Office's license can't spread, since you can't distribute a derivative work from office. GPL allows that, but says that the derivative work must be GPL. Thus, the GPL spreads...
No, I think you are putting words into MS's mouth. Microsoft isn't complaining about not being able to use GPLed code.
First, I think some people actually do wake up and say... For example, the NSA with the secure Linux distro. They realized that they couldn't use it the way they wanted due to the GPL. So in effect, they perhaps are proof that some people don't understand the GPL and perhaps need to understand it better before making decisions. This is probably especially true of management. And this is what MS is trying to do. Obviously, they will explain the GPL from their perspective, but in some cases this might be closer to the perspective of the manager in charge.
Microsoft is saying: "Yes, GPL or use GPL if you like, but there are consequences you may not like."
Microsoft is saying: "Warning -- if you use GPLed product B, you will have to release the source to your derivative work before distributing it."
Microsoft is saying: "Government should be aware that if they GPL the result of their research, the commercial companies are going to have a hard time with it."
Microsoft is not saying: "We want to be able to steal all GPLed code."
Yes, it is wonderful that in China, the powerful can control the speech of others. And if we were to force the powerful to stop gagging the others, we would have taken away this wonderful gift of gag.
How do they prevent other people from profiting from it? The code they "steal" in this hypothetical situation is still there, and you are still welcome to profit from it if you can.
This isn't subsidizing proprietary software. This is subsidizing any software org that makes use of the contribution. If Microsoft manages to make the dominant tool, so be it. That would be because they added some value to it that made it more usable than the tool of anyone else.
I'm a bit puzzled about how you obtained this far-reaching birthright. It sounds to me more like something you would like to have. Not everything you would like to have is a birthright.
The taxpayers paid for it, precisely why should a business be allowed to profit from it without paying royalties back in one form or another?
Well, it sounds like in this case those using it under the GPL had better pay royalties, too.
What MS is asking is to be allowed to reap the profits while letting the taxpayers foot the bill.
What MS is asking is that ANYBODY, themselves included, be allowed to reap the profits. <OR> put another way, it sounds like YOU want to reap the benefits and let the taxpayers foot the bill, but prevent Microsoft from being able to do so. (And if you are thinking about responding that "the code will now be closed source," you need to think again: only Microsoft's product will be closed source; the research is STILL open.)
What agency? Microsoft is trying to remind the govt. that if you take a starting point that is under the GPL and apply research to it, the resulting work is under the GPL. It then becomes tricky to separate it back out. I thought people around here actually knew what the GPL was and how it worked! They talk about it all the time. And assuming it is possible, why should one group have to go negotiate a new license while other groups don't? Is the non-free-software community that much less deserving?
The argument of the last paragraph (using property) again neglects the fact that the "property" is not diminished or taken away when Microsoft or any other company puts it into their product. It is a public good now. The original is still available. Microsoft paid for any modifications/enhancements without taking the original away.
Different entities have different business models, with different needs.
Individual: Make some software, let it spread. Don't steal it from me -- obey the GPL/BSD/MIT/etc. license. (GPL is appropriate.)
Free software created by a company: My company needs to profit from this somehow. Support? Docs? Just so long as nobody else can get an unfair advantage on us, we're ok. We can take IP under GPL, since we're releasing under GPL anyway. (GPL is appropriate -- prevents others from providing significantly better support than the original authors, so the original author can still justify the investment.)
Non-free software company: We depend on software sales for our profit, so we can't give OUR IP away to others. When we get IP from others, we have to make sure we have free and clear usage of it. When we share IP with others, we have to make sure that they agree to what they can and can't do with it. My company can't risk tainting the code we write with anything that will open us up to lawsuits.
All of these business models are perfectly ethical and reasonable. Some software is so challenging to write that decent versions of it would NEVER appear without the more direct profitability of the non-free software company. Other software is less immediately profitable, so it would never appear without the individual who only cares for recognition, if even that much. Some software provides non-sales opportunities for profit (or break-even, which is ok if the company paying for the software also needs the software), opening up a window for the free software market. But why should one of them be singled out as not being allowed to use the IP that the other two can use, if all 3 paid through tax dollars?
As far as the GPL applying to government sponsored research -- Microsoft wants to be able to use this research just like anybody else. What if TCP/IP (research results, not code) had been released under GPL? The free OSes could use it no problem, but no commercial OS would be able to use it, and there would likely be no TCP/IP in general use today. And even when just TCP/IP code is released under GPL, then the software companies have to clean-room re-engineering of it. This is especially stupid if a great deal of the effort was figuring out how to make the code work in the first place.
And how do you negotiate a suitable license when something is GPLed? You find any entity that had anything to do with that code and negotiate a separate license with that entity. If it is just the government, and you can do it, then why didn't the government just release it under BSD license to begin with? But otherwise, you CAN'T DO IT! The derivative work, with the new research added is pretty hard to split from the earlier existing work. (You may need to review the GPL if you don't get this -- the point of the GPL is to make it so that derivative works CAN'T be relicensed, yet you say that MS should just get the IP relicensed... Anybody else see the problem here?)
So Microsoft is claiming with these slides that if everybody (free-software proponents and non-proponents) paid equally through taxes for IP (which is debatable, since MS puts a lot more into the Tax system than any other software company), why should they get the shaft?
