FYI they were under no obligation whatsoever to include the copyright notice. They did though. Also, so what if it was in a DLL? Is that important?
I do so tire of people claiming it was ripped off though. As I said, they were supposed to take it, that was the whole idea. It was why BSD was asked toi implement it in the first place, to avoid each vendor having their own implementation and buggering up TCP/IP. Microsoft didn't actually have to, and I believe they were using their own stack to begin with, but as soon as possible they switched.
For example, does it mean traditional programming languages will be modified, handling of variables will be different, maybe new operators?
It does mean that the traditional view of the operating system will change, and that might change programming languages. A variable will still be a variable, same for constants, and when it comes down to it there are very few actual operators. I'm not aware of quantum mechanics introducing any new operators, so I can't see that they would be needed for quantum computing. It could be that the way we use them use will radically change.
Will it be able to solve Traveling Salesman in linear (or constant)time?
TSP is NP-hard, so yes, it's tricky, but what do you mean solve? You mean as in if your solution is true for n cities it will remain true for n+1?
Any computer can do the TSP, so I guess you mean, could a quantum computer calculate a superior answer to the TSP for a large value of n. One assumes you also mean 'and do it quicker'. And the answer is, I'm buggered if I know.
Is it able to solve chess game?
Chess, aside from being Zero Sum, does not have a single solution in the classic sense, such that it could be said to be solved that I am ware of. Any single solution, once described, could be negated (beaten) because of the extremely large combination of possible configurations possible on a chess board, and not all pieces move the same way. I seriously doubt there is one unbeatable strategy, since a player cannot control the first piece the other player moves.
It certainly didn't hurt Microsoft when they ripped off FreeBSD's TCP/IP networking stack and called it their own, no?/sigh
Here we go again.
Microsoft did not rip off the BSC TCP/IP stack. They, and every other OS vendor were *expected* (almost required I think) to use it, AND they left the copyright notices in, as required. The idea was that everyone would be on the same page, as it were. OK Microsoft buggered it a bit with their darn silly extensions, but even these did not stop network connections from other OS's from working properly.
Just have a project so obscure or specialised that no bugger's going to think its worthwhile nicking in the first place. Like mine for instance/sob.
Actually licensing is the way to go. True no license will stop someone stealing it, but it will give you the right to send 'cease and desist' notices to any site hosting the offending code. Its very hard to spread a usurped version of a program if reputable download locations won't host it.
How is my hardware faulty? It works fine when I'm running Linux.
It's classic Microsoftie newspeak. If Microsoft release a product that doesn't work properly on otherwise perfectly useable hardware, it's the fault of the hardware itself.
For instance, downstairs I have a new duel core box (AMD) with 1Gb of ram and a gforce 7300 on a 10 Mb network running Vista. It's slower then my main machine, which is four years old and has a two year old AMD 400+ 64 bit chip, 1gb ram and a gforce 6200. Network performance from the Vista machine is a joke when compared to all the other machines on that network, well not a joke, because that would mean it was funny. Do you think it's the hardwares fault?
That particular machine isn't mine, hence why it still has Vista on it, but I booted it into the Ubuntu livecd for a test. The difference? well lets just say 'fuck me', and leave it there.
That does go too far, yes, but as I said, thew whole point of the website is to share your information. If we paid Facebook for an account I'm sure it would be a lot easier to control what of your information they use, but we don't, and as a result they will data mine you for all your worth.
Anyone who didn't think this would happen is fooling themselves. ANy compaany will try first, and back off only if they have to. Companies that play nice will get dropped by investors. Besides, how long before it happens so often people end up accepting it? Or accepting that a premium must be paid to opt out, rather than just ticking a box.
Remember the scene in Minority report when John Anderton is walking past those animated billboards and every one talks to him using his name? That's an advertisers wet dream, the idea that all of your consumer activity can be accessed, controlled, and used to monitor everything you do.
Given that the entire point of the site is to share information about yourself, I have a bit of a problem with people complaining that it shares information about them.
It's a free service, not a charity. They need to turn a profit, like any other company, and the only commodity is the information that you *chose* to give them in the first place. Don't like it? Don't use it, it's ever so simple...
What's next, people deliberately setting themselves on fire and then suing the company they bought the matches from?
Only real question is, how will knol prevent inheritance of wikipedias "cult" society?
I don't know. We'll have to see. You can be pretty sure that if people start complaining a lot google will come down hard on any such movement if it threatens their profits from advertising on the site.
Clearly, the #1 test for any new web authoring service or information repository is whether it will be capable of archiving priceless webcomic knowledge for future generations.
