So... Microsoft says "don't let other OS's run on your chip or else we'll...." what exactly? Microsoft will make it so that Windows *doesn't* run on Intel chips anymore?
Intel's main concern is selling chips. If the chip runs MS Windows, fine... that's a sold chip. If the chip runs Linux, fine... that's a sold chip. No matter the OS you run on the Intel chip, you *still bought an Intel chip*.
Why would Intel *not* want another OS to run on an Intel platform? There is no amount of tinfoil that can justify it.
Yeah... 250 years in the span of millions/billions. What caused the ice ages? Are we due for another one? Were there "hot ages" in the middle of those ice ages? Are cycles of hot and cold weather a normal part of Earth's weather patterns? If so, how long are the cycles and to what extremes do they go? If so, are we on just on the natural rise in temperature part of the cycle?
For something that is as huge, and probably as slow to morph, as the Earth's climate, 250 years isn't enough time to get data to know really anything but a trend. That being said, I do believe that humans are doing quite a few things that can alter the global weather patterns. I also believe that the Earth (and its climate) is like a big machine. You start doing action A and this will cause reprocussions that will try to correct for it. i.e. raise the temperature, more water vapor is in the air forming clouds which cuts down the amount of sunlight that reaches the earth/ground, which reduces the amount of heat generated by the sun, which will try to offset (cool down) the planet. Of course, you can always run a machine out of spec and get wierd/catastrophic results.
Just curiosity as I'm developing code on Linux and I need to know the extents of the GPL. I know/. is not legal advice but it gives me stuff to think about.
I have some more scenarios after thinking on it more.
- Suppose I write code of my own for an app and do not GPL any of it. However, some features in it require the presence of GPL code being linked with my program. I distribute my binaries with the instructions that certain features are not available unless the end user downloads and installs (seperately from my bundle) those GPL libraries - possibly linking the GPL library to an.so that I provide. This means that I am not distributing GPL code with my product. Would this require my product to also be GPL?
- (similar to the above) Suppose I write an app that can load arbitrary dynamic linked libraries (.so) at runtime and use them somehow. I never developed my code touching GPL code but some end user loads/links with a GPL.so. Would that require my code to be GPL at that point?
Heh... yeah... I *bought* the 16K RAM expansion (because I needed it). My AD&D Character Generation Program grew quickly to over 4K and eventually even topped out the 20K. I think the 16K RAM expansion cost a fortune (for me) back then. It was like $10/K or something.
After that, I got an Apple ][+, then an Apple//c, then an Atari 1040ST. I held out as long as I could but eventually had to move over to the dark side and buy an (AMD) i386DX-40.
And let's not hold it against countries who've stood up for what *they* think is right,
And that would be which countries, exactly? The ones who had debt owed to them by Iraq which was in danger of becoming unpayable?http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/12/15/sprj.irq.france.debt/index.html
And yes... some folks who do drugs are probably supporting terrorism... http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/12/20/gulf.arr ests/index.html
The Ring was in his hand as he hit the magma. We talked about this today at lunch and all concluded that The Ring, in desperation, was trying to keep itself from being destroyed by keeping Gollum alive and making Gollum hold it above the magma as long as he could. At least, this was enough to satisfy most folks.
Other things after this though, Sam/Frodo are perilously close to magma a lot right after that. I'm sure that the heat would have gotten them sooner or later at that distance, not to mention the noxious/poisonous fumes.
I haven't read the article but I would guess it's because of increased cloud cover (which may be from warmer atmosphere containing more water vapor, etc.)
Many places give the option (they hand out both LaTeX and Word styles/templates). I opted for LaTeX because I like it a lot more for complex documents but I know plenty of folks who used Word.
Perl is ok but still daunting for someone with little programming background. There are too many symbols and the contexts where those symbols are used that make it look scary. At least, that's what some friends have told me.
VB, for instance, builds GUI apps... something that they can see and something they can see changes in very easily. Drag this button here, double click on this button write some code, done. Even designing the forms gives folks a sense of accomplishment sometimes, even with nothing behind it. In Perl, you do a bit of typing (using lots of strange symbols - for someone who at most just sees the characters that can be found in a newspaper column) which is just a bunch of text, then there's nothing to look at when you run it but maybe a prompt asking for you to type some more stuff. Not very exciting... powerful, yes... just not flashy or pretty.
