1. Everything in source control. Everything. 1.1 Source control on RAID. 1.2 Occasional offsite backups.
2. Get everyone on the same page as far as who's going to do what, and how the parts will talk to each other, before anybody writes a line of code.
3. Never add manpower unless: 3.1... they have needed expertise, and no one else can learn it on schedule. 3.2... someone else is leaving. 3.3... you JUST shipped the last version and have plenty of time to bring the new folks up to speed.
4. (This is a more personal-level tip) No AIM, no IRC, no email while coding.
It only requires a few billion USD to develop drug lines... I'm sure there is plenty of non-profit, non-patent money to fund that, and so we can do away with the entire patent system.
When I read this line I stopped, and thought I'd misinterpreted your entire post, and you were being very gravely and blackly satiric. Then I realized you were serious, and that made me sad.
Who the hell will give anybody a few BILLION DOLLARS to develop something with no chance of recouping it? You might raise a couple ten million, sure. A billion dollars is so much money... I bet no single non-commercial research & development project has ever raised that much in history. Billion dollar budgets are what the DOD gives to skunkworks.
Though, as another poster commented, we could just nationalize Roche. That would arguably solve the problem. As well as slash the money they waste on marketing.
I hate it when corporations do this. If they charged a fair amount, everyone would gladly work with them. Africa would buy their AIDS drugs. Taiwan would buy their bird flu vaccine. Everybody would be happy, especially Roche, who would be raking in huge amounts of money from many sovereign nations.
Instead, by setting unreasonable terms, they get nothing. We're talking about Taiwan here, they've got plenty of money; if they won't meet Roche's terms, it's not because they can't, it's because the terms are ridiculous.
The real loser here is Roche, not for enforcing their patent, but for pig-headedly refusing to negotiate fair terms.
For "not significantly better than" in first paragraph, read that doing anything special in the case that a high bidder raises their maximum is not significantly better than doing nothing.
Oh, and I totally forgot. eBay has SELLERS TOO! For the tiny amount this hurts buyers, it HELPS SELLERS, to whom eBay has just as much loyalty and responsibility. Unless anybody wishes to complain that eBay is prejudiced toward sellers (in contradiction to the obvious time and effort put into the rest of the system to make it equitable), there's now officially nothing whatsoever with this maximum bid thing.
Kindly consider this comment as part of parent when modding ^_^
This is not "price gouging". This is nothing evil on eBay's part. So what if they get an extra cent from whatever small fraction of auctions in which this occurs? They didn't do this for the money, they did it because it was easier and not significantly better than any other way.
There's a lot of discussion here about whether or not increasing your maximum ought to constitute a new bid. eBay decided when they implemented the bidding system that it would. It was strictly an implementation question Odds are the people on the business end never comprehended such a distinction could exist.
Think about the bidding system. Each auction has a list of bids associated with it. If eBay is implemented with a relational database backend, they have a (very very large) table of bids. The table has columns for all the necessary info about a bid (auction it's connected to, user who made the bid, maximum value, time it was bid). When somebody bids, a new row is created in the table of bids. The question is what happens in the abstract case of "raising one's maximum". Let's look at this more practically.
"Raising one's maximum" is defined as entering a bid in an auction where one is already the maximum bidder. Simply determining if this is the case requires answering a few questions:
Who is the winning user, and how large is their bid?
Is the user making this bid that user? (I.e., is the current user already the winner).
Is the new bid's maximum greater than the previous maximum (the previous winning bid)
Depending on how eBay is implemented, this may result in another database query. It probably won't, but it's certainly additional CPU time and complexity. The engineers may have decided not to write this special case, to save a little bit of computation. (And when you have as many bids per second as eBay does, it definitely helps.)
In the absence of the special case as above, a new bid by the winning bidder is treated precisely the same as a new bid by a non-winning bidder -- i.e., it can be no lower than the next increment above the current price.
IANAL, and I don't know what legally constitutes "price gouging" or whatever the exact charges in the suit are... but this certainly doesn't seem to have any merit.
It's fair. It affects everyone equally.
It's logical. It's not astonishing. A bit surprising, perhaps, if you end up on the wrong end of it, and it hits everybody's sense of frugality that we just got bilked out of $1.94 for no good reason... but if you give it a few seconds thought, it makes sense.
It's documented, as pointed out many times elsewhere in the comments. They aren't trying to hide this behavior.
