The Fourth Amendment: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
You have a right to privacy in your house. Your business, to my understanding, is a completely different matter.
I wouldn't put it past Microsoft. There was a story on/. years ago (couldn't find the link.../.'s search engine sucks ass...) about how Bill had invested $20 Million in a tempest-tech company. The gist of the article was that they were developing software (er, video drivers) that put out not only your video display information, but also caused the monitor to emit your license number as well (basically, it did display it on the monitor, they just pulled some fancy Sampling-theorem techniques so you could not see it...unless you had the technology). The article predicted a fleet of M$ vans sitting in neighborhoods etc, seeing who had legal software.
Re:What's even more disturbing...
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Worst Buy
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No no no.
Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.
Since when does creating a backup copy of licensed material qualify as Fair Use? It doesn't. It never has. It probably never will.
From the above page: ...the fair use doctrine allows an individual to make a copy of their lawfully obtained copyrighted work for their own personal use. Allowing people to make a copy of copyrighted music for their personal use provides for enhanced consumer convenience through legitimate and lawful copying. It can also enlarge the exploitable market for the rights holders. The fair use privilege's personal use right is what allows an individual to make a backup copy of their computer software as an essential defense against future media failure.
Get your terms straight and maybe people will actually address the issues that you feel strongly about.
Whatever you say, Hiliary. I hope you paid for all those KD Lang CD's:)
I know... but why didn't you use the correct units then?
Because Pound-seconds is unintuitive (slug-feet/second is even better...or worse); I said each of us in a car is wielding 3000 pounds (a convention which is incorrect) of momental, speed-dependent force. Everyone knows that 3000 "pounds" is a hell of a lot of mass. Had correctly said "93.4 slugs" would you have had any idea what the hell I was talking about? (Would I? No. I don't often use slugs).
And the page I quoted did indeed say lb*ft/sec.
Don't try to blame this on the quality of your reference materials. You were flippant enough to add the "...as a physicist" line to your post. The difference between slugs and pounds is something that *all* first semester physics students learn (but apparently the guys at NASA did not).
And if you didn't know, looking it up is cheating:)
Ok, but even if, this would still not make it a correct unit for momentum: you'd need to remultiply it with a unit of time to get momentum (mass times speed, while force is mass times acceleration).
Which, again, is why I added "speed dependent" at the end, which you so kindly deleted when you quoted me out of context.
This next bit is funny: POST: the SI unit for momentum is either one of kg*m/s or Newton-seconds
REPLY: Of which both are exactly the same, as a Newton is kg*m/s^2
Yes, I originally said they were the same. Thanks for clarifying that, it was really vague...
Exact. Pound seconds, and not just pounds.
Again, I had left things vague in my original post so as not to have to deal with slugs while still being able to emphasize that cars are heavy. And yes, you nitpicked and I explained that it's pound-seconds, not pounds (again, I never said it was pounds in the first place). Pound-seconds is not nearly as clear as slug-feet/second; both are correct, while your lb-ft/sec is completely *wrong*.
Each and every one of us in a car is weilding 3000 lbs (minimum) of momentum (speed dependent).
I put "speed dependent" there for a reason - momentum is p = m*v where m is mass and v is velocity.
Pounds (lbs) are a unit [wihatools.com] of force or of mass.
(Notice how I was nice enough to include your whole sentence and not take things out of context?)
Using Newton's Law F = M*a we see that mass and force are related by acceleration; therefore pounds can be both force and mass if and only if the acceleration is zero, which is not a very interesting case.
For momentum, you'd use lb*ft/sec
And you'd be wrong. the English unit of mass is the slug, which is equal to 14.6 kilograms. The pound is in fact a unit of force, equal to 4.45 Newtons. Therefore the relation "momentum = lb*ft/sec" is wrong; the correct relation is momentum = lbs*sec or m = F*s. You can derive this using p=mv , F=Ma, and a=m/s^2. I derived it myself, and I didn't need a website to do it:)
(Yes, this is non-intuitive. If you still do not believe it is correct, however, consider this: 1) the English equivalent of the Newton is the pound; 2) the SI unit for momentum is either one of kg*m/s or Newton-seconds. Therefore the English equilavent of Newton-seconds is pound-seconds = 4.45*Newton-seconds. As a side note, this sort of unitary tomfoolery is typical of why Britain, an empire which once spanned the globe, is now an island;)
That's very true- if both cars were parked there would be no injury.
Yup. And if you don't connect your computer to the internet, you need not worry about the FBI. Is this the best rebuttal you can offer? (The point is pretty indefensible).
I say lets start with monitoring police cars...but when they're not I say they should be fired and prosecuted for violations.
I couldn't agree with you more, given a few caveats: 1) they are already monitored with video cameras (ever watched that idiotic show on CourtTV?); 2) sometimes cops cannot run lights and sirens even when they are on an emergency run - for example, the time I had to hit that handy "mayday" button on my radio (Yes, Sir, I can see that your wife is having chest pain, seeing as how you shot her in the chest with that there shotgun), the cops showed up quite silently, which is good, since I had a gun aimed at me.
