(TFA isn't about those 4999; it's about the one that was right.)
If you want to pick one and explain what their error was, that might be interesting, but I think it's going to be less interesting than looking at the guys who were more careful.
In the next story about how Copernicus' model of the solar system being confirmed, are you going to ask "What about the Pope's model?" and talk about that instead? Not saying it's pointless to laugh at the pope or anything, just that you sure are easily distracted.
Everytime you stop your car at a stop sign, you are doing so because someone else told you to stop there, and that stop signs mean "stop"
There are traffic laws which people obey truly out of fear that authority's force will be used against them if they don't submit, but with stop signs you picked a terrible example.
You follow stop sign protocol not because a court will punish you for "disobeying", but because defecting from the shared convention will probably result in a collision.
You obey speed limit signs because someone tells you to. You obey stop signs because someone taught you to.
I don't get the rape comparison. I can see how some people might consider frisking a violation, but a sexual one? You have some strange turn-ons, dude, er, lady, er, my numerically named friend.
But to bring the thread to a more interesting topic, I thought it was W.C. Fields joke. Turns out somebody has tried to figure out who said that though the conclusion isn't satisfying. I can only hope this "Lord Beaverbrook" also had a physical appearance similar to Fields and Churchhill.
Alas, he probably also has a job, something else he needs to do, instead of staying home all day guarding the house. I see where you're going with the idea, though. Instead of using tech to guard his home, you're saying he should use tech to go out and perform his jobs for pay, or go out and enjoy his vacations? That way, he'll be freed from those burdens, so he can walk around his home all day, practicing his quickdraw, muttering about invaders, slowly losing interest in the world outside his walls, his mind fading into madness. And then he'll have the reputation.
I see why people should try to get more fiscally conservative social liberals winning elections, but what are the advantages of using the Democrat party for that? Wouldn't it make more noise and sense, to use a party whose very platform includes those two things?
Not to mention that if the Democrat party were to go libertarian, what party would "hippie liberals" have to vote for? They would then need another party. They're just going to be fighting you, telling people to try to get more fiscally liberal Democrats winning elections. There's still a place for "classic" Democrats and a huge amount of support for them.
Don't try to repurpose Democrats (that's a fight you likely can't win); replace them.
As a rule of thumb, if there are laws relating to something about "counterfeiting" or "unauthorized sharing", you are dealing with a system based around "artificial scarcity".
I don't think that's necessarily so. Some things have real scarcity, such as bushels of wheat or energy. There really is only so much, and its limits are quite natural.
Suppose you and I trade; I'll give you a bushel of wheat in exchange for 100 KiloWatt Hours of energy from your solar generator. So far, this is all on the up'n'up, nothing corrupt or artificially scarce going on, right?
Unfortunately, I do hundreds of trades like this per day, and we don't really have a cable from your generator to my energy-sucking appliances, and you don't really want to eat that unmilled wheat as-is; you were just going to have me drop-ship it at the miller, along with all the other wheat I've bartered. (Yay, I only have to drive my trucks over there once per day/week/month instead of for every trade.)
Tell you what, here's a chit that represents your bushel. Maybe it's a physical coin, or maybe it's some cryptographic blob. You're ok with that, right? Of course you are, because this is actually a good idea which improves both of our efficiencies, reduces transportation overhead, and so on. It's a good thing. There's still no corruption or artificial scarcity happening. And I also know you're on board with the idea because you gave me something similar to represent my shiny new 100 KWH.
We still have to worry about and try to prevent counterfeiting. If I drop off 100 bushels of wheat at the miller and 200 people show up with my chit to collect flour, that's a legitimate problem. Crud, we can't use chits? Let's try to think up ways we can both have chits and not introduce any unwanted side-effects, like counterfeiting or big brother. It's worth the effort, assuming it's possible (and I'm not sure it is).
Because everyone and their mother is invested in Android. If they go with Android, they're just another manufacturer in an already saturated market.
