So if you generate code that works -- do you really want to generate code that doesn't work the next time you point and click?
Why is it different for masterpieces? What notes do you change in a masterpiece to make it better? If there are a "set of masterpieces" that can exist because certain notes can be varied withing certain parameters, why is it not practical to vary those, programatically, each time the piece is played?
That way you can ensure each playing is a masterpiece withing the parameters that define that masterpiece and there will be no playings that will be outside the bounds of 'a masterpiece' (as defined for that work).
>What if our autobahn, like the German Autobahn, prohibited passing on the right, thus[sic] > making the far right lane the slowest lane and [sic] the far left lane the fastest lane, > eliminating large differences in speed between adjacent lanes of traffic?
---- How does slowing down the entire highway to stay behind the visitors traveling 30MPH in the far left [fast] lane help anything?
That's simply unworkable. As long as you have police who prioritize giving _speeding_ tickets over ticketing for violating the state LAW of "slower traffic stays right", this won't work.
I've never seen nor heard of anyone getting a ticket for not moving over to the right when they are going too slow. It's a state law which is never enforced. The situation may be influenced by the fact that increasingly, many traffic laws are created with a profit motive in mind, and have little or nothing to do with public safety. THAT should be illegal...but hey..it is capitalism at work -- if there isn't a law against using the legal system to make money, you can bet that the various levels of government will start using the legal system to make money.
schools are primarily for those who evaluate based on your possession of a "pass" from the school. Online schools will almost never let you skip classes, because usually, their only income is from those who pay -- and if you skip, then that means 1) they get less money for granting you a 'degree', and 2) the over-all value of their degree (measured in $$ to get degree) becomes less.
If they all too many people to get degree too cheaply, degree becomes too easy to get and becomes worth less. You might find that you could proficiency through 90% of their program -- and their $10K+ degree program is now only gonna cost you $600 + materials... That wouldn't mess up their system.
Conventional schools *sometimes* offer proficiency exams to pass through lower level course. They have a mixed incentive. Since part of their income comes from governments, they are often paid, "per-seat-term", with "term"=(1 if attendance >90%; 0 if attendance 90%). Notice how that part of the equation is only based on attendance, and not based on grades. In this sense conventional schools are paid for being babysitters for undertrained "persons". They aren't really (as far as I can tell) given alot of incentive to actually educate the students. Free market doesn't work because there is usually little or no competition for conventional schools -- they often have a semi-monopoly in their geographic market, though freedom may be granted to adults to attend out of their geographic region depending on local rules and situation.
Conventional schools do have a charter to serve students -- which means they usually create turnover by creating time limits within which you have to graduate, but some have no such requirement or incentive. Depends on school.
In either case, they don't really have any incentive to actually teach you anything. It's not required. You are just required to fulfill your "educational"[sic] institution's requirements.
Evaluators -- such as future employers use your being able to complete those requirements as a rough-yard stick of competency, when you have no other measures, or when other measures/assessments are hard to evaluate or compare.
Obviously, real learning, is a 'self-discipline'. It *CAN* occur at a school -- and if you are lucky course requirements will assist you and make it difficult to not learn, while completing them -- but this is 'luck' based primarily on teacher. As for support by the institution, what does the institute offer to support the instructor? Can he hold students back? Can he fail 30%? Will he? If he does, is he at fault? How is this assessed? [Good luck in determining an objective answer to that!]...
Meanwhile, you have to determine whether you are disciplined enough to learn in a vacuum. Having other people to bounce ideas off of is useful, only if you get a chance to bounce ideas off of other people. If you have no interactions with people, then a classroom experience (including virtual) is of questionable benefit). Indeed, a virtual classroom could include virtual students, that ask common (but real questions) taken from real world classrooms. They could ask these questions on a classroom virtual whiteboard, where student's ask their questions and everyone in the classroom sees the questions -- so whether someone really asks important questions or not, the virtual shill/students could to make it look like someone was paying attention and someone is asking questions that might make you think -- and to encourage others to ask questions.
Until schools and educators can have some financial incentive for for your actual learning, any learning, by you, will be a side product of the system.
Mark Jaquith wrote an excellent[sic] [one-sided] technical analysis....
He forgot an important point in proving his theory.
If you come up with an exception to the theory it disproves the theory -- no matter how well you think it should be true.
If I design a 'theme creator' that creates themes and has a Wordpress extension that creates wordpress themes -- does that mean if someone uses my theme creator and creates a theme for wordpress that it is automatically open sourced? I don't think so.
If I look at the wordpress, and write a spec. Have someone else write a functional equivalent, then we have an editor that can create themes compatible with wordpress that have never touched wordpress.
The fact that this doesn't currently exist, I believe is someone moot -- it proves the point that the code itself by virtue of being compatible with an "algorithm" - isn't copyrightable. Algorithms are patentable - but the Gnu copyright wouldn't apply.
IF they do not copy the code, but even if they look at the source to design algorithm compatible devices that can function when hooked up to wordpress,
His argument that the code creates changes in wordpress could apply to a C program using Gnu C specific macros.
It makes changes in the compiler and how it will function -- doesn't that mean that the program -- which can't function apart from the Gnu C compiler is now a derivative work?
I think that case is fairly well been decided that it is not.
