Most of those people faced a real threat of persecution (up to and including incineration) if they had professed a disbelief. Statements taken under torture should not be believed, so statements taken while inquisitors watch nearby are hardly more credible.
Einstein believed in God. So do I.
Einstein's famous pertinent quote is "God does not play dice with the universe". That is broadly interpreted as an affirmation of the existence of God.
But in reality, it was uttered shortly after a mathematical demonstration that the universe is indeed controlled by randomness- someone playing "dice". So the true meaning of the quote is the reverse of what is assumed.
Here's an Einstein quote that is less widely-spread (for some odd reason): "I believe not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings."
In strict Computer Science terminology, no. A "graph" is a set theoretical relationship where each element in S contains a reference to 0 to |S|-1 others.
While graphs can be visualized or drawn as a picture, that picture is not the graph.
The particular definition that you cite from that link is
Nope. You don't know which definition I meant, because there are 4 on that page, and 3 of them have "written" as the first meaning. The other has it as the second.
Thus they are unanimous that the claim "Graphical is not Text" is absolutely, completely false.
Again, consulting the OED reveals that the pictoral interpretation of the word "graphical" in the English predates the written word interpretation
I doubt that, as it contradicts other words with the "graph" base such as "graphology" and "digraph". The historical record clearly shows that although "graph" meant "visible shapes", it was first used to indicate the shapes of letters.
All that said, I am realistic, and see that "graphical" is a more useful word with the new definition than the old. Just chalk it up alongside "decimate", "tradegy", and "vagina" as terms whose meaning has completely flipped over the decades.
btw: pure research, like what's being done (in small amounts because of the cutbacks) on the ISS and shuttle, is what's given us little things like "electricity" and "chemistry".
Completely wrong. The Shuttle and ISS have never been any good for "pure research".
The manned spaceflights are just for publicity value. All research accomplished by shuttle or ISS could be done cheaper and faster with disposable satellites.
This isn't just my opinion. Every serious astronomer to whom I've seen the question posed agrees with me. (The only dispute comes from those who think the PR value of "heroic astronauts" increases their total budget allocation enough to compensate for the waste- still not a ringing endorsement)
It's widely believed that most albums have only 2 or 3 good songs, and that customers would actually prefer to buy songs a la carte, rather than being stuck with bundles that don't usually make much sense. (In the past, buying CD singles was too unwieldy. But when all your music is stored on a 10 gig drive, the question of which song came on which disk becomes irrelevant)
It worked for iD Software - why shouldn't it work for EMI?
You allude to the shareware release of the hit games Doom and Quake. (A style that has now been emulated by most PC game publishers under the name of "demos") But that situation does not resemble the position the music companies are in.
iD released fully-functional games, but missing a weapon, 75% of the levels, and 50% of the monsters. Players were inspired to buy the full version because they'd get more. Not only would the recieve enormously more content, but they'd also get the ability to play online against other people who had the full game- something that for networked products like Doom and Quake was the biggest part of the attraction. (cf Metcalfe's Law)
it also affects us people who want to actually see the site
Right on. That's one causal factor for the unceasing series of/. posters who comment before reading the article- they're trying to be responsible and not hammer a crippled website.
The FAQ answer alludes to "implications". Well so what? There might be problems, so take 'em on! That answer is four years old. There's been enough time to "think it through in detail". None of the problems look insurmountable.
It would be fairly easy to script a webspider which auto-downloads a copy of submitted pages (to 2-3 levels of depth). Then, if the page is scheduled for the frontpage, it's owner could be given a few emails warning of the impending slashdotting. By responding, she could automatically permit slashdot.org to serve cached versions of the site for the next 24 hours.
It's not a reinvention, though. The word usage in the computer user-interface field has always been at odds with the English language. But computers became so popular that they've wiped-out the original meaning.
Graphical is not Text.
That's exactly what the word means, though. In fact to be pedantically correct, a photograph or diagram isn't graphical. Only written text is by-definition "graphic".
Use your dictionary: the very first definition listed is "Of or relating to a written representation". That's the oldest meaning of the word; the others are neologisms by comparison.
