I am pretty sure that while you are downloading content, you are also uploading what you have so far
Yep, that's the point of BitTorrent - and what made it so special when it first came out
So the sharing still works to some extent even if people disconnect right away.
Furthermore, it's only possible to leech significantly from a peer that has already finished downloading. Any other client will notice that it's giving but not getting, and scale down it's giving appropriately. I bet the leechs love it when folks moralise about not disconnecting right away - on the other hand, it's certainly not the kiss of BitTorrent when those connections do drop.
I disagree. I find that it takes a much deeper understanding of the language to create good code than it does to understand it. It's the same with art - it takes considerably more skill to be a painter than an art critic.
Who said anything about good code?! - I thought we were talking about the source for Windows!
Code that easy to follow is a very very rare commoditiy indeed - actually I've only ever seen one such program - and yes, I'm certain it was harder to write than it was for me to read. Normally the only way to understand a program is to fiddle with it and see what happens. At least well documented interfaces (API's) are slightly more common.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I believe every reasonable effort to make code more readable should be made. I just happen to think that writing code that is that easy to read would require unreasonable effort, even if you factor in the hit you know you're going to take on the maintaince side of things if you don't do it. Oh, and it would be almost a sin to accidently introduce a bug into code that works perfectly well, in an effort to make it more readable - and eventually this is envitable unless you confine your efforts to comments.
Further more, a deep understanding of the language has about as much to do with writing good code as knowing one end of a paintbrush from the other has to do with being a great artist - it's a pre-requistite, nothing more. Calling something a programming "language" does the thing too much credit, anyway - as far as I'm concerned they're all just syntaxes.
Sartre got it wrong when he said hell is other people. Hell is other people's code.
The two layer approach doesn't really require the person not know how to write C/C++ - only that they not contribute any code. Not certain why parent added that extra requirement.
Cool! Is this a widely know approach (kind of how clean-room development is a widely know approach)? - and if so, where can I find out more about it, please? Or is it just an idea that we're kicking around here on slashdot?
There's no quad-damage in the real world... bummer.
No, there isn't, is there. On a whim I've just looked up some densities, and come to the (probably totally suprious) conclusion that you only get an extra two-thirds damage for using depleted uranium instead of lead. Yeah, bummer.
Not to nitpick, but we seem to have had some success (dare I really call it that?) with the same type of fusion reaction observed on Sol. I believe they call it a "thermonuclear bomb"
Well, since we're not nitpicking, I wont mention that (iirc) one's fusion and the other's fission.
For example I could open a resturant called "Apple Delight", but If I started selling computers I better get a new name.
No, actually I think you'll find that it's if you went into the computer business calling yourself "Apple", but then started selling music, that'd you'd be in trouble - Beatles' label sues Apple - again
Last time I saw I spam like this I noticed it was lower down in my InBox than mail I had already received. This meant it was sent with the time and date field set back a few hours into the past. I deleted the spam without bothering to check but I presume the stock in question had experienced a sharp rise in those few hours.
Obviously a more efficent version of the scam you are talking about, because you don't have to discard any of your "marks".
Oh well, that would be something anyway. I was probably thinking of trademarks when I wondered if selective enforcement was allowed (I believe you can't selectively enforce a trademark)
The license they thought they had to use it would vaporize - and the chances of finding every single author of every single itty bitty part and getting them to sign up to some 'son-of-GPL' license - are pretty slim.
It wouldn't be quite that bad because a lot of well organised projects have their contributors assign their copyrights to the projects as a whole. Therefore a process often exists by which a new licenses could be drawn up (e.g. referendum amoung active contributors... or project leader dictates... or whatever)
So, for example, the software in gnu.org would be fine, but perhaps a fair amount of the stuff in sourceforge would be stuffed.
If the GPL *is* invalid, as SCO claim, then the code reverts back to being the copyright of the individual contributers, who can then sue them for breach.
And also sue IBM... Red Hat... each other...