Everyone and their mother is invested in electronic phones. If they sell electronic phones, they're just another manufacturer in an already saturated market. Nokia should sell cans and strings!
Of course you could say that AMD should release their proprietary driver/OpenGL implementation which would be nice indeed but isn't practical on so many levels and certainly not something they promised.
That's actually what they need to do if they want to stay relevant, because their competition has done it.
And by competition, I don't mean nVidia. I mean the truly monstrously huge behemoth, whose claws and fangs are already dripping with so much AMD blood, yet who is dismissed every time graphics hardware comes up, because their hardware is merely low-end integrated crap. You know who I mean.
Low-end integrated "crap" is what 95% of the world needs, and with each passing year that fraction increases a little, as people realize that "crap" keeps getting less and less crappy. That's where the real money is. That's even where AMD's own Llano is! About a month from now, people will see the "crap" bar has moved again, crossing yet more peoples' threshold for what isn't really crap, and God Help AMD a year from now.
"Whaaaaaaaa performance sucks, write the code too"
There's no "Whaa" anymore, because AMD's real competition is writing and releasing the Free code, so instead of crying, people can just buy their amazing hardware. (Amazing, if slightly limited on graphics, and "slightly limited" is itself so subjective!)
You're both right, talking about different times. When GIF appeared, it was uncontroversial and unfought. One more image format vying among its competitors, and a relatively (at the time) sophisticated one.
It wasn't until the LZW patent letter appeared in DDJ that millions of programmers got sudden rude shock, that algorithms could be patented, and that algorithm patents can have serious consequences for interoperativity with file formats; you couldn't read and write GIF files without infringing the patent. Software patents existed, and also mattered in a way that couldn't be ignored.
That was a huge revelation to many, ground-shaking, and it was at that point, that the fighting over patents really began.
You can free the GIL from a C extension module as long as you promise to behave (e.g. don't modify refcounts). As a result, the GIL becomes a relative non-issue in many performance applications, as you're likely going to be most of the performance critical stuff in C on C data.
You're right, of course, but looking at it that way requires that you think of "performance applications" as a special case, and then use the right tool for the job (C) instead of the tool that you want to (Python). As pros or "advanced" enthusiasts that's ok, but it's kind of regrettable that some 12-year-old kid who just wants to write a game with pyglet has to either learn C or stick to one core. I don't wanna tell some budding novice "oh, didn't you know? Your game is a 'performance application' and if I knew you wanted to write a game that might be able to use non-multi-process parallelism, I would have given you a different toolbox instead."
"Kind of regrettable." Ok, I know: Learning is good, we all had to do it, and the 12-year-old probably learns faster than we old farts do now. But let's remember the point of languages like Python is to make things easier and get away from some kinds of details. If you don't value that, you have little reason to use Python in the first place.
Compare this to a situation without a GIL. Switch to Jython, throw hardware at your problems in the form of cores (and the passing years seem like they're throwing plenty of hardware right at us, very cheaply), and you don't have to think about the "right tool for the job" because you're already using a perfectly adequate tool. That's how things should be.
CPython's failing to deliver something that, no, I'm not entitled to or anything, but sure would be sweet. That's a shame, boo hoo.
so abstracted that it doesn't even feel like programming to me, more like connecting together pre-built black boxes. Where's the fun in that?
The fun is in building bigger things out of the boxes. Even working in a lower-level language you get up to some part of your project where you're just making lots of function calls. All that lower-level codeis stuff you built for the purpose of finally getting to work with abstractions.
And the GIL doesn't necessarily keep you from using the parallelism of a multicore processor, because it doesn't actually block other threads -- when they're waiting on I/O.;-)
I love python but I wish they'd do something about the GIL. It's not a total deal-breaker (there are.. usually.. things you can do, and Guido mentions one of them) but it really is a weakness.
Note... he never asked for a driver's license, which yes, I had on me. He just kept repeating 'government ID', but then kept rejecting them when I showed them.