The reason that Linux's codebase has remained so cohesive, focused, and flexible is that Linux has so many really skilled developers
That's partly (if not more than partly) because of the (traditionally) high cost for your ticket to enter Linux/Un*x Land (both monitarily and intellectually). Keep the entry barriers high (steep learning curve, tools that are difficult to use, etc.) and the only ones who can stick it out will typically be the above average folks.
On the other hand, make it so that any Joe Shmoe can cobble together *something* that works (at least works a fair amount of the time) and you get more people developing on it (ever hear of VB?).
Things are changing with Linux dropping the cost point of entry and the intellectual point of entry dropping (but still having a good deal of a ways to go, IMO) with the development of more tools on Linux but Linux isn't there yet until Joe Shmoe can throw together a toy app quickly and easily that can keep track of his beer, cigarette, and pork rind expenditures.
I suppose this is where I am expected to say something along the lines of, "I thought the recording industry said that this business model wouldn't work, that people won't pay for what they can download for free?"
And you would be assuming that the people who are paying for iTunes songs are people who would otherwise have downloaded the songs for free. I've seen no evidence that shows this. For all we know, the people buying iTunes songs are completely the same group of people who would also buy the CDs. Personally, I doubt that iTunes has had much of an impact at all on pirated music. Those who download for free already have no problem with downloading music for free, so why would they change and start paying?
Also, don't forget that iTunes is not supposed to make money in and of itself. It's meant to sell iPods. Jobs has already stated many times that iTunes is not supposed to (and won't) make money, at least for Apple.
Re:Expect their products to be leased not sold
on
EMC To Acquire VMware
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· Score: 1
Oh, also like someone else said, I can have multiple VMs running different OSs all on my one computer here, simulating a heterogenous networking environment for testing and such. One computer + VMWare costs much, much less than a computer for each OS (and multiple machines for each OS).
Re:Expect their products to be leased not sold
on
EMC To Acquire VMware
·
· Score: 1
Another factor is that Win4Lin uses the native file system whereas VMWare creates a "virtual disk" which ends up being a huge file on your drive somewhere. So Win4Lin runs out of a copy of Windows in my ~/win directory with a whole Windows file structure below it. I can copy/delete, etc. anything in my Windows installation from my Linux shell. And since it uses the native filesystem, it's fast. VMWare, on the other hand, creates a virtual disk which is a huge file somewhere in your filesystem. So you'll see your Windows installation as a 2GB file and the only way to get data out of it is to run VMWare, enter that environment, and then copy it out (using FTP, networking, etc.). Meanwhile, I can get to every file in my Win4Lin installation just by cd'ing to that directory. I don't actually have to run Win4Lin to get to my files
This is a feature. For instance, I can make a new Linux VM and set it up to be a web server or whatever on my desktop machine. Once I get it up and running like I like, I copy it over to a server and fire it up and it never knows the difference. Also, the suspend feature is nice in that I can do things like debug a program up to a point just before it fails, suspend it, send the VM to someone (or point them to it on a file server) and they can pick up where I left off. The other nice thing about it is that it *completely* isolates my VMs from each other and my host OS. I can have multiple VMs and move them around to other machines all I want without blowing anything up.
btw, Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions. Now, on to more scenarios.
1. I write a wrapper library that wraps the GPL code completely. I LGPL my wrapper library and then call my library from my code I don't want GPL'd. Does that work?
2. I write a daemon that basically turns the GPL code into RPCs. I GPL my daemon and call it from my proprietary code that I don't GPL. Does that work?
Where does the GPL boundary lie? Is it IPC? If I call into another process to get at the code, that's OK and I don't have to GPL my code? Does the GPL stop at the context switch from user to kernel space? If it doesn't, then anything that makes a system call must then be GPL'd unless the kernel is LGPL. (Stretching) What about using GPL code to generate your own code? Using a GPL compiler would then force you to GPL your code.
