Security is NOT about patching holes, a system must be designed from the ground up to be secure. Doze and it's predecessors were NEVER designed this way.
Is that why Ubuntu 8.04 prompts me to install some hundred or more security updates after installing it?
Nice strawman you've got there. So Linux is insecure too. Yea, that really shows how secure Windows is.
No software is perfect and anyone who thinks that the only secure system is on that is "designed from the ground up to be secure" either A) has never worked on a large software project and/or B) doesn't have a clue what they're talking about.
Arguing "no software is perfect" is an argument more about defects in implementation than the actual fundamental design. It's the difference between making a straw house sturdy enough to withstand a hurricane by regularly slapping it with cement vs having to epoxy a brick house to reduce the weathering damage. As for an actual design, one can look into something like Coyotos.
What is so fundamentally more secure from a design perspective about the Linux kernel compared with the WinNT kernel? How about a distribution like Ubuntu compared with Windows XP/Vista/7? Since one was "designed from the ground up to be secure" I sure hope you can point out a few design choices specifically.
You can't. They're both crap. Move on.
Since all software (even the Linux kernel and its ilk) have security holes, the ability and speed at which you discover the exploits and issue fixes for them is at least as important as the initial design and coding of the program. It's naive and obtuse to think any complex system will be perfect from the get-go.
No doubt. But the inverse of that, to expect all software to have vulnerabilities at all times and for most of them to be massively critical is equally naive and obtuse. Further, good coding practices can eliminate or at least mitigate many types of possible security vulnerabilities when implementing a secure design. Instead, both Windows and Linux (and obvious Mac OS X) are created from the pragmatic desire to build a system quickly, not just at the OS but at the application level. In short, there's more desire to spend less time and energy now with prolonged efforts to fix bugs over time than to built software right once, the first time, with only minimal patching needed in the future.
Such is visible in the firmware of many appliances which, oddly enough, don't randomly misbehave in the fashion you seem to believe should be expected in everything with software. When human life and limb, and the ensuing litigation costs, start to figure into the equation a lot of testing is done even when software is designed to fail safe. And when such software malfunctions or the design doesn't fail safe, the manufacturers are condemned, not merely patted on their shoulder with a "we understand, writing complex software is hard".
In short, own up the truth. PC software is shit because you and I are unwilling to wait for good software to be written and are willing to accept the consequences, including the need for patching. The only thing left is which software has to be patched more often, how much more (if any) pain it is to patch one system over another, how much that induces more pragmatic risk, and finally how that pragmatic risk actually starts to effect you directly or indirectly. Once you acknowledge that, you're left to acknowledge that arguments over relative security are pointless. The real issue is the pragmatic damage and the pragmatic risk.
It's much, much simpler to just install Chrome and not have to worry about javascript performance.
The day one doesn't have to worry about javascript performance is the day we all have infinite computing resources. Until then, there's always someone out there writing either too much or too badly javascript, most often for a pointless (to me) reason. This latter part is a big reason to disable javascript. The other two? Annoying ads and malware (which might well be residing in said annoying ad). Of course noscript. flashbock, cookie safe, etc aren't silver bullets--there's still visited site tracking, meta-refresh, and lots of other possibly nasties (like buggy image, video (with html5), or html processing code). But, reasonably, even if I had infinite resources to run whatever random javascript (or flash or java) some web site wants ran, why would I aid what is still overly heavily used as a mechanism to spam myself?
The whole point of the Crusoe was that it could distil down various types of instruction (e.g. x86, even Java bytecode) to native instructions it understood. It could run 'anything' so to speak, given the right abstraction layer in between
Yea, uh, that's true for *any* general purpose processor. What Crusoe original promised was that this dynamically recompiled code might be either faster (by reordering and optimizing many instructions to fit Crusoe's Very Large Instruction Word design--not unlike how the Pentium Pro and above do it in hardware with multiple APU/FPU functional units) or more power efficiently (by removing the hardware parts of the reorderer/optimizer and having the software equivalent run unoften). Of course, the former just didn't hold because Intel/AMD could just pump out higher hertz processors and the latter didn't matter as much as simply underclocking the whole CPU when the system was idle (which is often enough). In short, Crusoe found two niches that both Intel and AMD cornered.
Its lack of success was nothing to do with programming - just that no one needed a processor that could these things. The demand wasn't there
Well, that's the other part of the equation. If the Crusoe had actually provided multiple abstraction layers and not just the one (the x86 one), perhaps they could have survived. Crusoe would have been a great platform for emulating the PSX, for example. Or providing multiple, concurrent x86/Java/whatever systems to sandbox for servers--and for which the power efficiency would be important. But, then, providing well-optimized and many software solutions isn't an easy task, especially when balanced against the task of avoiding running the "Code Morphing" software as much as possible to avoid all the penalties associated with it.
In short, the problem wasn't the demand per se; it was a lack of supply. Pining the hopes of the company on a few niches of which the competitors managed to relatively quickly occupy certainly didn't help.
If the 'F' word is banned in your school and the kids all of a sudden decide to say the word 'Squash' in lieu of the naughty word, eventually they become synonymous. Saying "Squash you, Mr. Teacher" is still potentially going to get you in trouble if the teacher knows what "Squash" means in that context.
When, then the answer is pretty clear. PTC becomes shit, family values becomes fuck, etc. In short, make it so the very groups that bitch about such things become unmentionable and have to self-censor. Since what they really want to do is control the hatred expressed by such languages, perhaps they should focus more on their own hatred of others using "non-vulgar" language since the words used don't change the fundamental issue, which is more with such people themselves than with others who don't have such hate in their heart that they desire to "fix" everyone else by hurting them.
One, GPL software can be used anywhere once you've legally obtained it (barring some sort of specific law, like for nuclear reactors or whatever). This is true with any software since copyright covers copying, not use--EULAs legality being obvious a side discussion. Presumably the issue at hand is redistribution, since it's an intellectually empty exercise on what one can legally do with one's own things in such a circumstance.
Two, GPL software can only be legally redistributed if it complies with the GPL license. This means really GPL software, not just pseudo-GPL software. Pseudo-GPL software would be if, for example, I wrote a program, compiled a binary, and then redistributed just the binary with a copy of the GPL. Since I'm the original author, I have perfect redistribution rights to the binary, but no one else can actually comply with the GPL since they lack the source code. Once you get GPL software from someone else, though, if you want to redistribute it you have to comply with the GPL to remain legal (or, obviously, negotiate a deal with the original author(s) under a different license).
You bring up the issue of "installing GPL software on a Windows machine means NTFS is suddenly GPL too" and of course the answer is no. The legally murky question is whether there is such a thing as "GPL software on a Windows machine"--or even "GPL software on a system with closed firmware". Of course, most people tend to treat it as "it's okay so long as it doesn't appear to be nefarious efforts to hinder modification" (ie, Tivoization). Making a ROM chip can be nefarious or it can simply be economical (ROM being possibly cheaper than flash). Flash being used and the flash tools not being redistributed and available, GPL licensed or not, seems more nefarious and is likely to urge rancor.
When it comes down to it, in a civil suit the copyright holder of the GPL code as well as the FSF are in the best position to argue the intent of the use of the GPL and language of the GPL. With only a majority agreement need with the jury, most cases would probably be persuaded on the seeming intent of most of the GPL language and side with the copyright holder. The simple point that the FSF and the copyright holder could invariably bring is, since the issue is legally murky the vendor should default with the safest legal option: don't redistribute the code or binaries based on it.
To that end, the safest legal defense to redistributing a ROM chip with GPL code on it would be to obtain the blessing of the GPL code's copyright holder. So, I'd say there'd be a pretty legally definitively route to releasing GPL code on a ROM chip.
I'm not a fan of either "three strikes" laws that impose penalties without a proper court hearing or going after people based on an IP address alone, but as the recent round of proposals have gone, this one seems to be about as reasonable as you're going to get in who it claims to be targetting.