You should have known, though. Think for a second: do you want to get on a plane with someone who might think it's ok to pass a school bus in the center isle? What if a kid suddenly darts out toward the other side of the isle, while that idiot is passing? And don't tell me you've never seen some inattentive moron fiddling with their electronic gadget or reading a book, when they're supposed to have their eyes on the seat-back in front of them.
He's a snitch. Of course he should be persecuted. Worst of all, he snitched one the one person who should have been able to count on his loyalty and discretion: himself.
You need to host your own content, so that you're receiving actual DMCA notices and no one is in a youtube-like position of voluntarily taking things down.
Since apparently Rumblefish contacted you about this particular video, I assume (though I realize this is getting iffy) you've made some sort of contact over there. Tell them about your new host, to make sure they know about it and that you have not changed the soundtrack in any way (so that it'll still be "infringing").
At this point, you win. Either they will abstain from taking action and your publishing continues without any opposition. Or they fight back with DMCA notices. Then you counter-notice and sue them for any expenses.
Right now you can't do that, because you're not owed anything, and it's Youtube voluntarily refusing to host your video, rather than it being any sort of matter concerning laws. No one has yet been harmed by Rumblefish's fraud (except perhaps Youtube themselves, and they don't care), so there's nothing yet to fight about. Even you haven't been harmed or had your speech impacted, because you have only lost one particular middleman, and not forcefully, rather than all middlemen or your speech itself.
It's like if if someone goes to Tomas Paine's printer and says, "Paine's a liar, you shouldn't publish Common Sense," and the printer says, "I don't care if you're right or wrong, but as a courtesy to you, my friend, I will tell Paine to print elsewhere. It's not like he was paying me, anyway." It's ugly and based on a deception, but also all very polite and consensual. Consent goes a long ways.
What's to keep your average marker-sniffing high school student from cracking these open and going to town (and then to the hospital)?
What's to stop someone from drinking a pint of Draino with a few tsp of rat poison dissolved in it, swallowing the "decorative" mercury globule treat which is meant to be left at the bottom of the glass, gouging their eyes out with an un-safety-labeled spoon, and then walking to the nearest NRA convention holding a sign "I want to take your guns, but first let me hold your cold dead hand"?
Slashdot Mirror
(TFA isn't about those 4999; it's about the one that was right.)
If you want to pick one and explain what their error was, that might be interesting, but I think it's going to be less interesting than looking at the guys who were more careful.
In the next story about how Copernicus' model of the solar system being confirmed, are you going to ask "What about the Pope's model?" and talk about that instead? Not saying it's pointless to laugh at the pope or anything, just that you sure are easily distracted.
There are traffic laws which people obey truly out of fear that authority's force will be used against them if they don't submit, but with stop signs you picked a terrible example.
You follow stop sign protocol not because a court will punish you for "disobeying", but because defecting from the shared convention will probably result in a collision.
You obey speed limit signs because someone tells you to. You obey stop signs because someone taught you to.
I don't get the rape comparison. I can see how some people might consider frisking a violation, but a sexual one? You have some strange turn-ons, dude, er, lady, er, my numerically named friend.
But to bring the thread to a more interesting topic, I thought it was W.C. Fields joke. Turns out somebody has tried to figure out who said that though the conclusion isn't satisfying. I can only hope this "Lord Beaverbrook" also had a physical appearance similar to Fields and Churchhill.
Oh, a sarcasmometer, that's a real useful invention!
Alas, he probably also has a job, something else he needs to do, instead of staying home all day guarding the house. I see where you're going with the idea, though. Instead of using tech to guard his home, you're saying he should use tech to go out and perform his jobs for pay, or go out and enjoy his vacations? That way, he'll be freed from those burdens, so he can walk around his home all day, practicing his quickdraw, muttering about invaders, slowly losing interest in the world outside his walls, his mind fading into madness. And then he'll have the reputation.
Oh shit, that means I have to give up alcohol!
I see why people should try to get more fiscally conservative social liberals winning elections, but what are the advantages of using the Democrat party for that? Wouldn't it make more noise and sense, to use a party whose very platform includes those two things?
