The word SCO is in danger of becoming a synonym for sue. Some thing like "Oh yeah, well I am going to SCO your ass off, buddy" Sorta like google became a standardized verb.
I'm sorry but you got it wrong, SCO is only a synonym for stupid baseless litigation, as in: "I heard their suing you", "nah their only SCOing us".
I know as a college student that a quiet atmosphere while doing work is valuable. The question for most would be, is it $1,400 worth. I *know* that I could not afford that while trying to pay tuition, renting a house, and feeding myself. Somethings are necessary, and some are just...not. Now, if someone gave that to me as a gift or something, no way i would complain:)
What nonsense I used to be a uni student, and I can assure you the most valuable thing as a student is a decent racket in the back ground, something that sounded enough like conditions when I first learned to study, in mums kitchen with 4 sisters and 2 brothers.:-D
Seriously though I simply find it easier to study/work in noise, I use the tv mostly, I have learned to work in quiet if I must, but it's always harder, as a uni student I could never work in the library, too quiet, *shudder*, it all depends on what you're used to, in the future when I have kids I plan to teach them to work in noise, the "I need it to be so quiet" thing is so suboptimal.
Same with Computers I like them to pur a bit, I hate the thought of silent computers *shudder*, Ugg Long Live Fan noise
Stallman asserts that "non-free software carries with it an antisocial system that prohibits coopoeration and community." This is MOST certainly overstating the importance of software's influence on each person's ability to cooperate and experience community. And I assert that this is where the open source movement fails. While open source software promotes cooperation and community for the developers involved in its creation, it doesn't attempt to build community by creating more user friendly tools. The general popluation doesn't care about the right to see the source code, most of the users of computers can't do any thing with the code any way. Open source project managers and developers need to better consider their end users. End users are not always other programmers, some are teachers, doctors, lawyers, engineers, housewives, grandparents. Usability must extend into high quality instructional programs that provide the information at the user's fingertips. Job aids and other electronic performance support tools that address the needs of the non-developer community will do more to foster cooperation and community between the developers and their users. After all what good is any application free or not without a high probability of end user acceptance?
No he's right, one hundred million percent right, yes we could have wider community, involving the wider community of FOSS users, but the FOSS documentation movement, addresses this, as does the EFF, GrokLaw, Creative Commons and many, many more, if you know of another hole in the community, well start organising and fill it.
In any case RMS is right the FOSS developers freedom, is the necessary basis of the freedom, for every one else, unless the developers have this freedom, all the other freedoms are stifled.
God bless Richard Stallman for giving us GNU.
God Bless Linus Torvalds for making it usable.
Indeed I'd have to agree with you entirely there. And thanks to the antics of various companies out there, over the last couple of years, I've come from a position of not fully agreeing with what RMS said in that article, to the point now where I now agree 2000%.
The propriety software moguls should look to their strategy, in their narrow attempts to just grab bucks, even if software quality and other issues, such as user freedom, suffer, their loosing more and more people. But then I no longer want them to get a clue, as I want people to get the point, to radicalise and join the FOSS cause.
Call me crazy, but I'm glad we've got a choice of desktop environments. Not to knock the KDE folks, but I happen to prefer GNOME. If desktops were to somehow "unify," and that meant all we had left was KDE, I'd be more than a bit peeved. I'm sure there are plenty of other people who'd feel the same if GNOME were to disappear so that KDE could be the one true desktop environment.
If that means that some apps won't be completely integrated with my dekstop, I'm fine with that. I'd rather have the choices I have now than be forced to use a desktop environment I don't like.
Hmmmmm hang on if I call you crazy, then I have to call myself Crazy, Ok in that case you're Crazy, Like Man you're completely NUTS. Ah that feels better, I'd hate to think too many people thought I was sane:-D.
Seriously but, I totally agree with you, I've always found these sort of stories weird, I don't want only one desktop environment, mostly I prefer Gnome, but sometime for a change I'll use KDE for a bit, I also like having all them others, basically we need competition, and I believe that in the long run only other FOSS desktops will provide this, to my mind Widows no longer provides any real competition or Idea's, as for Mac OS X, (I know this is blasphemy:-D) but well it really provides little that I would care to call completion, and soon the FOSS offerings will be so far ahead of them, that they will never have a hope of catching us.
If we want to keep the standard moving we will need to compete amongst ourselves, also I just like changing now and again, and choice is good.
