BeOS was NEVER as far along as Nextstep was even when taking into acount the hardware transition. BeOS had poor to no network or print servies. We where promissed that they would be released "real soon now" for years. Granted what Be had was better then the same stuff on Next. But Be lacked a lot of very important stuff.
In 1996, Apple CEO Gil Amelio estimated that it would take three years of development for BeOS to succeed Mac OS; it took NEXTSTEP five.
Mac OS X has less code in common with NEXTSTEP than commonly assumed; it also lacked large swaths of current functionality, and much of what it had was rewritten. The XNU kernel, including networking, is a fresh implementation of the same architecture. Printing was redone to work with the new driver and display models, then scrapped and replaced with CUPS just two years ago. Developers balked when told that the only way to get their apps running natively on Rhapsody would be to rewrite them in Java or some crazy moon language, so Apple had to go write Carbon.
Unlike the grandparent, I'm not convinced that 'Plan Be' would have worked out better than what we have now, but reusable lines of code and time to market weren't the NeXT advantages Apple thought they would be.
Michigan: "The union of one man and one woman in marriage shall be the only agreement recognized as marriage or similar union for any purpose." (emphasis mine)
Ohio: "This state and its political subdivisions shall not create or recognize a legal status for relationships of unmarried individuals that intends to approximate the design, qualities, significance or effect of marriage."
I'll let you fill in the other nine.
The finer points of gross misunderstanding
on
BusyBox Goes 1.0.0
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· Score: 3, Informative
The GPL does not require disclosure of source code for *use* of the software. It also does not require one to *release* the source code, only provide it to customers.
In context, "use" implies distribution; it's imprecise, but hardly evidence of a "gross misunderstanding". I have no idea what you infer from "release" that you don't from "provide" or "make... available". Also, your own reading is in error. The GPL says nothing about "customers"; the source must "accompany" the binaries (whether provided to customers, partners, or anyone else) or be offered to "any third party".
According to some readings of the GPL, if you don't modify the sources, you could even get away with merely providing a link to the Busybox ftp site!
Section 3c, which allows the recipient of a binary and an offer simply to pass on both, applies only to noncommercial distribution. Most if not all the products in the hall of shame are commercial, and the one possible exception I saw does not include information about an offer of source Also, I cannot see how I could satisfy section 3c by linking to the BusyBox FTP site. The web site contains source, not an offer, and the FTP site appears not to be open to the public. A link by itself doesn't meet the requirements of an offer in section 3b, and I would need a 3b offer to make a 3c reference.
I thought that taking photos of any public building in the USA these days could result in arrest by the actual police?
No law explicitly authorizes such arrests. Citizens have been molested for photographing public buildings and threatened with arrest, but it's difficult to know when that's a reliable threat and when it's an empty scare tactic. One Mike Maginnis of Denver, Colorado claims he was arrested when he refused to surrender his film after taking pictures of and around a hotel where Vice-President Cheney was staying, but the Denver PD denies this, and nobody has corroborated his story.
Also, the UCPD are state police with limited jurisdiction. I don't know how it is in New Zealand, but this is typical of public universities over here.
Us asking how an entity could exist outside our timeline is pretty analogous to a Flatlander asking how an entity could exist outside his plane.
Awestruck at the sight of the mysteries of the earth, thus unveiled before my unworthy eye, I said to my Companion, "Behold, I am become as a God. For the wise men in our country say that to see all things, or as they express it, omnividence, is the attribute of God alone." There was something of scorn in the voice of my Teacher as he made answer: "is it so indeed? Then the very pick-pockets and cut-throats of my country are to be worshiped by your wise men as being Gods: for there is not one of them that does not see as much as you see now. But trust me, your wise men are wrong."
Edwin Abbott, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
But from reading the article, I don't get the impression that this is an anti-piracy effort either. Consider that the RPMs and DEBs are unaffected. Could be anti-piracy, but it could also be just a download counting system or maybe per-user customization.
The RPM and DEB formats carry their own checksums and can't be modified simply by twiddling a few bites. Counting downloads doesn't require rewriting the file, and exactly what sort of "per-user customization" involves rewriting 20 bytes in a gzip header?
It's not lying.... All they can do is threaten to stop offering the CVS.
Dishonest, disingenuous, intended to deceive--call it what you like.
