Re:I don't even know where to begin...
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Spring Into PHP 5
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· Score: 1
"If you're working in an interpreter and copy/pasting from a script, the interpreter (at least those I used) would generally screw up the linefeeds when I'd try to copy part of the script and dump it in the interpreter window."
This is your shell screwing up, not the python interperter. It has nothing to do with the language at all.
And while your experience may vary, I find that the whitespace blocks cause no problems, and all my Python code is more readable than my C or C++ code. Go figure.
"I believe in the rights of software users, and code that I write will not be used to remove those writes from them".
If this statement is true for you, then the GPL is a good license for your code. If your priorities lie elsewhere, then it is likely that a different license will suit you better.
The idea that the GPL is only used by selfish people who want to force others to give up code is ridiculous. For one thing, if thats your goal there's far better licenses for it - like the Sun license, for example. Or even a proprietary one.
Re:I don't even know where to begin...
on
Spring Into PHP 5
·
· Score: 1
Python actually correctly handles linefeed differences, and as long as you don't *mix* tabs and spaces in a file, it will execute correctly whether your editor understands tabs or not. On the other hand, if you're actually writing code, in the year 2005, in an editor that doesn't understand tabs you're a fuckup anyway.
While I'm sure the "spite" aspect plays a role, the main motivation of the GPL is actually something quite different. The freedom being protected in the GPL is the freedom of the user, not of the programmer. The point is to ensure that software users can change, modify, fix, or audit the software they run without onerous commercial licensing. That sort of freedom is what the GPL considers important and thats what it is designed the protect. The BSD license doesn't offer that protection, and therefor to people who think the freedom of software users should be protected, it's insufficent. This is political, to the extent that "People have the right to be empowered" is political.
The secondary purpose is to create a culture of sharing. You could view it sort of as the difference between a potluck and a soup kitchen.
According to TFA, however, the problem was that the prosecution, even given extra time, couldn't come up with an expert witness to say what you just said. Which implies to me either that a) the cops in Australia are total cretins who can't even work a phone book or b) despite hyperbole to the contrary, the actual defense was an attack on the methodology, not so much on MD5 itself. Or maybe it's c), the entire system was developed by an overseas contractor and nobody in Australia actually knows how it works.
For what it's worth, in other, not totally fucking insane industries, breaking an NDA in order to reveal an issue of public safety will get you protected under whistleblower laws.
An intelligent carjacker will take your car, because it's worth more, and because he'll know that your ability to defend yourself from a suprise attack by an armed assailant is pretty much zero whether you have a gun in your truck or not.
Theres a kernel of truth in what Rand wrote, but only a kernel. And the conclusion is wrong anyway. It's true that sort of thing does happen to people who genuinely want to help. It's not because they're selfish and self centered and they only wanted to help because it made them feel good - thats Rands inability to understand altruism showing. It's because when you do that sort of thing, you're in a position of power, and power is seductive and addictive and corrupting and desires to maintain itself. And Rand was a big, big fan of power.
I do the same thing. The development tools available in Firefox are valuable enough that it's worth the (usually minor) futzing I have to do. EditCSS alone is worth the effort. The only time it's really annoying is when I get some CSS working just right in FF and then IE completely screws it up.
The only feature that I find desirable in IE that I can't implement in Firefox/Mozilla is the ability to show modal & non-modal dialogs. These can be very handy for certain types of async behavior, and are much nicer than JS alert() for showing errors.
"Features", by which I generally mean "standard compliant behavior" I miss from Firefox in IE are rather more common.
Dell sells at least 2 brands of Windows: XP and Home (I'm discounting the server versions, although they're probably built using the same supply chain). *However*, not all of those images are identical - based upon current promotions, different software is pre-loaded and different configurations are chosen. In addition, MS regularly provides Dell (and other OEMs) with updated base Windows installs (with new patches, SP 2, etc), although it's less likely that those are tracked as closely. Whoever assembles the PC already has to pull the correctly imaged hard drive off the rack - it's no more expensive to pull the FreeDOS one.
I hear this reasoning a lot too, and I find it possible but extremely implausible. Dell creates and tests *lots* of OS images. They sell lots of (different) OS images. I find it difficult indeed to justify that a FreeDOS image is that different than any of the number of different Windows images they ship.
