I also think GPL is a scourge that gives OSS a shitty name because idiots such as yourself care more about manipulating others so you can get at what they have then actually sharing common code and functionality.
Okay, now I'm really confused. Several people, you included, seem to have inferred that my original post was saying "I want to use GPL code in my product without paying the associated dues." Where exactly did I write this? Heck, it wasn't even from a personal standpoint, I was just trying to be objective about it.
I personally like the "share and share alike" concept behind the GPL and have both used and released code under it. However, I can also see where a managerial type like Ballmer is coming from when he looks at it from Microsoft's behemoth codebase in his mind. Is it really so hard for Slashdot commentators to see both sides?
With regards to the GPL, it has to be explained every fucking time to people like you who don't get it.
Can I suggest you remove your head from your ass and read what I said?
Whether subversively or accidentally
In a large software project with dozens of developers how hard is it to imagine one person lifting a library or portion of code from a GPL project -- either because the are lazy, or because they don't understand the rules? Clearly the GPL isn't going around "infecting" things, but an unaware or intentionally malicious developer may still use it. The outcome is the same.
They are a convicted monopolist and have called upon everyone to view Linux as a cancer.
I assume you're talking about this? A few things to keep in mind:
This was 10 years ago. A long time.
Second, if you read the statement in context Ballmer wasn't really referring to Linux as a cancer but the GPL. And, depending on the situation, he is probably right. If you have a proprietary software product and you want to keep it that way (for better or worse), the introduction of a GPL component into it really would be like a "cancer" in the sense that it may force it open in spite of your wishes to the contrary. Whether subversively or accidentally, the outcome is the same. Heck, even The Register points out the vague nature of the inclusion clause.
So it depends on your point-of-view. If you want to keep a product closed, the GPL is something to be concerned about. If you prefer and encourage open source development, the GPL is a good thing which helps keep people honest. Like most worthwhile things it can be both good and bad at the same time, depending on the circumstances.
I thought it odd as well, but checking the company's website it is in fact "Celmet".
It appears that Celmet is a proprietry compound they've been making for a while from nickel and chromium which is designed to be very porous (and high surface area). This announcement seems to just be that they've created an aluminum variant and figure it should work well in lithium batteries.
However, like others have noted, it appears to be pure conjecture on the company's part. There's no mention of creating an actual battery using this method and, if I were to guess, this whole thing is just an attempt to generate interest in their new (patented, trademarked, and whatever else-d) material.
...which really is the sole source of what passes for MainStreamMedia in the US, ever report that the organization which vets, or does the background checks for the TSA, is Xe Services, formerly known as Blackwater USA??? Never, never will they ever report that very crucial fact, which may be why over 55 sky marshals (the doods with the guns aboard the jetliners) have been fired, and/or convicted and jailed for everything from human trafficking, to drug smuggling, rape, etc., etc.? Blackwater OK's the crooks, so the TSA is full of crooks.
Interesting, but I'm curious why none of this is mentioned on either the Blackwater nor the TSA Wikipedia pages. Nothing even on the discussion pages.
Black helicopters invading Wikipedia, or something more mundane?
And Notch really has no incentive to finish the game anymore.
I wonder about this. According to the Minecraft stats, there have been 2,507,617 purchases made for the game. Even assuming a 10 euro average price (I'm not sure how the price has increased over time), that's over 25 million euros he's already made -- and it's probably a bit more than that. The guy is rolling in money, and unless developing Minecraft is something he really enjoys, I don't see any real motivation for him to continue much longer.
It is clear that the operation in parenthesis occurs first so 6/2(1+2) becomes 6/2(3) or 6/2x3. The question then is do you multiply or divide first. The precedence I learned in school was multiply, divide, add, subtract (mnemonic "My Dear Aunt Sally") so that would be 6/6 or 1.
That mnemonic helps remember the order of operations, but is not absolute, as multiplication and division are on the same level of precedence. One does not come before the other and has nothing to do with which you perform first. Rather, you do the operation which appears first starting on the left side (division is left-associative).
In this case, the statement 6/2(3) is equal to (6/2)(3) = (3)(3) = 9.