In fact, the license says upfront why they provide the CVS and that they would prefer that people not use it to distribute binaries, etc.
In fact, it doesn't. The license page explains which components are subject to which license and contains the LGPL, AFPL, and ReWind license; the sources page contains the CVS information and a warning against commercial redistribution but nowhere even hints that noncommercial redistribution could have adverse consequences. That's beside the point, though; TransGaming should choose a license that accurately reflects its intent.
Ofcourse if you are concerned about TG.COM being hacked, they could just as easily modify the MD5sum on the website.
It would take additional effort, though, to modify the md5sum on the Gentoo Portage master server. Of course, getting the hash from Gentoo wouldn't help if the Cedega ebuild maintainer had downloaded the same bogus file, but without cooperation from TransGaming it's the best that can be done.
simply use the gentoo ebuild tools to generate a new MD5 hash based on the.tgz you downloaded... you *DO* trust transgaming's own binaries, dont you??? hmmm???:)
You may have been joking, but whoever modded this insightful presumably wasn't. The Portage hash check assures the user that the Cedega tarball isn't really a rootkit uploaded by whoever 0wned TransGaming's server. It would be best if all publishers cryptographically signed their releases, but since most don't, comparing hashes with a trusted third party like Gentoo is a reasonable compromise.
I thought I recalled reading in the article that some had been encrypted using a one-time pad. How exactly did a pair of reporters manage to crack a one-time pad? Its considered one of the hardest types of encryption to crack is it not?
A one-time pad is theoretically impossible to crack. The laptop presumably contained the pad or the decrypted messages.
Appropriating the entire song and changing some of the lyrics goes beyond the normal bounds of fair use. It's why Weird Al Yankovic gets the copyright holder's permission before publishing his parody songs....
Maybe you should tell him: Al does get permission from the original writers of the songs that he parodies. While the law supports his ability to parody without permission, he feels it's important to maintain the relationships that he's built with artists and writers over the years. Plus, Al wants to make sure that he gets his songwriter credit (as writer of new lyrics) as well as his rightful share of the royalties. (emphasis added)
Computers use powers of two for every kind of calculation.
Except when they don't. Binary is dominant, but not universal.
The most important reason of all to do the measurements this way is because it's easier.
Sure, as long as we're dealing with binary systems, sometimes binary multiples will be more convenient. They're even more convenient when they're unambiguous.
It also makes a kind of sense to redefine mega, giga, and tera in terms of base 2 because a byte is a base 2 unit. Why not just go all out when you're using them and make everything else base 2 as well?
We don't go all out. We use base 10 numbers in front of these "base 2" units. Given a computer with eight-bit bytes, 2^8 would fit the architecture better than 2^10; we use the latter number solely because of its proximity to 10^3. And what about those eight bits? 8 is 2^3, a power of two at least, but an odd one if you'll pardon the pun. Why not 2^2 or 2^4? For that matter, why bytes at all? Because we meatbags need to encode text, and English fits in seven bits plus one for parity. Moreover, even if we were using numbers like 3 and 10 for the computers' sake and not our own, it still would make no sense to confuse the meanings of existing words instead of adopting unambiguous terms.
You may not that bits, which come out to a nice, round number in every number base, are measured in base 10.
Except when they aren't. Memory capacity is consistently expressed in binary powers whether using bits or bytes. Most of the networking software I've seen defines a kilobit as 2^10 bits, and some service providers do it too. Expressions of bus speed may depend on the passengers.
It's too much to ask that a microcontroller that reports usage have half of it's hardware devoted to base conversion, especially when the result may come out to some terrible fraction.
Bytes are discrete, and an integer in base 2 is an integer in base 10. A report for human eyes usually has the latter, but none of this is relevant to whether you then divide the number by 1000 or 1024 or not at all. If it makes sense to measure something in groups of 2^10, do so, but call it what it is. More to the point, don't call it what it isn't.
To use your statement, I find that just because people are using mega, giga, and tera with the original meanings just because they're entrenched is folly at best and is better regarded as arrogant.
It has nothing to do with entrenchment; science and technology demand clarity and accuracy.
No, the fact is that SI unit prefixes have slightly different values when describing computer storage, and you're just going to have to accept that.
