A.1) The compiler can have a tremendous understanding of how the code can most efficiently be run under most archetectural circumstances, yet has to assume the most common-dumbest implementation
That's true for any two chips that run the same architectures; why is it better to have to compile for x86 and MIPS then to compile for x86 and (possibly) x86-64 and have the choice of running the x86 binary on the x86-64?
There is nothing responsible about injesting toxins that cause brain damage (even if the brain damage is temporary).
Everything is a toxin. Unless you subside on a precisely controlled diet of low fat organic foods, you're doing more damage to your body then you need to be. A responsible person can chose how and when to use toxins - like alcohol, aspirin, fatty meats and mercury-heavy fish - reasonably.
It is still logic. Theology is a rigorous and logical field. Just because you might not agree with it does not mean it is not logic.
It has no formal basis, nor does it use formal means to arrive at its conclusions, so it's not a branch of logic. It uses no experiments, or any other tests or proofs, so it's not rigorous.
It is not only possible, it is prevalent and quite common. Do you see the air between yourself and the monitor?
Of course, air's not a dense ordered substance. There's a big difference between air and a living thing, and the compounds that make up living things are not transparent or even translucent.
Remember, copyright law is given in the constitution. So much like slavery (a similarly bad system), a constitutional amendment will have to occur to rid of us this scourge.
Actually not. Copyright law is merely an option given to Congress, which Congress doesn't have to exercise. Congress could end copyright law with one bill.
Christians and Muslims both believe in the same God, just disagree in the nature of Jesus Christ
That's not the question; the question is, would Nostradamus have described Baghdad as "the City of God"? Given the particular views on God and religion that Catholism of the era put forth, I would seriously doubt, especially given as I don't remember any of the people of the book who would consider Baghdad "the City of God". Jersulem, yes. Mecca, yes. Rome, yes. Constantinople - mmm, maybe. But Baghdad, the capitol of Babylon, never.
Now let's think about the type of people that apply for $1,000,000 prizes. Do you think that he's really getting the intellectually honest people who are doing the research for the truth, rather than expected results?
Does it matter? If you're the next Thomas Edison and discover a telepathic enhancer and decide to make a quick mill on it, does that reduce the effectiveness of your invention? And as Randi says, if you don't need that money (and I know way too many people who buy lotto tickets to think that most people wouldn't try for an easy million if they thought they could get it), then surely your favorite charity could use the money?
It's well known that the movement of people often introduces noise into the measurement of the gravitational constant. Any measurement of the gravitational constant that didn't take proper precautions to reduce that effect would be ignored. Likewise, it's well known that cheating, including such simple things as he mentioned here, often introduces noise (and worse yet, biased noise) into the measurement of paranormal abilities. Why should take any study that doesn't take proper precautions to reduce that effect be taken seriously?
This is something I can disagree with on its face. Not everything that exists is provable,
(By provable, you mean testable, right?)
That's an claim about the nature of reality, that I think James Randi might disagree with, as might I. If something's not subject to study or is random, then it's like dust on the film of reality; it doesn't help me figure what the movie is about; it's just noise I won't ever really understand it.
Not everyone is interested in taking his test, yet my understanding is that he uses the lack of anyone succeeding in the test to 'prove' that there is no substance to any 'paranormal' claims.
Those who are already using their testable 'powers' for money in public eye really have no excuse for not taking the test. Admittedly, others may not be as greedy or desiring of attention, but as Randi says, if you really don't need or want a million bucks, your favorite charity could sure use it.
Randi would never use the word prove; he would just make snide remarks. And while the Wiccans and other true believers may have good reason for not trying for it, many of the people he directs the snide remarks at - those selling their powers on TV, or those selling 'enhanced' water or 'hi-tech' dowsing rods - if they were on the up and up, wouldn't hesitate to grab the million dollars (if Randi tried to weasle out of it, you've got a contract you can take to court - if it works, what do you have to lose?).
To reduce this to the ever popular "invisible pink unicorn" debate, I can't prove there are invisible pink unicorns. I also can't prove there aren't. Therefore, it is most reasonable to be unsure of their existance.
