD carried on working for a few months.
...built pre 1940 at a point when the general public cared about quality (both sturdiness and look) of buildings.
There have always been builders doing shoddy work. Older buildings are sturdier mainly because the flimsy old buildings have already been replaced or improved.
Biometrics are supposed to transform some physical characteristic of your body into a number that can be used to retrieve a database record.
Biometrics can't be measured consistently. This makes them useless for identification, as there will be unacceptable levels of false positives or false negatives (or both) depending on the matching tolerance.
But biometrics can't authenticate the rest of the card's contents,
Biometrics are supposed to authenticate the holder, not the card. The information on an identity card should be digitally signed by the issuing authority, and the signature should not be too difficult to verify (though revokation lists may pose a problem, depending on how large they grow).
Without a scanner you'll never know if the card is stolen; if you have a scanner you don't need the card.
Not only are you overrating the reliability of biometrics, but you seem to be assuming that every identity checkpoint will have online access to the identity database. I don't think that's a sensible design. Although I wouldn't be surprised if the control freaks and IT cowboys behind the government ID card schemes would try to do things this way.
The problem with usenet names is the fact that there is a master list.
This is true within the 8 hierarchies historically known as Usenet (comp, humanities, misc, news, rec, soc, sci, talk) and within many other hierarchies but there is certainly no authoritative list of top-level names.
There is no such list for the web, and making one, yet alone displaying it, is really unfeasible.
Right, but there's a hierarchy of authoritative name information.
First, it should be pointed out that "cheap slave labour" is an oxymoron. Slave labour is by definition free.
If you use slave labour you have to buy the slaves first, and then you have to provide food and shelter for them - even when you don't have much work for them to do. Hired labour can actually be cheaper since you can lay off employees in slack times. To be even more cynical, if the work you need done is dangerous (e.g. railway construction), employees are much cheaper to replace when they get killed.
They ruled based on law, they couldn't find anything in the law that would prevent the bundling of services.
They rule based on an interpretation of the law, which is subject to opinion. It's kind of stretching things to rule that DSL Internet access is an "information service" when it's really just a content-neutral pipe (even more so than telephone service). The FCC's similar decision about cable Internet service is being challenged in the Supreme Court (FCC v. Brand X Internet Services, 04-281).
Slashdot Mirror
GCC wasn't the first or only free and portable C compiler. While it is extremely useful, I don't think it was absolutely essential to the development of free software.
This doesn't actually contradict what I said...
Mutexes can be used between processes (though the old LinuxThreads didn't support this). It helps if they're stored in shared memory as well, rather than static storage, though...
It's worse than that. The code has glaring errors in it. It's just awful.
This is not about the period of detention without trial (which can, unfortunately, be a very long time already). It's about detention without charge. Suspects can currently be held for 14 days without any explanation of what offence they are believed to have committed and the government wanted to extend that to 90 days.
The applications I can think of are (1) uncompressed or losslessly compressed digital video or film (2) large compressed video archive (think Internet Archive) (3) 3D medical images.
The routers needed to light up that fibre are still pretty expensive.
Idle-time tracking under Windows requires use of an "input hook" DLL that will be loaded into every process that has a window in the session.
You can disable this annoying backward-compatible behaviour using the /d option.
Java isn't on a par with C++. It was once described as C++--+. It's far less powerful and flexible.
It's arguable whether distribution of an executable that merely uses interface definitions and dynamically links to a library requires permission from the library's copyright holder; if not, then the LGPL provisions are moot. Having said that, if the executable incorporates inline functions or macro-expanded code from the library, I can see that that may well create a derived work (in US law) and so require permission. (Regrettably the term "derived work" is not defined in UK law, which might present a problem for enforcement of copyright on GPL'd or LGPL'd software here.)
Note that while the C library (glibc) is under LGPL, "runtime libraries" normally refers to more fundamental libraries that compiled programs may implicitly depend on. The C and C++ runtime libraries for GCC are licenced under the "Runtime GPL" which basically allows unrestricted binary distribution while maintaining copyleft on source distribution.
I admit that's possible.
By customers I mean of course the companies they sell to. If I'd meant consumers I would have said consumers.
Ah, well, maybe the farmers could get together and form a new co-op. Or maybe this was just a bad example.
You missed a really important one: telecommunications can help small business owners like farmers to find customers and to get a better idea of the market so they know what sort of price to sell at (probably higher than they've been paid in the past).
True, but whereas in the US HD is a mandatory part of the digital terrestrial TV specification, there isn't the same linkage here. Most DTV receivers, even Sky ones, can't handle HD signals.
Digital TV in Britain is not HD.
US DTV receivers might be a bit more expensive as they'll need to be capable of decoding (and then scaling down) high-definition pictures. I don't think they'll need to support MHEG (interactive content) though.
I don't think that's likely, as DAB uses a completely different band from analogue radio whereas DVB-T shares spectrum with analogue TV broadcasts. Anyway, you seem to be having problems with low received power, which won't be solved by increasing bandwidth.
You need to sign an NDA to get hold of it, so it won't be redistributable and most users are going to have to just disable its use when building the program. It probably only includes binaries for Windows/x86, anyway.
I had an Optiplex desktop at work once. After I moved office back to my home country someone decided to send that PC over with another employee, who put it in the hold. Now this wouldn't be a great idea with any PC, but this one had an almost entirely plastic case that just broke apart at the edges. Thankfully the HD carried on working for a few months.
There have always been builders doing shoddy work. Older buildings are sturdier mainly because the flimsy old buildings have already been replaced or improved.
Biometrics can't be measured consistently. This makes them useless for identification, as there will be unacceptable levels of false positives or false negatives (or both) depending on the matching tolerance.
Biometrics are supposed to authenticate the holder, not the card. The information on an identity card should be digitally signed by the issuing authority, and the signature should not be too difficult to verify (though revokation lists may pose a problem, depending on how large they grow).
Not only are you overrating the reliability of biometrics, but you seem to be assuming that every identity checkpoint will have online access to the identity database. I don't think that's a sensible design. Although I wouldn't be surprised if the control freaks and IT cowboys behind the government ID card schemes would try to do things this way.
This is true within the 8 hierarchies historically known as Usenet (comp, humanities, misc, news, rec, soc, sci, talk) and within many other hierarchies but there is certainly no authoritative list of top-level names.
Right, but there's a hierarchy of authoritative name information.
If you use slave labour you have to buy the slaves first, and then you have to provide food and shelter for them - even when you don't have much work for them to do. Hired labour can actually be cheaper since you can lay off employees in slack times. To be even more cynical, if the work you need done is dangerous (e.g. railway construction), employees are much cheaper to replace when they get killed.
They rule based on an interpretation of the law, which is subject to opinion. It's kind of stretching things to rule that DSL Internet access is an "information service" when it's really just a content-neutral pipe (even more so than telephone service). The FCC's similar decision about cable Internet service is being challenged in the Supreme Court (FCC v. Brand X Internet Services, 04-281).