Seriously tho, cops DO speed like crazy. Up to the point of their killing people or causing accidents or just looking unprofessional, I am willing to write it off as a job perk (in the same way that many coders that I know write "free company software isos" off as a job perk...give the BSA a few years, and that too will carry a possible death penalty:)
Lastly, the "I should be able to speed since cops do" is a horribly indefensible argument. Even if they are law enforcement, that in no way lessens your breaking the law. They should just be punished more severely (black boxes up their asses:)
You mean to tell me that you -never-, not -once-, end up going a few miles over the posted speed limits?
Cops will give you +-5MPH. Here in Va, they really don't start pulling until you're 10 over, unless you look "shady."
Beyond that, it is a fact that most roads [with the exception of very old ones] are designed to support speeds 5-15 mph higher than the posted limit
You have gotta be a CS major, because had you majored in engineering, you would have heard of this thing called "factor of safety." You see, you determine what is safe, then you stay inside that limit a little bit. That way, when you are still inside that limit, and the sun blinds you temporarily, or an insect files into your car and momentarily distracts you, you are still SAFE. Yeah, that guy who set the speed limit on that road you are driving on majored in Civil Engineering, but that doesn't mean he's an idiot.
Roughly 50% of the accidents I work are Motor Vehicle Collisions. NOT Motor Vehicle Accidents - no such thing exists. Speed is the determining factor in the severity of the accident both to the person responsible for the collision and the innocent people they hit. If everyone followed the driving code to the letter of the law, collisions would not occur - and anything that helps my cop friends (I see them at every accident) better determine what each idiot was doing is a great idea. Also, consider the prevention capabilities - the black box sends a warning to the cops that such and such a car is weaving and speeding on such and such a road, and bam - they pull his drunken ass over before he kills someone.
...as a citizen: Ever yelled at someone who went through a red light or thru an intersection without stopping? Ever yelled at that asshole in front of you to get off of his cell phone?
...as a card-carrying member of the ACLU: I relish the privacy of my home. Driving on public streets, however, is in no way a private act. Each and every one of us in a car is weilding 3000 lbs (minimum) of momentum (speed dependent). That carries with it a significant amount of responsibility, which in turn carries a requisite amount of accountability. These black boxes would enforce that accountability. How is that a bad thing?
It will surely monitor your driving habits and give the insurance companies more reasons to refuse to pay. It'll allow cops to trace you but won't help in pinpointing your position if you have an accident.
If you were speeding and you had a collision, why should the insurance company pay? If you and I have policies with the same insurance company, it's my monthly payment that goes towards the money you get. Is that in any way fair? I follow the law, you break it, and you get my insurance money?
It's not that I don't have my tinfoil hat, it something called *REALITY*. Try it some time - it'll change the way you see the world
I still say you shouldn't argue things until you're sure you know them, though.
Agreed. As I've said, I had to go digging through the.NET dox to find out that JITing takes place, and I'm still not sure what their definition of "native" code is (is it machine code (I doubt that), or is it something else?
Either way, the intent of my original post was to clarify that yes I do have some hang ups because this is M$, but.NET (here goes the title) is actually pretty sweet. It's got multiple language support, it's based (for now) on industry standards, it eliminates DLL Hell, it eliminates the need for component-related registry settings, etc.
Having scoured the dox more carefully now, I don't think it's much of a stretch to say that.NET is in many ways a multilingual Java (with a few other improvements).
The sad thing is that NOBODY, across several subthreads, has picked up on one simple thing: This assertion is blatantly untrue..NET executables *are* bytecode, they're just bytecode packaged in a.exe wrapper that Windows operating systems know how to pass to the proper JIT compiler.
NO, they are NOT. They are MSIL code, native code, and metadata packaged in a PE/COFF file with an exe extension.
They are however JITed. I admit I did not know this - I knew a sort of JITing was taking place, but I thought the JITing was done by the CLR. In fact, the CLR does call a JITer.
There is still no need for a JVM. This isn't entirely true - there probably is a JVM, but it is implemented as a JIT that the CLR calls when in runs into JScript MSIL/metadata.
Miguel can call it whatever the hell he wants. NOWHERE in the MS.NET Documentation is the word "bytecode" or the phrase "byte code" to be found. In all fairness M$ has probably avoided this word out of fear that people will realize that their ideas from.NET originated in Java.
The runtime also has another method of compilation which is NOT JIT - install-time code generation. ITC-gen converts entire assemblies at once, as well as storing them, so that the resulting files load and execute more quickly.
Your comments about taking advantage of the X86 SSE2 instructions are also bogus. If Microsoft's.NET compiler has an optimization that will allow certain bytecode sequences to be JITed into SSE2 instructions on x86 processors, that's great! But don't try to imply that a Java VM couldn't implement exactly those same optimizations, because it could.