Non-compete contracts aren't universal the way you seem to believe they are. I haven't followed the court case, but thats exactly Googles reasoning.
In any case, in a truly free labor market (hah, right), non-compete wouldn't be permitted. If an employee is of such value to you that you would be seriously harmed by his leaving, you should have to compensate him (or her!) sufficently that they don't want to leave, not be able to wave the hammer of the non-compete contract, threatning to deprive them of livelyhood if they won't play by your rules.
It's not a misconception at all, and it's got relatively little to do with pirating, except in that it's correct - the cost to duplicate software is very close to zero. This makes it totally unlike non-trivial physical goods, where in addition to your production cost, you also have non-trivial per-unit prices.
Now, parent is still wrong, and it's because he's right - because the cost of duplication is identical for both FreeDOS and Windows, and Windows is proprietary and therefore requires a per-unit royalty, regardless of the actual cost incurred, it makes *no sense whatsoever* for a PC with FreeDOS to cost *more* than the equivilent Windows PC.
I was suprised the performance benefits were as small as they were also. SATA limitations seem a likely culprit, and I'm guessing that some low level implementation details in Windows assume high-latency block drives, which probably put an upper cap on drive performance.
Especially since the $100 is just for the card, and considering that you have the data loss issue to worry about, I don't think it's worth the money at this point.
The fact is, it's statistically likely that Thompson has dirty fantasies about little children. Not that I'm saying he's ever acted on them, because that would be libel.
No, radio stations play stuff that will make them the most money - at least all the corporate ClearChannel ones do. Therefore, when one option is to hire a few local DJs who know the tastes of th region, maybe do a show where the air local bands, that sort of thing, and the other option is to centralize all your programming in return for kickbacks from the labels, it's a pretty easy choice.
It's even easier when you realize that the ClearChannel execs are just as interested as the label execs in having a single, nation (world!) wide music market with consistent taste - it means you get your kickbacks *and* you get the higher listener count which means more advertising dollars.
And yes, there is a problem. This stupid neo-capitalist crap about how public services shouldn't be allowed and the only purpose of the government is to claim resources on behalf of whatever corporation offered up the most about of teenage hookers this week is bullshit. People who seriously believe this sort of thing should be sent to live in capitalist gulags or something, because they're clearly unable to comprehend the usefulness of living in an actual society of cooperating individuals.
The airwaves are a public resource. They are similiar to IP in that they're totally unlike traditional property. Similiar again to the concept of copyright, the FCC, on behalf of the commons, grants exclusive rights to certain spectrums so that they can be commercialized, but with the explicit requirement that the public good be served. Now, of course, nobody gives a fuck about the public good, and it's all rant rant rant, I shouldn't have to pay taxes, why can't I make money, look at my cock dangle I'm a capitalist. I say, if you don't care about the public good, I don't see why the public should give a fuck about you.
For comparison: This guy caused 900k of damage (figure inflated, because you always inflate damages). He's looking at 70 years of maximum security. Nasty.
Ebbers caused *11 billion* in damages. Over 1000 times as much. He got 20 years of soft time. Yes, Ebbers could have gotten more, but anyone want to place bets that this guy will get 20 years in a low security prison near his home so his family can visit?
Patrick Quinlan, the CEO of MCA financial, led a fraud scheme worth $256 million. He got the maximum sentence - 10 years.
Theres a concept in American law that when someone has made you a promise (contract), and they break that promise, you're due more than just a refund of the service. This is both to compensate you for the annoyance of having someone ditch out on you, and to provide incentive for people to not break contracts. The amount of "extra" you're entitled to will vary depending on why the promise was broken - if they tried but failed to make a deadline, thats one thing, if they intentionally dropped the ball at the last moment to cause you real harm, thats another.
Most people think this is pretty reasonable, even people who think Americans are too litigious.
This is not a black and white issue of intolerance and censorship.
Actually, yes it is. Regardless of the merit or lack thereof of the website. Is the content of the website within the bounds of CA law? Then it's black & white censorship and Telus should fuck off. Is the content of the website beyond whats acceptable to CA law? Then Telus should follow the guidelines established by CA law, instead of taking it upon themselves to censor the content.
When it comes to information Caveat Emptor.