There is only a miniscule benefit to eBay. Come on, how much could they POSSIBLY make off of this? If they were greedy, they could simply increase their commission by a tenth of a percent and make hell of much more. Would that be "price gouging"?
In conclusion, this was not an evil move on eBay's part. They're not trying to make a buck off anybody (they're already succeeding beyond anybody's wildest, most avaricious dreams at doing exactly that). This behavior is logical, documented, and most likely the product of an implementation decision. Case has no merit... wouldn't it be nice if for once the judge saw it that way too?
I don't know about you, but I never thought staring at a box counted as "socializing." The excerpt mentioned following-up to email... that's at least interpersonal communication. It seems the choice of "socializing" as a label for "everything besides computers" was chosen simply to make a more inflammatory headline.
Monkeys cannot enter into contracts, for obvious reasons.
But if you never agree to the EULA (by attaching a valid signature (that is, not a monkey's)), you're not allowed to use the software. So what's the point?
The objective isn't to avoid EULAs, it's to understand them.
2) Since when can a corporation trademark a building? They can trademark their stylized rendering of it, certainly. But they have zero authority or rationale to prevent anyone from using their own photograph of a building.
Why does a university need to protect its trademark? Is it afraid of losing business? Yeah, I'm going to write out my tuition check to ucsdfacebook.com because I confused the two. The intent of a trademark is to protect a corporation's identity and the branding symbols they do business under. A university doesn't do business in the same way a typical corporation does. UCSD doesn't have a 'brand' to protect, so why should they be allowed to enforce their trademarks against someone who's clearly not directly competing in business with them (youcsd)
Technological advantage alone is as worthless to a country as genius alone is to an individual.
And we don't have the technological advantage. That was one of the OP's main points.
Look around. Look at China, Japan, Taiwan, Korea. Look at Germany, Sweden, France. Cutting-edge technology.
Look at our aging powerplants and their aging fuels. Look at our absurdly low rates of broadband penetration, and the "digital divide." Look at our cities. Cripes, look at our cars! (And no, SUVs with every option, feature, and in-dash gewgaw are not "technologically advanced" compared to hybrids and SULEV compacts) Look at our, ha ha, our "education" system, hah!
The best and brightest come to get their PhDs in the US. Then the ones with vision and ability see what a cesspool of a country they're in, and go back home to get something accomplished.
I'm class of 2008. How's the coverage? I'm in Sixth, where the dorms and quad are wireless, and I've heard ERC's new dorms have coverage... but how is the rest of campus?
Gee, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't collisions like this absolutely inevitable?
You have many bits of data becoming fewer bits of data. There WILL BE collisions.
What does this REALLY mean about the strength of the algorithm, though? In one possible instance, a file could be changed in a very particular way that could theoretically result in a non-nonsensical modification to the source while the hash remained the same. Does this mean the algorithm is "broken"?! No.
Or, if it DOES mean the algorithm was broken, then it was broken since it was dreamed up in some mathematician's mind.
Nobody cares how many Linux apps you ship with your distro. You're not being anticompetitive by doing so. The distro maker doesn't make any money one way or another. Those who write the software that gets included don't make any more. Those who write software that doesn't get included don't lose anything.
The problem with Microsoft including software with Windows was that they were making a decision as to whose products would be used and whose would not which would then bring in more or less money to those companies. Microsoft decided which companies lived or died, and that was too much power.
Distro packagers have nowhere near Microsoft's dominance... and "living" or "dying" in the F/OSS world simply means somebody will be happy or disappointed with his pet project's uptake by the community. Nobody's jobs are at stake, nor anybody's precious "shareholder value."
This is awfully puzzling to me. Real wanted access to the iPod's DRM. Which would allow their content to work on iPods. Which would sell more iPods. It certainly wouldn't hurt iPod sales a bit... Real would be a weak competitor far behind the iTunes Music Store ----- which makes no profit, and whose sole purpose for existence is to sell more iPods!
On the other hand, outright refusing the deal is going to drive Real to Microsoft. Either they actually ask Microsoft to use WMA DRM, or they try to roll their own solution, get marginalized, and M$ buys the mout down the line. Either way, Microsoft needs no more help at all to compete against Apple in this arena. Billy Gates is just getting warmed up for this next great chapter of the titanic struggle that started in 1985, and Apple needs all the allies it can get.