Not to mention that if the Democrat party were to go libertarian, what party would "hippie liberals" have to vote for? They would then need another party. They're just going to be fighting you, telling people to try to get more fiscally liberal Democrats winning elections. There's still a place for "classic" Democrats and a huge amount of support for them.
Don't try to repurpose Democrats (that's a fight you likely can't win); replace them.
I think that's what he meant; he was just being brief. Encryption prevents sharing caches, which happens to usually be the whole point of caching.
Yes, "stealing" is the only explanation for someone using force (government patent) to deprive the other person of the ability to use the idea.
Some things are independently invented, and all the inventors get to use it, and other people get to copy them.
And some things are stolen, taken away from everyone else. It's not even an accident; the filing for a patent shows intent to take away from others.
I don't think that's necessarily so. Some things have real scarcity, such as bushels of wheat or energy. There really is only so much, and its limits are quite natural.
Suppose you and I trade; I'll give you a bushel of wheat in exchange for 100 KiloWatt Hours of energy from your solar generator. So far, this is all on the up'n'up, nothing corrupt or artificially scarce going on, right?
Unfortunately, I do hundreds of trades like this per day, and we don't really have a cable from your generator to my energy-sucking appliances, and you don't really want to eat that unmilled wheat as-is; you were just going to have me drop-ship it at the miller, along with all the other wheat I've bartered. (Yay, I only have to drive my trucks over there once per day/week/month instead of for every trade.)
Tell you what, here's a chit that represents your bushel. Maybe it's a physical coin, or maybe it's some cryptographic blob. You're ok with that, right? Of course you are, because this is actually a good idea which improves both of our efficiencies, reduces transportation overhead, and so on. It's a good thing. There's still no corruption or artificial scarcity happening. And I also know you're on board with the idea because you gave me something similar to represent my shiny new 100 KWH.
We still have to worry about and try to prevent counterfeiting. If I drop off 100 bushels of wheat at the miller and 200 people show up with my chit to collect flour, that's a legitimate problem. Crud, we can't use chits? Let's try to think up ways we can both have chits and not introduce any unwanted side-effects, like counterfeiting or big brother. It's worth the effort, assuming it's possible (and I'm not sure it is).
Everyone and their mother is invested in electronic phones. If they sell electronic phones, they're just another manufacturer in an already saturated market. Nokia should sell cans and strings!
That's actually what they need to do if they want to stay relevant, because their competition has done it.
And by competition, I don't mean nVidia. I mean the truly monstrously huge behemoth, whose claws and fangs are already dripping with so much AMD blood, yet who is dismissed every time graphics hardware comes up, because their hardware is merely low-end integrated crap. You know who I mean.
Low-end integrated "crap" is what 95% of the world needs, and with each passing year that fraction increases a little, as people realize that "crap" keeps getting less and less crappy. That's where the real money is. That's even where AMD's own Llano is! About a month from now, people will see the "crap" bar has moved again, crossing yet more peoples' threshold for what isn't really crap, and God Help AMD a year from now.
There's no "Whaa" anymore, because AMD's real competition is writing and releasing the Free code, so instead of crying, people can just buy their amazing hardware. (Amazing, if slightly limited on graphics, and "slightly limited" is itself so subjective!)
You're both right, talking about different times. When GIF appeared, it was uncontroversial and unfought. One more image format vying among its competitors, and a relatively (at the time) sophisticated one.
It wasn't until the LZW patent letter appeared in DDJ that millions of programmers got sudden rude shock, that algorithms could be patented, and that algorithm patents can have serious consequences for interoperativity with file formats; you couldn't read and write GIF files without infringing the patent. Software patents existed, and also mattered in a way that couldn't be ignored.
That was a huge revelation to many, ground-shaking, and it was at that point, that the fighting over patents really began.
