Actually, I think when he wrote The Hobbit JRRT "didn't realize" that it was set in the same world as his other stories. The original version of The Hobbit had Bilbo win the Ring from Gollum (See Wikipedia). Later on, as he was writing LOTR, he went back and revised The Hobbit to make it consistent with the rest of the universe. This explains why the terminology in The Hobbit is different (The orcs are referred to as Goblins, etc) and the other inconsistencies.
I don't see BSD dying (despite Netcraft) due to lack of contributions and effort.
Yet you have to admit, Linux has more features and better SMP support than the BSDs, and more drivers. So while the BSDs aren't DEAD from lack of contributions, Linux sure gets the lion's share of new contributions.
The problems with, say, RedHat sponsoring game development for Linux are numerous:
1. RedHat is an enterprise software company, and thus their shareholders may frown upon the high risk of branching out into the home-entertainment market. 2. Games are, by nature, very risky investments. Most games fail. 3. Typical games now have multi-million dollar budgets, akin to Hollywood movies. RedHat can't afford to take this kind of risk on something not core to its business. 4. The target market for Linux games is incredibly small. 5. The lifetime of a game is very short, unlike business applications. Only a few hit games are still making money a year after they are released.
All of these factors basically shut RedHat out of the big game business. Now, your post was about indie games. But typically indie games are comparable to the open-source games Linux already has; these likely do not increase Linux sales or adoption and thus are not likely to be funded by any commercial distro.
Bell Canada's OneBill system takes the prize in my book. The idea is that the phone company gives you one bill for all of the services provided by their various sub-companies, i.e. television (ExpressVu), local phone, long distance, and internet (Sympatico).
The problem is "OneBill" is actually a separate company, which means that in order to send the bills on time they have to get the billing information so far in advance that bill payments, and credits, don't appear until the NEXT bill.
For example, ExpressVu was charging me for a PPV movie even though I had a credit for $50 of free PPV for signing up with them. Problem is, the credit wasn't being applied correctly, so when I received my bill it said there was a $5 charge for PPV. So I called ExpressVu and they credited my account, except that they aren't scheduled to send an update to OneBill for 30 days, so the credit doesn't reflect in my OneBill balance, and consequently if I don't pay the amount it says I owe I will be penalized and charged interest (and, theoretically, risk disconnection of service).
Not only that, but the system is even dumber when it comes to disconnecting features you don't want. I didn't want to pay for the movie channels that I'd had for free since joining (as a promotion), and I was told to give 30 days notice to terminate them. I called 32 days before my trial was up and explained that I didn't want the channels after the trial ended. So far so good. Well, I receieved my bill for the month after the trial (remember, TV service is paid in advance) and there was a charge for the movie channels. Even though my service was disconnected on time. So I called the OneBill people and they fixed my bill. But on the NEXT bill ExpressVu ALSO fixed my bill, so I got credited twice. Later on when speaking to a rep about the PPV problem, they explained that in their system, the "stop collecting the fee for Services" message isn't sent to OneBill until the service is disconnected, but the service isn't disconnected until the day it's supposed to be, except OneBill sent that bill out already, because they get their updates 30 days in advance. Dumbest thing ever. Needless to say, I never got around to calling them telling them of their second mistake in the billing.
Ajax is hard not because of the Javascript aspect, but because of the sheer number of differences between programming DHTML for IE and for Firefox (and Opera, and...). The problem is that each browser's implementation of the "standard" is different, sometimes wildly different, sometimes slightly different. And sometimes the difference is so subtle, yet so important, such as the order events are processed. The net result is that, for any Internet-facing app using Ajax, it's often very difficult to get all the details right. Whereas a similar application, written in the old-fashioned way, often won't have nearly as many cases to deal with. Things like the differences between how FF and IE alllow you to manipulate tables don't matter if the whole table is re-written on the server.
Also there are lots of limitations in Javascript that become more of a problem when you are putting more logic into the browser. Things like the timeout not firing all the time or other limitations due to the single-threaded nature of Javascript. You also run into more bugs when you use more language features and browser features.
Finally, many developers will find that writing AJAX also involves writing a non-AJAX fallback. Integrating this into your code without duplicating everything is tricky and tedious.
All of these problems "disappear" once you have a proper AJAX framework that you can control at a high-level: these become framework problems and the developers can concentrate on the apps. But there are hardly any good frameworks out there.
All of this added AJAX complexity, trouble, and work combine to make AJAX "hard" compared to regular web development. Add this to the normal workload and your web developers are going to be pushed harder than before. Some can handle it, some can't. Consider that the level of expertise required for a typical AJAX development position is now much higher than before: you need to be an expert in your server-side language (which you already were), HTML (you probably had some knowledge), DOM, Javascript (you knew some of the stuff but likely didn't do much DOM manipulation and probably only used JS mainly for form validation), and whatever other tools you are using. I'd say basically an AJAX developer needs to know 2-5 times the "browser" knowledge that a regular web dev needs; esp if the web dev used to have a graphics/html person who coded up html pages to use as templates. This web dev probably only needed enough HTML to know how to hook in forms and form validation scripts. Now he needs to know how to re-write parts of the dom, and he will soon become intimately familiar with all the bugs and limitations and browser differences therein.
I wonder if Turnitin could render these arguments moot by taking into account the fact that schools have always stored school papers whenever the school deemed it appropriate. In this case the schools could operate their own turnitin node, with software sold to them by turnitin, but the papers stored locally and owned by the school. In this case a paper would be submitted to may distributed nodes but a copy would not be retained by turnitin or the nodes doing the validation; the papaer would only be stored by the school that submits it. And I bet the paper itself wouldn't be transmitted, just some hash-code or compiled representation. This would also allow the school to withdraw from the program if they deemed it necessary.