Have you ever taken an action based on the fact there might be "invisible pink unicorns" and it can't hurt just in case? It's easy to be unsure of their existence in a debate, but if you were seriously unsure of the existence of the pink unicorns (and all their kin), you would have seriously consider that you may offend one by stepping on its tail when walking and that it might take vengance, say by stabbing your heart and causing a heart attack. But in reality, you comport yourself in all ways like they were non-existant; so how can you honestly say you think they might exist?
Funny you said that, 'cause I just was reading this page of the site:
Debunking Debunker's Arguments - Occam's Razor.
Let's take one claim from that site and examine how Occam's Razor applies:
Likewise, if someone has a close up encounter of Bigfoot, skeptics will use Occam's Razor to claim that it is more likely that the experiencer was either lying or hallucinating.
Bigfoot, according to most reports, is a primate that stands over six feet tall and lives in the Pacific Northwest, the forests of which have been greatly reduced by logging and a large number of people moving into the area. Given what we know of ecology, it's impossible for that area to sustain a breeding population of large primates. Occam's Razor comes down to this - either basic ecology is wrong and biologists and hunters and truck drivers (no Bigfeet have turned up as roadkill) and farmers (most large creatures end up raiding farms for food at some point) have managed to miss a creature that stands over six feet tall and weights at least three hundred pounds, or someone's playing a hoax or isn't right in the head. You can call it Occam's Razor, or common sense, but the answer's simple.
Sure, there's little to no evidence of divinity, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Agnostics are the only ones who can claim that their beliefs are based off the scientific method, since they admit there's not enough evidence to make a conclusion, either way.
Sure, there's no little to no evidence of invisible pink unicorns, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. The scientific method includes this little thing called Occam's razor; if there's little to no evidence for something, and it would be simpler if you left it out, leave it out.
I honestly don't understand how the claims in this post are any different from those claimed by SCO.
We said you're violating our license on code you're clearly using here, here, and here. SCO says somehow we own the rights to the code you wrote, but we aren't going to tell you where. It's the whole truth and full disclosure thing.
No, the trick is to actually read the docs and have an idea of what you are doing. And no, rpm -i *.rpm doesn't qualify.
Sorry, I just hate laziness of thought and not too fond of those who advocate such.
Ah, bite me. It's a video player. Would you prefer it if you got your DVD in a box with a hundred pieces that you have to assemble, after you've got a half-dozen other pieces that weren't included? I can compile the program, but the fewer programs I have to download the source and install a dozen development packages and then wait for it to compile, the better.
As I said before [...] what if the sample of your work is used without your permission in Nazi, White Supremacy or Anti-Semitic music, and you disaprove? Why should the fruit of your creativity and your labor be used without your permission to promote people, ideas and movements you loath?
And how are you going to stop that? Let's say you're a pacifist who's written a song "Stop the man". It's entirely legal for a bunch of neo-Nazis to sit around and play that song and use it to explain why the Jews must be stopped. It's not entirely legal, but highly unlikely to be contested, for it to be played at a neo-Nazi rally. It's not legal for them to sample it or record a new version, but honestly speaking, it's probably underground enough that you can't stop it.
Stuff like this is entirely legal with open source software. If you want to replace the characters in Gnu Chess with neo-Nazi symbols, no one is going to stop you. Many modern modable games have neo-Nazi mods (I believe - never really searched for them), and it's usually even legal. Maybe it's too much trouble to give a damn - let everyone speak, and hopefully the sane will outweight the loonies, instead of trying to smack down the loonies, which is neigh impossible.
But [the total cost] is directly correlated to [the number of computers], is it not?
So long as everything else is held constant.
So why do you suppose that commodity P4s, Athlons, or Opterons will whip a G5 Mac?
Because every mega-computing project I've ever heard about used Intel processors? Because of that word commodity usually meaning that the people selling the hardware are shaving profits as tightly as possible to reduce prices, since that's a large buying factor? Because Apple is geared up to build workstations, whereas there are companies who build primarily x86 computers for situations where your goal is to pack as many of them in as little space as possible?
if Apple can design something that gives Pixar an edge, why wouldn't Apple do so,
Apple primarily wants to sell workstations, and as secondary goal, wants to sell servers, and uses as distinctive UI and optimized user experiance as the main selling points. The time and effort need for Apple to design rack mount systems optimized for max CPU per dollar isn't going help Apple with its primary markets.
