about the only reasonable chance we seem to have of causing our own extinction is nano-terrorism - the "grey goo" scenario.
Similar but much more plausible is bio-terrorism with a genetically-engineered virus.
All it would take is one artificial hybrid between a high-lethality germ and a rapid-proliferation one. (Such diseases have never evolved naturally, because anything that kills its hosts too thoroughly never gets a chance to reproduce. But laboratory conditions avoid that obstacle)
If the melting of the arctic ice were going to flood the world, then the melting of the ice in your beverage would flood your desk.
Not exactly. Most people don't fill their glasses to the 95% line with sand before adding water and ice!
The earth is not like a glass of water. The ice at the south pole is sitting on land, so melting it would increase the sea level. The north pole's ice is mostly floating, so that wouldn't change sea level (as per your science experiment). However, in the vicinity of the north pole is a lot of ice on land (glaciers and such), which would also melt if the polar ice caps did.
The melting of any ice not entirely floating on liquid water will increase the sea level by some amount.
The oceans bulge around the equator because of the earth's spin
No. The tidal bulge is due to the moon's gravitational force. (The moon does orbit around the same axis that the earth rotates on. This is the case with most observed planets)
and therefore rising sea levels
The sea levels would rise everywhere, but the increase would be larger towards the equator.
Technically, there were no political parties at the time of the Constitutional Convention.
A fact that is especially clear when you remember that at first, winning 2nd place in the Presidential voting made you Vice-President. Clearly, that system was created without the idea of party politics.
Imagine if the old rule was still in effect today- the temptation for a radical liberal or reactionary conservative to assasinate the President and turn over the White House to the opposition party would be enormous!
You know, Slashdot would be a better place if people would bother to do a bit of research before spouting off about stuff that they obviously have no clue about.
I have devoted more that 28 hours to researching this precise subject. But I don't have time to repost all of that for you here.
From the GPL FAQ:
Sorry, the GPL FAQ is not the GPL. It has no legal validity- the text of the GPL is all that matters. Nor does a FAQ have the authority to redefine existing terms like "distribute". That particular FAQ is just full of holes.
Just to point out one of the most blatantly wrong things about that FAQ: It's actually self-contradictory. In the first sentence, it says that using multiple copies within an organization is just fine. But the last sentence states "providing copies to contractors for use off-site is distribution"
So what if the off-site contractors are part of the organization? Can they use it, or can't they? Remember that it is possible for off-site contractors to be part of an organization! (For example, the United Space Alliance is an organization with multiple sites, and 100% of its members are contractors- and from different corporations)
And this effectively neuters your other argument
My simplest argument is that I'm part of the DoD, and know the rules around here. But I can't really prove that to you.
If your position held, then the GPL itself would be entirely powerless. Any company could happily violate the GPL by allowing customers to work with copies that the company owns.
The "boss" is not giving you a copy (thus "distributing" it), he/she is allowing you to work on a copy that the company owns.
You apparently don't know what "distribute" means. You claim distribute means "giving", but that is untrue. It means to spread out in different positions- "distribute" doesn't imply any transfer of ownership. Fortunately, the US legal system is very clear on the actual meaning of "distribute"! For the legal and technical definitions of "distribution", it doesn't matter if the recipients are all members of the same organization, corporation, or whatever.
If Wal-Mart makes 50,000 copies for all it's employees to use, that is distribution. If Ace-Soft makes 50 copies for its customers to use, that's distribution too. The only way either of those cases wouldn't be "distribution" is if everybody took turns running it on just one computer.
I see that you've still never even attempted to respond to the very simple question: "Why is it good for a voter in Montana to have a more powerful Presidential vote than one in California?" (Or, you could instead try the related question: "Why is it good for a state to have rights beyond those of the citizens who live there?")
Since you've posted 3 times without answering, I can only interpret this as an inability to answer.
I'd say that I'd be wasting my time attempting to explain
You haven't made an attempt yet.
the rather obvious conclusions of the creators of our republican system.
Ha ha! It's so obvious that you can't explain it, huh? Maybe I can guess what's happening here... you were sitting in one of those vauntedcivics classes, and the teacher explained how the system works today, and some of the history of how it came to be, and you nodded right along. Then he told you "This system is the best and fairest anyone could come up with", and you mechanically agreed to that too, without caring that you didn't understand why.