Actually, yes, it would be.
Did you for instance know that one of the reasons so many copies of fifties and sixties comics and novella's are around is that shipping companies used to buy them in bulk and use them as ballast? They'd then sell them on when they arrived at their destination. Nowadays those very same comics are, as you know, bought and sold for hundreds of dollers sometimes.
I know this because I relied on that very thing to keep me supplied here in the UK. I'd prefer if a slightly more reliable means of preserving for posterity were available for the current online 'pulp' phenomena. Wikipedia refusing to do so is snobbery, and lack of foresight.
Wikipedia is getting something of a reputation for being elitist and at times discriminatory without justification. Whatever the truth, when such labels are applied people are usually ripe for alternatives.
Google did this once before, in spite of what they say to the contrary, against Sourceforge. In that case, good though they are, Sourceforge was becoming quite unreliable for non paying users, and their service, while including many wonderful options, was unweildy to use.
Along came google with google code. It's a simpler service, nowhere near the features of sourceforge, but for sheer simplicity it's a joy. I wasn't alone in moving there.
Will I use knol? Well it might be just the place to place some articles derived from papers I've published, we shall see.
You do realise the only reason you're free to post this sort of thing on the Internet is because people have fought for that freedom in the past, right?
I realise it, I'm short a few older members of my family because of that very thing, but there is not a one who would, I am sure, been happier if they hadn't had to die in what I am sure was an awful way (including in one case falling thousands of feet in a bomber, during which I have no idea if he was alive or not).
Awareness of the terrible consequences of war does not diminish my ability to acknowledge the sacrifice of those who died, it merely causes me to hope that it might one day end.
Historically I realise this is viewed as a futile hope, but nonetheless I continue.
Well, that's just dandy if you're an American. But if you lived in Taiwan, South Korea or Israel, or Japan then America having the ability to shoot down ICBMs might come in handy
Am I alone in thinking that the way forward for our species is to stop pointing weapons at each other? I mean, we immortalised Ramses the great's assault on Megiddo. Isn't it about time we learned from that experience and considered a future that didn't involve everyone we don't like dying?
well, my bank gives me an automatic overdraft facility
I have always refused to have an overdraft. I've had bank peoples get quite annoyed with me over the years about this, after all they like punters to be in debt, selling debt has always been a big money thing. One even issued me with a credit card once. I went to see the bank manager, gave him the card cut up into pieces, and said that if it happened again I'd close my account.
I am unique among the people I know in that I am the only person to go through undergraduate university and then a four year phd without once going overdrawn.
Ok, a few weeks of living on toenails and tapwater from time to time, but I see it as a win overall.
You're sort of right, but credit cards can be a bad thing if you share one with someone and the relationship is ending. At least with a debit card the worst they can do is empty your current account.
My neighbor of a few years back had his wife walk out having spent tens of thousands on credit cards in the weeks before, *and* emptied his bank account for good measure (then demanded alimony, nice lady..). He never managed to get her to pay the card bills directly, but took all the money back as a 'shared expense' from the house sale, on which he made a handsome profit, as in 100k.
Plastic money of all kinds scares me to be honest. It's an evil I have to cope with, but credit cards are a bad idea.
On topic though, who on earth doesn't check to see whether what they are being billed for is what they actually owe? Ok some did, which is how they got caught, but obviously not everyone did.
I check all my bills every month, especially ones prone to change, like amazon/Audible/other online shopping orders and suchlike. I didn't always have to be so thorough, but there's this thing called the internet, and apparently not everyone on it is a cuddly bundle of trustworthiness.
if they insert something, like say adverts, into a data stream while someone is viewing the pirate bay, would that mean they were befitting from piracy?
Audible (the online audiobook seller) has an option in it's playback program 'rip to cd using Nero'. That wouldn't survive in a stricter copying environment.
It says you can only do this once, but I haven't noticed any physical restriction when I tested it by doing it twice for one of my books (well, I started it, it's a boring process, so I don't know if it completes the second time round). They don't let you rip to anything but CD, not mp3, but you can rip to CD image and convert straight to mp3, which is what I do.
It's not *totally* clear to me what the legal position of these mp3's is, but so long as Audible make money from me and I don't shove the mp3s on the internet I'm pretty certain we're both ok with this arrangement.
If on the other hand they dropped the rip to CD option, my subscription would be canceled the day I found out, and it'd be back to buying books on CD from amazon.
My personal way to get beautiful typesetting from office is to export to rtf and convert to LaTeX. Not that I have to do that often, fortunately.