No, I'm responding to the comment you made about Windows crashing (though in doing so I'm also taking out my frustrations from other comments). "Windows always requiring a reboot" was an issue that you brought up and the issue to which I responded.
I don't think I'm missing your point, but I'm saying that your point is very pointless. What you say sounds to me like somebody saying "Boy, that Nissan Sentra really sucks rocks trying to compete offroad against the Hummer and the Land Rover Defender." You go to any Nissan enthusiast and say something like that, they're going to either think you are crazy or leave you with an immaculate timepiece.
[I suppose this is flamebait, but I'm not in a very good mood, so you'll have to forgive me for not pulling my punches and couching my statements in more forgiving language.]
Anybody who compares Windows 95 or Windows 98 to Mac OS X and Linux and complains about the reliability/stability of 95/98 is up a tree. And anybody who accepts those comparisons is equally deluded. Every OS has problems that can and cannot be dealt with, because every OS design has compromises. Windows 95 and Windows 98 were designed with certain compatibility and performance compromises that made it impossible to provide complete inter-process stability. Guess what -- so was Mac OS v (where v is any number smaller than 10). Linux and Mac OS X do not make the same compromises. Guess what -- neither do Windows NT/2k/XP.
I would like to see you solve the same problem that you "can cope with on Linux" (and in the previous post on Mac OS X) on Mac OS 9. Can't do it? Then leave Mac OS X out of your comments about Windows 98, since they aren't in the same generation. And I would leave Linux out, too, since it really comes in a separate category.
Ok, next you mention something that confuses me a bit. Windows is designed for people... Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I can't tell, but since you seem to say that Linux needs to get to this point someday, I guess it is a good thing. So Windows is already there, and therefore better? And you had to work hard to get Linux to work with Novell and MS networks -- this makes Linux better, when Windows works with them more readily? Ah, with Linux it is possible to learn to work around the problems that exist, and with Win 95/98 it isn't, since rebooting doesn't count as a proper workaround. Ok, I can see that.
But didn't it take time and progress before Linux could deal with those problems? Well, then Windows must get the opportunity for time and progress as well. And with Windows, if you are doing things that seem to always require you to reboot and try again, you need to quit mucking around with that Sentra. I tried Windows NT 3.51 back in 1995, it didn't crash like Windows 3.11, and I've been making heavy use of NT for programming ever since. If crashing is your problem, then fix it. You did things to fix your Linux problems, right? Well, if Linux gets the benefit of a bit of work to solve the problems, why don't you give the same bit of work to Windows? I bet you've upgraded a kernel to solve a problem with Linux. You can switch to NT to fix your problem with Windows.
The key here is in "Windows may (I don't know) have fixed..." If you don't know, SHUT UP! Before you say "Windows sucks, cuz it crash lotz," please determine whether your statements are true and up to date (they aren't).
I appologize, since your original comment doesn't really deserve this. I just get very frustrated with SlashDot comments in general, and every once in a while I see a logical fallacy to pound on just as my frustration is boiling over. Some interesting issues get brought up, but the only responses are "yah, Windoze is for luzers and Bill Gate$ is ev!l." An occasional good comment comes up, but it usually gets drowned out. There are certainly things that could be improved in Windows (although recent improvements are very encouraging), and there are certainly things that Microsoft does that can be annoying, but Microsofties are people too.
Thanks -- very helpful. (I'm on vacation, so I don't have access to my normal English-Spanish dictionary, which has a large number of "localized" definitions, probably including this one.)
You're comparing Windows 98 to Mac OS X? Then you say "any version of MSWindows..."? Methinks you need to check the argument over a bit. Not very solid, not very convincing.
Please compare Mac OS 9 to Windows 95/98, and Mac OS X to Windows NT/2000/XP. You'll have a much more convincing story if you do that. The differences between them are analogous (though there are some good reasons to say that 95/98 was technically superior). In Win NT/2k/XP, right click on the task bar, click "Task Manager" and kill the offending process...
An up-to-date XP installation is pretty darn solid. Crashes pretty much seem to come from the drivers. Not as solid as my FreeBSD box, but then I don't even have a video card on my FreeBSD box, so there aren't many drivers to crash...
A capo is used to adjust a guitar's pitch higher or lower so that the same chord patterns can be used but different actual chords are produced. For example, if you learn to play a song using the C, F, and G7 chords, but need to play it in a different key (perhaps your vocalist can't sing in that range, or perhaps you want to play along with the original band that plays using D, G, A7), you can put a capo on so that the same hand pattern that normally makes a C chord now makes a D chord.
Or perhaps you were talking about a different kind of capo...
(Let's hear it for the karma whores! WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP!)
Ok, another translation by a person who kinda knows Spanish (I do fine in conversation) but I am bound to get a few things wrong where you need to know the culture. Those who know better -- please feel free to correct me. When I'm uncertain, I put the actual literally-translated Spanish word in parentheses after my guess at the best-fit (actual meaning) English word. Here goes nothing:
UEDO (Special Unit against Organized Crime) detains (roots?) head(?) pirates They (the pirates?) say they don't know/don't care about the way that their blank disks are used.
The UEDO spent 90 days detaining (rooting?) Efrain and Rafael Solis Heredia, owners of the Mekong Group and considered by the music indistry the "heads" of record piracy, since they alone bring into Mexico about 200 of the 400 million blank disks that are imported each year.