In theory, yes, but in practicality, no. I should have elaborated on this, but myself and the developers I work with have held for quite some time that both parts of the Wintel monopoly have undocumented (er, hidden) instructions in their CPU's/OSes. This is why, for instance, Intel's compiler beats the shit out of both VS and gcc, but gcc and VS are in a dead heat (according to some tests). It's also possible that the performance enhancements come simply from poorly documented optomizations, which (for instance) only the M$ developers can learn because only the M$ developers have access to the M$ source. I never said M$ was better - I just said.NET was a big improvement for them.
.NET (at least the CLR part of it, and if you don't know what CLR refers to you *really* shouldn't be advocating it) *is* a good idea. But it's a good idea for the *same* reasons that Java is - with almost exactly the same tradeoffs except that CLR gives slightly better multi-language capability (only slightly!) and Java gives slightly better cross-platform capability (again, only slightly! - at least if mono keeps up the momentum it has now).
Where exactly did I slam Java? I never said Java sucks - I said.NET is an improvement. It's an improvement on the ideas of Java - not only write once, but write in whatever the hell language you want. I think the mistake I made in my first post was the compile once line. In my view,.NET is pretty much part of the OS. I may be wrong about that. But considering that M$ thinks IE is part of its OS, I'm probably not:) By the same distinction, what is the current viewpoint of running Java code under Linux with the binfmt_misc module enabled? Do we view the Java as machine code, because the kernel is running it (even though its just calling the interpreter), or do we view the kernel as having a JVM "built in"?
Furthermore, why would.NET run any faster?.NET has to use all the kludge ups that any system running foreign OS/native hardware code has to do.
Can you understand that if Windows supported ELF, Linux executables would run really fast on Windows? Thats the analogy here - any OS that supports the ECMA executable format will be able to execute (quickly and natively) an ECMA executable. There's no JIT, no interpreter, no call conversion layer - it loads the executable into memory, writes a new value into EIP, and starts executing the executable's machine code. There are no kludge ups.
What uses big-endian x86? In case, portability to anything that runs.NET on x86 isn't exactly very portable
I am not aware of a big-endian X86. But you mentioned (er, tried to whine about) ECMA executables not being able to run on non-X86 CPU's which is false - they will run on non-X86. And endianness is an issue.
I can see how you saw it as sarcasm, but I was actually asking if the Linux IA64 port was done yet. Thats actually pretty schweeeet.
Yeah, that makes sense. Let's spend 5 years developing a ulta-portable platform to include the OSes that other people use, and then let's lock them out. We won't have gained any users because we pretty much control the market anyway, but let's just spend the billions of research dollars to do it anyways.
.NET would catch on with or without Linux. In fact, it's already caught on. It addresses pretty much every bitching point about Windows, eg DLL hell is gone. Seriously - don't knock it till you've tried it. (how often do we tell that to non-linux, linux bashing folk?)
So in other words, they created a new executable format (instead of Windows emulating Linux or visa versa, an much more useful goal), which will work on Linux/x86 if and when Linus ever adds support.
Yes. And Linux didn't support ELF until Linus added support. But being that ECMA335 is public, we won't have to reverse-engineer support, we'll simply have to read the standard.
Actually we won't. Miguel will do it for us with Mono. And you're right about Windows/Linux emulating Linux/Windows - because Wine and VMWare are *so* fast.
It's been doable in GNU C or GNU Ada for a long time now. It just needs a recompile. And there's all of what, 5, x86 OS's out there. Compile for x86 Linux and you will be able to run on most x86 BSD's anyway, so you only really need to compile it twice.
I guess you missed that article where Intel and MS VS.NET beat the crap out of gcc.
I am not 100% sure of this, but endianness is the only portability issue I've seen with the executables...and given that it's just a simply matter of inserting a bunch of bswap instructions in the assembly stage of compilation, it most likely won't be an issue by the time.NET and the ECMA standards are complete, so it really isn't an issue.
Frankly, I hope not to be running x86 in a few years. Either Itanium, or Sledgehammer or maybe some nice PowerPC hardware. Nothing you've suggested is in the least portable to non-x86 hardware, unless you're willing to emulate the x86, which puts us back to where we started with bytecode.
You can buy an Itanium now...it will run 64 bit XP or Linux...oh wait, is that Linux ia64 port done yet???
IIRC (and assuming youve got the module compiled - most distro kernels do), running Java stuff from the kernel is just a "su -c 'insmod binfmt_misc' " away:)
Here's the link to M$'s Shared Source CLI Beta. Yeah, it's beta...bitch about that only after youve examined your linux box and counted the percentage of apps that are 1.0 or greater.
Why is.NET bytecode an executable and Java bytecode not? Six of one and half dozen of the other. Anything you can do with one you can do with the other.