He even goes so far as to use Linux Kernel modules as an example of things that are covered by the Gnu license -- except for the ones that aren't -- which he didn't mention. The question becomes -- is the wordpress plugin interface 'published', or does one need intimate familiarity with the internals...that might be the deciding issue -- UNTIL, someone such a spec is published OR someone writes a utility that generates compatible themes.
I think wordpress has a low-middle strength legal argument to enforce this and it could really depend on who has the better lawyer -- except for the specific case of the developer who admitted wholesale copying...that's pretty much a slam-dunk.
That all said --- my general feeling is that the plugins/themes really should follow the spirit of wordpress and be available without charge -- to do otherwise is insulting and a bit of a slap in the face to the wordpress developer, on some level. It's just poor taste, at the very least, even though legally, you might have some leg to stand on if you don't copy code, that is...
I'm NOT convinced that something being compatible "only with X" makes it a "derivative of X" in any legal sense. It would be a redefinition of a derived worked in a legal sense that I'm not aware of any substantial precedence for.
Everyone is focusing on government crackdown on hackers...but no one is focusing on standard reasons -- like how does government pay compare to what the person might earn in the private sector?
Ok, now ask -- how much has the government done to cultivate love for country in the past quarter century? How about patriotism? No...paying people to snitch on their neighbors is not considered something that builds loyalty to country.
Ok...now put the pay item into perspective.... What are the pay and job prospects for software types, in general in the US -- compared to say, 15 years ago?
Add all that up...ignore the curiosity=jail trip... standard job market indicators would tend to say this type of job isn't going to be a big attractor these days...
Now add the curiosity=jail nonsense and get tough on US-citizens/war on US citizens rhetoric that is so popular with the conservatives that have been in power for most of the past 30 years (the Reagan generation, 1980 and beyond).
The dominant paradigm is to keep voters and consumers stupid. Education is *bad* -- since percentage wise, the more educated people are, the more likely they are to have liberal or progressive views. Not a bright prospect for American future -- at least not for the majority -- for those who run the big Corps, the landscape looks brighter and brighter...
I doubt I'll live long enough to see the worst of it, or a turnaround...
Have you ever heard of Firefox? AdBlock? NoScript?
Stop your whining and choose a solution.
Don't say you don't have a choice.
You do -- and right now, you are choosing your popups and ads and redirect problems.
They aren't many, but when I see people complain about ad-block and popups on articles -- and then read about people talking about nobody using addblock or noscript I gotta wonder -- what's wrong with these people.
Besides -- both firefox and IE block popups in the browser. What type of lame browser are you using that doesn't block popups?
Anyone using Firefox that I know, in 'IT' or not, uses Adblock -- and maybe 1 of those didn't use noscript because of the hassle -- at least until they asked me to clear off their last virus. Funny thing -- since installing noscript and Firefox, they don't seem to have problems with viruses anymore....
How does this slow a program down if the CPU GHZ are the same?
As for shutting down 2 cores shutting off 4MB of core -- unless went backward on their design with 6 core design, in their latest 4 core design, all 4 cores could utilize any or all of the 8MB of core. It was Intel's first Quad core that was with more restrictions as I believe it was effectively 2 Duals on 1 chip.
So unless intel went backwards on their design -- all 6 cores should be able to access all 12 MB of cache memory so shutting down cores will enable the core to be used by the remainder. Also, in intel's higher end chips, shutting down cores will speed up the rest of the cores -- not be even close to a linear speed up, but if all you want is single processor power, you get close to getting the next stepping up in speed out of 1 core by shutting the rest down -- or such was true of their quad cores. Their latest gen all use lower power -- running 6 cores in nearly the same thermal-wattage envelope as the previous gen's 4 cores.
As soon as you've gone to SMP -- which all modern kernel have, the playing field is pretty much level.
2 core, 4 cores, 8 cores...there is no processor overhead unless you recompile your kernel -- and even then the difference between a few hundred bytes out of a few gigabytes is meaningless.
What the "less-cores-is-good" guys are ignoring is the extra cache you get with more cores.
4 Core systems topped out at 8Meg cache.
6 Core Systems top out at 12 Meg cache.
If you don't use the extra 2 cores -- you can shut them off in the bios -- you get get 4Meg more of program and data cache -- or you can limit your progs at run time to only use the lower 4 cpus...which-ever.
Now who's the first idiot who wants to make the argument that your general singled threaded application won't benefit from.. 6 times the cache?
And um lower clock speed?
4 cores max speed @ 3.2GH (with 8M cache, or 3.4 @ 4M cache).
Now I have 6 cores @ 3.2 and 12M cache and it wasn't the fastest CPU.
You guys should check your figures before you try to make case: FAIL!
I think you aren't seeing what I'm seeing (and maybe vice versa). I ain't nobody's marketing droid -- anti-marketing droid, maybe.
I'm responding to you saying that instead of reading a book, you wanted to be able two write a book on your smartphone (well, a smartphone, since I get that you don't have one), while holding it in one hand using the same hand for input, and putting your other hand in your 'pocket'...(why you need to have one hand in your pocket and be typing with the other, I'll not venture to guess), but write a book that way?? To me, that sounded patently absurd.
Maybe you could use speech input -- but I stated -- what I think you agree with -- that to write a book you'd need two hand and a keyboard to have any speed -- and that as unsuitable as a tablet might be, a smartphone of any type would be a non-starter for most people.
That why I asserted that a no one would want such a primitive interface.
