According to his family and many associates, he probably died accidentally rather than committed suicide anyway. So it may have been completely irrelevent to his future productivity.
Doesn't mean the guy deserved any of it, but still, no sense in going off ad infinitum.
Re:Something in the HoL statement makes sense:
on
No Pardon For Turing
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· Score: 1
Notice that the US government never actually bothered to give the land back...
No, but it IS the best thing that can come for an apology to the family of Alan Turing.
I figured that the state-level apology was the best apology...
Without the pardon, there will always be a piece of paper sitting in government offices, pronouncing their relative to be a "sexual pervert." Clearly, that is unacceptable. This is the reason that posthumous pardons have been granted to many other individuals, prominent or not, over the years.
Using your logic, with the pardon there will no longer be a piece of paper sitting in government offices, saying, "Hey, remember when this wonderful man was found guilty of an unjust law? Let's not do that again, mmmkay?" He broke the law, as it was written. This is a fact. That law was terrible. That's an opinion, but happens to be mine and that of a large number of other people. Pretending that the crime didn't exist is a horrible way to honor his legacy.
I believe every single one of Firefox 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 had changes to web standards support... That's one of the reasons the version numbers are what they are.
Major changes that call into serious question their interoperability with applications built targetting the previous versions? I'm surprised, and not sure if I'm impressed or concerned. But that's good to know.
So what qualifies as a "major change" in your book? A rewritten JS JIT apparently does not. Significant additions to web standards support apparently do not. Rearchitecture of various parts of the browser to reduce memory usage don't.
Do you only consider random user-interface changes "major"?
Completely internal changes like reducing memory use? No, not so much. Changing the JIT? Hmm... maybe, since it would possibly trigger an external testing cycle. Changing web standards support? Yep, because that actually changes the way that the system behaves (as opposed to the way it performs) and installing it may well break existing usage patterns.
Of course they could have kept to exactly the same release schedule without completely changing the definition of "major version number" to the point that they now have no way of telling people when a real, serious, actually major change is happening.
Is "adopted" the right word here? It's funny how some people consider that same "influence" to be stealing.
Of course, the fact that Apple did, indeed, pay Xerox for those ideas, makes it hard for most people to see it as stealing. They got an amazingly good deal because Xerox didn't value what they'd developed. Again, not stealing.
apple has never released a brand new unique product that no one ever has
And, of course, neither has Google. They took existing ideas that were rapidly becoming seen as vital and did them in a more cohesive, higher quality way then their competitors.
The type of scenario that could lead to production equivalent to the usa in WWII would happen only after a very long, and very bloody conflict. It's my opinion we won't be seeing another of those soon, for many reasons I'll leave for others to ponder.
Yup. I'd be willing to bet that the Germans felt the same way in 1935 as well.
Oh? And just how many other possible-but-remarkably-improbable ways are there for something to screw up an airplane? Adding sensors for all of them just doesn't make sense. Then if you wanted to rely on it you'd need another sensor network to monitor the initial sensors for accurate operation...
Sometimes it really is too hard to make something foolproof. It just is.
A halfway-decent motor and controller will run you $3K all by themselves. Here's one breakdown estimate that I randomly pulled up that's basically in line with the other ones I'd worked out when I was considering doing so: http://www.evmiata.com/estimates.html . I am curious - how does that $3K break down, and what would it get you (range/performance/etc)?
Obviously. However with him prattling on about battery range, I'm pointing out the obvious. The average person does indeed drive more than 300mi regularly. Hell most people I know commute more than 700km/week.
Which is ~435 miles / week, or 85 miles a day (which is long in the places where most people live (not in "most of the country" by volume)), which is totally and utterly reasonable in a car that starts off every single day with 160 miles of range.
There are tons of those companies. The trouble is that when you add in all the actual costs (not assuming that you get a great deal on a wrecked EV to start with (which doesn't scale)) and if you want to end up with a "normal"-driving highway-capable vehicle with a reasonable (~75 mile) daily range, it costs more like $10-12K just to get in the game.
