switch/case is implemented via goto - which means that it can be expanded to use if/else's with goto's.
It doesn't work the other way around! You cannot implement goto's using switch/cases.
Using switch/case is NOT using goto's. It is like claiming that using C or Python is using ASM in a controlled fashion, its not.
You cannot use switch/case's to implement goto's and so the statement "Imagine if all the programming done with goto's was instead done with switch/case blocks. It would be just as bad" is just silly.
and realize that charging for software is not a sin..
Charging for software is fine. Limiting the freedom of users to do that via copyright (which is what you meant) is a sin.
It is an abuse of the copyright system that shouldn't exist in the digital age in the first place. It is placing restrictions on the freedom and sharing of information of every human in society, in order to promote the creation of the software - which would get created anyhow.
Why I have no problem with the incentive or payment. If you want me to write software for you, sure you can pay me and give me an incentive.
However, after getting paid for writing the software, I will not place restrictions on actions of the rest of humanity with that piece of software.
Incentives are fine, paying for programming is fine. Placing restrictions on humanity to increase incentive is insane. Evidently, the vast majority's needs are already addressed by existing Free Software - no copyright-incentive required.
So your attempt to make Free Software look absurd is just silly - as all the software you need probably already exists as Free Software. If you're an non-typical user, then perhaps a bit is missing, but hardly anything that won't be written some time soon.
I have little problem with capitalism, and attempting to link copyright (a set of restrictions) with capitalism (free market) is just a sign of ignorant propaganda rather than rational thinking about copyright. A free market can exist just fine without those restrictions.
In a time where millions and millions of people are exposed to the process of software making, why do we need to "provide an incentive" to create software? If one of these millions is only willing to create such software if guaranteed a copyright, then someone else would be willing to create it for the fame or love of programming - and probably do a better job.
Do we really want a society in which it is illegal to share and copy information, where people go to prison for giving software copies to their friends? Where it is illegal to learn from and understand the information we are exposed to, and share it with others?
Is the dubiously-required incentive worth all this?
I think it is clearly outragous - and the more arrests like this one, where obviously no life is at stake, nor is there a threat on the continuation of the creation of software will ultimately turn public oppinion against copyright.
Its nice to see that copyright is starting to get enforced.
You may be surprised that I find the idea of copyright in the digital age outrageous. My prediction though, is that as soon as copyright is actually enforced, society will shun it and abolish it.
The only reason Copyright is enjoying some public acceptance these days is because people don't believe it applies to them in practice. In fact, most of the copyright-defenders in Slashdot probably copy many of their software/music illegally with all sorts of self-justifying excuses - not seeing that everyone does this, because copyright is simply wrong.
coLinux is already faster in practice. vmWare has to emulate a general-purpose machine, while coLinux only tweaks the Linux kernel to context switch into Windows whenever it needs hardware serviced or to perform Windows-related operations.
The devel mailing list on the Source Forge works...
I downloaded CoLinux vanilla quite a while ago and it worked out of the box with just trivial setup of the colinux config.xml...
The comment about X is silly, because CoLinux supports networking, so you can run X clients - you don't really need an X server inside CoLinux.
The comment about the RAM is out of date, because you can use more RAM now.
The comment about documentation may be somewhat true (I didn't look), but this is a rather recent Free software project, so unless you're willing to contribute, don't expect anyone to care:-)
Dan actually wrote pretty much the entire CoLinux kernel patch, as well as all of the virtual drivers and the host OS code. I discussed the core design with him prior to his writing of it.
The contributors wrote things like the installer, some icons and some other less intricate things.
Since you have to indent in whatever language/editor you use, you're limited to using a "decent editor" anyways.
The fact whitespace is insignificant to the compiler does not mean it is not significant - as absolutely all worthy programmers indent these days. So no, significant whitespace does not limit your choice of an editor.
Typing curly braces, or typing spaces/backspaces is very similar in the amount of keypresses, but again - less noise results when only whitespace is required.
The "whitespace gets messed up" claim is just silly. If you use an editor that messes up random parts of your code, stop using it.
When copying and pasting code (Huh? I hope you mean cut and paste code, as copy/paste of code suggests *very* poor programming) you really do have to "re-indent" it (whether indentation is significant to the compiler or just to fellow human readers). If your editor supports "auto-indent" that reindents it when you use curly braces, then it also supports indenting or unindenting your code as required - so that is a null claim as well.
Use significant whitespace for less noise, less typing and no mismatch between the human and the compiler reader.
