Well, IBM is one of Sun's largest competitors, so it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to jump in bed with them. There probably isn't a whole lot of reason to not choose Intel, other than the fact that Sun operates on religious principles rather than business ones.
Sun likes to think they have the power to stick it to anyone they want. So, they are going after Intel by partnering with AMD. These practices haven't played out well for them in recent years.
Sun stuck with UNIX in a time when everyone was getting away from it. This paid off well for them a few years back. However, they have since used the same philosophy and have been digging a big hole. They tried to ride out on Solaris and SPARC, but the shift is towards Linux and x86. This move is a step in the right direction, but it might be too late. They have Java, but while Sun has been moping around, IBM jumped on the Linux bandwagon, and took a lot of the Java momentum away from Sun.
In short, if Sun would have played their cards right, they could be where IBM is today. Now, however, they have 2-3 years of catchup to do, and not many people are going to wait around.
Computers dont like C, C++, or even assembly for that matter. All they understand is 1s and 0s. Languages are created for the ease of the human programmers. It is the job of the compiler/assembler to translate them to binary.
Computers dont understand hex either, that is just convenient shorthand for programmers. Decimal is as well. Both are a simple conversion for the compiler. Incidentally, if you ever write a math library, I'd suggest you use decimal constants, as it will make it easier for someone else to modify or improve the library.
Computers, programming languages, decimal, hexidecimal are all created for humans, to make things easier. You are arguing for the reverse scenario, and don't even get that right. If you want to be a machine, talk only in binary.
The penny arcade comics concerning apple are all just flamebait. That is the point of the addendum. Funny flamebait though, and I am a satisfied Apple user (and Linux, BSD, QNX, anything but Microsoft).
Yeah, on a long enough time line, everything is bound to happen twice. Because of this, we should automatically discredit everything that anyone does. Einstein was an idiot, Beethoven wasn't really that great of a composer, and Plato was a sub-par philosopher.
Get real. Original ideas are probably much less likely to be independently created than are physical inventions.
Laws to prevent the free copying of information try to set up an artificial scarcity, and that is what is evil.
This is where you are misunderstood. Technology alone gives us a way to make information scarce. It is called encryption, and has been around for a long time. You can copy the encrypted stream over and over, but it is entirely meaningless without the decryption algorithm.
In the DirecTV example, there are no laws requiring them to encrypt their broadcast. They do it to preserve the value in the service they run. Take credit card transactions, surely that information needs to be scarce, and scarcity is acheived by encrypting the data. Your SSN is a form of encrpytion for your personal data, albeit a pretty weak one. (Incidentally, you have ignored the issue entirely of why you refuse to give it out. I suspect because you realise that it invalidates your argument.)
Now, on to the copyright issue. I think you come at it from the wrong angle. Copyright actually grants you the rights to copy data which you have purchased. You can be sure that, given the chance, most companies would encrypt everything they sell you and you could only access it on authorized devices. This is where the term "right" fits in copy"right". As a law, it is designed to give you the rights to make copies of that information which you own. It has been used sucessfully to argue against the DMCA. So, it can't be all bad now, can it?
Now, I suspect you take issue with not being able to give copies of the data to everyone you know. Your desire to do this is ludicrous, as the information is not rightfully yours, in a moral sense as well as a legal sense. Sure, you are not stealing, per se, but you can't discount the fact that the information has value. The value flows in the reverse direction as the information. So, by you becoming the transmitter, you have lessened the value of the original creator. Even you admit the value of information, de facto, in not giving out your SSN.
In short, encouraging the abolition of copyright, will only encourage the originators of the information to encrypt everything. At least with the way the system currently works, your rights are protected by law.
Have you ever met a happy employee at Wal-Mart? Seems to me most of them stand around or, when they are moving, it is just to avoid contact with actual customers. Mabey it is the boredom that comes with a dead-end job. Who know.
Anyway, my experience from the few times I've gone there. I usally avoid the place like the plague. It gives me headaches for some reason.
Once information is beamed everywhere on Earth, it's hard to keep it from being captured and decoded.