To be linguistically correct, modern computers would be said to employ PUIs (Pictoral User Interfaces)
I've had Plan 9 marked down in the bungled category for about a decade. So today it's a small, elegant OS with some cool ideas that has no prospect for serious use... is that any different from last year or 5 years ago?
C, UNIX, WIMP interfaces, etc., even Java, to some extent, could well be considered the output of such a process.
No. Only WIMP is from "pure" research. C, UNIX, and Java were all created with applications firmly in mind. In all cases, they're now used in broader scopes than originally planned (and in Java's case, it never worked out for the intended purpose...)
In fact, all three are just refinements of an existing software product: C from BCPL, UNIX from Multics, and Java from Oak.
because the *only* company in the *entire* world that produces proprietary software is Microsoft.
Well, let's see. Microsoft is the largest company making proprietary software both in terms of total revenue and number of employees. Of all proprietary software (as opposed to firmware) they have the most installations. And no other software company approaches the same wide range of proprietary output as Microsoft.
All in all, Microsoft appears excellently representative of the proprietary software world as a whole.
I doubt many of the members would appreciate getting spammed.
If the companies do it right, the result might not resemble spam. It can be much more targeted, based on the heavy amount of info advertisers can see.
The very social-network which attracts users can be even more attractive to advertisers. Who wants to bet that the best analysis of the network will be reserved for paying corporations and not individual consumers?
Suppose a major seller like Amazon hooks up with a social-network service. They'll be able to cross-correlate an individual's known purchases with those of his friends and related persons. You know the quasi-spam from Amazon that starts "You bought book X, so you'll probably also be interested in book Y"? Expect that type of thing to be intensified.
Even if Amazon doesn't "spam" per se, and instead only sends to people who've already "opted in" to targeted ads, those ads will become more effective because the seller will know more about the customer's personal life.
if you own a CD-version of the song, you have the right to do it.
Even if you have no right to the song, it's not theft. "Doing something without permission" isn't theft. It might be infringement, fraud, or trespassing, but unless you take away something the victim already had, no theft has occured.
From birth, William Gates III was a millionaire. (Trust fund from wealthy parents). The lowest net-worth he's ever experienced is greater than the highest an average American can ever expect.
Anybody who can exhibit a counterexample can say this is not true.
That's not how counterexamples work. If I claim my car runs on petroleum, and someone points out that it also has a electrical cell-battery providing a tiny bit of power, the existence of a 2nd power source doesn't eliminate the first. "is powered by" is not an exclusive phrase.
4. "It's simply going to be more secure than proprietary software."
This can be proven wrong, and you'll look stupid.
The fact that secrecy harms security is becoming increasingly well-documented (and that applies not just to software, but in general)
How can software which can be changed or withdrawn at a whim from Microsoft ever be considered secure? To be dependent on Microsoft is to be insecure (in the same way that the US subsidizes unneeded farming production for "national security"). Furthermore (and more related to tradional ideas of software-security), Microsoft claims that Windows has exploits that those with access to the source code can see and use. They're essentially saying "We could hack your box, if we wanted."
D&D is now distributed under a "free" license inspired by the GNU GPL. The redistributable/downloadable versions don't include all the artwork and flavor text, nor does it have each little special bonus and magic item. But it's all you need to play the game itself. (Better for your own GM to invent customized details for your particular world)
Sounds like what you want is a robot-programming game. They have existed for many years, but are unlikely to ever become generally popular. (Indeed, popularity would only lead to a script-kiddie effect, where most players download programs instead of writing their own)
Its called "strategy". We don't really have Real Time Strategy games, we have Real Time Micromanagement games.
Such a thing as a "Stragety Game" is by definition impossible.
There can no more be a "strategy game" than there can be a "shooting game". That is, you can make a game which appears to have strategy, but it'll only be fake. The window-dressing of strategy, not the reality (in the same way that Quake doesn't really involve firearms, but only appears to on a superficial level)
This isn't to say that no game can involve strategy... but games in the fields of sports, FPS, and PVP RPG all can have strategy to the same extent an RTS does.