Pretty fucking hard to take your information with a grain of salt when your ISP won't let you look at it , is it?
Telus is clearly outside the bounds of reasonable behavior. If the website is dangerous, or libelous, or any of those other things they claim, then there are clear and effective legal channels to follow. Cutting off access because they don't like it is ridiculous. Moreover, it's stupid, because assuming CA law is similiar to US in this regard (which I believe it is), they just lost common carrier status.
The image of Gods marketing department forcing him to ship Human 1.0 with the hocked up eye (from the beta prototype, obviously, only intended as a proof of concept placeholder) because they promised that it would be shipped in 7 days kinda tickles my fancy. There's a short story waiting to be written here, I think.
If China is full of pirates, then obviously what we need is a fleet of US-sanction privateers, who will... crap. I dunno, sell copies of Chinese art & literature for outrageous prices?
Common leftist comeback fitting attitudes of most of them
I'm not a leftist. I just think you're stupid.
Turn on the TV...look at the situation they were in. The only ones prosperous were the ones in power. That $$ (even the oil for food $$) went straight to Hussein and was not spent on food or upkeep of utilities. And don't do like the rest of the left and leave out all of the facts except the ones that support your case. He ATTACKED A NEIGHBORING COUNTRY. He left the oilfields burning when he realized he couldn't keep it for himself. He murdered so many they may never find all the mass graves. He fired upon allied airplanes in the no-fly zone more times than most people know. The list goes on and on.
Right. During the sanctions, the economy went to shit. I said that. Thats kinda what happens in sanctions. I'm not sure what the hell attacking a neighboring country is supposed to mean. Does it matter if it's a not-neighboring country? I mean, we attacked Afghanistan. And frankly, I'm not really going to condemn a leader for fighting back, in whatever minimal ways, against military force being used against his country. Theres plenty of bad things to say about Saddam, claiming that he was evil because he shot at enemy military forces is not one of them.
So how many hundreds of thousands would he need to murder to fit this profile? Millions like Hitler?
Iraq was a democracy (nominally), and not in the least ruled by the church. Fuck, that was a major cause of the whole Iraq/Iran dispute. You know, back when Saddam was a good guy, supported by the US? Because he was fighting Iran, which was, and is, a misogynist theocracy.
You seem to have already made that judgement based on your comments...
No. I object to the characterization of the US invasion as an unconditionally good thing. Some good has come of it. A great deal of evil has come of it. In the end, the good may outweigh the evil, but that is not presently the case.
Huh? How? Utilities coming back online, jobs, women aren't stoned to death for showing their face....
This is Iraq we're talking about, not Iran. Iraq has (had?) the highest standard for sexual equality in the Middle East. Women weren't stoned for showing thier face there. They could drive, recieve educations (and Iraq had excellect education infrastructure), own property, hold jobs. All the same stuff they can do in the US. Iraq wasn't some sort of barbaric wasteland the way you seem to think. The current state of society in Iraq is directly attributable to US action. You might argue that it's for the long term best, but it's just insuting that you're claiming a moral justification because we're slowly curing things that our actions caused.
Okay, so what makes the US good and Saddam evil? Everything you've said was nasty and horrible about Saddam are things the US has been responsible for in Iraq as well. So it has to be a matter of scale, right?
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This is your shell screwing up, not the python interperter. It has nothing to do with the language at all.
And while your experience may vary, I find that the whitespace blocks cause no problems, and all my Python code is more readable than my C or C++ code. Go figure.
"I believe in the rights of software users, and code that I write will not be used to remove those writes from them".
If this statement is true for you, then the GPL is a good license for your code. If your priorities lie elsewhere, then it is likely that a different license will suit you better.
The idea that the GPL is only used by selfish people who want to force others to give up code is ridiculous. For one thing, if thats your goal there's far better licenses for it - like the Sun license, for example. Or even a proprietary one.
Python actually correctly handles linefeed differences, and as long as you don't *mix* tabs and spaces in a file, it will execute correctly whether your editor understands tabs or not. On the other hand, if you're actually writing code, in the year 2005, in an editor that doesn't understand tabs you're a fuckup anyway.
The secondary purpose is to create a culture of sharing. You could view it sort of as the difference between a potluck and a soup kitchen.