I want to clarify something. In the case of DirecTV beaming their signal, it is still hard to keep it from being decoded. This is because it is encrypted and the decryption is incredibly difficult.
What they are not broadcasting is the decryption key, in much the same way you are not giving out your SSN.
If information wants to be free and has no inherent value, DirecTV would just broadcast unencrypted audio/video signals. And, you would just give out your SSN. Anyone could pick up free tv and anyone could look up your private personal details.
However, I'm sure you want to limit people's ability to do this, because those details are private (which is where their value lies.) The value in DirecTV's broadcast lies in the business expenses, which is why they don't broadcast unencrypted. Copyright is a legal key protecting creative works because their is value in the time spent creating them.
Anyway, this turned more long winded than I intended. But, I just wanted to rephrase. I'd like to here your response to these arguments.
You are making my point for me. If information wants to be free, you should not even try to keep it from being copied. It should be distributed openly, hence you should be willing to give me your SSN.
The only reason to protect the information with a key, and to keep that key secret, is because the information protected has value (read, is not free). In the case of your SSN, it is protecting personal information. In the case of DirecTV, it is protecting the content and the service they provide. It is not cheap to run a satellite TV business, so they need to protect the content to ensure its value.
Extending this argument (which you appear not to disagree with) yeilds the reason why copyright and intellectual property are not evil. Copyright is simply a key used to protect information that has inherent value. Just as you will not give out your SSN due to the data it protects, creative professionals defend their copyright because of the work it protects.
I hope this is becoming clearer for you now.
You are acting like a hypocrite by directly contradicting your beleifs. Unless you can back up your beleifs with a solid argument, you should stop promoting them.
Holy shit, the possibility! Just when I was feeling safe. Now the thought that he might not actually be dead and is still roaming the countryside. How am I ever gonna get up the courage to go outside tomorrow?
Beamed information wants to be aggregated, transmitted up to a satellite and then transmitted back down. The satellite has to be launched into space and the transmission equipment needs to be engineered. Seems to me, the information is doing everything it can to cost money.
Who would you suggest pay for this. I hardly doubt DirecTV is willing to foot the bill without a return on an investment. I'd laugh if you suggested a completely government run broadcast industry.
Let's test this theory of yours: What is your social security number. After all, information just wants to be free. Oh, and don't give me that lame content versus key answer. Keys are designed to lock up content. The key is probably why you consider DTV evil. They use it to lock up content, increasing the likelyhood you will pay for their service. So, if you don't give me your SSN, you are just as evil as DTV.
Beleive it or not, human beings actually have morals. Do we make mistakes? Hell yes. But, as a rule, over time, people will realise injustices and change for the better. This is why we do not have slavery anymore. Because it was immoral.
There is nothing immoral about renting an apartment or charging for information. If you think there is, you are crazy. On the other hand, you would like to take the value away from creative professionals. Essentially reduce their profession to tithes payed by the people. You would like to move their careers closer to slavery rather than away from it. That is just idiotic.
When you equate information to slavery, you are just laughed at. Things only change when people are presented with reason and incentive. You have none.
Yes, because we all know that a huge injustice is being done unto ideas by forcing them to work against their will. Get fucking real.
Slavery was morally reprehensible. Now, due to that fact, I would imagine I would have been against it then. However, hindsight is 20/20 and speculation is bullshit. But, there is nothing reprehensible about the concept of ideas holding value. In fact, I think it makes much more sense than saying they have no value. This is from experience.
Now, quit being a damned moron and start to think.
It looks like the code was printed out and then scanned in. The code in question is a call to a function with an argument of 'c': super.finalizeComponent(c). The OCR probably saw that and converted it to the copyright symbol.
Or, option 2, the code was opened in a word processor (damn lawyers) and the word processor decided to be idiotic.
Should I toss out the Einstein's theory of relativity too? I've just been itching to get rid of that one. Apparently, I don't even need a good reason to justify it either, just some hand waving and a "thinking for myself" excuse.