At least for the moment, a medium that was hailed as the ultimate venue for education and self-improvement is mired in the age-old conflict between the salesman who wants his foot in the door, no matter what, and the angry person who wants nothing more than to be left alone.
I just need to slam the door hard breaking the mongrels foot:-D, now how can I do similar to those spammers.
Any CD that is sold containing email addresses invariably has some that work, but the vast majority are just generated. I once knew someone (and I no longer communicate with that person) who insisted that spam was the only way to sell his products. He paid $400 to some marketing company, and they sold him a CD with a million addresses. He asked me to look at it, and my conclusions were that he got ripped off. He didn't want to believe me, but the sheer number of addresses that were obviously generated proved to me that someone had written a quick script to create addresses. A good portion of the addresses were also old-school, with lots of "71532.4532@compuserve.com" type addresses.
Spammers aren't just evil for selling addresses, they are evil for making up about 3/4 of the ones that they do sell, and anyone who buys a CD with email addresses on it should be aware of that.
Why would this be a surprise. All spammers are basically criminals, consider the essence of criminality is, that the criminal is some one who takes an immoral sort cut towards wealth/income, which is exactly what a spammer is doing, so in essence they are criminals, even if the law where they live doesn't specify this yet. I suggest some additions to the
rules:
Rule #4: All spammers are morally compromised/challenged.
Rule #5: All spammers are criminals, even if the law where they live doesn't specify this yet.
In one respect I'd sad that such a law has to be passed... What kind of idiot would use his laptop while driving? but then what kind of idiot reads a bok while driving, watches TV while driving, puts on MAKEUP WHILE DRIVING????
we all must remember.... over 50% of the population has an IQ below 100. so I guess such laws need to protect the rest of us from the complete morons that are just a inch away from being drooling idiots. now we have to deal with the retards that drive BMW's 3 inches form the rear bumber. why is it that the more you spend on your car the smaller your brain get's behind the wheel?
ummm by definition of IQ exactly 50% are above and 50% are below.
Definition of IQThe average IQ of the population as a whole is, by definition 50.
With more and more scientific advancements in ex-third world countries, I'm starting to wonder if this is the often predicted end of Western civilization.
The Western countries have lost their population advantage long ago - there are much more Chinese and Indians than Europeans and Americans.
The military advantage is already gone in thecase of e.g. France or UK or is already decreasing like e.g. US and Germany.
The industrial advantage is also gone: most industrial consumer products are not produced in Western countries these days leading to the huge trade deficit of the US.
What is remaining is the technological advantage.
However, India and China are catching up.
The US has traditional 2 strategies to keep this advantage:
. Sucking brillant minds out of 3rd world countries by getting them into the US via e.g. graduate schools.
. Blocking advancement in 3rd world countries by covering every rubbish with patents.
However, both strategies are failing these days:
Foreign graduates from India and China are in fact returning to htheir home countries. By this they are exporting the US technology there and creating unbeatable (cost !) conpetitors to US businesses.
With reducing importance of the US in the world China and other countries are less and less willing to accept the US patent dictatorship - killing the exploiting by IP strategy of the US.
Bush tries to cover these facts by made up wars in the middle east. But the Iraq war wouldn't last forever and the US public will be forced to face their bleak future.
Proud owner of a Mensa membership card.
Well that's about the level of intellectual achievement I've come to expect of a Mensa member, for all you're elitism you guys are never too bright are you, western civilisation is not failing, this is the day of our greatest triumph, we have are now witnessing the birth of a truly global civilisation, and we the west have the honour of being the civilisation that made it possible, the new civilisation will subsume the west, as it will subsume all human civilisation, but that is not failure nor the end of us, it's a new beginning, a new civilisation is born which will contain us all, it's culture will be the sum of all our cultures, it's technology the sum of all our technologies.
But I can see how a member of an elitist organisation like Mensa would view this death and failure, you believe that success is about keeping it all to yourself, being the elite who've got it and can look down on those who have not, egalitarianism is anathema to you, you see the trend towards a more equal sharing of the benefit's of advanced technology, as failure and death to those who once had it all to themselves, but in truth it is the ultimate victory, we have the honour to have given much too the world, hopefully this makes up for our past sins of enslaving and abusing so many.
Yeah I know I'll be modded down for not being nice to this troll, but sorry I have to say this, I'm a Dutch Australian (born in Australia of Dutch parents), and as such my culture teaches me to hate elitism, and the parents whole post is rife with elitism, and no surprise the sig eludes to membership of the worlds most quintessentially elitist organisation, Mensa, well as far as I'm concerned Mensa members deserve all they get, fancy being so unprincipled as to join those toe rags, I would be so ashamed if I was a Mensa member, thank GOD I am too principled, too intelligent, and too lacking in pompous egotism to ever have joined thats society of total Scum.