The problem with that statement is that it is an average. Probably close to zero Americans actually drive 40 miles per day. The point is this: Only rich people can afford a $60,000 car that is worthless other than for everyday commuting along with a second vehicle for longer trips where stopping for several hours after every 2 hours of driving is impractical. The average American may drive 40 miles per day, but the average American probably does make a one-way driving trip of over 160 miles at least a couple times a year (twice per major traveling holiday).
The average American, in your case, can rent a car twice a year. In fact, they frequently do so after getting in an airplane and travelling many miles. Plenty of people never drive their personal car over 250 miles (the larger range offered) in a single day... ever.
Yeah, but the one killer feature that you've added to your version is not in the upstream version that others can get.
And if enough people value free software over the "killer feature", it won't matter or it will get re-implemented. And if they don't, well then, it seems a little unreasonable to attempt to "legislate" things otherwise. After all, if that one feature is more valuable to the masses then a properly open and supported piece of software, then either the original wasn't very good, or someone would simply engineer the new feature in a new package anyway.
I'm a fan of free software. I'm also a fan of the BSD/Apache licenses. Freedom includes the freedom to take the consequences.
So... if I write some software... and release it under a non-GPL license... and someone else uses it... you claim that they can prevent me from giving it away to anyone else?
No, that's not the claim. The claim is that if you write some software, and release it under a GPL license, and somebody else makes an improved version of it, they can't refuse to make source to the improved version available and can't prohibit those who have received the source or binary of the improved version from giving it away to others.
Totally agree with that. But what the GPP actually said was: "The GPL... restricts you from taking private the hard work of the original authors." My point was that it does no such thing - the original authors (or current copywrite holders) are always allowed to keep their work public if they so desire. The GPL restricts you from taking private your work, in that if you wish to redistribute it at all you have to include your full source. A BSD license allows you to keep your modified source private, but gives you no power to make the unmodified code private.
Yup; and its exactly this kind of issue that has corporate lawyers looking at it and saying, "Nah, we'd probably be fine, but just buying that COTS package is only $22k which is cheaper than our costs to investigate it, plus auditing for years, plus potential liability."
You post is FUD of the worst sort. The GPL in no way restricts freedom to profit from GPL code, it only restricts you from taking private the hard work of the original authors.
So... if I write some software... and release it under a non-GPL license... and someone else uses it... you claim that they can prevent me from giving it away to anyone else?
And even that is not wholly correct. Perhaps this works best:
I can profit while using GPL software. I simply cannot close the source code as a means of forcing my customers into a dependency on me. Which is why the GPL was created in the first place.
You can't do that with BSD software either, since you can't close the source at all. You can fail to share the source, naturally - but anyone who wants it can go and get it from the same place you got it from. You, as an individual (or company) get to decide what license your code is released in, or even if its released at all - which is the same freedom that the original author of the BSD package you're using had.
More likely scenario: if I put a key into the car's ignition and before it started it gave me a 30 second ad by the car manufacturer, I would fucking sue their asses to hell for wasting my time (imagine if you have to get out of some situation rather quickly, you start your car, and instead of taking you out of there, it started an ad for 30 second, giving enough time for the angry mob to catch up - you are dead.)
More likely scenario?
Anyway, now imagine that most people are not chased by hordes of ravening zombies during their lives. Now imagine that in exchange for that 30 second ad-delay, you got to drive a new car all the time for free. Still suing?
That's something that Apple has figured out that others are still struggling with.
There are tons of people who will happily spend $500+ on a toy once or twice a year. They're very happy with their iPads. There are lots of people who won't spend $200 on a toy. They're not tablet customers at the moment. The number of people who have rational expectations, will spend $200 on a toy known to be more limited than the $500 toy, but who won't spend $500 on the iPad is... small.
Come on, Soulskill and esocid. Its Cory, not Corey. 10 out of 10 for attempting attribution, but couldn't you at least cut-and-paste the name correctly?
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According to his family and many associates, he probably died accidentally rather than committed suicide anyway. So it may have been completely irrelevent to his future productivity.