Idelfonso, Solis Heredia, brother of those detained (rooted?), acting as proxy, announced yesterday that the next week he will denounce PGR and the Secretariat... for the "illegal" nature of a December 18th operation where the Solis brothers were detained and 7 million CDR disks were confiscated (secured?).
"This operation turned into a search, but they had no warrant, with these situations as our basis, we are performing a legal analysis to figure out what kind of charges (demands?) will be brought, in the next week we'll have it." (run-on sentence present in original Spanish, making it hard for me to figure out what he was really trying to say...)
"They (the PGR?) were requested to release them (the Solis brothers), but the PGR detained (rooted?) them so that they could start their investigations, from that comes our concern because in the style of earlier administrations (Governments?) they are trying to make up some nonexistent crime or plant something to make us guilty of something that was never found," said the lawyer.
The Solis brothers are (SIC-were?) detained during the previous investigation PGR/UEDO/397/02, since its business, which has branches in 4 parts of the country, sells blank disks to the legal record industry as well as to pirates.
According to the calculations of the APDIF (Association for the Protection of Recording/Music IP), the legitamate industry (i.e. the record industry) purchases 20 million disks per year, but that is only 10% of the 200 million that the Solis family imports and sells each year. For this reason, they are flagged as the principle instigators of piracy in Mexico.
Among the accusations he refuted (among the supposed irregularities denounced?), Ildefonso Solis noted that in the December 18th operation, among the 7 million disks confiscated were 2.8 million units that were taken for a second time, since they had already been returned since the merchandise was legal.
"60% of these disks were produced in Mexico, 20% were disks that had been seized the previous time, and 20% are disks for which we have the necessary invoices and papers, so we can't see any reason why they make these illegal seizures," he said.
In fact, Mekong's proxy (Idelfonso) presented copies of documents from the Tax Administration Service, in which is recorded the return of 2,852,523 blank CDR disks and 3 CPUs on August 27.
Solis said that it is not their problem that some of their customers are producers of unauthorized music, and accused the AMPROFON (Mexican Association of Producers of Records and Videos) and the APDIF (Association for the Protection of Record IP) of being behind the "defamations" and operations of the PGR.
"They claim that these disks can be used for illegal activities, which is something that doesn't really concern us -- we know what we are doing, but we don't know what other industries are doing."
"We know that behind them (PGR) is the AMPROFON componay, that they (AMPROFON) have turned (taken? I'm guessing the m should really be an rn, in which case "turned" is correct) them against us, as well as APDIF, because they feel it is illegal (they feel illegal?), but we only sell original blank materal, and we sell it to the industry, we don't understand the rationale behind these accusations and defamations against us," he claimed.
In addition, he asked the PGR for "talk, not repression," since he complained that the federal authorities have only acted against ("grabbed at it") the Mekong company and not against a single one of the 50 other companies -- including international companies -- that are involved with importing and selling CDR disks.
Between December 19th 2001 and December 18th 2002, there have been 10 operations and 10 visits to 10 branches and warehouses of this company that supposedly supplies half of the pirates in Mexico.
"We know that we are not the only ones, there are about 50 companies that are involved in importing disks, and among these 50 there are many international ones that have not been bothered and that are involved in the same activities as are we, I won't name names."
"We want the authorities to talk with us and we want to not have repression, the operations that are being made are totally illegal, we want there to be dialogue, that the authorities explain to us why they are doing these illegal actions," said Solis.
Oh, and I was thinking of another kind of templates (web pages/content/presentation) when I read the title, but of course we have waay too many of those in Java already.
If that is what you think of when you hear "templates" in reference to programming languages, perhaps you need to become more familiar with the world of Computer Science (not computer programming -- there is a difference). Anyway, that sentence gives the impression that you don't spend enough time deep in code to make any experienced comments about language features.
You know, I've never felt a need for templates.
This is either flamebait, you don't know what the real principles of system design are (see the Computer Science comment above), or you don't have enough experience to be speaking. Perhaps a combination of the three.
You're the one controlling what data goes into which data structure, so as long as you're not confused (and not forced to work with people who are) templates aren't necessary.
Parameterized containers are just one use of templates, and obviously you haven't found the others. Programmers with a lot of experience are usually very excited when they learn about templates, because they can immediately see where they would be really useful. If you can't, then you need to do more reading than speaking (insert sagely counsel here ending with "young padawan"). A function needs to be written twice, once for 8-bit characters and once for 16-bit characters. Templates make it possible to write (and, more importantly, maintain) just one version of the function that handles both situations. And it will also nicely handle the situation of 32-bit characters just fine if that situation ever arises.
Even in the case of simple parameterized containers, templates do a lot more than you give credit for. First, it isn't always YOU that puts stuff in the container. Did you know that some programs aren't written by just one person? Yes, really! So sometimes somebody else misunderstands what goes into your nice generic vector named "nuts". It compiles ok, and works most of the time, but once in a while an exception now pops up. Hey, how did this walnut get into my peanut vector?
Second, when extracting items from the vector, there is no need to cast the type. And remember that casting actually has a runtime cost -- the system has to verify the type.
It [the Java language] seems almost ready to go mainstream.
Alright, if that isn't flamebait, I don't know what is.
I understand the rest, but I'm not sure about what you find wrong with null. Please expand on that, if you would.
Thanks.
Re:The sysadmins sound so... disturbing.