I can't understand why any rational executive WOULDN'T agree to a deal of this nature. I can't understand why any rational executive would just plain slam the door on Real. But I suppose I can understand why Steve Jobs would.
This is yet another example of Steve's hubris, his greatest flaw. It's burned Apple before and it'll burn Apple again. Steve already pulled a Phoenix in 1998. Let's hope he doesn't have to do it again.
I don't know where the Simeda people got their inspiration, but in his 1997 book book The Dilbert Future: Thriving on Stupidity in the 21st Century, Scott Adams of Dilbert fame described this invention precisely.
Page 28:
Excuse 9000 (tm)
The patented Excuse 9000 device will add selected background noise to any phone conversation, giving you the perfect alibi for not being at work. Need a flat tire alibi? No problem. Just set the Excuse 9000 for "Highway Noise" and leave your boss a voicemail message from the comfort of your own bed. Other noises in the basic starter pack include: airliner going down, deep-lung coughing, and armed intruder.
Matrix series started off excellent with the first movie, but Reloaded was crap and Revolutions was just a normal regular movie really. OTOH, LotR started awesome and got awesomer, TTT > FotR and RotK > TTT. I think the three of them are one of the best film series ever made, up there with (or above) the original Star Wars. Are you listening, Academy?
When was the last time you were in a physics class that used video demos? For me, it was last Wednesday.
In a typical physics classroom, can you -drop a pair of iron balls of differing weights from ten stories up? -fire a rifle through a pair of sensors to find the bullet's velocity? (Think again - guns and school don't mix, even when it's a benign demonstration like this. I hate overprotective conservatives. But I digress...) -do simple collision and action/reaction experiments in zero-G?
You can do all of those and more with video presentations.
Is it less "real" than if we did it ourselves in the classroom? Yes. Is it better than nothing, which is what we'd have otherwise? Yes.
Video in the classroom, as well as computers, is a tool to help teach. It's not a substitute for teaching, and it should be used correctly. Too often administrators are throwing out needless requirements that students will know how to use computers, and teachers are misinterpreting that and misteaching by requiring needless use of PowerPoint, or the internet, or whatever the fad of the week is. But the computer is just a tool, and throwing laptops at fourth-graders isn't going to accomplish anything but burn money that could be used for better things.
Go research.rtfd files on NeXT and Mac OS X. They're basically super-RTF files. They are actually a folder ending with.rtfd that the operating system presents to the user as a single file (for mere aesthetic and encapsulation reasons). They contain an RTF file and all the non-RTF resources (images, sounds, etc) that are embedded in the document as separate files in their own formats. I believe images are saved as TIFF by default.
So why not combine open XML document formats and rtfd-style bundles! A complex document is really a folder full of files, but it appears to the user as a single file. This makes it easy to move around, esp from computer to computer, and presents a nice sensible metaphor to the user. It's also difficult to screw things up by messing with the components (but it is possible to get into the bundle if you need to). Inside these complex documents is an XML file that describes the components of the document. Then there are files that contain the components, in whatever (open) format you wish. RTF or OpenOffice or whatever for text, Ogg sounds, PNG or SVG images, CSV or more complex spreadsheet/table formats, all the fonts the document needs, etc.
One of the replies to the parent addressed the issue of pixel-exact rendering. That's easy - just use the same rendering engine everywhere! All Gecko browsers render exactly the same everywhere (assuming the same fonts are available). So just use a single homogenous rendering engine everywhere. (And include fonts in the document bundle).
I sure hope some brilliant application-software engineer reads this!:)
(Final note: Another, more risky option would be to provide an API for rendering modules written in some suitable language, which would then be included in the bundle. You want to render, say, Maya IFF images? Include the IFF renderer in the bundle. Of course great security precautions would need to be taken, and optimally the rendering modules would have access to nothing outside the document-world, and preferably only a buffer to draw into and layout above them would be managed by the program. This has been tried before, I think. But maybe its time has come?)
It seems like the objections to RFID everywhere are that people can track your purchases, movements, personal possessions, etc etc etc. They can do this because they can read the RFID tag and figure out what it is - the RFID tag in your driver's license card announces it's a driver's license card for John Doe, the RFID tag in the Benneton shirt you just bought says it's a Benneton shirt, etc.