".NET executables" (AFAIK ECMA 335 compliant executables) are not bytecode - they're machine code (If you don't understand why bytecode is not an executable...should you really be bitching about it?). They do not need a JIT or JVM - they directly call the OS. If I build a Java app on Linux, I have to go and install a JVM on Windows before I can execute it (because M$ went and removed Java...bastards...). Once Mono has ECMA compilers, I can compile an ECMA335 on Linux and then go run it on Windows by simply double clicking it...provided that both of the boxes are, of course, little-endian X86's.
The executables are also very small and very fast - this is important. Most of the computing I do is (floating-point) signal processing, so Java has always been a bad idea anyways. But writing an app that takes advantage of the X86 SSE2 instructions? And running it on any P4 regardless of OS? Schweeeeeet.
I had used Linux and FreeBSD excusively for about two years - I even once posted a (rejected) Ask Slashdot question entitled "Why Windows," arguing that with the multimedia (mplayer) and browser (pick konq/galeon) support available in Linux, that no one needed Windows.
My viewpoint has changed radically. I have an XP box now - it's actually a pretty stable OS. And.NET delivers on all the promises that Sun had made of Java. (M$ has beaten them - intsead of "write once, run anywhere,".NET offers "compile once, run anywhere.")
I still use Linux/Apache/MySQL for all of my servers - and with SQL 2000 at $20,000 per processor that won't change anytime soon - but Windows has gotten more stable. Linus once said that he started Linux because he wanted software that didn't stink...win3.1, win95, and win98 all stink, but 2K and XP are actually pretty nice.
I will probably switch back over to an all OSS setup when Miguel et al finish Mono. That's gonna be sweet, too - imagine the day when you can compile an executable (not java bytecode) on a {Windows, Linux} box and then run that executable on a {Linux, Windows} box.
That's the nice thing about.NET - M$ has actually embraced industry standards. ASP.NET can be accessed from any client provided you have an HTTP connection. That's the only requirement. I sitll support the paranoid people, because there is always the chance that M$ will extend and extinguish what it has embraced, but with them having submitted everything to ECMA, that's really an outside worry.
Have you used google? They even have a page explaining why their site doesn't have pop-ups (I hadn't realized Yahoo had become such a pop-up pain till I used IE recently - GOD I love Galeon).
The paid search watch has already gone off, with Yahoo offering premium content at a price. You can put your watch back on GMT now.
Google are good people. They recognize that the dot com boot is over, and they are pursuing good, honest, value-based business models. Yes they have patents, but they don't patent silly, no-brainer things like the idea compressing a file before you transmit it. They patent hardcore search algorithms, which they paid a bunch of CS/IT people to develop. You can tell it's not a common-sense patent by the fact that no one has written a mod_google for apache that can rival Google's indexing abilities.
I recall a certain Finnish nerd, who sat around in his bathrobe in his mom's apartment all the way thru college. Apparently with those credentials he managed to write a pretty decent OS...
I am a Gnome user, and athough I am NOT a sky is falling person, KDE seems to be making much more usefull strides, I am also concerned about the Ximian fork, (even though I use it) How long till XImian hack up all the libs to work for their effort and how compatible will it be ?
Ximian is still open source. When THAT changes, worry. For now, don't.
Their stuff is pretty compatible, tho to get things like Evolution working you have to have the latest versions of some things (gal, gtkhtml, I think bonobo)...
I have thought about switching to KDE for no other reason than they seem to have a much better, much more focused direction.
I use both Gnome and KDE. The only thing that irritates me about the holy war between them is that one would expect that, given all the hype, someone from one camp would have made that camp compatible with the other camp as a sort of reverse-psychology love-flame. They don't work perfectly together, but I digress.
Gnome seems faster. It also does not have the annoying habit of attaching a blinking app icon to my mouse cursor when an app is doing something that takes a long time...but Gnome apps don't to seem to have the lag that the KDE ones do. KPoker roxxx tho:)
Does it seem to anyone else latley Gnome is becoming a throw in everything and if the kitchen sink dosent work its OK, or is it just me.
It's just you.
Admittedly Gnome 2 has some nice stuff but how much will be functional by first release ?
The idea of a first release is that the code is stable and fully functional.
Would "PHD Level Computer Scientist" have made things more clear?
Yes, he reimplemented an existing system. Yes, degrees are surely *not* measures of programming skills. Yes, the phrase "PhD level programmer" sounds down right weird. But look at the code - there are plenty of things he (and others) have done to advance the state of the art within this system which they have "merely reimplemented."
Slashdot Mirror
You know, thats an interesting point: Fontographer was written BEFORE the DMCA existed.
Tom says he wrote the app (which, BTW, is about 30 lines of SIMPLE C) in 1997; IIRC, the DMCA was not law until 1998.
Any lawyers know if ex post facto applies here?
"SOT, a Linux-distributor from the home-country of Linux"
:)
Linux is now a country? It wasn't enough that it was ported to MIPS, Dreamcast, etc? They had to get a government to run it???