But how is GPL not viral then? To include any GPL code in your (proprietary) code forces all of your code to also be GPL. In other words, the injection of a small amount of (GPL) code infects the whole. To me, that is the very definition of viral.
Also, what prevents me from taking some GPL code, turning it into a library and releasing it under LGPL and using it as such?
I write all the code in my proprietary program (my product) except for a singular and specific library which is GPL'd (call it Library Z) and suppose, just in case someone asks, that Library Z makes up less than 10% of the total lines of source and/or the total binary size of my producct (I dunno why this would matter, but I threw it in anyway). Can I then sell my product in binary only form and provide only the source code for that particular library (Library Z) and put in the documentation that I use said library and the source for that library is provided without violation of the GPL? I am providing the GPL'd source (for Library Z) for download free to anyone who asks. I am not providing the source to the rest of the product (which I wrote) nor am I placing the source that I wrote under the GPL license.
If this is a violation of the GPL, then how exactly is it a violation of the GPL? Also, if it is a violation of the GPL, what must I do to be "right" with the GPL regarding my product? If the answer to the previous question is that I must also provide the source code for my entire product, then how is this not considered viral?
I'm with the tinfoil hat folks on this one. I would bet that there is a backdoor for Chinese security folks to monitor everything that goes across it. If the rest of the world starts to use it, then the rest of the world is in the same position as their using Microsoft. Most governments aren't comfortable with having a foreign body having a hand in their information. If you don't trust Microsoft and think they may spy on you, then I can't see how anyone would trust China to dictate their encryption.
Same here. I went there thinking they were coming out with a new way of reducing/eliminating SPAM and such but the thing was just about some new email client.
Then you are stuck with an unsupported legacy system that you can't support at all
Ever heard of Source Code Escrow? Many smaller companies will enter into these with customers without too much trouble. Just because you may not have ever heard of them doesn't mean they do not exist.
This is something I've posted about before. Choice is a good thing but having too many variants of the same software (especially when incompatibilities creep in) can lead to massive headaches. Which one do you install? Variant-X has feature-1 but Variant-Y has feature-2. Neither one has both features but I need both. What do I do? Install them both, spend time learning them both, and switch back and forth between them? Again, choice is generally a good thing, but not when there are so many choices that it clouds the real issues. Most home users just want something to work. They don't want to have to sit around spending time thinking about which choice to make when many times they won't even understand all the details about what they are trying to decide, much less the non-relevant details that they'll also have to start factoring in because they *may* want to do them in the future.
Not to mention, having many forks of the same software generally leads to "reinventing the wheel" many times as each political camp believes they are forced to do it "their way" in order to prove that they are "right". Lots of duplication of effort when those resources can be used on something else that is not currently being addressed.
Another issue of forks is from the developer side. So your group is chugging along nicely. You release your code and go into your support mode for it, hoping to make some money. The developers decide to split from your group and open up a competing group to do the same. You just funded the development of the software and are left holding the bill for it while the developers start with a clean slate and take all your prospective support contracts. It was nice of you to donate all your money to their cause.
Similarly, forking of resources during the development of some app can stall both/all forks for an even longer period of time as the resources are thinned and focus diverges.
Also, with many variants out, particularly in the areas of platform advancement (developmental libraries and APIs) for things like sound, graphics, and the like fragment and stall the advancement of the platform itself. You have no API/library that developers can count on being present so you put them into the position of the "you gotta also install" which opens up all those issues (stomping, 3rd party dependencies, etc). You have no common model so the whole scene is fairly chaotic and unorganized. Say what you want about Microsoft, but I firmly believe that their consolidation on APIs such as graphics drove the graphics card industry to be at the advanced level that they are in now, which everyone else is able to take advantage. With a common API and functionality set, it made sense to develop hardware to handle these tasks because the hardware vendors could make money because there was one standard to support, not many. One standard means one final product to develop. With many variants or different APIs/standards, costs go up as you have to develop and support a different product for each one. With so many APIs to do one particular task out there, it's like herding cats across a field trying to advance your platform, IMO.
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So... Microsoft says "don't let other OS's run on your chip or else we'll...." what exactly? Microsoft will make it so that Windows *doesn't* run on Intel chips anymore?