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Largo Loving Linux
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Personally, I'm just about fed up with both parties, and I do my best to try to pick the lesser of evils when voting. Lately, that has been republican. Your opinion may differ, and for good reason.
My personal feelings on the issue are to go with the person who is the most honest. But I haven't seen an honest presidential candidate since, um, well, probably before I was born.
The evolution of this joke, as far as I can tell, goes like this:
There are two kinds of people in the world:... (insert wise and pithy categorization here)...
There are three kinds of people in the world: those who can count, and those who cannot.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who do not.
Although it may have been a bit subtle, and it is definitely not funny now that I have explained it, my response "What about the other 7?" was not an admission that I lack an understanding of binary, but was an attempt at reaching back into the joke's history to give it a new twist.
Microsoft definitely has a monopoly. But it is not illegal to be a monopoly. It is illegal to use monopoly power in certain ways, and neither I nor the vast majority of the SlashDot crowd is anywhere near capable of determining what behavior by a monopoly is legal and what behavior is illegal.
Homework assignment: go read the complete trial history of 7 major monopoly trials. After that, I'll listen to your opinions about how illegal Microsoft is. Until then, don't take it upon yourself to determine how illegal and evil Microsoft is.
Microsoft has done something that no other industry could do: provide a platform compelling enough to allow it to continue to make 85% profit margins even in the face of fairly strong competition being given away for free. People want/need/think they need Windows and Office. And maybe they don't just get it because they are ignorant masses. Perhaps they get it because it provides some things that nothing else can.
First, it is pretty tough to say exactly what it cost to produce Windows. We can see how much Bill spent on employees in the Windows division last year versus the profits that Windows sales brought. But Last Year's work on Windows isn't what made people want to make Last Year's Windows purchases. It was the work of years of figuring out how to make Windows valuable. A lot of this was research (which loses money). Some of this is peripheral applications (which lose money) -- without them available, nobody would want to buy Windows.
Now in doing this, Microsoft has stepped into controversial territory. Instead of under-pricing to take over a market, they are under-pricing to ensure the survival of another market. Those are different things. Predatory pricing is illegal, but the other hasn't been completely evaluated in court (AFAIK). Perhaps they are both wrong, perhaps only one. (Although it is likely that the real answer is that you can't really have one without the other, so maybe the question is moot.)
But I suggest that instead of yelling about how evil (aka very effective at doing what companies are supposed to do -- make a profit) and mean (aka looking out for themselves instead of their competition) Microsoft is, and how all Microsofties should go to jail, I would much rather focus on topics more grounded in reality:
What is Microsoft doing that Open Source isn't? How can we start doing this better without abandoning our values?
Should this practice of non-predatory undercutting be legal? It has definite advantages for some people (even not counting Microsoft), and definite disadvantages for some people. Is it different, as I asserted earlier, or is it the same as the normal predatory price undercutting?
What population is most hurt by this practice? Can Linux fill this need? Should we work to make this happen, or would it be better to chase the more mainstream population?
What do we need to do to shore up Linux's environment in the same way that Microsoft shores up Windows' environment?
The mindless repetition of whining and flaming of Microsoft every time any article about them comes out won't get anybody anywhere. Lets talk about something intelligent for a change. Please?
Most of the time, I agree. For most of what I do, extra eye-candy is all you are going to get for your extra Mhz. I cannot immediately think of anything that my mom or dad would want to do that would require more than 500 Mhz.
On the other hand, just last week I plowed my dual P3-900 box into the ground. Doing some diagnostic work on a large program I work on, the diagnostic utility bumped my virtual memory usage up to 1.5 GB and kept my CPUs burning 100% for over an hour.
I guess most people don't need the extra speed. But those who know how to use it should be thankful to all who buy more speed than necessary. How much more do you think a 2.4Ghz chip would cost if 99% of the people were satisfied with the 500Mhz one? Intel can spread development costs over many more people if more people buy the higher-end chip.
I think it all depends on what skills a person needs to succeed at the position. If the position requires writing skills, it is a very good idea to ask the candidate to write something. If the position requires no writing skills then asking the candidate to write something is a waste of time (unless you are indirectly measuring some other skill). If there are skills for the position that are best measured by a written exam, then do it. Otherwise, don't.
I interviewed 4 people in the last week for development and debugging positions. The skills for the positions can be adequately measured through verbal questions and verbal or written (on notepad or whiteboard) answers. So there was no written test. I can't answer the question for any other postion, though.
So the answer is: I don't, but you might. It doesn't sound at all strange to me. Just do what is best for your situation. And check with your legal department to make sure you are following proper procedure to avoid getting yourself sued.
Strangely enough, I was discussing this with a co-worker yesterday. We joked about the silly programmers who return pointers to local variables, or think "char *" is the same as "string".
char *s; strcat(s, "Mary had a little lamb");
The result of the discussion was that everyone needs to understand at least one level down from the level of abstraction at which they will be working. For example, someone using sockets for TCP/IP will probably have a very hard time understanding what is going on unless he knows the general concepts of TCP. A C programmer really needs to understand a little bit about how the C code is going to look and work at the assembly level or she will never understand why the code above crashes
In addition to providing the details needed to make sense of the higher-level abstration layer, a basic understanding of the lower-level abstraction layer allows a good programmer to make educated guesses about potential trouble spots -- performance traps or feature limitations.