Consider this hypothetical: Sony starts up an ISP in Ireland. They decide to have a "three strikes" rule, where anyone caught sharing Sony music gets banned. Now, along comes Columbia Records. They notice that due to Sony's blatant and wide-spread advertising "We'll ban you if you share Sony music", Sony's ISP is now a large haven for sharing Columbia Records music but no Sony music. Hmm.. That sure looks like a conspiracy to commit copyright infringement (no different, really, than what Napster was slammed under).
The fact that the ISP isn't owned by one or a few music labels doesn't really change the point. They've taken it upon themselves not to ban copyright infringers of music (or even copyright infringers in general) but to selectively pick winners and losers in the "you can get free music and avoid paying a label their [fair or not] share of copyright money*. And unlikely the whole debate over scanning networks for obscene material, the parties in question (a) have lots of money to sue, (b) have lots of precedent for redress in civil court, and (c) are defending material where there isn't some major moral issue which might taint the subject.
In short, good fucking luck with that Eircom. I hope you get sued into the ground by a major label and then--after the Irish RIAA gets their artists named added to the search filter--by indie labels and then--after even most the indie labels with deep enough pockets sue--finally by a few really rich independent musicians. Then we can move onto all the other non-music infringement that they'll be havens for. Good luck filtering the whole internet systematically for all copyright infringement.
*Yea, clearly, it's debatable on whether they deserve a share or not morally, but legally they're in a good position for the courts.
Well, consider that "history class" in the US focuses incredibly heavily on US history and a lot of the US's major changes (or even it's founding) are the result of progressive movements and/or strong thinkers/leaders--and political opportunism, which should be mentioned. Of course, as a byproduct it'd show that while government itself tends not to push radical and/or necessary change on its own, movements, especially helped by a strong leader, have repeatedly reformed government in radical ways which have greatly benefited people. But, that'd also show progressivism too.
In short, the problem is US history has a significant progressive bias.
human nature is complex, and when forced into simplistic models, you just wind up causing more suffering than you are attempting to stop. this isn't an attempt to excuse lack of responsibility or criminal activity, its a simple obvious statement that the real world is more complex than very simpleminded teachings
I think it's more than simpleminded teachings. Consider the show "Way of the Master". Ask a person if they ever lied? They're a liar. Ask if they've ever stolen? They're a thief. Ask if they've ever lusted after another? They're an adulterer. Well, any one of those three, and you go to hell in Christian teachings. But, of course, there's "a way out". By the "Way of the Master', Jesus Christ, you can be saved. It's funny, though. If you actually believed that being a liar, thief, or adulterer would send you to hell *before* you chose to become one, then shouldn't you *want* to accept the responsibility and go to hell?
As you note, it's not the simplemindedness that's the problem. It's that "social conservatives" are overwhelmingly ones who think there is a way out from responsibility. If one believes that one can steal and get away with it, then no amount of "Thou shalt not steal" will cover it. I guess the whole "genuinely repent" was not really understood. If one believes that murderers should be executed because they can't genuinely repent for their wrongs (and if you do execute them, it really makes it hard for them to repent, anyways), then under what basis would you think a simple, and mostly accepted*, liar would genuinely repent?
*The other main factor of "Way of the Master" is the way it tries to shame people into confession and their teaching. Of course, for most murderers there's already a great deal of shame pushed against them by family and/or friends. But, lairs tend to be less shamed because of many reasons. Regardless, real repentance obviously comes from within, not from being socially brow beat into disassociation from one's sins. That was one of the points behind Jesus' "Judge not lest thee be judged". Of course, when people go as far as to outright fight and reject social brow beating, "social conservatives" want to ingrain society into law. And that leads into wanted to be the Romans who would persecute and execute Jesus. But, then, considering just how ineffectual "social conservatives" claim government is and will be, it's funny how many of them are hammering so hard to become a part of it.
Certain words have crept into vocabulary and are now used to the exclusion of other words. It seems young folks are unable, now, to express themselves without swear words. It seems that they are completely unaware that there are actual words that actually MEAN what they are trying to say; but since they don't know them, they attach the same word that everyone else attaches for emphasis. So we end up with sentences that include the same word, for emphasis, three times... when all they really mean to say is "I was astounded."
To me, people who use swear words for pretty much everything sound uneducated and... well, the follow-the-crowd type... someone who is clearly influenced, in the way they talk, by whoever is around them at the time.
Rather true. The power of swear words is precisely in their taboo nature. To use them regularly makes you look vulgar (aka, of the common people). It also removes their power. This is true of things like "God" and having talk of Christianity flooded everywhere, but that's another discussion. Yes, it would be preferable if people strove to learn new and creative ways to express amazement and offensiveness with either the words that already exist or, if necessary (not likely), with new words instead of simply co-opting existing words.
It's also interesting to me that people argue that words have no meaning out of context, etc., and typically argue that with someone who is offended by that kind of speech... and yet, then they use those same words specifically to offend or be abrasive. That's not out-of-context, that is a very specific context. If you are using a word specifically to offend me while claiming I shouldn't be offended because it's out of context, you're being rather rude.
I think the point was, being offended to the point that you'd actually seek to have the word legally banned is out of proportion to what the situation calls for. Being offended is a fact of life. Striving to ban "bad" words doesn't change the ability to offend because, as you note, the words chosen are being chosen specifically to offend. The words are a symptom, not the disease. I don't think there's a real cure for the disease, as at times there is reason to be offended with others or the general facts of reality. The only thing that can be done is to try to comfort those when they are in pain, when applicable.
I personally dislike swearing. I find it... well, vulgar and uneducated:) Here's my actual "political" response though: as long as I am not allowed to use certain terms for people because it's "politically incorrect" or "offensive" to them, etc - for example, "black" or "gay" or perhaps saying that some act or sexual orientation is a "sin" - then I don't see why you should be allowed to swear and cuss under to offend someone under the guise of free speech.
Um, people use "black" and "gay" all the time. No one is being fined or arrested for the use of those words, nor should they be. Yes, one person may scold another for the words they use. That holds if you say "nigger" or if they say "fuck". It's a one-on-one interaction, where each person tries to defend their belief that a word should or shouldn't be used. It's the same as here. Yes, the people around you may not speak up, but then most people are too uninvolved or too cowardly to express their own views on the subject. And yes, that puts you an uncomfortable position where you feel you're battling the world when one person expresses derision about your word choices. That's life. That's how it's always been. The only difference is how often and what words are most likely to result in someone else pipping up and actually commenting.
Me? I'm more concerned about the actual anger and thoughts of others. PC-ness simply masks the issue. Having said that, I don't actually do what I should to work through that issue--to befrien
There is no such thing as an apolitical view of history, as among other things, every viewpoint has its own judgments of the same events. There is no way to teach history independently of those judgments; the best you can do is point out where the judgments are and hope that the students will figure out what to take with a grain of salt and what not to.
Interestingly enough, that's precisely the work that historians are working towards. It is these historians who provide the information for the base textbooks. While you can't remove judgment, more often than not history is distorted in incredibly subjective ways (the winner writes the history books, as it goes). So, yes, point out that there are limitations on presenting an entirely objective view of history. That doesn't justify the current Texas revision of history books or the general call to more subjectivism. You'd think Christians, especially the Evangelical kind, would have a problem with the writing of history books when it translates to, for the readers, the subjective reading of books or bibles.
To block "deviating from the accepted teachings" is really nothing more than an attempt to cement one's own judgments into the curriculum. I'm no fan of what Texas is doing here, but this particular solution is not an acceptable way of blocking it. Go back to the drawing board.