You're right, of course, but looking at it that way requires that you think of "performance applications" as a special case, and then use the right tool for the job (C) instead of the tool that you want to (Python). As pros or "advanced" enthusiasts that's ok, but it's kind of regrettable that some 12-year-old kid who just wants to write a game with pyglet has to either learn C or stick to one core. I don't wanna tell some budding novice "oh, didn't you know? Your game is a 'performance application' and if I knew you wanted to write a game that might be able to use non-multi-process parallelism, I would have given you a different toolbox instead."
"Kind of regrettable." Ok, I know: Learning is good, we all had to do it, and the 12-year-old probably learns faster than we old farts do now. But let's remember the point of languages like Python is to make things easier and get away from some kinds of details. If you don't value that, you have little reason to use Python in the first place.
Compare this to a situation without a GIL. Switch to Jython, throw hardware at your problems in the form of cores (and the passing years seem like they're throwing plenty of hardware right at us, very cheaply), and you don't have to think about the "right tool for the job" because you're already using a perfectly adequate tool. That's how things should be.
CPython's failing to deliver something that, no, I'm not entitled to or anything, but sure would be sweet. That's a shame, boo hoo.
The fun is in building bigger things out of the boxes. Even working in a lower-level language you get up to some part of your project where you're just making lots of function calls. All that lower-level codeis stuff you built for the purpose of finally getting to work with abstractions.
And the GIL doesn't necessarily keep you from using the parallelism of a multicore processor, because it doesn't actually block other threads -- when they're waiting on I/O. ;-)
I love python but I wish they'd do something about the GIL. It's not a total deal-breaker (there are .. usually .. things you can do, and Guido mentions one of them) but it really is a weakness.
You should have known, though. Think for a second: do you want to get on a plane with someone who might think it's ok to pass a school bus in the center isle? What if a kid suddenly darts out toward the other side of the isle, while that idiot is passing? And don't tell me you've never seen some inattentive moron fiddling with their electronic gadget or reading a book, when they're supposed to have their eyes on the seat-back in front of them.
If they did have side effects, how would you know?
He's a snitch. Of course he should be persecuted. Worst of all, he snitched one the one person who should have been able to count on his loyalty and discretion: himself.
Because it's very likely to be used for different things to solve different problems for different purposes.
It's even more ridiculous than that. Tom's boys say that by overclocking it a little, you might even make it more efficient.
You need to host your own content, so that you're receiving actual DMCA notices and no one is in a youtube-like position of voluntarily taking things down.
Since apparently Rumblefish contacted you about this particular video, I assume (though I realize this is getting iffy) you've made some sort of contact over there. Tell them about your new host, to make sure they know about it and that you have not changed the soundtrack in any way (so that it'll still be "infringing").
At this point, you win. Either they will abstain from taking action and your publishing continues without any opposition. Or they fight back with DMCA notices. Then you counter-notice and sue them for any expenses.
Right now you can't do that, because you're not owed anything, and it's Youtube voluntarily refusing to host your video, rather than it being any sort of matter concerning laws. No one has yet been harmed by Rumblefish's fraud (except perhaps Youtube themselves, and they don't care), so there's nothing yet to fight about. Even you haven't been harmed or had your speech impacted, because you have only lost one particular middleman, and not forcefully, rather than all middlemen or your speech itself.
It's like if if someone goes to Tomas Paine's printer and says, "Paine's a liar, you shouldn't publish Common Sense," and the printer says, "I don't care if you're right or wrong, but as a courtesy to you, my friend, I will tell Paine to print elsewhere. It's not like he was paying me, anyway." It's ugly and based on a deception, but also all very polite and consensual. Consent goes a long ways.
Damn your grandparents' laziness, you could have been drinking 30 year old mead!
What's to stop someone from drinking a pint of Draino with a few tsp of rat poison dissolved in it, swallowing the "decorative" mercury globule treat which is meant to be left at the bottom of the glass, gouging their eyes out with an un-safety-labeled spoon, and then walking to the nearest NRA convention holding a sign "I want to take your guns, but first let me hold your cold dead hand"?
Those are magic words; be thankful. I'd love to hear stupid commands replaced with that.