The words "strategy" and "tactics" are difficult to clearly dilineate, but the true effective difference between them is that tactics are things you can practice, and strategy is not. Any strategic decision, rehearsed enough times, becomes a tactical one.
General Colin Powel, General Tommy Franks, etc don't spend time telling individual soldiers what to do, but they're hardly just sitting back and watching either.
Guys like that have only two valuable (relevant) skills. One is leadership- the ability to be trusted by their men. The other is strategy- the ability to evaluate different outcomes. The whole point of true strategic thinking is that in real life, there are no clearly defined "victory conditions". Re the original Gulf War, there was never a doubt that the US could win. In question was what kind of victory would be most useful- how many friendly and civilian deaths were acceptable, what style of fighting would reflect well or poorly, and how much to keep pushing Saddam before the cost outweighs the benefit.
None of those questions can translate to a videogame environment. Games are necessarily played repeatedly. In 10-20 replays, both sides would learn exactly where the best equilibrium is... which outcome has the highest product of best result and most likelihood. Then once the "optimal plan" is known, the only question is how closely any particular player can execute that plan. (The better mouse-clicker)
Re:Where patent law is good
on
TiVo Will Die
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· Score: 1
I have to wonder what Tivo has patented.
No big mystery. They have a lot of patents, for each part of their system (and some things that didn't make it into products)
I believe their patents do have value. That doesn't necessarily mean they'll all stand up- but to strike them down would be expensive and slow, so any competitors would be pushed towards licensing rather than challenging.
Here's the list, all avail from uspto.gov:
6,643,798 Self-test electronic assembly and test system 6,642,939 Multimedia schedule presentation system 6,535,253 Analog video tagging and encoding system 6,490,722 Software installation and recovery system 6,487,646 Apparatus and method capable of restricting access to a data storage device 6,385,739 Self-test electronic assembly and test system 6,327,418 Method and apparatus implementing random access and time-based functions on a continuous stream of formatted digital data 6,310,886 Method and apparatus implementing a multimedia digital network 6,233,389 Multimedia time warping system 6,215,526 Analog video tagging and encoding system
Programmers are lazy, and (IMO) security-by-obscurity is the most common type in use today in closed-source apps.
No. Wrong. Backwards. Bizarro. That's all lies.
Nobody uses security-through-obscurity in software. Especially in government military/espionage matters! The NSA simply isn't moronic enough to let that happen.
It means that everyone who has access to the binary also has access to the source.
That's a little different from the definition of Free Software, which requires that everyone with access to the binary also has access and rights to the source.
That's a bad thing. Microsoft having a near-monopoly on IM servers would be bad, bad bad.
Personally, I'd like to see Yahoo become the de-facto standard
It's crazy to imagine that a Microsoft buyout of AOL would somehow open it up for Yahoo to take over messenging. When the #2 buys #1, #3 is in trouble. And if #2 already owned the default desktop of 90% of users, then #3 is completely dead.
If Microsoft owns both AIM and MSNMessenger, then they can "upgrade" one program into just a re-skinned version of the other, and then really start to config the servers so that only officially distributed executables can connect.
Goodbye to Linux IM programs. Goodbye gaim & everybuddy. Goodbye all 3rd-party IM utilities.
(Yes, there'll always be the possibility for someone to install a completely separate IM program like Jabber or GaduGadu. But not only would that software face the uphill battle of non-defaultness, there's also Metcalfe's Law in play)
The ipod is the undisputable king in the look and feel department, and that is why it's outselling anything else.
Look & feel is not protectable intellectual property, as Apple has learned in repeated lost lawsuits.
Any advantages they have in that area are fair game for a Taiwanese knockoff to sell for 60% less. The iPod just isn't a viable long-term profit-center for a computer+OS company.
Slashdot Mirror
Newton, Galileo, Kepler, Dirac, Faraday, Planck, Kelvin, Maxwell
Most of those people faced a real threat of persecution (up to and including incineration) if they had professed a disbelief. Statements taken under torture should not be believed, so statements taken while inquisitors watch nearby are hardly more credible.
Einstein believed in God. So do I.
Einstein's famous pertinent quote is "God does not play dice with the universe". That is broadly interpreted as an affirmation of the existence of God.