I'm being pedantic, but just to clarify: a single sentence is not likely to be enough, in most cases, to qualify for copyright protection, since there are only so many ways to express the idea in a single sentence. Otherwise you could suppress the expression of an idea by copyrighting a sufficient number of variations on the sentence that expresses it. But once you have enough sentences together that particular combination of words is definitely copyrightable, and the parent post's original point, which is that copyright is automatically granted at the moment that a work is created, stands.
I suppose, if you've never seen a date written in shorthand before, then no date format is truly intuitive, but yours is better than yyyy-mm-dd. But frankly, considering how much sense yyyy-mm-dd makes, and how unambiguous it is to most people, it's the better format. After all, cursive handwriting is confusing to children, but we teach it to them and then take it for granted. I think we can do the same with the date format: teach children one standard, that is least ambiguous while being most useful, and then take it for granted that everyone knows yyyy-mm-dd. But I suppose there will be some people who refuse to admit that this date format is superior (once you understand it, which isn't hard)... just as I refuse to admit that any other date format is superior:)
If you're going to go to the trouble of writing the year first, why on earth would you transpose the month and day? I don't think I've ever heard of anyone, anywhere, using yyyy-dd-mm... that is truly nonsensical, at least for any date format I've ever heard. It doesn't sort, it's not in numerical order, it's not convenient to speak, and nobody actually pronounces dates that way that I know of. I think it's pretty safe to assume that if you see a date in the 4digits-2digits-2digits then you can infer yyyy-mm-dd.
How is the "internet" being "forced" into your property? Sure, your notebook connects to the WLAN, but you are the one that opens an internet connection. Your private IP address is not part of the internet.
Now, if you want to talk about liability, I will allow that if your your access point is near to someone else's access point, and access theirs by accident, instead of your own, because of the way your notebook automatically decides to connect to the strongest AP, then you might be forgiven for using someone else's resource. But if you are deliberately using someone else's AP, without express permission, to access the internet, then you are knowningly using someone else's private resource. It's plain and simple, the "internet" isn't free and if you are accessing the internet you must know that SOMEONE is paying for that access, and if you know it's not you, then you must know that it's someone else.
Now, if you were using the WLAN to communicate with another wireless device on the WLAN, and you're not using the internet, then you are just using the WLAN that is broadcast into your own airspace. But the "internet" doesn't broadcast, and claiming that because someone's WLAN is unsecured gives you the right to access the internet is wrong. It's like saying that because there is no fence on someone's yard you can go into their house because their front door is unlocked.
Exactly: Communicating with the router may fall within the "rights" granted by the FCC for public airwaves, but using the associated LAN or internet connection is still using private resources, and private resources are not "free for the taking unless explicitly stated otherwise."
What you're saying is now equivalent to "if someone is coming onto your property to use your electricity, you should put up a fence" or "if someone comes into your house to make long-distance calls, you should lock your door". Yes, you should secure your property to prevent people from tresspassing. However, that doesn't change the fact that such tresspass is still unethical. Our society generally has a notion of individual's property rights, and I don't think it's wrong to extend "property" rights to things like your internet connection. Just as you can't steal my car from my driveway, you can't use my bandwidth and degrade my internet performance and/or cause me to incur fees.
Sure, access to the WLAN is in the air you breathe, but access to the internet is not. You are definitely causing potential harm in the form of increased ISP charges by using someone's IP. Many ISPs have bandwidth caps and if you go over your transfer limit you pay fees. Also your actions might not be legal and thus you are exposing the owner of the internet connection to legal risk.
You can connect to an unsecured WLAN all you want, but to use that connection to go onto the internet is clearly entering into a different domain of "property". Maybe I threw my bike onto your lawn, or maybe it fell off my driveway onto your lawn, but that doesn't give you the right to go into my house to get oil for its chain, even if my garage door is open and the oil is sitting right there. (Yes this analogy is just as bad as yours and all the others:) )
The problem with comparing accessing someone's wireless lan to other forms of "tresspass" is that there are TWO things that need to be taken into consideration.
First, as you mentioned, the WLAN broadcasts into the air to advertise its presence, thus, in a sense, inviting users. Arguments can be made about whether this constitutes an actual invitation by the owner of the WLAN or not, since by default most wireless devices are always on and open. But that's beside the point, because:
Second, the owner's internet connection is a separate resource that he/she is paying for, and other people's use of that resource is not necessarily implied by the fact that it is accessible once you connect to the WLAN. To use the imperfect garden example: If, instead of a garden, we had an orchard, where fruit trees grow. Let's say it can be assumed that the owner of the orchard allows you to walk among the trees and eat apples. However, he has water piped into an irrigation system that he purchased in order to water the trees. Just because you can reach that faucet doesn't mean you are allowed to drink that water, even if you are allowed to be in the orchard.
What I'm getting at is, it's one thing to connect to a WLAN because your notebook did it automatically because the WLAN was open. But it's totally different to use that WLAN's internet bandwidth to download stuff for yourself if you don't know that you have permission to do so. You are an internet user, you should know that the internet is not free, and thus you should know better than to assume that someone's internet connection is free for your use.
Just because WORA isn't perfect for every single program doesn't mean that it's a lie. For most programs it works perfectly. For the greater majority it works in almost every case. It's only a few cases that affect a few programs where the abstractions break down. If your criteria for "WORA" is "Java implementations on different platforms never have bugs, and nobody ever uses any unique features of those platforms", then you're right, it's impossible to write any random code and guarantee that the code works on every single Java platform ever. But let's be realistic.