But now, when challenged to actually explain why it's good, the only thing you can do is fall back on variations of "My civics class said so!" or "George Washington liked it!"
perhaps in time you'll take my advice and actually learn something about the history of the founding of our system of government instead of simply repeating nonsense that was discredited years ago.
That's the third time you repeated the "go to school" line. It just doesn't work- it's either a vapid insult, or an appeal to authority, which is an invalid argument if I've ever heard one.
The definition for the boundaries for the State of California were not defined by the US Congress.
Yes they were.
The US Government played absolutely no part in the decision.
Final approval of the boundaries always lay with the US Congress. No matter how much land was transmitted with each particular treaty, the division into states was up to them.
101 years ago, the US annexed a big piece of land as a single action- but had no trouble dividing it into 13 separate states. They could've done the same to California.
The delegates of California unaminously decided on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada's.
They had no authority for that decision. People outside the USA can't just declare themselves a new state (I wonder what'd happen if Puerto Rico tried this?). All they can do is offer themselves for annexation to the US, and then Congress decides exactly what to do with it.
No, you do. You think "parse" is a more powerful term than it really is. Although ratsos1 didn't explain his "French" analogy quite right: to parse French, you need to understand not just the letters, but also verb-conjugation suffixes and structural words (la, le, de...)
That's sufficient for you to diagram a French sentence. And that's all parsing can do for you.
Since the tags are documented, you have no reason to be unable to understand the file.
That's another invalid assumption. XML does nothing (and can do nothing) to guarantee that the attached documentation is correct or complete, or if it even exists at all.
It would be valid XML, for example, for each tag to be documented with a page number in a trade-secret book accessible only to Microsoft employees. And in fact, for some of their past experiments with XML storage, that's exactly what they've done! There have been data-blocks whose only documentation has been a reference to a Microsoft OLE type id.
Minor nitpick, but Iraq has the 3rd largest reserve of oil. Not exactly 3rd world
Actually, that oil is part of what keeps Iraq (and many Middle Eastern nations) from developing "first world" status. If a nation possesses over-abundant salable natural resources, it has no incentive to develop the industrial economy required to support modern warfare is actually reduced.
This is an oversimplification, but to a first approximation, the citizens of an oil-rich nation don't actually have to work for a living. Taxes work backwards- every year the government pays you just for living there. (Alaska in the USA has a minor version of this system)
Compared to Iraq, places like Germany and especially Japan had negligble supplies of natural resources, which is why their people became (occasionally) such hard workers, and why they had the ambition to attempt global empire.
Fortunately this was not a pre-emtive war, it was a resumption of a previous conflict when one party failed to live up to the cease fire treaty.
With that claim, you are accusing the President of treason-level lying, because pre-emption was exactly the reason he gave for going to war.
Besides, the US was not a party to that agreement, It was been Iraq and the UN (of which US is just one member)! If the US had gone to the UN and properly demanded that either (a) sanctions against Iraq be dropped as ineffective, or (b) Iraq be forcibly put into compliance, then all indications are that UN approval would've come through by around February, 2004.
But that didn't mesh with Bush's schedule... he just couldn't wait. (The especially funny part is: if he did wait, then the war would be ongoing during the US Presidential elections, and voters prefer not to change the Commander-In-Chief during wartime)
So, tell me, if parsing isn't understanding the file, exactly what is your definition of parsing?
I define "parse" the same way your dictionary does- which does not call it equivalent to "understanding". In computer science, as in linguisticts, parsing is one specific stage of coming to understand.
The following sentence is parsable according to the same rules as the English language; but can you understand it?
Stortilly racan the actouct into a jerby hoonter.
It's parsable, but not comprehensible. You can identify each noun, verb, adverb, and adjective. The relationship between each is clear. But you still can't tell what it means! (Another good example)
To go back to the more specific topic of Microsoft file formats: if they used XML, you could probably parse out their data. You'd know what each of the variables in the file was set to. You might even know what each variable was called, if the XML or DTD is verbose enough. But you still don't know what they do.
You can guess, but that'll never be good enough, since "correct" behavior is defined as "whatever Microsoft Word does when given the file". Only exhaustive reverse-engineering of the actual program can produce true bug-for-bug compatibility.
it is a file format that would allow anyone to open anywhere on any platform using any software, assuming that said software could properly parse the XML file.
Flat-out wrong. The ability to parse a file doesn't imply that you can understand it!
