the digital tsunami hit way before 1979, and plenty of us had been running BASIC (and better languages) on our microcomputers for years before that, and it wasn't a Micro-Soft product
Well, in 1979 a lot of 8080 or Z80 machines were running either a ROM-based Microsoft BASIC or a floppy-based one (CP/M MBASIC, for instance). But the "tsunami" (who makes up this stuff?) definitely started with much earlierrumblings.
In point of fact, though, there's still a very real chance that if you were running BASIC on an Altair, you might have been running a Micro-Soft product. But not a certainty, since there were other implementations of BASIC available at that time. Microsoft was still avoidable; the monopoly was yet to come.
is beneficial. It provides calibrated feedback into the guiding philosophies of information freedom, making sure that all perspectives are considered.
The Shadows had it right, until they tried dominating their own dynamic tension. At that point, the balance was broken and tragedy ensued. The same can happen in the Open/Free movement, if it becomes dogmatic and polarized. (For sufficiently small values of "tragic". Does someone envision millions dying because Microsoft won't open-source their office productivity suite?)
As long as the relationship is at least slightly respectful and communicative, it helps.
So, you're saying that patents should be allowed to exist, but hung with enough booby traps and high explosive that anyone attempting to defend a patent will be asploded for their arrogance.
An invalid patent, innocently applied for in accidental ignorance (after due diligence) of prior art, shouldn't be a life-ending event. Especially since not all patents are held by teh huge EVIL corporations.
Or do you make a distinction between innocent and ill-intentioned patent applications? It sounds like you assume that (A) failure to detect prior art on the part of the patent applicant in the course of a patent application is always willful, and that (B) only big corps will do this. The small basement inventor seems to either not exist in your world, or will always be capable of finding prior art and avoiding this kind of fiasco.
Hypothetically, although that volume of player noise would more realistically be caused by screaming, cursing, and loud emotionally-charged groaning after the seventh wipe. Plus loud fingerpointing.
Well, sure, the chopper would probably* autorotate down. And it will probably do so in some direction other than straight down. But if it did fall (relatively slowly) straight down, you can add the insult (or injury) of being painted by a high-energy laser ("AAAH, MY EYES! THE GOGGLES DO NOTHING!") to the injury (or severe injury) of a crash-landing.
*There are a few catastrophic failure modes, such as spontaneous rotor system failure, in which autorotation isn't available. OTOH, in those failure modes, laser beams are the least of your problem.
And they fixed it in the simplest of ways, in light of the GPL's terms and legal standing.
They could have hid, denied, and stonewalled it... but that only goes so far. At some point, they would have faced a court of law and an order enforcing the terms of the GPL, although that may have taken years. (They may have bankrolled SCO as their anti-Free-Software suicide bomber, but they're not stupid enough to strap the explosives vest onto themselves.)
They could have said "oops, sorry, we'll rewrite the offending driver and keep the product closed", but I'm not aware of any take-back provisions in the GPL: Once you have distributed, I don't know of any way to "undistribute". Once you've incorporated and distributed, you can't get out of the rest of your GPL obligations.
what brave soul wants to pilot the test helicopter anchoring the top of the beanstalk, while engineers of varying degrees of competence are aiming powerful directed energy beams at an object suspended a short distance below them.
"Do not glance outside of cockpit with remaining eye."
No, seriously, someone in the militantly proprietary SW camp is going to latch onto this and turn it into some kind of morality tale. "Poor Microsoft, they took the tempting bait of Open Source code and LOST THEIR PRODUCT! Don't let this HAPPEN TO YOU! ph33r teh Open Source!"
Mark my words. Expect a flood of "independent studies" dissecting this story with the intent of making Free Software look like hidden poison.
I'll answer your question with another question. What's the difference between electrically conductive and optically transparent?
Re:Which seems to make sense over all
on
F-22 Raptor Cancelled
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The current generation of missiles can hit a target at 100+ km away, I think... So what's the point?