Basically Java is frozen in stone and will never be updated with anything worthwhile. Apparently anything that requires JVM support is absolutely out of the question.
When I first read about the type erasure fiasco and now the new lambda mess, this was my exact same thought. The only way they might be able to move the language and framework forward at this point is to have a huge drop-off where compatibility with older JVM is removed cold turkey in favor of improving the language. They'd call it something reasonable like Java 2, or something stupid like Java X, and it would be a fresh new start.
It doesn't even seem like compatibility would be that bad. Java programs can target specific versions of the JVM, right? It seems like it should be possible to have multiple versions installed. However, it would probably mean a significant rewrite of the JVM and compiler, a big investment, combined with the effort of maintaining two separate Java branches for who knows how long.
The problem is that Oracle is behind the wheel now, and that just won't happen. As you said, Java is frozen.
While M$ may prevail in this case, the case itself ironically can be used to invalid many of M$'s own patents.
Don't cry foul when what you wish for come back to take a big bite at your ass, Micro$oft !
Microsoft might be many things, but a patent troll isn't usually one of them. That's one reason that Apple and Google are siding with them on this issue, the other being that these big technology companies are the primary targets for genuine patent trolls like i4i.
The entire patent system is in need of serious reform. Microsoft pushing to make it easier to invalidate all the completelystupid and pointless patents the USPTO has gotten into the habit of granting is only a good thing. It's the first step in (hopefully) bringing some sanity back into the system, and I don't care if it's Microsoft, Apple, or ScumSoft doing the legwork and footing the bill.
The pictures and video are pretty interesting, but also awfully short. It would be neat to see some combined expressions rather than just simple blinking and mouth movement. Speaking of the movement in the video, was anyone else reminded of Not Quite Human? Haven't thought about that movie in quite a while:)
Also, can anyone say "uncanny valley"? They've definitely made progress, but there's still something... not quite right about it. Considering that the easiest part of creating an android is probably the static external features such as skin, hair, and eyes (lots of practice from movie/TV makeup), it's interesting that a still photo still triggers the cues which tell us "that's not real."
Now only a few things left to do:
1. Create an evil twin bent death, carnage, and annihilation 3. ??? 4. Profit! (well, that, or doom the human race)
It might have been a bit unfair that MS had a stranglehold on the browser market for those PCs that had Windows pre-installed.
Except that IE's market share was slipping long before the EU felt the need to pointlessly start throwing their weight around.
Choice is good, and it's great that the EU evened the playing field. But too many choices will confuse the general public.
The EU did not level anything. All they did, as you note, is introduce confusion. Anyone who's read much of Raymond Chen's blog knows the thought that goes into initial user experience. Starting off by throwing up dialog boxes and asking the user questions they cannot answer is NOT helpful and just reminds people that computers are hard to use.
Something like 90% of users probably fall into one or two categories when it comes to the stupid browser ballot:
1. Already have a browser they like. Ballot serves no purpose. 2. Have no idea what a "browser" is, and just want to check their email. They click a button randomly, or maybe based on which icon is the prettiest. Ballot still serves no purpose for the user -- all it manages to do is artificially spread around market share to no-name browsers.
Given TFS's saying "The answers are very mixed.", I would guess most fall into the 2nd category. Maybe browsers that haven't seen an improvement should make shinier icons.
What else is new? "Imitate Chrome" has been the mantra for the entire Firefox 4 project. Everything about it reeks of "we can't think of anything original, so let's just copy Chrome". Violating the non-client area by putting tabs and buttons in the title bar (much more likely to break in future versions of $OS), removing important UI elements (decreasing usability), increasing the release schedule to artificially balloon version numbers, etc.
The best part is that everything I hate about Chrome, and all the reasons I don't use it, will now be translated over to Firefox 4. I can only hope that IE9 doesn't fail quite as hard as the other two, otherwise I guess I'll be sticking with Firefox 3 for the foreseeable future.
If your time isn't worth much then spending all day fiddling with Linux systems to get things working is OK.
So time spent fiddling with a Windows system is somehow magically free?
If the time spent is orders of magnitude less than getting an equivalent Linux desktop working the way you want, then yes. Especially when you start talking about thousands of machines, the relative cost of the Windows "fiddling" approaches zero.
