As I always have to point out in these discussions, when you have around 90% of the market share, you define the standard. Anything with less than 10% support in the market isn't a standard, it's just a formal specification, no matter who writes it. This may not be ideal, but it is the way this sort of market works.
They're both standards. Internet Explorer is a de facto standard. The W3C is the de jure standard. The former got established by ruthless arm-twisting, anti-competitive behavior and the illegal exploitation of a monopolistic position.
If you think you can do better than CSS, and you're in business, and you have 90% market share, then you probably just go ahead and do your own thing. It doesn't matter if other browsers don't support it, because 90% of users will be fine, and of the other 10%, the vast majority will just think those other browsers are broken and load up yours instead. This is why the stubborn insistence of certain other browser development groups that they will only support W3C specs is the biggest own goal since the last World Cup.
How are they supposed to support anything other than W3C specs? The W3C publishes their specs; Microsoft does not. If they did, I'm sure the Mozilla folks would be more than happy to implement it. As it stands, they're forced to try and emulate some of IE's bugs and quirks in order to render poorly-written, IE-only pages correctly.
Yes, I know, this sucks for the consumer. Yes, I know, most of us here in a geeky community would agree that the W3C specs are far more useful than IE. I'm not disputing any of this. I'm simply giving a straightforward business case, from MS' perspective, for doing their own thing regardless of what the W3C say. This is why unregulated monopolies, or near-monopolies, suck.
It doesn't just suck for the consumer. It sucks for web developers. The whole point of a published standard is that you can be assured of certain behaviors. So if I code my HTML to comply to the standard, any browser that follows the standard will display it correctly. This makes the testing process far, far easier. For something like IE, you have to reverse-engineer and guess what's going on.
It's all well and good to be smug and practical about this kind of thing. "Well Microsoft dominates so just live with it." But some of us are, you know, interested in making things better than how they are, not waiting for our Benevolent Microsoft Gods to give us their blessings.
Did the knowledge stick with you any differently than if you'd just learned it the "normal" way? I ask because I've known once-upon-a-time-heavy smokers that swore up and down the things they learned while they were regularly smoking kinda faded away when they tried to quit. So if they needed to recall something they'd go take a smoke. Of course, it could just be them rationalizing their desire to take their first smoke in a few years/months.:) I was just wondering if anybody had any similar anecdotes for other drugs.
Well when trying to quit, your body is going through withdrawal, which has plenty of negative mental side-effects. And nicotine does temporarily increase synaptic responsiveness. So it wouldn't surprise me. Plus, any break from studying a long time is beneficial. You'll get fatigued more easily if you never stop. The real test would be to give a non-smoker a cigarette and see how his mental acuity changes.
I bought a pill of adderol once from a friend of mine in my sophomore year at college. I had linear algebra and EM physics finals the next morning. I've never concentrated that hard in my life. I was going from about 11:00pm to 7:00am straight (with regular smoke breaks) at the library, and my linear final was at 7:50. I nailed it too. When I was done studying, my hand was cramped up from all the writing, and my paper felt more like papyrus from all the hand-sweat that was on it.
Too bad he was stupid enough to buy an Escalade. If you're going to defraud people, you could at least refrain from using the money to waste gasoline and annoy other drivers on the road. Nothing pisses me off more than being at in the left turn lane of an intersection and trying to judge a gap when one of those fucking gigantic things is sitting across the intersection in the other left turn lane, blocking out the inside lane and not to mention the fucking sun. Nothing, except of course when the car in question is "pimped out" with spinning, 20-inch rims over-driven bass and whatever else these sub-sentient, gangsta-wannabe rich boys are loading it up with these days.
As far as I'm concerned, you can shoot any fucker who drives one of those things on sight.
I doubt it, really. Apple's philosophy just isn't focused on gaming. What they probably figure is, "Look, there are already several heavyweights in that area, and they're doing a better job than we ever could with our resources, so we'll leave that market to them." I can't think of anything Apple could really bring to the console market except iPod integration, and that's something they could license out. They don't have to develop their own in-house system for that.
I don't doubt that there is brainstorming going on in Cupertino about how to integrate a gaming console with the Mac in the living room.
I'd say that it's more because Steve Jobs has focused the company on consumer electronics and digital life-style. In Jobs' mind, Mac users who really want to play games will simply buy consoles. I'm guessing that Jobs feels that PC gaming as a whole is on the way out, being eaten away by consoles. To him, gaming is one of those things that is best served by a dedicated device, like a console. I don't know if I agree with that viewpoint, but that's probably what he thinks.