That's pretty ironic. The drawing board is precisely where this whole debate started. Experts (in this case, historians) presented texts to be used in textbooks. This information "[deviated] from the accepted teachings" as far as the school board was concerned (consider what the word "conservative" means); more precisely, they were offended by the progressively more unbiased labeling actions of the US (not that this specific cycle in textbook revisions is the one to start using those labels). So, remove "propaganda" from the US for WW1. Change "capitalism" to "free enterprise" to avoid "capitalist pig". Change US "imperialism" to US "expansionism". Because technically it was the men who voted for women suffrage, let's just ignore how hard women worked to change the minds of men. The same for the civil rights movement.
In short, take words that accurately fit the behavior within history and been used pejorative (because they've been bad behavior at times) and either politically correct them to take out the bite of the words or just delete them. Reverting those changes would be to go back to the drawing board. Reverting those changes would be to deviate from "accepted" teaching--as the Texas School Board likes to note, they're democratically elected and hence "represent" the people and hence the "accepted" view (and these reversions to what experts say would be an acceptance of expert's attempted for unbiased views, not of the views themselves).
I'm honestly too lazy to look up the textbook definition right now... But the fine summary has it pretty close to right.
images that are of little or no educational value but which appeal solely to prurient interests
Interesting. So, I'd imagine pictures of gold, money, etc would be porn, as people lust after such things. Of course, people don't lust after the image so much as what's being displayed in the image and what can be done with those people/things. One could argue that gold and money don't qualify because people don't solely lust after gold/money but towards the power that gold/money represents and could provide; ie, there's both lust and greed involved, not solely lust. Of course, given the argument that porn is general misogynistic and represents power over women, porn really isn't solely about lust either. So, really, porn isn't porn, but erotica is porn. So, Wikipedia should only ban the non-degrading images of nude people.
Maybe I'm missing the point but I'm *glad* there is only one version of the.Net Framework 4.0
Actually, AFAIK, there's actually a few versions of the.Net Framework 4.0 released by Microsoft. There's at least a micro version and the standard version.
If the source was truly open, I'm sure someone, somewhere, would make something awesome, that I'd want to use, but it would require me using the forked (or whatever they call it) home-brew version that may or may not introduce instability into my application.
That's a pretty funny fear, actually. By the same logic, you don't like the idea of there being multiple makers of CPUs, compilers, etc because one of them might seem better than what you're currently using and any switch away could introduce the risk of instability. In short, your complaint is one that choice includes potential risk. Well, if you're so afraid of various non-Microsoft forks, then you can *choose* not to use them and avoid that perceived risk. Nothing about having choices forces you to choose something other than what you wish to use.
And when I took my problem online and said, 'WTF! I'm just doing System.Console.Writeline()' why doesn't this work!' it would lead to all sorts of confusion.
Sure, if you posted on a Microsoft forum about a non-Microsoft fork you could generate confusion for yourself and others. Oddly enough, this confusion would have more to do with you failing to provide a proper context to your problem than anything to do with there being multiple forks.
But yeah, I'm probably missing the point as my understanding of OpenSource is limited. I just don't see why you'd ever want to a modified version of the.Net Framework.
To have bugs fix that Microsoft won't fix? At some point,.Net Framework v4.0 will be old and unsupported. When that time comes, some people and companies would prefer to maintain a fork of the v4.0 line than to port one or more applications (consider how happy IT folk would be if they could patch up IE6 to their heart's content for intranet use).
The enormity of the effort they would have to mount given the physics of space travel would be rather significant, and at great cost to themselves. The time it would take would depend on how close to the speed of light they can reach. And the physics of THAT means they would have to have the technology to convert matter into energy somehow. Or, it would take them many thousands of years to get here.
You know, this is more or less precisely the reason I'd disagree with your argument. If they have mastered space travel and could either harness insane (by human standards) amounts of energy or making thousands of years trips, I'd imagine that Earth and humanity in general would hardly even register on their radar as either a target or even something of interest to study. Put in perspective, it'd be like humanity's fascination with anthills in far off-continents. To that end, I'd look at humanity's history so far. It's only in recent history that humanity has shown a clear interest in studying anthills and not merely intentionally plodding over them or ignoring them (the latter of which might result in accidentally plodding over them)
Either way, it's NOT going to be a friendly housecall, no matter how you shake it.
I'd imagine the real issue is it wouldn't be a housecall at all. If aliens were to interact with humanity, it might well just be their ship zooming close enough to our solar system to cause some indirect harm to Earth (pulling a Kuiper belt object into Earth's orbit, for example). An actual housecall seems a lot less probable, statistically, than our anthill being wiped out accidentally by a more adolescent space fairing society.
Which is more likely: getting a grant to disprove global warming, or getting a grant to produce evidence of global warming?
The latter. Why? Because there's already been tons of attempts to disprove global warming (that's, you know, what scientists do). It's the fact that it's been tested so much with so many diverse ideas and still fundamental stands that it's a theory. The bigger question is, if you wanted to make a lot of money, which path would make you more: coming up with a way to conclusively disprove global warming (translating into something fossil fuel companies would find worth millions of dollars) or yet another study gathering data that will likely enforce the global warming finding (but one of a pool of hundreds of grants from a government which probably cares more about funding some anti-crop-pest research). The fact that global warming hasn't been disproved suggests either no one has yet been smart enough to disprove it, no one who could cares enough to disprove it (neither for the monetary, the intellectual challenge, nor the prestige that'd come from it), there's some big conspiracy stopping the former two from happening, or global warming is real. Only the first and last options seem realistic (especially since two very much counters three).
Who lives in the granting agencies? What are their biases? This is what strikes at the heart of the problem. For example, my company has the technology to cure AIDS, but we can't get the time of day from any granting agencies, because they will only fund vaccine research.
Find a billionaire who has AIDS. I'm sure if your proposal is sound, they'll be willing to pony up the money. Hell, even if it's not sound, they still might given they're likely desperate for a cure.
Remember, Occam's razor was originally invented to prove that God exists.
That's the law of unintended consequences for you. Of course, given the fact that education for God has lead to various theories that remove the need for God, is it any surprise that there might be a push against education by those with an agenda? A conspiracy, conscious or subconscious, is sometimes the simplest explanation. Trying to invoke reverse psychology, though, makes things interesting.
They are supported to a degree, through the use of XP Mode in windows 7 even the latest 64bit OS is able to run old 16bit applications, I shouldn't think there is much need to expend effort supporting Win16 beyond that.
My understanding of XP Mode is that it's even more in-a-bottle than WoW was. Beyond that, XP Mode really doesn't do anything about DOS games. And it does make me worry that Microsoft might pull an Apple (ie, dropping XP Mode in the future like Apple dropped Classic Environment) given the demands of having to effectively keep up to date two OSs.
I'd say the incredibly vast majority of developers are quite happy for Win16 to no longer be supported in the latest development tools. You can run your old programs in the latest OS, you can develop them with the older development tools, really what more do you need?
I agree that you're right. Most developers probably like the idea of removing older, obsolete API with a virtual machine for those who want to run older programs. Perhaps I'd be less cranky if they included a (good) DOS mode?:)
DOS games on WinNT. Win16 on Win x64. I'm certain there are other big ones, but those are two big and obvious ones to me.
Those aren't API changes - which is the context of this discussion - those are major architectural changes.
You're mostly right. Never the less, DOS and Win16 APIs were dropped in Win x64 unnecessarily. AFAIK, even though Long mode doesn't support VM86, all non-x86 WinNT lines already had an emulator in NTVDM, so it would have been quite possible to continue support of DOS and Win16 APIs in some capacity if desired. Put in perspective, Microsoft effectively upgraded the Win16 API to the Win32 API and deprecated the usage of the Win16 API. The architectural change meant having an excuse to finally cut having to support the Win16 API. As well, it seems, Win32 for 64-bit Windows also drops some deprecated Win32 API calls (although Wikipedia doesn't mention which ones).
You can't expect compatibility that transcends architectures and operating systems.