But in reality, it was uttered shortly after a mathematical demonstration that the universe is indeed controlled by randomness- someone playing "dice". So the true meaning of the quote is the reverse of what is assumed.
Here's an Einstein quote that is less widely-spread (for some odd reason): "I believe not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings."
is a graph graphic?
In strict Computer Science terminology, no. A "graph" is a set theoretical relationship where each element in S contains a reference to 0 to |S|-1 others.
While graphs can be visualized or drawn as a picture, that picture is not the graph.
The particular definition that you cite from that link is
Nope. You don't know which definition I meant, because there are 4 on that page, and 3 of them have "written" as the first meaning. The other has it as the second.
Thus they are unanimous that the claim "Graphical is not Text" is absolutely, completely false.
Again, consulting the OED reveals that the pictoral interpretation of the word "graphical" in the English predates the written word interpretation
I doubt that, as it contradicts other words with the "graph" base such as "graphology" and "digraph". The historical record clearly shows that although "graph" meant "visible shapes", it was first used to indicate the shapes of letters.
All that said, I am realistic, and see that "graphical" is a more useful word with the new definition than the old. Just chalk it up alongside "decimate", "tradegy", and "vagina" as terms whose meaning has completely flipped over the decades.
btw: pure research, like what's being done (in small amounts because of the cutbacks) on the ISS and shuttle, is what's given us little things like "electricity" and "chemistry".
Completely wrong. The Shuttle and ISS have never been any good for "pure research".
The manned spaceflights are just for publicity value. All research accomplished by shuttle or ISS could be done cheaper and faster with disposable satellites.
This isn't just my opinion. Every serious astronomer to whom I've seen the question posed agrees with me. (The only dispute comes from those who think the PR value of "heroic astronauts" increases their total budget allocation enough to compensate for the waste- still not a ringing endorsement)
and then buy the album
It's widely believed that most albums have only 2 or 3 good songs, and that customers would actually prefer to buy songs a la carte, rather than being stuck with bundles that don't usually make much sense. (In the past, buying CD singles was too unwieldy. But when all your music is stored on a 10 gig drive, the question of which song came on which disk becomes irrelevant)
It worked for iD Software - why shouldn't it work for EMI?
You allude to the shareware release of the hit games Doom and Quake. (A style that has now been emulated by most PC game publishers under the name of "demos") But that situation does not resemble the position the music companies are in.
iD released fully-functional games, but missing a weapon, 75% of the levels, and 50% of the monsters. Players were inspired to buy the full version because they'd get more. Not only would the recieve enormously more content, but they'd also get the ability to play online against other people who had the full game- something that for networked products like Doom and Quake was the biggest part of the attraction. (cf Metcalfe's Law)
CHUI stands for CHaracter User Interface.
Character Interface!?!
Oh no, Clippy is back! And here comes the searcher-dog. And Bonzi Buddy!
it also affects us people who want to actually see the site
/. posters who comment before reading the article- they're trying to be responsible and not hammer a crippled website.
Right on. That's one causal factor for the unceasing series of
The FAQ answer alludes to "implications". Well so what? There might be problems, so take 'em on! That answer is four years old. There's been enough time to "think it through in detail". None of the problems look insurmountable.
It would be fairly easy to script a webspider which auto-downloads a copy of submitted pages (to 2-3 levels of depth). Then, if the page is scheduled for the frontpage, it's owner could be given a few emails warning of the impending slashdotting. By responding, she could automatically permit slashdot.org to serve cached versions of the site for the next 24 hours.
Problem solved!
Let's not start re-inventing technical meanings.
It's not a reinvention, though. The word usage in the computer user-interface field has always been at odds with the English language. But computers became so popular that they've wiped-out the original meaning.
Graphical is not Text.
That's exactly what the word means, though. In fact to be pedantically correct, a photograph or diagram isn't graphical. Only written text is by-definition "graphic".
Use your dictionary: the very first definition listed is "Of or relating to a written representation". That's the oldest meaning of the word; the others are neologisms by comparison.