That is why I have always advocated an understanding of assembly language, computer architecture, TCP/IP protocols, etc. If you know TCP/IP, you can probably figure out what is wrong with your sockets code much more quickly. If you know how the Ethernet works, you will have much more success trying to wire your apartment. You might not technically need that knowledge, but it helps to be able to guess the answer to "can I just get better shielding to make the ethernet signal go farther?" rather than look it up.
Slashdot Mirror
Viral != you can't change.
Viral == spreads.
Office's license can't spread, since you can't distribute a derivative work from office. GPL allows that, but says that the derivative work must be GPL. Thus, the GPL spreads...
No, I think you are putting words into MS's mouth. Microsoft isn't complaining about not being able to use GPLed code.
First, I think some people actually do wake up and say... For example, the NSA with the secure Linux distro. They realized that they couldn't use it the way they wanted due to the GPL. So in effect, they perhaps are proof that some people don't understand the GPL and perhaps need to understand it better before making decisions. This is probably especially true of management. And this is what MS is trying to do. Obviously, they will explain the GPL from their perspective, but in some cases this might be closer to the perspective of the manager in charge.
Microsoft is saying: "Yes, GPL or use GPL if you like, but there are consequences you may not like."
Microsoft is saying: "Warning -- if you use GPLed product B, you will have to release the source to your derivative work before distributing it."
Microsoft is saying: "Government should be aware that if they GPL the result of their research, the commercial companies are going to have a hard time with it."
Microsoft is not saying: "We want to be able to steal all GPLed code."
Yes, it is wonderful that in China, the powerful can control the speech of others. And if we were to force the powerful to stop gagging the others, we would have taken away this wonderful gift of gag.
How do they prevent other people from profiting from it? The code they "steal" in this hypothetical situation is still there, and you are still welcome to profit from it if you can.
This isn't subsidizing proprietary software. This is subsidizing any software org that makes use of the contribution. If Microsoft manages to make the dominant tool, so be it. That would be because they added some value to it that made it more usable than the tool of anyone else.
I'm a bit puzzled about how you obtained this far-reaching birthright. It sounds to me more like something you would like to have. Not everything you would like to have is a birthright.
The taxpayers paid for it, precisely why should a business be allowed to profit from it without paying royalties back in one form or another?
Well, it sounds like in this case those using it under the GPL had better pay royalties, too.
What MS is asking is to be allowed to reap the profits while letting the taxpayers foot the bill.
What MS is asking is that ANYBODY, themselves included, be allowed to reap the profits. <OR> put another way, it sounds like YOU want to reap the benefits and let the taxpayers foot the bill, but prevent Microsoft from being able to do so. (And if you are thinking about responding that "the code will now be closed source," you need to think again: only Microsoft's product will be closed source; the research is STILL open.)
What agency? Microsoft is trying to remind the govt. that if you take a starting point that is under the GPL and apply research to it, the resulting work is under the GPL. It then becomes tricky to separate it back out. I thought people around here actually knew what the GPL was and how it worked! They talk about it all the time. And assuming it is possible, why should one group have to go negotiate a new license while other groups don't? Is the non-free-software community that much less deserving?
The argument of the last paragraph (using property) again neglects the fact that the "property" is not diminished or taken away when Microsoft or any other company puts it into their product. It is a public good now. The original is still available. Microsoft paid for any modifications/enhancements without taking the original away.
All of these business models are perfectly ethical and reasonable. Some software is so challenging to write that decent versions of it would NEVER appear without the more direct profitability of the non-free software company. Other software is less immediately profitable, so it would never appear without the individual who only cares for recognition, if even that much. Some software provides non-sales opportunities for profit (or break-even, which is ok if the company paying for the software also needs the software), opening up a window for the free software market. But why should one of them be singled out as not being allowed to use the IP that the other two can use, if all 3 paid through tax dollars?
As far as the GPL applying to government sponsored research -- Microsoft wants to be able to use this research just like anybody else. What if TCP/IP (research results, not code) had been released under GPL? The free OSes could use it no problem, but no commercial OS would be able to use it, and there would likely be no TCP/IP in general use today. And even when just TCP/IP code is released under GPL, then the software companies have to clean-room re-engineering of it. This is especially stupid if a great deal of the effort was figuring out how to make the code work in the first place.
And how do you negotiate a suitable license when something is GPLed? You find any entity that had anything to do with that code and negotiate a separate license with that entity. If it is just the government, and you can do it, then why didn't the government just release it under BSD license to begin with? But otherwise, you CAN'T DO IT! The derivative work, with the new research added is pretty hard to split from the earlier existing work. (You may need to review the GPL if you don't get this -- the point of the GPL is to make it so that derivative works CAN'T be relicensed, yet you say that MS should just get the IP relicensed... Anybody else see the problem here?)
So Microsoft is claiming with these slides that if everybody (free-software proponents and non-proponents) paid equally through taxes for IP (which is debatable, since MS puts a lot more into the Tax system than any other software company), why should they get the shaft?
No, I'm responding to the comment you made about Windows crashing (though in doing so I'm also taking out my frustrations from other comments). "Windows always requiring a reboot" was an issue that you brought up and the issue to which I responded.
I don't think I'm missing your point, but I'm saying that your point is very pointless. What you say sounds to me like somebody saying "Boy, that Nissan Sentra really sucks rocks trying to compete offroad against the Hummer and the Land Rover Defender." You go to any Nissan enthusiast and say something like that, they're going to either think you are crazy or leave you with an immaculate timepiece.