While I can't expect such compatibility reasonably, Microsoft, Intel, AMD, and BIOS makers have all seemed to have made it their mission to continue support of programs written in 1981 for a 256KB, 16-bit processor without any modification. Ie, it's quite possible to boot some version of DOS (or Windows 9x, barring some memory issues) and run some program in 1981 on the highest end Intel system available. Microsoft and others have tried to push an unreasonably expectation of compatibility as the norm; they've fallen short at times. Hence, I applaud their efforts, but I can still point at their failings.
That sounds about right. One rarely calls a violin/game a work of art. But, the music/game play that the artist/player creates can be called art. Look no further than Tool-Assisted Speed runs for an example.
Of course, as I hinted out earlier, while one rarely calls a violin a work of art, that doesn't mean they could never be considered works of art. Most games don't qualify because they're designed to facilitate art production. Others (Animal Crossing, Farm Ville) are meant to facilitate communication and community. But, clearly some games are meant as works of art and would qualify.
The interesting thing, then, is that while virtually all games include art, very few are art. In other words, a video game is less than the some of its parts in that regard. In fact, most things in reality would qualify under that point.
The company doesn't control whether you can release the app to a device. The company controls whether the app will run on a device
You're free to release an application that doesn't run?
Thanks for butchering what I said. Note what you chopped off "(either by buying the app through an app store or paying a set fee to the company)". The point being is, if you compile an app to run on Windows and don't have Windows, you have to (or someone else has to) pay Microsoft to run that app*.
it's not that far off from most any commercial library/OS
Absolute nonsense. This sort of thing is common on game consoles, but on every other type of OS it's unheard of. Mac OS, Windows, Linux, Palm, Android - none of those platforms require you to get permission from the company before you publish an application.
Okay, "not that far off" may be too close of a wording. But, as far as I can see, there's nothing to stop someone from releasing their pre-signed iPhone applications to other users and those users enrolling in the iPhone Developer Program to sign and run those applications on their own iPhones. To that end, the $99/year iPhone Developer Program fee translates into little more than a sort of software rental fee. Yes, I don't believe that's what Apple intended, and I'm not sure if they'd allow that sort of thing to continue to happen. If that's the case, then I agree my statement was absolute nonsense.
*Yes, there's Wine, but Wine isn't perfect. And presumably if one made an iPhone OS clone, one could run apps and bypass any seeming control that Apple has. As it stands, though, to run an app for a commercial platform tends to entail paying a fee to the platform's owner, be it once or repeatedly.
I no longer program, I moved on to a field where computers are ancillary to my line of work and happy about the reboot, but I remember this being the case even a few years back. Microsoft maintains strict backwards compatibility at all risks.
DOS games on WinNT. Win16 on Win x64. I'm certain there are other big ones, but those are two big and obvious ones to me.
Microsoft has routinely left in holes in their OS that can't be easily fixed because a major software developer can't be bothered to fix their software.
I'd love to hear some examples of this.
So give credit to Microsoft for maintaining backwards compatibility, but you are just thanking them for providing a buggy OS that allows viruses to run rampant.
I didn't realize PowerPCs were a huge security hole. Or that every single API Microsoft still supports is riddled with huge security holes. Yes, it's definitely bad to leave in buggy APIs and inherently having much more API code greatly increases the chance of some of it being buggy*. But, that doesn't inherently justify creating multiple APIs to cover the same functions over 10 years or deprecating and then dropping the oldest--that alone is just API churn. Microsoft tends to be guilty of a lot more of the former than the latter and Apple seems guilty of both.
*Considering that *nixes tend to includes multiple overlapping APIs for which most users probably have part of a few installed at once, one can draw a similar concern for them as well.
You complaining about a company that retains control of whether or not you can release the app to the device even if it conforms perfectly to their APIs.
Um, not quite. The company doesn't control whether you can release the app to a device. The company controls whether the app will run on a device (either by buying the app through an app store or paying a set fee to the company). This isn't too far off from the XBox 360, either. To some extent, it's not that far off from most any commercial library/OS (the main difference is whether you effectively pay the fee upfront or whether they try to nickel and dime you later).
If that's not a deal breaker for you why do you think that complaining about shitty incompatible frameworks or passing colour components on slightly different programs is going to worry them?
Apparently the Dali Clock is a rather old program (nearly 20 years) that's been ported to a variety of platforms. Presumably, the author chose to port the Dali Clock to the iPhone precisely because it was supposed to be relatively trivial to port from a Mac OS X version. The blog highlights how untrue that ended up being; comments on the blog suggest it's because Apple provided multiple graphical APIs and if the author had been lucky several years ago, he would have chosen the one that worked on the iPhone.
In short, it doesn't sound like the author bought his iPhone to write apps for it. It was more a porting exercise to see just how trivial the task would be.
You're wasting your breath.
No doubt. But, then, most blogs are a "[waste of breathe]". These comments, both yours and mine, would likely qualify as well. I don't think that'll stop me from commenting or considering the blog for what it is, a recognition of Apple having the same sort of failings that Microsoft does: designing too many APIs/interfaces/file formats, dropping support for them whenever they can, and generally being about as bad as any other platform when it comes to having a unified, solid solution to the many problems that exist for the developers. I will give Microsoft some credit, though, for generally waiting longer than most public, commercial software companies in maintaining strict backwards compatibility.
Perhaps that is why people tend to stray into the other lane when driving/talking on the cell. A third activity comes in or they have to fork a thought for consideration during the conversation, and they run out of brainpower/memory, so the least important activity (driving) gets swapped out for a second. Humans just need more RAM.
Not quite. Humans are concurrent tasking with a maximum of about two tasks and an ability to ferry out some subtask simultaneously (something like remote procedure calls but with a delay-able return value; ferrying out a subtask to the GPU for processing is another conceptual idea); there's also a hardware watchdog to bootstrap a "fight or flight" task (override all existing tasks). The problem is either (a) a subtask stalls so the main task is stuck waiting for a reply and can't swap to another task or (b) the main task itself is taking too long. Nothing about RAM or memory swapping has anything to do with it.
Oh, and unlike the lower submitter, another processor might not help. Yes, you might be able to ferry out the subtask to the other processor to get a faster response. But, odds are good the subtask would simply stall on the second processor and you'd be in the same position.
it is if you accept the status quo. If you took all drivers out of the main tree and created a new tree specially for driver code, not only would the kernel suddenly get smaller and easier to work with (as you at least wouldn't have to download all that useless-to-you driver code) but the distinction between them would help to keep drivers as separate, truly distinct modules.
Linux is a monolithic kernel. Just because you can load or unload parts of it at runtime doesn't make those parts of it any less monolithic in design. Taking drivers out of the main tree won't make the modules any more distinct, stable, or secure. It would, potentially, better classify what is and is not a driver. That's the only main change I can really see in the move.
Of course this only happens with a stable ABI. Break that every version and all that driver code starts to wither. Keep it and you won't have to keep going back to fix up the interfaces. A stable ABI would be a good thing.
Nothing about a stable ABI moves code outside of kernel space. It would encourage the production of binary drivers, though, which if anything would worsen security and stability.
And, no that doesn't mean the interfaces couldn't ever be changed, you can change them in major versions of the kernel, just that anything built for 2.6.0 should still work with 2.6.100
So, you wish to turn major version changes into an even more political thing than it is now because?
It won't be perfect, but it'll be a lot easier to manage for driver writers. I can't see how it would be too much of a hardship for kernel developers either, unless they only churn the code in an amateur 'just hack it until it works' way.
It's funny. Your argument for a stable API is, if anything, an argument to make it so driver writers *don't* have to manage drivers. That's hardly a surprise, since I think most driver writers are of the mindset that if the hardware doesn't change, they should only have to write code for the hardware once and never have to touch the code again. It's not the mindset of "I wrote this code perfectly with perfect stability and security and consideration on exactly what my hardware does". Often enough, it's "good, it seems to work, that's good enough". Not surprisingly, kernel developers, who are concerned about more than "good enough" want code that's well designed, stable, and secure, with hopefully flexibility to work with many devices in a close to optimal way. This invariably puts them at odds with driver writers who are uninterested in maintaining anything*.