To be linguistically correct, modern computers would be said to employ PUIs (Pictoral User Interfaces)
So sad, Lucent have bungled it.
I've had Plan 9 marked down in the bungled category for about a decade. So today it's a small, elegant OS with some cool ideas that has no prospect for serious use... is that any different from last year or 5 years ago?
C, UNIX, WIMP interfaces, etc., even Java, to some extent, could well be considered the output of such a process.
No. Only WIMP is from "pure" research. C, UNIX, and Java were all created with applications firmly in mind. In all cases, they're now used in broader scopes than originally planned (and in Java's case, it never worked out for the intended purpose...)
In fact, all three are just refinements of an existing software product: C from BCPL, UNIX from Multics, and Java from Oak.
because the *only* company in the *entire* world that produces proprietary software is Microsoft.
Well, let's see. Microsoft is the largest company making proprietary software both in terms of total revenue and number of employees. Of all proprietary software (as opposed to firmware) they have the most installations. And no other software company approaches the same wide range of proprietary output as Microsoft.
All in all, Microsoft appears excellently representative of the proprietary software world as a whole.
I doubt many of the members would appreciate getting spammed.
If the companies do it right, the result might not resemble spam. It can be much more targeted, based on the heavy amount of info advertisers can see.
The very social-network which attracts users can be even more attractive to advertisers. Who wants to bet that the best analysis of the network will be reserved for paying corporations and not individual consumers?
Suppose a major seller like Amazon hooks up with a social-network service. They'll be able to cross-correlate an individual's known purchases with those of his friends and related persons. You know the quasi-spam from Amazon that starts "You bought book X, so you'll probably also be interested in book Y"? Expect that type of thing to be intensified.
Even if Amazon doesn't "spam" per se, and instead only sends to people who've already "opted in" to targeted ads, those ads will become more effective because the seller will know more about the customer's personal life.
if you own a CD-version of the song, you have the right to do it.
Even if you have no right to the song, it's not theft. "Doing something without permission" isn't theft. It might be infringement, fraud, or trespassing, but unless you take away something the victim already had, no theft has occured.
Here's a guy who started a company from scratch,
From birth, William Gates III was a millionaire. (Trust fund from wealthy parents). The lowest net-worth he's ever experienced is greater than the highest an average American can ever expect.
When you make jokes at someone's mother its a petty thing to do.
Yes, playground bullies are indeed petty. Thanks for the insight!
1. "The Internet is powered by open source."
Anybody who can exhibit a counterexample can say this is not true.
That's not how counterexamples work. If I claim my car runs on petroleum, and someone points out that it also has a electrical cell-battery providing a tiny bit of power, the existence of a 2nd power source doesn't eliminate the first. "is powered by" is not an exclusive phrase.
4. "It's simply going to be more secure than proprietary software."
This can be proven wrong, and you'll look stupid.
The fact that secrecy harms security is becoming increasingly well-documented (and that applies not just to software, but in general)
How can software which can be changed or withdrawn at a whim from Microsoft ever be considered secure? To be dependent on Microsoft is to be insecure (in the same way that the US subsidizes unneeded farming production for "national security"). Furthermore (and more related to tradional ideas of software-security), Microsoft claims that Windows has exploits that those with access to the source code can see and use. They're essentially saying "We could hack your box, if we wanted."
There has to be SOME government checks on capitalism or the the little people get screwed.
The text of the proposed "economic treason" amendment was undeniably intended to screw little guys.
What we need is a constitutional amendment defining economic treason as a high crime.
Ah good! Economic direction from the central government in the finest tradition of Stalin's USSR!
Could you be more specific?
Um, opengamgingfoundation.org...
D&D is now distributed under a "free" license inspired by the GNU GPL. The redistributable/downloadable versions don't include all the artwork and flavor text, nor does it have each little special bonus and magic item. But it's all you need to play the game itself. (Better for your own GM to invent customized details for your particular world)
Sounds like what you want is a robot-programming game. They have existed for many years, but are unlikely to ever become generally popular. (Indeed, popularity would only lead to a script-kiddie effect, where most players download programs instead of writing their own)
Its called "strategy". We don't really have Real Time Strategy games, we have Real Time Micromanagement games.