The Author of the parent post, should be totally ashamed of himself, but I'm sure being a Mensa member he/she is too mind numbingly stupid for that.
Here's the funny thing about the accent issue: call centers have been outsourcing to India for years. Aside from saving money, 24-7 operations find it useful to have a call center where the time's half a day ahead of the U.S.
So why don't you hear a lot of people complaining that their airline or credit card company customer reps can't talk good American? Because there are plenty of well-educated Indians who speak fluent western English. All they need is a little practice on their idioms and pronunciation, and you can't tell them from a native of Duluth. Not over the phone anyway.
So it's perfectly possible to run an operation out of Bangalore or Dehli without communication problems. And yet you hear all these horror stories. I have a few myself: I subscribe to techwr-l, and we often get lame questions from Indian writers, usually basic grammatical stuff even a American 4th grader or a Slashdot editor would know.
My inference is that the companies driving the offshoring trend aren't satisified with the pay differential between San Jose and Bangalore. So they don't hire people with degrees from India's universities or engineering schools. (Which produce a lot of good people -- I've worked with some of them.) They hire folks whose educational achievements culminated in one of those "learn programming in 2 weeks" schools. Their English is hard to follow, not because of their accents, but because its one of the highly-localized English dialects that Indians use amongst themselves.
What can I say, I'm sorry but, that is just such a load of rubbish, I could point you to four or five Indians right now who have appalling accents, and grammar, which you would find murder to understand, all of them have Phd's some in Mathematics, some in Physics, some in Computer Science, all brilliant, so forget that crap about all well educated Indians having good English, thats the biggest load of rubbish I have ever heard.
Now that we have languages such as Perl and Python, much of shell scripting has been forgotten.
I for one still use shell scripts all the time, thats the reason I hate Csh/Tcsh and family their grammar is broken, scripting in them is fairly crappy, as I remember all too well. For some things shell scripts are just better, easier and more scalable, I use the right tool for the right job mostly, never use python it's no begin, {/end, { syntax sux majorly.
All these years of people whining how X is no good, chuck it away, (kick, kick, kick the developers while their down), now you're all scared of loosing X
Sorry but it serves you right you rotten mongrel's:-D.
Sun should have invited us GCC developers also to help out with this because most of us want a way to do Inter modular optimizations but we have the FSF looking over our shoulder on how we implement it, right now (the mainline) you have to compile all the source files at the same time to get IMA to work correctly and you have to say to produce an.o file first.
hmmm would the intermediate form you use in gcc work for this, how high level is it, and what is in the.o file I always thought machine code.
What I hope is that Sun takes a good, long look at the only intermediate assembly that has been designed with language neutrality in mind, Parrot. While this article is over 2 years old, it's a decent starting point. Parrot has already been used to implement rudimentary versions of Perl 5, Perl 6, Python, Java, Scheme and a number of other languages. The proof of concept is done, and Sun could start with a wonderfully advanced next generation byte code language if they can avoid dismissing Parrot as, "a Perl thing" with their usual distain for things "not of Sun".... IBM on the other hand is usally more open to good ideas.
Nah. we put that in to not scare people. Parrot is, for all intents and purposes, completely independent from Perl 6 and has been for ages. (well before that article was written). While we're going to put in anything we need to make perl 6 run on parrot, the same can be said of anything we need to run Python and Ruby. (Which has already happened, FWIW) The only difference is that Matz and Guido haven't asked for anything yet...
Ummmm how does Parrot go at being compiled to real machine code, without that it's not even a contender in my book, the article you link to say it's for dynamic languages "we'd like Parrot to become a 'common language runtime' for dynamic languages", I personally would only be interested if it was for both dynamic and non-dynamic languages.
I wouldn't use it unless it could be used as a step in the process of compiling a C/C++ program, and produce code at least as fast as gcc, would. But if it can do that, then I would suggest that SUN just pitch in and help make Parrot the standard their looking for.
We've already established that moderate proficiency in a high-level language with a good optimizing compiler is worth far more than mastery of assembly in today's environment, what with the size and scope of most programming tasks nowadays. Creating an intermediate language seems to couple the worst inefficiencies of high-level programming and assembly micromanagement: something akin to writing 'machine code' directly for a Java VM to optimize your application instead of just writing the darn thing in C, compiling it to the three platforms it's going to run on, and getting a 300% speed boost.