The reason why Open Source user interfaces are so bad
Open Source user interfaces usually trade ease of use for power. Many of them aren't bad, they're merely built to different design specifications.
One of my few projects is a program which has a mpg123-like UI, but handles a wide variety of music files. I'm sure if UI engineers designed it, they would come up with something like WinAMP or Windows Media Player; but mine works from a batch file or console, and works easier for me.
For years people in the HCI field been screaming at open source engineers to design the UI before the code is written
What ever happened to talking to people, or actually doing some work yourself? Screaming at people, especially volunteers, is not the best solution.
For years the entertainment industry has come out with morality killing movies, tv programs and music, now the monsters they have created couldn't care less about morality of it
How about for centuries, or did you forget about Robin Hood?
We know 4 fire fighters who gave their lives in the rescue effort.
It is not a hysterical witch hunt.
And there were communist spys back in the 1950's. That doesn't make McArthur any more right. For a hysterical witch hunt to work, there has got to be a core of beliveability, the truth working best.
The way I see it, with movie piracy, biggest losers here are non-action flicks, comedy, and romance movies.
There is validity to the points that you make. But, OTOH, the type of people who download movies are computer geeks who are primarily male and largely in their late teens and early twentys. People with money don't spend hours searching for a movie and waiting for it download, hoping that it's decent quality and tolerating what inperfections come up - they go drop ten bucks to rent it, buy it, or watch it at the movie theater. Even this audience probably wouldn't download something to watch with his girlfriend or family. So he's probably looking for Matrix Reloaded, T3 or anime, despite the encoding problems.
So... either SCO only copyrighted 20 pages of code, or you don't need to deposit the whole work with the CO in order to have it copyrighted. Unless the '(20 p.)' above means something entirely different...
On sourcecode, you only have to deposit the first ten and the last ten pages. Doesn't seem like it would help much in a copyright case, but they probably don't want to handle stuff like GCC, which would be 13,000 pages if printed out in full.
Let's say an arab comes up with an arabic word for something new. Do you think we'd all start using the arabic word?
jihad. alcohol. algebra. (or from another enemy: cosmonaut, perestrokia, vodka). Americans have borrowed many words from other languages, including Arabic.
In any case, it's not a matter of whether or not we would start using the word; it's a case of whether or not the government would dictate that another word be used.
No, free software is all about control of free software. The point is that BK is not free, but collaborates with free software; both benefit from the relationship.
Lore has it that the free software movement started when RMS couldn't get the software to fix the printer. (It's, at best, a simplification, but it's a good example.) If the printer manufacturer just "collaborated" with free software by providing binary-only drivers, we still have the same problem. Ruling the world is not important; ruling our computers is.
This guy is an ally.
This guy is an ally like Stalin was an ally in WWII. He doesn't share the same goals, and he doesn't share the same ethics (especially that comment about switching the protocols every six months). It might so happen that it's best to work with him for a while, but never be deluded into thinking he's a friend or it's a long term relationship, because if you do, you'll start giving up your ethics to do so.
If the guy that spent money developing the product asks that you not make a direct, compatible, free software GPLd competitor then I think under the circumstances that that is only fair
AT&T, who spent money developing Unix, asked the people making BSD to stop distributing BSD, a direct compatible free software competitor. Should they have said, "Yes, we're happy for you to use our work, and we know that we can never be anything more then your unpaid servants"? Free software is all about control, and I'm not more happy to give McVeigh control then Gates.
What does it take to start a/. article about faulty compilers. This ought to be a big deal.
All programs have bugs. An optimizing compiler is a big, complex program with some very hairy algorithms that has to deal closely with the quirks of assembly. You can't really expect perfection.
Even years ago I knew of C code that broke for no known reason when optimizations were selected.
A lot of times the C code is bad, not the compiler. The naive non-optimized version works, but when the compiler starts taking advantage of the language rules to optimize, then the program breaks.