Oh you mean Finland...my bad
The Fourth Amendment:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
You have a right to privacy in your house. Your business, to my understanding, is a completely different matter.
It would make them think twice before doing this kind of audit.
:)
I submit to you that "thinking once", much less "twice", and "working for the BSA" are mutually exclusive concepts
I wouldn't put it past Microsoft. There was a story on /. years ago (couldn't find the link.../.'s search engine sucks ass...) about how Bill had invested $20 Million in a tempest-tech company. The gist of the article was that they were developing software (er, video drivers) that put out not only your video display information, but also caused the monitor to emit your license number as well (basically, it did display it on the monitor, they just pulled some fancy Sampling-theorem techniques so you could not see it...unless you had the technology). The article predicted a fleet of M$ vans sitting in neighborhoods etc, seeing who had legal software.
No no no.
Once is happenstance.
Twice is coincidence.
Three times is enemy action.
This technology / method does NOT have ANYTHING to do with fair use!
:)
Yes it does
Since when does creating a backup copy of licensed material qualify as Fair Use? It doesn't. It never has. It probably never will.
From the above page:
...the fair use doctrine allows an individual to make a copy of their lawfully obtained copyrighted work for their own personal use. Allowing people to make a copy of copyrighted music for their personal use provides for enhanced consumer convenience through legitimate and lawful copying. It can also enlarge the exploitable market for the rights holders. The fair use privilege's personal use right is what allows an individual to make a backup copy of their computer software as an essential defense against future media failure.
Get your terms straight and maybe people will actually address the issues that you feel strongly about.
Whatever you say, Hiliary. I hope you paid for all those KD Lang CD's
I know... but why didn't you use the correct units then?
:)
Because Pound-seconds is unintuitive (slug-feet/second is even better...or worse); I said each of us in a car is wielding 3000 pounds (a convention which is incorrect) of momental, speed-dependent force. Everyone knows that 3000 "pounds" is a hell of a lot of mass. Had correctly said "93.4 slugs" would you have had any idea what the hell I was talking about? (Would I? No. I don't often use slugs).
And the page I quoted did indeed say lb*ft/sec.
Don't try to blame this on the quality of your reference materials. You were flippant enough to add the "...as a physicist" line to your post. The difference between slugs and pounds is something that *all* first semester physics students learn (but apparently the guys at NASA did not).
And if you didn't know, looking it up is cheating
Ok, but even if, this would still not make it a correct unit for momentum: you'd need to remultiply it with a unit of time to get momentum (mass times speed, while force is mass times acceleration).
Which, again, is why I added "speed dependent" at the end, which you so kindly deleted when you quoted me out of context.
This next bit is funny:
POST: the SI unit for momentum is either one of kg*m/s or Newton-seconds
REPLY: Of which both are exactly the same, as a Newton is kg*m/s^2
Yes, I originally said they were the same. Thanks for clarifying that, it was really vague...
Exact. Pound seconds, and not just pounds.
Again, I had left things vague in my original post so as not to have to deal with slugs while still being able to emphasize that cars are heavy. And yes, you nitpicked and I explained that it's pound-seconds, not pounds (again, I never said it was pounds in the first place). Pound-seconds is not nearly as clear as slug-feet/second; both are correct, while your lb-ft/sec is completely *wrong*.
Each and every one of us in a car is weilding 3000 lbs (minimum) of momentum (speed dependent).
:)
;)
I put "speed dependent" there for a reason - momentum is p = m*v where m is mass and v is velocity.
Pounds (lbs) are a unit [wihatools.com] of force or of mass.
(Notice how I was nice enough to include your whole sentence and not take things out of context?)
Using Newton's Law F = M*a we see that mass and force are related by acceleration; therefore pounds can be both force and mass if and only if the acceleration is zero, which is not a very interesting case.
For momentum, you'd use lb*ft/sec
And you'd be wrong. the English unit of mass is the slug, which is equal to 14.6 kilograms. The pound is in fact a unit of force, equal to 4.45 Newtons. Therefore the relation "momentum = lb*ft/sec" is wrong; the correct relation is
momentum = lbs*sec or m = F*s. You can derive this using p=mv , F=Ma, and a=m/s^2. I derived it myself, and I didn't need a website to do it
(Yes, this is non-intuitive. If you still do not believe it is correct, however, consider this: 1) the English equivalent of the Newton is the pound; 2) the SI unit for momentum is either one of kg*m/s or Newton-seconds. Therefore the English equilavent of Newton-seconds is pound-seconds = 4.45*Newton-seconds. As a side note, this sort of unitary tomfoolery is typical of why Britain, an empire which once spanned the globe, is now an island
That's very true- if both cars were parked there would be no injury.
:)
:)
Yup. And if you don't connect your computer to the internet, you need not worry about the FBI. Is this the best rebuttal you can offer? (The point is pretty indefensible).
I say lets start with monitoring police cars...but when they're not I say they should be fired and prosecuted for violations.