[I suppose this is flamebait, but I'm not in a very good mood, so you'll have to forgive me for not pulling my punches and couching my statements in more forgiving language.]
Anybody who compares Windows 95 or Windows 98 to Mac OS X and Linux and complains about the reliability/stability of 95/98 is up a tree. And anybody who accepts those comparisons is equally deluded. Every OS has problems that can and cannot be dealt with, because every OS design has compromises. Windows 95 and Windows 98 were designed with certain compatibility and performance compromises that made it impossible to provide complete inter-process stability. Guess what -- so was Mac OS v (where v is any number smaller than 10). Linux and Mac OS X do not make the same compromises. Guess what -- neither do Windows NT/2k/XP.
I would like to see you solve the same problem that you "can cope with on Linux" (and in the previous post on Mac OS X) on Mac OS 9. Can't do it? Then leave Mac OS X out of your comments about Windows 98, since they aren't in the same generation. And I would leave Linux out, too, since it really comes in a separate category.
Ok, next you mention something that confuses me a bit. Windows is designed for people... Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I can't tell, but since you seem to say that Linux needs to get to this point someday, I guess it is a good thing. So Windows is already there, and therefore better? And you had to work hard to get Linux to work with Novell and MS networks -- this makes Linux better, when Windows works with them more readily? Ah, with Linux it is possible to learn to work around the problems that exist, and with Win 95/98 it isn't, since rebooting doesn't count as a proper workaround. Ok, I can see that.
But didn't it take time and progress before Linux could deal with those problems? Well, then Windows must get the opportunity for time and progress as well. And with Windows, if you are doing things that seem to always require you to reboot and try again, you need to quit mucking around with that Sentra. I tried Windows NT 3.51 back in 1995, it didn't crash like Windows 3.11, and I've been making heavy use of NT for programming ever since. If crashing is your problem, then fix it. You did things to fix your Linux problems, right? Well, if Linux gets the benefit of a bit of work to solve the problems, why don't you give the same bit of work to Windows? I bet you've upgraded a kernel to solve a problem with Linux. You can switch to NT to fix your problem with Windows.
The key here is in "Windows may (I don't know) have fixed..." If you don't know, SHUT UP! Before you say "Windows sucks, cuz it crash lotz," please determine whether your statements are true and up to date (they aren't).
I appologize, since your original comment doesn't really deserve this. I just get very frustrated with SlashDot comments in general, and every once in a while I see a logical fallacy to pound on just as my frustration is boiling over. Some interesting issues get brought up, but the only responses are "yah, Windoze is for luzers and Bill Gate$ is ev!l." An occasional good comment comes up, but it usually gets drowned out. There are certainly things that could be improved in Windows (although recent improvements are very encouraging), and there are certainly things that Microsoft does that can be annoying, but Microsofties are people too.
Thanks -- very helpful. (I'm on vacation, so I don't have access to my normal English-Spanish dictionary, which has a large number of "localized" definitions, probably including this one.)
You're comparing Windows 98 to Mac OS X? Then you say "any version of MSWindows..."? Methinks you need to check the argument over a bit. Not very solid, not very convincing.
Please compare Mac OS 9 to Windows 95/98, and Mac OS X to Windows NT/2000/XP. You'll have a much more convincing story if you do that. The differences between them are analogous (though there are some good reasons to say that 95/98 was technically superior). In Win NT/2k/XP, right click on the task bar, click "Task Manager" and kill the offending process...
An up-to-date XP installation is pretty darn solid. Crashes pretty much seem to come from the drivers. Not as solid as my FreeBSD box, but then I don't even have a video card on my FreeBSD box, so there aren't many drivers to crash...
A capo is used to adjust a guitar's pitch higher or lower so that the same chord patterns can be used but different actual chords are produced. For example, if you learn to play a song using the C, F, and G7 chords, but need to play it in a different key (perhaps your vocalist can't sing in that range, or perhaps you want to play along with the original band that plays using D, G, A7), you can put a capo on so that the same hand pattern that normally makes a C chord now makes a D chord.
Or perhaps you were talking about a different kind of capo...
(Let's hear it for the karma whores! WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP!)
Ok, another translation by a person who kinda knows Spanish (I do fine in conversation) but I am bound to get a few things wrong where you need to know the culture. Those who know better -- please feel free to correct me. When I'm uncertain, I put the actual literally-translated Spanish word in parentheses after my guess at the best-fit (actual meaning) English word. Here goes nothing:
UEDO (Special Unit against Organized Crime) detains (roots?) head(?) pirates
They (the pirates?) say they don't know/don't care about the way that their blank disks are used.
The UEDO spent 90 days detaining (rooting?) Efrain and Rafael Solis Heredia, owners of the Mekong Group and considered by the music indistry the "heads" of record piracy, since they alone bring into Mexico about 200 of the 400 million blank disks that are imported each year.
Idelfonso, Solis Heredia, brother of those detained (rooted?), acting as proxy, announced yesterday that the next week he will denounce PGR and the Secretariat... for the "illegal" nature of a December 18th operation where the Solis brothers were detained and 7 million CDR disks were confiscated (secured?).
"This operation turned into a search, but they had no warrant, with these situations as our basis, we are performing a legal analysis to figure out what kind of charges (demands?) will be brought, in the next week we'll have it." (run-on sentence present in original Spanish, making it hard for me to figure out what he was really trying to say...)