Doesn't mean the guy deserved any of it, but still, no sense in going off ad infinitum.
Notice that the US government never actually bothered to give the land back...
No, but it IS the best thing that can come for an apology to the family of Alan Turing.
I figured that the state-level apology was the best apology...
Without the pardon, there will always be a piece of paper sitting in government offices, pronouncing their relative to be a "sexual pervert." Clearly, that is unacceptable. This is the reason that posthumous pardons have been granted to many other individuals, prominent or not, over the years.
Using your logic, with the pardon there will no longer be a piece of paper sitting in government offices, saying, "Hey, remember when this wonderful man was found guilty of an unjust law? Let's not do that again, mmmkay?" He broke the law, as it was written. This is a fact. That law was terrible. That's an opinion, but happens to be mine and that of a large number of other people. Pretending that the crime didn't exist is a horrible way to honor his legacy.
I believe every single one of Firefox 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 had changes to web standards support... That's one of the reasons the version numbers are what they are.
Major changes that call into serious question their interoperability with applications built targetting the previous versions? I'm surprised, and not sure if I'm impressed or concerned. But that's good to know.
So what qualifies as a "major change" in your book? A rewritten JS JIT apparently does not. Significant additions to web standards support apparently do not. Rearchitecture of various parts of the browser to reduce memory usage don't.
Do you only consider random user-interface changes "major"?
Completely internal changes like reducing memory use? No, not so much. Changing the JIT? Hmm... maybe, since it would possibly trigger an external testing cycle. Changing web standards support? Yep, because that actually changes the way that the system behaves (as opposed to the way it performs) and installing it may well break existing usage patterns.
I actually thought this was a joke before reading the follow-on commentary.
That's a problem.
Of course they could have kept to exactly the same release schedule without completely changing the definition of "major version number" to the point that they now have no way of telling people when a real, serious, actually major change is happening.
Is "adopted" the right word here? It's funny how some people consider that same "influence" to be stealing.
Of course, the fact that Apple did, indeed, pay Xerox for those ideas, makes it hard for most people to see it as stealing. They got an amazingly good deal because Xerox didn't value what they'd developed. Again, not stealing.
apple has never released a brand new unique product that no one ever has
And, of course, neither has Google. They took existing ideas that were rapidly becoming seen as vital and did them in a more cohesive, higher quality way then their competitors.
Just like Apple did.
The type of scenario that could lead to production equivalent to the usa in WWII would happen only after a very long, and very bloody conflict. It's my opinion we won't be seeing another of those soon, for many reasons I'll leave for others to ponder.
Yup. I'd be willing to bet that the Germans felt the same way in 1935 as well.
Oh? And just how many other possible-but-remarkably-improbable ways are there for something to screw up an airplane? Adding sensors for all of them just doesn't make sense. Then if you wanted to rely on it you'd need another sensor network to monitor the initial sensors for accurate operation...
Sometimes it really is too hard to make something foolproof. It just is.
A halfway-decent motor and controller will run you $3K all by themselves. Here's one breakdown estimate that I randomly pulled up that's basically in line with the other ones I'd worked out when I was considering doing so: http://www.evmiata.com/estimates.html . I am curious - how does that $3K break down, and what would it get you (range/performance/etc)?
Obviously. However with him prattling on about battery range, I'm pointing out the obvious. The average person does indeed drive more than 300mi regularly. Hell most people I know commute more than 700km/week.
Which is ~435 miles / week, or 85 miles a day (which is long in the places where most people live (not in "most of the country" by volume)), which is totally and utterly reasonable in a car that starts off every single day with 160 miles of range.
There are tons of those companies. The trouble is that when you add in all the actual costs (not assuming that you get a great deal on a wrecked EV to start with (which doesn't scale)) and if you want to end up with a "normal"-driving highway-capable vehicle with a reasonable (~75 mile) daily range, it costs more like $10-12K just to get in the game.