Intel's main concern is selling chips. If the chip runs MS Windows, fine... that's a sold chip. If the chip runs Linux, fine... that's a sold chip. No matter the OS you run on the Intel chip, you *still bought an Intel chip*.
Why would Intel *not* want another OS to run on an Intel platform? There is no amount of tinfoil that can justify it.
Yeah... 250 years in the span of millions/billions. What caused the ice ages? Are we due for another one? Were there "hot ages" in the middle of those ice ages? Are cycles of hot and cold weather a normal part of Earth's weather patterns? If so, how long are the cycles and to what extremes do they go? If so, are we on just on the natural rise in temperature part of the cycle?
For something that is as huge, and probably as slow to morph, as the Earth's climate, 250 years isn't enough time to get data to know really anything but a trend. That being said, I do believe that humans are doing quite a few things that can alter the global weather patterns. I also believe that the Earth (and its climate) is like a big machine. You start doing action A and this will cause reprocussions that will try to correct for it. i.e. raise the temperature, more water vapor is in the air forming clouds which cuts down the amount of sunlight that reaches the earth/ground, which reduces the amount of heat generated by the sun, which will try to offset (cool down) the planet. Of course, you can always run a machine out of spec and get wierd/catastrophic results.
Just curiosity as I'm developing code on Linux and I need to know the extents of the GPL. I know /. is not legal advice but it gives me stuff to think about.
.so that I provide. This means that I am not distributing GPL code with my product. Would this require my product to also be GPL?
.so. Would that require my code to be GPL at that point?
I have some more scenarios after thinking on it more.
- Suppose I write code of my own for an app and do not GPL any of it. However, some features in it require the presence of GPL code being linked with my program. I distribute my binaries with the instructions that certain features are not available unless the end user downloads and installs (seperately from my bundle) those GPL libraries - possibly linking the GPL library to an
- (similar to the above) Suppose I write an app that can load arbitrary dynamic linked libraries (.so) at runtime and use them somehow. I never developed my code touching GPL code but some end user loads/links with a GPL
Heh... yeah... I *bought* the 16K RAM expansion (because I needed it). My AD&D Character Generation Program grew quickly to over 4K and eventually even topped out the 20K. I think the 16K RAM expansion cost a fortune (for me) back then. It was like $10/K or something.
//c, then an Atari 1040ST. I held out as long as I could but eventually had to move over to the dark side and buy an (AMD) i386DX-40.
After that, I got an Apple ][+, then an Apple
And I even had a micro-Color Computer.
I thought the MMU of the Atari XE line was pretty novel for the times as well. One instruction page flipping and it could access up to 1M, iirc.
And let's not hold it against countries who've stood up for what *they* think is right,
e /12/15/sprj.irq.france.debt/index.html
r ests/index.html
And that would be which countries, exactly? The ones who had debt owed to them by Iraq which was in danger of becoming unpayable?http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europ
And yes... some folks who do drugs are probably supporting terrorism... http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/12/20/gulf.ar
The Ring was in his hand as he hit the magma. We talked about this today at lunch and all concluded that The Ring, in desperation, was trying to keep itself from being destroyed by keeping Gollum alive and making Gollum hold it above the magma as long as he could. At least, this was enough to satisfy most folks.
Other things after this though, Sam/Frodo are perilously close to magma a lot right after that. I'm sure that the heat would have gotten them sooner or later at that distance, not to mention the noxious/poisonous fumes.
I haven't read the article but I would guess it's because of increased cloud cover (which may be from warmer atmosphere containing more water vapor, etc.)
Many places give the option (they hand out both LaTeX and Word styles/templates). I opted for LaTeX because I like it a lot more for complex documents but I know plenty of folks who used Word.
Perl is ok but still daunting for someone with little programming background. There are too many symbols and the contexts where those symbols are used that make it look scary. At least, that's what some friends have told me.