What if RFID tags provided a single GUID, and no more? Kind of like a MAC address, but a bigger name space. So your driver's license says it has tag number 123456789123456789, and your shirt says it's number 147258369147258369. And that's all.
Each entity that puts RFID tags in things maintains its own list of what tag number goes into what item. This list would be shared (not openly) with other entities that need to correlate items and tags. RFID tag scanners can be connected with WiFi or similar back to a server at each company/entity which will store all the correlations between tag number and item.
So Benneton makes a shirt and puts tag number 123 in it. Benneton shares their list that maps id->item with Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart puts the list into their Big Ol' RFID Server. The RFID scanner at the checkout sees number 123, asks the Wal-mart server, which says it's a Benneton shirt.
Depending on how much traffic it would cause, it might be more secure to make Wal-Mart's checkout box check with Benneton's RFID info server, BUT that could cause problems if e.g. Benneton goes out of business; not to mention great amounts of traffic.
On first glance, this system would be just as secure from the vendor's point of view as UPCs. In fact, it's easier to fake a UPC than an RFID. The only risks would be if the databases were to fall into the hands of nefarious evildoers - and so exchanges of tag to item mapping information would have to be regulated, and there would have to be some way (PKI-based?) to ensure that the information requester is who they claim to be. (So that some dork with an RFID scanner doesn't claim to be a police officer and get your driver's license info from the DMV's tag info server)
K, I'm just throwing this out there, feel free to tear it apart.:)
Can you build the proprietary code as a separate library that builds upon the public framework? Then open-source the lower framework and keep the proprietary code closed.
Thinking of an analogy... ah! Open-source the C standard library, but build libgif on top of it and keep libgif closed-source.
The application may or may not be amenable to vertical splitting like this; this just looks like the easiest way with the least paperwork & red tape. Not two codebases - two projects.
I totally agree with that, except that I've asked several times for a time-speedup or distance-compression feature. Currently to make an 8 hour cross-country haul, you have to actually have the sim run for 8 hours. Of coruse you can put it on autopilot and walk away..... But Austin did not want to add anything like that to the sim. *shrug*, I can understand that, I'm just playing it as a game but it's *most* useful as an aerodynamic modeler, or in cases like logging time where you don't WANT to speed it up. Can we get a mod to mod down the "mod parent down" post please?
noooooooo no it doesn't. I went to the link immediately afterward and it does not contain a trojan horse, it contains the best consumer/prosumer flight sim available. Which has been FAA certified to get instrument, commercial, and air transport certificates.
Slashdot Mirror
1. Everything in source control. Everything.
... they have needed expertise, and no one else can learn it on schedule. ... someone else is leaving. ... you JUST shipped the last version and have plenty of time to bring the new folks up to speed.
1.1 Source control on RAID.
1.2 Occasional offsite backups.
2. Get everyone on the same page as far as who's going to do what, and how the parts will talk to each other, before anybody writes a line of code.
3. Never add manpower unless:
3.1
3.2
3.3
4. (This is a more personal-level tip) No AIM, no IRC, no email while coding.
5. Use Ruby. Or Python, even.
It only requires a few billion USD to develop drug lines... I'm sure there is plenty of non-profit, non-patent money to fund that, and so we can do away with the entire patent system.
When I read this line I stopped, and thought I'd misinterpreted your entire post, and you were being very gravely and blackly satiric. Then I realized you were serious, and that made me sad.
Who the hell will give anybody a few BILLION DOLLARS to develop something with no chance of recouping it? You might raise a couple ten million, sure. A billion dollars is so much money... I bet no single non-commercial research & development project has ever raised that much in history. Billion dollar budgets are what the DOD gives to skunkworks.
Though, as another poster commented, we could just nationalize Roche. That would arguably solve the problem. As well as slash the money they waste on marketing.
I hate it when corporations do this. If they charged a fair amount, everyone would gladly work with them. Africa would buy their AIDS drugs. Taiwan would buy their bird flu vaccine. Everybody would be happy, especially Roche, who would be raking in huge amounts of money from many sovereign nations.
Instead, by setting unreasonable terms, they get nothing. We're talking about Taiwan here, they've got plenty of money; if they won't meet Roche's terms, it's not because they can't, it's because the terms are ridiculous.
The real loser here is Roche, not for enforcing their patent, but for pig-headedly refusing to negotiate fair terms.