For kernel developers, a stable ABI includes negative consequences like static or binary drivers that hold back redesign and introduce security and stability concerns. It does nothing to address drivers having to reside in kernel space. Yes, this is a byproduct of "amateur 'just hack it until it works'", but that claim can be put on just about C developer. That doesn't mean all or even most developers actually function that way in the kernel development. But, even with simple screening for obvious bad design in submissions, bugs can be very obfuscated in C; Linux nor any modern OS I know of are willing to spend the time and energy to show code is provably correct**, so trying their best and fixing problems later is the best one can reasonably expect in any remotely large, modern OS.
*I don't mean this to be totally lambasting of driver writers. I can understand that trying to support hardware which you don't even have the specs on is frustrating, so one getting the hardware to seemingly work is usually enough to want to provide others a driver, even if one's work is incomplete or potentially sloppy (not the code itself but the design relative to what's possible). And once hardware does appear supported, one's interest are usually in coding something else (like a driver for other hardware), not doing furt
Last I checked, changes to the interfaces by someone puts the onus on them to fix all the calls to it in the kernel...
That's the theory. Here is how it works in practice: A pet project or cosmetic change that touches a lot of code is implemented and then dependencies are grepped. The dependencies are fixed up in a cut and paste way. Sometimes more important drivers get some review to make sure nothing breaks. Everything else just gets shipped if it compiles. Then when that kernel is used in a distribution, sometimes years later, many drivers are suddenly broken and you have to back track to see which change took it out. If someone has a lot of time and desire to support a "lesser" driver then they can spend all of their time playing catch up, but that wears out volunteers quickly and annoys commercial vendors.
Unfortunately, that's a simple fact of life. The kernel has two main responsibilities: make sure the system doesn't crash and make sure that a process doesn't exceed the authority that's granted to it. Hardware drivers, by definition, have to access hardware. While it's possible in some circumstances to create an all-encompassing kernel driver and ferry out actual hardware interface handling to a user process in a stable and secure way, in most circumstances such amounts to create a huge gaping security hole which allows for nearly trivial system crashes.
Meanwhile, within the kernel itself there's a lot of consideration that has to be given to a lot of very varied considerations, from low latency hardware access to high scalability and utilization. While this has translated into various "pet projects", in general they are efforts to take an idea an outstanding problem in one or several part of the kernel and solve them. Enough times they're incomplete solutions which only become apparent as new problems are discovered. In short, the kernel's efforts to be all things to all people has at times required significant rewrites, but the overall effort has been generally worth it.
So, while I certainly understand your feeling about significant code churning and not enough testing, I think the kernel would be in much worse shape if consideration was given more to slow and decisive actions. Yes, this does translate into volunteer churn as well, but so long as "pet projects" are more geared towards the pragmatic and less of the political, I think most volunteers who sought out Linux for pragmatic reasons are a lot less likely to be dissuaded by yet another pragmatic push to do things better.
Re:Its all about the command line stupid....
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Ubuntu on a Dime
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that's funny because back when Microsoft software became ubiquitous on PC, there was "command line" required.
How is that funny?
The pot calling the kettle black. If MS became ubiquitous on PCs at a time when they were clearly UI inferior to what was available*, then Linux being able to do the same thing is if anything predictable. Besides that, it's not like using Microsoft software means getting away from some sort of text interface (the command line, creating scripts, or registry editing at times). Yes, it is almost certainly less common than on Linux, but it's not "100 years ago" uncommon.
*The Xerox Alto came out earlier. The Apple Lisa and Apple Macintosh both came out around the time of MS-DOS's growing popularity. Both failed to become ubiquitous, for the most part, on their significant cost compared to MS-DOS/IBM machines. Linux is cheaper than Windows. In short, MS-DOS (and MS Windows) didn't win because of a superior interface but because it was "good enough" while being significantly cheaper. So, it's silly to suggest that people shouldn't choose Linux when the same reasoning was previously used to choose MS-DOS and MS Windows.
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Nice strawman you've got there. So Linux is insecure too. Yea, that really shows how secure Windows is.
Arguing "no software is perfect" is an argument more about defects in implementation than the actual fundamental design. It's the difference between making a straw house sturdy enough to withstand a hurricane by regularly slapping it with cement vs having to epoxy a brick house to reduce the weathering damage. As for an actual design, one can look into something like Coyotos.
You can't. They're both crap. Move on.
No doubt. But the inverse of that, to expect all software to have vulnerabilities at all times and for most of them to be massively critical is equally naive and obtuse. Further, good coding practices can eliminate or at least mitigate many types of possible security vulnerabilities when implementing a secure design. Instead, both Windows and Linux (and obvious Mac OS X) are created from the pragmatic desire to build a system quickly, not just at the OS but at the application level. In short, there's more desire to spend less time and energy now with prolonged efforts to fix bugs over time than to built software right once, the first time, with only minimal patching needed in the future.
Such is visible in the firmware of many appliances which, oddly enough, don't randomly misbehave in the fashion you seem to believe should be expected in everything with software. When human life and limb, and the ensuing litigation costs, start to figure into the equation a lot of testing is done even when software is designed to fail safe. And when such software malfunctions or the design doesn't fail safe, the manufacturers are condemned, not merely patted on their shoulder with a "we understand, writing complex software is hard".
In short, own up the truth. PC software is shit because you and I are unwilling to wait for good software to be written and are willing to accept the consequences, including the need for patching. The only thing left is which software has to be patched more often, how much more (if any) pain it is to patch one system over another, how much that induces more pragmatic risk, and finally how that pragmatic risk actually starts to effect you directly or indirectly. Once you acknowledge that, you're left to acknowledge that arguments over relative security are pointless. The real issue is the pragmatic damage and the pragmatic risk.
Because people have a strong obsession with infornography on the internet.
The day one doesn't have to worry about javascript performance is the day we all have infinite computing resources. Until then, there's always someone out there writing either too much or too badly javascript, most often for a pointless (to me) reason. This latter part is a big reason to disable javascript. The other two? Annoying ads and malware (which might well be residing in said annoying ad). Of course noscript. flashbock, cookie safe, etc aren't silver bullets--there's still visited site tracking, meta-refresh, and lots of other possibly nasties (like buggy image, video (with html5), or html processing code). But, reasonably, even if I had infinite resources to run whatever random javascript (or flash or java) some web site wants ran, why would I aid what is still overly heavily used as a mechanism to spam myself?
Yea, uh, that's true for *any* general purpose processor. What Crusoe original promised was that this dynamically recompiled code might be either faster (by reordering and optimizing many instructions to fit Crusoe's Very Large Instruction Word design--not unlike how the Pentium Pro and above do it in hardware with multiple APU/FPU functional units) or more power efficiently (by removing the hardware parts of the reorderer/optimizer and having the software equivalent run unoften). Of course, the former just didn't hold because Intel/AMD could just pump out higher hertz processors and the latter didn't matter as much as simply underclocking the whole CPU when the system was idle (which is often enough). In short, Crusoe found two niches that both Intel and AMD cornered.
Well, that's the other part of the equation. If the Crusoe had actually provided multiple abstraction layers and not just the one (the x86 one), perhaps they could have survived. Crusoe would have been a great platform for emulating the PSX, for example. Or providing multiple, concurrent x86/Java/whatever systems to sandbox for servers--and for which the power efficiency would be important. But, then, providing well-optimized and many software solutions isn't an easy task, especially when balanced against the task of avoiding running the "Code Morphing" software as much as possible to avoid all the penalties associated with it.