First, barring bugs, which do sometimes appear, or platform-specific problems that can not be overcome (eg Solaris's fork() system call fails if you don't have enough ram to duplicate the entire program, even if your program is just going to exec(), whereas Linux and other OSes don't have this limitation), it's generally only when the developer chooses to use a platform-specific feature that Java doesn't support where the WORA breaks down. If you are using some hardware-specific library (say 3d accel), then you will find that your program may behave differently on different platforms. But how many programs do this, on average, as a percentage of all programs? Shit, even on ONE platform there are still BUGS where the same exact program doesn't even run the same if you have a NVidia card vs an ATI card.
The point is, for almost everyone, all the time, Java is WORA. Want to call a native library? Fine, you forsake your WORA card. Want to use specific hardware? Obviously that won't be WORA either. But to claim that WORA is a "lie" because in 1% or fewer of the cases you'll have platform issues is silly.
The thing is, Java provides a cross-platform environment for developing. You can write code that works on any system, or code that's system-specific. But the point is that it is easy to write big, complex programs that work on multiple, dissimilar operating systems, without knowing specific details of those operating systems. Also, you don't have to worry about things like the number of bits in an integer, or long integer, or what floating point capabilities are available on the target platform, because Java takes care of all of this. Finally, Java provides a huge library of code that is available on every platform.
All of this means that it's easy to write once for every target platform that has a JVM. Now, you still have to TEST. You always have to test, otherwise you have no assurance that there ISN'T a bug. But most of the time your application will just work, and you can limit the further testing done on multiple platforms once you are reasonably sure that you have covered the cases where platform differences crop up. But by and large, testing is platform agnostic, since features usually work identically on every platform.
Some of your design decisions may not be right for all platforms, i.e. if you use floating point math but are targetting a platform where FP is emulated in the JVM. Your app will work, but performance will be poor. In that case, you may need to reconsider your implementation. But your app will work.
These goals are possible in other languages; many interpreted languages are available on different platforms. Also many compiled lanauges like C or C++ can be used to write portable code. You can even use libraries like QT which are designed to abstract away many details. Java isn't the only game in town for WORA. But to claim that Java isn't WORA is simply wrong.
Let me give you a concrete example: I develop software on Windows XP. I take the software I build and deploy it on a test server which runs Solaris. It gets functional testing on this server. Then I deploy it on a production server which runs Linux. This is the exact same binary object in every case. Try that with C++ or any other language. The simple fact is, Java has WORA, and it works.
1. Sounds like you're using Fedora or Redhat. You might want to look at Jpackage. It lets you re-package the SUN Java so that it fits into Fedora's weird java world. Works well, at least on the latest 1.4 and 1.5 JDKs.
2. Here's what you need to know about the different versions. JDK/Java SDK is for development. Comes with Javac. You need this for J2EE and for development. JRE is included in the JDK or is available as a standalone download. The JRE is the runtime env, it only includes the VM. J2EE is a specification, you almost never want the J2EE install from Sun since, by itself, it doesn't give you anything. You need an application server, such as Websphere, Geronimo, JBoss, Weblogic, etc. The application server includes the J2EE libraries. It does not always include a JDK.
3. You can always do what I do when you install the sun JDK: move the whole directory so that it is where you want it. AFAIK on Linux it doesn't install any files outside of its directory. Install as many JDKs as you like, then have your users set the JAVA_HOME env variable and add $JAVA_HOME/bin to the path.
As for why you couldn't find documentation for this... I'm not sure if there is any, I thought this stuff was common knowledge in the Java world (but if you don't devel in java, I guess you can't be expected to know this).
You can't alter the code of the stored proc, but you can (in Java, anyway) alter the CALL to the stored proc. This is trickier but it means you can still run arbitrary code on the DB.
You're right about the NT Workstation limitation being due to a registry entry, but my point is that it's not about "compatibility". Microsoft sold people an OS to use for workstations. They made it clear that the OS was not for use as a server. They sell a different OS for servers. Naturally they didn't want people running Netscape server on NT Workstation because it violates the license. Microsoft would have been thrilled to sell you NT Server for you to run Netscape Server. But their EULA forbids doing that on NT Workstation (at least, it forbids more than 10 connections at once). Whether or not that is "right" or "moral" is beside the point, their product, their license. Nothing to do with compatibility. The same restrictions would apply to Oracle or even IIS running on NTWS.
Again, the IE thing wasn't about any compatibility. Microsoft used OEM licensing agreements to ensure that OEM Vendors didn't install Netscape; if they installed netscape MS wouldn't give them a fair price on Windows licenses. However, if they DID install Netscape, it would work 100%. Sure, you couldn't REMOVE IE, but its presence never harmed Netscape (except that people didn't strictly NEED Netscape since a browser was already installed). No compatibility involved. Lawsuits yes, compat. no.
Finally, Active Directory didn't break existing Kerberos implementations. It was a new "protocol" based on kerberos. Now, it's designed to be different than Kerberos, i.e. it's designed NOT to be compatible with Kerberos. But I think that's different than if MS HAD kerberos, then CHANGED it (thus BREAKING compat). Since MS never had Kerberos before, how could they be accused of breaking anyone's compat by introducing pseudo-kerberos? You didn't have Kerberos before, you don't now. Yes, it's mean spirited, but it's certainly not the same as what everyone expects them to do with NTFS: change the implementation so that Linux, or any other third parties who write ntfs, suddenly are corrupting data because they think it's ntfs but don't realize it's new-ntfs. Or less maliciously, suddenly just can't write to the disk because the format has changed and they don't know how to do it. I mean, there has to be a practical benefit to this. There are almost no use-cases for NTFS-access in Linux, why would MS care if people are doing it? Dual boot systems? Please, that's like 1% of 1% of the population. Rescue disks? Ok, but MS doesn't compete in that market. How much would MS have to spend to introduce major, compatibility-breaking changes into NTFS JUST to break people's rescue disks?
