I'm confused by the whole "wealth disparity causes crime" argument. It seems clear that there's correlation between poverty and crime, but what's unclear is the direction of causation, if any. I think you can
argue equally well that crime causes poverty. Or that there are external causes for the two to be correlated. Look at the effect of crime on poor areas, and on the families of criminals. The case
of a wealthy person being materially affected by a poor criminal is very rare. But poor people are
materially affected dramatically by both rich and poor criminals often.
Re:"cell" architecture is all about local memory
on
IBM Releases Cell SDK
·
· Score: 1
So, no, there isn't a NVidia 'GPU' in the PS3...
Wrong. Here's something from eurogamer.net, from last year:
"NVIDIA's graphics processing unit (GPU) for PlayStation 3 will be completed by the end of 2005, according to US Internet reports citing comments made by chief executive Jen-Hsun Huang to investment firm Morgan Stanley this week...."
Please at least google "nvidia ps3" before responding.
I was interested to see a well-researched article on the financial situation with Social Security. This article appears to do well with the numbers, although it clearly plays a few games. But it contains the same old weird leftist mentality about goverment finances.
My favorite quote:
...rather than saving Social Security's surplus, the government has been spending it -- on the military, education, tax cuts.
Only by very twisted thinking could tax cuts be categorized as goverment spending. The implication is that it's the government's money, and letting me keep it is somehow irresponsible.
The article is riddled with this type of mentality. I honestly believe that many on the left can't even perceive the problem with this viewpoint.
As is customary on SlashDot, disapproval of homosexuality is equated with homophobia. One
can disagree with something, and even speak against
it, without fearing it (at least in the phobic sense).
I'll connect the dots in case people haven't been
paying attention. Dan Ravicher is the head of
PUBPAT. He is also affiliated with OSRM (Open Source Risk Management), the group that issued the press release about Linux patent risks.
It's not too hard to connect the dots and see the relationship between OSRM's business model (which benefits from reduced patent risk for Linux) and PUBPAT's agenda, which is to rid the world of bogus patents.
Since this is Slashdot, I don't expect many people will recant their negative comments about OSRM, but I hope most people recognize this as the type of work that OSRM/PUBPAT can do that will have some real positive benefits for Linux, whether you buy OSRM's insurance or not.
Grandparent: It's mind-numbingly clear that Iraq had WMD.
Parent: To who? Where are they?
To the Kurds, who were victims of them.
We don't know now if many were preserved, or if so where they are now. Given how hard we've looked for them, maybe they were all dismantled. But you can't realistically say that Saddam didn't have them and use them.
Having talked with some of the principals at OSRM, I believe they are good guys rather than bad guys.
Sure, they have an agenda, and a product to sell. However, I think they are raising a valid issue and making an attempt to address it. Pooling a defense fund for patent nuisance suits makes sense. How to do that with open source software is new territory, and whether it will work is still anyone's guess. This is a first attempt.
Note that OSRM has put themselves in the position of being strongly incented to NOT see Linux infringe patents (whatever they tell their customers in the way of fear-producing press releases). One possibility, which we should look for in the future, is that OSRM will quietly guide the community to move Linux out of and around infringing areas. If you see mysterious, unjustified kernel change requests from OSRM, it might be worth listening to them (and it just might be evidence that they are on "our" side.)
This is not a good idea. If OSRM published them, I would not look at them. The patent system is crazy enough that you are punished for knowing infringing patents. The legal system rewards you for NOT knowing, and hence for not searching for infringement.
In this sense, the patent system generates an
environment of, as Daniel Egger puts it "studied ignorance", that inhibits rather than promotes
the "progress of the arts and sciences".
Well, this is interesting. I was on the Corsair research project at Novell in 1993, when Bryan Sparks and the rest of the gang that became Caldera spent 18 months trying to create a Linux desktop product inside Novell. Novell killed the project, because they couldn't see the value in the world wide web or in Linux.
This is during the same period when Microsoft was cementing its monopoly in the desktop market and preparing for the release of Windows 95. What a different world it might have been if we had succeeded (or been allowed to succeed)!
I think this is a good move for Novell, but I can't help think it would have been even better if they had continued executing on a project started over 10 years ago in the same direction.