In short, the problem wasn't the demand per se; it was a lack of supply. Pining the hopes of the company on a few niches of which the competitors managed to relatively quickly occupy certainly didn't help.
When, then the answer is pretty clear. PTC becomes shit, family values becomes fuck, etc. In short, make it so the very groups that bitch about such things become unmentionable and have to self-censor. Since what they really want to do is control the hatred expressed by such languages, perhaps they should focus more on their own hatred of others using "non-vulgar" language since the words used don't change the fundamental issue, which is more with such people themselves than with others who don't have such hate in their heart that they desire to "fix" everyone else by hurting them.
There's really two main issues.
One, GPL software can be used anywhere once you've legally obtained it (barring some sort of specific law, like for nuclear reactors or whatever). This is true with any software since copyright covers copying, not use--EULAs legality being obvious a side discussion. Presumably the issue at hand is redistribution, since it's an intellectually empty exercise on what one can legally do with one's own things in such a circumstance.
Two, GPL software can only be legally redistributed if it complies with the GPL license. This means really GPL software, not just pseudo-GPL software. Pseudo-GPL software would be if, for example, I wrote a program, compiled a binary, and then redistributed just the binary with a copy of the GPL. Since I'm the original author, I have perfect redistribution rights to the binary, but no one else can actually comply with the GPL since they lack the source code. Once you get GPL software from someone else, though, if you want to redistribute it you have to comply with the GPL to remain legal (or, obviously, negotiate a deal with the original author(s) under a different license).
You bring up the issue of "installing GPL software on a Windows machine means NTFS is suddenly GPL too" and of course the answer is no. The legally murky question is whether there is such a thing as "GPL software on a Windows machine"--or even "GPL software on a system with closed firmware". Of course, most people tend to treat it as "it's okay so long as it doesn't appear to be nefarious efforts to hinder modification" (ie, Tivoization). Making a ROM chip can be nefarious or it can simply be economical (ROM being possibly cheaper than flash). Flash being used and the flash tools not being redistributed and available, GPL licensed or not, seems more nefarious and is likely to urge rancor.
When it comes down to it, in a civil suit the copyright holder of the GPL code as well as the FSF are in the best position to argue the intent of the use of the GPL and language of the GPL. With only a majority agreement need with the jury, most cases would probably be persuaded on the seeming intent of most of the GPL language and side with the copyright holder. The simple point that the FSF and the copyright holder could invariably bring is, since the issue is legally murky the vendor should default with the safest legal option: don't redistribute the code or binaries based on it.
To that end, the safest legal defense to redistributing a ROM chip with GPL code on it would be to obtain the blessing of the GPL code's copyright holder. So, I'd say there'd be a pretty legally definitively route to releasing GPL code on a ROM chip.
Consider this hypothetical: Sony starts up an ISP in Ireland. They decide to have a "three strikes" rule, where anyone caught sharing Sony music gets banned. Now, along comes Columbia Records. They notice that due to Sony's blatant and wide-spread advertising "We'll ban you if you share Sony music", Sony's ISP is now a large haven for sharing Columbia Records music but no Sony music. Hmm.. That sure looks like a conspiracy to commit copyright infringement (no different, really, than what Napster was slammed under).
The fact that the ISP isn't owned by one or a few music labels doesn't really change the point. They've taken it upon themselves not to ban copyright infringers of music (or even copyright infringers in general) but to selectively pick winners and losers in the "you can get free music and avoid paying a label their [fair or not] share of copyright money*. And unlikely the whole debate over scanning networks for obscene material, the parties in question (a) have lots of money to sue, (b) have lots of precedent for redress in civil court, and (c) are defending material where there isn't some major moral issue which might taint the subject.
In short, good fucking luck with that Eircom. I hope you get sued into the ground by a major label and then--after the Irish RIAA gets their artists named added to the search filter--by indie labels and then--after even most the indie labels with deep enough pockets sue--finally by a few really rich independent musicians. Then we can move onto all the other non-music infringement that they'll be havens for. Good luck filtering the whole internet systematically for all copyright infringement.
*Yea, clearly, it's debatable on whether they deserve a share or not morally, but legally they're in a good position for the courts.
Well, consider that "history class" in the US focuses incredibly heavily on US history and a lot of the US's major changes (or even it's founding) are the result of progressive movements and/or strong thinkers/leaders--and political opportunism, which should be mentioned. Of course, as a byproduct it'd show that while government itself tends not to push radical and/or necessary change on its own, movements, especially helped by a strong leader, have repeatedly reformed government in radical ways which have greatly benefited people. But, that'd also show progressivism too.
In short, the problem is US history has a significant progressive bias.
I think it's more than simpleminded teachings. Consider the show "Way of the Master". Ask a person if they ever lied? They're a liar. Ask if they've ever stolen? They're a thief. Ask if they've ever lusted after another? They're an adulterer. Well, any one of those three, and you go to hell in Christian teachings. But, of course, there's "a way out". By the "Way of the Master', Jesus Christ, you can be saved. It's funny, though. If you actually believed that being a liar, thief, or adulterer would send you to hell *before* you chose to become one, then shouldn't you *want* to accept the responsibility and go to hell?
As you note, it's not the simplemindedness that's the problem. It's that "social conservatives" are overwhelmingly ones who think there is a way out from responsibility. If one believes that one can steal and get away with it, then no amount of "Thou shalt not steal" will cover it. I guess the whole "genuinely repent" was not really understood. If one believes that murderers should be executed because they can't genuinely repent for their wrongs (and if you do execute them, it really makes it hard for them to repent, anyways), then under what basis would you think a simple, and mostly accepted*, liar would genuinely repent?
*The other main factor of "Way of the Master" is the way it tries to shame people into confession and their teaching. Of course, for most murderers there's already a great deal of shame pushed against them by family and/or friends. But, lairs tend to be less shamed because of many reasons. Regardless, real repentance obviously comes from within, not from being socially brow beat into disassociation from one's sins. That was one of the points behind Jesus' "Judge not lest thee be judged". Of course, when people go as far as to outright fight and reject social brow beating, "social conservatives" want to ingrain society into law. And that leads into wanted to be the Romans who would persecute and execute Jesus. But, then, considering just how ineffectual "social conservatives" claim government is and will be, it's funny how many of them are hammering so hard to become a part of it.
Rather true. The power of swear words is precisely in their taboo nature. To use them regularly makes you look vulgar (aka, of the common people). It also removes their power. This is true of things like "God" and having talk of Christianity flooded everywhere, but that's another discussion. Yes, it would be preferable if people strove to learn new and creative ways to express amazement and offensiveness with either the words that already exist or, if necessary (not likely), with new words instead of simply co-opting existing words.
I think the point was, being offended to the point that you'd actually seek to have the word legally banned is out of proportion to what the situation calls for. Being offended is a fact of life. Striving to ban "bad" words doesn't change the ability to offend because, as you note, the words chosen are being chosen specifically to offend. The words are a symptom, not the disease. I don't think there's a real cure for the disease, as at times there is reason to be offended with others or the general facts of reality. The only thing that can be done is to try to comfort those when they are in pain, when applicable.
Um, people use "black" and "gay" all the time. No one is being fined or arrested for the use of those words, nor should they be. Yes, one person may scold another for the words they use. That holds if you say "nigger" or if they say "fuck". It's a one-on-one interaction, where each person tries to defend their belief that a word should or shouldn't be used. It's the same as here. Yes, the people around you may not speak up, but then most people are too uninvolved or too cowardly to express their own views on the subject. And yes, that puts you an uncomfortable position where you feel you're battling the world when one person expresses derision about your word choices. That's life. That's how it's always been. The only difference is how often and what words are most likely to result in someone else pipping up and actually commenting.