"They (the PGR?) were requested to release them (the Solis brothers), but the PGR detained (rooted?) them so that they could start their investigations, from that comes our concern because in the style of earlier administrations (Governments?) they are trying to make up some nonexistent crime or plant something to make us guilty of something that was never found," said the lawyer.
The Solis brothers are (SIC-were?) detained during the previous investigation PGR/UEDO/397/02, since its business, which has branches in 4 parts of the country, sells blank disks to the legal record industry as well as to pirates.
According to the calculations of the APDIF (Association for the Protection of Recording/Music IP), the legitamate industry (i.e. the record industry) purchases 20 million disks per year, but that is only 10% of the 200 million that the Solis family imports and sells each year. For this reason, they are flagged as the principle instigators of piracy in Mexico.
Among the accusations he refuted (among the supposed irregularities denounced?), Ildefonso Solis noted that in the December 18th operation, among the 7 million disks confiscated were 2.8 million units that were taken for a second time, since they had already been returned since the merchandise was legal.
"60% of these disks were produced in Mexico, 20% were disks that had been seized the previous time, and 20% are disks for which we have the necessary invoices and papers, so we can't see any reason why they make these illegal seizures," he said.
In fact, Mekong's proxy (Idelfonso) presented copies of documents from the Tax Administration Service, in which is recorded the return of 2,852,523 blank CDR disks and 3 CPUs on August 27.
Solis said that it is not their problem that some of their customers are producers of unauthorized music, and accused the AMPROFON (Mexican Association of Producers of Records and Videos) and the APDIF (Association for the Protection of Record IP) of being behind the "defamations" and operations of the PGR.
"They claim that these disks can be used for illegal activities, which is something that doesn't really concern us -- we know what we are doing, but we don't know what other industries are doing."
"We know that behind them (PGR) is the AMPROFON componay, that they (AMPROFON) have turned (taken? I'm guessing the m should really be an rn, in which case "turned" is correct) them against us, as well as APDIF, because they feel it is illegal (they feel illegal?), but we only sell original blank materal, and we sell it to the industry, we don't understand the rationale behind these accusations and defamations against us," he claimed.
In addition, he asked the PGR for "talk, not repression," since he complained that the federal authorities have only acted against ("grabbed at it") the Mekong company and not against a single one of the 50 other companies -- including international companies -- that are involved with importing and selling CDR disks.
Between December 19th 2001 and December 18th 2002, there have been 10 operations and 10 visits to 10 branches and warehouses of this company that supposedly supplies half of the pirates in Mexico.
"We know that we are not the only ones, there are about 50 companies that are involved in importing disks, and among these 50 there are many international ones that have not been bothered and that are involved in the same activities as are we, I won't name names."
"We want the authorities to talk with us and we want to not have repression, the operations that are being made are totally illegal, we want there to be dialogue, that the authorities explain to us why they are doing these illegal actions," said Solis.
Umm, well, (thinking...)
Maybe forever?
Oh, and I was thinking of another kind of templates (web pages/content/presentation) when I read the title, but of course we have waay too many of those in Java already.
If that is what you think of when you hear "templates" in reference to programming languages, perhaps you need to become more familiar with the world of Computer Science (not computer programming -- there is a difference). Anyway, that sentence gives the impression that you don't spend enough time deep in code to make any experienced comments about language features.
You know, I've never felt a need for templates.
This is either flamebait, you don't know what the real principles of system design are (see the Computer Science comment above), or you don't have enough experience to be speaking. Perhaps a combination of the three.
You're the one controlling what data goes into which data structure, so as long as you're not confused (and not forced to work with people who are) templates aren't necessary.
Parameterized containers are just one use of templates, and obviously you haven't found the others. Programmers with a lot of experience are usually very excited when they learn about templates, because they can immediately see where they would be really useful. If you can't, then you need to do more reading than speaking (insert sagely counsel here ending with "young padawan"). A function needs to be written twice, once for 8-bit characters and once for 16-bit characters. Templates make it possible to write (and, more importantly, maintain) just one version of the function that handles both situations. And it will also nicely handle the situation of 32-bit characters just fine if that situation ever arises.
Even in the case of simple parameterized containers, templates do a lot more than you give credit for. First, it isn't always YOU that puts stuff in the container. Did you know that some programs aren't written by just one person? Yes, really! So sometimes somebody else misunderstands what goes into your nice generic vector named "nuts". It compiles ok, and works most of the time, but once in a while an exception now pops up. Hey, how did this walnut get into my peanut vector?
Second, when extracting items from the vector, there is no need to cast the type. And remember that casting actually has a runtime cost -- the system has to verify the type.
It [the Java language] seems almost ready to go mainstream.
Alright, if that isn't flamebait, I don't know what is.
I understand the rest, but I'm not sure about what you find wrong with null. Please expand on that, if you would.
Thanks.
Personally, I'm just about fed up with both parties, and I do my best to try to pick the lesser of evils when voting. Lately, that has been republican. Your opinion may differ, and for good reason.
My personal feelings on the issue are to go with the person who is the most honest. But I haven't seen an honest presidential candidate since, um, well, probably before I was born.
This brings to mind a story about a hungry alien...