One is taken to wondering just how different things might've been if we'd shown more spine earlier as opposed to picking up the pieces later.
By "spine", I assume you mean strictness or aggression. But actually, for optimal results, the Allies (US+UK+France) should've been more gentle earlier. Then WWII never would've happened. (I wouldn't expect you to understand what I mean without an uncommon knowledge of history)
How many contracts do developers *really* lose because someone used a snippit?
VRML and C++/Java/Javascript have to be pretty different in this regard. VRML works are essentially artistic data, like a JPG or MP3, while all programming code is functional. You'll notice there is no equivalent to the Free Software / Open Source movement for music or images (there may be some groups that attempt this, but they've had nowhere near the success of FOSS).
There are many possible explanations for this. One is that artistic works are more composable. If I need sound effects or 3d models for my video game, it's much easier to snag individual small files from here&there than it would be for me to build up executable code from the same scatter methodology. (Composability of software is often attempted, but seldom realized. One might say that successful software is more than the sum of its parts)
I don't see any reason one format could not accomodate all of those things.
There are abundant reasons. For interior spaces, for example, it can be important for the polygons to be indexed along BSPs (or some even more complex data structure). In the demanding world of 3d performance, there are all kinds of ways the file structure can impact runtime performance. There are many things that could be precaluated in different ways, for example.
One might respond that a single format can accomodate all of those needs by including an optional feature for each specialized area. That's a possibility, but it also weakens the chances for adoption of the format.
The more optional features there are, the greater the chance that some popular programs will implement only a subset of the specification, meaning the power of the format to serve as an interchange standard for all 3d programs will weaken.
XML hardly deserves to be called a file format. To have any meaning, the term "file format" must be usable as a way to discuss what files a program is capable of understanding. If two programs are known to both use MP3 or both use JPG, then one can predict with high certainty that they are compatible on the file level.
But if all we know is that the programs both read XML data, then we actually know nothing about what they actually do.
It would be possible for Microsoft to use XML for everything, but still not make life any easier for outsiders trying to achieve compatibility.
We wouldn't claim "binary" is a file format, and we shouldn't call "XML" one either.
Saddam Hussein may not have been an imminent threat, but then again neither was Hitler.
By the time the USA took up arms against Hitler, he certainly wasn't imminent anymore- he was active. He'd already invaded 6 different US allies by the time they decided to join the fight against Germany.
the difficulty of doing so makes it so remote a possibility as to be discounted. After all, the Pentagon doesn't write laws.
No, if the Pentagon for some reason had a strong desire to seize a GPLed program for their own secret reasons, they could do so without begging Congress to modify any laws.
The US Federal Government has the right of eminent domain. They can seize any private property they want, as long as a "fair" payment set by some 3rd-party arbitrator is made.
This normally applies to physical property or real estate, but can work for intellectual property too. (For example, in 1917 the Wright Brothers refused to license airplanes to the US Army, so their trillion dollar patent was seized with no payment)
And chances are that the "fair price" they'd pay would be low, because the arbitrator would see that the GPL software is normally distributed for free anyhow.
Responding to your earlier message: The only requirement is that if it releases the product or software using GPL'd code outside of its organization, it must release the source code too.
Wrong. The GPL doesn't contain any mention of "release", or "internal" or "external" use, or use inside/outside of a corporation or organization.
All it talks about is "distribution". There is no exception to allow free distribution inside one organization. If you give a modified GPL program to anyone, an employee of yours or not, you must give her permission to redistribute it freely. Otherwise, you have no right to give her a copy at all.
The only thing stopping you would be a contract which strictly prohibits it
Actually, that contract would be incompatible with the GPL. See GPL section 6 (as quoted in my adjacent response). If such a restriction were in place before the GPL was used, then the reciept of GPLed software constitutes a relaxation of that term.
If an employer gives his team modified GPL programs, but forbids them to redistribute, then this is just as illegal as ordering his staff to install one copy of Microsoft Office (Home Edition) on 35 PCs. Both are violations of copyright law.
Now, if that company does decide to distribute this GPLd item outside the company for others to use
Wrong. The GPL says "distribute". It does not say "distribute outside the company". It gives no special exception to allow a single company to redistribute software for internal use only.
Nothing in the GPL allows an employee to take an internally modified version of GPLd software without permission of that person's employer.