From what I understand, there have been various rulings on the subject. But since Audio CD-R's and regular CD-R's are exactly the same, I imagine it would apply to both.
I, for one, would be happy to pay a small tax on computers, iPods and the like to be guaranteed protection against being sued for copyright infringement.
High storage DVDs allow for a higher bit-rate, which will look better, of course. But try watching one of the Lord of the Rings extended editions on an HD-TV. All the action sequences get blocky-looking when motion starts picking up.
They most certainly do. Ever watch a DVD on an HD-TV? HD reveals all the glorious compression artifacts and pixelation of MPEG-2. DVD looks good on SD because everything gets blurred to shit. But HD-TV's need HD movies.
We have a tax on media in the United States. It's part of the Audio Home Recording Act. Here is the actual text.
2. The AHRA also provides for a royalty tax of up to $8 per new digital recording machine and 3 percent of the price of all digital audiotapes or discs. This tax is paid by the manufacturers of digital media devices and distributed to the copyright owners whose music is presumably being copied. In consideration of this tax, copyright owners agree to forever waive the right to claim copyright infringement against consumers using audio recording devices in their homes. This is commensurate with the fair use exception to copyright law, which allows consumers to make copies of copyrighted music for non-commercial purposes.
This tax is applied to CD-R's and other "recording devices" (iPods and the like are probably included as well), but not computers themselves. In either case, every time you buy CD-Rs or any sort of digital audio "recording machine", you have compensated the copyright holders. As far as I'm concerned, there is nothing unethical about downloading songs for free, especially from Mafia-like cartels like the RIAA.
In that case, "inflammable" is a direct derivative of the word "inflame", not of the word "flame". "Inflammable" and "flammable" just happent o be two words that mean the same thing but came from slightly different roots.
There is no such word as "irregard", so there is no linguistic basis for the word "irregardless" outside of morons who mix the words "irrespective" and "regardless" into some weird concoction that they think sounds correct. Your argument that there is such a word because some people of low intelligence have mistakenly created it is the same bullshit people use to justify the use of the word "nukular". Specifically, pronouncing the "clear" part of "nuclear" as "clee-ar" seems unnatural to some people when preceded by a "yoo" sound. So they take cues from words like "spectacular" instead of pronouncing the word correctly.
That's the explanation behind the idiocy. But it doesn't change the fundamental issue that people who consistently use such pronunciations are incorrect and sound like blithering idiots.
Linguistically, "irregardless" would mean "not regardless". Hence it would mean the exact opposite of what people using it are trying to say. So regardless of what Merriam-Webster says, "irregardless" is a stupid word and a mark of unintelligence if you use it. Just like "nukular".
Yes, it is. But you can't call something open source if it includes components you can't view the source on. Why don't we compromise and say darwin-ppc is open & darwin-x86 is made of open & closed components?
Fine. I'm sure we're both tired of trying to get the last word.
But you said darwin was open source. If one component of its closed, then you can't call the whole open.
You can't call the whole not open either. Apple does not say that OS X is open source. They say Darwin is. This is true for the PowerPC Darwin, and when they release the x86 XNU sources, it'll be true for the whole x86 branch. (The BSD tool sources are available for both.) You're operating under this idiotic speculation from some moron in the tech press. In any case, Darwin is more open than closed at this point.
Aaaah, 'mostly open source' kinda like being 'mostly pregnant' don't you think?
False analogy. Pregnancy is a binary condition. Unless Darwin has exactly one source file with all the code in it, your analogy doesn't apply.
Right, so you admit:
1) Its not available for download (you can't view the source)
Everything in Darwin x86, except XNU, is open source. The entire PowerPC Darwin is open source.
2) It's been that way for months
3) Apple hasn't said it's open source (no statement)
It's listed under their "open source" projects, so I'd say that qualifies. x86 XNU isn't open source yet, but Apple might just be taking its time releasing the sources. There could be any number of reasons for this. The speculation in the original article isn't indicative of anything. It was just some moron who saw that he couldn't download the XNU source for x86 and said "OMG DARWIN IS DEAD!!!!"
But you're still a believer that Darwin is Open Source!
Get it through your head. Darwin is not exclusively made up of XNU. It's XNU along with the FreeBSD layer and everything else required to run a POSIX-compliant operating system. Darwin is mostly open source. When Apple releases the sources for x86 XNU is up to them, but they haven't said that they won't.
Darwin is not open source, because a major component (x86 xnu) of it is not open source - even if you use your incorrect definition.
