For me, it was about being logical. I first laid hands on an infix calculator in about 1970. I could not make it work! I was used to mechanical calculators for which you entered a first operand and a second and then commanded an operation on them. With the newfangled electronic calculator, it never occurred to me to specify the operation before I had specified both operands. I finally asked a salesperson in a department store, "How do you make this thing work?", and I got a response like, "You know - '1' '+' '2' '=': See?: 3". Being a mathematician, I was embarrassed; but I was able to grasp the infix concept quickly enough. However, when I got my hands on an HP calculator, I was much happier. At one point, I had got my company to buy me a programmable TI calculator (with removable program medium), thinking it was a much better deal than the comparable HP. However, I was so annoyed with the infix notation that I insisted on returning the TI so I could get the more expensive postfix HP. We're talking here about prices in the several $100s.
The infix calculators are OK if you are punching in a fully formed expression which you are reading. However, if I am just thinking and calculating as I go, I find the postfix way to be much easier to keep track of - as I can do operations as I think of them, and I do not have to think about operand grouping or think ahead because of it. For me in postfix mode, it is more like a succession of "Do this to the number I have got so far." Conceptually, I am operating directly on intermediate results as opposed to evaluating an expression which already existed in some sense.
One problem I have with infix calculators is that they are not consistent in the way they implement operation hierarchy. Eg., on some, 2+2/2 would produce a result of 3 and, on others, 2. (I actually prefer 2 in this case, as I do not want to have to think about a stack of pending operations when it cannot be presented in an obvious manner.) On an unfamiliar infix calculator, I wind up putting in potentially unnecessary parentheses just to be safe.
PS - I apologize for my "testing" posting. I really did hit "Preview" as I wanted to test my login. I don't know what went wrong, but it probably had something to do with the fact that I was not yet logged in.
How is "reverse engineering" meant in this context? I always took it to refer to closely examining a thing or even taking it apart to see how it was implemented. In the case of a software implementation, this may involve disassembling the code. OTOH, if you try a product to find out what it does and then find your own way of implementing similar function, that does not strike me as reverse engineering, but merely as exploiting other folks' good ideas about what such a system should do. This goes on all the time. We call it "progress"!
It appears to me that the court got caught up in a too-broad interpretation of what constitutes "reverse engineering", but I am open to further insight here as the article was not very clear on how the clause was interpreted or how it is supposed to be interpreted.
Note that you do not have to buy a product and break the shrink wrap to try it. All you need to do is to find someone who has legitmately acquired the product and ask them to let you try it. If I were the purchaser and allowed a competitor's representative to play with the product, would I be violating anyone's rights? Once a product has been released, I don't see how you can legally deny anyone the right to find out what it does. (More often than not, the manual is online!) It does make a little sense (not too much, mind you) to try to prevent other folks from figuring out how you got it to work. (Not that such efforts are all that likely to succeed though.)
I am fishing for a better understanding of the situation here. I have always avoided doing business with any Web merchant which could not directly accept my credit card. It seemed to me that, under those circumstances, I no longer had the protection of the credit card company if the merchandise did not arrive or was not satisfactory. If the merchant has been 'blessed' by the credit card company, that, in itself, gives me some assurance about their credibility -- in addition to the fact that the credit card company is going to stand behind the transaction in any case. So a 3rd party funds transfer situation always struck me as a red flag indicating that I could not necessarily trust the merchant. Indeed, it bothered me that these 3rd party credit card transactions were even possible. Obviously, some folks have been taking them seriously. Was I being excessively cautious?
(Clearly I cannot get excited about the MasterCharge policy change, since I never wanted to go through a 3rd party anyway.)
Another thing I don't understand is the following: Though PayPal is not a bank, I see no reason in principle why I cannot transfer funds to my account there and then have them disburse such funds to merchants. The disbursal and deposit transactions are independent of each other. If I used a credit card to make the deposit, that does not imply to me any responsibility on the part of the credit card company for subsequent disbursals. I expect that the answer here is that such disbursals are not considerd to be 3rd party credit card transactions.
Anyway, I have 'worried' about these issues for some time. When, on a couple of occasions, I directly questioned merchants who used 3rd party credit card transactions, I found their responses about the level of my protection to be evasive. (Another red flag.) I would appreciate further insight if someone can provide it.
You do not have to own Word in order to view Word documents. MicroSoft offers a free viewer here.
I know this is not "free" in the 'liberated source' sense promoted by RMS, but it does solve the practical problem at no cost to the recipient of a Word file.
At under $40 this no-frills programmable remote has been very satisfactory for me. I use it to control TV, digital cable box, receiver, five! VCRs, and an RCA switch for selecting (1 of 6) S-video or composite video sources for TV aux-in. It does everything I could ask, including doing macros. I was able assign VCR remote codes to keys in such a way as to make all the VCRs behave much more similarly than with their own remotes. (I also have a DVD player which comes through the switch, but I have not put it on the remote. I don't use it much, but I think it could share keys with my receiver mode.) Cleared off my coffee table!