For "not significantly better than" in first paragraph, read that doing anything special in the case that a high bidder raises their maximum is not significantly better than doing nothing.
Oh, and I totally forgot. eBay has SELLERS TOO! For the tiny amount this hurts buyers, it HELPS SELLERS, to whom eBay has just as much loyalty and responsibility. Unless anybody wishes to complain that eBay is prejudiced toward sellers (in contradiction to the obvious time and effort put into the rest of the system to make it equitable), there's now officially nothing whatsoever with this maximum bid thing.
Kindly consider this comment as part of parent when modding ^_^
This is not "price gouging". This is nothing evil on eBay's part. So what if they get an extra cent from whatever small fraction of auctions in which this occurs? They didn't do this for the money, they did it because it was easier and not significantly better than any other way.
There's a lot of discussion here about whether or not increasing your maximum ought to constitute a new bid. eBay decided when they implemented the bidding system that it would. It was strictly an implementation question Odds are the people on the business end never comprehended such a distinction could exist.
Think about the bidding system. Each auction has a list of bids associated with it. If eBay is implemented with a relational database backend, they have a (very very large) table of bids. The table has columns for all the necessary info about a bid (auction it's connected to, user who made the bid, maximum value, time it was bid). When somebody bids, a new row is created in the table of bids. The question is what happens in the abstract case of "raising one's maximum". Let's look at this more practically.
"Raising one's maximum" is defined as entering a bid in an auction where one is already the maximum bidder. Simply determining if this is the case requires answering a few questions:
- Who is the winning user, and how large is their bid?
- Is the user making this bid that user? (I.e., is the current user already the winner).
- Is the new bid's maximum greater than the previous maximum (the previous winning bid)
Depending on how eBay is implemented, this may result in another database query. It probably won't, but it's certainly additional CPU time and complexity. The engineers may have decided not to write this special case, to save a little bit of computation. (And when you have as many bids per second as eBay does, it definitely helps.)In the absence of the special case as above, a new bid by the winning bidder is treated precisely the same as a new bid by a non-winning bidder -- i.e., it can be no lower than the next increment above the current price.
IANAL, and I don't know what legally constitutes "price gouging" or whatever the exact charges in the suit are... but this certainly doesn't seem to have any merit.
In conclusion, this was not an evil move on eBay's part. They're not trying to make a buck off anybody (they're already succeeding beyond anybody's wildest, most avaricious dreams at doing exactly that). This behavior is logical, documented, and most likely the product of an implementation decision. Case has no merit... wouldn't it be nice if for once the judge saw it that way too?
Gee, doesn't that just mean they published a phone book? They do it every year...
I don't know about you, but I never thought staring at a box counted as "socializing." The excerpt mentioned following-up to email... that's at least interpersonal communication. It seems the choice of "socializing" as a label for "everything besides computers" was chosen simply to make a more inflammatory headline.
No, I did not RTFA. Happy New Year.
Monkeys cannot enter into contracts, for obvious reasons.
But if you never agree to the EULA (by attaching a valid signature (that is, not a monkey's)), you're not allowed to use the software. So what's the point?
The objective isn't to avoid EULAs, it's to understand them.
Then why isn't the university protecting its trademark against sites like, say, UCSDguardian.org, sandiegoccc.org/UCSD, UCSDcycling.org, and so forth?
2) Since when can a corporation trademark a building? They can trademark their stylized rendering of it, certainly. But they have zero authority or rationale to prevent anyone from using their own photograph of a building.
Why does a university need to protect its trademark? Is it afraid of losing business? Yeah, I'm going to write out my tuition check to ucsdfacebook.com because I confused the two. The intent of a trademark is to protect a corporation's identity and the branding symbols they do business under. A university doesn't do business in the same way a typical corporation does. UCSD doesn't have a 'brand' to protect, so why should they be allowed to enforce their trademarks against someone who's clearly not directly competing in business with them (youcsd)
-a UCSD student
...old news
Technological advantage alone is as worthless to a country as genius alone is to an individual.
And we don't have the technological advantage. That was one of the OP's main points.
Look around. Look at China, Japan, Taiwan, Korea. Look at Germany, Sweden, France. Cutting-edge technology.
