It is odd that my browser doesn't have any notion of pages (in the paper sense) but I still get to see the ends of pages and those pages are the basis of navigation - just because so many idiots can't be bothered to learn how to produce html.
Yes, there are some cases where PDF is useful and better than html (due to html/browser deficiencies - mostly involving mathematical markup).
They won't adapt. And some(many?) of them will do their best to sabotage the conversion/adaptation process. As would (to be fair) some linux people forced to convert to Windows.
I had a linux/apache server when the code red worm was going around and created a 17 Mb file for it to suck up. But then I wasn't paying for bandwidth. On the other hand by keeping some infected machine busy maybe I was helping some other machine escape for a few minutes more.
Quotes from Perens [perens.com]:
The oldest version of this code we've found so far is in Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming, published in 1968.
So the code can't have been legaly copied from there (it's copyright).
In this case Knuth has the deciding vote on how legal the use is. Has anyone asked him?
Even more, the code from "TAOCP" is likely written in pseudocode or MIX and while the pseudocode is likely to be protected by copyright, I'm not sure if a translation of it into C would be - as the algorithm may be the same, but the expression of it very, very different. Enough so that I suspect a patent might cover it, but copyright would not.
Maybe if everyone got a scanned notary stamp and sent them (is there going to be a fax number) long
(and I mean long - not just what music you have but when you listened to it, what you thought of it, everything....) detailed confessions. (Think of the big kid in "Goonies" "telling all".)
Be sure to copyright them and attach an EULA for them to consider (or maybe you could license the confessions appropriately and say that they cant use them without agreeing to the license).
But I cannot think of any case in an object-oriented language where it would be both less work and more maintainable to write a code generator than to just abstract away the parts that would be autogenerated.
To be polite: "Bullshit" (The impolite version, well, best it remains unexpressed.)
I have a program that has a bunch of base classes and that I specialize with a set of fairly simple java classes to generate domain specific programs.
These java classes look very much alike, but vary in as many as 20 lines per class - this includes the name of the class (both the class name and a string representing it) and some executable code. I also generate a list of the classes as a step in building an interpreter.
So, I wrote a short python program that reads a file describing all the classes to generate and that produces a java class for each such file, a list of the classes, and an executable code segment that loads all the classes and properly initializes them.
This step makes it possible to generate all these classes quickly when I move the program to work in a new domain.
There are other ways to do this, but this seems to me by far the most simple and it has saved me much work over time.
In any case, what is a programming language in general but a code generator for a specific domain
(or large connected set of domains)?
Currently I have no particular plans. I'm still just feeling around trying to decide what information will help best, trying to figure out how best to determine a keyword list and some other odd details.
Its rather low on my priority list so things are going slowly, I'm afraid.
I'm currently playing around with putting all my mail messages, bookmarks, web pages loaded, file accesses (on a day to day basis) into a database. Maybe not all the actual data, but the stuff that might help me find it when I need it. I'm hoping to eventually scan everything that changes on my computer or that I do
for keywords and so on and then organize them so I can browse them by some kind of visual graph/map metaphor on any of several axes (type of file, date/time, keywords, directory....).
I want to be able to go in with a query like "sometime in july I did something having to do with a picnic and watermelon" and get a list of possibilities, then be able to rate those in the hopes of finding the exact info I'm looking for.
OK, so far I only have some pieces of it. But I'm getting closer to a database schema for the information and that will help me figure out better what info I need to collect.
Every subpoena is overbroad. It's the responsibility of the party receiving the subpoena to try and narrow it.
IANAL (naturally) so I'm confused.
As I understand it, the DMCA allows someone who thinks they are being ill used (in copyright sorts of ways) to issue a subpoena essentially without a judge being involved and those on the receiving end are then supposed to comply. But this lawyer says that those on the receiving end get to try to negotiate it. If there's no court/judge involved, who do you negotiate with?
If an operating system integer upgrade [v1.X -> v2.X] requires the user to purchase new operating system software or hardware, then the source code will be offered to registered customers.
That would pretty much ensure that there would be no more "integer upgrades". Instead software would be numbered in ten-millionths or just renamed (fer'instance "Windows XP" might become "The Great and Powerful Windows" and so on).
Some (but by no means all) studies of things like TCO do include estimates of costs incurred when security is breached.
This is a tough one to do as it is necessarily based on probabilities of problems and estimations of the related costs. Even more, the cost estimates were frequently so high that they looked unreasonable to most managers - but those costs occurred with low probability. (It would probably be unkind of me to say something disparaging about managers who can't learn about probability and so on. Appropriate. True. But unkind.)
I think the combination of the sheer size of the costs and the fact that they were
probabilistic was just too much for most bureaucracies to cope with so those costs stopped being included.