HOWEVER...a tablet isn't the same thing -- for drawing, reading I'd love a light-weight, fast multi-touch & Pen-pressure sensitive input tablet for use in visual arts, *maybe* watching a video -- if it had good battery life and was well suited for viewing in sunlight (thinking of taking it to a park or beach to work outdoors. It should have plenty of memory -- and not worry much about diskspace when undocked -- for docking, either a cradle better -- a flexible long cable to allow 6GB USB3 access to disks or the network. Still think voice would be a good option -- if they can make it as as fast and natural as typing. Ideally, I could use it as a 'remote' display if the bandwidth were high enough.
I'd prefer a table over a desktop for visual arts, since I can change position with it -- or I can use it with me parked right over it and looking down -- not some distance away on a too-high desk in a stiff backed chair.
Right now I use a 0G-reclining chair -- which is ok for keyboard usage (keyboard on tray), but it's not so great for reading -- not a comfortable laid back position, -- the monitor is too far away -- and if I move it close, it's way too large (it's large for programming work -- 30" 2560x1600). It's also not a good setup for using a pressure-sensitive tablet like a Wacom -- there's no table to rest it on. so it sits in my lap. For drawing, nothing beats being 'over' the work -- it being flat, and me being able to lean on the surface it is on.
Doing lots of drawing without such a setup -- you have to support your own arms weight -- and use your arm muscles to support your hands -- something that interferes with fine, pixel precision motion -- especially after a few hours. Sure -- if your surface is huge, like a paint-easel, that's one thing -- but computer art is usually about much finer details -- so you need arm support so you can use your hands and wrists for fine motor movement.
A standard computer setup that's ideal for programming or office work isn't ideal for drawing.
I can't think of any compelling reason I'd want a computing device that would be held and used with one hand. You wanna reconsider your idea that I'm an apple droid trying to sell a product?
I'm sure a full size keyboard option would be an easy add-on for the courier or the smart[sic]phone. A well-designed, flat, membrane-style keyboard using touch circuits instead of physical-contacts to reduce size and weight would fit within the form-factor of the courier and add no appreciable size or weight.
However, such an option wouldn't be possible for a phone sized object designed to fit in your hile a totally flat, fold-able keyboard would be no major decrease in the utility of a courier, such would not be the case with the smartphone.
I.e. if you have to carry around a keyboard in addition to a smartphone, you aren't going to be putting it in your pocket: you eliminate major benefits of a smartphone, thus making a full-size keyboard option a conceptual incompatibility with the idea of a pocket-able, all inclusive device.
Your evaluation is based on current technological constraints. It says nothing about whether or not it is a good idea and therefore has nothing to do with what people want. You might as well remark 'who wants it to boot up and be limited to 640K' for all the usefulness transitory technological constraints have to do with the concept of 'want'.
Same goes for talk about internal politics in Microsoft -- they have nothing to what people would 'like' or whether or not the product was a good idea.
What people want has little to do with current (or future) practicality.
Why this was marked down to -1, I don't know. If anything, it's insightful -- MS has collected a world class collection of talent (not to say all are at that level, but many are). It's only been Google that really created competing (and possibly better) resource, and that only in recent years.
You might compare (though not in its maturity) such a research group to _historical_ groups like those of Bell Labs, IBM's Almaden(older be less well-known), or Watson research centres, or Xerox's Research PARC.
Unfortunately, such groups are quite vulnerable to mismanagement and need powerful, high-level leadership to protect them from internal company politics -- something Microsoft hasn't been around _long enough_ to develop, and may not be _diversified enough to develop in the future. Bill Gates, being CEO/head of Microsoft was in no position to be both company chief and research VP leading (protecting) the head of company's creativity-nursery. He had insufficient self-restraint NOT to be in the midst of the company's leading edge research and technology.
That a comment such as this would be casually dismissed only shows how little people understand about the positive good MS has done (likely because it is well hidden behind much management, legal and marketing bogosity). This may be inevitable and may be the the final limiting factor in MS's future -- as it's culture was started on the basis of shifty dealings with Bill Gates starting the company based on craftiness the craftiness of taking advantage of other people's lack of knowledge, rather than sound or good ideas. Companies founded on idealism fare little, if at all better in the long run.
you are going to write a book, holding the device in one hand while you write with the other...
right....
jot a note? sure...but right a book?
I would want something that allows me to write on any surface -- even a pillow - and...what am I saying..."WRITE?" a book....I can't write worth a darn....I need two hands and keyboard to have any speed.
Maybe speech input -- like dictation, but write? as in printing/cursive?
You are really deluding yourself, if you think any number of people will want such a primitive interface these days.
Smartphones won't come close to cutting it.
I Disagree with the essence of This Article
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The End of Free
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I probably disagree with nearly all of it.
I'm not affected by 'app' pricing or smartphone price plans, nor do I intend to put myself in a position to care.
Why do I want such a smartphone when I can have an always on internet lan that's flat rate?
Why do I want to wander around on a battery powered phone staring at a tiny screen to do my work when I've been trying most of my programming career for a LARGER display and faster internet speeds.
What *overriding* concern would prompt me to trade in my 30" 2560x1600 + 50" 1920x1080 display with pen and touch input and a 7.1 channel Theater system with ~50TB of local storage for something with nothing remotely comparable but that does have poor reception, antenna problems, slow network access and poor call quality!?
Yeah -- in this guy's dream I'm moving to the a 'smart'[sic] phone.