Look at our aging powerplants and their aging fuels. Look at our absurdly low rates of broadband penetration, and the "digital divide." Look at our cities. Cripes, look at our cars! (And no, SUVs with every option, feature, and in-dash gewgaw are not "technologically advanced" compared to hybrids and SULEV compacts) Look at our, ha ha, our "education" system, hah!
The best and brightest come to get their PhDs in the US. Then the ones with vision and ability see what a cesspool of a country they're in, and go back home to get something accomplished.
w00t ucsd!
I'm class of 2008. How's the coverage? I'm in Sixth, where the dorms and quad are wireless, and I've heard ERC's new dorms have coverage... but how is the rest of campus?
Gee, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't collisions like this absolutely inevitable?
You have many bits of data becoming fewer bits of data. There WILL BE collisions.
What does this REALLY mean about the strength of the algorithm, though? In one possible instance, a file could be changed in a very particular way that could theoretically result in a non-nonsensical modification to the source while the hash remained the same. Does this mean the algorithm is "broken"?! No.
Or, if it DOES mean the algorithm was broken, then it was broken since it was dreamed up in some mathematician's mind.
Nobody cares how many Linux apps you ship with your distro. You're not being anticompetitive by doing so. The distro maker doesn't make any money one way or another. Those who write the software that gets included don't make any more. Those who write software that doesn't get included don't lose anything.
The problem with Microsoft including software with Windows was that they were making a decision as to whose products would be used and whose would not which would then bring in more or less money to those companies. Microsoft decided which companies lived or died, and that was too much power.
Distro packagers have nowhere near Microsoft's dominance... and "living" or "dying" in the F/OSS world simply means somebody will be happy or disappointed with his pet project's uptake by the community. Nobody's jobs are at stake, nor anybody's precious "shareholder value."
This is awfully puzzling to me. Real wanted access to the iPod's DRM. Which would allow their content to work on iPods. Which would sell more iPods. It certainly wouldn't hurt iPod sales a bit... Real would be a weak competitor far behind the iTunes Music Store ----- which makes no profit, and whose sole purpose for existence is to sell more iPods!
On the other hand, outright refusing the deal is going to drive Real to Microsoft. Either they actually ask Microsoft to use WMA DRM, or they try to roll their own solution, get marginalized, and M$ buys the mout down the line. Either way, Microsoft needs no more help at all to compete against Apple in this arena. Billy Gates is just getting warmed up for this next great chapter of the titanic struggle that started in 1985, and Apple needs all the allies it can get.
I can't understand why any rational executive WOULDN'T agree to a deal of this nature. I can't understand why any rational executive would just plain slam the door on Real. But I suppose I can understand why Steve Jobs would.
This is yet another example of Steve's hubris, his greatest flaw. It's burned Apple before and it'll burn Apple again. Steve already pulled a Phoenix in 1998. Let's hope he doesn't have to do it again.
the vehicle is down, in the water.
Matrix series started off excellent with the first movie, but Reloaded was crap and Revolutions was just a normal regular movie really.
OTOH, LotR started awesome and got awesomer, TTT > FotR and RotK > TTT. I think the three of them are one of the best film series ever made, up there with (or above) the original Star Wars.
Are you listening, Academy?
When was the last time you were in a physics class that used video demos? For me, it was last Wednesday.
In a typical physics classroom, can you
-drop a pair of iron balls of differing weights from ten stories up?
-fire a rifle through a pair of sensors to find the bullet's velocity? (Think again - guns and school don't mix, even when it's a benign demonstration like this. I hate overprotective conservatives. But I digress...)
-do simple collision and action/reaction experiments in zero-G?
You can do all of those and more with video presentations.
Is it less "real" than if we did it ourselves in the classroom? Yes. Is it better than nothing, which is what we'd have otherwise? Yes.
Video in the classroom, as well as computers, is a tool to help teach. It's not a substitute for teaching, and it should be used correctly. Too often administrators are throwing out needless requirements that students will know how to use computers, and teachers are misinterpreting that and misteaching by requiring needless use of PowerPoint, or the internet, or whatever the fad of the week is. But the computer is just a tool, and throwing laptops at fourth-graders isn't going to accomplish anything but burn money that could be used for better things.
Better yet than XML... bundles!!!
.rtfd files on NeXT and Mac OS X. They're basically super-RTF files. They are actually a folder ending with .rtfd that the operating system presents to the user as a single file (for mere aesthetic and encapsulation reasons). They contain an RTF file and all the non-RTF resources (images, sounds, etc) that are embedded in the document as separate files in their own formats. I believe images are saved as TIFF by default.