This is especially true once you start looking at using Group Policy management and software deployment.
Or in other words meta-data is data. Sorry, but until you understand that in your bones you are not a decent programmer.
Metadata is data, yes, but it is not the data. Users largely don't care if metadata is lost because a file is copied to an incompatible filesystem on a flash drive, synced to Dropbox, emailed to a friend, or maybe even printed out.
Things like ADS provide a way to store data about a file which doesn't have an integrated mechanism to store metadata (e.g., EXIF). Keeping it in a separate name and using an alternative API call makes sense from a compatibility and a simplicity point-of-view. Should old software break when encountering an ADS-tagged file? Should calling ReadFile() really return every single data stream in an object? I doubt the user would care very much for either option.
When it comes down to it, users only care about the data proper; metadata is second-class data and fluff. Losing a last-modified date might be annoying, but losing the 200 page thesis is unacceptable.
I would have to include NTFS alternate data streams as well. It sounded like a good idea, but in practice it just left huge security holes.
Ignoring the fact that alternate data streams are incredibly useful, how exactly are they "huge security holes"? That doesn't even make a little sense.
The only argument might be that it makes it easier to hide things from a user, but if that's the case you could just bury a file somewhere in the filesystem, protect the parent directory with ACLs (so it can't be found by searching the filesystem), and be done with it.
ADS is not a security problem. If you have rights to the ADS, you have rights to the main file. If malicious software has gained rights to the user's files, that user has already lost.
the visionary men that made computers what they are today:
Interesting list. With one exception (Bill Gates), you seem to have excluded those who are the actual reason computers exist as they do today.
No mention of Ed Roberts, the father of the personal computer. No mention of Bricklin and Frankston, developers of Visicalc, the "killer app" of the personal computer. No mention of Don Estridge, the man who broke through IBM's famous bureaucracy to lead development of the IBM PC. No mention of Canion, Harris, and Murto, founders of Compaq, the company which dethroned the IBM PC, introduced the "portable" computer, and led the way to compatible commodity PCs. No mention of Steve Wozniak, easily equal to Jobs in terms of importance (if not moreso) to the success of Apple.
Selling and marketing computers is important, but without engineers there wouldn't be anything to sell.
It's so frustrating how correct you are. I used to enjoy reading comments to a story, but now it's essentially impossible because of how BROKEN the scrolling is (at least in Firefox and IE). Scrolling using the mousewheel is slow as hell and when using the keyboard it's very unresponsive. That and the new style is hard to read and has too much whitespace. I feel like I'm staring at a lightbulb trying to read gray text.
For me this redesign has just demonstrated why I hate web 2.0. You are held hostage at the whims of moron marketing people and crappy devs like those behind the driving force of this redesign. It serves absolutely no meaningful purpose, is worse than the previous design, and everyone hates it. As you noted, fewer people are commenting, and if it doesn't improve people won't come back.
Taco - Why can't you wait until you have something that's actually better than the previous version before releasing this crap on us? Or do you not have a dev/staging system in place and this is your way of testing it? Waiting for people to come up with Stylish hacks to fix your useless and broken CSS? Just wondering.
One step closer to a single outfit controlling^Wsupplying all your media needs.
Along with that, it will be interesting to see what happens when Comcast gets Universal Studios along with NBC. I guess it means they'll start suing their own file-sharing customers -- which they won't even have to subpoena the names for. Maybe you'll even just see a charge on your next bill:
Comcast High Speed Internet Service: $52.99 Movie Sharing Fee: $25,000.00 Total due by Feb 8, 2011: $25,052.99
Slashdot Mirror
I also think GPL is a scourge that gives OSS a shitty name because idiots such as yourself care more about manipulating others so you can get at what they have then actually sharing common code and functionality.
Okay, now I'm really confused. Several people, you included, seem to have inferred that my original post was saying "I want to use GPL code in my product without paying the associated dues." Where exactly did I write this? Heck, it wasn't even from a personal standpoint, I was just trying to be objective about it.
I personally like the "share and share alike" concept behind the GPL and have both used and released code under it. However, I can also see where a managerial type like Ballmer is coming from when he looks at it from Microsoft's behemoth codebase in his mind. Is it really so hard for Slashdot commentators to see both sides?