As someone else responded, and has been explained to you before, the body of the GPL itself constitutes permission to redistribute. Here's the text:
6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein.
When a boss gives an employee a modified copy of a GPLed program, two possible things may be taking place:
He is ignoring the GPL. In that case, he is immediately guilty of criminal copyright infringement. That's theft, industrial espionage, and just plain UNETHICAL.
He is redistributing the program under the GPL. In that case, he must include the full GPL license with each copy. That license will contain the same section 6 I quoted above, which constitutes explicit permission redistribute copies.
If the boss turns around and instructs the employee "Don't hand out copies of this software, or you're fired!", then he has imposed a "further restriction" in violation of section 6, breaking the GPL, and removing his right to the modified software.
I can assure you that if you work for the government and you start passing around internal software that contains GPL or any of the other "open source" licenses,
Wrong. If you work for government and you put any classified or otherwise sensitive data in a GPL program, then the whole project will be destroyed as soon as counsel learns about it, and you should expect reprimand.
(Yes, I do work for government. Yes, I've observed programmers steered away from GPL baselines for this very reason)
On the other hand, a great deal of government-owned software and data is neither classified nor secret, but is in fact public domain. Mixing it up with GPL code is no problem at all.
It's only if you release the code that you need to make it available.
Untrue. According to the text of the GPL, you need to make the code availabile if you distribute it, not release it. (The word "release" is not present in the GPL) Sending copies to 10 Generals in different branches of the Pentagon meets the technical and legal definition of "distribution".
For internal use you can change whatever you want and keep your changes internal.
Sure you can. You just can't prohibit any internal people from releasing it publically. (The word "internal" is not present in the GPL)
But, I guess, they'd be honour bound to supply any infantry man who got the Linux kit with the source code, if they asked.
They would, although many people don't believe it.
Seriously, I imagine they one of the standard hardened kernels, and attach lots of their own non-GPL apps / kernel modules to that
In reality, they simply hardly ever modify GPL code. The DoD doesn't want to be in the kernel-maintenance business, for example. They just buy a Linux distrib prepackaged by Red Hat, or by some embedded-oriented vendor. The military just doesn't see a cost-effective benefit to modifying an OS on their own.
Secondly, they didn't have to make California as big as they did and I suspect a fair portion of its inhabitants would be happy to see it split in half.
"They". Who is "they" in that sentence? Who drew the lines defining California?
It was the US Congress- a Congress that was disproportionately influenced by small eastern states (RI, NJ, NH, etc).
By defining new states to be large areas, the existing US Senators protected themselves from competition. If they had created California as multiple states, then there would've been 4-6 new Senators, instead of just two. The more new states created, the more the power of existing Senators is diluted.
Thus, making larger & larger states as time went on was a way for the original states to preserve some measure of extra power.
Whoever won the court battle was going to have their legitimacy questioned.
Nope. If a FULL recount had been done of all of Florida, then these attacks which have targeted Bush wouldn't have happened.
The concept of "stop counting, we don't want to see the real results" sounds too much like an intentional coverup. Whenever you refuse to measure something accurately, you are open to charges of dishonesty, regardless of what the truth might be.
1. Enable a person to be elected president even though he didn't win the majority of the votes.
Nitpicking, but that in itself is not bad. Nor is it enabled by the Electoral College.
Direct voting would still allow a non-majority to win, in a scenario like: Bush 49%, Gore 48%, Nader 1%, others 2%)
4. Electorial college makes it easy to commit voter fraud.
Not really. Even if it was direct voting, there'd still probably be hierarchical counting at the level of each state. In some ways, EC might actually make it easier to detect cheaters.
You have skipped the single largest problem of EC: the disenfranchisement of voters in non-swing states. Voters in FL or NH are most powerful, one vote has around an 0.05% chance of tipping the statewide result. MA and UT are the least powerful states, since they have strong biases towards Dem or Repub. But other states are biased too- overall, 30 states vote in predictable ways, leaving only 20 that are truely in play during a campaign.
The additional power CA gets from Super-Electorial status is largely cancelled because it's non-swing. In a very real way, Bush voters in California don't matter: because no matter if he wins 5% or 45%, he'll still get 0 of the 55 electoral votes.
Democrats in TX and UT and Republicans in CA and MA are both harmed by the swing-state pheomenon of the Electoral College. The only result their votes can possibly achieve is bragging rights about winning "the popular vote", not change who actually gets the White House.