As far as we know, the source for x86 XNU is simply not available yet. There is no definitive statement from Apple on the subject, and this was, in fact, done to death on the Darwin mailing list. This post should shed a little light on the subject.
Lets go back & look at you're first statement in this thread:
No, "open source" means "the source code is available for you to see"
I have shown that:
1) The word 'open' comprehensively means more then "viewable" (in particular, it means access that it two way)
2) When you use multiple words, they gain meaning. The term "Open Source" is commonly held to mean viewable, redistributable code.
The word "open" CAN mean comprehensively more than "viewable". It does not HAVE to. Is this sinking in yet?
"Commonly held" isn't relevant. I've shown that my interpretation of the term "open source" is, linguistically, completely valid, while you're holding that there is only one possible definition. Yet again, you offer no argument for this pronouncement; you simply state it as fact. Further, you're ignoring the context of my argument, which was that your definition of open source is actually a sub-set of all open source, meaning that it's a specialization. My meaning, while more general, is still perfectly valid.
Do you honestly think that the inventor of the screwdriver can tell bartenders to stop referring to vodka and orange juice as such?
Please provide me with a link (hell, I'm not even asking for credible anymore) from someone who agrees with your definition. (hint, if you're alone on the Internet, you're almost certainly wrong).
Appeal to popularity fallacy. Please show what is wrong with my interpretation of the word "open".
I'm afraid you're wrong again (why am I not surprised):
1) Apple does not say Darwin is open source (XNU is a component of darwin, and is not listed on Apple's OSS page).
Of course they do. Darwin is listed under "Open Source Projects".
2) If they did, they would be lying.
Bullshit. Just because they don't adhere to your definition doesn't mean that there aren't other possible definitions. I can't see why the concepts of multiple meanings and subtle differences are flying over your head like this. Hell, Apple themselves provide an open source FAQ, so there is no confusion about what they mean when they say "open source". (Incidentally, their definition is closer to yours than mine, but it doesn't include the ability to freely redistribute software.)
Instead of trying to redefine open source to make Apple look good, why didn't you just correct the original poster about Apple saying Darwin was open source? Then you wouldn't have looked so ignorant.
Apple has, in fact, said that Darwin is open source, and they're not lying. The people you've linked to possess no trademark on the term, and thus they have no right to define it in such a way that it excludes all other possible definitions.
Trademarking a phrase is extremely difficult, and the only trademarks I see there are for actual logos. The phrase "open source" certainly isn't trademarked, since projects on SourceForge can claim to be "open source" without fear of penalty. Since Apple never uses these logos or markers on their web site to describe OS X, they are not engaging in misrepresentation of any kind.
42 definitions... most of which go a good deal beyond 'accessable'.
Irrelevant. You are arguing that it can mean only one thing, which is absurd precisely because the term "open" has so many definitions.
Not only does the he term implies a hell of a lot more then you say it does, but it's commonn usage implies redistribution as well.
The open source group does not have a trademark on the term "open source", so they do not have exclusive rights to define it. The original contention was that Apple was lying when they said that Darwin was "open source", which is pure horse shit. The term does not have one definition. It can have many, including the one you have posited.
Again, I challenge you to provide a link that supports your point of view.
You already linked to the definition of "open". I've shown that the phrase "open source" can be interpreted as "source code is available to see", an interpretation which you have not directly criticized. Instead, you've said, "My definition is the only one!" without any justification aside from the say-so of some people on the Internet. The term "screwdriver" can mean "An alcoholic drink made with vodka and orange juice". Does that automatically prevent Stanley Tools from using it to refer to their line of products which set and drive screws?
Why the hell did you get machines with integrated graphics chipsets for graphic design work? You could've gotten an iMac with an X1600 or just waited for the new towers.
How about looking up the word "open", dumb-ass? As I said before, there is nothing linguistically about the term "open source" that implies a right to distribute as you see fit. It simply means "the source code is accessible".
It's an unfortunate trend. With languages becoming more and more high-level, computer science students are simply being taught to hit the "compile" button and go. What happens between the compilation and running of the program might as well be a black box for a good chunk of students. It's true that the "science" part of computer science is really the modeling of algorithms, but some people take this to mean that the technical and engineering aspect of the discipline doesn't need to be emphasized. The attitude is "As long as they learn how to write algorithms, they can just pick up whatever programming languages they need." Sorry, but someone who's been strictly taught in Java would have a far more difficult time picking up C++ than someone who knows C++ trying to pick up Java.