You're making the assumption that with meaningful whitespace you have to "format" the whitespace in your code, which is not true. In a decent editor, both methods take the same amount of keypresses (slightly less with whitespace formatting, actually) to do the same job, but with less syntax noise on the whitespace formatting side.
if a:[enter indents here]
a = 1
b = 2
[backspace unindents here]
That's ":" and "backspace".
if(a) {[enter indents here]
}[unindents here]
With Python, you do the same with less typing, and end up with less curly noise.
If you use spaces after tabs (mix tabs/spaces), Python will tell you this and raise an error. Then you can easily convert this to all-tabs or all-spaces.
It could not create a problem, as it raises a SyntaxError to mix the use of tabs and spaces.
I refuse to believe that those who think indentation-based syntax is a huge flaw don't indent anyways, in which case they're wasting their time explaining to the compiler where their indentation starts and ends with curly braces. That waste of time is the flaw, although far from a huge one.
Except for some extreme cases (cell phones, embedded hardware, etc) where Python won't do, why would you want to use Java where Python applies?
Python is a far more productive language than Java, even if it executes slower. For the small parts of code where execution performance is an issue, you can use Pyrex or C or hell, even Java. But why use Java for the larger part of the program? Also note the Python VM is smaller, lighter and starts up more quickly.
Even in terms of portability/compatibility, it seems that Python is better on many platforms (Windows, GNU, and a few more).
Windows will interpret such as: "Cannot find MBR" (It has a magic signature at the end), or if it contains the signature, it will still fail to find an active partition to boot from because the active bit needs to be on and the partition type needs to be correct.
Except all that, Windows/others only write to the disk in much later stages, when its pretty sure partitions/etc aren't just random blobs of data...
Slashdot Mirror
switch/case is implemented via goto - which means that it can be expanded to use if/else's with goto's.
It doesn't work the other way around! You cannot implement goto's using switch/cases.
Using switch/case is NOT using goto's. It is like claiming that using C or Python is using ASM in a controlled fashion, its not.
You cannot use switch/case's to implement goto's and so the statement "Imagine if all the programming done with goto's was instead done with switch/case blocks. It would be just as bad" is just silly.
and realize that charging for software is not a sin..
Charging for software is fine. Limiting the freedom of users to do that via copyright (which is what you meant) is a sin.
It is an abuse of the copyright system that shouldn't exist in the digital age in the first place. It is placing restrictions on the freedom and sharing of information of every human in society, in order to promote the creation of the software - which would get created anyhow.
switch/case control blocks are implemented via goto, they are not "a version of goto" and do not have the disadvantages of using goto.
Do computers think?
:)
Do submarines swim?
Silly questions, yet people spend hours debating them
Huh? If you could calculate that, there would be little point / profit in holding slot machines, wouldn't there?
Why I have no problem with the incentive or payment. If you want me to write software for you, sure you can pay me and give me an incentive.
However, after getting paid for writing the software, I will not place restrictions on actions of the rest of humanity with that piece of software.
Incentives are fine, paying for programming is fine. Placing restrictions on humanity to increase incentive is insane. Evidently, the vast majority's needs are already addressed by existing Free Software - no copyright-incentive required.
So your attempt to make Free Software look absurd is just silly - as all the software you need probably already exists as Free Software. If you're an non-typical user, then perhaps a bit is missing, but hardly anything that won't be written some time soon.
I have little problem with capitalism, and attempting to link copyright (a set of restrictions) with capitalism (free market) is just a sign of ignorant propaganda rather than rational thinking about copyright. A free market can exist just fine without those restrictions.
In a time where millions and millions of people are exposed to the process of software making, why do we need to "provide an incentive" to create software? If one of these millions is only willing to create such software if guaranteed a copyright, then someone else would be willing to create it for the fame or love of programming - and probably do a better job.
Do we really want a society in which it is illegal to share and copy information, where people go to prison for giving software copies to their friends? Where it is illegal to learn from and understand the information we are exposed to, and share it with others?
Is the dubiously-required incentive worth all this?
I think it is clearly outragous - and the more arrests like this one, where obviously no life is at stake, nor is there a threat on the continuation of the creation of software will ultimately turn public oppinion against copyright.
From my experience, good software companies do not think their value lies in their IP. Good software companies think their value lies in their people.
Sure, patents protect the little man.
When the huge company uses his idea he can hire a band of lawyers to fight it out in court. But in that case, he's not so little.
Ofcourse, because the value of a software firm these days, is exactly the cost of all of its customers switching to alternate solutions.
They are trying to increase that cost.
Its nice to see that copyright is starting to get enforced.
You may be surprised that I find the idea of copyright in the digital age outrageous.