With regards to the GPL, it has to be explained every fucking time to people like you who don't get it.
Can I suggest you remove your head from your ass and read what I said?
Whether subversively or accidentally
In a large software project with dozens of developers how hard is it to imagine one person lifting a library or portion of code from a GPL project -- either because the are lazy, or because they don't understand the rules? Clearly the GPL isn't going around "infecting" things, but an unaware or intentionally malicious developer may still use it. The outcome is the same.
The GPL doesn't care about intent, only actions.
They are a convicted monopolist and have called upon everyone to view Linux as a cancer.
I assume you're talking about this? A few things to keep in mind:
This was 10 years ago. A long time.
Second, if you read the statement in context Ballmer wasn't really referring to Linux as a cancer but the GPL. And, depending on the situation, he is probably right. If you have a proprietary software product and you want to keep it that way (for better or worse), the introduction of a GPL component into it really would be like a "cancer" in the sense that it may force it open in spite of your wishes to the contrary. Whether subversively or accidentally, the outcome is the same. Heck, even The Register points out the vague nature of the inclusion clause.
So it depends on your point-of-view. If you want to keep a product closed, the GPL is something to be concerned about. If you prefer and encourage open source development, the GPL is a good thing which helps keep people honest. Like most worthwhile things it can be both good and bad at the same time, depending on the circumstances.
I thought it odd as well, but checking the company's website it is in fact "Celmet".
It appears that Celmet is a proprietry compound they've been making for a while from nickel and chromium which is designed to be very porous (and high surface area). This announcement seems to just be that they've created an aluminum variant and figure it should work well in lithium batteries.
However, like others have noted, it appears to be pure conjecture on the company's part. There's no mention of creating an actual battery using this method and, if I were to guess, this whole thing is just an attempt to generate interest in their new (patented, trademarked, and whatever else-d) material.
...which really is the sole source of what passes for MainStreamMedia in the US, ever report that the organization which vets, or does the background checks for the TSA, is Xe Services, formerly known as Blackwater USA??? Never, never will they ever report that very crucial fact, which may be why over 55 sky marshals (the doods with the guns aboard the jetliners) have been fired, and/or convicted and jailed for everything from human trafficking, to drug smuggling, rape, etc., etc.? Blackwater OK's the crooks, so the TSA is full of crooks.
Interesting, but I'm curious why none of this is mentioned on either the Blackwater nor the TSA Wikipedia pages. Nothing even on the discussion pages.
Black helicopters invading Wikipedia, or something more mundane?
It's starting to get time for the yearly reinstall anyway. My Windows is getting slow, and a reinstall really clears things up.
If you need a "yearly reinstall" of any Windows since XP, it's a problem with you, not Windows.
The benefit of regular reinstalls ended with Windows ME.
JYR76-C9WTK-T8G7R-4V9D7-TY32J
Ha. Sounds like a good tag for this story.
Tagged: JYR76C9WTKT8G7R4V9D7TY32J
And Notch really has no incentive to finish the game anymore.
I wonder about this. According to the Minecraft stats, there have been 2,507,617 purchases made for the game. Even assuming a 10 euro average price (I'm not sure how the price has increased over time), that's over 25 million euros he's already made -- and it's probably a bit more than that. The guy is rolling in money, and unless developing Minecraft is something he really enjoys, I don't see any real motivation for him to continue much longer.
It is clear that the operation in parenthesis occurs first so 6/2(1+2) becomes 6/2(3) or 6/2x3. The question then is do you multiply or divide first. The precedence I learned in school was multiply, divide, add, subtract (mnemonic "My Dear Aunt Sally") so that would be 6/6 or 1.
That mnemonic helps remember the order of operations, but is not absolute, as multiplication and division are on the same level of precedence. One does not come before the other and has nothing to do with which you perform first. Rather, you do the operation which appears first starting on the left side (division is left-associative).
In this case, the statement 6/2(3) is equal to (6/2)(3) = (3)(3) = 9.
Basically Java is frozen in stone and will never be updated with anything worthwhile. Apparently anything that requires JVM support is absolutely out of the question.