What's wrong with making a good compiler that writes directly to machine code? I would think Cray and IBM would be even more inclined to do so, given their control over the hardware their software will run on.
So, one of the ideas behind C# was to make an intermediate laguage (MS-Java-byte-code, if you will) which could be quickly compiled for the CPU in question. Stick a system call envrionment and garbage collector around it and you have [roughly] what C# is. One of the nice things about Java was that it was for no specific machine... it was very very simple at the instruction level, but making native code from that can be a pain.
Now, from the looks of the posted article some folks now want an intermediate laguage that can represent concepts like instruction vectorization and maybe SMP (hypter threading) and perhaps some other more complicated constructs that Java's machine code just doesn't talk about.
The end result is that you would have very fast machine code for the number-crunching loops in the code and portability. The compile time would be fairly quick and the optimization for the local CPU would be "smart" and fast if you marked up what where vectorizable instructions.
Why C# falls short, I can't say. I've only looked at the Java machine, never at how C# represets a program.
Hope this is helpful!
Basically if you do this really low level there's no point, for it to be worth anything it would need, to be a sort of slightly higher level assembler, (i.e. like Perl 6's Parrot), basically you go fairly low level, but you still want to abstract away all the machine pacific stuff, and you should support some concepts traditionally thought of as the domain of high level languages, for instance: strings, arrays, hashes/assoc arrays, struct's, functions, and basic object support. This language, can then be supported two ways on all real world architecture's:
You have a runtime interpreter to run it directly.
You have a compiler that can convert it to the machine code of a given machine.
The main issues are: you have are:
Making sure it can be converted fairly rapidly to machine code.
To insure there's not too much penalty in running it in interpreted mode.
Making sure it's a good intermediate target language for a compiler to convert to real machine code.
Making sure it's a good target for an dynamic interpreted language like Perl, Python etc...
If I where them I'd be looking closely at Perl 6's Parrot, and gcc's intermediate machine independent form. I'd also look at allowing interpreted blocks, in the compiled case, so if because of dynamic features in the code a given chunk, cannot, be compiled to real machine code at compile time, you just include a call to the interpreter passing that chunk, of course, there are better ways you could have dynamic stuff in there, (i.e. polymorphism) so this should be a last ditch method.
For this to be worth doing, and in my opinion for it to gain real acceptance, two criterion must be met:
The real machine code that results from a compile must run as fast as any that could be generarted with a target pacific compiler.
Or at the very least must not be orders of magnitude slower. (i.e. there should be no serious penalty).
In the interpreted case it must run reasonable fast.
Given all this it would be worth doing.
Re:source code escrow not very useful
on
Source Code Escrow
·
· Score: 1
If the developer goes out of business, getting the source code by itself is almost always useless: almost no single customer will have the resources to maintain and extend it. Source code is only cost effective if there is a community of users and developers, and that requires releasing the code under an open source license ahead of time.
(For the same reason, Microsoft source code isn't their crown jewels, as they always claim: even if people got access to it, they couldn't develop and maintain it anyway. The main reason Microsoft doesn't want their sources released is probably marketing--the "Coca Cola Secret Formula" gimmick--and the probably embarrassing state of it.)
Another problem with source code escrow agreements is that people don't know whether the code deposited with the agent will even compile or be complete. And the agents themselves disappear or misplace code.
There is always a better solution, it's called Open source software, release it as GPL, and all those problems go away.
The Europeans are as incompetent as the Americunts (naaaaaah!)
There is something on Mars which hates space probes!
Or lets see, Mars could be a harsh planet with rugged terrain.
come on there's no need to get weird, have a good look at some of what we know about Mars, there's more than enough information to indicate that Mars is tricky to land on, and then if things go even a little wrong, there's more than enough to explain how the normal martian environment could destroy a damaged craft.
OpenBSD loses DARPA funding after the agency takes offense at Theo de Raadt's views.
Hmmm I not a BSD'er (for now at least), and I not sure why this is on a Linux Time-line, but still it good to see people not selling their integrity, Good on you Theo. It may have cost you but being a phony to get funding would cost you more.
I'm pretty confused that the timeline ignored all Perl-related advancements in the last year.
Has this something to do with the Perl license or are there other reasons ?
Ummmmm I'd say it's because it's a Linux Time-line, not a Perl Time-line, Perl is great and all, but how does it belong in a give OS's time-line???
