If you "embrace bleeding edge technology", don't come crying when you get cut by it. Bleeding edge technology tends to mean just that, it is not as reliable as traditional technology.
When your application crashes 20% of your customer's browsers, you can of course say, "But that's not my problem. They should have upgraded to the latest version of the browser, and...", however, your customers probably won't get your point, when "the rest of the web", "just works."
If you don't know that you are doing something, you shouldn't be held accountable for it. There are various levels of "knowing" something in a legal sense: knowing of the problem, knowing the problem *could* occur, knowing with certitude, etc.
Why, of course you should be held accountable for what you're doing. Ignorance is no excuse at all. If you're inapt to run a networked computer, to a degree that you're causing damage to others, you're by all means responsible for the damage you cause. Who else should be responsible?
Let's say I just use commodity PC hardware, and create an amazing program that does amazing thing, say, make that PC fly from NY to SF (I said extreme already!). That relies only on software. Do I have the right to patent that invention or not? According to your distinction here, probably not. There's no innovation in "computer controlled technical inventions" at all. It's pure software.
Well, the problem is that according to current practice in the European Patent Office, this qualifies as a technical invention, and not a software patent. Another real life example: A computer screen is hardware, right? So, according to the European Patent Office, a progress bar which is displayed on a computer screen is a technical invention, and not a software patent. Now tell me again this is a good distinction.
No, absolutely not. This may be true for certain software, but surely not for "which ever piece of software".
Take a simple piece of software, that just does its job on a generic piece of hardware, which can be replaced at any time. Oh, and not connected to any evil network, just doing its job on a single machine.
Now explain to me how you're locked into any kind of upgrade path. The only thing that could stop this machine from working is when the software says, "Whee! We're so far into the future, something must be going wrong."
Take a company that is in control of an open source project. If they change their project radically, in a way other users of the software don't like, these can branch at any time. This allows them to at least maintain the old version of the software.
However, there has to be open source code for that. If all you have is an API and an SDK, you can't maintain such an older version for your ever-changing environment, should those in control of the closed source move into a direction you don't like.
Actually, these were exactly the same words that Erich Mielke used right before the Berlin wall fell.
He was head of state intelligence and secret police in the German Democratic Republic. Being questioned about his actions by an angry crowd, he said:
Haha, where I'm living (Austria), everyone has locked mail boxes at the moment. Only the mailman has got a second key to the box.
However, our mail system is getting privatized, and the new mail services demand access to these locked boxes, so they can deliver mail as well. Now legislation has RULED to replace our locked mail boxes with UNLOCKED ones, in order that everyone can access them.
Our brain is subject to such deterioration just the same.
In my experience the human brain is capable of completely forgetting the PIN number of an ATM card, after having typed that PIN hundreds of times. It's also capable of forgetting root passwords, also having typed them several hundreds of times.
If you really want to remember something, don't trust yourself. Make a backup.
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If you "embrace bleeding edge technology", don't come crying when you get cut by it. Bleeding edge technology tends to mean just that, it is not as reliable as traditional technology.
...", however, your customers probably won't get your point, when "the rest of the web", "just works."
When your application crashes 20% of your customer's browsers, you can of course say, "But that's not my problem. They should have upgraded to the latest version of the browser, and
If you don't know that you are doing something, you shouldn't be held accountable for it. There are various levels of "knowing" something in a legal sense: knowing of the problem, knowing the problem *could* occur, knowing with certitude, etc.
Why, of course you should be held accountable for what you're doing. Ignorance is no excuse at all. If you're inapt to run a networked computer, to a degree that you're causing damage to others, you're by all means responsible for the damage you cause. Who else should be responsible?
Let's say I just use commodity PC hardware, and create an amazing program that does amazing thing, say, make that PC fly from NY to SF (I said extreme already!). That relies only on software. Do I have the right to patent that invention or not? According to your distinction here, probably not. There's no innovation in "computer controlled technical inventions" at all. It's pure software.
Well, the problem is that according to current practice in the European Patent Office, this qualifies as a technical invention, and not a software patent. Another real life example: A computer screen is hardware, right? So, according to the European Patent Office, a progress bar which is displayed on a computer screen is a technical invention, and not a software patent. Now tell me again this is a good distinction.
Exactly, I'm not interested either.
What I'm really interested in is running free software on dirt cheap hardware.
No, absolutely not. This may be true for certain software, but surely not for "which ever piece of software".
Take a simple piece of software, that just does its job on a generic piece of hardware, which can be replaced at any time. Oh, and not connected to any evil network, just doing its job on a single machine.
Now explain to me how you're locked into any kind of upgrade path. The only thing that could stop this machine from working is when the software says, "Whee! We're so far into the future, something must be going wrong."
I absolutely disagree.
Take a company that is in control of an open source project. If they change their project radically, in a way other users of the software don't like, these can branch at any time. This allows them to at least maintain the old version of the software.
However, there has to be open source code for that. If all you have is an API and an SDK, you can't maintain such an older version for your ever-changing environment, should those in control of the closed source move into a direction you don't like.
There's no Flash player for my platform (ppc Linux), but I know IBM has done similar research:
r y. htm
http://researchweb.watson.ibm.com/history/galle
Martin: But I love everybody.
Actually, these were exactly the same words that Erich Mielke used right before the Berlin wall fell. He was head of state intelligence and secret police in the German Democratic Republic. Being questioned about his actions by an angry crowd, he said:
"But I love, I love everybody..."
Haha, where I'm living (Austria), everyone has locked mail boxes at the moment. Only the mailman has got a second key to the box.
However, our mail system is getting privatized, and the new mail services demand access to these locked boxes, so they can deliver mail as well. Now legislation has RULED to replace our locked mail boxes with UNLOCKED ones, in order that everyone can access them.
May those idiot politicians rot in hell.
Our brain is subject to such deterioration just the same.
In my experience the human brain is capable of completely forgetting the PIN number of an ATM card, after having typed that PIN hundreds of times.
It's also capable of forgetting root passwords, also having typed them several hundreds of times.
If you really want to remember something, don't trust yourself. Make a backup.
Space Odyssey may precede it, but I rather connect the Danube Waltz with the Elite docking sequence. Which fits nicely.
In general, the animation reminds me a lot of Elite II. What a shame they killed Elite TNK.
> So if one contributer feels 2+2=4
... someone might come along and tell them that they both could be right:
> and another feels 2+2=6
2 (±1) + 2 (±1) = 4 (±2)