When such a device has a 30+ hour battery life, flat rates and Gigabit speeds with at least a TB of local space and a visual display that can be displayed virtually anywhere -- or that will display on my eyeballs as a comparable multi-megapixel display, then I might be tempted, but I'm not holding my breath.
Uh...couple of problems. One -- the candidate I vote for has never made it into office EXCEPT this last election.
Two: the lower level douche bags that implement these stupid policies are 99% of the time appointed by the previous administration. They were they ones that constantly overran the constitution. Unfortunately, the lower-level rift-raft is protected from outright firing by the new administration by laws to prevent whole sale "slaughter" of previous administration hires upon every change of leadership (otherwise no one would want to work for government -- and they already have enough problems hiring quality people with any intelligence). The previous administration worked to replace -- slowly, via transfers -- not firings, all positions with complete incompetents, because they believe it is the best way to show how big government fails (GOP was long party of smaller government).
Then they left the current administration with the worst deficit and the need to bail out banks and wall street -- so they'd have difficulty doing ANYTHING progressive -- that's what the previous Bush did to Clinton. Clinton spent the first 6 years out of his 8 year term repairing damage from the previous administration. It's been the same here.
The reason we have a reasonably (not entirely) stable foreign policy and the reason the dollar has been a strong currency, year after year (until the past 4 years when the last administration really tanked it) is that our domestic and foreign policies have been stable.
The previous administration was unstable in all regards because they had a president and VP who ignored the constitution -- and I don't know why thy got away with it. There is some gentlemen's agreement crap going on in D.C. not to hang previous admin criminals, even for crimes like were done in Gitmo. It's a dark time in this nation's history -- no doubt. And Americans are largely responsible (especially the under 30's) for taking so many things for granted as rights that used to be earned privileges.
It's going to take some unpleasant years to change that -- but the GOP is fighting every step of the way -- they don't want to eliminate their tax breaks -- the GAP between the rich and the poor grew by about 6% under Bush-II alone -- a record amount in my mind (but I don't know history). The last time the rich got complete political dominance in the white house, it took a 1920's depression to break their hold.
Most people today have no memory of that. Political folly like interfering in world politics hasn't had its day of repercussions yet...but it will come...and I'm NOT looking forward to it (as being one who is still living here)...
You turn on NoScript for your casual browsing. Sites that you want to let display, you put them in the permission list. Just that simple. Then you get the web the way you want it. Also -- you can tailor out facebook scripts which many websites include by default these days.
Is it my imagination, -- but I tried Chrome the other day and noticed no 'noscript' option. It had adblock, but didn't seem to have a way to control scripting. Could your annoyance with the noscript comment be that Chrome doesn't have this? Or did I just miss something?
No, I view monopolies as what they are considered and agreed to be under law. This is useful because that way, when the grown-ups are talking, we all get to talk about the same thing.
And laws are subject to change. Consumer advocates agree with, in theory, the idea of expanding the legal definition of the word. That you go on to claim anyone moving to change the definition is not grownup...well, that's just childish.
Like I said, you can keep your definition, I'll keep mine. We'll see if your apple manages to steer clear of regulation.
Reverse engineered implementations have been sued out of business. It is impractical, given the non-published interface to clean-room implement it and even under the DMCA, breaking of a 'shrouded' interface is allowed to provide interoperability. But apple sues, with their legal might, anyone who tries. Thus they continue to monopolize the market.
You can have your definitions, I can have mine. Eventually if apple continues their practices and especially if they continue to increase their success, they will become "legally entangled", as they are going against the public good.
The tragedy is your tiny view of monopolies being only what you are told they are.
You cannot run applications on a 'Mondeo'. There is no marketplace of 3rd party apps that run only on 'Mondeo's. Your analogy is 'tragically' flawed.
But you have an entire market place of applications that only run on 1) iphones, and 2) OS-x based computers.
No one else is allowed to provide a "plug-compatible" platform that will run those applications. There is no competition. If you want a device that will run all of the apps in those specific spaces, you must by from Apple.
That's what I mean by no competition. Apple has a created a unique niche for which they are the only allowed supplier. That is why they are a monopolist. They wouldn't be one if they didn't sue every "compatible" maker off the market.
You aren't counting the increased file allocation table sizes needed to hold 8 times as many blocks -- both on disk and in memory.
While you may save 'some' disk space by having smaller sectors -- you LOSE disk space, due to having more 'gap' space.
There's something like 120 bytes added to each sector for header/CRC and padding.
So for 512 byte sectors, there's almost 20% of wasted space. In reformatting a SCSI disk from 512 -> 4096, I got an immediate 'raw' disk size boost of around 12-15%.
It may not be the same with each manufacturer, but the formulas for savings aren't as simple as you state.
With larger sectors, besides saving space in less external overhead, you also get faster data rates -- by the amount of saved 'external' space -- as the head can now read more data/track on each revolution (it doesn't have to skip over as many 'overhead' spots).
There are way too many benefits you gain by going to larger disk units. Hopefully, linux will catch up with windows in the area, soon, and will start allowing >4K sectors now, since on a 2TB disk, with files 1000, a 64K sector size isn't unreasonable.
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So if you generate code that works -- do you really want to generate code that doesn't work the next time you point and click?
Why is it different for masterpieces? What notes do you change in a masterpiece to make it better?