After I took my school's introductory programming courses in C++, my school switched those courses to Java. But the algorithms course remained in C++. Things like pointers and linking confused the Java people to no end, and many of them did poorly in the course. And it's not their fault. The school let them down. Half of the things I learned were on my own, whether they were self-motivated research or related to my job somehow. (I worked as a Mac OS X programmer for the school while I was taking classes.) Some very useful debugging techniques, like defining debug symbols, were completely foreign to just about all of my classmates. When I would program in pairs, I had to explain the concept to my parters. Hell, in my second-level C++ course, I was the only one who could tell the teacher why #ifdef'ing a symbol for a library or class was required and what it did.
The sad fact is that many people go into computer science for the money. They have no drive to learn anything beyond what their courses tell them, and they have no real love for computing. And the worst part is that the trend of abstracting the shit out of languages so programmers don't have to deal with linking, pointers, symbols, etc... is making the field more accessible to these kinds of people. And they can get decent grades by just regurgitating everything. Hell I sat next to a guy at my graduation who was dumb as a fucking box of rocks when it came to computing, and he was wearing three tassels and graduated cum laude! I'd never, in my life, want this guy anywhere near any kind of programming project.
I think that an introductory course in straight C programming would serve well to weed out the people who really don't belong in the major. Computer science is as much an engineering discipline as it is a scientific one. It's not supposed to be easy. Graduates could potentially be entrusted with sensitive data like bank accounts and customer records. If they don't know what the hell they're doing, it's a disservice to the people who trust them.
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It's all well and good to be smug and practical about this kind of thing. "Well Microsoft dominates so just live with it." But some of us are, you know, interested in making things better than how they are, not waiting for our Benevolent Microsoft Gods to give us their blessings.
I bought a pill of adderol once from a friend of mine in my sophomore year at college. I had linear algebra and EM physics finals the next morning. I've never concentrated that hard in my life. I was going from about 11:00pm to 7:00am straight (with regular smoke breaks) at the library, and my linear final was at 7:50. I nailed it too. When I was done studying, my hand was cramped up from all the writing, and my paper felt more like papyrus from all the hand-sweat that was on it.
Come on. Putting little Mickey Ears on our missiles would be cool!
Too bad he was stupid enough to buy an Escalade. If you're going to defraud people, you could at least refrain from using the money to waste gasoline and annoy other drivers on the road. Nothing pisses me off more than being at in the left turn lane of an intersection and trying to judge a gap when one of those fucking gigantic things is sitting across the intersection in the other left turn lane, blocking out the inside lane and not to mention the fucking sun. Nothing, except of course when the car in question is "pimped out" with spinning, 20-inch rims over-driven bass and whatever else these sub-sentient, gangsta-wannabe rich boys are loading it up with these days.
As far as I'm concerned, you can shoot any fucker who drives one of those things on sight.
Okay, rant mode off.
I doubt it, really. Apple's philosophy just isn't focused on gaming. What they probably figure is, "Look, there are already several heavyweights in that area, and they're doing a better job than we ever could with our resources, so we'll leave that market to them." I can't think of anything Apple could really bring to the console market except iPod integration, and that's something they could license out. They don't have to develop their own in-house system for that.
I don't doubt that there is brainstorming going on in Cupertino about how to integrate a gaming console with the Mac in the living room.
I'd say that it's more because Steve Jobs has focused the company on consumer electronics and digital life-style. In Jobs' mind, Mac users who really want to play games will simply buy consoles. I'm guessing that Jobs feels that PC gaming as a whole is on the way out, being eaten away by consoles. To him, gaming is one of those things that is best served by a dedicated device, like a console. I don't know if I agree with that viewpoint, but that's probably what he thinks.
Hm, weird. But no one ever said laws had to make sense.
From what I understand, there have been various rulings on the subject. But since Audio CD-R's and regular CD-R's are exactly the same, I imagine it would apply to both.
I, for one, would be happy to pay a small tax on computers, iPods and the like to be guaranteed protection against being sued for copyright infringement.
High storage DVDs allow for a higher bit-rate, which will look better, of course. But try watching one of the Lord of the Rings extended editions on an HD-TV. All the action sequences get blocky-looking when motion starts picking up.
In that case, "inflammable" is a direct derivative of the word "inflame", not of the word "flame". "Inflammable" and "flammable" just happent o be two words that mean the same thing but came from slightly different roots.
There is no such word as "irregard", so there is no linguistic basis for the word "irregardless" outside of morons who mix the words "irrespective" and "regardless" into some weird concoction that they think sounds correct. Your argument that there is such a word because some people of low intelligence have mistakenly created it is the same bullshit people use to justify the use of the word "nukular". Specifically, pronouncing the "clear" part of "nuclear" as "clee-ar" seems unnatural to some people when preceded by a "yoo" sound. So they take cues from words like "spectacular" instead of pronouncing the word correctly.