Me? I'm more concerned about the actual anger and thoughts of others. PC-ness simply masks the issue. Having said that, I don't actually do what I should to work through that issue--to befrien
Interestingly enough, that's precisely the work that historians are working towards. It is these historians who provide the information for the base textbooks. While you can't remove judgment, more often than not history is distorted in incredibly subjective ways (the winner writes the history books, as it goes). So, yes, point out that there are limitations on presenting an entirely objective view of history. That doesn't justify the current Texas revision of history books or the general call to more subjectivism. You'd think Christians, especially the Evangelical kind, would have a problem with the writing of history books when it translates to, for the readers, the subjective reading of books or bibles.
That's pretty ironic. The drawing board is precisely where this whole debate started. Experts (in this case, historians) presented texts to be used in textbooks. This information "[deviated] from the accepted teachings" as far as the school board was concerned (consider what the word "conservative" means); more precisely, they were offended by the progressively more unbiased labeling actions of the US (not that this specific cycle in textbook revisions is the one to start using those labels). So, remove "propaganda" from the US for WW1. Change "capitalism" to "free enterprise" to avoid "capitalist pig". Change US "imperialism" to US "expansionism". Because technically it was the men who voted for women suffrage, let's just ignore how hard women worked to change the minds of men. The same for the civil rights movement.
In short, take words that accurately fit the behavior within history and been used pejorative (because they've been bad behavior at times) and either politically correct them to take out the bite of the words or just delete them. Reverting those changes would be to go back to the drawing board. Reverting those changes would be to deviate from "accepted" teaching--as the Texas School Board likes to note, they're democratically elected and hence "represent" the people and hence the "accepted" view (and these reversions to what experts say would be an acceptance of expert's attempted for unbiased views, not of the views themselves).
Interesting. So, I'd imagine pictures of gold, money, etc would be porn, as people lust after such things. Of course, people don't lust after the image so much as what's being displayed in the image and what can be done with those people/things. One could argue that gold and money don't qualify because people don't solely lust after gold/money but towards the power that gold/money represents and could provide; ie, there's both lust and greed involved, not solely lust. Of course, given the argument that porn is general misogynistic and represents power over women, porn really isn't solely about lust either. So, really, porn isn't porn, but erotica is porn. So, Wikipedia should only ban the non-degrading images of nude people.
Actually, AFAIK, there's actually a few versions of the .Net Framework 4.0 released by Microsoft. There's at least a micro version and the standard version.
That's a pretty funny fear, actually. By the same logic, you don't like the idea of there being multiple makers of CPUs, compilers, etc because one of them might seem better than what you're currently using and any switch away could introduce the risk of instability. In short, your complaint is one that choice includes potential risk. Well, if you're so afraid of various non-Microsoft forks, then you can *choose* not to use them and avoid that perceived risk. Nothing about having choices forces you to choose something other than what you wish to use.
Sure, if you posted on a Microsoft forum about a non-Microsoft fork you could generate confusion for yourself and others. Oddly enough, this confusion would have more to do with you failing to provide a proper context to your problem than anything to do with there being multiple forks.
To have bugs fix that Microsoft won't fix? At some point, .Net Framework v4.0 will be old and unsupported. When that time comes, some people and companies would prefer to maintain a fork of the v4.0 line than to port one or more applications (consider how happy IT folk would be if they could patch up IE6 to their heart's content for intranet use).
You know, this is more or less precisely the reason I'd disagree with your argument. If they have mastered space travel and could either harness insane (by human standards) amounts of energy or making thousands of years trips, I'd imagine that Earth and humanity in general would hardly even register on their radar as either a target or even something of interest to study. Put in perspective, it'd be like humanity's fascination with anthills in far off-continents. To that end, I'd look at humanity's history so far. It's only in recent history that humanity has shown a clear interest in studying anthills and not merely intentionally plodding over them or ignoring them (the latter of which might result in accidentally plodding over them)
I'd imagine the real issue is it wouldn't be a housecall at all. If aliens were to interact with humanity, it might well just be their ship zooming close enough to our solar system to cause some indirect harm to Earth (pulling a Kuiper belt object into Earth's orbit, for example). An actual housecall seems a lot less probable, statistically, than our anthill being wiped out accidentally by a more adolescent space fairing society.
The latter. Why? Because there's already been tons of attempts to disprove global warming (that's, you know, what scientists do). It's the fact that it's been tested so much with so many diverse ideas and still fundamental stands that it's a theory. The bigger question is, if you wanted to make a lot of money, which path would make you more: coming up with a way to conclusively disprove global warming (translating into something fossil fuel companies would find worth millions of dollars) or yet another study gathering data that will likely enforce the global warming finding (but one of a pool of hundreds of grants from a government which probably cares more about funding some anti-crop-pest research). The fact that global warming hasn't been disproved suggests either no one has yet been smart enough to disprove it, no one who could cares enough to disprove it (neither for the monetary, the intellectual challenge, nor the prestige that'd come from it), there's some big conspiracy stopping the former two from happening, or global warming is real. Only the first and last options seem realistic (especially since two very much counters three).
Find a billionaire who has AIDS. I'm sure if your proposal is sound, they'll be willing to pony up the money. Hell, even if it's not sound, they still might given they're likely desperate for a cure.
That's the law of unintended consequences for you. Of course, given the fact that education for God has lead to various theories that remove the need for God, is it any surprise that there might be a push against education by those with an agenda? A conspiracy, conscious or subconscious, is sometimes the simplest explanation. Trying to invoke reverse psychology, though, makes things interesting.
My understanding of XP Mode is that it's even more in-a-bottle than WoW was. Beyond that, XP Mode really doesn't do anything about DOS games. And it does make me worry that Microsoft might pull an Apple (ie, dropping XP Mode in the future like Apple dropped Classic Environment) given the demands of having to effectively keep up to date two OSs.
I agree that you're right. Most developers probably like the idea of removing older, obsolete API with a virtual machine for those who want to run older programs. Perhaps I'd be less cranky if they included a (good) DOS mode? :)
You're mostly right. Never the less, DOS and Win16 APIs were dropped in Win x64 unnecessarily. AFAIK, even though Long mode doesn't support VM86, all non-x86 WinNT lines already had an emulator in NTVDM, so it would have been quite possible to continue support of DOS and Win16 APIs in some capacity if desired. Put in perspective, Microsoft effectively upgraded the Win16 API to the Win32 API and deprecated the usage of the Win16 API. The architectural change meant having an excuse to finally cut having to support the Win16 API. As well, it seems, Win32 for 64-bit Windows also drops some deprecated Win32 API calls (although Wikipedia doesn't mention which ones).
While I can't expect such compatibility reasonably, Microsoft, Intel, AMD, and BIOS makers have all seemed to have made it their mission to continue support of programs written in 1981 for a 256KB, 16-bit processor without any modification. Ie, it's quite possible to boot some version of DOS (or Windows 9x, barring some memory issues) and run some program in 1981 on the highest end Intel system available. Microsoft and others have tried to push an unreasonably expectation of compatibility as the norm; they've fallen short at times. Hence, I applaud their efforts, but I can still point at their failings.
That sounds about right. One rarely calls a violin/game a work of art. But, the music/game play that the artist/player creates can be called art. Look no further than Tool-Assisted Speed runs for an example.
Of course, as I hinted out earlier, while one rarely calls a violin a work of art, that doesn't mean they could never be considered works of art. Most games don't qualify because they're designed to facilitate art production. Others (Animal Crossing, Farm Ville) are meant to facilitate communication and community. But, clearly some games are meant as works of art and would qualify.
The interesting thing, then, is that while virtually all games include art, very few are art. In other words, a video game is less than the some of its parts in that regard. In fact, most things in reality would qualify under that point.
You're free to release an application that doesn't run?
Thanks for butchering what I said. Note what you chopped off "(either by buying the app through an app store or paying a set fee to the company)". The point being is, if you compile an app to run on Windows and don't have Windows, you have to (or someone else has to) pay Microsoft to run that app*.