Such a thing as a "Stragety Game" is by definition impossible.
There can no more be a "strategy game" than there can be a "shooting game". That is, you can make a game which appears to have strategy, but it'll only be fake. The window-dressing of strategy, not the reality (in the same way that Quake doesn't really involve firearms, but only appears to on a superficial level)
This isn't to say that no game can involve strategy... but games in the fields of sports, FPS, and PVP RPG all can have strategy to the same extent an RTS does.
The words "strategy" and "tactics" are difficult to clearly dilineate, but the true effective difference between them is that tactics are things you can practice, and strategy is not. Any strategic decision, rehearsed enough times, becomes a tactical one.
General Colin Powel, General Tommy Franks, etc don't spend time telling individual soldiers what to do, but they're hardly just sitting back and watching either.
Guys like that have only two valuable (relevant) skills. One is leadership- the ability to be trusted by their men. The other is strategy- the ability to evaluate different outcomes. The whole point of true strategic thinking is that in real life, there are no clearly defined "victory conditions". Re the original Gulf War, there was never a doubt that the US could win. In question was what kind of victory would be most useful- how many friendly and civilian deaths were acceptable, what style of fighting would reflect well or poorly, and how much to keep pushing Saddam before the cost outweighs the benefit.
None of those questions can translate to a videogame environment. Games are necessarily played repeatedly. In 10-20 replays, both sides would learn exactly where the best equilibrium is... which outcome has the highest product of best result and most likelihood. Then once the "optimal plan" is known, the only question is how closely any particular player can execute that plan. (The better mouse-clicker)
No big mystery. They have a lot of patents, for each part of their system (and some things that didn't make it into products)
I believe their patents do have value. That doesn't necessarily mean they'll all stand up- but to strike them down would be expensive and slow, so any competitors would be pushed towards licensing rather than challenging.
Here's the list, all avail from uspto.gov:
6,642,939 Multimedia schedule presentation system
6,535,253 Analog video tagging and encoding system
6,490,722 Software installation and recovery system
6,487,646 Apparatus and method capable of restricting access to a data storage device
6,385,739 Self-test electronic assembly and test system
6,327,418 Method and apparatus implementing random access and time-based functions on a continuous stream of formatted digital data
6,310,886 Method and apparatus implementing a multimedia digital network
6,233,389 Multimedia time warping system
6,215,526 Analog video tagging and encoding system
Programmers are lazy, and (IMO) security-by-obscurity is the most common type in use today in closed-source apps.
No. Wrong. Backwards. Bizarro. That's all lies.
Nobody uses security-through-obscurity in software. Especially in government military/espionage matters! The NSA simply isn't moronic enough to let that happen.
It means that everyone who has access to the binary also has access to the source.
That's a little different from the definition of Free Software, which requires that everyone with access to the binary also has access and rights to the source.
mean one more step towards unified IM
That's a bad thing. Microsoft having a near-monopoly on IM servers would be bad, bad bad.
Personally, I'd like to see Yahoo become the de-facto standard
It's crazy to imagine that a Microsoft buyout of AOL would somehow open it up for Yahoo to take over messenging. When the #2 buys #1, #3 is in trouble. And if #2 already owned the default desktop of 90% of users, then #3 is completely dead.
If Microsoft owns both AIM and MSNMessenger, then they can "upgrade" one program into just a re-skinned version of the other, and then really start to config the servers so that only officially distributed executables can connect.
Goodbye to Linux IM programs. Goodbye gaim & everybuddy. Goodbye all 3rd-party IM utilities.
(Yes, there'll always be the possibility for someone to install a completely separate IM program like Jabber or GaduGadu. But not only would that software face the uphill battle of non-defaultness, there's also Metcalfe's Law in play)
The ipod is the undisputable king in the look and feel department, and that is why it's outselling anything else.
Look & feel is not protectable intellectual property, as Apple has learned in repeated lost lawsuits.
Any advantages they have in that area are fair game for a Taiwanese knockoff to sell for 60% less. The iPod just isn't a viable long-term profit-center for a computer+OS company.