Re:Who Cares What Language, It Reeks of Poor Desig
on
Why COBOL Could Come Back
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· Score: 2, Interesting
The language itself is fine. Yes it's verbose, and yes it's old, but it does what it needs to do, which is solving business problems. Look, you need to keep a historical perspective here. COBOL was created back in the "bad old days" before all the best practices were written, because at the time they were still being written.
I don't see that this has anything to do with whether COBOL is an OK language. This means that it was an OK language (or maybe even a good language) in the "bad old days", but Moore's Law has given us the luxury of having much higher standards now.
DRM is an active mechanism, and cannot be implemented without code. Vista includes DRM code, the stand-alone HD-DVD player contains DRM code, the only way to get the keys to decrypt the HD-DVD is to include DRM code in your product.
1. They want to talk to regulators as "insiders" in the Open Source community, asking for increases in software patenting that will actually block Open Source.
Is there any reason to think that this would actually work? Why can't a "real" insider just coherently explain that that position does not make sense?
2. Trying to become the dominant server for Apache Foundtion software is an anti-Linux play.
As long as they do this by improving their product, this is a good thing. Linux is not the sole bringer of good into the world; high-quality software is high-quality software regardless of its origins.
3. There is a potential for embrace and enhance of Apache Foundation software.
Better software is actually a good thing, there's only a problem if they start doing undocumented things to the protocols. And it sounds like they've gotten much better about that lately, even if not by choice.
4. If they really want to be sincere community members, let's see them play by GPL rules, not by Apache's "anything goes" rules. What they're doing now is trying to seem members of Open Source without any of the obligation.
Because all the community is GPL, and everyone else needs to be educated and brought into the fold.
Why should an Open Source developer help them replace an Open Source platform with a proprietary platform in the market?
Because the people paying them for this want to use the proprietary platform instead? Believe it or not, there are features other than "user-modifiable" that some people actually care about.
So if you make something available for everyone, you become the "unpaid employee" of anyone who improves it?
Let's take an extreme example. The Java Model Railroad Interface developer used the Artistic license. A toy train throttle manufacturer called KAM used his software in their product, and sent him a bill for about twice his annual income because KAM claims a broad patent on any two computers communicating to control a toy train. The JMRI developer got pretty cruelly used in this case.
It's not anyone who improves it who is a problem. But some folks, like KAM in this example, are really unsavory exploiters of the Open Source developer. Strong licensing (which doesn't mean the Artistic license, as the JMRI guy found out) is a good way to fight them.
It sounds to me like the real issue there has nothing to do with the license or with doing other people's work for them, and everything to do with stupidly bad patents.
1. OSS story pops up on Slashdot.
2. Someone posts: "Developing OSS is antithetical to making money!!"
3. Deluge of responses: "You're crazy. There're all kinds of ways to make money off OSS. It's the way of the future!"
And Now:
1. Slashdot posts a story about Microsoft showing sympathy towards OSS.
2. Deluge of posts: "This can't be! They must have evil secret motives."
I don't know what to think anymore.
Actually, in case it's:
Slashdot posts a story that Microsoft's apparent sympathy is hiding evil secret motives.
I'm not sure why this would be said to be an anti-Linux move. I realize that this might be what people sense with regards to the contribution, but like the article said the "Apache license is practically a no-strings gift".
That's exactly it. GPL has strings, so promoting something with no strings is clearly anti-GPL, which puts you on the "them" side of the "with us or against us" stance promoted by the FSF, which means you are clearly against anything on the "us" side, which includes Linux, which means you are anti-Linux.
...if something they do appears to not be evil, that's only because we're not looking at it the right way.
Microsoft has lots of money to hire key Apache developers, if they actually plan to use the code and want good service from its developers on a 24/7 basis. So, this $100,000 contribution and the partial patent grant aren't about interoperability.
Who says Microsoft wants to use this code? From the earlier article, it sounded like they wanted to improve the code that other people use, to make it easier to use on Windows. And this way they don't have difficulties with convincing people to become @microsoft.com, or with convincing people to trust and work with people @microsoft.com.
Last year, GPL went through a major revision, with the participation of dozens of attorneys from the world's largest companies, along with academics and individuals. That caught it up with the elaboration of copyright and patent law over the past quarter century. A second version, the AGPL, has evolved to deal with the business model of Google, software as a service instead of on the user's PC. That's fortunate, as GPL is going to be even more important now.
Because writing and using good, unique software is something that has to be "dealt with". Re-implementing parts that could be useful isn't enough, non-shared software is Evil and must never be allowed to be written.