Rules of Engagement are the point. A missile that can hit a target at 100+ km is useless if the people calling the shots (i.e., civilians in command of the armed forces) require the warfighter to visually identify a probable target as friend or foe before pulling a trigger. That's why U.S. military air arms re-discovered dogfighting in the early 70s: American warplanes in the air battle of Viet Nam weren't permitted to engage North Vietnamese aircraft at missile range, and wound up in close-range gunfights... often, in aircraft with no guns. Even after retrofitting guns, American pilots had to deal with their lack of training in close-in air combat maneuver, and in consequence did a fair bit of "win or die" on-the-job training.
Here's a pretty good history of that particular scenario.
Red Flag and TOPGUN came out of the dogfighting Renaissance of the post-Vietnam period in the U.S. air combat arms, as the survivors of the school of lethal knocks came back to teach their successors how to dogfight before those kids had to learn it the hard way.
What almost makes more sense, if you really want to pick the brains of the TechDirt guys is to fork the $1,000 for spending one day with them (even tough I think it's only worth maybe $200).
Meh. You monetize your business model, TechDirt monetizes its business model, but our abuse ^w advice is completely free.
Re:The 2nd edition will use an unsigned byte count
on
The Geek Atlas
·
· Score: 1
I'm not going to assume you even have a geek card, because your google-fu is so weak.
Honestly, I don't think the US constitution has an impeachment process clearly laid out either.
L2ReadTheUSConstitution
Article I, Section 2
Clause 5: The House of Representatives shall choose their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.
Article I, Section 3
Clause 6: The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.
Clause 7: Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party, (defendant), convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.
Article II, Section 4
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
What if a US president is impeached, but refuses to leave office?What is the process? Our situation would be similar.
If he or she is impeached, he or she is still president. Impeachment akin to indictment, which is a formal accusation in a legal forum; it starts a trial process which will convict or acquit. No penalty is enforced, because guilt is still unproven. If, after this, the Senate trial convicts the sitting president (Article I, Section 3, Clause 6), of "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors" (Article II, Section 4), the maximum penalty is "removal from Office, and disqualification to old any other Office.." (Article I, Section 3, Clause 7).
After that? If the sitting president is subjected to "removal from Office", then he or she is not president any more. They can't refuse to be removed. They are officially no longer president, the normal chain of presidential succession triggers, and the disgraced ex-President slinks off into the history books.
If you've been reading too many cheap drama novels, you can ask "and if some part of the government sides with the ex-President?" Well, civilians who are employees of the government would be possibly subject to discipline, if their "siding with the ex" takes the form of refusing to follow legitimate work directions from lawfully constituted authority. (Perhaps up to firing; who knows, with today's highly unionized federal bureaucracy. At a minimum, you can assume that service at the ol' Social Security office will be a lot slower than usual.)
Any part of the military which declares that it follows the orders of the ex to the exclusion of obeying the lawful Commander-in-Chief is subject to court-martial for such charming offenses as "Disobedience of Lawful Orders" (UCMJ Article 92 and related), or "Mutiny or Sedition" (UCMJ Article 94).
You can make the argument, by analogy, that "a slightly excessive gunshot wound to the kneecap" is "crippling."
Nothing to see here. Move along, Slashcitizen.
Re:Software Projects vs. Traditional Projects
on
Why New Systems Fail
·
· Score: 1
All the detail is just detail, the end requirement is invariable.
While the functional requirements for bridges tend to be invariant, the "ility" requirements often gowrong. And those performance requirements are the places where software projects often go wrong, too.
Slashdot Mirror
the digital tsunami hit way before 1979, and plenty of us had been running BASIC (and better languages) on our microcomputers for years before that, and it wasn't a Micro-Soft product
Well, in 1979 a lot of 8080 or Z80 machines were running either a ROM-based Microsoft BASIC or a floppy-based one (CP/M MBASIC, for instance). But the "tsunami" (who makes up this stuff?) definitely started with much earlier rumblings.
