Mr. Software Architect in this article clearly doesn't ever touch programming languages. I do hope we can all at least agree that he has no business writing about the evolution of development tools.
This makes no difference to MS whatsoever. The whole point of WPA is not to stop dedicated and knowledagble computer users from finding or using valid keys; it is to stop Mom and Pop from installing someone else's version of Windows. If you told your Mom, "oh, you have to use this little keygen program to get the key", then she'd be a whole hell of a lot less likely to pirate it than if you just said "Use the installation code on the back of the jewel case".
Good god, who here ever thought WPA was going to stop the pirating of MS software? *prolonged awkward silence*
Yeah, that's what I thought.
Unfortunately, the Courts have interpreted fair use not as a constitutional right, but as something allowed by law and granted by the Home Recording Act of 1982 (or something like that...someone help me out here?). Therefore, the DMCA can trample over fair use all it likes because it is just another law, not a right. And if we don't like it, we have to get the DMCA repealed by Congress, not the Court System. And that is very difficult seeing as corporations have so much money to lobby with, and we (relatively speaking) don't.
This is why if you want the DMCA overturned, we need campaign finance reform first. Then MAYBE our voices and votes will be able to stand up against corporate capital. But even then I think it rather unlikely. It makes me so damned mad to see so much power in the hands of the Corporations rather than the hands of individual voters. Something is definitely wrong with our system.
I see a lot of comments to the effect of: "How is this any different from Windows users shutting out others with Word Docs/Windows only Apps/IE only sites/etc.?"
First off, two wrongs do not make a right. If you think it is wrong to be shut out because you don't use Windows, then it is certainly hypocritical to turn around and do the same thing back.
Secondly, this is even worse than those aforementioned cases because it is fully intentional. *Most* of the time non-MS clients are not shut out intentionally, but simply because of uninformed users or capabilities lacking in the software. For example, I think most people would not have a problem sending docs in RTF if they didn't use any special features of Word and they knew some people couldn't read.DOC files.
In this case, it is the worst of all possible scenarios: hypocritical, intentional, by a user that knows better, and not due to any lacking capabilities in the software. Deliberately targeting bugs when it is easily avoidable is no better than being a script kiddy.
Actually, it's not really that far off. Pipelining and superscalar architectures let you execute many instructions simultaneously provided they are independent instructions. Data and control hazards (i.e. dependencies) significantly impair the ability to execute instructions in parallel, and there is only a limited amount of instruction level parallelism (ILP) inherent in the code.
With EPIC and IA64, that parallelism is significantly increased since most dependencies do not need any stalls a la predicate registers and speculative loads. Now, of course, there is still an inherent limitation in the parallelism of the code; you can't just create a processor without 1000 execution units and expect it to run a program in one clock cycle. But with a good compiler, stalls and branch mispredictions should be just about completely eliminated.
More accurate would be to say:
Intel is wagering on the Itanium, which also processes 64 bits of data at a time and has added ability to execute many instructions simultaneously.
Don't do it. If you're hating it while you're in school, just imagine what's it's like to sit in front of a machine 8+ hours/day, day in and day out, and do that sort of "mind-numbing" programming. Personally, I *love* the stuff, and it still can get pretty tiresome for me. It's so important to do something you enjoy everyday, otherwise you will not be happy, no matter what the rest of your life looks like.
Like some of the people above, I got a second degree (in History) when I was in College. I plan on going back to get my Master's in that eventually, and teach. I don't have any desire to combine the two (CS+History); I just love them both. But I'm pretty sure I can't love just CS forever, so I already have something lined up for after that. I know lots of people who have tired of CS after only a few years and go on to do management or something, anything, other than programming.
This looks like the beginning of the next phase in PC CPUs. It's possible that instead of seeing lots of innovation to give us better IPC because of speed limits, the major chipmakers will start to go the route of just denser and higher speeds, i.e. pump that MHz and make 2-way, 3-way, 4-way, etc. systems. Forget about re-architecture, just make a core and try to get as many of them in there at as high a speed as possible.
I think the P4 was an especially telltale sign of the times ahead for the PC chip industry. While the AMD rivalry has helped to spark fierce pricing competition, I also think that it has prompted Intel to go the "MHz at any cost" route. Don't be suprised to see the P4 as the first in a long line of "let's increase that pipeline to pump up the clock speed!" While undoubtedly this can make a chip faster if IPC is not just cut equivalently, it also smacks of "MHz at all" marketing strategy.
Intel has realized (more than AMD, who is still trying to "educate" those consumers) that the general mass of people don't pay attention to SIMD instructions, double clocked FPU units, superscalar speculative execution, full speed caches, or any of that other jive that gives you higher IPC. They look at MHz and just want to see higher numbers. And also more CPUs can't = bad either, can it? I mean, that's the next marketing blitz campaign once MHz stops working.
I hate to burst everyone's bubble, but this really doesn't get us anything. Sure, the ruling is quite favorable in the precedents it establishes for the main trial. But in this case we're attacking the USTA, which as the verdict noted, has no constitutional backing. The issue in this case is simply whether DeCSS can be "published" on websites where it wasn't obtained by improper means (e.g industrail espionage).