I will quit chasing you around when you offer resonable, logical explanations for your ideas. Until then, I regard you as the single biggest uneducated person on Slashdot, and I will continue to point this out and probe for reasoning. If you can't provide any, then quit making inane comments.
You may be right about the whole intuitive things. But think back to in school, your ten fingers no doubt helped you learn to add and subtract. They do have some use, and I think it is no accident we have a base 10 system.
As for this comment: By the way, you should spend some time teaching yourself the valuable social skill of understanding when someone is being facetious.
I suggest you spend some time reading the persons past post history to see if he is actually being facetious. Oh, and don't assume everything, because you just made an ass of yourself.
This guy is utterly serious when he says we should switch to hex. He also thinks we should start speaking lojban because it would be easier for computers to do speech recognition. Read his past post history if you doubt me.
It is fairly easy to tune the analog cable channels. This has been around for decades. However, you can't tune to digital cable channels on your TV Wonder. That is because they are sent using a different format and are encrypted. I.E. you need to have a set-top box with a decoder to watch them. Same thing goes for HDTV, they are sent encrypted over the digital band.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it is going to be tough to get any significant amount of HDTV reception on a computer. As I see it, most of HDTV is going to come over satellite or cable broadcasts. In the case of satellite, you will need a card that can decrypt/authenticate with their systems. The same with cable. Most of their HDTV transmissions will come over the digital (FAT) bandwidth.
You may be able to pick up local, over the air stations, but this will amount to a very small percentage of the eventual HDTV channels.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, IBM is one of Sun's largest competitors, so it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to jump in bed with them. There probably isn't a whole lot of reason to not choose Intel, other than the fact that Sun operates on religious principles rather than business ones.
Sun likes to think they have the power to stick it to anyone they want. So, they are going after Intel by partnering with AMD. These practices haven't played out well for them in recent years.
Sun stuck with UNIX in a time when everyone was getting away from it. This paid off well for them a few years back. However, they have since used the same philosophy and have been digging a big hole. They tried to ride out on Solaris and SPARC, but the shift is towards Linux and x86. This move is a step in the right direction, but it might be too late. They have Java, but while Sun has been moping around, IBM jumped on the Linux bandwagon, and took a lot of the Java momentum away from Sun.
In short, if Sun would have played their cards right, they could be where IBM is today. Now, however, they have 2-3 years of catchup to do, and not many people are going to wait around.
1000 processors is 3E8h.
Computers dont like C, C++, or even assembly for that matter. All they understand is 1s and 0s. Languages are created for the ease of the human programmers. It is the job of the compiler/assembler to translate them to binary.
Computers dont understand hex either, that is just convenient shorthand for programmers. Decimal is as well. Both are a simple conversion for the compiler. Incidentally, if you ever write a math library, I'd suggest you use decimal constants, as it will make it easier for someone else to modify or improve the library.
Computers, programming languages, decimal, hexidecimal are all created for humans, to make things easier. You are arguing for the reverse scenario, and don't even get that right. If you want to be a machine, talk only in binary.
The penny arcade comics concerning apple are all just flamebait. That is the point of the addendum. Funny flamebait though, and I am a satisfied Apple user (and Linux, BSD, QNX, anything but Microsoft).
Yeah, on a long enough time line, everything is bound to happen twice. Because of this, we should automatically discredit everything that anyone does. Einstein was an idiot, Beethoven wasn't really that great of a composer, and Plato was a sub-par philosopher.
Get real. Original ideas are probably much less likely to be independently created than are physical inventions.
Laws to prevent the free copying of information try to set up an artificial scarcity, and that is what is evil.
This is where you are misunderstood. Technology alone gives us a way to make information scarce. It is called encryption, and has been around for a long time. You can copy the encrypted stream over and over, but it is entirely meaningless without the decryption algorithm.
In the DirecTV example, there are no laws requiring them to encrypt their broadcast. They do it to preserve the value in the service they run. Take credit card transactions, surely that information needs to be scarce, and scarcity is acheived by encrypting the data. Your SSN is a form of encrpytion for your personal data, albeit a pretty weak one. (Incidentally, you have ignored the issue entirely of why you refuse to give it out. I suspect because you realise that it invalidates your argument.)