Is there any particulerly useful procedure you have for doing this? I have a 250 page document in MSword that I would really like to have in latex, but I'm working blind as it were.
a bigger problem from microsofts point of view is that they made such a fuss about not being able to implement ODF in office, and now they may have to, showing their previous statements to be lies. (well, perhaps it won't be too hard, after all it happens so often:)
Reliance on plug ins for office ODF compatibility would be crazy, either they implement it on the 'save as' menu, and allow it to be chosen as default, or they get sidelined by users as being too much work when compared to a simple and quick save operation.
I wasn't disputing that, I'm disputing that a company is going to change if they're invested into a current service contract unless something is really bad. I don't think Vista is going to harm microsofts current service contracts at all personally. It won't get great takeup for a while, but as you point out, while changing between linux and unix vendors is easy, changing from microsoft is a big deal, they are a one stop shop. It's not just the service contracts, its all the software, the data, the entire infrastructure of a company. That can be huge, and if its software is mainly windows native, ongodly expensive too.
I think that a great many companies will stay put and wait for Vista to mature, or die and be replaced with windows 7 (if microsoft bomb with windows 7, then, well, anything could happen). Linux is going to have to get very invested to break into those long term microsoft support contracts.
Interestingly, while all the large organizations and institutions I know personally are heavily windows invested, all the small businesses I know of are either Linux or Mac.
Its always puzzled me why ISP's won't text you about network outages, filtering and bandwidth limitations.
For the same reason Water companies don't contact you and tell you about all the leaky water pipes in your area, they don't want to be sending negative news to everyone, it makes them look bad.
If they can blame you for breaking their terms and conditions, that makes you the bad guy, but if they sent a text telling you all the latest things they'd decided to not let you do, regardless of whether you were doing them, that makes them the bad guy, and customers would start leaving.
Probably exactly the same thing. The trick is, as I made in my original post, getting people to move from their existing support contracts to one that involves them using Linux. Linux being free is not at all the point, It's the support people want, and if they're happy with what they have, they are unlikely to change to a Linux based one.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, way to have blinkered vision.
FYI they were under no obligation whatsoever to include the copyright notice. They did though. Also, so what if it was in a DLL? Is that important?
I do so tire of people claiming it was ripped off though. As I said, they were supposed to take it, that was the whole idea. It was why BSD was asked toi implement it in the first place, to avoid each vendor having their own implementation and buggering up TCP/IP. Microsoft didn't actually have to, and I believe they were using their own stack to begin with, but as soon as possible they switched.
well you had fun, so I don't know what your muttering about. Perhaps your penis isn't large enough.
For example, does it mean traditional programming languages will be modified, handling of variables will be different, maybe new operators?
It does mean that the traditional view of the operating system will change, and that might change programming languages. A variable will still be a variable, same for constants, and when it comes down to it there are very few actual operators. I'm not aware of quantum mechanics introducing any new operators, so I can't see that they would be needed for quantum computing. It could be that the way we use them use will radically change.
Will it be able to solve Traveling Salesman in linear (or constant)time?
TSP is NP-hard, so yes, it's tricky, but what do you mean solve? You mean as in if your solution is true for n cities it will remain true for n+1?
Any computer can do the TSP, so I guess you mean, could a quantum computer calculate a superior answer to the TSP for a large value of n. One assumes you also mean 'and do it quicker'. And the answer is, I'm buggered if I know.
Is it able to solve chess game?
Chess, aside from being Zero Sum, does not have a single solution in the classic sense, such that it could be said to be solved that I am ware of. Any single solution, once described, could be negated (beaten) because of the extremely large combination of possible configurations possible on a chess board, and not all pieces move the same way. I seriously doubt there is one unbeatable strategy, since a player cannot control the first piece the other player moves.
It certainly didn't hurt Microsoft when they ripped off FreeBSD's TCP/IP networking stack and called it their own, no? /sigh
Here we go again.
Microsoft did not rip off the BSC TCP/IP stack. They, and every other OS vendor were *expected* (almost required I think) to use it, AND they left the copyright notices in, as required. The idea was that everyone would be on the same page, as it were. OK Microsoft buggered it a bit with their darn silly extensions, but even these did not stop network connections from other OS's from working properly.
Just have a project so obscure or specialised that no bugger's going to think its worthwhile nicking in the first place. Like mine for instance /sob.
Actually licensing is the way to go. True no license will stop someone stealing it, but it will give you the right to send 'cease and desist' notices to any site hosting the offending code. Its very hard to spread a usurped version of a program if reputable download locations won't host it.