In point of fact, though, there's still a very real chance that if you were running BASIC on an Altair, you might have been running a Micro-Soft product. But not a certainty, since there were other implementations of BASIC available at that time. Microsoft was still avoidable; the monopoly was yet to come.
is beneficial. It provides calibrated feedback into the guiding philosophies of information freedom, making sure that all perspectives are considered.
The Shadows had it right, until they tried dominating their own dynamic tension. At that point, the balance was broken and tragedy ensued. The same can happen in the Open/Free movement, if it becomes dogmatic and polarized. (For sufficiently small values of "tragic". Does someone envision millions dying because Microsoft won't open-source their office productivity suite?)
As long as the relationship is at least slightly respectful and communicative, it helps.
So, you're saying that patents should be allowed to exist, but hung with enough booby traps and high explosive that anyone attempting to defend a patent will be asploded for their arrogance.
An invalid patent, innocently applied for in accidental ignorance (after due diligence) of prior art, shouldn't be a life-ending event. Especially since not all patents are held by teh huge EVIL corporations.
Or do you make a distinction between innocent and ill-intentioned patent applications? It sounds like you assume that (A) failure to detect prior art on the part of the patent applicant in the course of a patent application is always willful, and that (B) only big corps will do this. The small basement inventor seems to either not exist in your world, or will always be capable of finding prior art and avoiding this kind of fiasco.
Hypothetically, although that volume of player noise would more realistically be caused by screaming, cursing, and loud emotionally-charged groaning after the seventh wipe. Plus loud fingerpointing.
Well, sure, the chopper would probably* autorotate down. And it will probably do so in some direction other than straight down. But if it did fall (relatively slowly) straight down, you can add the insult (or injury) of being painted by a high-energy laser ("AAAH, MY EYES! THE GOGGLES DO NOTHING!") to the injury (or severe injury) of a crash-landing.
*There are a few catastrophic failure modes, such as spontaneous rotor system failure, in which autorotation isn't available. OTOH, in those failure modes, laser beams are the least of your problem.
And the patent infringement suit you receive is a surefire indication that you weren't the first one with that particular idea.
And they fixed it in the simplest of ways, in light of the GPL's terms and legal standing.
They could have hid, denied, and stonewalled it... but that only goes so far. At some point, they would have faced a court of law and an order enforcing the terms of the GPL, although that may have taken years. (They may have bankrolled SCO as their anti-Free-Software suicide bomber, but they're not stupid enough to strap the explosives vest onto themselves.)
They could have said "oops, sorry, we'll rewrite the offending driver and keep the product closed", but I'm not aware of any take-back provisions in the GPL: Once you have distributed, I don't know of any way to "undistribute". Once you've incorporated and distributed, you can't get out of the rest of your GPL obligations.
what brave soul wants to pilot the test helicopter anchoring the top of the beanstalk, while engineers of varying degrees of competence are aiming powerful directed energy beams at an object suspended a short distance below them.
"Do not glance outside of cockpit with remaining eye."
Tell 'em they'll get lighter.
Leveraging homographs for fun and PROFIT!!!
about viral GPL in 5... 4... 3...
No, seriously, someone in the militantly proprietary SW camp is going to latch onto this and turn it into some kind of morality tale. "Poor Microsoft, they took the tempting bait of Open Source code and LOST THEIR PRODUCT! Don't let this HAPPEN TO YOU! ph33r teh Open Source!"
Mark my words. Expect a flood of "independent studies" dissecting this story with the intent of making Free Software look like hidden poison.
I'll answer your question with another question. What's the difference between electrically conductive and optically transparent?
The current generation of missiles can hit a target at 100+ km away, I think... So what's the point?