I couldn't agree with you more, given a few caveats: 1) they are already monitored with video cameras (ever watched that idiotic show on CourtTV?); 2) sometimes cops cannot run lights and sirens even when they are on an emergency run - for example, the time I had to hit that handy "mayday" button on my radio (Yes, Sir, I can see that your wife is having chest pain, seeing as how you shot her in the chest with that there shotgun), the cops showed up quite silently, which is good, since I had a gun aimed at me.
Seriously tho, cops DO speed like crazy. Up to the point of their killing people or causing accidents or just looking unprofessional, I am willing to write it off as a job perk (in the same way that many coders that I know write "free company software isos" off as a job perk...give the BSA a few years, and that too will carry a possible death penalty
Lastly, the "I should be able to speed since cops do" is a horribly indefensible argument. Even if they are law enforcement, that in no way lessens your breaking the law. They should just be punished more severely (black boxes up their asses
You mean to tell me that you -never-, not -once-, end up going a few miles over the posted speed limits?
Cops will give you +-5MPH. Here in Va, they really don't start pulling until you're 10 over, unless you look "shady."
Beyond that, it is a fact that most roads [with the exception of very old ones] are designed to support speeds 5-15 mph higher than the posted limit
You have gotta be a CS major, because had you majored in engineering, you would have heard of this thing called "factor of safety." You see, you determine what is safe, then you stay inside that limit a little bit. That way, when you are still inside that limit, and the sun blinds you temporarily, or an insect files into your car and momentarily distracts you, you are still SAFE. Yeah, that guy who set the speed limit on that road you are driving on majored in Civil Engineering, but that doesn't mean he's an idiot.
...as a paramedic:
...as a citizen:
...as a card-carrying member of the ACLU:
Roughly 50% of the accidents I work are Motor Vehicle Collisions. NOT Motor Vehicle Accidents - no such thing exists. Speed is the determining factor in the severity of the accident both to the person responsible for the collision and the innocent people they hit. If everyone followed the driving code to the letter of the law, collisions would not occur - and anything that helps my cop friends (I see them at every accident) better determine what each idiot was doing is a great idea. Also, consider the prevention capabilities - the black box sends a warning to the cops that such and such a car is weaving and speeding on such and such a road, and bam - they pull his drunken ass over before he kills someone.
Ever yelled at someone who went through a red light or thru an intersection without stopping? Ever yelled at that asshole in front of you to get off of his cell phone?
I relish the privacy of my home. Driving on public streets, however, is in no way a private act. Each and every one of us in a car is weilding 3000 lbs (minimum) of momentum (speed dependent). That carries with it a significant amount of responsibility, which in turn carries a requisite amount of accountability. These black boxes would enforce that accountability. How is that a bad thing?
It will surely monitor your driving habits and give the insurance companies more reasons to refuse to pay. It'll allow cops to trace you but won't help in pinpointing your position if you have an accident.
If you were speeding and you had a collision, why should the insurance company pay? If you and I have policies with the same insurance company, it's my monthly payment that goes towards the money you get. Is that in any way fair? I follow the law, you break it, and you get my insurance money?
It's not that I don't have my tinfoil hat, it something called *REALITY*. Try it some time - it'll change the way you see the world
I still say you shouldn't argue things until you're sure you know them, though.
.NET dox to find out that JITing takes place, and I'm still not sure what their definition of "native" code is (is it machine code (I doubt that), or is it something else?
.NET (here goes the title) is actually pretty sweet. It's got multiple language support, it's based (for now) on industry standards, it eliminates DLL Hell, it eliminates the need for component-related registry settings, etc.
.NET is in many ways a multilingual Java (with a few other improvements).
Agreed. As I've said, I had to go digging through the
Either way, the intent of my original post was to clarify that yes I do have some hang ups because this is M$, but
Having scoured the dox more carefully now, I don't think it's much of a stretch to say that
The sad thing is that NOBODY, across several subthreads, has picked up on one simple thing: This assertion is blatantly untrue. .NET executables *are* bytecode, they're just bytecode packaged in a .exe wrapper that Windows operating systems know how to pass to the proper JIT compiler.
.NET Documentation is the word "bytecode" or the phrase "byte code" to be found. In all fairness M$ has probably avoided this word out of fear that people will realize that their ideas from .NET originated in Java.
.NET compiler has an optimization that will allow certain bytecode sequences to be JITed into SSE2 instructions on x86 processors, that's great! But don't try to imply that a Java VM couldn't implement exactly those same optimizations, because it could.
.NET was a big improvement for them.
.NET (at least the CLR part of it, and if you don't know what CLR refers to you *really* shouldn't be advocating it) *is* a good idea. But it's a good idea for the *same* reasons that Java is - with almost exactly the same tradeoffs except that CLR gives slightly better multi-language capability (only slightly!) and Java gives slightly better cross-platform capability (again, only slightly! - at least if mono keeps up the momentum it has now).