If there are a "set of masterpieces" that can exist because certain notes can be varied withing certain parameters,
why is it not practical to vary those, programatically, each time the piece is played?
That way you can ensure each playing is a masterpiece withing the parameters that define that masterpiece and there will be no playings that will be outside the bounds of 'a masterpiece' (as defined for that work).
>What if our autobahn, like the German Autobahn, prohibited passing on the right, thus[sic]
> making the far right lane the slowest lane and [sic] the far left lane the fastest lane,
> eliminating large differences in speed between adjacent lanes of traffic?
----
How does slowing down the entire highway to stay behind the visitors traveling 30MPH in the
far left [fast] lane help anything?
That's simply unworkable.
As long as you have police who prioritize giving _speeding_ tickets over ticketing for violating the state LAW of "slower traffic
stays right", this won't work.
I've never seen nor heard of anyone getting a ticket for not moving over to the right when they are going too slow. It's a state law which is never enforced. The situation may be influenced by the fact that increasingly, many traffic laws are created with a profit motive in mind, and have little or nothing to do with public safety. THAT should be illegal...but hey..it is capitalism at work -- if there isn't a law against using the legal system to make money, you can bet that the various levels of government will start using the legal system to make money.
schools are primarily for those who evaluate based on your possession of a "pass" from the school.
Online schools will almost never let you skip classes, because usually, their only income is from those who pay -- and if you skip, then that means 1) they get less money for granting you a 'degree', and 2) the over-all value of their degree (measured in $$ to get degree) becomes less.
If they all too many people to get degree too cheaply, degree becomes too easy to get and becomes worth less. You might find that you could proficiency through 90% of their program -- and their $10K+ degree program is now only gonna cost you $600 + materials... That wouldn't mess up their system.
Conventional schools *sometimes* offer proficiency exams to pass through lower level course. They have a mixed incentive. Since part of their income comes from governments, they are often paid, "per-seat-term", with "term"=(1 if attendance >90%; 0 if attendance 90%). Notice how that part of the equation is only based on attendance, and not based on grades. In this sense conventional schools are paid for being babysitters for undertrained "persons". They aren't really (as far as I can tell) given alot of incentive to actually educate the students. Free market doesn't work because there is usually little or no competition for conventional schools -- they often have a semi-monopoly in their geographic market, though freedom may be granted to adults to attend out of their geographic region depending on local rules and situation.
Conventional schools do have a charter to serve students -- which means they usually create turnover by creating time limits within which you have to graduate, but some have no such requirement or incentive. Depends on school.
In either case, they don't really have any incentive to actually teach you anything. It's not required. You are just required to fulfill your "educational"[sic] institution's requirements.
Evaluators -- such as future employers use your being able to complete those requirements as a rough-yard stick of competency, when you have no other measures, or when other measures/assessments are hard to evaluate or compare.
Obviously, real learning, is a 'self-discipline'. It *CAN* occur at a school -- and if you are lucky course requirements will assist you and make it difficult to not learn, while completing them -- but this is 'luck' based primarily on teacher. As for support by the institution, what does the institute offer to support the instructor? Can he hold students back? Can he fail 30%? Will he? If he does, is he at fault? How is this assessed? [Good luck in determining an objective answer to that!]...
Meanwhile, you have to determine whether you are disciplined enough to learn in a vacuum. Having other people to bounce ideas off of is useful, only if you get a chance to bounce ideas off of other people. If you have no interactions with people, then a classroom experience (including virtual) is of questionable benefit). Indeed, a virtual classroom could include virtual students, that ask common (but real questions) taken from real world classrooms. They could ask these questions on a classroom virtual whiteboard, where student's ask their questions and everyone in the classroom sees the questions -- so whether someone really asks important questions or not, the virtual shill/students could to make it look like someone was paying attention and someone is asking questions that might make you think -- and to encourage others to ask questions.
Until schools and educators can have some financial incentive for for your actual learning, any learning, by you, will be a side product of the system.
I like that analogy!
++ for amusing and pertinent!
Mark Jaquith wrote an excellent[sic] [one-sided] technical analysis....
He forgot an important point in proving his theory.
If you come up with an exception to the theory it disproves the theory -- no matter how well you think it should be true.
If I design a 'theme creator' that creates themes and has a Wordpress extension that creates wordpress
themes -- does that mean if someone uses my theme creator and creates a theme for wordpress that it is
automatically open sourced? I don't think so.
If I look at the wordpress, and write a spec. Have someone else write a functional equivalent, then we have an editor that can create themes compatible with wordpress that have never touched wordpress.
The fact that this doesn't currently exist, I believe is someone moot -- it proves the point that the code
itself by virtue of being compatible with an "algorithm" - isn't copyrightable. Algorithms are patentable - but the Gnu copyright wouldn't apply.
IF they do not copy the code, but even if they look at the source to design algorithm compatible devices that can function when hooked up to wordpress,
His argument that the code creates changes in wordpress could apply to a C program using Gnu C specific macros.
It makes changes in the compiler and how it will function -- doesn't that mean that the program -- which can't function apart from the Gnu C compiler is now a derivative work?
I think that case is fairly well been decided that it is not.
He even goes so far as to use Linux Kernel modules as an example of things that are covered by the Gnu license -- except for the ones that aren't -- which he didn't mention. The question becomes -- is the wordpress plugin interface 'published', or does one need intimate familiarity with the internals...that might be the deciding issue -- UNTIL, someone such a spec is published OR someone writes a utility that generates compatible themes.