Good correction on the nature of monopoly and legalities, but...
It is even fine for them to have become a monopoly, but once they are they are forbiden such practices which used to be perfectly legal.
This is true in general, but Microsoft also used regular old illegal tactics to get and keep their monopoly, not just illegal-because-they're-a-monopoly tactics. I know details because I was on the inside of an anti-trust lawsuit with them that was eventually settled out of court (the DRDOS lawsuit).
But strictly speaking Microsoft isn't a monopoly in the sense that DeBeers or OPEC are, or Standard Oil was.
I beg to differ on this. Microsoft understood from day one the market effects that are created by the tie between the OS and applications. They did everthing in their power (both legal and illegal) to create and maintain exactly the monopoly that they have. These network effects ("network" in economic terms) can be just as powerful in terms of maintaining monopoly control of a market as other forces, such as cornering supply, production and distribution of a natural resource.
More to the point for the parent: Saying people are apathetic about their choice is silly in this context. A monopoly situation precludes a choice they could care about.
Copyright infringement is creating a new copy of something which you are not allowed to do. That is, you gained something you should ne have been allowed to gain.
Theft has an additional part, which is that not only did you gain something, the one you stole from lost his copy of it (since there was not any copying involved creating a second copy).
Copyright infringement is stealing alright. But it's not the song/movie/ebook that's being stolen -- what is being stolen is the right to copy that work and benefit from such copies. And although it's more abstract than taking a physical object from someone, it still consists of depriving the person to whom that "thing" belongs their benefit and use of that thing.
When you infringe "copyright", you are literally stealing someone's "right" to make a "copy", which is something they were granted and possess, and you are depriving them of something valuable to them. Sometimes they earned that right by their own sweat or creativity. Sometimes they bought that right with money. But it's worth something to them and you've taken it away.
Speaking on behalf of the Forum, (I'm co-Chair of the Architecture Group) I can say that forking is not our intention. It is the strong desire of the member companies to keep synchronized (to about the same degree current popular Linux distros keep synchronized) with the kernel.org tree.
I found the decision disappointing, but not in the ways I expected.
In short the majority said, "Congress can do what it likes here. It not up to us to interfere." Stevens said, "To heck with precendence, retroactive extensions are not constitutional." Beyer was more aggressive and said, "life of author+70 years is not (meaninfully) limited, so it's unconstitutional."
The majority deferred to a lot of precedence and to Congress, but that's a perogative I think they should have (although I liked Beyer's argument better, that Congress went too far on this one and they should have gone back to the drawing board.)
The thing that really annoyed me, and suprised me, however, was the majority interpretation that copyright isn't a quid-pro-quo like patents. Lessig had argued this: in exchange for your limited monopoly, you publish your work and it eventually goes into the public domain. That's the exchange of benefit that drives the "progress in the arts and sciences".
However, the majority essentially said that while this was true for patents it wasn't for copyrights? Say WHAT??? Apparently, the court believes that use of a work's ideas, but not duplication of its presentation is sufficient benefit to the public in exchange for the granted monopoly.
This seems to me a twisted interpretation of the constitutional bargain created by copyright, and it is disappointing indeed.
You're right. I should have said "probably shouldn't be patentable." Non-obviousness is supposed to be required. But, in many of the egregious patents (including "Method of Swinging on a Swing"), it hasn't been.
I didn't mean to imply that an expert (as this
guy appears to be) can't have that sudden flash of insight that should be patentable. But even then, preceding it are, likely, years of study and experience. Given that his main purpose is to hinder or preempt Microsoft activities, and he crafted the patents, quickly, for this end, I doubt they are truly innovative. But who knows?
Oh, I agree. I like that he's done this, for
whatever reasons. I was just pointing out
another possible, and, IMO, defensible reason
for taking this course.
If he gets the patent, however, given my belief that it's likely he didn't work to hard to come up with the ideas (given the circumstances), I'll be (yet again) disappointed with the patent office.
You missed another goal, which is to abuse the patent system. The patent system should be used to protect long years of research and work, or truly dramatic insights (which often occur only following longs years of research and work).