You must be a steenking commie to even think of such a thing!
That it would help solve the problem, educate students a bit - probably leaving them far closer to computer literacy than anything else they'll do in college... Thats all irrelevant. You are proposing something that is clearly unamerican, anti-capitalist, communistic, anarchistic, anti-christian, and so on.
there's one basic valid purpose of government, and that's to defend the individual rights of its citizens
And the spending on NASA? At least its money not being spent on all the fun ways the ash-hole (with the collusion of our congress-creeps) is coming up with to remove our individual rights.
If the extent of the damage and the threat it posed had been known I'd bet someone would have come up with a way to do some kind of repair or rescue.
A successful rescue could have been a real boost to the space program and if not we could always get Ron Howard to make a film about it that would be.
A serious attempt at a rescue would have certainly got people more involved emotionally with the space program.
Most tantalizing to me though is the notion that perhaps if Americans had been seriously looking to the skies and thinking about rescuing people aboard the shuttle, we might have actually managed to avoid entangling ourselves in Iraq. (OK, unlikely for soooo many reasons.)
I've said a couple times that I expect soon for the telemarketers to make deals with charities, so that they'll be calling on behalf of the charity but selling the same old crap. That way they'll be immune to the do-not-call list.
I've been told I'm far too cynical about that though and that it will never happen. If I were a betting human though I'd place a bet on it and I'd say it will be about October that you'll start getting the calls from them.
Then they'll figure out how to use the "existing business relationship angle" and the do not call registry will be worth all the paper its EULA is printed on.
If so your rights to do with the hardware what you want may not last long. There is a strong (and well financed, of course) movement afoot to restrict computing to trusted computing platforms only.
And I can easily imagine getting a computer with a hardware EULA that requires me to run a specific operating sytem from a specific vendor, that will not boot to anything else and that will have a tamper resistant bios.
This just has me thinking that I'd like to set up a special checkbook with a statement on each check that says something like:
"By cashing this check you agree to my EULA and all its terms and conditions and you further agree to indemnify me for any legal expenses I may incur if you decide to give me legal trouble. My EULA may be found on my website at.... . "
Patents in general are entirely anti-capitalistic devices. Their primary purpose is to inhibit competition
I'm not sure why it has occured but capitalism has come to be taken as synonymous with "free market". Which is not the case. Capitalism just means that the money (capital) is privately held, not in the hands of the government. Indeed the great "capitalists" were often those who held great monopolies.
"Free Market" is very different. A free market is one that permits competition.
Its quite possible to be capitalist without being in favor of a free market. I think the good Mr. Gates is almost certainly in favor of capitalism, but not in favor of a free market. (Though I do suspect he'd like any of his suppliers to be competing with other suppliers to keep costs down. )
What seems interesting to me is that currently I believe that the prevailing mood in the US is neither particularly capitalist nor pro-free-market. Instead it seems to be in favor of profits for corporations at the expense of individuals - and those running the corporations are quite willing to sacrifice both capitalism and the free market in favor of profit.
Think about it - would Mr. Gates really object if his company were taken over by the government if he were guaranteed continued profits and control? Would he really object if the government legislatively eliminated competition? Hardly. But either of these is far closer to socialism/communism/fascism than to any real free market model.
Bad patents (ie most software patents, and far, far too many of the patents granted today) are effectively just that - government grants of special status (monopoly status, often) to corporations. (Individuals can get patents though the patent/patent lawyer process is becoming prohibitively expensive unless you're nicely well off already.)
Property rights are broadly covered by the fifth amendment to the constitution when it states "nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation"
Unless you count asset forfeiture. Which has developed into a very nice way for the local "law enforcement folks" to deprived someone of any of their property with essentially no due process , no right of appeal and generally no rights for much of anything. But then its only applied to those who are evidently (though not legally) icky and horrid in one way or another, so the notion of rights (which clearly should only belong to the nice and law abiding) doesn't apply.
But what the hell, Scalia thinks all the lumpen proles have too many rights already. Maybe its time to change the constitution as so many would like it changed : "Nobody but me and my friends have any rights except as I want to bestow them."
I think every CS major should ideally be required to learn on several OS's (and I do not mean several variants of the same OS). And similarly for several very different languages. And to use them.
That's the most effective way I've seen to teach people about OS's/languages in general.
But really, while I agree with the statement in theory, in practice I've seen just that statement used by students to justify their resistance to learning an OS/language they don't know already (ie a non MS OS).
The saying goes "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
And I think that goes for "conspiracy" too.
Though I do expect that MS will happily exploit their laxness in building their systems if they can do it in such a way as to make their monopoly permanent and legally required.
I've used two spreadsheets that were each (in different ways) very good reasons to not copy (or perhaps to just not copy excel).