I think wordpress has a low-middle strength legal argument to enforce this and it could really depend on who has the better lawyer -- except for the specific case of the developer who admitted wholesale copying...that's pretty much a slam-dunk.
That all said --- my general feeling is that the plugins/themes really should follow the spirit of wordpress and
be available without charge -- to do otherwise is insulting and a bit of a slap in the face to the wordpress developer, on some level. It's just poor taste, at the very least, even though legally, you might have some leg to stand on if you don't copy code, that is...
I'm NOT convinced that something being compatible "only with X" makes it a "derivative of X" in any legal sense. It would be a redefinition of a derived worked in a legal sense that I'm not aware of any substantial precedence for.
Everyone is focusing on government crackdown on hackers...but no one is focusing on standard reasons -- like how does government pay compare to what the person might earn in the private sector?
Ok, now ask -- how much has the government done to cultivate love for country in the past quarter century?
How about patriotism? No...paying people to snitch on their neighbors is not considered something that builds loyalty to country.
Ok...now put the pay item into perspective....
What are the pay and job prospects for software types, in general in the US -- compared to say, 15 years ago?
Add all that up...ignore the curiosity=jail trip...
standard job market indicators would tend to say this type of job isn't going to be a big attractor these days...
Now add the curiosity=jail nonsense and get tough on US-citizens/war on US citizens rhetoric that is so popular with the conservatives that have been in power for most of the past 30 years (the Reagan generation, 1980 and beyond).
The dominant paradigm is to keep voters and consumers stupid. Education is *bad* -- since percentage wise, the more educated people are, the more likely they are to have liberal or progressive views. Not a bright prospect for American future -- at least not for the majority -- for those who run the big Corps, the landscape looks brighter and brighter...
I doubt I'll live long enough to see the worst of it, or a turnaround...
Oi vey.
Have you ever heard of Firefox? AdBlock? NoScript?
Stop your whining and choose a solution.
Don't say you don't have a choice.
You do -- and right now, you are choosing your popups and ads and redirect problems.
They aren't many, but when I see people complain about ad-block and popups on articles -- and then read about people talking about nobody using addblock or noscript I gotta wonder -- what's wrong with these people.
Besides -- both firefox and IE block popups in the browser. What type of lame browser are you using
that doesn't block popups?
Anyone using Firefox that I know, in 'IT' or not, uses Adblock -- and maybe 1 of those didn't use noscript because of the hassle -- at least until they asked me to clear off their last virus. Funny thing -- since installing noscript and Firefox, they don't seem to have problems with viruses anymore....
Weird.
How does this slow a program down if the CPU GHZ are the same?
As for shutting down 2 cores shutting off 4MB of core -- unless went backward on their design with 6 core design, in their latest 4 core design, all 4 cores could utilize any or all of the 8MB of core. It was Intel's first Quad core that was with more restrictions as I believe it was effectively 2 Duals on 1 chip.
So unless intel went backwards on their design -- all 6 cores should be able to access all 12 MB of cache memory so shutting down cores will enable the core to be used by the remainder. Also, in intel's higher end chips, shutting down cores will speed up the rest of the cores -- not be even close to a linear speed up, but if all you want is single processor power, you get close to getting the next stepping up in speed out of 1 core by shutting the rest down -- or such was true of their quad cores. Their latest gen all use lower power -- running 6 cores in nearly the same thermal-wattage envelope as the previous gen's 4 cores.
"Core overhead"
As soon as you've gone to SMP -- which all modern kernel have, the playing field is pretty much level.
2 core, 4 cores, 8 cores...there is no processor overhead unless you recompile your kernel -- and even then the difference between a few hundred bytes out of a few gigabytes is meaningless.
What the "less-cores-is-good" guys are ignoring is the extra cache you get with more cores.
4 Core systems topped out at 8Meg cache.
6 Core Systems top out at 12 Meg cache.
If you don't use the extra 2 cores -- you can shut them off in the bios -- you get
get 4Meg more of program and data cache -- or you can limit your progs at run time to only use the lower 4 cpus...which-ever.
Now who's the first idiot who wants to make the argument that your general singled threaded application won't benefit from .. 6 times the cache?
And um lower clock speed?
4 cores max speed @ 3.2GH (with 8M cache, or 3.4 @ 4M cache).
Now I have 6 cores @ 3.2 and 12M cache and it wasn't the fastest CPU.
You guys should check your figures before you try to make case: FAIL!
naw...
Just the red hat users who've jumped ship....
um...wonder how it got to be 2nd largest user base given no one is
using it...
gotta wonder who's sayin' what...
Eh?
I think you aren't seeing what I'm seeing (and maybe vice versa). I ain't nobody's marketing droid -- anti-marketing droid, maybe.
I'm responding to you saying that instead of reading a book, you wanted to be able two write a book on your smartphone (well, a smartphone, since I get that you don't have one), while holding it in one hand using the same hand for input, and putting your other hand in your 'pocket'...(why you need to have one hand in your pocket and be typing with the other, I'll not venture to guess), but write a book that way?? To me, that sounded patently absurd.
Maybe you could use speech input -- but I stated -- what I think you agree with -- that to write a book you'd need two hand and a keyboard to have any speed -- and that as unsuitable as a tablet might be, a smartphone of any type would be a non-starter for most people.