Both kinds of developers may choose the GPL: the commercial ones because they want to keep their competitors from running away with the program without sharing their own work, and the individuals because they'd rather function as equal partners in enforced sharing than as unpaid employees who give all they create as a gift to the big company.
So if you make something available for everyone, you become the "unpaid employee" of anyone who improves it? Regardless of the fact that any further improvements you make will actually create more work for them to do (unless they send their changes back upstream)?
This also has philosophical issues, manufacturers of physical products don't get to forbid aftermarket modifications (and can't even void warranties just because of aftermarket work), why should this be considered a legitimate right for manufactures of knowledge (I know it's a legal right, but that doesn't make it reasonable)?
And most important, GPL is what developers will use if they welcome Microsoft's participation in their projects, but only on the same terms as everybody else.
Because BSD/MIT/X11 have wacky rules that apply differently to different kinds of contributors.
Lower demand, due to fewer oil users feeling that they need to keep a stockpile, due to those same oil users believing that it will be easier/cheaper to buy oil in the future instead of buying it now and storing it.
At least they're down to only using his name twice in the summary, even if one of them is in the title... I'd been starting to wonder if all the articles about the DNS bug were really just about how l33t he was for publicizing it and having it fixed.
"However, it's actually a very good thing that the update and the servicing fail in this scenario, because you can just imagine the implications if the update automatically reinstalled the Vista MBR to restore boot integrity - we'd be flooded with complaints."
So... yeah. Anyone technical enough to change their bootloader should know how to put it back temporarily so it can get updated.
If you are running BitLocker, or if Microsoft resumes implementing Trusted Computing, then you are S.O.L.
I thought that was the entire point of BitLocker - don't unlock things unless you know that you're not running on top of some evil VM.
I can't believe that they thought that query was so good it needed to be passed down. They'd have gotten a lot more benefit out of skimming a handful of articles that mentioned the guys name more than once.
That could also just mean that it was a "magic black box" that they didn't really (want to be bothered to) understand. If they'd kept it because it was good, I'd expect that they would have tweaked it occasionally to make it even better.
There are many ways to make money that don't involve directly selling software. IBM and RedHat make a lot from support,
The support model works because of (1) crappy software, (2) crappy documentation, (3) willfully-ignorant users, and (4) fearful/CYA users. A programmer's goal should be to get rid of (1) and (2), and I'd expect the corporate cultures responsible for (3) and (4) to make such customers less fit in the evolutionary sense. So the support model also only works because the market hasn't matured enough yet.
It is clearly true that copying software, once it has been created, is essentially free. However that ignores the fact that software costs a lot of money to create. If there is no financial motive to create software, very little software will be created.
There's always a motive to create/improve software, which is the same as the motive for buying software it can help you do your job better/faster. Wasn't there some statistic about the majority of software actually being in-house tools rather than commercial products? But this doesn't work as well for software used primarily by people who aren't (and don't work with) programmers... I wonder how a model of "source is free, but precompiled binaries will cost you" would work?
But your special purpose robot is just a manifestation of a particular set of instructions to the general purpose one. If it is patentable, then that particular set of instructions (pure mental process) is clearly also patentable... if this means that it's not patentable, then what is does is "an existing device, used as designed, plus an unpatentable mental process", which puts us back where we started.
Point being, everything imaginable is either a pure mental process or the simple combination of an existing device (it doesn't even matter if it's not being used as designed, that can be reduced to designing a new identical device with a different intended use, so it still comes out to devices used as designed plus pure mental processes) and a pure mental process. Since you can't patent a piece of rock you found, the patentability has to come from the "pure mental process" part.
So what? The development costs for software can be pretty huge. You still need folks to figure out which problems really need solving, and folks to figure out how to best solve those problems; that's gonna cost you. And suppose you've paid that cost, and are working hard to sell your solution. Well, guess what, some bigger fish can come along and build the same thing for cheaper (since they can copy the design that cost you so much to make), and beat you.
No, copyright says they can't just copy it. They have to decipher and re-implement it, which is much much harder than simply copying some mechanical contraption without understanding it. Unless you're thinking somehow that the patent would cover the problem being solved, rather than the solution to that problem...
The USPTO already has a policy of rejecting applications involving only abstract concepts; this distinction already exists, it just isn't always enforced. Why should the same process, still involving only abstract concepts but "with a computer!!!", be any different?
Because AIUI it tends to be "on a computer, with an output", so it does lead to some specific change in the physical world.
What we're left with is an algorithm -- not a method of production, as in a chemical process patent, but a pure mental process -- automated by means of a general-purpose computer. How does an existing device, used as designed, plus an unpatentable mental process possibly qualify for a patent?