Slashdot Mirror
A.1) The compiler can have a tremendous understanding of how the code can most efficiently be run under most archetectural circumstances, yet has to assume the most common-dumbest implementation
That's true for any two chips that run the same architectures; why is it better to have to compile for x86 and MIPS then to compile for x86 and (possibly) x86-64 and have the choice of running the x86 binary on the x86-64?
There is nothing responsible about injesting toxins that cause brain damage (even if the brain damage is temporary).
Everything is a toxin. Unless you subside on a precisely controlled diet of low fat organic foods, you're doing more damage to your body then you need to be. A responsible person can chose how and when to use toxins - like alcohol, aspirin, fatty meats and mercury-heavy fish - reasonably.
It is still logic. Theology is a rigorous and logical field. Just because you might not agree with it does not mean it is not logic.
It has no formal basis, nor does it use formal means to arrive at its conclusions, so it's not a branch of logic. It uses no experiments, or any other tests or proofs, so it's not rigorous.
It is not only possible, it is prevalent and quite common. Do you see the air between yourself and the monitor?
Of course, air's not a dense ordered substance. There's a big difference between air and a living thing, and the compounds that make up living things are not transparent or even translucent.
Remember, copyright law is given in the constitution. So much like slavery (a similarly bad system), a constitutional amendment will have to occur to rid of us this scourge.
Actually not. Copyright law is merely an option given to Congress, which Congress doesn't have to exercise. Congress could end copyright law with one bill.
Christians and Muslims both believe in the same God, just disagree in the nature of Jesus Christ
That's not the question; the question is, would Nostradamus have described Baghdad as "the City of God"? Given the particular views on God and religion that Catholism of the era put forth, I would seriously doubt, especially given as I don't remember any of the people of the book who would consider Baghdad "the City of God". Jersulem, yes. Mecca, yes. Rome, yes. Constantinople - mmm, maybe. But Baghdad, the capitol of Babylon, never.
Now let's think about the type of people that apply for $1,000,000 prizes. Do you think that he's really getting the intellectually honest people who are doing the research for the truth, rather than expected results?
Does it matter? If you're the next Thomas Edison and discover a telepathic enhancer and decide to make a quick mill on it, does that reduce the effectiveness of your invention? And as Randi says, if you don't need that money (and I know way too many people who buy lotto tickets to think that most people wouldn't try for an easy million if they thought they could get it), then surely your favorite charity could use the money?
A simple example of implied accusation of fraud:
It's well known that the movement of people often introduces noise into the measurement of the gravitational constant. Any measurement of the gravitational constant that didn't take proper precautions to reduce that effect would be ignored. Likewise, it's well known that cheating, including such simple things as he mentioned here, often introduces noise (and worse yet, biased noise) into the measurement of paranormal abilities. Why should take any study that doesn't take proper precautions to reduce that effect be taken seriously?
This is something I can disagree with on its face. Not everything that exists is provable,
(By provable, you mean testable, right?)
That's an claim about the nature of reality, that I think James Randi might disagree with, as might I. If something's not subject to study or is random, then it's like dust on the film of reality; it doesn't help me figure what the movie is about; it's just noise I won't ever really understand it.
Not everyone is interested in taking his test, yet my understanding is that he uses the lack of anyone succeeding in the test to 'prove' that there is no substance to any 'paranormal' claims.
Those who are already using their testable 'powers' for money in public eye really have no excuse for not taking the test. Admittedly, others may not be as greedy or desiring of attention, but as Randi says, if you really don't need or want a million bucks, your favorite charity could sure use it.
Randi would never use the word prove; he would just make snide remarks. And while the Wiccans and other true believers may have good reason for not trying for it, many of the people he directs the snide remarks at - those selling their powers on TV, or those selling 'enhanced' water or 'hi-tech' dowsing rods - if they were on the up and up, wouldn't hesitate to grab the million dollars (if Randi tried to weasle out of it, you've got a contract you can take to court - if it works, what do you have to lose?).
To reduce this to the ever popular "invisible pink unicorn" debate, I can't prove there are invisible pink unicorns. I also can't prove there aren't. Therefore, it is most reasonable to be unsure of their existance.