One was Lotus Improv. Radically different than most spreadsheets and far more usable.
The other was called "Advance". I don't remember who put it out, but I think it was inspired by Improv but then went several steps further to produce a tool that was more than just a spreadsheet (thoush you could do most spreadsheet things easily enough) - you could really build complex data models that were very powerful. Indeed, just building the data model was often a very telling and revealing process in itself.
So, why reinvent the wheel?
Because wheels work - and square thingies for the same purpose do not.
Slashdot Mirror
I may be able to read pdf, but I don't enjoy it.
It is odd that my browser doesn't have any notion of pages (in the paper sense) but I still get to see the ends of pages and those pages are the basis of navigation - just because so many idiots can't be bothered to learn how to produce html.
Yes, there are some cases where PDF is useful and better than html (due to html/browser deficiencies - mostly involving mathematical markup).
They won't adapt. And some(many?) of them will do their best to sabotage the conversion/adaptation process. As would (to be fair) some linux people forced to convert to Windows.
I had a linux/apache server when the code red worm was going around and created a 17 Mb file for it to suck up. But then I wasn't paying for bandwidth. On the other hand by keeping some infected machine busy maybe I was helping some other machine escape for a few minutes more.
The oldest version of this code we've found so far is in Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming, published in 1968.
So the code can't have been legaly copied from there (it's copyright).
In this case Knuth has the deciding vote on how legal the use is. Has anyone asked him?
Even more, the code from "TAOCP" is likely written in pseudocode or MIX and while the pseudocode is likely to be protected by copyright, I'm not sure if a translation of it into C would be - as the algorithm may be the same, but the expression of it very, very different. Enough so that I suspect a patent might cover it, but copyright would not.
It lets a group of people who want to coerce others into voting the "right way" know who to beat up when they fail to follow the party line.
It lets people buy votes secure in the knowledge that the vote they bought was cast correctly.
It makes it easy to find those in a community who are prone to wrongthink.
Yah, lets go with it - it is so clearly a vast improvement over the other messy systems that might actually allow for independent thought.
Be sure to copyright them and attach an EULA for them to consider (or maybe you could license the confessions appropriately and say that they cant use them without agreeing to the license).
Ah, such potential...
To be polite: "Bullshit" (The impolite version, well, best it remains unexpressed.)
I have a program that has a bunch of base classes and that I specialize with a set of fairly simple java classes to generate domain specific programs. These java classes look very much alike, but vary in as many as 20 lines per class - this includes the name of the class (both the class name and a string representing it) and some executable code. I also generate a list of the classes as a step in building an interpreter.
So, I wrote a short python program that reads a file describing all the classes to generate and that produces a java class for each such file, a list of the classes, and an executable code segment that loads all the classes and properly initializes them.
This step makes it possible to generate all these classes quickly when I move the program to work in a new domain.
There are other ways to do this, but this seems to me by far the most simple and it has saved me much work over time.
In any case, what is a programming language in general but a code generator for a specific domain (or large connected set of domains)?
Its rather low on my priority list so things are going slowly, I'm afraid.
Or is that KAOS (as in "Get Smart") ?
I'm currently playing around with putting all my mail messages, bookmarks, web pages loaded, file accesses (on a day to day basis) into a database. Maybe not all the actual data, but the stuff that might help me find it when I need it. I'm hoping to eventually scan everything that changes on my computer or that I do for keywords and so on and then organize them so I can browse them by some kind of visual graph/map metaphor on any of several axes (type of file, date/time, keywords, directory ....).
I want to be able to go in with a query like "sometime in july I did something having to do with a picnic and watermelon" and get a list of possibilities, then be able to rate those in the hopes of finding the exact info I'm looking for.
OK, so far I only have some pieces of it. But I'm getting closer to a database schema for the information and that will help me figure out better what info I need to collect.
IANAL (naturally) so I'm confused.
As I understand it, the DMCA allows someone who thinks they are being ill used (in copyright sorts of ways) to issue a subpoena essentially without a judge being involved and those on the receiving end are then supposed to comply. But this lawyer says that those on the receiving end get to try to negotiate it. If there's no court/judge involved, who do you negotiate with?
That would pretty much ensure that there would be no more "integer upgrades". Instead software would be numbered in ten-millionths or just renamed (fer'instance "Windows XP" might become "The Great and Powerful Windows" and so on).
Otherwise I rather like the idea.
This is a tough one to do as it is necessarily based on probabilities of problems and estimations of the related costs. Even more, the cost estimates were frequently so high that they looked unreasonable to most managers - but those costs occurred with low probability. (It would probably be unkind of me to say something disparaging about managers who can't learn about probability and so on. Appropriate. True. But unkind.)