Given a general-purpose robot, everything can be reduced to "a pure mental process -- automated by means of a general-purpose computer". So how are software patents any different from any other kind of patent?
If you never plan to invent anything, and want to ensure those who do invent have no recourse when their inventions are blatantly stolen by Big Business, then just lap up whatever those goons at the paten office dish out. But if you think there is any value to having a strong patent system to protect legitimate inventions (like the Framers of the Constitution did)
Perhaps Big Business has a symbiosis with the patent system, patents prevent anyone without a good legal department from doing anything new or useful, and big business demands specialization and compartmentalization such that "invention" is a job (and cost) on its own instead of a natural byproduct of doing a good job.
My impression is that the case against software patents is really a fight by proxy against patents in general, recognising the growing role that software plays to make anything happen.
There are a few differences:
Software has approximately zero manufacturing cost and production ramp-up time. You don't need protection for while you get factories up to speed or shop around for capital.
Software is protected by copyright. The mechanism of a log cutter isn't.
Some software (especially protocols/file formats) derives nearly all of its value from network effects. This greatly amplifies the power of the patent holder, I'd say beyond what is reasonable. (This could also apply to certain physical patents, but I'd guess that the effects are probably stronger with software because things happen so fast.)
It shouldn't be about whether an invention is entitled to or "deserves" protection, but whether giving protection to a class of inventions is really beneficial to society.
Of course, "it depends" doesn't make for nearly as good a rant as "hell no", so any populist group (formal or informal) will tend toward the latter...
MY IP phone has a dedicated monitor that shows a christmas tree with a pretty pony under it and all the shiny blinking lights come on when people call, you insensitive clod.
Whoosh
Does this fancy IP phone still work when your IP network is broken?
No, it really does have some interesting observations, with some very scary implications:
One of the first things that will happen, is that the memory DIMMs will no longer be refreshed properly (DRAM needs to be refreshed constantly otherwise it will loose it's data) and very rapidly, the memory will contain only garbage. The hard drives and DMA controller however, will run a bit longer; so if data is being written to disk, the DMA controller will keep reading data from memory, but it has no idea that this data is corrupted.
However, we've recently seen that RAM holds state well enough to preserve crypto keys thru a power cycle. This has very scary implications: the RAM knows what's happening, and behaves differently (loses data immediately on power-off or remembers it for several seconds) in order to cause the most difficulty for the owner of the machine.
Not only are computer components intelligent and self-aware, they're also out to get us!
Slashdot Mirror
The language itself is fine. Yes it's verbose, and yes it's old, but it does what it needs to do, which is solving business problems. Look, you need to keep a historical perspective here. COBOL was created back in the "bad old days" before all the best practices were written, because at the time they were still being written.
I don't see that this has anything to do with whether COBOL is an OK language. This means that it was an OK language (or maybe even a good language) in the "bad old days", but Moore's Law has given us the luxury of having much higher standards now.
Why can't people learn to look at their own issues before pointing fingers and pushing blame to everyone else so quickly?
When you do that there's no opportunity for a media circus, so people who would set good examples are never heard.
so where is the DRM? In the format.
DRM is an active mechanism, and cannot be implemented without code. Vista includes DRM code, the stand-alone HD-DVD player contains DRM code, the only way to get the keys to decrypt the HD-DVD is to include DRM code in your product.
1. They want to talk to regulators as "insiders" in the Open Source community, asking for increases in software patenting that will actually block Open Source.
Is there any reason to think that this would actually work? Why can't a "real" insider just coherently explain that that position does not make sense?
2. Trying to become the dominant server for Apache Foundtion software is an anti-Linux play.
As long as they do this by improving their product, this is a good thing. Linux is not the sole bringer of good into the world; high-quality software is high-quality software regardless of its origins.
3. There is a potential for embrace and enhance of Apache Foundation software.
Better software is actually a good thing, there's only a problem if they start doing undocumented things to the protocols. And it sounds like they've gotten much better about that lately, even if not by choice.
4. If they really want to be sincere community members, let's see them play by GPL rules, not by Apache's "anything goes" rules. What they're doing now is trying to seem members of Open Source without any of the obligation.
Because all the community is GPL, and everyone else needs to be educated and brought into the fold.
Why should an Open Source developer help them replace an Open Source platform with a proprietary platform in the market?
Because the people paying them for this want to use the proprietary platform instead? Believe it or not, there are features other than "user-modifiable" that some people actually care about.
So if you make something available for everyone, you become the "unpaid employee" of anyone who improves it?