Now, on to the copyright issue. I think you come at it from the wrong angle. Copyright actually grants you the rights to copy data which you have purchased. You can be sure that, given the chance, most companies would encrypt everything they sell you and you could only access it on authorized devices. This is where the term "right" fits in copy"right". As a law, it is designed to give you the rights to make copies of that information which you own. It has been used sucessfully to argue against the DMCA. So, it can't be all bad now, can it?
Now, I suspect you take issue with not being able to give copies of the data to everyone you know. Your desire to do this is ludicrous, as the information is not rightfully yours, in a moral sense as well as a legal sense. Sure, you are not stealing, per se, but you can't discount the fact that the information has value. The value flows in the reverse direction as the information. So, by you becoming the transmitter, you have lessened the value of the original creator. Even you admit the value of information, de facto, in not giving out your SSN.
In short, encouraging the abolition of copyright, will only encourage the originators of the information to encrypt everything. At least with the way the system currently works, your rights are protected by law.
Have you ever met a happy employee at Wal-Mart? Seems to me most of them stand around or, when they are moving, it is just to avoid contact with actual customers. Mabey it is the boredom that comes with a dead-end job. Who know.
Anyway, my experience from the few times I've gone there. I usally avoid the place like the plague. It gives me headaches for some reason.
Once information is beamed everywhere on Earth, it's hard to keep it from being captured and decoded.
I want to clarify something. In the case of DirecTV beaming their signal, it is still hard to keep it from being decoded. This is because it is encrypted and the decryption is incredibly difficult.
What they are not broadcasting is the decryption key, in much the same way you are not giving out your SSN.
If information wants to be free and has no inherent value, DirecTV would just broadcast unencrypted audio/video signals. And, you would just give out your SSN. Anyone could pick up free tv and anyone could look up your private personal details.
However, I'm sure you want to limit people's ability to do this, because those details are private (which is where their value lies.) The value in DirecTV's broadcast lies in the business expenses, which is why they don't broadcast unencrypted. Copyright is a legal key protecting creative works because their is value in the time spent creating them.
Anyway, this turned more long winded than I intended. But, I just wanted to rephrase. I'd like to here your response to these arguments.
You are making my point for me. If information wants to be free, you should not even try to keep it from being copied. It should be distributed openly, hence you should be willing to give me your SSN.
The only reason to protect the information with a key, and to keep that key secret, is because the information protected has value (read, is not free). In the case of your SSN, it is protecting personal information. In the case of DirecTV, it is protecting the content and the service they provide. It is not cheap to run a satellite TV business, so they need to protect the content to ensure its value.
Extending this argument (which you appear not to disagree with) yeilds the reason why copyright and intellectual property are not evil. Copyright is simply a key used to protect information that has inherent value. Just as you will not give out your SSN due to the data it protects, creative professionals defend their copyright because of the work it protects.
I hope this is becoming clearer for you now.
You are acting like a hypocrite by directly contradicting your beleifs. Unless you can back up your beleifs with a solid argument, you should stop promoting them.
Because all your posts are illogical.
By the way, I am eagerly awaiting an intelligent response to my reply in this thread.
Holy shit, the possibility! Just when I was feeling safe. Now the thought that he might not actually be dead and is still roaming the countryside. How am I ever gonna get up the courage to go outside tomorrow?
Beamed information wants to be aggregated, transmitted up to a satellite and then transmitted back down. The satellite has to be launched into space and the transmission equipment needs to be engineered. Seems to me, the information is doing everything it can to cost money.
Who would you suggest pay for this. I hardly doubt DirecTV is willing to foot the bill without a return on an investment. I'd laugh if you suggested a completely government run broadcast industry.
Let's test this theory of yours: What is your social security number. After all, information just wants to be free. Oh, and don't give me that lame content versus key answer. Keys are designed to lock up content. The key is probably why you consider DTV evil. They use it to lock up content, increasing the likelyhood you will pay for their service. So, if you don't give me your SSN, you are just as evil as DTV.