They should be a means of rewarding
investment in research.
Something you can think of off the top of your head just after a conference really ought not to be patentable. It's a weakness of the system if it is.
Abusing the patent system by obtaining ridiculous patents is one way of demonstrating how broken the system really is. My all-time favorite is
Method of Swinging on a Swing I laughed so hard when I read it that I cried!
Re:An indictment of the Python programming languag
on
The Python Cookbook
·
· Score: 1
I usually resist answering a troll like this, but then it hit me that you might be (taking yourself) serious(ly). If so, I think you have some language snobbery to overcome.
First, you rely too much on denigration of people using the language. To wit:
...too lazy to type braces...still don't know where to find braces on the keyboard...very undisciplined programmer...
I think your arguments are weakened rather than strengthened with this tone.
Python is probably the weakest addition to computer science in quite some time
Oh, so languages exist to advance computer science? How about being useful?
On to your arguments...
Your first two points about white space delimitation should be numbered, since they come from straight from the immortal canon of Python detractors. I won't rehash the debate too much. I was at first put off by this feature also. However, other aspects of the language drew me back, and after acclimating myself to this feature I can now say I REALLY like it. It is a small part of a overall philosophy of developing maintainable software that grows on you (the philosophy, not the software).
Oh, and #2, and #5 are the numbered responses I have chosen for you today:
#2: The requirement to delimit with whitespace avoids scoping errors common in some languages when no delimiters are used for single line blocks.
#5: The requirement to delimit with whitespace enforces a matching between scoping and its visual indicators, making maintenance easier.
It's interesting that you would raise some minor nits about syntax with Python, and then bring up Perl!!! Perl is jokingly referred to as a "write-only" language because of the way it tersely uses complex syntax, side effects and multiplicity of allowed constructs. I don't intend to detract from Perl - it's combination of terseness and expressive power are very useful for a wide range of applications, and appealing to a large number of programmers.
Having translated large programs from Perl to Python, I can say that in my experience the expressive power of the languages is similar. The difference is that 6 months later I can read my Python code.
Also, having written and maintained large programs with Python, I can tell you from first hand experience that the other "problems" you mention (lack of variable declarations, tuple singleton syntax) simply aren't a big issue, if an issue at all. I'm trying to remember if I've ever even declared a singleton tuple...
As for your attack on Guido (the author of Python) you'll have to be more specific. When did he say Python had more flexibility than Lisp? This is a strawman you set up yourself. Python has very flexible data structures, probably borrowing a lot from Lisp and other languages. It's the entire package of simplicity in design (everything's a namespace), enforcement of rules to enhance maintenance, and expressive power that characterize Python.
I know you'll think this is condescending, but why don't you give the language a serious try before condeming (or indicting) it. Your arguments come off as puritanical nitpicking by someone unfamiliar with the "karma" of the language. I have used it for several years, in both personal and commercial settings, for both large and small programs. And it has worked very well for me.
Isn't that the ultimate test of the value of a language?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm confused by the whole "wealth disparity causes crime" argument. It seems clear that there's correlation between poverty and crime, but what's unclear is the direction of causation, if any. I think you can argue equally well that crime causes poverty. Or that there are external causes for the two to be correlated. Look at the effect of crime on poor areas, and on the families of criminals. The case of a wealthy person being materially affected by a poor criminal is very rare. But poor people are materially affected dramatically by both rich and poor criminals often.
"NVIDIA's graphics processing unit (GPU) for PlayStation 3 will be completed by the end of 2005, according to US Internet reports citing comments made by chief executive Jen-Hsun Huang to investment firm Morgan Stanley this week...."
Please at least google "nvidia ps3" before responding.
My favorite quote:
Only by very twisted thinking could tax cuts be categorized as goverment spending. The implication is that it's the government's money, and letting me keep it is somehow irresponsible.The article is riddled with this type of mentality. I honestly believe that many on the left can't even perceive the problem with this viewpoint.
As is customary on SlashDot, disapproval of homosexuality is equated with homophobia. One can disagree with something, and even speak against it, without fearing it (at least in the phobic sense).