Does anyone know if you're allowed to defend copyright against infringement selectively? Either way, the Free Software movement will be in a real pickle in this senario.
You don't know anything about auctions, do you? People who know what they're doing (i.e. not eBay) prefer sealed-bid auctions.
I will admit to limited experience of auctions, but that's one hell of a generalisation that you're making without any evidence to back it up!
As far as I can see it, sealed-bid auctions only benefit buyers who have a strong idea of what they are prepared to pay for a thing, and don't mind paying it. That's all very well if I'm buying a DVD that I'm going to watch, or a picture that I'm going to hang on my wall - but what a stock certificate is worth to me happens to depend rather a lot upon what others think it's worth.
Based on a "Dutch auction" process, online bidders will post the price they are willing to pay and the number of shares they want to purchase. Bidders will not know what the high bids are and cannot adjust their bids. The bidding will remain open six to eight weeks, which is the same time traditional investment banks use between the time an IPO is filed with the Securities and Exchange commission and the security is priced.
When the bidding closes for Ravenswood, the highest bidders will receive the shares they requested, and allocations will work backward until the 1 million shares are distributed.
Oh, by the way, did I mention that it's us next? IT has acheived liquidity, and is starting to flow overseas (to anywhere that is "downhill" in terms of cost)
It's the Fight Club paradox - those people most necessary to run the world are the ones getting the most shat upon.
If you have a large enough labour pool then you can hire and fire at will. Especially if, through a process of industrialisation, you have gradually streamlined the tasks they do. At a certain point, the individual becomes powerless, you achieve liquidity, and people become a commodity.
It's not a paradox, it's an inevitability, because the people most necessary to power our society are the ones who are going to get commoditized first.
Sorry to sound so cheerless, but let me give you another example of a commodity: a battery. Welcome to The Matrix. Have a nice day.
My point was that there are still opportunites out there for bedroom coders, whether it be in gaming, OSes, or whatever one could wish. No end to the golden age, but you wont find it where it was before - new ground must be broken.
Have you read any of the novels by Iain M Banks about "The Culture"? He writes about AI's the end of the age of scarcity. Excession is particularly good.
Personally I wouldn't describe Dune as a cop-out, though. The absence of "machines made in the likeness of a human-being" is due to the Butlerian Jihad ten thousand years before the novel is set, which freed the human race from being the machines slaves.
Slashdot Mirror
Yep, that's the point of BitTorrent - and what made it so special when it first came out
So the sharing still works to some extent even if people disconnect right away.
Furthermore, it's only possible to leech significantly from a peer that has already finished downloading. Any other client will notice that it's giving but not getting, and scale down it's giving appropriately. I bet the leechs love it when folks moralise about not disconnecting right away - on the other hand, it's certainly not the kiss of BitTorrent when those connections do drop.
Share the weight out, then have a chain of 99 robots following your footsteps.
Really? How many planes do you want to miss? ;-)
I disagree. I find that it takes a much deeper understanding of the language to create good code than it does to understand it. It's the same with art - it takes considerably more skill to be a painter than an art critic.
Who said anything about good code?! - I thought we were talking about the source for Windows!
Code that easy to follow is a very very rare commoditiy indeed - actually I've only ever seen one such program - and yes, I'm certain it was harder to write than it was for me to read. Normally the only way to understand a program is to fiddle with it and see what happens. At least well documented interfaces (API's) are slightly more common.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I believe every reasonable effort to make code more readable should be made. I just happen to think that writing code that is that easy to read would require unreasonable effort, even if you factor in the hit you know you're going to take on the maintaince side of things if you don't do it. Oh, and it would be almost a sin to accidently introduce a bug into code that works perfectly well, in an effort to make it more readable - and eventually this is envitable unless you confine your efforts to comments.