Well, to be clear about the Windows NT Workstation bit: It's the LICENSE that prohibits using it as a server, not "Microsoft breaking compatibility". Also, refusing to make Explorer removable has nothing to do with compatibility with any software; I've ALWAYS been able to use Netscape or Mozilla or Firefox on any version of Windows that I cared to. Now, some programs DEPEND on IE, but that's not because Microsoft is breaking compatibility with Netscape. Finally, ODF isn't about Microsoft breaking compatibility; they never had it in the first place; it's about MS fighting to stay in the list of "legal" office suites to use in MA.
Your list of gripes are all about maintaining a monopoly, but frankly they have nearly nothing to do with compatibility. MS's version of Kerberos isn't compatible with any other? True, but at least it's not like they HAD a compatible version, and then they broke it on purpose. And if someone DID reverse-engineer the AD protocol, MS isn't likely to make drastic changes, at least not to the existing installations.
I dislike MS as much as the next guy, but you have to respect the lengths they go to to keep software working. Read Raymond Chen's blog http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/ if you want to know just what kinds of things they've done to make sure your crappy game from 1994 or your business-critical software that was written for NT 3.51 still works.
1. A friend of mine had a computer with similar specs to mine, a 486 DX2-66 with 16 MB of RAM (I had 12 MB). Thing was, on my computer Duke Nukem 3D ran great, but on his it was slow as a dog. He drives his computer out to my place, 25 miles, and we set it up in my basement. Sure enough, it's freaking slow. I check his conventional memory, seems fine, in fact everything seems normal. But it's slow. So I hit the turbo button, and what do you know? The damn thing works now:)
2. Same friend, new computer. He's got a shiny new Athlon (original Athlon) and everyone's envious. But for some reason his "explorer is messed up"; when he opens "My Computer" the button appears on the task bar but the window is nowhere to be seen. But if he clicks on the button he can see a maximize/minimize animation, but no window appears. I right click on the button, hit "resize", tap the arrow keys, and the My Computer window expands out of nowhere in the middle of the screen. He says "Great, now why don't you just hit the turbo button?"
3. Customer where I used to work: The computer shop I worked at had lots of corporate customers who had their own IT depts and only called us in when things got bad. Well, some non-IT user calls us up and says he's trying to install Sympatico software on his Win 95 box. (Windows 95 OEM version A, or Win95 upgrade, doesn't have TCP/IP by default). So Windows says "Please insert Windows 95 Disk 2". The user is confused, he doesn't know what to do.
Me: Are you at the computer? User: No
Me: Did your helpdesk give you any disks? User: Yes, there are two stacks, the Windows 95 disks 1-13 and the Sympatico disks 1-4
Me: And the computer is asking for Windows Disk 2? User: Yes
Me: What's the problem? User: Which disk do I put in? There are two disk twos, one in each pile.
Me (trying not to sound condescending): Well, usually when the computer wants a particular disk, it'usually pretty specific. So if it's asking for Windows 95 disk 2, I'd use the Disk 2 from the Windows 95 pile. User: So that's it? What do I do next?
Me: Well, you can press enter to acknowledge that the disk is there. But if Windows asks you WHERE the disk is, type A: and press ENTER. User: (long pause)... how do you spell that?
Me:... well... it's the letter A, and the colon symbol. User:....
Me: It's next to the 'L' User: which side?
Me: The right side. User: Do I have to press SHIFT?
Me: Yes.
And we're not talking about people who don't speak English, or who speak it as a second or third lanugage or anything. This is someone who was born and raised speaking English, but doesn't know what a colon is. One of my coworkers told me I should have said "You type the letter A, then your name..."
The thing is, it's not the typeface that the computer font represents that is copyrighted; it's the font file itself, which is a program. It is an implementation of an idea; like other software and like written works the idea itself can't be copyright but the expression or implementation (as software) of it is.
Well, there was once an argument put forward by Sco that was along the lines of "the GPL isn't valid, yet these people gave the code away anyway, thus it's now public domain". Nonsense, I know, but if it WERE true it'd be good news for SCO. Maybe they're believing their own dog-poop?
Re:Not unique to open source
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You may have said it before, but that doesn't mean it's true. For some number of versions of windows (definitely including 2000 and XP) there have been only a small number of DLL files that need to be installed in the system directory. Windows (since ver 95) has ALWAYS allowed applications to put DLLs in their own directories, which is where the linker looks first for the DLLs. So, while there is no way to version DLLs like there is on Linux, the problem of multiple programs with the same lib isn't as bad as you imagine it to be. There is MSDN documentation about this if you don't believe me. Furthermore, what directory would you delete on a Fedora or Suse distro to uninstall Firefox? On Fedora, Firefox is (at least partially) installed in/usr/bin. Along with 10 million other programs. Some of it will be squirrelled away in/usr/lib/something but who can tell which of those directories are used only by Firefox and which might be shared with Mozilla (seamonkey)? Your only choice in this case is to use a package manager to uninstall Firefox.
And as for the registry, sure, it has its limitations and drawbacks, but just because every program modifies it is not necessarily bad. There are two cases: one, a program modifies its private keys. If you can't delete those keys when you delete a program (why aren't you using the uninstaller?), your system won't be corrupted afterwards. Two: a program modifies some shared keys, such as file associations. This is admittedly a problem because, if you didn't use the uninstaller or the uninstaller didn't fix the associations, your file associations are broken. But guess what? This can affect linux systems too! KDE has file associations and it doesn't know if they work or not, until you try them. Basically any place that one program can be configured to rely on another is a potential place where the "system" can become unstable if one of those programs is removed. It's naive to claim that only Windows is affected by this.
Anyway, you are partially right which is that some programs don't have, or have really bad, uninstallers. But once there is as much software out there for Linux as there is for Windows, that problem will hit Linux as well. Only your distro's package repository can hide you from that problem; better hope everything you want to install is in there.