When I first read about the type erasure fiasco and now the new lambda mess, this was my exact same thought. The only way they might be able to move the language and framework forward at this point is to have a huge drop-off where compatibility with older JVM is removed cold turkey in favor of improving the language. They'd call it something reasonable like Java 2, or something stupid like Java X, and it would be a fresh new start.
It doesn't even seem like compatibility would be that bad. Java programs can target specific versions of the JVM, right? It seems like it should be possible to have multiple versions installed. However, it would probably mean a significant rewrite of the JVM and compiler, a big investment, combined with the effort of maintaining two separate Java branches for who knows how long.
The problem is that Oracle is behind the wheel now, and that just won't happen. As you said, Java is frozen.
While M$ may prevail in this case, the case itself ironically can be used to invalid many of M$'s own patents.
Don't cry foul when what you wish for come back to take a big bite at your ass, Micro$oft !
Microsoft might be many things, but a patent troll isn't usually one of them. That's one reason that Apple and Google are siding with them on this issue, the other being that these big technology companies are the primary targets for genuine patent trolls like i4i.
The entire patent system is in need of serious reform. Microsoft pushing to make it easier to invalidate all the completely stupid and pointless patents the USPTO has gotten into the habit of granting is only a good thing. It's the first step in (hopefully) bringing some sanity back into the system, and I don't care if it's Microsoft, Apple, or ScumSoft doing the legwork and footing the bill.
PS: That doesn't help your "argument".
No Natalya, now ve Spike dem. Better luck next time, slugheads!
I AM INVINCIBLE!
Merely related ideas are not "ironic". Ironic is when one's words say one thing and one's actions another that contradict it.
Like rain on your wedding day?
Didn't Star Trek do a couple episodes about the Twibel problem?
Yes. The Twouble With Twibels.
I would think that Twials and Twilbelations is more appropriate given the nature of this story :)
The pictures and video are pretty interesting, but also awfully short. It would be neat to see some combined expressions rather than just simple blinking and mouth movement. Speaking of the movement in the video, was anyone else reminded of Not Quite Human? Haven't thought about that movie in quite a while :)
Also, can anyone say "uncanny valley"? They've definitely made progress, but there's still something... not quite right about it. Considering that the easiest part of creating an android is probably the static external features such as skin, hair, and eyes (lots of practice from movie/TV makeup), it's interesting that a still photo still triggers the cues which tell us "that's not real."
Now only a few things left to do:
1. Create an evil twin bent death, carnage, and annihilation
3. ???
4. Profit! (well, that, or doom the human race)
It might have been a bit unfair that MS had a stranglehold on the browser market for those PCs that had Windows pre-installed.
Except that IE's market share was slipping long before the EU felt the need to pointlessly start throwing their weight around.
Choice is good, and it's great that the EU evened the playing field. But too many choices will confuse the general public.
The EU did not level anything. All they did, as you note, is introduce confusion. Anyone who's read much of Raymond Chen's blog knows the thought that goes into initial user experience. Starting off by throwing up dialog boxes and asking the user questions they cannot answer is NOT helpful and just reminds people that computers are hard to use.
Something like 90% of users probably fall into one or two categories when it comes to the stupid browser ballot:
1. Already have a browser they like. Ballot serves no purpose.
2. Have no idea what a "browser" is, and just want to check their email. They click a button randomly, or maybe based on which icon is the prettiest. Ballot still serves no purpose for the user -- all it manages to do is artificially spread around market share to no-name browsers.
Given TFS's saying "The answers are very mixed.", I would guess most fall into the 2nd category. Maybe browsers that haven't seen an improvement should make shinier icons.
Basically as of Beta 12 they're imitating Chrome.
What else is new? "Imitate Chrome" has been the mantra for the entire Firefox 4 project. Everything about it reeks of "we can't think of anything original, so let's just copy Chrome". Violating the non-client area by putting tabs and buttons in the title bar (much more likely to break in future versions of $OS), removing important UI elements (decreasing usability), increasing the release schedule to artificially balloon version numbers, etc.
The best part is that everything I hate about Chrome, and all the reasons I don't use it, will now be translated over to Firefox 4. I can only hope that IE9 doesn't fail quite as hard as the other two, otherwise I guess I'll be sticking with Firefox 3 for the foreseeable future.