.NET is an improvement. It's an improvement on the ideas of Java - not only write once, but write in whatever the hell language you want. I think the mistake I made in my first post was the compile once line. In my view, .NET is pretty much part of the OS. I may be wrong about that. But considering that M$ thinks IE is part of its OS, I'm probably not :)
NO, they are NOT. They are MSIL code, native code, and metadata packaged in a PE/COFF file with an exe extension.
They are however JITed. I admit I did not know this - I knew a sort of JITing was taking place, but I thought the JITing was done by the CLR. In fact, the CLR does call a JITer.
There is still no need for a JVM. This isn't entirely true - there probably is a JVM, but it is implemented as a JIT that the CLR calls when in runs into JScript MSIL/metadata.
Miguel can call it whatever the hell he wants. NOWHERE in the MS
The runtime also has another method of compilation which is NOT JIT - install-time code generation. ITC-gen converts entire assemblies at once, as well as storing them, so that the resulting files load and execute more quickly.
Your comments about taking advantage of the X86 SSE2 instructions are also bogus. If Microsoft's
In theory, yes, but in practicality, no. I should have elaborated on this, but myself and the developers I work with have held for quite some time that both parts of the Wintel monopoly have undocumented (er, hidden) instructions in their CPU's/OSes. This is why, for instance, Intel's compiler beats the shit out of both VS and gcc, but gcc and VS are in a dead heat (according to some tests). It's also possible that the performance enhancements come simply from poorly documented optomizations, which (for instance) only the M$ developers can learn because only the M$ developers have access to the M$ source. I never said M$ was better - I just said
Where exactly did I slam Java? I never said Java sucks - I said
By the same distinction, what is the current viewpoint of running Java code under Linux with the binfmt_misc module enabled? Do we view the Java as machine code, because the kernel is running it (even though its just calling the interpreter), or do we view the kernel as having a JVM "built in"?
Furthermore, why would .NET run any faster? .NET has to use all the kludge ups that any system running foreign OS/native hardware code has to do.
.NET on x86 isn't exactly very portable
Can you understand that if Windows supported ELF, Linux executables would run really fast on Windows? Thats the analogy here - any OS that supports the ECMA executable format will be able to execute (quickly and natively) an ECMA executable. There's no JIT, no interpreter, no call conversion layer - it loads the executable into memory, writes a new value into EIP, and starts executing the executable's machine code. There are no kludge ups.
What uses big-endian x86? In case, portability to anything that runs
I am not aware of a big-endian X86. But you mentioned (er, tried to whine about) ECMA executables not being able to run on non-X86 CPU's which is false - they will run on non-X86. And endianness is an issue.
I can see how you saw it as sarcasm, but I was actually asking if the Linux IA64 port was done yet. Thats actually pretty schweeeet.
Yeah, that makes sense. Let's spend 5 years developing a ulta-portable platform to include the OSes that other people use, and then let's lock them out. We won't have gained any users because we pretty much control the market anyway, but let's just spend the billions of research dollars to do it anyways.
.NET would catch on with or without Linux. In fact, it's already caught on. It addresses pretty much every bitching point about Windows, eg DLL hell is gone. Seriously - don't knock it till you've tried it. (how often do we tell that to non-linux, linux bashing folk?)
So in other words, they created a new executable format (instead of Windows emulating Linux or visa versa, an much more useful goal), which will work on Linux/x86 if and when Linus ever adds support.
.NET and the ECMA standards are complete, so it really isn't an issue.
Yes. And Linux didn't support ELF until Linus added support. But being that ECMA335 is public, we won't have to reverse-engineer support, we'll simply have to read the standard.
Actually we won't. Miguel will do it for us with Mono. And you're right about Windows/Linux emulating Linux/Windows - because Wine and VMWare are *so* fast.
It's been doable in GNU C or GNU Ada for a long time now. It just needs a recompile. And there's all of what, 5, x86 OS's out there. Compile for x86 Linux and you will be able to run on most x86 BSD's anyway, so you only really need to compile it twice.
I guess you missed that article where Intel and MS VS.NET beat the crap out of gcc.
I am not 100% sure of this, but endianness is the only portability issue I've seen with the executables...and given that it's just a simply matter of inserting a bunch of bswap instructions in the assembly stage of compilation, it most likely won't be an issue by the time
Frankly, I hope not to be running x86 in a few years. Either Itanium, or Sledgehammer or maybe some nice PowerPC hardware. Nothing you've suggested is in the least portable to non-x86 hardware, unless you're willing to emulate the x86, which puts us back to where we started with bytecode.
You can buy an Itanium now...it will run 64 bit XP or Linux...oh wait, is that Linux ia64 port done yet???
IIRC (and assuming youve got the module compiled - most distro kernels do), running Java stuff from the kernel is just a "su -c 'insmod binfmt_misc' " away :)
Here's the link to M$'s Shared Source CLI Beta. Yeah, it's beta...bitch about that only after youve examined your linux box and counted the percentage of apps that are 1.0 or greater.