Slashdot Mirror
The Chinese have long since passed us up on coal usage...
No... assuming by "us" you meant the USA. The USA uses coal at nearly three times the rate of China- while having one third the population.
(Plus, much of China's industrial usage is going to products destined for the USA- those nations have an intertwined economy)
But the bit about China "rapidly gaining" is true.
about the only reasonable chance we seem to have of causing our own extinction is nano-terrorism - the "grey goo" scenario.
Similar but much more plausible is bio-terrorism with a genetically-engineered virus.
All it would take is one artificial hybrid between a high-lethality germ and a rapid-proliferation one. (Such diseases have never evolved naturally, because anything that kills its hosts too thoroughly never gets a chance to reproduce. But laboratory conditions avoid that obstacle)
If the melting of the arctic ice were going to flood the world, then the melting of the ice in your beverage would flood your desk.
Not exactly. Most people don't fill their glasses to the 95% line with sand before adding water and ice!
The earth is not like a glass of water. The ice at the south pole is sitting on land, so melting it would increase the sea level. The north pole's ice is mostly floating, so that wouldn't change sea level (as per your science experiment). However, in the vicinity of the north pole is a lot of ice on land (glaciers and such), which would also melt if the polar ice caps did.
The melting of any ice not entirely floating on liquid water will increase the sea level by some amount.
The oceans bulge around the equator because of the earth's spin
No. The tidal bulge is due to the moon's gravitational force. (The moon does orbit around the same axis that the earth rotates on. This is the case with most observed planets)
and therefore rising sea levels
The sea levels would rise everywhere, but the increase would be larger towards the equator.
Technically, there were no political parties at the time of the Constitutional Convention.
A fact that is especially clear when you remember that at first, winning 2nd place in the Presidential voting made you Vice-President. Clearly, that system was created without the idea of party politics.
Imagine if the old rule was still in effect today- the temptation for a radical liberal or reactionary conservative to assasinate the President and turn over the White House to the opposition party would be enormous!
You know, Slashdot would be a better place if people would bother to do a bit of research before spouting off about stuff that they obviously have no clue about.
I have devoted more that 28 hours to researching this precise subject. But I don't have time to repost all of that for you here.
From the GPL FAQ:
Sorry, the GPL FAQ is not the GPL. It has no legal validity- the text of the GPL is all that matters. Nor does a FAQ have the authority to redefine existing terms like "distribute". That particular FAQ is just full of holes.
Just to point out one of the most blatantly wrong things about that FAQ: It's actually self-contradictory. In the first sentence, it says that using multiple copies within an organization is just fine. But the last sentence states "providing copies to contractors for use off-site is distribution"
So what if the off-site contractors are part of the organization? Can they use it, or can't they? Remember that it is possible for off-site contractors to be part of an organization! (For example, the United Space Alliance is an organization with multiple sites, and 100% of its members are contractors- and from different corporations)
And this effectively neuters your other argument
My simplest argument is that I'm part of the DoD, and know the rules around here. But I can't really prove that to you.
If your position held, then the GPL itself would be entirely powerless. Any company could happily violate the GPL by allowing customers to work with copies that the company owns.
The "boss" is not giving you a copy (thus "distributing" it), he/she is allowing you to work on a copy that the company owns.
You apparently don't know what "distribute" means. You claim distribute means "giving", but that is untrue. It means to spread out in different positions- "distribute" doesn't imply any transfer of ownership. Fortunately, the US legal system is very clear on the actual meaning of "distribute"!
For the legal and technical definitions of "distribution", it doesn't matter if the recipients are all members of the same organization, corporation, or whatever.
If Wal-Mart makes 50,000 copies for all it's employees to use, that is distribution. If Ace-Soft makes 50 copies for its customers to use, that's distribution too. The only way either of those cases wouldn't be "distribution" is if everybody took turns running it on just one computer.
I see that you've still never even attempted to respond to the very simple question: "Why is it good for a voter in Montana to have a more powerful Presidential vote than one in California?" (Or, you could instead try the related question: "Why is it good for a state to have rights beyond those of the citizens who live there?")
Since you've posted 3 times without answering, I can only interpret this as an inability to answer.
I'd say that I'd be wasting my time attempting to explain
You haven't made an attempt yet.
the rather obvious conclusions of the creators of our republican system.