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Actually, I think when he wrote The Hobbit JRRT "didn't realize" that it was set in the same world as his other stories. The original version of The Hobbit had Bilbo win the Ring from Gollum (See Wikipedia). Later on, as he was writing LOTR, he went back and revised The Hobbit to make it consistent with the rest of the universe. This explains why the terminology in The Hobbit is different (The orcs are referred to as Goblins, etc) and the other inconsistencies.
Yet you have to admit, Linux has more features and better SMP support than the BSDs, and more drivers. So while the BSDs aren't DEAD from lack of contributions, Linux sure gets the lion's share of new contributions.
The problems with, say, RedHat sponsoring game development for Linux are numerous:
1. RedHat is an enterprise software company, and thus their shareholders may frown upon the high risk of branching out into the home-entertainment market.
2. Games are, by nature, very risky investments. Most games fail.
3. Typical games now have multi-million dollar budgets, akin to Hollywood movies. RedHat can't afford to take this kind of risk on something not core to its business.
4. The target market for Linux games is incredibly small.
5. The lifetime of a game is very short, unlike business applications. Only a few hit games are still making money a year after they are released.
All of these factors basically shut RedHat out of the big game business. Now, your post was about indie games. But typically indie games are comparable to the open-source games Linux already has; these likely do not increase Linux sales or adoption and thus are not likely to be funded by any commercial distro.
Bell Canada's OneBill system takes the prize in my book. The idea is that the phone company gives you one bill for all of the services provided by their various sub-companies, i.e. television (ExpressVu), local phone, long distance, and internet (Sympatico).
The problem is "OneBill" is actually a separate company, which means that in order to send the bills on time they have to get the billing information so far in advance that bill payments, and credits, don't appear until the NEXT bill.
For example, ExpressVu was charging me for a PPV movie even though I had a credit for $50 of free PPV for signing up with them. Problem is, the credit wasn't being applied correctly, so when I received my bill it said there was a $5 charge for PPV. So I called ExpressVu and they credited my account, except that they aren't scheduled to send an update to OneBill for 30 days, so the credit doesn't reflect in my OneBill balance, and consequently if I don't pay the amount it says I owe I will be penalized and charged interest (and, theoretically, risk disconnection of service).
Not only that, but the system is even dumber when it comes to disconnecting features you don't want. I didn't want to pay for the movie channels that I'd had for free since joining (as a promotion), and I was told to give 30 days notice to terminate them. I called 32 days before my trial was up and explained that I didn't want the channels after the trial ended. So far so good. Well, I receieved my bill for the month after the trial (remember, TV service is paid in advance) and there was a charge for the movie channels. Even though my service was disconnected on time. So I called the OneBill people and they fixed my bill. But on the NEXT bill ExpressVu ALSO fixed my bill, so I got credited twice. Later on when speaking to a rep about the PPV problem, they explained that in their system, the "stop collecting the fee for Services" message isn't sent to OneBill until the service is disconnected, but the service isn't disconnected until the day it's supposed to be, except OneBill sent that bill out already, because they get their updates 30 days in advance. Dumbest thing ever. Needless to say, I never got around to calling them telling them of their second mistake in the billing.
Ajax is hard not because of the Javascript aspect, but because of the sheer number of differences between programming DHTML for IE and for Firefox (and Opera, and...). The problem is that each browser's implementation of the "standard" is different, sometimes wildly different, sometimes slightly different. And sometimes the difference is so subtle, yet so important, such as the order events are processed. The net result is that, for any Internet-facing app using Ajax, it's often very difficult to get all the details right. Whereas a similar application, written in the old-fashioned way, often won't have nearly as many cases to deal with. Things like the differences between how FF and IE alllow you to manipulate tables don't matter if the whole table is re-written on the server.
Also there are lots of limitations in Javascript that become more of a problem when you are putting more logic into the browser. Things like the timeout not firing all the time or other limitations due to the single-threaded nature of Javascript. You also run into more bugs when you use more language features and browser features.
Finally, many developers will find that writing AJAX also involves writing a non-AJAX fallback. Integrating this into your code without duplicating everything is tricky and tedious.
All of these problems "disappear" once you have a proper AJAX framework that you can control at a high-level: these become framework problems and the developers can concentrate on the apps. But there are hardly any good frameworks out there.
All of this added AJAX complexity, trouble, and work combine to make AJAX "hard" compared to regular web development. Add this to the normal workload and your web developers are going to be pushed harder than before. Some can handle it, some can't. Consider that the level of expertise required for a typical AJAX development position is now much higher than before: you need to be an expert in your server-side language (which you already were), HTML (you probably had some knowledge), DOM, Javascript (you knew some of the stuff but likely didn't do much DOM manipulation and probably only used JS mainly for form validation), and whatever other tools you are using. I'd say basically an AJAX developer needs to know 2-5 times the "browser" knowledge that a regular web dev needs; esp if the web dev used to have a graphics/html person who coded up html pages to use as templates. This web dev probably only needed enough HTML to know how to hook in forms and form validation scripts. Now he needs to know how to re-write parts of the dom, and he will soon become intimately familiar with all the bugs and limitations and browser differences therein.
I wonder if Turnitin could render these arguments moot by taking into account the fact that schools have always stored school papers whenever the school deemed it appropriate. In this case the schools could operate their own turnitin node, with software sold to them by turnitin, but the papers stored locally and owned by the school. In this case a paper would be submitted to may distributed nodes but a copy would not be retained by turnitin or the nodes doing the validation; the papaer would only be stored by the school that submits it. And I bet the paper itself wouldn't be transmitted, just some hash-code or compiled representation. This would also allow the school to withdraw from the program if they deemed it necessary.
The momement you write a sentence...