Slashdot Mirror
What nonsense I used to be a uni student, and I can assure you the most valuable thing as a student is a decent racket in the back ground, something that sounded enough like conditions when I first learned to study, in mums kitchen with 4 sisters and 2 brothers. :-D
Kick Darl McBride in the nuts, my not help, but hey, always fun :-D
thats SCOumbag indemnification right :-D
No he's right, one hundred million percent right, yes we could have wider community, involving the wider community of FOSS users, but the FOSS documentation movement, addresses this, as does the EFF, GrokLaw, Creative Commons and many, many more, if you know of another hole in the community, well start organising and fill it.
Indeed I'd have to agree with you entirely there. And thanks to the antics of various companies out there, over the last couple of years, I've come from a position of not fully agreeing with what RMS said in that article, to the point now where I now agree 2000%.
Hmmmmm hang on if I call you crazy, then I have to call myself Crazy, Ok in that case you're Crazy, Like Man you're completely NUTS. Ah that feels better, I'd hate to think too many people thought I was sane :-D.
Why would this be a surprise. All spammers are basically criminals, consider the essence of criminality is, that the criminal is some one who takes an immoral sort cut towards wealth/income, which is exactly what a spammer is doing, so in essence they are criminals, even if the law where they live doesn't specify this yet. I suggest some additions to the rules:
http://killaspammerforchrist.com/therules.html :-D, normally Jesus is against kill those that wrong us but maybe he'll make an exception for spammers :-D.
ummm by definition of IQ exactly 50% are above and 50% are below.
Definition of IQThe average IQ of the population as a whole is, by definition 50.
Well that's about the level of intellectual achievement I've come to expect of a Mensa member, for all you're elitism you guys are never too bright are you, western civilisation is not failing, this is the day of our greatest triumph, we have are now witnessing the birth of a truly global civilisation, and we the west have the honour of being the civilisation that made it possible, the new civilisation will subsume the west, as it will subsume all human civilisation, but that is not failure nor the end of us, it's a new beginning, a new civilisation is born which will contain us all, it's culture will be the sum of all our cultures, it's technology the sum of all our technologies.
But I can see how a member of an elitist organisation like Mensa would view this death and failure, you believe that success is about keeping it all to yourself, being the elite who've got it and can look down on those who have not, egalitarianism is anathema to you, you see the trend towards a more equal sharing of the benefit's of advanced technology, as failure and death to those who once had it all to themselves, but in truth it is the ultimate victory, we have the honour to have given much too the world, hopefully this makes up for our past sins of enslaving and abusing so many.
What can I say, I'm sorry but, that is just such a load of rubbish, I could point you to four or five Indians right now who have appalling accents, and grammar, which you would find murder to understand, all of them have Phd's some in Mathematics, some in Physics, some in Computer Science, all brilliant, so forget that crap about all well educated Indians having good English, thats the biggest load of rubbish I have ever heard.
All these years of people whining how X is no good, chuck it away, (kick, kick, kick the developers while their down), now you're all scared of loosing X
Sorry but it serves you right you rotten mongrel's :-D.
Ummmm how does Parrot go at being compiled to real machine code, without that it's not even a contender in my book, the article you link to say it's for dynamic languages "we'd like Parrot to become a 'common language runtime' for dynamic languages", I personally would only be interested if it was for both dynamic and non-dynamic languages.
I spent all day trying to fix the oven, after some script kiddies cracked it.
Basically if you do this really low level there's no point, for it to be worth anything it would need, to be a sort of slightly higher level assembler, (i.e. like Perl 6's Parrot), basically you go fairly low level, but you still want to abstract away all the machine pacific stuff, and you should support some concepts traditionally thought of as the domain of high level languages, for instance: strings, arrays, hashes/assoc arrays, struct's, functions, and basic object support. This language, can then be supported two ways on all real world architecture's:
The main issues are: you have are:
To insure there's not too much penalty in running it in interpreted mode.
If I where them I'd be looking closely at Perl 6's Parrot, and gcc's intermediate machine independent form. I'd also look at allowing interpreted blocks, in the compiled case, so if because of dynamic features in the code a given chunk, cannot, be compiled to real machine code at compile time, you just include a call to the interpreter passing that chunk, of course, there are better ways you could have dynamic stuff in there, (i.e. polymorphism) so this should be a last ditch method.
Or lets see, Mars could be a harsh planet with rugged terrain.