VB, for instance, builds GUI apps... something that they can see and something they can see changes in very easily. Drag this button here, double click on this button write some code, done. Even designing the forms gives folks a sense of accomplishment sometimes, even with nothing behind it. In Perl, you do a bit of typing (using lots of strange symbols - for someone who at most just sees the characters that can be found in a newspaper column) which is just a bunch of text, then there's nothing to look at when you run it but maybe a prompt asking for you to type some more stuff. Not very exciting... powerful, yes... just not flashy or pretty.
The reason that Linux's codebase has remained so cohesive, focused, and flexible is that Linux has so many really skilled developers
That's partly (if not more than partly) because of the (traditionally) high cost for your ticket to enter Linux/Un*x Land (both monitarily and intellectually). Keep the entry barriers high (steep learning curve, tools that are difficult to use, etc.) and the only ones who can stick it out will typically be the above average folks.
On the other hand, make it so that any Joe Shmoe can cobble together *something* that works (at least works a fair amount of the time) and you get more people developing on it (ever hear of VB?).
Things are changing with Linux dropping the cost point of entry and the intellectual point of entry dropping (but still having a good deal of a ways to go, IMO) with the development of more tools on Linux but Linux isn't there yet until Joe Shmoe can throw together a toy app quickly and easily that can keep track of his beer, cigarette, and pork rind expenditures.
I suppose this is where I am expected to say something along the lines of, "I thought the recording industry said that this business model wouldn't work, that people won't pay for what they can download for free?"
And you would be assuming that the people who are paying for iTunes songs are people who would otherwise have downloaded the songs for free. I've seen no evidence that shows this. For all we know, the people buying iTunes songs are completely the same group of people who would also buy the CDs. Personally, I doubt that iTunes has had much of an impact at all on pirated music. Those who download for free already have no problem with downloading music for free, so why would they change and start paying?
Also, don't forget that iTunes is not supposed to make money in and of itself. It's meant to sell iPods. Jobs has already stated many times that iTunes is not supposed to (and won't) make money, at least for Apple.
Oh, also like someone else said, I can have multiple VMs running different OSs all on my one computer here, simulating a heterogenous networking environment for testing and such. One computer + VMWare costs much, much less than a computer for each OS (and multiple machines for each OS).
Another factor is that Win4Lin uses the native file system whereas VMWare creates a "virtual disk" which ends up being a huge file on your drive somewhere. So Win4Lin runs out of a copy of Windows in my ~/win directory with a whole Windows file structure below it. I can copy/delete, etc. anything in my Windows installation from my Linux shell. And since it uses the native filesystem, it's fast. VMWare, on the other hand, creates a virtual disk which is a huge file somewhere in your filesystem. So you'll see your Windows installation as a 2GB file and the only way to get data out of it is to run VMWare, enter that environment, and then copy it out (using FTP, networking, etc.). Meanwhile, I can get to every file in my Win4Lin installation just by cd'ing to that directory. I don't actually have to run Win4Lin to get to my files
This is a feature. For instance, I can make a new Linux VM and set it up to be a web server or whatever on my desktop machine. Once I get it up and running like I like, I copy it over to a server and fire it up and it never knows the difference. Also, the suspend feature is nice in that I can do things like debug a program up to a point just before it fails, suspend it, send the VM to someone (or point them to it on a file server) and they can pick up where I left off. The other nice thing about it is that it *completely* isolates my VMs from each other and my host OS. I can have multiple VMs and move them around to other machines all I want without blowing anything up.
Cool. Thanks for answering my questions.
btw, Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions. Now, on to more scenarios.
1. I write a wrapper library that wraps the GPL code completely. I LGPL my wrapper library and then call my library from my code I don't want GPL'd. Does that work?
2. I write a daemon that basically turns the GPL code into RPCs. I GPL my daemon and call it from my proprietary code that I don't GPL. Does that work?
Where does the GPL boundary lie? Is it IPC? If I call into another process to get at the code, that's OK and I don't have to GPL my code? Does the GPL stop at the context switch from user to kernel space? If it doesn't, then anything that makes a system call must then be GPL'd unless the kernel is LGPL. (Stretching) What about using GPL code to generate your own code? Using a GPL compiler would then force you to GPL your code.
Yeah, I understand the LGPL bit.