Have you ever taken an action based on the fact there might be "invisible pink unicorns" and it can't hurt just in case? It's easy to be unsure of their existence in a debate, but if you were seriously unsure of the existence of the pink unicorns (and all their kin), you would have seriously consider that you may offend one by stepping on its tail when walking and that it might take vengance, say by stabbing your heart and causing a heart attack. But in reality, you comport yourself in all ways like they were non-existant; so how can you honestly say you think they might exist?
Funny you said that, 'cause I just was reading this page of the site:
Debunking Debunker's Arguments - Occam's Razor.
Let's take one claim from that site and examine how Occam's Razor applies:
Likewise, if someone has a close up encounter of Bigfoot, skeptics will use Occam's Razor to claim that it is more likely that the experiencer was either lying or hallucinating.
Bigfoot, according to most reports, is a primate that stands over six feet tall and lives in the Pacific Northwest, the forests of which have been greatly reduced by logging and a large number of people moving into the area. Given what we know of ecology, it's impossible for that area to sustain a breeding population of large primates. Occam's Razor comes down to this - either basic ecology is wrong and biologists and hunters and truck drivers (no Bigfeet have turned up as roadkill) and farmers (most large creatures end up raiding farms for food at some point) have managed to miss a creature that stands over six feet tall and weights at least three hundred pounds, or someone's playing a hoax or isn't right in the head. You can call it Occam's Razor, or common sense, but the answer's simple.
Sure, there's little to no evidence of divinity, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Agnostics are the only ones who can claim that their beliefs are based off the scientific method, since they admit there's not enough evidence to make a conclusion, either way.
Sure, there's no little to no evidence of invisible pink unicorns, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. The scientific method includes this little thing called Occam's razor; if there's little to no evidence for something, and it would be simpler if you left it out, leave it out.
I honestly don't understand how the claims in this post are any different from those claimed by SCO.
We said you're violating our license on code you're clearly using here, here, and here. SCO says somehow we own the rights to the code you wrote, but we aren't going to tell you where. It's the whole truth and full disclosure thing.
No, the trick is to actually read the docs and have an idea of what you are
doing. And no, rpm -i *.rpm doesn't qualify.
Sorry, I just hate laziness of thought and not too fond of those who advocate
such.
Ah, bite me. It's a video player. Would you prefer it if you got your DVD in a box with a hundred pieces that you have to assemble, after you've got a half-dozen other pieces that weren't included? I can compile the program, but the fewer programs I have to download the source and install a dozen development packages and then wait for it to compile, the better.
As I said before [...] what if the sample of your work is used without your permission in Nazi, White Supremacy or Anti-Semitic music, and you disaprove? Why should the fruit of your creativity and your labor be used without your permission to promote people, ideas and movements you loath?
And how are you going to stop that? Let's say you're a pacifist who's written a song "Stop the man". It's entirely legal for a bunch of neo-Nazis to sit around and play that song and use it to explain why the Jews must be stopped. It's not entirely legal, but highly unlikely to be contested, for it to be played at a neo-Nazi rally. It's not legal for them to sample it or record a new version, but honestly speaking, it's probably underground enough that you can't stop it.
Stuff like this is entirely legal with open source software. If you want to replace the characters in Gnu Chess with neo-Nazi symbols, no one is going to stop you. Many modern modable games have neo-Nazi mods (I believe - never really searched for them), and it's usually even legal. Maybe it's too much trouble to give a damn - let everyone speak, and hopefully the sane will outweight the loonies, instead of trying to smack down the loonies, which is neigh impossible.
But [the total cost] is directly correlated to [the number of computers], is it not?
So long as everything else is held constant.
So why do you suppose that commodity P4s, Athlons, or Opterons will whip a G5 Mac?
Because every mega-computing project I've ever heard about used Intel processors? Because of that word commodity usually meaning that the people selling the hardware are shaving profits as tightly as possible to reduce prices, since that's a large buying factor? Because Apple is geared up to build workstations, whereas there are companies who build primarily x86 computers for situations where your goal is to pack as many of them in as little space as possible?
if Apple can design something that gives Pixar an edge, why wouldn't Apple do so,
Apple primarily wants to sell workstations, and as secondary goal, wants to sell servers, and uses as distinctive UI and optimized user experiance as the main selling points. The time and effort need for Apple to design rack mount systems optimized for max CPU per dollar isn't going help Apple with its primary markets.