According to TFA, however, the problem was that the prosecution, even given extra time, couldn't come up with an expert witness to say what you just said. Which implies to me either that a) the cops in Australia are total cretins who can't even work a phone book or b) despite hyperbole to the contrary, the actual defense was an attack on the methodology, not so much on MD5 itself. Or maybe it's c), the entire system was developed by an overseas contractor and nobody in Australia actually knows how it works.
For what it's worth, in other, not totally fucking insane industries, breaking an NDA in order to reveal an issue of public safety will get you protected under whistleblower laws.
An intelligent carjacker will take your car, because it's worth more, and because he'll know that your ability to defend yourself from a suprise attack by an armed assailant is pretty much zero whether you have a gun in your truck or not.
Theres a kernel of truth in what Rand wrote, but only a kernel. And the conclusion is wrong anyway. It's true that sort of thing does happen to people who genuinely want to help. It's not because they're selfish and self centered and they only wanted to help because it made them feel good - thats Rands inability to understand altruism showing. It's because when you do that sort of thing, you're in a position of power, and power is seductive and addictive and corrupting and desires to maintain itself. And Rand was a big, big fan of power.
"Think of the Children" has been a rallying cry for as long as there's been politics. It's what Socrates was exectuted for, for Christs sake.
It's also been the mantra of the religious right ("conservative") for generations, on topics ranging from pornography to prohibition to abortion.
The only feature that I find desirable in IE that I can't implement in Firefox/Mozilla is the ability to show modal & non-modal dialogs. These can be very handy for certain types of async behavior, and are much nicer than JS alert() for showing errors.
"Features", by which I generally mean "standard compliant behavior" I miss from Firefox in IE are rather more common.
This should have worked a year ago, too. Maybe not 2 years ago.
Dell sells at least 2 brands of Windows: XP and Home (I'm discounting the server versions, although they're probably built using the same supply chain). *However*, not all of those images are identical - based upon current promotions, different software is pre-loaded and different configurations are chosen. In addition, MS regularly provides Dell (and other OEMs) with updated base Windows installs (with new patches, SP 2, etc), although it's less likely that those are tracked as closely. Whoever assembles the PC already has to pull the correctly imaged hard drive off the rack - it's no more expensive to pull the FreeDOS one.
I hear this reasoning a lot too, and I find it possible but extremely implausible. Dell creates and tests *lots* of OS images. They sell lots of (different) OS images. I find it difficult indeed to justify that a FreeDOS image is that different than any of the number of different Windows images they ship.
In any case, in a truly free labor market (hah, right), non-compete wouldn't be permitted. If an employee is of such value to you that you would be seriously harmed by his leaving, you should have to compensate him (or her!) sufficently that they don't want to leave, not be able to wave the hammer of the non-compete contract, threatning to deprive them of livelyhood if they won't play by your rules.
Now, parent is still wrong, and it's because he's right - because the cost of duplication is identical for both FreeDOS and Windows, and Windows is proprietary and therefore requires a per-unit royalty, regardless of the actual cost incurred, it makes *no sense whatsoever* for a PC with FreeDOS to cost *more* than the equivilent Windows PC.
Especially since the $100 is just for the card, and considering that you have the data loss issue to worry about, I don't think it's worth the money at this point.
The fact is, it's statistically likely that Thompson has dirty fantasies about little children. Not that I'm saying he's ever acted on them, because that would be libel.
It's even easier when you realize that the ClearChannel execs are just as interested as the label execs in having a single, nation (world!) wide music market with consistent taste - it means you get your kickbacks *and* you get the higher listener count which means more advertising dollars.
And yes, there is a problem. This stupid neo-capitalist crap about how public services shouldn't be allowed and the only purpose of the government is to claim resources on behalf of whatever corporation offered up the most about of teenage hookers this week is bullshit. People who seriously believe this sort of thing should be sent to live in capitalist gulags or something, because they're clearly unable to comprehend the usefulness of living in an actual society of cooperating individuals.
The airwaves are a public resource. They are similiar to IP in that they're totally unlike traditional property. Similiar again to the concept of copyright, the FCC, on behalf of the commons, grants exclusive rights to certain spectrums so that they can be commercialized, but with the explicit requirement that the public good be served. Now, of course, nobody gives a fuck about the public good, and it's all rant rant rant, I shouldn't have to pay taxes, why can't I make money, look at my cock dangle I'm a capitalist. I say, if you don't care about the public good, I don't see why the public should give a fuck about you.