Rules of Engagement are the point. A missile that can hit a target at 100+ km is useless if the people calling the shots (i.e., civilians in command of the armed forces) require the warfighter to visually identify a probable target as friend or foe before pulling a trigger. That's why U.S. military air arms re-discovered dogfighting in the early 70s: American warplanes in the air battle of Viet Nam weren't permitted to engage North Vietnamese aircraft at missile range, and wound up in close-range gunfights... often, in aircraft with no guns. Even after retrofitting guns, American pilots had to deal with their lack of training in close-in air combat maneuver, and in consequence did a fair bit of "win or die" on-the-job training.
Here's a pretty good history of that particular scenario.
Red Flag and TOPGUN came out of the dogfighting Renaissance of the post-Vietnam period in the U.S. air combat arms, as the survivors of the school of lethal knocks came back to teach their successors how to dogfight before those kids had to learn it the hard way.
There are better ways to crowdsource a business idea.
True. And we're free, and worth every penny.
What almost makes more sense, if you really want to pick the brains of the TechDirt guys is to fork the $1,000 for spending one day with them (even tough I think it's only worth maybe $200).
Meh. You monetize your business model, TechDirt monetizes its business model, but our abuse ^w advice is completely free.
I'm not going to assume you even have a geek card, because your google-fu is so weak.
ECCE LIBRO II CONTINENTUR
Srsly. Google '"Geek atlas" table of contents'. First link.
The table of contents enumerates 128 chapters, indexing from 1 to 128. So your assumption that all geeks count from zero is unfounded.
If you, in fact, possess a geek card, please report for re-certification.
The web-based mgt interface on my PowerConnect 3024 gives FF no problems. (On any OS platform in the house: CENTOS, Kubuntu, or MS Windows.)
Dell must have broken it after that point.
Honestly, I don't think the US constitution has an impeachment process clearly laid out either.
L2ReadTheUSConstitution
What if a US president is impeached, but refuses to leave office?What is the process? Our situation would be similar.
If he or she is impeached, he or she is still president. Impeachment akin to indictment, which is a formal accusation in a legal forum; it starts a trial process which will convict or acquit. No penalty is enforced, because guilt is still unproven. If, after this, the Senate trial convicts the sitting president (Article I, Section 3, Clause 6), of "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors" (Article II, Section 4), the maximum penalty is "removal from Office, and disqualification to old any other Office.." (Article I, Section 3, Clause 7).
After that? If the sitting president is subjected to "removal from Office", then he or she is not president any more. They can't refuse to be removed. They are officially no longer president, the normal chain of presidential succession triggers, and the disgraced ex-President slinks off into the history books.
If you've been reading too many cheap drama novels, you can ask "and if some part of the government sides with the ex-President?" Well, civilians who are employees of the government would be possibly subject to discipline, if their "siding with the ex" takes the form of refusing to follow legitimate work directions from lawfully constituted authority. (Perhaps up to firing; who knows, with today's highly unionized federal bureaucracy. At a minimum, you can assume that service at the ol' Social Security office will be a lot slower than usual.)
Any part of the military which declares that it follows the orders of the ex to the exclusion of obeying the lawful Commander-in-Chief is subject to court-martial for such charming offenses as "Disobedience of Lawful Orders" (UCMJ Article 92 and related), or "Mutiny or Sedition" (UCMJ Article 94).
Where, where?
Oh, here.
Gremans, who will then be forced to bomb Pearl Harbor.
Again.
BTW, misspelling "Germans" won't help you avoid Godwinization.
Even Disney World has pirates
Not to mention that URL fragment reminds me too much /b/
of that pondscum whiskey.
Yeah, but the data definition conundrum "space fill or zero fill" is pretty persuasive in this case. Or at least a damn interesting coincidence.
You can make the argument, by analogy, that "a slightly excessive gunshot wound to the kneecap" is "crippling."
Nothing to see here. Move along, Slashcitizen.
All the detail is just detail, the end requirement is invariable.
While the functional requirements for bridges tend to be invariant, the "ility" requirements often go wrong. And those performance requirements are the places where software projects often go wrong, too.
I bet it was North Korean controlling a Brit controlling the botnet.