My prediction though, is that as soon as copyright is actually enforced, society will shun it and abolish it.
The only reason Copyright is enjoying some public acceptance these days is because people don't believe it applies to them in practice. In fact, most of the copyright-defenders in Slashdot probably copy many of their software/music illegally with all sorts of self-justifying excuses - not seeing that everyone does this, because copyright is simply wrong.
So if the general theory of relativity is correct or not does not really matter to the results of this experiment :)
That sounds like a fallacy.
If the response rate drops, the value of sending spam drops and thus the incentive drops.
Why wouldn't they already send more, with a high response rate? It is even more rewarding.
coLinux is already faster in practice. vmWare has to emulate a general-purpose machine, while coLinux only tweaks the Linux kernel to context switch into Windows whenever it needs hardware serviced or to perform Windows-related operations.
No, you run CoLinux via a driver inside Windows NT. No need to reboot or install any meta-os.
The devel mailing list on the Source Forge works...
:-)
I downloaded CoLinux vanilla quite a while ago and it worked out of the box with just trivial setup of the colinux config.xml...
The comment about X is silly, because CoLinux supports networking, so you can run X clients - you don't really need an X server inside CoLinux.
The comment about the RAM is out of date, because you can use more RAM now.
The comment about documentation may be somewhat true (I didn't look), but this is a rather recent Free software project, so unless you're willing to contribute, don't expect anyone to care
It can run any distribution since it allows running the Linux kernel on Windows. You can use root images of many distributions.
Dan actually wrote pretty much the entire CoLinux kernel patch, as well as all of the virtual drivers and the host OS code. I discussed the core design with him prior to his writing of it.
The contributors wrote things like the installer, some icons and some other less intricate things.
Since you have to indent in whatever language/editor you use, you're limited to using a "decent editor" anyways.
The fact whitespace is insignificant to the compiler does not mean it is not significant - as absolutely all worthy programmers indent these days. So no, significant whitespace does not limit your choice of an editor.
Typing curly braces, or typing spaces/backspaces is very similar in the amount of keypresses, but again - less noise results when only whitespace is required.
The "whitespace gets messed up" claim is just silly. If you use an editor that messes up random parts of your code, stop using it.
When copying and pasting code (Huh? I hope you mean cut and paste code, as copy/paste of code suggests *very* poor programming) you really do have to "re-indent" it (whether indentation is significant to the compiler or just to fellow human readers). If your editor supports "auto-indent" that reindents it when you use curly braces, then it also supports indenting or unindenting your code as required - so that is a null claim as well.
Use significant whitespace for less noise, less typing and no mismatch between the human and the compiler reader.
The real benefit is that the code does what it seems to do whereas curly-braced code may not:
for(i=0; i100; ++i) {
if(blah)
do_something;
do_something_else;
}
You're making the assumption that with meaningful whitespace you have to "format" the whitespace in your code, which is not true. In a decent editor, both methods take the same amount of keypresses (slightly less with whitespace formatting, actually) to do the same job, but with less syntax noise on the whitespace formatting side.
if a:[enter indents here]
a = 1
b = 2
[backspace unindents here]
That's ":" and "backspace".
if(a) {[enter indents here]
}[unindents here]
With Python, you do the same with less typing, and end up with less curly noise.
Read about the "-t" option (and "-t -t" option) to the interpreter.
If you use spaces after tabs (mix tabs/spaces), Python will tell you this and raise an error. Then you can easily convert this to all-tabs or all-spaces.
I don't really see the problem here.
It could not create a problem, as it raises a SyntaxError to mix the use of tabs and spaces.
I refuse to believe that those who think indentation-based syntax is a huge flaw don't indent anyways, in which case they're wasting their time explaining to the compiler where their indentation starts and ends with curly braces. That waste of time is the flaw, although far from a huge one.
Except for some extreme cases (cell phones, embedded hardware, etc) where Python won't do, why would you want to use Java where Python applies?
Python is a far more productive language than Java, even if it executes slower. For the small parts of code where execution performance is an issue, you can use Pyrex or C or hell, even Java. But why use Java for the larger part of the program?
Also note the Python VM is smaller, lighter and starts up more quickly.
Even in terms of portability/compatibility, it seems that Python is better on many platforms (Windows, GNU, and a few more).
Windows will interpret such as: "Cannot find MBR" (It has a magic signature at the end), or if it contains the signature, it will still fail to find an active partition to boot from because the active bit needs to be on and the partition type needs to be correct.
Except all that, Windows/others only write to the disk in much later stages, when its pretty sure partitions/etc aren't just random blobs of data...