Ha ha! It's so obvious that you can't explain it, huh? Maybe I can guess what's happening here... you were sitting in one of those vaunted civics classes, and the teacher explained how the system works today, and some of the history of how it came to be, and you nodded right along. Then he told you "This system is the best and fairest anyone could come up with", and you mechanically agreed to that too, without caring that you didn't understand why.
But now, when challenged to actually explain why it's good, the only thing you can do is fall back on variations of "My civics class said so!" or "George Washington liked it!"
perhaps in time you'll take my advice and actually learn something about the history of the founding of our system of government instead of simply repeating nonsense that was discredited years ago.
That's the third time you repeated the "go to school" line. It just doesn't work- it's either a vapid insult, or an appeal to authority, which is an invalid argument if I've ever heard one.
The definition for the boundaries for the State of California were not defined by the US Congress.
Yes they were.
The US Government played absolutely no part in the decision.
Final approval of the boundaries always lay with the US Congress. No matter how much land was transmitted with each particular treaty, the division into states was up to them.
101 years ago, the US annexed a big piece of land as a single action- but had no trouble dividing it into 13 separate states. They could've done the same to California.
The delegates of California unaminously decided on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada's.
They had no authority for that decision. People outside the USA can't just declare themselves a new state (I wonder what'd happen if Puerto Rico tried this?). All they can do is offer themselves for annexation to the US, and then Congress decides exactly what to do with it.
You misunderstand the use of the term "parse."
No, you do. You think "parse" is a more powerful term than it really is. Although ratsos1 didn't explain his "French" analogy quite right: to parse French, you need to understand not just the letters, but also verb-conjugation suffixes and structural words (la, le, de...)
That's sufficient for you to diagram a French sentence. And that's all parsing can do for you.
Since the tags are documented, you have no reason to be unable to understand the file.
That's another invalid assumption. XML does nothing (and can do nothing) to guarantee that the attached documentation is correct or complete, or if it even exists at all.
It would be valid XML, for example, for each tag to be documented with a page number in a trade-secret book accessible only to Microsoft employees. And in fact, for some of their past experiments with XML storage, that's exactly what they've done! There have been data-blocks whose only documentation has been a reference to a Microsoft OLE type id.
Minor nitpick, but Iraq has the 3rd largest reserve of oil. Not exactly 3rd world
Actually, that oil is part of what keeps Iraq (and many Middle Eastern nations) from developing "first world" status. If a nation possesses over-abundant salable natural resources, it has no incentive to develop the industrial economy required to support modern warfare is actually reduced.
This is an oversimplification, but to a first approximation, the citizens of an oil-rich nation don't actually have to work for a living. Taxes work backwards- every year the government pays you just for living there. (Alaska in the USA has a minor version of this system)
Compared to Iraq, places like Germany and especially Japan had negligble supplies of natural resources, which is why their people became (occasionally) such hard workers, and why they had the ambition to attempt global empire.
Fortunately this was not a pre-emtive war, it was a resumption of a previous conflict when one party failed to live up to the cease fire treaty.
With that claim, you are accusing the President of treason-level lying, because pre-emption was exactly the reason he gave for going to war.
Besides, the US was not a party to that agreement, It was been Iraq and the UN (of which US is just one member)! If the US had gone to the UN and properly demanded that either (a) sanctions against Iraq be dropped as ineffective, or (b) Iraq be forcibly put into compliance, then all indications are that UN approval would've come through by around February, 2004.
But that didn't mesh with Bush's schedule... he just couldn't wait. (The especially funny part is: if he did wait, then the war would be ongoing during the US Presidential elections, and voters prefer not to change the Commander-In-Chief during wartime)
I define "parse" the same way your dictionary does- which does not call it equivalent to "understanding". In computer science, as in linguisticts, parsing is one specific stage of coming to understand.
The following sentence is parsable according to the same rules as the English language; but can you understand it?
It's parsable, but not comprehensible. You can identify each noun, verb, adverb, and adjective. The relationship between each is clear. But you still can't tell what it means! (Another good example)
To go back to the more specific topic of Microsoft file formats: if they used XML, you could probably parse out their data. You'd know what each of the variables in the file was set to. You might even know what each variable was called, if the XML or DTD is verbose enough. But you still don't know what they do.
You can guess, but that'll never be good enough, since "correct" behavior is defined as "whatever Microsoft Word does when given the file". Only exhaustive reverse-engineering of the actual program can produce true bug-for-bug compatibility.