Okay, "not that far off" may be too close of a wording. But, as far as I can see, there's nothing to stop someone from releasing their pre-signed iPhone applications to other users and those users enrolling in the iPhone Developer Program to sign and run those applications on their own iPhones. To that end, the $99/year iPhone Developer Program fee translates into little more than a sort of software rental fee. Yes, I don't believe that's what Apple intended, and I'm not sure if they'd allow that sort of thing to continue to happen. If that's the case, then I agree my statement was absolute nonsense.
*Yes, there's Wine, but Wine isn't perfect. And presumably if one made an iPhone OS clone, one could run apps and bypass any seeming control that Apple has. As it stands, though, to run an app for a commercial platform tends to entail paying a fee to the platform's owner, be it once or repeatedly.
DOS games on WinNT. Win16 on Win x64. I'm certain there are other big ones, but those are two big and obvious ones to me.
I'd love to hear some examples of this.
I didn't realize PowerPCs were a huge security hole. Or that every single API Microsoft still supports is riddled with huge security holes. Yes, it's definitely bad to leave in buggy APIs and inherently having much more API code greatly increases the chance of some of it being buggy*. But, that doesn't inherently justify creating multiple APIs to cover the same functions over 10 years or deprecating and then dropping the oldest--that alone is just API churn. Microsoft tends to be guilty of a lot more of the former than the latter and Apple seems guilty of both.
*Considering that *nixes tend to includes multiple overlapping APIs for which most users probably have part of a few installed at once, one can draw a similar concern for them as well.
Um, not quite. The company doesn't control whether you can release the app to a device. The company controls whether the app will run on a device (either by buying the app through an app store or paying a set fee to the company). This isn't too far off from the XBox 360, either. To some extent, it's not that far off from most any commercial library/OS (the main difference is whether you effectively pay the fee upfront or whether they try to nickel and dime you later).
Apparently the Dali Clock is a rather old program (nearly 20 years) that's been ported to a variety of platforms. Presumably, the author chose to port the Dali Clock to the iPhone precisely because it was supposed to be relatively trivial to port from a Mac OS X version. The blog highlights how untrue that ended up being; comments on the blog suggest it's because Apple provided multiple graphical APIs and if the author had been lucky several years ago, he would have chosen the one that worked on the iPhone.
In short, it doesn't sound like the author bought his iPhone to write apps for it. It was more a porting exercise to see just how trivial the task would be.
No doubt. But, then, most blogs are a "[waste of breathe]". These comments, both yours and mine, would likely qualify as well. I don't think that'll stop me from commenting or considering the blog for what it is, a recognition of Apple having the same sort of failings that Microsoft does: designing too many APIs/interfaces/file formats, dropping support for them whenever they can, and generally being about as bad as any other platform when it comes to having a unified, solid solution to the many problems that exist for the developers. I will give Microsoft some credit, though, for generally waiting longer than most public, commercial software companies in maintaining strict backwards compatibility.
Not quite. Humans are concurrent tasking with a maximum of about two tasks and an ability to ferry out some subtask simultaneously (something like remote procedure calls but with a delay-able return value; ferrying out a subtask to the GPU for processing is another conceptual idea); there's also a hardware watchdog to bootstrap a "fight or flight" task (override all existing tasks). The problem is either (a) a subtask stalls so the main task is stuck waiting for a reply and can't swap to another task or (b) the main task itself is taking too long. Nothing about RAM or memory swapping has anything to do with it.
Oh, and unlike the lower submitter, another processor might not help. Yes, you might be able to ferry out the subtask to the other processor to get a faster response. But, odds are good the subtask would simply stall on the second processor and you'd be in the same position.
Linux is a monolithic kernel. Just because you can load or unload parts of it at runtime doesn't make those parts of it any less monolithic in design. Taking drivers out of the main tree won't make the modules any more distinct, stable, or secure. It would, potentially, better classify what is and is not a driver. That's the only main change I can really see in the move.
Nothing about a stable ABI moves code outside of kernel space. It would encourage the production of binary drivers, though, which if anything would worsen security and stability.
So, you wish to turn major version changes into an even more political thing than it is now because?
It's funny. Your argument for a stable API is, if anything, an argument to make it so driver writers *don't* have to manage drivers. That's hardly a surprise, since I think most driver writers are of the mindset that if the hardware doesn't change, they should only have to write code for the hardware once and never have to touch the code again. It's not the mindset of "I wrote this code perfectly with perfect stability and security and consideration on exactly what my hardware does". Often enough, it's "good, it seems to work, that's good enough". Not surprisingly, kernel developers, who are concerned about more than "good enough" want code that's well designed, stable, and secure, with hopefully flexibility to work with many devices in a close to optimal way. This invariably puts them at odds with driver writers who are uninterested in maintaining anything*.
For kernel developers, a stable ABI includes negative consequences like static or binary drivers that hold back redesign and introduce security and stability concerns. It does nothing to address drivers having to reside in kernel space. Yes, this is a byproduct of "amateur 'just hack it until it works'", but that claim can be put on just about C developer. That doesn't mean all or even most developers actually function that way in the kernel development. But, even with simple screening for obvious bad design in submissions, bugs can be very obfuscated in C; Linux nor any modern OS I know of are willing to spend the time and energy to show code is provably correct**, so trying their best and fixing problems later is the best one can reasonably expect in any remotely large, modern OS.
*I don't mean this to be totally lambasting of driver writers. I can understand that trying to support hardware which you don't even have the specs on is frustrating, so one getting the hardware to seemingly work is usually enough to want to provide others a driver, even if one's work is incomplete or potentially sloppy (not the code itself but the design relative to what's possible). And once hardware does appear supported, one's interest are usually in coding something else (like a driver for other hardware), not doing furt
Unfortunately, that's a simple fact of life. The kernel has two main responsibilities: make sure the system doesn't crash and make sure that a process doesn't exceed the authority that's granted to it. Hardware drivers, by definition, have to access hardware. While it's possible in some circumstances to create an all-encompassing kernel driver and ferry out actual hardware interface handling to a user process in a stable and secure way, in most circumstances such amounts to create a huge gaping security hole which allows for nearly trivial system crashes.
Meanwhile, within the kernel itself there's a lot of consideration that has to be given to a lot of very varied considerations, from low latency hardware access to high scalability and utilization. While this has translated into various "pet projects", in general they are efforts to take an idea an outstanding problem in one or several part of the kernel and solve them. Enough times they're incomplete solutions which only become apparent as new problems are discovered. In short, the kernel's efforts to be all things to all people has at times required significant rewrites, but the overall effort has been generally worth it.
So, while I certainly understand your feeling about significant code churning and not enough testing, I think the kernel would be in much worse shape if consideration was given more to slow and decisive actions. Yes, this does translate into volunteer churn as well, but so long as "pet projects" are more geared towards the pragmatic and less of the political, I think most volunteers who sought out Linux for pragmatic reasons are a lot less likely to be dissuaded by yet another pragmatic push to do things better.
The pot calling the kettle black. If MS became ubiquitous on PCs at a time when they were clearly UI inferior to what was available*, then Linux being able to do the same thing is if anything predictable. Besides that, it's not like using Microsoft software means getting away from some sort of text interface (the command line, creating scripts, or registry editing at times). Yes, it is almost certainly less common than on Linux, but it's not "100 years ago" uncommon.
*The Xerox Alto came out earlier. The Apple Lisa and Apple Macintosh both came out around the time of MS-DOS's growing popularity. Both failed to become ubiquitous, for the most part, on their significant cost compared to MS-DOS/IBM machines. Linux is cheaper than Windows. In short, MS-DOS (and MS Windows) didn't win because of a superior interface but because it was "good enough" while being significantly cheaper. So, it's silly to suggest that people shouldn't choose Linux when the same reasoning was previously used to choose MS-DOS and MS Windows.