I'm being pedantic, but just to clarify: a single sentence is not likely to be enough, in most cases, to qualify for copyright protection, since there are only so many ways to express the idea in a single sentence. Otherwise you could suppress the expression of an idea by copyrighting a sufficient number of variations on the sentence that expresses it. But once you have enough sentences together that particular combination of words is definitely copyrightable, and the parent post's original point, which is that copyright is automatically granted at the moment that a work is created, stands.
I suppose, if you've never seen a date written in shorthand before, then no date format is truly intuitive, but yours is better than yyyy-mm-dd. But frankly, considering how much sense yyyy-mm-dd makes, and how unambiguous it is to most people, it's the better format. After all, cursive handwriting is confusing to children, but we teach it to them and then take it for granted. I think we can do the same with the date format: teach children one standard, that is least ambiguous while being most useful, and then take it for granted that everyone knows yyyy-mm-dd. But I suppose there will be some people who refuse to admit that this date format is superior (once you understand it, which isn't hard)... just as I refuse to admit that any other date format is superior :)
If you're going to go to the trouble of writing the year first, why on earth would you transpose the month and day? I don't think I've ever heard of anyone, anywhere, using yyyy-dd-mm... that is truly nonsensical, at least for any date format I've ever heard. It doesn't sort, it's not in numerical order, it's not convenient to speak, and nobody actually pronounces dates that way that I know of. I think it's pretty safe to assume that if you see a date in the 4digits-2digits-2digits then you can infer yyyy-mm-dd.
How is the "internet" being "forced" into your property? Sure, your notebook connects to the WLAN, but you are the one that opens an internet connection. Your private IP address is not part of the internet.
Now, if you want to talk about liability, I will allow that if your your access point is near to someone else's access point, and access theirs by accident, instead of your own, because of the way your notebook automatically decides to connect to the strongest AP, then you might be forgiven for using someone else's resource. But if you are deliberately using someone else's AP, without express permission, to access the internet, then you are knowningly using someone else's private resource. It's plain and simple, the "internet" isn't free and if you are accessing the internet you must know that SOMEONE is paying for that access, and if you know it's not you, then you must know that it's someone else.
Now, if you were using the WLAN to communicate with another wireless device on the WLAN, and you're not using the internet, then you are just using the WLAN that is broadcast into your own airspace. But the "internet" doesn't broadcast, and claiming that because someone's WLAN is unsecured gives you the right to access the internet is wrong. It's like saying that because there is no fence on someone's yard you can go into their house because their front door is unlocked.
Exactly: Communicating with the router may fall within the "rights" granted by the FCC for public airwaves, but using the associated LAN or internet connection is still using private resources, and private resources are not "free for the taking unless explicitly stated otherwise."
What you're saying is now equivalent to "if someone is coming onto your property to use your electricity, you should put up a fence" or "if someone comes into your house to make long-distance calls, you should lock your door". Yes, you should secure your property to prevent people from tresspassing. However, that doesn't change the fact that such tresspass is still unethical. Our society generally has a notion of individual's property rights, and I don't think it's wrong to extend "property" rights to things like your internet connection. Just as you can't steal my car from my driveway, you can't use my bandwidth and degrade my internet performance and/or cause me to incur fees.
Sure, access to the WLAN is in the air you breathe, but access to the internet is not. You are definitely causing potential harm in the form of increased ISP charges by using someone's IP. Many ISPs have bandwidth caps and if you go over your transfer limit you pay fees. Also your actions might not be legal and thus you are exposing the owner of the internet connection to legal risk.
:) )
You can connect to an unsecured WLAN all you want, but to use that connection to go onto the internet is clearly entering into a different domain of "property". Maybe I threw my bike onto your lawn, or maybe it fell off my driveway onto your lawn, but that doesn't give you the right to go into my house to get oil for its chain, even if my garage door is open and the oil is sitting right there. (Yes this analogy is just as bad as yours and all the others
The problem with comparing accessing someone's wireless lan to other forms of "tresspass" is that there are TWO things that need to be taken into consideration.
First, as you mentioned, the WLAN broadcasts into the air to advertise its presence, thus, in a sense, inviting users. Arguments can be made about whether this constitutes an actual invitation by the owner of the WLAN or not, since by default most wireless devices are always on and open. But that's beside the point, because:
Second, the owner's internet connection is a separate resource that he/she is paying for, and other people's use of that resource is not necessarily implied by the fact that it is accessible once you connect to the WLAN. To use the imperfect garden example: If, instead of a garden, we had an orchard, where fruit trees grow. Let's say it can be assumed that the owner of the orchard allows you to walk among the trees and eat apples. However, he has water piped into an irrigation system that he purchased in order to water the trees. Just because you can reach that faucet doesn't mean you are allowed to drink that water, even if you are allowed to be in the orchard.
What I'm getting at is, it's one thing to connect to a WLAN because your notebook did it automatically because the WLAN was open. But it's totally different to use that WLAN's internet bandwidth to download stuff for yourself if you don't know that you have permission to do so. You are an internet user, you should know that the internet is not free, and thus you should know better than to assume that someone's internet connection is free for your use.
Just because WORA isn't perfect for every single program doesn't mean that it's a lie. For most programs it works perfectly. For the greater majority it works in almost every case. It's only a few cases that affect a few programs where the abstractions break down. If your criteria for "WORA" is "Java implementations on different platforms never have bugs, and nobody ever uses any unique features of those platforms", then you're right, it's impossible to write any random code and guarantee that the code works on every single Java platform ever. But let's be realistic.
First, barring bugs, which do sometimes appear, or platform-specific problems that can not be overcome (eg Solaris's fork() system call fails if you don't have enough ram to duplicate the entire program, even if your program is just going to exec(), whereas Linux and other OSes don't have this limitation), it's generally only when the developer chooses to use a platform-specific feature that Java doesn't support where the WORA breaks down. If you are using some hardware-specific library (say 3d accel), then you will find that your program may behave differently on different platforms. But how many programs do this, on average, as a percentage of all programs? Shit, even on ONE platform there are still BUGS where the same exact program doesn't even run the same if you have a NVidia card vs an ATI card.