Let's take an extreme example. The Java Model Railroad Interface developer used the Artistic license. A toy train throttle manufacturer called KAM used his software in their product, and sent him a bill for about twice his annual income because KAM claims a broad patent on any two computers communicating to control a toy train. The JMRI developer got pretty cruelly used in this case.
It's not anyone who improves it who is a problem. But some folks, like KAM in this example, are really unsavory exploiters of the Open Source developer. Strong licensing (which doesn't mean the Artistic license, as the JMRI guy found out) is a good way to fight them.
It sounds to me like the real issue there has nothing to do with the license or with doing other people's work for them, and everything to do with stupidly bad patents.
The Usual Pattern:
1. OSS story pops up on Slashdot. 2. Someone posts: "Developing OSS is antithetical to making money!!" 3. Deluge of responses: "You're crazy. There're all kinds of ways to make money off OSS. It's the way of the future!"
And Now:
1. Slashdot posts a story about Microsoft showing sympathy towards OSS. 2. Deluge of posts: "This can't be! They must have evil secret motives."
I don't know what to think anymore.
Actually, in case it's:
I'm not sure why this would be said to be an anti-Linux move. I realize that this might be what people sense with regards to the contribution, but like the article said the "Apache license is practically a no-strings gift".
That's exactly it. GPL has strings, so promoting something with no strings is clearly anti-GPL, which puts you on the "them" side of the "with us or against us" stance promoted by the FSF, which means you are clearly against anything on the "us" side, which includes Linux, which means you are anti-Linux.
"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition."
...if something they do appears to not be evil, that's only because we're not looking at it the right way.
Microsoft has lots of money to hire key Apache developers, if they actually plan to use the code and want good service from its developers on a 24/7 basis. So, this $100,000 contribution and the partial patent grant aren't about interoperability.
Who says Microsoft wants to use this code? From the earlier article, it sounded like they wanted to improve the code that other people use, to make it easier to use on Windows. And this way they don't have difficulties with convincing people to become @microsoft.com, or with convincing people to trust and work with people @microsoft.com.
Last year, GPL went through a major revision, with the participation of dozens of attorneys from the world's largest companies, along with academics and individuals. That caught it up with the elaboration of copyright and patent law over the past quarter century. A second version, the AGPL, has evolved to deal with the business model of Google, software as a service instead of on the user's PC. That's fortunate, as GPL is going to be even more important now.
Because writing and using good, unique software is something that has to be "dealt with". Re-implementing parts that could be useful isn't enough, non-shared software is Evil and must never be allowed to be written.
Both kinds of developers may choose the GPL: the commercial ones because they want to keep their competitors from running away with the program without sharing their own work, and the individuals because they'd rather function as equal partners in enforced sharing than as unpaid employees who give all they create as a gift to the big company.
So if you make something available for everyone, you become the "unpaid employee" of anyone who improves it? Regardless of the fact that any further improvements you make will actually create more work for them to do (unless they send their changes back upstream)?
This also has philosophical issues, manufacturers of physical products don't get to forbid aftermarket modifications (and can't even void warranties just because of aftermarket work), why should this be considered a legitimate right for manufactures of knowledge (I know it's a legal right, but that doesn't make it reasonable)?
And most important, GPL is what developers will use if they welcome Microsoft's participation in their projects, but only on the same terms as everybody else.
Because BSD/MIT/X11 have wacky rules that apply differently to different kinds of contributors.
Lower demand, due to fewer oil users feeling that they need to keep a stockpile, due to those same oil users believing that it will be easier/cheaper to buy oil in the future instead of buying it now and storing it.
At least they're down to only using his name twice in the summary, even if one of them is in the title... I'd been starting to wonder if all the articles about the DNS bug were really just about how l33t he was for publicizing it and having it fixed.
If you're not using Bitlocker (and therefore presumably don't care about a trusted bootloader) you are still unable to install SP1.
Would you prefer that it did install, and trashed your bootloader when it tried to update it?
So... yeah. Anyone technical enough to change their bootloader should know how to put it back temporarily so it can get updated.
If you are running BitLocker, or if Microsoft resumes implementing Trusted Computing, then you are S.O.L.
I thought that was the entire point of BitLocker - don't unlock things unless you know that you're not running on top of some evil VM.
I can't believe that they thought that query was so good it needed to be passed down. They'd have gotten a lot more benefit out of skimming a handful of articles that mentioned the guys name more than once.
That could also just mean that it was a "magic black box" that they didn't really (want to be bothered to) understand. If they'd kept it because it was good, I'd expect that they would have tweaked it occasionally to make it even better.