It's not too hard to connect the dots and see the relationship between OSRM's business model (which benefits from reduced patent risk for Linux) and PUBPAT's agenda, which is to rid the world of bogus patents.
Since this is Slashdot, I don't expect many people will recant their negative comments about OSRM, but I hope most people recognize this as the type of work that OSRM/PUBPAT can do that will have some real positive benefits for Linux, whether you buy OSRM's insurance or not.
Parent: To who? Where are they?
To the Kurds, who were victims of them.
We don't know now if many were preserved, or if so where they are now. Given how hard we've looked for them, maybe they were all dismantled. But you can't realistically say that Saddam didn't have them and use them.
Sure, they have an agenda, and a product to sell. However, I think they are raising a valid issue and making an attempt to address it. Pooling a defense fund for patent nuisance suits makes sense. How to do that with open source software is new territory, and whether it will work is still anyone's guess. This is a first attempt.
Note that OSRM has put themselves in the position of being strongly incented to NOT see Linux infringe patents (whatever they tell their customers in the way of fear-producing press releases). One possibility, which we should look for in the future, is that OSRM will quietly guide the community to move Linux out of and around infringing areas. If you see mysterious, unjustified kernel change requests from OSRM, it might be worth listening to them (and it just might be evidence that they are on "our" side.)
In this sense, the patent system generates an environment of, as Daniel Egger puts it "studied ignorance", that inhibits rather than promotes the "progress of the arts and sciences".
There's something like this already called the Ancestral File. It's a collection of contributed pedigree charts. See http://www.familysearch.org/
Well, this is interesting. I was on the Corsair research project at Novell in 1993, when Bryan Sparks and the rest of the gang that became Caldera spent 18 months trying to create a Linux desktop product inside Novell. Novell killed the project, because they couldn't see the value in the world wide web or in Linux.
This is during the same period when Microsoft was cementing its monopoly in the desktop market and preparing for the release of Windows 95. What a different world it might have been if we had succeeded (or been allowed to succeed)!
I think this is a good move for Novell, but I can't help think it would have been even better if they had continued executing on a project started over 10 years ago in the same direction.
Hindsight is 20/20.
- It is even fine for them to have become a monopoly, but once they are they are forbiden such practices which used to be perfectly legal.
This is true in general, but Microsoft also used regular old illegal tactics to get and keep their monopoly, not just illegal-because-they're-a-monopoly tactics. I know details because I was on the inside of an anti-trust lawsuit with them that was eventually settled out of court (the DRDOS lawsuit).- But strictly speaking Microsoft isn't a monopoly in the sense that DeBeers or OPEC are, or Standard Oil was.
I beg to differ on this. Microsoft understood from day one the market effects that are created by the tie between the OS and applications. They did everthing in their power (both legal and illegal) to create and maintain exactly the monopoly that they have. These network effects ("network" in economic terms) can be just as powerful in terms of maintaining monopoly control of a market as other forces, such as cornering supply, production and distribution of a natural resource. More to the point for the parent: Saying people are apathetic about their choice is silly in this context. A monopoly situation precludes a choice they could care about.- Copyright infringement is creating a new copy of something which you are not allowed to do. That is, you gained something you should ne have been allowed to gain.
Copyright infringement is stealing alright. But it's not the song/movie/ebook that's being stolen -- what is being stolen is the right to copy that work and benefit from such copies. And although it's more abstract than taking a physical object from someone, it still consists of depriving the person to whom that "thing" belongs their benefit and use of that thing.Theft has an additional part, which is that not only did you gain something, the one you stole from lost his copy of it (since there was not any copying involved creating a second copy).
When you infringe "copyright", you are literally stealing someone's "right" to make a "copy", which is something they were granted and possess, and you are depriving them of something valuable to them. Sometimes they earned that right by their own sweat or creativity. Sometimes they bought that right with money. But it's worth something to them and you've taken it away.
This article has additional information, including that the forum plans to release some source by the end of summer.
Speaking on behalf of the Forum, (I'm co-Chair of the Architecture Group) I can say that forking is not our intention. It is the strong desire of the member companies to keep synchronized (to about the same degree current popular Linux distros keep synchronized) with the kernel.org tree.
I found the decision disappointing, but not in the ways I expected.