Now, reason through that.
Beleive it or not, human beings actually have morals. Do we make mistakes? Hell yes. But, as a rule, over time, people will realise injustices and change for the better. This is why we do not have slavery anymore. Because it was immoral.
There is nothing immoral about renting an apartment or charging for information. If you think there is, you are crazy. On the other hand, you would like to take the value away from creative professionals. Essentially reduce their profession to tithes payed by the people. You would like to move their careers closer to slavery rather than away from it. That is just idiotic.
When you equate information to slavery, you are just laughed at. Things only change when people are presented with reason and incentive. You have none.
Yes, because we all know that a huge injustice is being done unto ideas by forcing them to work against their will. Get fucking real.
Slavery was morally reprehensible. Now, due to that fact, I would imagine I would have been against it then. However, hindsight is 20/20 and speculation is bullshit. But, there is nothing reprehensible about the concept of ideas holding value. In fact, I think it makes much more sense than saying they have no value. This is from experience.
Now, quit being a damned moron and start to think.
Encouraging illegal activity is a sure fire way to gain people's respect and promote your ideals. Right.
Grow up. You make the most unenlighted posts ever. You must bathe in ignorance.
It looks like the code was printed out and then scanned in. The code in question is a call to a function with an argument of 'c': super.finalizeComponent(c). The OCR probably saw that and converted it to the copyright symbol.
Or, option 2, the code was opened in a word processor (damn lawyers) and the word processor decided to be idiotic.
Yes, but "its'" is not. Note the trailing apostrophe. That is the non-word the parent was complaining about. Now, read before you critiqe.
I admit, the apostrophe is hard to see amongst all the qotation marks.
That is all.
Should I toss out the Einstein's theory of relativity too? I've just been itching to get rid of that one. Apparently, I don't even need a good reason to justify it either, just some hand waving and a "thinking for myself" excuse.
This is not an insane asylum after all.
By the way, which one did you escape from? Or do they let you on the internet where you are commited?
I will quit chasing you around when you offer resonable, logical explanations for your ideas. Until then, I regard you as the single biggest uneducated person on Slashdot, and I will continue to point this out and probe for reasoning. If you can't provide any, then quit making inane comments.
It is all up to you.
You may be right about the whole intuitive things. But think back to in school, your ten fingers no doubt helped you learn to add and subtract. They do have some use, and I think it is no accident we have a base 10 system.
As for this comment: By the way, you should spend some time teaching yourself the valuable social skill of understanding when someone is being facetious.
I suggest you spend some time reading the persons past post history to see if he is actually being facetious. Oh, and don't assume everything, because you just made an ass of yourself.
This guy is utterly serious when he says we should switch to hex. He also thinks we should start speaking lojban because it would be easier for computers to do speech recognition. Read his past post history if you doubt me.
That is all.
Uhh, yes, I realise this. I am not dumb.
It is fairly easy to tune the analog cable channels. This has been around for decades. However, you can't tune to digital cable channels on your TV Wonder. That is because they are sent using a different format and are encrypted. I.E. you need to have a set-top box with a decoder to watch them. Same thing goes for HDTV, they are sent encrypted over the digital band.
Yep, I'm early awaiting the day a couple hundred thousand years from now when the first human descendant is born with 16 fingers.
Until then, give up on your "coming shift to hexadecimal" which is nonexistent except in your illusionary relality.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it is going to be tough to get any significant amount of HDTV reception on a computer. As I see it, most of HDTV is going to come over satellite or cable broadcasts. In the case of satellite, you will need a card that can decrypt/authenticate with their systems. The same with cable. Most of their HDTV transmissions will come over the digital (FAT) bandwidth.
You may be able to pick up local, over the air stations, but this will amount to a very small percentage of the eventual HDTV channels.
I know, this is unfortunate.
Read the sig. Learn. Grow up or go away.
Looks like the other guy really threw your point back in your face:
What is the point of a key by the way? To lock up content?
If it just wants to be free, you shouldn't want to lock it up. You remain an idiot.