Its just the FSF as far as I'm aware. I looked into it myself, but opted for them listing my project but not holding copyright.
How is my hardware faulty? It works fine when I'm running Linux.
It's classic Microsoftie newspeak. If Microsoft release a product that doesn't work properly on otherwise perfectly useable hardware, it's the fault of the hardware itself.
For instance, downstairs I have a new duel core box (AMD) with 1Gb of ram and a gforce 7300 on a 10 Mb network running Vista. It's slower then my main machine, which is four years old and has a two year old AMD 400+ 64 bit chip, 1gb ram and a gforce 6200. Network performance from the Vista machine is a joke when compared to all the other machines on that network, well not a joke, because that would mean it was funny. Do you think it's the hardwares fault?
That particular machine isn't mine, hence why it still has Vista on it, but I booted it into the Ubuntu livecd for a test. The difference? well lets just say 'fuck me', and leave it there.
That does go too far, yes, but as I said, thew whole point of the website is to share your information. If we paid Facebook for an account I'm sure it would be a lot easier to control what of your information they use, but we don't, and as a result they will data mine you for all your worth.
Anyone who didn't think this would happen is fooling themselves. ANy compaany will try first, and back off only if they have to. Companies that play nice will get dropped by investors. Besides, how long before it happens so often people end up accepting it? Or accepting that a premium must be paid to opt out, rather than just ticking a box.
Remember the scene in Minority report when John Anderton is walking past those animated billboards and every one talks to him using his name? That's an advertisers wet dream, the idea that all of your consumer activity can be accessed, controlled, and used to monitor everything you do.
Given that the entire point of the site is to share information about yourself, I have a bit of a problem with people complaining that it shares information about them.
It's a free service, not a charity. They need to turn a profit, like any other company, and the only commodity is the information that you *chose* to give them in the first place. Don't like it? Don't use it, it's ever so simple...
What's next, people deliberately setting themselves on fire and then suing the company they bought the matches from?
Only real question is, how will knol prevent inheritance of wikipedias "cult" society?
I don't know. We'll have to see. You can be pretty sure that if people start complaining a lot google will come down hard on any such movement if it threatens their profits from advertising on the site.
Clearly, the #1 test for any new web authoring service or information repository is whether it will be capable of archiving priceless webcomic knowledge for future generations.
Actually, yes, it would be.
Did you for instance know that one of the reasons so many copies of fifties and sixties comics and novella's are around is that shipping companies used to buy them in bulk and use them as ballast? They'd then sell them on when they arrived at their destination. Nowadays those very same comics are, as you know, bought and sold for hundreds of dollers sometimes.
I know this because I relied on that very thing to keep me supplied here in the UK. I'd prefer if a slightly more reliable means of preserving for posterity were available for the current online 'pulp' phenomena. Wikipedia refusing to do so is snobbery, and lack of foresight.
Wikipedia is getting something of a reputation for being elitist and at times discriminatory without justification. Whatever the truth, when such labels are applied people are usually ripe for alternatives.
Google did this once before, in spite of what they say to the contrary, against Sourceforge. In that case, good though they are, Sourceforge was becoming quite unreliable for non paying users, and their service, while including many wonderful options, was unweildy to use.
Along came google with google code. It's a simpler service, nowhere near the features of sourceforge, but for sheer simplicity it's a joy. I wasn't alone in moving there.
Will I use knol? Well it might be just the place to place some articles derived from papers I've published, we shall see.
You do realise the only reason you're free to post this sort of thing on the Internet is because people have fought for that freedom in the past, right?
I realise it, I'm short a few older members of my family because of that very thing, but there is not a one who would, I am sure, been happier if they hadn't had to die in what I am sure was an awful way (including in one case falling thousands of feet in a bomber, during which I have no idea if he was alive or not).
Awareness of the terrible consequences of war does not diminish my ability to acknowledge the sacrifice of those who died, it merely causes me to hope that it might one day end.
Historically I realise this is viewed as a futile hope, but nonetheless I continue.
Well, that's just dandy if you're an American. But if you lived in Taiwan, South Korea or Israel, or Japan then America having the ability to shoot down ICBMs might come in handy
Am I alone in thinking that the way forward for our species is to stop pointing weapons at each other?
I mean, we immortalised Ramses the great's assault on Megiddo. Isn't it about time we learned from that experience and considered a future that didn't involve everyone we don't like dying?
well, my bank gives me an automatic overdraft facility
I have always refused to have an overdraft. I've had bank peoples get quite annoyed with me over the years about this, after all they like punters to be in debt, selling debt has always been a big money thing. One even issued me with a credit card once. I went to see the bank manager, gave him the card cut up into pieces, and said that if it happened again I'd close my account.