The point is, for almost everyone, all the time, Java is WORA. Want to call a native library? Fine, you forsake your WORA card. Want to use specific hardware? Obviously that won't be WORA either. But to claim that WORA is a "lie" because in 1% or fewer of the cases you'll have platform issues is silly.
The thing is, Java provides a cross-platform environment for developing. You can write code that works on any system, or code that's system-specific. But the point is that it is easy to write big, complex programs that work on multiple, dissimilar operating systems, without knowing specific details of those operating systems. Also, you don't have to worry about things like the number of bits in an integer, or long integer, or what floating point capabilities are available on the target platform, because Java takes care of all of this. Finally, Java provides a huge library of code that is available on every platform.
All of this means that it's easy to write once for every target platform that has a JVM. Now, you still have to TEST. You always have to test, otherwise you have no assurance that there ISN'T a bug. But most of the time your application will just work, and you can limit the further testing done on multiple platforms once you are reasonably sure that you have covered the cases where platform differences crop up. But by and large, testing is platform agnostic, since features usually work identically on every platform.
Some of your design decisions may not be right for all platforms, i.e. if you use floating point math but are targetting a platform where FP is emulated in the JVM. Your app will work, but performance will be poor. In that case, you may need to reconsider your implementation. But your app will work.
These goals are possible in other languages; many interpreted languages are available on different platforms. Also many compiled lanauges like C or C++ can be used to write portable code. You can even use libraries like QT which are designed to abstract away many details. Java isn't the only game in town for WORA. But to claim that Java isn't WORA is simply wrong.
Let me give you a concrete example: I develop software on Windows XP. I take the software I build and deploy it on a test server which runs Solaris. It gets functional testing on this server. Then I deploy it on a production server which runs Linux. This is the exact same binary object in every case. Try that with C++ or any other language. The simple fact is, Java has WORA, and it works.
1. Sounds like you're using Fedora or Redhat. You might want to look at Jpackage. It lets you re-package the SUN Java so that it fits into Fedora's weird java world. Works well, at least on the latest 1.4 and 1.5 JDKs.
2. Here's what you need to know about the different versions. JDK/Java SDK is for development. Comes with Javac. You need this for J2EE and for development. JRE is included in the JDK or is available as a standalone download. The JRE is the runtime env, it only includes the VM. J2EE is a specification, you almost never want the J2EE install from Sun since, by itself, it doesn't give you anything. You need an application server, such as Websphere, Geronimo, JBoss, Weblogic, etc. The application server includes the J2EE libraries. It does not always include a JDK.
3. You can always do what I do when you install the sun JDK: move the whole directory so that it is where you want it. AFAIK on Linux it doesn't install any files outside of its directory. Install as many JDKs as you like, then have your users set the JAVA_HOME env variable and add $JAVA_HOME/bin to the path.
As for why you couldn't find documentation for this... I'm not sure if there is any, I thought this stuff was common knowledge in the Java world (but if you don't devel in java, I guess you can't be expected to know this).
You can't alter the code of the stored proc, but you can (in Java, anyway) alter the CALL to the stored proc. This is trickier but it means you can still run arbitrary code on the DB.
You're right about the NT Workstation limitation being due to a registry entry, but my point is that it's not about "compatibility". Microsoft sold people an OS to use for workstations. They made it clear that the OS was not for use as a server. They sell a different OS for servers. Naturally they didn't want people running Netscape server on NT Workstation because it violates the license. Microsoft would have been thrilled to sell you NT Server for you to run Netscape Server. But their EULA forbids doing that on NT Workstation (at least, it forbids more than 10 connections at once). Whether or not that is "right" or "moral" is beside the point, their product, their license. Nothing to do with compatibility. The same restrictions would apply to Oracle or even IIS running on NTWS.
Again, the IE thing wasn't about any compatibility. Microsoft used OEM licensing agreements to ensure that OEM Vendors didn't install Netscape; if they installed netscape MS wouldn't give them a fair price on Windows licenses. However, if they DID install Netscape, it would work 100%. Sure, you couldn't REMOVE IE, but its presence never harmed Netscape (except that people didn't strictly NEED Netscape since a browser was already installed). No compatibility involved. Lawsuits yes, compat. no.
Finally, Active Directory didn't break existing Kerberos implementations. It was a new "protocol" based on kerberos. Now, it's designed to be different than Kerberos, i.e. it's designed NOT to be compatible with Kerberos. But I think that's different than if MS HAD kerberos, then CHANGED it (thus BREAKING compat). Since MS never had Kerberos before, how could they be accused of breaking anyone's compat by introducing pseudo-kerberos? You didn't have Kerberos before, you don't now. Yes, it's mean spirited, but it's certainly not the same as what everyone expects them to do with NTFS: change the implementation so that Linux, or any other third parties who write ntfs, suddenly are corrupting data because they think it's ntfs but don't realize it's new-ntfs. Or less maliciously, suddenly just can't write to the disk because the format has changed and they don't know how to do it. I mean, there has to be a practical benefit to this. There are almost no use-cases for NTFS-access in Linux, why would MS care if people are doing it? Dual boot systems? Please, that's like 1% of 1% of the population. Rescue disks? Ok, but MS doesn't compete in that market. How much would MS have to spend to introduce major, compatibility-breaking changes into NTFS JUST to break people's rescue disks?