Think about it for a sec - 802.11b is not a one-way transmission. Your wireless card transmits, too.
Ebbers caused *11 billion* in damages. Over 1000 times as much. He got 20 years of soft time. Yes, Ebbers could have gotten more, but anyone want to place bets that this guy will get 20 years in a low security prison near his home so his family can visit?
Patrick Quinlan, the CEO of MCA financial, led a fraud scheme worth $256 million. He got the maximum sentence - 10 years.
Most people think this is pretty reasonable, even people who think Americans are too litigious.
Actually, yes it is. Regardless of the merit or lack thereof of the website. Is the content of the website within the bounds of CA law? Then it's black & white censorship and Telus should fuck off. Is the content of the website beyond whats acceptable to CA law? Then Telus should follow the guidelines established by CA law, instead of taking it upon themselves to censor the content.
When it comes to information Caveat Emptor.
Pretty fucking hard to take your information with a grain of salt when your ISP won't let you look at it , is it?
Telus is clearly outside the bounds of reasonable behavior. If the website is dangerous, or libelous, or any of those other things they claim, then there are clear and effective legal channels to follow. Cutting off access because they don't like it is ridiculous. Moreover, it's stupid, because assuming CA law is similiar to US in this regard (which I believe it is), they just lost common carrier status.
The image of Gods marketing department forcing him to ship Human 1.0 with the hocked up eye (from the beta prototype, obviously, only intended as a proof of concept placeholder) because they promised that it would be shipped in 7 days kinda tickles my fancy. There's a short story waiting to be written here, I think.
If China is full of pirates, then obviously what we need is a fleet of US-sanction privateers, who will... crap. I dunno, sell copies of Chinese art & literature for outrageous prices?
I'm not a leftist. I just think you're stupid.
Turn on the TV...look at the situation they were in. The only ones prosperous were the ones in power. That $$ (even the oil for food $$) went straight to Hussein and was not spent on food or upkeep of utilities. And don't do like the rest of the left and leave out all of the facts except the ones that support your case. He ATTACKED A NEIGHBORING COUNTRY. He left the oilfields burning when he realized he couldn't keep it for himself. He murdered so many they may never find all the mass graves. He fired upon allied airplanes in the no-fly zone more times than most people know. The list goes on and on.
Right. During the sanctions, the economy went to shit. I said that. Thats kinda what happens in sanctions. I'm not sure what the hell attacking a neighboring country is supposed to mean. Does it matter if it's a not-neighboring country? I mean, we attacked Afghanistan. And frankly, I'm not really going to condemn a leader for fighting back, in whatever minimal ways, against military force being used against his country. Theres plenty of bad things to say about Saddam, claiming that he was evil because he shot at enemy military forces is not one of them.
So how many hundreds of thousands would he need to murder to fit this profile? Millions like Hitler?
Iraq was a democracy (nominally), and not in the least ruled by the church. Fuck, that was a major cause of the whole Iraq/Iran dispute. You know, back when Saddam was a good guy, supported by the US? Because he was fighting Iran, which was, and is, a misogynist theocracy.
You seem to have already made that judgement based on your comments...
No. I object to the characterization of the US invasion as an unconditionally good thing. Some good has come of it. A great deal of evil has come of it. In the end, the good may outweigh the evil, but that is not presently the case.
Huh? How? Utilities coming back online, jobs, women aren't stoned to death for showing their face....
This is Iraq we're talking about, not Iran. Iraq has (had?) the highest standard for sexual equality in the Middle East. Women weren't stoned for showing thier face there. They could drive, recieve educations (and Iraq had excellect education infrastructure), own property, hold jobs. All the same stuff they can do in the US. Iraq wasn't some sort of barbaric wasteland the way you seem to think. The current state of society in Iraq is directly attributable to US action. You might argue that it's for the long term best, but it's just insuting that you're claiming a moral justification because we're slowly curing things that our actions caused.
Okay, so what makes the US good and Saddam evil? Everything you've said was nasty and horrible about Saddam are things the US has been responsible for in Iraq as well. So it has to be a matter of scale, right?