In short the majority said, "Congress can do what it likes here. It not up to us to interfere." Stevens said, "To heck
with precendence, retroactive extensions
are not constitutional." Beyer was more aggressive and said, "life of author+70 years is not (meaninfully) limited, so it's unconstitutional."
The majority deferred to a lot of precedence and to Congress, but that's a perogative I think they should have (although I liked Beyer's argument better, that Congress went too far on this one and they should have gone back to the drawing board.)
The thing that really annoyed me, and suprised me, however, was the majority interpretation that copyright isn't a quid-pro-quo like patents. Lessig had argued this: in exchange for your limited monopoly, you publish your work and it eventually goes into the public domain.
That's the exchange of benefit that drives the
"progress in the arts and sciences".
However, the majority essentially said that while this was true for patents it wasn't for copyrights? Say WHAT??? Apparently, the court believes that use of a work's ideas, but not duplication of its presentation is sufficient benefit to the public in exchange for the granted monopoly.
This seems to me a twisted interpretation of the constitutional bargain created by copyright, and it is disappointing indeed.
I didn't mean to imply that an expert (as this guy appears to be) can't have that sudden flash of insight that should be patentable. But even then, preceding it are, likely, years of study and experience. Given that his main purpose is to hinder or preempt Microsoft activities, and he crafted the patents, quickly, for this end, I doubt they are truly innovative. But who knows?
Probably not the patent examiner.
If he gets the patent, however, given my belief that it's likely he didn't work to hard to come up with the ideas (given the circumstances), I'll be (yet again) disappointed with the patent office.
Something you can think of off the top of your head just after a conference really ought not to be patentable. It's a weakness of the system if it is.
Abusing the patent system by obtaining ridiculous patents is one way of demonstrating how broken the system really is. My all-time favorite is Method of Swinging on a Swing I laughed so hard when I read it that I cried!
First, you rely too much on denigration of people using the language. To wit:
I think your arguments are weakened rather than strengthened with this tone.
Python is probably the weakest addition to computer science in quite some time
Oh, so languages exist to advance computer science? How about being useful?
On to your arguments...
Your first two points about white space delimitation should be numbered, since they come from straight from the immortal canon of Python detractors. I won't rehash the debate too much. I was at first put off by this feature also. However, other aspects of the language drew me back, and after acclimating myself to this feature I can now say I REALLY like it. It is a small part of a overall philosophy of developing maintainable software that grows on you (the philosophy, not the software).
Oh, and #2, and #5 are the numbered responses I have chosen for you today:
#2: The requirement to delimit with whitespace avoids scoping errors common in some languages when no delimiters are used for single line blocks.
#5: The requirement to delimit with whitespace enforces a matching between scoping and its visual indicators, making maintenance easier.
It's interesting that you would raise some minor nits about syntax with Python, and then bring up Perl!!! Perl is jokingly referred to as a "write-only" language because of the way it tersely uses complex syntax, side effects and multiplicity of allowed constructs. I don't intend to detract from Perl - it's combination of terseness and expressive power are very useful for a wide range of applications, and appealing to a large number of programmers.
Having translated large programs from Perl to Python, I can say that in my experience the expressive power of the languages is similar. The difference is that 6 months later I can read my Python code.
Also, having written and maintained large programs with Python, I can tell you from first hand experience that the other "problems" you mention (lack of variable declarations, tuple singleton syntax) simply aren't a big issue, if an issue at all. I'm trying to remember if I've ever even declared a singleton tuple...
As for your attack on Guido (the author of Python) you'll have to be more specific. When did he say Python had more flexibility than Lisp? This is a strawman you set up yourself. Python has very flexible data structures, probably borrowing a lot from Lisp and other languages. It's the entire package of simplicity in design (everything's a namespace), enforcement of rules to enhance maintenance, and expressive power that characterize Python.
I know you'll think this is condescending, but why don't you give the language a serious try before condeming (or indicting) it. Your arguments come off as puritanical nitpicking by someone unfamiliar with the "karma" of the language. I have used it for several years, in both personal and commercial settings, for both large and small programs. And it has worked very well for me.
Isn't that the ultimate test of the value of a language?