Well, to be clear about the Windows NT Workstation bit: It's the LICENSE that prohibits using it as a server, not "Microsoft breaking compatibility". Also, refusing to make Explorer removable has nothing to do with compatibility with any software; I've ALWAYS been able to use Netscape or Mozilla or Firefox on any version of Windows that I cared to. Now, some programs DEPEND on IE, but that's not because Microsoft is breaking compatibility with Netscape. Finally, ODF isn't about Microsoft breaking compatibility; they never had it in the first place; it's about MS fighting to stay in the list of "legal" office suites to use in MA.
Your list of gripes are all about maintaining a monopoly, but frankly they have nearly nothing to do with compatibility. MS's version of Kerberos isn't compatible with any other? True, but at least it's not like they HAD a compatible version, and then they broke it on purpose. And if someone DID reverse-engineer the AD protocol, MS isn't likely to make drastic changes, at least not to the existing installations.
I dislike MS as much as the next guy, but you have to respect the lengths they go to to keep software working. Read Raymond Chen's blog
http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/ if you want to know just what kinds of things they've done to make sure your crappy game from 1994 or your business-critical software that was written for NT 3.51 still works.
My favourite support calls:
:)
... well... it's the letter A, and the colon symbol. ....
1. A friend of mine had a computer with similar specs to mine, a 486 DX2-66 with 16 MB of RAM (I had 12 MB). Thing was, on my computer Duke Nukem 3D ran great, but on his it was slow as a dog. He drives his computer out to my place, 25 miles, and we set it up in my basement. Sure enough, it's freaking slow. I check his conventional memory, seems fine, in fact everything seems normal. But it's slow. So I hit the turbo button, and what do you know? The damn thing works now
2. Same friend, new computer. He's got a shiny new Athlon (original Athlon) and everyone's envious. But for some reason his "explorer is messed up"; when he opens "My Computer" the button appears on the task bar but the window is nowhere to be seen. But if he clicks on the button he can see a maximize/minimize animation, but no window appears. I right click on the button, hit "resize", tap the arrow keys, and the My Computer window expands out of nowhere in the middle of the screen. He says "Great, now why don't you just hit the turbo button?"
3. Customer where I used to work: The computer shop I worked at had lots of corporate customers who had their own IT depts and only called us in when things got bad. Well, some non-IT user calls us up and says he's trying to install Sympatico software on his Win 95 box. (Windows 95 OEM version A, or Win95 upgrade, doesn't have TCP/IP by default). So Windows says "Please insert Windows 95 Disk 2". The user is confused, he doesn't know what to do.
Me: Are you at the computer?
User: No
Me: Did your helpdesk give you any disks?
User: Yes, there are two stacks, the Windows 95 disks 1-13 and the Sympatico disks 1-4
Me: And the computer is asking for Windows Disk 2?
User: Yes
Me: What's the problem?
User: Which disk do I put in? There are two disk twos, one in each pile.
Me (trying not to sound condescending): Well, usually when the computer wants a particular disk, it'usually pretty specific. So if it's asking for Windows 95 disk 2, I'd use the Disk 2 from the Windows 95 pile.
User: So that's it? What do I do next?
Me: Well, you can press enter to acknowledge that the disk is there. But if Windows asks you WHERE the disk is, type A: and press ENTER.
User: (long pause)... how do you spell that?
Me:
User:
Me: It's next to the 'L'
User: which side?
Me: The right side.
User: Do I have to press SHIFT?
Me: Yes.
And we're not talking about people who don't speak English, or who speak it as a second or third lanugage or anything. This is someone who was born and raised speaking English, but doesn't know what a colon is. One of my coworkers told me I should have said "You type the letter A, then your name..."
Actually I think if there was only one single being on this planet, there wouldn't be much conflict :)
The thing is, it's not the typeface that the computer font represents that is copyrighted; it's the font file itself, which is a program. It is an implementation of an idea; like other software and like written works the idea itself can't be copyright but the expression or implementation (as software) of it is.
Well, there was once an argument put forward by Sco that was along the lines of "the GPL isn't valid, yet these people gave the code away anyway, thus it's now public domain". Nonsense, I know, but if it WERE true it'd be good news for SCO. Maybe they're believing their own dog-poop?
You may have said it before, but that doesn't mean it's true. For some number of versions of windows (definitely including 2000 and XP) there have been only a small number of DLL files that need to be installed in the system directory. Windows (since ver 95) has ALWAYS allowed applications to put DLLs in their own directories, which is where the linker looks first for the DLLs. So, while there is no way to version DLLs like there is on Linux, the problem of multiple programs with the same lib isn't as bad as you imagine it to be. There is MSDN documentation about this if you don't believe me. Furthermore, what directory would you delete on a Fedora or Suse distro to uninstall Firefox? On Fedora, Firefox is (at least partially) installed in /usr/bin. Along with 10 million other programs. Some of it will be squirrelled away in /usr/lib/something but who can tell which of those directories are used only by Firefox and which might be shared with Mozilla (seamonkey)? Your only choice in this case is to use a package manager to uninstall Firefox.
And as for the registry, sure, it has its limitations and drawbacks, but just because every program modifies it is not necessarily bad. There are two cases: one, a program modifies its private keys. If you can't delete those keys when you delete a program (why aren't you using the uninstaller?), your system won't be corrupted afterwards. Two: a program modifies some shared keys, such as file associations. This is admittedly a problem because, if you didn't use the uninstaller or the uninstaller didn't fix the associations, your file associations are broken. But guess what? This can affect linux systems too! KDE has file associations and it doesn't know if they work or not, until you try them. Basically any place that one program can be configured to rely on another is a potential place where the "system" can become unstable if one of those programs is removed. It's naive to claim that only Windows is affected by this.
Anyway, you are partially right which is that some programs don't have, or have really bad, uninstallers. But once there is as much software out there for Linux as there is for Windows, that problem will hit Linux as well. Only your distro's package repository can hide you from that problem; better hope everything you want to install is in there.