(you may want to back up a few days to establish the plot)
The evolution of this joke, as far as I can tell, goes like this:
Although it may have been a bit subtle, and it is definitely not funny now that I have explained it, my response "What about the other 7?" was not an admission that I lack an understanding of binary, but was an attempt at reaching back into the joke's history to give it a new twist.
There are only 10 kinds of people in the world--
Those who understand binary, and those who don't.
So, like, what happened to the other 7?
Nope. Just for you. I'm that messed in the head.
Microsoft definitely has a monopoly. But it is not illegal to be a monopoly. It is illegal to use monopoly power in certain ways, and neither I nor the vast majority of the SlashDot crowd is anywhere near capable of determining what behavior by a monopoly is legal and what behavior is illegal.
Homework assignment: go read the complete trial history of 7 major monopoly trials. After that, I'll listen to your opinions about how illegal Microsoft is. Until then, don't take it upon yourself to determine how illegal and evil Microsoft is.
Microsoft has done something that no other industry could do: provide a platform compelling enough to allow it to continue to make 85% profit margins even in the face of fairly strong competition being given away for free. People want/need/think they need Windows and Office. And maybe they don't just get it because they are ignorant masses. Perhaps they get it because it provides some things that nothing else can.
First, it is pretty tough to say exactly what it cost to produce Windows. We can see how much Bill spent on employees in the Windows division last year versus the profits that Windows sales brought. But Last Year's work on Windows isn't what made people want to make Last Year's Windows purchases. It was the work of years of figuring out how to make Windows valuable. A lot of this was research (which loses money). Some of this is peripheral applications (which lose money) -- without them available, nobody would want to buy Windows.
Now in doing this, Microsoft has stepped into controversial territory. Instead of under-pricing to take over a market, they are under-pricing to ensure the survival of another market. Those are different things. Predatory pricing is illegal, but the other hasn't been completely evaluated in court (AFAIK). Perhaps they are both wrong, perhaps only one. (Although it is likely that the real answer is that you can't really have one without the other, so maybe the question is moot.)
But I suggest that instead of yelling about how evil (aka very effective at doing what companies are supposed to do -- make a profit) and mean (aka looking out for themselves instead of their competition) Microsoft is, and how all Microsofties should go to jail, I would much rather focus on topics more grounded in reality:
What is Microsoft doing that Open Source isn't? How can we start doing this better without abandoning our values?
Should this practice of non-predatory undercutting be legal? It has definite advantages for some people (even not counting Microsoft), and definite disadvantages for some people. Is it different, as I asserted earlier, or is it the same as the normal predatory price undercutting?
What population is most hurt by this practice? Can Linux fill this need? Should we work to make this happen, or would it be better to chase the more mainstream population?
What do we need to do to shore up Linux's environment in the same way that Microsoft shores up Windows' environment?
The mindless repetition of whining and flaming of Microsoft every time any article about them comes out won't get anybody anywhere. Lets talk about something intelligent for a change. Please?
Thanks.
Most of the time, I agree. For most of what I do, extra eye-candy is all you are going to get for your extra Mhz. I cannot immediately think of anything that my mom or dad would want to do that would require more than 500 Mhz.
On the other hand, just last week I plowed my dual P3-900 box into the ground. Doing some diagnostic work on a large program I work on, the diagnostic utility bumped my virtual memory usage up to 1.5 GB and kept my CPUs burning 100% for over an hour.
I guess most people don't need the extra speed. But those who know how to use it should be thankful to all who buy more speed than necessary. How much more do you think a 2.4Ghz chip would cost if 99% of the people were satisfied with the 500Mhz one? Intel can spread development costs over many more people if more people buy the higher-end chip.
Should we administer a written test?
I think it all depends on what skills a person needs to succeed at the position. If the position requires writing skills, it is a very good idea to ask the candidate to write something. If the position requires no writing skills then asking the candidate to write something is a waste of time (unless you are indirectly measuring some other skill). If there are skills for the position that are best measured by a written exam, then do it. Otherwise, don't.
I interviewed 4 people in the last week for development and debugging positions. The skills for the positions can be adequately measured through verbal questions and verbal or written (on notepad or whiteboard) answers. So there was no written test. I can't answer the question for any other postion, though.
So the answer is: I don't, but you might. It doesn't sound at all strange to me. Just do what is best for your situation. And check with your legal department to make sure you are following proper procedure to avoid getting yourself sued.
Strangely enough, I was discussing this with a co-worker yesterday. We joked about the silly programmers who return pointers to local variables, or think "char *" is the same as "string".
char *s;
strcat(s, "Mary had a little lamb");
The result of the discussion was that everyone needs to understand at least one level down from the level of abstraction at which they will be working. For example, someone using sockets for TCP/IP will probably have a very hard time understanding what is going on unless he knows the general concepts of TCP. A C programmer really needs to understand a little bit about how the C code is going to look and work at the assembly level or she will never understand why the code above crashes
In addition to providing the details needed to make sense of the higher-level abstration layer, a basic understanding of the lower-level abstraction layer allows a good programmer to make educated guesses about potential trouble spots -- performance traps or feature limitations.
That is why I have always advocated an understanding of assembly language, computer architecture, TCP/IP protocols, etc. If you know TCP/IP, you can probably figure out what is wrong with your sockets code much more quickly. If you know how the Ethernet works, you will have much more success trying to wire your apartment. You might not technically need that knowledge, but it helps to be able to guess the answer to "can I just get better shielding to make the ethernet signal go farther?" rather than look it up.