I think the combination of the sheer size of the costs and the fact that they were probabilistic was just too much for most bureaucracies to cope with so those costs stopped being included.
That it would help solve the problem, educate students a bit - probably leaving them far closer to computer literacy than anything else they'll do in college ... Thats all irrelevant. You are proposing something that is clearly unamerican, anti-capitalist, communistic, anarchistic, anti-christian, and so on.
I'd love to see it done.
And the spending on NASA? At least its money not being spent on all the fun ways the ash-hole (with the collusion of our congress-creeps) is coming up with to remove our individual rights.
A successful rescue could have been a real boost to the space program and if not we could always get Ron Howard to make a film about it that would be.
A serious attempt at a rescue would have certainly got people more involved emotionally with the space program.
Most tantalizing to me though is the notion that perhaps if Americans had been seriously looking to the skies and thinking about rescuing people aboard the shuttle, we might have actually managed to avoid entangling ourselves in Iraq. (OK, unlikely for soooo many reasons.)
I've been told I'm far too cynical about that though and that it will never happen. If I were a betting human though I'd place a bet on it and I'd say it will be about October that you'll start getting the calls from them.
Then they'll figure out how to use the "existing business relationship angle" and the do not call registry will be worth all the paper its EULA is printed on.
Are you living in the USA?
If so your rights to do with the hardware what you want may not last long. There is a strong (and well financed, of course) movement afoot to restrict computing to trusted computing platforms only.
And I can easily imagine getting a computer with a hardware EULA that requires me to run a specific operating sytem from a specific vendor, that will not boot to anything else and that will have a tamper resistant bios.
But then too, I am a rather cynical fart.
"By cashing this check you agree to my EULA and all its terms and conditions and you further agree to indemnify me for any legal expenses I may incur if you decide to give me legal trouble. My EULA may be found on my website at
I'm not sure why it has occured but capitalism has come to be taken as synonymous with "free market". Which is not the case. Capitalism just means that the money (capital) is privately held, not in the hands of the government. Indeed the great "capitalists" were often those who held great monopolies.
"Free Market" is very different. A free market is one that permits competition.
Its quite possible to be capitalist without being in favor of a free market. I think the good Mr. Gates is almost certainly in favor of capitalism, but not in favor of a free market. (Though I do suspect he'd like any of his suppliers to be competing with other suppliers to keep costs down. )
What seems interesting to me is that currently I believe that the prevailing mood in the US is neither particularly capitalist nor pro-free-market. Instead it seems to be in favor of profits for corporations at the expense of individuals - and those running the corporations are quite willing to sacrifice both capitalism and the free market in favor of profit.
Think about it - would Mr. Gates really object if his company were taken over by the government if he were guaranteed continued profits and control? Would he really object if the government legislatively eliminated competition? Hardly. But either of these is far closer to socialism/communism/fascism than to any real free market model.
Bad patents (ie most software patents, and far, far too many of the patents granted today) are effectively just that - government grants of special status (monopoly status, often) to corporations. (Individuals can get patents though the patent/patent lawyer process is becoming prohibitively expensive unless you're nicely well off already.)
Unless you count asset forfeiture. Which has developed into a very nice way for the local "law enforcement folks" to deprived someone of any of their property with essentially no due process , no right of appeal and generally no rights for much of anything. But then its only applied to those who are evidently (though not legally) icky and horrid in one way or another, so the notion of rights (which clearly should only belong to the nice and law abiding) doesn't apply.
But what the hell, Scalia thinks all the lumpen proles have too many rights already. Maybe its time to change the constitution as so many would like it changed : "Nobody but me and my friends have any rights except as I want to bestow them."
That's the most effective way I've seen to teach people about OS's/languages in general.
But really, while I agree with the statement in theory, in practice I've seen just that statement used by students to justify their resistance to learning an OS/language they don't know already (ie a non MS OS).
And I think that goes for "conspiracy" too.
Though I do expect that MS will happily exploit their laxness in building their systems if they can do it in such a way as to make their monopoly permanent and legally required.
One was Lotus Improv. Radically different than most spreadsheets and far more usable.
The other was called "Advance". I don't remember who put it out, but I think it was inspired by Improv but then went several steps further to produce a tool that was more than just a spreadsheet (thoush you could do most spreadsheet things easily enough) - you could really build complex data models that were very powerful. Indeed, just building the data model was often a very telling and revealing process in itself.
So, why reinvent the wheel?
Because wheels work - and square thingies for the same purpose do not.
And why not reinvent the wheel?
Because in some cases we can do much better.
You could just go read "Bored of the Rings". And given "Meet the Feebles" I think Peter Jackson is exactly the right person to bring it to the screen.
Just more interested in other things than in aping (so to speak) the expensive and seriously phallic menswear styles now in style.