I am unique among the people I know in that I am the only person to go through undergraduate university and then a four year phd without once going overdrawn.
Ok, a few weeks of living on toenails and tapwater from time to time, but I see it as a win overall.
Basically the suns solar winds push back interstellar matter. This can have a shape.
So what your saying is, out there in interstellar space is a giant space kitteh saying 'I has a shape, let me apply it to you'.
If it drops some giant space kitteh kibble while doing this, we are so screwed..
You're sort of right, but credit cards can be a bad thing if you share one with someone and the relationship is ending. At least with a debit card the worst they can do is empty your current account.
My neighbor of a few years back had his wife walk out having spent tens of thousands on credit cards in the weeks before, *and* emptied his bank account for good measure (then demanded alimony, nice lady..). He never managed to get her to pay the card bills directly, but took all the money back as a 'shared expense' from the house sale, on which he made a handsome profit, as in 100k.
Plastic money of all kinds scares me to be honest. It's an evil I have to cope with, but credit cards are a bad idea.
yeah, nice family friendly tagging there..
On topic though, who on earth doesn't check to see whether what they are being billed for is what they actually owe? Ok some did, which is how they got caught, but obviously not everyone did.
I check all my bills every month, especially ones prone to change, like amazon/Audible/other online shopping orders and suchlike. I didn't always have to be so thorough, but there's this thing called the internet, and apparently not everyone on it is a cuddly bundle of trustworthiness.
sooo
if they insert something, like say adverts, into a data stream while someone is viewing the pirate bay, would that mean they were befitting from piracy?
Audible (the online audiobook seller) has an option in it's playback program 'rip to cd using Nero'. That wouldn't survive in a stricter copying environment.
It says you can only do this once, but I haven't noticed any physical restriction when I tested it by doing it twice for one of my books (well, I started it, it's a boring process, so I don't know if it completes the second time round). They don't let you rip to anything but CD, not mp3, but you can rip to CD image and convert straight to mp3, which is what I do.
It's not *totally* clear to me what the legal position of these mp3's is, but so long as Audible make money from me and I don't shove the mp3s on the internet I'm pretty certain we're both ok with this arrangement.
If on the other hand they dropped the rip to CD option, my subscription would be canceled the day I found out, and it'd be back to buying books on CD from amazon.
My personal way to get beautiful typesetting from office is to export to rtf and convert to LaTeX. Not that I have to do that often, fortunately.
Is there any particulerly useful procedure you have for doing this? I have a 250 page document in MSword that I would really like to have in latex, but I'm working blind as it were.
a bigger problem from microsofts point of view is that they made such a fuss about not being able to implement ODF in office, and now they may have to, showing their previous statements to be lies. :)
(well, perhaps it won't be too hard, after all it happens so often
Reliance on plug ins for office ODF compatibility would be crazy, either they implement it on the 'save as' menu, and allow it to be chosen as default, or they get sidelined by users as being too much work when compared to a simple and quick save operation.
I wasn't disputing that, I'm disputing that a company is going to change if they're invested into a current service contract unless something is really bad. I don't think Vista is going to harm microsofts current service contracts at all personally. It won't get great takeup for a while, but as you point out, while changing between linux and unix vendors is easy, changing from microsoft is a big deal, they are a one stop shop. It's not just the service contracts, its all the software, the data, the entire infrastructure of a company. That can be huge, and if its software is mainly windows native, ongodly expensive too.
I think that a great many companies will stay put and wait for Vista to mature, or die and be replaced with windows 7 (if microsoft bomb with windows 7, then, well, anything could happen). Linux is going to have to get very invested to break into those long term microsoft support contracts.
Interestingly, while all the large organizations and institutions I know personally are heavily windows invested, all the small businesses I know of are either Linux or Mac.
Its always puzzled me why ISP's won't text you about network outages, filtering and bandwidth limitations.
For the same reason Water companies don't contact you and tell you about all the leaky water pipes in your area, they don't want to be sending negative news to everyone, it makes them look bad.
If they can blame you for breaking their terms and conditions, that makes you the bad guy, but if they sent a text telling you all the latest things they'd decided to not let you do, regardless of whether you were doing them, that makes them the bad guy, and customers would start leaving.
Probably exactly the same thing. The trick is, as I made in my original post, getting people to move from their existing support contracts to one that involves them using Linux. Linux being free is not at all the point, It's the support people want, and if they're happy with what they have, they are unlikely to change to a Linux based one.