The reason why Open Source user interfaces are so bad
Open Source user interfaces usually trade ease of use for power. Many of them aren't bad, they're merely built to different design specifications.
One of my few projects is a program which has a mpg123-like UI, but handles a wide variety of music files. I'm sure if UI engineers designed it, they would come up with something like WinAMP or Windows Media Player; but mine works from a batch file or console, and works easier for me.
For years people in the HCI field been screaming at open source engineers to design the UI before the code is written
What ever happened to talking to people, or actually doing some work yourself? Screaming at people, especially volunteers, is not the best solution.
For years the entertainment industry has come out with morality killing movies, tv programs and music, now the monsters they have created couldn't care less about morality of it
How about for centuries, or did you forget about Robin Hood?
We know 4 fire fighters who gave their lives in the rescue effort.
It is not a hysterical witch hunt.
And there were communist spys back in the 1950's. That doesn't make McArthur any more right. For a hysterical witch hunt to work, there has got to be a core of beliveability, the truth working best.
The way I see it, with movie piracy, biggest losers here are non-action flicks, comedy, and romance movies.
There is validity to the points that you make. But, OTOH, the type of people who download movies are computer geeks who are primarily male and largely in their late teens and early twentys. People with money don't spend hours searching for a movie and waiting for it download, hoping that it's decent quality and tolerating what inperfections come up - they go drop ten bucks to rent it, buy it, or watch it at the movie theater. Even this audience probably wouldn't download something to watch with his girlfriend or family. So he's probably looking for Matrix Reloaded, T3 or anime, despite the encoding problems.
So... either SCO only copyrighted 20 pages of code, or you don't need to deposit the whole work with the CO in order to have it copyrighted. Unless the '(20 p.)' above means something entirely different...
On sourcecode, you only have to deposit the first ten and the last ten pages. Doesn't seem like it would help much in a copyright case, but they probably don't want to handle stuff like GCC, which would be 13,000 pages if printed out in full.
Let's say an arab comes up with an arabic word for something new. Do you think we'd all start using the arabic word?
jihad. alcohol. algebra. (or from another enemy: cosmonaut, perestrokia, vodka). Americans have borrowed many words from other languages, including Arabic.
In any case, it's not a matter of whether or not we would start using the word; it's a case of whether or not the government would dictate that another word be used.
Free software is all about control
Sigh. You want to rule the world then. Boring!
No, free software is all about control of free software. The point is that BK is not free, but collaborates with free software; both benefit from the relationship.
Lore has it that the free software movement started when RMS couldn't get the software to fix the printer. (It's, at best, a simplification, but it's a good example.) If the printer manufacturer just "collaborated" with free software by providing binary-only drivers, we still have the same problem. Ruling the world is not important; ruling our computers is.
This guy is an ally.
This guy is an ally like Stalin was an ally in WWII. He doesn't share the same goals, and he doesn't share the same ethics (especially that comment about switching the protocols every six months). It might so happen that it's best to work with him for a while, but never be deluded into thinking he's a friend or it's a long term relationship, because if you do, you'll start giving up your ethics to do so.
If the guy that spent money developing the product asks that you not make a direct, compatible, free software GPLd competitor then I think under the circumstances that that is only fair
AT&T, who spent money developing Unix, asked the people making BSD to stop distributing BSD, a direct compatible free software competitor. Should they have said, "Yes, we're happy for you to use our work, and we know that we can never be anything more then your unpaid servants"? Free software is all about control, and I'm not more happy to give McVeigh control then Gates.
What does it take to start a /. article about faulty compilers. This ought to be a big deal.
All programs have bugs. An optimizing compiler is a big, complex program with some very hairy algorithms that has to deal closely with the quirks of assembly. You can't really expect perfection.
Even years ago I knew of C code that broke for no known reason when optimizations were selected.
A lot of times the C code is bad, not the compiler. The naive non-optimized version works, but when the compiler starts taking advantage of the language rules to optimize, then the program breaks.