So time spent fiddling with a Windows system is somehow magically free?
If the time spent is orders of magnitude less than getting an equivalent Linux desktop working the way you want, then yes. Especially when you start talking about thousands of machines, the relative cost of the Windows "fiddling" approaches zero.
This is especially true once you start looking at using Group Policy management and software deployment.
Or in other words meta-data is data. Sorry, but until you understand that in your bones you are not a decent programmer.
Metadata is data, yes, but it is not the data. Users largely don't care if metadata is lost because a file is copied to an incompatible filesystem on a flash drive, synced to Dropbox, emailed to a friend, or maybe even printed out.
Things like ADS provide a way to store data about a file which doesn't have an integrated mechanism to store metadata (e.g., EXIF). Keeping it in a separate name and using an alternative API call makes sense from a compatibility and a simplicity point-of-view. Should old software break when encountering an ADS-tagged file? Should calling ReadFile() really return every single data stream in an object? I doubt the user would care very much for either option.
When it comes down to it, users only care about the data proper; metadata is second-class data and fluff. Losing a last-modified date might be annoying, but losing the 200 page thesis is unacceptable.
I would have to include NTFS alternate data streams as well. It sounded like a good idea, but in practice it just left huge security holes.
Ignoring the fact that alternate data streams are incredibly useful, how exactly are they "huge security holes"? That doesn't even make a little sense.
The only argument might be that it makes it easier to hide things from a user, but if that's the case you could just bury a file somewhere in the filesystem, protect the parent directory with ACLs (so it can't be found by searching the filesystem), and be done with it.
ADS is not a security problem. If you have rights to the ADS, you have rights to the main file. If malicious software has gained rights to the user's files, that user has already lost.
the visionary men that made computers what they are today:
Interesting list. With one exception (Bill Gates), you seem to have excluded those who are the actual reason computers exist as they do today.
No mention of Ed Roberts, the father of the personal computer.
No mention of Bricklin and Frankston, developers of Visicalc, the "killer app" of the personal computer.
No mention of Don Estridge, the man who broke through IBM's famous bureaucracy to lead development of the IBM PC.
No mention of Canion, Harris, and Murto, founders of Compaq, the company which dethroned the IBM PC, introduced the "portable" computer, and led the way to compatible commodity PCs.
No mention of Steve Wozniak, easily equal to Jobs in terms of importance (if not moreso) to the success of Apple.
Selling and marketing computers is important, but without engineers there wouldn't be anything to sell.
It's so frustrating how correct you are. I used to enjoy reading comments to a story, but now it's essentially impossible because of how BROKEN the scrolling is (at least in Firefox and IE). Scrolling using the mousewheel is slow as hell and when using the keyboard it's very unresponsive. That and the new style is hard to read and has too much whitespace. I feel like I'm staring at a lightbulb trying to read gray text.
For me this redesign has just demonstrated why I hate web 2.0. You are held hostage at the whims of moron marketing people and crappy devs like those behind the driving force of this redesign. It serves absolutely no meaningful purpose, is worse than the previous design, and everyone hates it. As you noted, fewer people are commenting, and if it doesn't improve people won't come back.
Taco - Why can't you wait until you have something that's actually better than the previous version before releasing this crap on us? Or do you not have a dev/staging system in place and this is your way of testing it? Waiting for people to come up with Stylish hacks to fix your useless and broken CSS? Just wondering.
One step closer to a single outfit controlling^Wsupplying all your media needs.
Along with that, it will be interesting to see what happens when Comcast gets Universal Studios along with NBC. I guess it means they'll start suing their own file-sharing customers -- which they won't even have to subpoena the names for. Maybe you'll even just see a charge on your next bill:
Comcast High Speed Internet Service: $52.99
Movie Sharing Fee: $25,000.00
Total due by Feb 8, 2011: $25,052.99
Thank you for choosing Comcast!
Wow, I had no idea he'd posted the Sith review -- thanks for the heads-up!
It is like holding your break when released into the vacuum of space: too little, too late.
Ah, you had me all ready for a car analogy there. :(