:)
Go research
So why not combine open XML document formats and rtfd-style bundles! A complex document is really a folder full of files, but it appears to the user as a single file. This makes it easy to move around, esp from computer to computer, and presents a nice sensible metaphor to the user. It's also difficult to screw things up by messing with the components (but it is possible to get into the bundle if you need to). Inside these complex documents is an XML file that describes the components of the document. Then there are files that contain the components, in whatever (open) format you wish. RTF or OpenOffice or whatever for text, Ogg sounds, PNG or SVG images, CSV or more complex spreadsheet/table formats, all the fonts the document needs, etc.
One of the replies to the parent addressed the issue of pixel-exact rendering. That's easy - just use the same rendering engine everywhere! All Gecko browsers render exactly the same everywhere (assuming the same fonts are available). So just use a single homogenous rendering engine everywhere. (And include fonts in the document bundle).
I sure hope some brilliant application-software engineer reads this!
(Final note: Another, more risky option would be to provide an API for rendering modules written in some suitable language, which would then be included in the bundle. You want to render, say, Maya IFF images? Include the IFF renderer in the bundle. Of course great security precautions would need to be taken, and optimally the rendering modules would have access to nothing outside the document-world, and preferably only a buffer to draw into and layout above them would be managed by the program. This has been tried before, I think. But maybe its time has come?)
It seems like the objections to RFID everywhere are that people can track your purchases, movements, personal possessions, etc etc etc. They can do this because they can read the RFID tag and figure out what it is - the RFID tag in your driver's license card announces it's a driver's license card for John Doe, the RFID tag in the Benneton shirt you just bought says it's a Benneton shirt, etc.
:)
What if RFID tags provided a single GUID, and no more? Kind of like a MAC address, but a bigger name space. So your driver's license says it has tag number 123456789123456789, and your shirt says it's number 147258369147258369. And that's all.
Each entity that puts RFID tags in things maintains its own list of what tag number goes into what item. This list would be shared (not openly) with other entities that need to correlate items and tags. RFID tag scanners can be connected with WiFi or similar back to a server at each company/entity which will store all the correlations between tag number and item.
So Benneton makes a shirt and puts tag number 123 in it. Benneton shares their list that maps id->item with Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart puts the list into their Big Ol' RFID Server. The RFID scanner at the checkout sees number 123, asks the Wal-mart server, which says it's a Benneton shirt.
Depending on how much traffic it would cause, it might be more secure to make Wal-Mart's checkout box check with Benneton's RFID info server, BUT that could cause problems if e.g. Benneton goes out of business; not to mention great amounts of traffic.
On first glance, this system would be just as secure from the vendor's point of view as UPCs. In fact, it's easier to fake a UPC than an RFID. The only risks would be if the databases were to fall into the hands of nefarious evildoers - and so exchanges of tag to item mapping information would have to be regulated, and there would have to be some way (PKI-based?) to ensure that the information requester is who they claim to be. (So that some dork with an RFID scanner doesn't claim to be a police officer and get your driver's license info from the DMV's tag info server)
K, I'm just throwing this out there, feel free to tear it apart.
Can you build the proprietary code as a separate library that builds upon the public framework? Then open-source the lower framework and keep the proprietary code closed. Thinking of an analogy... ah! Open-source the C standard library, but build libgif on top of it and keep libgif closed-source. The application may or may not be amenable to vertical splitting like this; this just looks like the easiest way with the least paperwork & red tape. Not two codebases - two projects.
I totally agree with that, except that I've asked several times for a time-speedup or distance-compression feature. Currently to make an 8 hour cross-country haul, you have to actually have the sim run for 8 hours. Of coruse you can put it on autopilot and walk away..... But Austin did not want to add anything like that to the sim. *shrug*, I can understand that, I'm just playing it as a game but it's *most* useful as an aerodynamic modeler, or in cases like logging time where you don't WANT to speed it up. Can we get a mod to mod down the "mod parent down" post please?
noooooooo no it doesn't. I went to the link immediately afterward and it does not contain a trojan horse, it contains the best consumer/prosumer flight sim available. Which has been FAA certified to get instrument, commercial, and air transport certificates.
http://www.x-plane.com/ 'nuff said.