The problem with that statement is that it is an average. Probably close to zero Americans actually drive 40 miles per day. The point is this: Only rich people can afford a $60,000 car that is worthless other than for everyday commuting along with a second vehicle for longer trips where stopping for several hours after every 2 hours of driving is impractical. The average American may drive 40 miles per day, but the average American probably does make a one-way driving trip of over 160 miles at least a couple times a year (twice per major traveling holiday).
The average American, in your case, can rent a car twice a year. In fact, they frequently do so after getting in an airplane and travelling many miles. Plenty of people never drive their personal car over 250 miles (the larger range offered) in a single day ... ever.
Yeah, but the one killer feature that you've added to your version is not in the upstream version that others can get.
And if enough people value free software over the "killer feature", it won't matter or it will get re-implemented. And if they don't, well then, it seems a little unreasonable to attempt to "legislate" things otherwise. After all, if that one feature is more valuable to the masses then a properly open and supported piece of software, then either the original wasn't very good, or someone would simply engineer the new feature in a new package anyway.
I'm a fan of free software. I'm also a fan of the BSD/Apache licenses. Freedom includes the freedom to take the consequences.
So... if I write some software... and release it under a non-GPL license... and someone else uses it... you claim that they can prevent me from giving it away to anyone else?
No, that's not the claim. The claim is that if you write some software, and release it under a GPL license, and somebody else makes an improved version of it, they can't refuse to make source to the improved version available and can't prohibit those who have received the source or binary of the improved version from giving it away to others.
Totally agree with that. But what the GPP actually said was: "The GPL... restricts you from taking private the hard work of the original authors." My point was that it does no such thing - the original authors (or current copywrite holders) are always allowed to keep their work public if they so desire. The GPL restricts you from taking private your work, in that if you wish to redistribute it at all you have to include your full source. A BSD license allows you to keep your modified source private, but gives you no power to make the unmodified code private.
Yup; and its exactly this kind of issue that has corporate lawyers looking at it and saying, "Nah, we'd probably be fine, but just buying that COTS package is only $22k which is cheaper than our costs to investigate it, plus auditing for years, plus potential liability."
You post is FUD of the worst sort. The GPL in no way restricts freedom to profit from GPL code, it only restricts you from taking private the hard work of the original authors.
So... if I write some software... and release it under a non-GPL license... and someone else uses it... you claim that they can prevent me from giving it away to anyone else?
And you're calling the GPP FUD?
And even that is not wholly correct. Perhaps this works best:
I can profit while using GPL software. I simply cannot close the source code as a means of forcing my customers into a dependency on me. Which is why the GPL was created in the first place.
You can't do that with BSD software either, since you can't close the source at all. You can fail to share the source, naturally - but anyone who wants it can go and get it from the same place you got it from. You, as an individual (or company) get to decide what license your code is released in, or even if its released at all - which is the same freedom that the original author of the BSD package you're using had.
Fantastic Idea, important fields become mandatory ...
That's a great way of going from somewhat incompete bug reports to no bug reports whatsoever.
More likely scenario: if I put a key into the car's ignition and before it started it gave me a 30 second ad by the car manufacturer, I would fucking sue their asses to hell for wasting my time (imagine if you have to get out of some situation rather quickly, you start your car, and instead of taking you out of there, it started an ad for 30 second, giving enough time for the angry mob to catch up - you are dead.)
More likely scenario?
Anyway, now imagine that most people are not chased by hordes of ravening zombies during their lives. Now imagine that in exchange for that 30 second ad-delay, you got to drive a new car all the time for free. Still suing?
That's something that Apple has figured out that others are still struggling with.
There are tons of people who will happily spend $500+ on a toy once or twice a year. They're very happy with their iPads. There are lots of people who won't spend $200 on a toy. They're not tablet customers at the moment. The number of people who have rational expectations, will spend $200 on a toy known to be more limited than the $500 toy, but who won't spend $500 on the iPad is... small.
Yup. Which you can also easily do in Plain Old Text mode. C'mon, at least give it a try before being snarky.
Come on, Soulskill and esocid. Its Cory, not Corey. 10 out of 10 for attempting attribution, but couldn't you at least cut-and-paste the name correctly?