There are many ways to make money that don't involve directly selling software. IBM and RedHat make a lot from support,
The support model works because of (1) crappy software, (2) crappy documentation, (3) willfully-ignorant users, and (4) fearful/CYA users. A programmer's goal should be to get rid of (1) and (2), and I'd expect the corporate cultures responsible for (3) and (4) to make such customers less fit in the evolutionary sense. So the support model also only works because the market hasn't matured enough yet.
It is clearly true that copying software, once it has been created, is essentially free. However that ignores the fact that software costs a lot of money to create. If there is no financial motive to create software, very little software will be created.
There's always a motive to create/improve software, which is the same as the motive for buying software it can help you do your job better/faster. Wasn't there some statistic about the majority of software actually being in-house tools rather than commercial products? But this doesn't work as well for software used primarily by people who aren't (and don't work with) programmers... I wonder how a model of "source is free, but precompiled binaries will cost you" would work?
But your special purpose robot is just a manifestation of a particular set of instructions to the general purpose one. If it is patentable, then that particular set of instructions (pure mental process) is clearly also patentable... if this means that it's not patentable, then what is does is "an existing device, used as designed, plus an unpatentable mental process", which puts us back where we started.
Point being, everything imaginable is either a pure mental process or the simple combination of an existing device (it doesn't even matter if it's not being used as designed, that can be reduced to designing a new identical device with a different intended use, so it still comes out to devices used as designed plus pure mental processes) and a pure mental process. Since you can't patent a piece of rock you found, the patentability has to come from the "pure mental process" part.
So what? The development costs for software can be pretty huge. You still need folks to figure out which problems really need solving, and folks to figure out how to best solve those problems; that's gonna cost you. And suppose you've paid that cost, and are working hard to sell your solution. Well, guess what, some bigger fish can come along and build the same thing for cheaper (since they can copy the design that cost you so much to make), and beat you.
No, copyright says they can't just copy it. They have to decipher and re-implement it, which is much much harder than simply copying some mechanical contraption without understanding it. Unless you're thinking somehow that the patent would cover the problem being solved, rather than the solution to that problem...
The USPTO already has a policy of rejecting applications involving only abstract concepts; this distinction already exists, it just isn't always enforced. Why should the same process, still involving only abstract concepts but "with a computer!!!", be any different?
Because AIUI it tends to be "on a computer, with an output", so it does lead to some specific change in the physical world.
What we're left with is an algorithm -- not a method of production, as in a chemical process patent, but a pure mental process -- automated by means of a general-purpose computer. How does an existing device, used as designed, plus an unpatentable mental process possibly qualify for a patent?
Given a general-purpose robot, everything can be reduced to "a pure mental process -- automated by means of a general-purpose computer". So how are software patents any different from any other kind of patent?
If you never plan to invent anything, and want to ensure those who do invent have no recourse when their inventions are blatantly stolen by Big Business, then just lap up whatever those goons at the paten office dish out. But if you think there is any value to having a strong patent system to protect legitimate inventions (like the Framers of the Constitution did)
Perhaps Big Business has a symbiosis with the patent system, patents prevent anyone without a good legal department from doing anything new or useful, and big business demands specialization and compartmentalization such that "invention" is a job (and cost) on its own instead of a natural byproduct of doing a good job.
My impression is that the case against software patents is really a fight by proxy against patents in general, recognising the growing role that software plays to make anything happen.
There are a few differences:
It shouldn't be about whether an invention is entitled to or "deserves" protection, but whether giving protection to a class of inventions is really beneficial to society.
Of course, "it depends" doesn't make for nearly as good a rant as "hell no", so any populist group (formal or informal) will tend toward the latter...
MY IP phone has a dedicated monitor that shows a christmas tree with a pretty pony under it and all the shiny blinking lights come on when people call, you insensitive clod.
Whoosh
Does this fancy IP phone still work when your IP network is broken?
Sounds like you have to use a shitty system. Real systems prevent duplicates, or even similar patterns. It can be a real pain.
...since real systems also only store a hash instead of the plaintext password, how do they know it's similar?
One of the first things that will happen, is that the memory DIMMs will no longer be refreshed properly (DRAM needs to be refreshed constantly otherwise it will loose it's data) and very rapidly, the memory will contain only garbage. The hard drives and DMA controller however, will run a bit longer; so if data is being written to disk, the DMA controller will keep reading data from memory, but it has no idea that this data is corrupted.
However, we've recently seen that RAM holds state well enough to preserve crypto keys thru a power cycle. This has very scary implications: the RAM knows what's happening, and behaves differently (loses data immediately on power-off or remembers it for several seconds) in order to cause the most difficulty for the owner of the machine.
Not only are computer components intelligent and self-aware, they're also out to get us!