The real obstacle ahead is the DMCA, which gives legislative weight to EULAs. In this case they weren't challenging the DMCA. The court sidestepped talking about the DMCA issue by claiming that they were not going to rule on whether Jon Johannsen's reverse engineering in Norway was "proper". But that's the real problem here: we are still being denied our "fair use" of software, and it's not even clear whether people in countries with less restrictive laws can exercise those rights for us.
It doesn't look good in this area to me. I doubt the DMCA will be overturned since the issue here is not "free spech" vs "trade secrets", but "IP rights" vs "fair use". IP rights are guaranteed in the constitution and its not clear that "fair use" is. The best we can hope for is that some court will rule that the constitution both guarantees those IP rights but also limits those as well (a la "fair use") and thus EULAs can't impose Draconian rules on how to use software.
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Mr. Software Architect in this article clearly doesn't ever touch programming languages. I do hope we can all at least agree that he has no business writing about the evolution of development tools.
Good god, who here ever thought WPA was going to stop the pirating of MS software?
*prolonged awkward silence*
Yeah, that's what I thought.
Unfortunately, the Courts have interpreted fair use not as a constitutional right, but as something allowed by law and granted by the Home Recording Act of 1982 (or something like that...someone help me out here?). Therefore, the DMCA can trample over fair use all it likes because it is just another law, not a right. And if we don't like it, we have to get the DMCA repealed by Congress, not the Court System. And that is very difficult seeing as corporations have so much money to lobby with, and we (relatively speaking) don't.
This is why if you want the DMCA overturned, we need campaign finance reform first. Then MAYBE our voices and votes will be able to stand up against corporate capital. But even then I think it rather unlikely. It makes me so damned mad to see so much power in the hands of the Corporations rather than the hands of individual voters. Something is definitely wrong with our system.
I see a lot of comments to the effect of: "How is this any different from Windows users shutting out others with Word Docs/Windows only Apps/IE only sites/etc.?"
.DOC files.
First off, two wrongs do not make a right. If you think it is wrong to be shut out because you don't use Windows, then it is certainly hypocritical to turn around and do the same thing back.
Secondly, this is even worse than those aforementioned cases because it is fully intentional. *Most* of the time non-MS clients are not shut out intentionally, but simply because of uninformed users or capabilities lacking in the software. For example, I think most people would not have a problem sending docs in RTF if they didn't use any special features of Word and they knew some people couldn't read
In this case, it is the worst of all possible scenarios: hypocritical, intentional, by a user that knows better, and not due to any lacking capabilities in the software. Deliberately targeting bugs when it is easily avoidable is no better than being a script kiddy.
This guy should get bent.
Actually, it's not really that far off. Pipelining and superscalar architectures let you execute many instructions simultaneously provided they are independent instructions. Data and control hazards (i.e. dependencies) significantly impair the ability to execute instructions in parallel, and there is only a limited amount of instruction level parallelism (ILP) inherent in the code.
With EPIC and IA64, that parallelism is significantly increased since most dependencies do not need any stalls a la predicate registers and speculative loads. Now, of course, there is still an inherent limitation in the parallelism of the code; you can't just create a processor without 1000 execution units and expect it to run a program in one clock cycle. But with a good compiler, stalls and branch mispredictions should be just about completely eliminated.
More accurate would be to say:
Like some of the people above, I got a second degree (in History) when I was in College. I plan on going back to get my Master's in that eventually, and teach. I don't have any desire to combine the two (CS+History); I just love them both. But I'm pretty sure I can't love just CS forever, so I already have something lined up for after that. I know lots of people who have tired of CS after only a few years and go on to do management or something, anything, other than programming.
I think the P4 was an especially telltale sign of the times ahead for the PC chip industry. While the AMD rivalry has helped to spark fierce pricing competition, I also think that it has prompted Intel to go the "MHz at any cost" route. Don't be suprised to see the P4 as the first in a long line of "let's increase that pipeline to pump up the clock speed!" While undoubtedly this can make a chip faster if IPC is not just cut equivalently, it also smacks of "MHz at all" marketing strategy.
Intel has realized (more than AMD, who is still trying to "educate" those consumers) that the general mass of people don't pay attention to SIMD instructions, double clocked FPU units, superscalar speculative execution, full speed caches, or any of that other jive that gives you higher IPC. They look at MHz and just want to see higher numbers. And also more CPUs can't = bad either, can it? I mean, that's the next marketing blitz campaign once MHz stops working.
The real obstacle ahead is the DMCA, which gives legislative weight to EULAs. In this case they weren't challenging the DMCA. The court sidestepped talking about the DMCA issue by claiming that they were not going to rule on whether Jon Johannsen's reverse engineering in Norway was "proper". But that's the real problem here: we are still being denied our "fair use" of software, and it's not even clear whether people in countries with less restrictive laws can exercise those rights for us.
It doesn't look good in this area to me. I doubt the DMCA will be overturned since the issue here is not "free spech" vs "trade secrets", but "IP rights" vs "fair use". IP rights are guaranteed in the constitution and its not clear that "fair use" is. The best we can hope for is that some court will rule that the constitution both guarantees those IP rights but also limits those as well (a la "fair use") and thus EULAs can't impose Draconian rules on how to use software.