Optimizing your web hosting to make search more efficient or productive?
Optimizing your paying clients' web-pages to have automatically higher search priority?
it is a file format that would allow anyone to open anywhere on any platform using any software, assuming that said software could properly parse the XML file.
Flat-out wrong. The ability to parse a file doesn't imply that you can understand it!
One is taken to wondering just how different things might've been if we'd shown more spine earlier as opposed to picking up the pieces later.
By "spine", I assume you mean strictness or aggression. But actually, for optimal results, the Allies (US+UK+France) should've been more gentle earlier. Then WWII never would've happened. (I wouldn't expect you to understand what I mean without an uncommon knowledge of history)
How many contracts do developers *really* lose because someone used a snippit?
VRML and C++/Java/Javascript have to be pretty different in this regard. VRML works are essentially artistic data, like a JPG or MP3, while all programming code is functional. You'll notice there is no equivalent to the Free Software / Open Source movement for music or images (there may be some groups that attempt this, but they've had nowhere near the success of FOSS).
There are many possible explanations for this. One is that artistic works are more composable. If I need sound effects or 3d models for my video game, it's much easier to snag individual small files from here&there than it would be for me to build up executable code from the same scatter methodology. (Composability of software is often attempted, but seldom realized. One might say that successful software is more than the sum of its parts)
I don't see any reason one format could not accomodate all of those things.
There are abundant reasons. For interior spaces, for example, it can be important for the polygons to be indexed along BSPs (or some even more complex data structure). In the demanding world of 3d performance, there are all kinds of ways the file structure can impact runtime performance. There are many things that could be precaluated in different ways, for example.
One might respond that a single format can accomodate all of those needs by including an optional feature for each specialized area. That's a possibility, but it also weakens the chances for adoption of the format.
The more optional features there are, the greater the chance that some popular programs will implement only a subset of the specification, meaning the power of the format to serve as an interchange standard for all 3d programs will weaken.
Microsoft did adopt an open file format: XML.
XML hardly deserves to be called a file format. To have any meaning, the term "file format" must be usable as a way to discuss what files a program is capable of understanding. If two programs are known to both use MP3 or both use JPG, then one can predict with high certainty that they are compatible on the file level.
But if all we know is that the programs both read XML data, then we actually know nothing about what they actually do.
It would be possible for Microsoft to use XML for everything, but still not make life any easier for outsiders trying to achieve compatibility.
We wouldn't claim "binary" is a file format, and we shouldn't call "XML" one either.
Saddam Hussein may not have been an imminent threat, but then again neither was Hitler.
By the time the USA took up arms against Hitler, he certainly wasn't imminent anymore- he was active. He'd already invaded 6 different US allies by the time they decided to join the fight against Germany.
the difficulty of doing so makes it so remote a possibility as to be discounted. After all, the Pentagon doesn't write laws.
No, if the Pentagon for some reason had a strong desire to seize a GPLed program for their own secret reasons, they could do so without begging Congress to modify any laws.
The US Federal Government has the right of eminent domain. They can seize any private property they want, as long as a "fair" payment set by some 3rd-party arbitrator is made.
This normally applies to physical property or real estate, but can work for intellectual property too. (For example, in 1917 the Wright Brothers refused to license airplanes to the US Army, so their trillion dollar patent was seized with no payment)
And chances are that the "fair price" they'd pay would be low, because the arbitrator would see that the GPL software is normally distributed for free anyhow.
Responding to your earlier message:
The only requirement is that if it releases the product or software using GPL'd code outside of its organization, it must release the source code too.
Wrong. The GPL doesn't contain any mention of "release", or "internal" or "external" use, or use inside/outside of a corporation or organization.
All it talks about is "distribution". There is no exception to allow free distribution inside one organization. If you give a modified GPL program to anyone, an employee of yours or not, you must give her permission to redistribute it freely. Otherwise, you have no right to give her a copy at all.
The only thing stopping you would be a contract which strictly prohibits it
Actually, that contract would be incompatible with the GPL. See GPL section 6 (as quoted in my adjacent response). If such a restriction were in place before the GPL was used, then the reciept of GPLed software constitutes a relaxation of that term.
If an employer gives his team modified GPL programs, but forbids them to redistribute, then this is just as illegal as ordering his staff to install one copy of Microsoft Office (Home Edition) on 35 PCs. Both are violations of copyright law.