That why I asserted that a no one would want such a primitive interface.
HOWEVER...a tablet isn't the same thing -- for drawing, reading I'd love a light-weight, fast multi-touch & Pen-pressure sensitive input tablet for use in visual arts, *maybe* watching a video -- if it had good battery life and was well suited for viewing in sunlight (thinking of taking it to a park or beach to work outdoors. It should have plenty of memory -- and not worry much about diskspace when undocked -- for docking, either a cradle better -- a flexible long cable to allow 6GB USB3 access to disks or the network. Still think voice would be a good option -- if they can make it as as fast and natural as typing. Ideally, I could use it as a 'remote' display if the bandwidth were high enough.
I'd prefer a table over a desktop for visual arts, since I can change position with it -- or I can use it with me parked right over it and looking down -- not some distance away
on a too-high desk in a stiff backed chair.
Right now I use a 0G-reclining chair -- which is ok for keyboard usage (keyboard on tray), but it's not so great for reading -- not a comfortable laid back position, -- the monitor is too far away -- and if I move it close, it's way too large (it's large for programming work -- 30" 2560x1600). It's also not a good setup for using a pressure-sensitive tablet like a Wacom -- there's no table to rest it on. so it sits in my lap. For drawing, nothing beats being 'over' the work -- it being flat, and me being able to lean on the surface it is on.
Doing lots of drawing without such a setup -- you have to support your own arms weight -- and use your arm muscles to support your hands -- something that interferes with fine, pixel precision motion -- especially after a few hours. Sure -- if your surface is huge, like a paint-easel, that's one thing -- but computer art is usually about much finer details -- so you need arm support so you can use your hands and wrists for fine motor movement.
A standard computer setup that's ideal for programming or office work isn't ideal for drawing.
I can't think of any compelling reason I'd want a computing device that would be held and used with one hand. You wanna reconsider your idea that I'm an apple droid trying to sell a product?
I'm sure a full size keyboard option would be an easy add-on for the courier or the smart[sic]phone.
A well-designed, flat, membrane-style keyboard using touch circuits instead of physical-contacts
to reduce size and weight would fit within the form-factor of the courier and add no appreciable size or weight.
However, such an option wouldn't be possible for a phone sized object designed to fit in your hile a totally flat, fold-able keyboard would be no major decrease in the utility of a
courier, such would not be the case with the smartphone.
I.e. if you have to carry around a keyboard in addition to a smartphone, you aren't going to be putting it in your pocket: you eliminate major benefits of a smartphone, thus making a full-size keyboard option a conceptual incompatibility with the idea of a pocket-able, all inclusive device.
Your evaluation is based on current technological constraints. It says nothing about whether or not it is a good idea and therefore has nothing to do with what people want. You might as well remark 'who wants it to boot up and be limited to 640K' for all the usefulness transitory technological constraints have to do with the concept of 'want'.
Same goes for talk about internal politics in Microsoft -- they have nothing to what people would 'like' or whether or not the product was a good idea.
What people want has little to do with current (or future) practicality.
Why this was marked down to -1, I don't know.
If anything, it's insightful -- MS has collected a world class collection of talent (not to say all are at that level, but many are). It's only been Google that really created competing (and possibly better) resource, and that only in recent years.
You might compare (though not in its maturity) such a research group to _historical_ groups like those of Bell Labs, IBM's Almaden(older be less well-known), or Watson research centres, or Xerox's Research PARC.
Unfortunately, such groups are quite vulnerable to mismanagement and need powerful, high-level leadership to protect them from internal company politics -- something Microsoft hasn't been around _long enough_ to develop, and may not be _diversified enough to develop in the future. Bill Gates, being CEO/head of Microsoft was in no position to be both company chief and research VP leading (protecting) the head of company's creativity-nursery. He had insufficient self-restraint NOT to be in the midst of the company's leading edge research and technology.
That a comment such as this would be casually dismissed only shows how little people understand about the positive good MS has done (likely because it is well hidden behind much management, legal and marketing bogosity). This may be inevitable and may be the the final limiting factor in MS's future -- as it's culture was started on the basis of shifty dealings with Bill Gates starting the company based on craftiness the craftiness of taking advantage of other people's lack of knowledge, rather than sound or good ideas. Companies founded on idealism fare little, if at all better in the long run.
you are going to write a book, holding the device in one hand while you write with the other...
right....
jot a note? sure...but right a book?
I would want something that allows me to write on any surface -- even a pillow - and ...what am I
saying..."WRITE?" a book....I can't write worth a darn....I need two hands and keyboard to have any speed.
Maybe speech input -- like dictation, but write? as in printing/cursive?
You are really deluding yourself, if you think any number of people will want such a primitive
interface these days.
Smartphones won't come close to cutting it.
I probably disagree with nearly all of it.
I'm not affected by 'app' pricing or smartphone price plans, nor do I intend to put myself in a position to care.
Why do I want such a smartphone when I can have an always on internet lan that's flat rate?
Why do I want to wander around on a battery powered phone staring at a tiny screen to do my work when I've been trying most of my programming career for a LARGER display and faster internet speeds.
What *overriding* concern would prompt me to trade in my 30" 2560x1600 + 50" 1920x1080 display with pen and touch input and a 7.1 channel Theater system with ~50TB of local storage for something with nothing remotely comparable but that does have poor reception, antenna problems, slow network access and poor call quality!?