That's the explanation behind the idiocy. But it doesn't change the fundamental issue that people who consistently use such pronunciations are incorrect and sound like blithering idiots.
Linguistically, "irregardless" would mean "not regardless". Hence it would mean the exact opposite of what people using it are trying to say. So regardless of what Merriam-Webster says, "irregardless" is a stupid word and a mark of unintelligence if you use it. Just like "nukular".
Yeah you sure showed me. Well played. Moron.
As if mods are even watching this anymore.
"Commonly held" isn't relevant. I've shown that my interpretation of the term "open source" is, linguistically, completely valid, while you're holding that there is only one possible definition. Yet again, you offer no argument for this pronouncement; you simply state it as fact. Further, you're ignoring the context of my argument, which was that your definition of open source is actually a sub-set of all open source, meaning that it's a specialization. My meaning, while more general, is still perfectly valid.
Do you honestly think that the inventor of the screwdriver can tell bartenders to stop referring to vodka and orange juice as such? Appeal to popularity fallacy. Please show what is wrong with my interpretation of the word "open". Of course they do. Darwin is listed under "Open Source Projects". Bullshit. Just because they don't adhere to your definition doesn't mean that there aren't other possible definitions. I can't see why the concepts of multiple meanings and subtle differences are flying over your head like this. Hell, Apple themselves provide an open source FAQ, so there is no confusion about what they mean when they say "open source". (Incidentally, their definition is closer to yours than mine, but it doesn't include the ability to freely redistribute software.) Apple has, in fact, said that Darwin is open source, and they're not lying. The people you've linked to possess no trademark on the term, and thus they have no right to define it in such a way that it excludes all other possible definitions.
Trademarking a phrase is extremely difficult, and the only trademarks I see there are for actual logos. The phrase "open source" certainly isn't trademarked, since projects on SourceForge can claim to be "open source" without fear of penalty. Since Apple never uses these logos or markers on their web site to describe OS X, they are not engaging in misrepresentation of any kind.
Why the hell did you get machines with integrated graphics chipsets for graphic design work? You could've gotten an iMac with an X1600 or just waited for the new towers.
How about looking up the word "open", dumb-ass? As I said before, there is nothing linguistically about the term "open source" that implies a right to distribute as you see fit. It simply means "the source code is accessible".
It's an unfortunate trend. With languages becoming more and more high-level, computer science students are simply being taught to hit the "compile" button and go. What happens between the compilation and running of the program might as well be a black box for a good chunk of students. It's true that the "science" part of computer science is really the modeling of algorithms, but some people take this to mean that the technical and engineering aspect of the discipline doesn't need to be emphasized. The attitude is "As long as they learn how to write algorithms, they can just pick up whatever programming languages they need." Sorry, but someone who's been strictly taught in Java would have a far more difficult time picking up C++ than someone who knows C++ trying to pick up Java.
... is making the field more accessible to these kinds of people. And they can get decent grades by just regurgitating everything. Hell I sat next to a guy at my graduation who was dumb as a fucking box of rocks when it came to computing, and he was wearing three tassels and graduated cum laude! I'd never, in my life, want this guy anywhere near any kind of programming project.
After I took my school's introductory programming courses in C++, my school switched those courses to Java. But the algorithms course remained in C++. Things like pointers and linking confused the Java people to no end, and many of them did poorly in the course. And it's not their fault. The school let them down. Half of the things I learned were on my own, whether they were self-motivated research or related to my job somehow. (I worked as a Mac OS X programmer for the school while I was taking classes.) Some very useful debugging techniques, like defining debug symbols, were completely foreign to just about all of my classmates. When I would program in pairs, I had to explain the concept to my parters. Hell, in my second-level C++ course, I was the only one who could tell the teacher why #ifdef'ing a symbol for a library or class was required and what it did.
The sad fact is that many people go into computer science for the money. They have no drive to learn anything beyond what their courses tell them, and they have no real love for computing. And the worst part is that the trend of abstracting the shit out of languages so programmers don't have to deal with linking, pointers, symbols, etc
I think that an introductory course in straight C programming would serve well to weed out the people who really don't belong in the major. Computer science is as much an engineering discipline as it is a scientific one. It's not supposed to be easy. Graduates could potentially be entrusted with sensitive data like bank accounts and customer records. If they don't know what the hell they're doing, it's a disservice to the people who trust them.