.NET bytecode an executable and Java bytecode not? Six of one and half dozen of the other. Anything you can do with one you can do with the other.
Why is
".NET executables" (AFAIK ECMA 335 compliant executables) are not bytecode - they're machine code (If you don't understand why bytecode is not an executable...should you really be bitching about it?). They do not need a JIT or JVM - they directly call the OS. If I build a Java app on Linux, I have to go and install a JVM on Windows before I can execute it (because M$ went and removed Java...bastards...). Once Mono has ECMA compilers, I can compile an ECMA335 on Linux and then go run it on Windows by simply double clicking it...provided that both of the boxes are, of course, little-endian X86's.
The executables are also very small and very fast - this is important. Most of the computing I do is (floating-point) signal processing, so Java has always been a bad idea anyways. But writing an app that takes advantage of the X86 SSE2 instructions? And running it on any P4 regardless of OS? Schweeeeeet.
I had used Linux and FreeBSD excusively for about two years - I even once posted a (rejected) Ask Slashdot question entitled "Why Windows," arguing that with the multimedia (mplayer) and browser (pick konq/galeon) support available in Linux, that no one needed Windows.
.NET delivers on all the promises that Sun had made of Java. (M$ has beaten them - intsead of "write once, run anywhere," .NET offers "compile once, run anywhere.")
.NET - M$ has actually embraced industry standards. ASP.NET can be accessed from any client provided you have an HTTP connection. That's the only requirement. I sitll support the paranoid people, because there is always the chance that M$ will extend and extinguish what it has embraced, but with them having submitted everything to ECMA, that's really an outside worry.
My viewpoint has changed radically. I have an XP box now - it's actually a pretty stable OS. And
I still use Linux/Apache/MySQL for all of my servers - and with SQL 2000 at $20,000 per processor that won't change anytime soon - but Windows has gotten more stable. Linus once said that he started Linux because he wanted software that didn't stink...win3.1, win95, and win98 all stink, but 2K and XP are actually pretty nice.
I will probably switch back over to an all OSS setup when Miguel et al finish Mono. That's gonna be sweet, too - imagine the day when you can compile an executable (not java bytecode) on a {Windows, Linux} box and then run that executable on a {Linux, Windows} box.
That's the nice thing about
Hrmmm. NO.
Have you used google? They even have a page explaining why their site doesn't have pop-ups (I hadn't realized Yahoo had become such a pop-up pain till I used IE recently - GOD I love Galeon).
The paid search watch has already gone off, with Yahoo offering premium content at a price. You can put your watch back on GMT now.
Google are good people. They recognize that the dot com boot is over, and they are pursuing good, honest, value-based business models. Yes they have patents, but they don't patent silly, no-brainer things like the idea compressing a file before you transmit it. They patent hardcore search algorithms, which they paid a bunch of CS/IT people to develop. You can tell it's not a common-sense patent by the fact that no one has written a mod_google for apache that can rival Google's indexing abilities.
I recall a certain Finnish nerd, who sat around in his bathrobe in his mom's apartment all the way thru college. Apparently with those credentials he managed to write a pretty decent OS...
Thanks for the tip...since you too are running both Gnome and KDE, any tips on how to get them to happily co-exist?
I am a Gnome user, and athough I am NOT a sky is falling person, KDE seems to be making much more usefull strides, I am also concerned about the Ximian fork, (even though I use it) How long till XImian hack up all the libs to work for their effort and how compatible will it be ?
:)
Ximian is still open source. When THAT changes, worry. For now, don't.
Their stuff is pretty compatible, tho to get things like Evolution working you have to have the latest versions of some things (gal, gtkhtml, I think bonobo)...
I have thought about switching to KDE for no other reason than they seem to have a much better, much more focused direction.
I use both Gnome and KDE. The only thing that irritates me about the holy war between them is that one would expect that, given all the hype, someone from one camp would have made that camp compatible with the other camp as a sort of reverse-psychology love-flame. They don't work perfectly together, but I digress.
Gnome seems faster. It also does not have the annoying habit of attaching a blinking app icon to my mouse cursor when an app is doing something that takes a long time...but Gnome apps don't to seem to have the lag that the KDE ones do. KPoker roxxx tho
Does it seem to anyone else latley Gnome is becoming a throw in everything and if the kitchen sink dosent work its OK, or is it just me.
It's just you.
Admittedly Gnome 2 has some nice stuff but how much will be functional by first release ?
The idea of a first release is that the code is stable and fully functional.
Would "PHD Level Computer Scientist" have made things more clear?
Yes, he reimplemented an existing system. Yes, degrees are surely *not* measures of programming skills. Yes, the phrase "PhD level programmer" sounds down right weird. But look at the code - there are plenty of things he (and others) have done to advance the state of the art within this system which they have "merely reimplemented."