Yeah -- in this guy's dream I'm moving to the a 'smart'[sic] phone.
When such a device has a 30+ hour battery life, flat rates and Gigabit speeds with at least a TB of local space and a visual display that can be displayed virtually anywhere -- or that will display on my eyeballs as a comparable multi-megapixel display, then I might be tempted, but I'm not holding my breath.
Uh...couple of problems. One -- the candidate I vote for has never made it into office EXCEPT this last election.
Two: the lower level douche bags that implement these stupid policies are 99% of the time appointed by the previous administration. They were they ones that constantly overran the constitution. Unfortunately, the lower-level rift-raft is protected from outright firing by the new administration by laws to prevent whole sale "slaughter" of previous administration hires upon every change of leadership (otherwise no one would want to work for government -- and they already have enough problems hiring quality people with any intelligence). The previous administration worked to replace -- slowly, via transfers -- not firings, all positions with complete incompetents, because they believe it is the best way to show how big government fails (GOP was long party of smaller government).
Then they left the current administration with the worst deficit and the need to bail out banks and wall street -- so they'd have difficulty doing ANYTHING progressive -- that's what the previous Bush did to Clinton. Clinton spent the first 6 years out of his 8 year term repairing damage from the previous administration. It's been the same here.
The reason we have a reasonably (not entirely) stable foreign policy and the reason the dollar has been a strong currency, year after year (until the past 4 years when the last administration really tanked it) is that our domestic and foreign policies have been stable.
The previous administration was unstable in all regards because they had a president and VP who ignored the constitution -- and I don't know why thy got away with it. There is some gentlemen's agreement crap going on in D.C. not to hang previous admin criminals, even for crimes like were done in Gitmo. It's a dark time in this nation's history -- no doubt. And Americans are largely responsible (especially the under 30's) for taking so many things for granted as rights that used to be earned privileges.
It's going to take some unpleasant years to change that -- but the GOP is fighting every step of the way -- they don't want to eliminate their tax breaks -- the GAP between the rich and the poor grew by about 6% under Bush-II alone -- a record amount in my mind (but I don't know history). The last time the rich got complete political dominance in the white house, it took a 1920's depression to break their hold.
Most people today have no memory of that. Political folly like interfering in world politics hasn't had its day of repercussions yet...but it will come...and I'm NOT looking forward to it (as being one who is still living here)...
Does this say anything about Apple security?
That's nice for silence: Celeron's were quieter too. How does it measure up in performance?
You are so full of it...
You turn on NoScript for your casual browsing. Sites that you want to let display, you put them in the permission list. Just that simple. Then you get the web the way you want it. Also -- you can tailor out facebook scripts which many websites include by default these days.
Is it my imagination, -- but I tried Chrome the other day and noticed no 'noscript' option. It had adblock, but didn't seem to have a way to control scripting. Could your annoyance with the noscript comment be that Chrome doesn't have this? Or did I just miss something?
No, I view monopolies as what they are considered and agreed to be under law. This is useful because that way, when the grown-ups are talking, we all get to talk about the same thing.
And laws are subject to change. Consumer advocates agree with, in theory, the idea
of expanding the legal definition of the word. That you go on to claim anyone moving to change the definition is not grownup...well, that's just childish.
Like I said, you can keep your definition, I'll keep mine. We'll see if your apple manages to steer clear of regulation.
Reverse engineered implementations have been sued out of business.
It is impractical, given the non-published interface to clean-room implement it and even under the DMCA, breaking of a 'shrouded' interface is allowed to provide interoperability. But apple sues, with their legal might, anyone who tries. Thus they continue to monopolize the market.
You can have your definitions, I can have mine. Eventually if apple continues their practices and especially if they continue to increase their success, they will become "legally entangled", as they are going against the public good.
The tragedy is your tiny view of monopolies being only what you are told they are.
You cannot run applications on a 'Mondeo'. There is no marketplace of 3rd party apps that run only on 'Mondeo's. Your analogy is 'tragically' flawed.
But you have an entire market place of applications that only run on 1) iphones, and 2) OS-x based computers.
No one else is allowed to provide a "plug-compatible" platform that will run those applications. There is no competition. If you want a device that will run all of the apps in those specific spaces, you must by from Apple.
That's what I mean by no competition. Apple has a created a unique niche for which they are the only allowed supplier. That is why they are a monopolist. They wouldn't be one if they didn't sue every "compatible" maker off the market.
You aren't counting the increased file allocation table sizes needed to hold 8 times as many blocks -- both on disk and in memory.
While you may save 'some' disk space by having smaller sectors -- you LOSE disk space, due to having more 'gap' space.
There's something like 120 bytes added to each sector for header/CRC and padding.
So for 512 byte sectors, there's almost 20% of wasted space. In reformatting a SCSI disk from 512 -> 4096, I got an immediate 'raw' disk size boost of around 12-15%.
It may not be the same with each manufacturer, but the formulas for savings aren't as simple as you state.
With larger sectors, besides saving space in less external overhead, you also get faster data rates -- by the amount of saved 'external' space -- as the head can now read more data/track on each revolution (it doesn't have to skip over as many 'overhead' spots).
There are way too many benefits you gain by going to larger disk units. Hopefully, linux will catch up with windows in the area, soon, and will start allowing >4K sectors now, since on a 2TB disk, with files 1000, a 64K sector size isn't unreasonable.