But how is GPL not viral then? To include any GPL code in your (proprietary) code forces all of your code to also be GPL. In other words, the injection of a small amount of (GPL) code infects the whole. To me, that is the very definition of viral.
Also, what prevents me from taking some GPL code, turning it into a library and releasing it under LGPL and using it as such?
Scenario:
I write all the code in my proprietary program (my product) except for a singular and specific library which is GPL'd (call it Library Z) and suppose, just in case someone asks, that Library Z makes up less than 10% of the total lines of source and/or the total binary size of my producct (I dunno why this would matter, but I threw it in anyway). Can I then sell my product in binary only form and provide only the source code for that particular library (Library Z) and put in the documentation that I use said library and the source for that library is provided without violation of the GPL? I am providing the GPL'd source (for Library Z) for download free to anyone who asks. I am not providing the source to the rest of the product (which I wrote) nor am I placing the source that I wrote under the GPL license.
If this is a violation of the GPL, then how exactly is it a violation of the GPL? Also, if it is a violation of the GPL, what must I do to be "right" with the GPL regarding my product? If the answer to the previous question is that I must also provide the source code for my entire product, then how is this not considered viral?
offtopic:
Your sig is funny. Along similar lines, I liked Londo's quip about Vir being the "moonfaced assassin of joy".
I'm with the tinfoil hat folks on this one. I would bet that there is a backdoor for Chinese security folks to monitor everything that goes across it. If the rest of the world starts to use it, then the rest of the world is in the same position as their using Microsoft. Most governments aren't comfortable with having a foreign body having a hand in their information. If you don't trust Microsoft and think they may spy on you, then I can't see how anyone would trust China to dictate their encryption.
Same here. I went there thinking they were coming out with a new way of reducing/eliminating SPAM and such but the thing was just about some new email client.
Then you are stuck with an unsupported legacy system that you can't support at all
Ever heard of Source Code Escrow? Many smaller companies will enter into these with customers without too much trouble. Just because you may not have ever heard of them doesn't mean they do not exist.
This is something I've posted about before. Choice is a good thing but having too many variants of the same software (especially when incompatibilities creep in) can lead to massive headaches. Which one do you install? Variant-X has feature-1 but Variant-Y has feature-2. Neither one has both features but I need both. What do I do? Install them both, spend time learning them both, and switch back and forth between them? Again, choice is generally a good thing, but not when there are so many choices that it clouds the real issues. Most home users just want something to work. They don't want to have to sit around spending time thinking about which choice to make when many times they won't even understand all the details about what they are trying to decide, much less the non-relevant details that they'll also have to start factoring in because they *may* want to do them in the future.
Not to mention, having many forks of the same software generally leads to "reinventing the wheel" many times as each political camp believes they are forced to do it "their way" in order to prove that they are "right". Lots of duplication of effort when those resources can be used on something else that is not currently being addressed.
Another issue of forks is from the developer side. So your group is chugging along nicely. You release your code and go into your support mode for it, hoping to make some money. The developers decide to split from your group and open up a competing group to do the same. You just funded the development of the software and are left holding the bill for it while the developers start with a clean slate and take all your prospective support contracts. It was nice of you to donate all your money to their cause.
Similarly, forking of resources during the development of some app can stall both/all forks for an even longer period of time as the resources are thinned and focus diverges.
Also, with many variants out, particularly in the areas of platform advancement (developmental libraries and APIs) for things like sound, graphics, and the like fragment and stall the advancement of the platform itself. You have no API/library that developers can count on being present so you put them into the position of the "you gotta also install" which opens up all those issues (stomping, 3rd party dependencies, etc). You have no common model so the whole scene is fairly chaotic and unorganized. Say what you want about Microsoft, but I firmly believe that their consolidation on APIs such as graphics drove the graphics card industry to be at the advanced level that they are in now, which everyone else is able to take advantage. With a common API and functionality set, it made sense to develop hardware to handle these tasks because the hardware vendors could make money because there was one standard to support, not many. One standard means one final product to develop. With many variants or different APIs/standards, costs go up as you have to develop and support a different product for each one. With so many APIs to do one particular task out there, it's like herding cats across a field trying to advance your platform, IMO.