Wrong. The GPL says "distribute". It does not say "distribute outside the company". It gives no special exception to allow a single company to redistribute software for internal use only.
Nothing in the GPL allows an employee to take an internally modified version of GPLd software without permission of that person's employer.
As someone else responded, and has been explained to you before, the body of the GPL itself constitutes permission to redistribute. Here's the text:
When a boss gives an employee a modified copy of a GPLed program, two possible things may be taking place:
If the boss turns around and instructs the employee "Don't hand out copies of this software, or you're fired!", then he has imposed a "further restriction" in violation of section 6, breaking the GPL, and removing his right to the modified software.
I can assure you that if you work for the government and you start passing around internal software that contains GPL or any of the other "open source" licenses,
Wrong. If you work for government and you put any classified or otherwise sensitive data in a GPL program, then the whole project will be destroyed as soon as counsel learns about it, and you should expect reprimand.
(Yes, I do work for government. Yes, I've observed programmers steered away from GPL baselines for this very reason)
On the other hand, a great deal of government-owned software and data is neither classified nor secret, but is in fact public domain. Mixing it up with GPL code is no problem at all.
It's only if you release the code that you need to make it available.
Untrue. According to the text of the GPL, you need to make the code availabile if you distribute it, not release it. (The word "release" is not present in the GPL) Sending copies to 10 Generals in different branches of the Pentagon meets the technical and legal definition of "distribution".
For internal use you can change whatever you want and keep your changes internal.
Sure you can. You just can't prohibit any internal people from releasing it publically. (The word "internal" is not present in the GPL)
But, I guess, they'd be honour bound to supply any infantry man who got the Linux kit with the source code, if they asked.
They would, although many people don't believe it.
Seriously, I imagine they one of the standard hardened kernels, and attach lots of their own non-GPL apps / kernel modules to that
In reality, they simply hardly ever modify GPL code. The DoD doesn't want to be in the kernel-maintenance business, for example. They just buy a Linux distrib prepackaged by Red Hat, or by some embedded-oriented vendor. The military just doesn't see a cost-effective benefit to modifying an OS on their own.
Secondly, they didn't have to make California as big as they did and I suspect a fair portion of its inhabitants would be happy to see it split in half.
"They". Who is "they" in that sentence? Who drew the lines defining California?
It was the US Congress- a Congress that was disproportionately influenced by small eastern states (RI, NJ, NH, etc).
By defining new states to be large areas, the existing US Senators protected themselves from competition. If they had created California as multiple states, then there would've been 4-6 new Senators, instead of just two. The more new states created, the more the power of existing Senators is diluted.
Thus, making larger & larger states as time went on was a way for the original states to preserve some measure of extra power.
Whoever won the court battle was going to have their legitimacy questioned.
Nope. If a FULL recount had been done of all of Florida, then these attacks which have targeted Bush wouldn't have happened.
The concept of "stop counting, we don't want to see the real results" sounds too much like an intentional coverup. Whenever you refuse to measure something accurately, you are open to charges of dishonesty, regardless of what the truth might be.
1. Enable a person to be elected president even though he didn't win the majority of the votes.
Nitpicking, but that in itself is not bad. Nor is it enabled by the Electoral College.
Direct voting would still allow a non-majority to win, in a scenario like: Bush 49%, Gore 48%, Nader 1%, others 2%)
4. Electorial college makes it easy to commit voter fraud.
Not really. Even if it was direct voting, there'd still probably be hierarchical counting at the level of each state. In some ways, EC might actually make it easier to detect cheaters.
You have skipped the single largest problem of EC: the disenfranchisement of voters in non-swing states. Voters in FL or NH are most powerful, one vote has around an 0.05% chance of tipping the statewide result. MA and UT are the least powerful states, since they have strong biases towards Dem or Repub. But other states are biased too- overall, 30 states vote in predictable ways, leaving only 20 that are truely in play during a campaign.
The additional power CA gets from Super-Electorial status is largely cancelled because it's non-swing. In a very real way, Bush voters in California don't matter: because no matter if he wins 5% or 45%, he'll still get 0 of the 55 electoral votes.
Democrats in TX and UT and Republicans in CA and MA are both harmed by the swing-state pheomenon of the Electoral College. The only result their votes can possibly achieve is bragging rights about winning "the popular vote", not change who actually gets the White House.