Slashdot Mirror
For me, it was about being logical. I first laid hands on an infix calculator in about 1970. I could not make it work! I was used to mechanical calculators for which you entered a first operand and a second and then commanded an operation on them. With the newfangled electronic calculator, it never occurred to me to specify the operation before I had specified both operands. I finally asked a salesperson in a department store, "How do you make this thing work?", and I got a response like, "You know - '1' '+' '2' '=': See?: 3". Being a mathematician, I was embarrassed; but I was able to grasp the infix concept quickly enough. However, when I got my hands on an HP calculator, I was much happier. At one point, I had got my company to buy me a programmable TI calculator (with removable program medium), thinking it was a much better deal than the comparable HP. However, I was so annoyed with the infix notation that I insisted on returning the TI so I could get the more expensive postfix HP. We're talking here about prices in the several $100s.
The infix calculators are OK if you are punching in a fully formed expression which you are reading. However, if I am just thinking and calculating as I go, I find the postfix way to be much easier to keep track of - as I can do operations as I think of them, and I do not have to think about operand grouping or think ahead because of it. For me in postfix mode, it is more like a succession of "Do this to the number I have got so far." Conceptually, I am operating directly on intermediate results as opposed to evaluating an expression which already existed in some sense.
One problem I have with infix calculators is that they are not consistent in the way they implement operation hierarchy. Eg., on some, 2+2/2 would produce a result of 3 and, on others, 2. (I actually prefer 2 in this case, as I do not want to have to think about a stack of pending operations when it cannot be presented in an obvious manner.) On an unfamiliar infix calculator, I wind up putting in potentially unnecessary parentheses just to be safe.
PS - I apologize for my "testing" posting. I really did hit "Preview" as I wanted to test my login. I don't know what went wrong, but it probably had something to do with the fact that I was not yet logged in.
testing
How is "reverse engineering" meant in this context? I always took it to refer to closely examining a thing or even taking it apart to see how it was implemented. In the case of a software implementation, this may involve disassembling the code. OTOH, if you try a product to find out what it does and then find your own way of implementing similar function, that does not strike me as reverse engineering, but merely as exploiting other folks' good ideas about what such a system should do. This goes on all the time. We call it "progress"!
It appears to me that the court got caught up in a too-broad interpretation of what constitutes "reverse engineering", but I am open to further insight here as the article was not very clear on how the clause was interpreted or how it is supposed to be interpreted.
Note that you do not have to buy a product and break the shrink wrap to try it. All you need to do is to find someone who has legitmately acquired the product and ask them to let you try it. If I were the purchaser and allowed a competitor's representative to play with the product, would I be violating anyone's rights? Once a product has been released, I don't see how you can legally deny anyone the right to find out what it does. (More often than not, the manual is online!) It does make a little sense (not too much, mind you) to try to prevent other folks from figuring out how you got it to work. (Not that such efforts are all that likely to succeed though.)
I am fishing for a better understanding of the situation here. I have always avoided doing business with any Web merchant which could not directly accept my credit card. It seemed to me that, under those circumstances, I no longer had the protection of the credit card company if the merchandise did not arrive or was not satisfactory. If the merchant has been 'blessed' by the credit card company, that, in itself, gives me some assurance about their credibility -- in addition to the fact that the credit card company is going to stand behind the transaction in any case. So a 3rd party funds transfer situation always struck me as a red flag indicating that I could not necessarily trust the merchant. Indeed, it bothered me that these 3rd party credit card transactions were even possible. Obviously, some folks have been taking them seriously. Was I being excessively cautious?
(Clearly I cannot get excited about the MasterCharge policy change, since I never wanted to go through a 3rd party anyway.)
Another thing I don't understand is the following: Though PayPal is not a bank, I see no reason in principle why I cannot transfer funds to my account there and then have them disburse such funds to merchants. The disbursal and deposit transactions are independent of each other. If I used a credit card to make the deposit, that does not imply to me any responsibility on the part of the credit card company for subsequent disbursals. I expect that the answer here is that such disbursals are not considerd to be 3rd party credit card transactions.
Anyway, I have 'worried' about these issues for some time. When, on a couple of occasions, I directly questioned merchants who used 3rd party credit card transactions, I found their responses about the level of my protection to be evasive. (Another red flag.) I would appreciate further insight if someone can provide it.
You do not have to own Word in order to view Word documents. MicroSoft offers a free viewer here.
I know this is not "free" in the 'liberated source' sense promoted by RMS, but it does solve the practical problem at no cost to the recipient of a Word file.
At under $40 this no-frills programmable remote has been very satisfactory for me. I use it to control TV, digital cable box, receiver, five! VCRs, and an RCA switch for selecting (1 of 6) S-video or composite video sources for TV aux-in. It does everything I could ask, including doing macros. I was able assign VCR remote codes to keys in such a way as to make all the VCRs behave much more similarly than with their own remotes. (I also have a DVD player which comes through the switch, but I have not put it on the remote. I don't use it much, but I think it could share keys with my receiver mode.) Cleared off my coffee table!