A recordable CD can hold 650 * 2^20 bytes; a single-layer recordable DVD, 4.7 * 10^9. Back when magnetic media were measured in megabytes, values of mega- included 2^20, 10^6, and (in the case of the '1.44 MB' floppy) 1,024,000; today they're uniformly sold by 10^9s but measured by common desktop environments in 2^30s. No, the fact is that the SI prefixes are consistently misused only when describing computer memory, and the 7% difference at the gigabyte level is significant.
After a brief glance at Amazon, it also looks like you can't get BT phones unless they're for AT&T or T-Mobile.
Bluetooth-capable phones are available for all common digital standards and from all major carriers.
Considering that GSM coverage here in the USA seems to be kinda spotty compared to, say, TDMA, that's a serious drawback.
GSM coverage is mostly tied to population density, and for many people it's good enough. Cingular and AT&T Wireless still have TDMA networks and sell or sold the Sony Ericsson T62u, a GAIT phone with an optional Bluetooth dongle.
Hang on, how would what you describe at the end there still be an abuse of the patent system?
It still allows the licensor to infringe even legitimate patents without consequence.
Can you think of any other way to avoid being hurt by patents?
Stop patent offices from granting trivial patents. Anyone with more to fear than to gain from such patents ought to be spending at least as much lobbying for reform as perpetuating the status quo.
I can't recall ever hearing about Microsoft even threatening a patent lawsuit, and I'm sure it would get out if they did.
Then you probably can't recall ever hearing about a program named VirtualDub. That's the most readily verifiable example I know; other situations have been handled more discreetly.
I'm no MS apologist, but I believe in giving them all the acclaim for the ethical things they get right as I can.
Even had Microsoft never enforced any of its patents, few people could afford to invest significantly in a project that could be shut down at a whim--and since Microsoft has used its patents offensively, ignoring them is not a prudent course. A truly "defensive" patent would be licensed royalty-free and on the sole condition that the license is revoked if the licensee sues the licensor for patent infringement, and that still would be an abuse of the patent system.
"If I must be ruled by larcenous bullies, I much prefer that they be located far away. Local bullies know far more about me and my doings than faraway bullies sitting in offices in Washington, and can oppress me far more effectively."
Even assuming that all politicians are equally larcenous and equally belligerent and hence that voting them out or moving would bring only superficial changes--none of which is true--I would prefer mine to have the least ambition and the smallest budget.
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Mac OS X has less code in common with NEXTSTEP than commonly assumed; it also lacked large swaths of current functionality, and much of what it had was rewritten. The XNU kernel, including networking, is a fresh implementation of the same architecture. Printing was redone to work with the new driver and display models, then scrapped and replaced with CUPS just two years ago. Developers balked when told that the only way to get their apps running natively on Rhapsody would be to rewrite them in Java or some crazy moon language, so Apple had to go write Carbon.
Unlike the grandparent, I'm not convinced that 'Plan Be' would have worked out better than what we have now, but reusable lines of code and time to market weren't the NeXT advantages Apple thought they would be.
Michigan: "The union of one man and one woman in marriage shall be the only agreement recognized as marriage or similar union for any purpose." (emphasis mine)
Ohio: "This state and its political subdivisions shall not create or recognize a legal status for relationships of unmarried individuals that intends to approximate the design, qualities, significance or effect of marriage."
I'll let you fill in the other nine.
I've read Mr. Spiers's story before, and I've just read it again now. He was harassed and intimidated but not arrested.
No law explicitly authorizes such arrests. Citizens have been molested for photographing public buildings and threatened with arrest, but it's difficult to know when that's a reliable threat and when it's an empty scare tactic. One Mike Maginnis of Denver, Colorado claims he was arrested when he refused to surrender his film after taking pictures of and around a hotel where Vice-President Cheney was staying, but the Denver PD denies this, and nobody has corroborated his story.
Also, the UCPD are state police with limited jurisdiction. I don't know how it is in New Zealand, but this is typical of public universities over here.
Edwin Abbott, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
Al does get permission from the original writers of the songs that he parodies. While the law supports his ability to parody without permission, he feels it's important to maintain the relationships that he's built with artists and writers over the years. Plus, Al wants to make sure that he gets his songwriter credit (as writer of new lyrics) as well as his rightful share of the royalties. (emphasis added)