Further more, a deep understanding of the language has about as much to do with writing good code as knowing one end of a paintbrush from the other has to do with being a great artist - it's a pre-requistite, nothing more. Calling something a programming "language" does the thing too much credit, anyway - as far as I'm concerned they're all just syntaxes.
Sartre got it wrong when he said hell is other people. Hell is other people's code.
The two layer approach doesn't really require the person not know how to write C/C++ - only that they not contribute any code.
Not certain why parent added that extra requirement.
Cool! Is this a widely know approach (kind of how clean-room development is a widely know approach)? - and if so, where can I find out more about it, please? Or is it just an idea that we're kicking around here on slashdot?
Probably impossible - it's far far easier to write code than it is to read somebody elses.
...that I can get Word up and running on my Windows XP box WITHOUT it (occasionally) suddenly dying for no apparent reason.
Europe? Collectively do anything? It's two fingers in some parts of Europe, you know.
No, there isn't, is there. On a whim I've just looked up some densities, and come to the (probably totally suprious) conclusion that you only get an extra two-thirds damage for using depleted uranium instead of lead. Yeah, bummer.
Perhaps I should hire myself out as a "Nuclear Bomb Making Expert" then. No... really - I figure I'd be doing the world a favour.
Well, since we're not nitpicking, I wont mention that (iirc) one's fusion and the other's fission.
No, actually I think you'll find that it's if you went into the computer business calling yourself "Apple", but then started selling music, that'd you'd be in trouble - Beatles' label sues Apple - again
Obviously a more efficent version of the scam you are talking about, because you don't have to discard any of your "marks".
Oh well, that would be something anyway. I was probably thinking of trademarks when I wondered if selective enforcement was allowed (I believe you can't selectively enforce a trademark)
It wouldn't be quite that bad because a lot of well organised projects have their contributors assign their copyrights to the projects as a whole. Therefore a process often exists by which a new licenses could be drawn up (e.g. referendum amoung active contributors... or project leader dictates... or whatever)
So, for example, the software in gnu.org would be fine, but perhaps a fair amount of the stuff in sourceforge would be stuffed.
And also sue IBM... Red Hat... each other...
Does anyone know if you're allowed to defend copyright against infringement selectively? Either way, the Free Software movement will be in a real pickle in this senario.
I will admit to limited experience of auctions, but that's one hell of a generalisation that you're making without any evidence to back it up!
As far as I can see it, sealed-bid auctions only benefit buyers who have a strong idea of what they are prepared to pay for a thing, and don't mind paying it. That's all very well if I'm buying a DVD that I'm going to watch, or a picture that I'm going to hang on my wall - but what a stock certificate is worth to me happens to depend rather a lot upon what others think it's worth.
When the bidding closes for Ravenswood, the highest bidders will receive the shares they requested, and allocations will work backward until the 1 million shares are distributed.
Forget it!
Oh, by the way, did I mention that it's us next? IT has acheived liquidity, and is starting to flow overseas (to anywhere that is "downhill" in terms of cost)
If you have a large enough labour pool then you can hire and fire at will. Especially if, through a process of industrialisation, you have gradually streamlined the tasks they do. At a certain point, the individual becomes powerless, you achieve liquidity, and people become a commodity.
It's not a paradox, it's an inevitability, because the people most necessary to power our society are the ones who are going to get commoditized first.
Sorry to sound so cheerless, but let me give you another example of a commodity: a battery. Welcome to The Matrix. Have a nice day.
My point was that there are still opportunites out there for bedroom coders, whether it be in gaming, OSes, or whatever one could wish. No end to the golden age, but you wont find it where it was before - new ground must be broken.
In other new, Linux continues to go from strength to strength.
You mean you don't have the technology to read slashdot on the shitter?... priorities here man, the autotuner can wait.
Personally I wouldn't describe Dune as a cop-out, though. The absence of "machines made in the likeness of a human-being" is due to the Butlerian Jihad ten thousand years before the novel is set, which freed the human race from being the machines slaves.
Do you mean God or Frith?