When I see record-breaking revenue being referred to as recording-breaking profits, I must question the validity of the article:
Revenue == Top-line (not profits)
Earnings == Bottom-line (profits)
Simply import it into your own code base, and then review it as if it was written internally. Basically, learn it inside out, as if you wrote it yourself. If that is not legally sufficient, then the laws need to be rewritten since the lines they would be attempting to delineate would at this point be completely imaginary. It doesn't matter whose head it originates from, what matters is that it is fully reviewed and completely understood to the point where everyone on your team is prepared to stand behind the entire body of code. If that confidence comes from actual understand, it becomes irrelevant who wrote the code in the first place. How would it be any different if, instead, it was code written by somebody who no longer works at the company.
Wondering whether or not this crosses the line is, in fact, quite irrelevant. None of the data elements mentioned in the report were gathered illegally, and theoretically, could be available to any enterprising company. We need to stop expecting companies to be any more respecting of our privacy than we have previously asked them to be.
They're using data which was voluntarily given to them by customers, and data which is publicly available on the web. If you really expect a company to not use any of this type of information for marketing purposes, you're being exceptionally naive.
The information is available, is completely legal to use, and some of it was even voluntarily given directly to Amazon by it's customers. The only thing which could ever prevent anything like this from happening in a case like this or at least limit it's use, would be to pass new laws limiting the usage of such information. Or, just don't voluntarily give information to companies if you don't want them to use it to market to you.
While the article (and the proof of concept) is impressive, you do NOT have to limit yourself to assembly to end up with machine code that is OS neutral. You can write a freestanding C program, and only use assembly to navigate linkage to system calls. The rest of your logic can safely be in C.
Claria's new business model is 'a new platform designed to provide consumers with a personalized Internet experience.'
Sounds like a recipe for failure to me. I doubt the value that they add is going to be enough to make people want to pay for their software. I doubt that very much.
Why would anybody pay for software to pre-populate fields w/ credit cards, addresses, etc. when Internet Explorer and Firefox can already do that for free? (If you're into that sort of thing.)
There's no need to rely on XmlHttpRequest. You can take advantage of a method of data transfer that does not require any DOM objects nor glue code to interface to the algorithms that manipulate them (neither or your own nor any 3rd-party request library). The server may simply respond with the JavaScript data structures (variables, array initializers, object initializers). And now, all of your variable data is happily parsed into the runtime environment's symbol tables.
No, I don't need to tell you that you're naive or academic. I need to tell you that you've done quite a brilliant job... discussing the wrong thing. While you discuss SOA's and the like, you forget... that we are not discussing a SOA. We are discussing whether or not to use XML for user-interface interactions with the back-end server when NO other requirements call for it. Most SOA's require XML.
So we are back to previous points of mine: There is no need to introduce an additional level of abstraction with parsing and generating XML, if no components in the system require it. If the app does not need it, nobody has asked for it, and suggestions to the contrary are not agreed with, don't build it.
Okay, I have to reply, because now you're just rewording part of my statement in lieu of a useful reply.
I just _said_ that the XML isn't useful _unless_ you need/want communication with 3rd-party components that use XML.
Plus, you also seem to be hinting that one should always aspire to connect their app up to 3rd-party components or even that one should always do the work to make the app integratable w/ XML before even knowing that this is necessary or required.
I'm sorry, but this is just another example of wasted programming hours and wasted money spent on the same. If the app does not need it, nobody has asked for it, and suggestions to the contrary are not agreed with, don't build it.
If you're just communicating with other parts of your app instead of 3rd-party components, why use XML?
Append a script tag to the document, using the DOM. Put as many GET request variables in the src attribute's URI as you need. Return JavaScript code from the server. Array initializers, object initializers, whatever. You can even put an onload handler on the script tag so you can execute code once the request has completed.
This is what I do. There is reason to continually generate and parse XML here. It's just an extra unneeded step. No need to use XML unless you're dealing w/ 3rd-party components that expect it or you need to data that isn't easily packed into GET request variables.
I don't think that past ignorances will have an effect on future lawsuits. That's like saying "How can you arrest me for breaking into your house for the 3rd time? You didn't say anything the first two times!"
I couldn't agree more. I've worked for types of people like this. Always trying to find some way around the licensing agreement for software that they receive for FREE. In my opinion, this is tantamount to stealing from a charity.
I'm sure they understand, too. What's more, I'm sure that they also understand that others are getting away with the same illegal actions everyday, without facing any legal ramnifications. And this is the real problem: NOBODY WHO MATTERS IS DOING ANYTHING ABOUT IT. The GPL needs to be tested in court.
And to think that I wanted to buy one of these. Now, I just want them to comply or fry.
Unless they apologize on the nightly news program, there likely won't be much of an overlap between demographics. It's like apologizing to the person on your left after stepping on the foot of the person to your right.
The claim that this is the first time that Microsoft has included open source code in one of their products is completely inaccurate. Winsock is a BSD sockets derivative, and includes BSD code. I believe current versions of Windows have some code under the MIT license as well, but I could be wrong.
And how are the numbers tracked here? Is it based on an assumption of what percentage of audio media is used to record media which is then given to someone who is not the copyright holder? How staggering inaccurate.
Additionally, enough people make more than one backup of a CD, because their CD's get scratched often enough.
"Over time, CRS products might come to be written with a large public audience in mind and could no longer be focused solely on congressional needs," CRS Director Mulhollan said in a written statement yesterday.
And the current congressional leadership apparently agrees.
I worked as a contractor at Congressional Research Services for a bit over a year, so let me put in my two cents.
Of course they agree, because it's an obvious truth. When does a author not consider their audience when writing a document? How hard would it be to try not to consider your audience when writing a piece? Furthermore, how cumbersome do you think it would be, administratively, to effectively convince one's employees not to worry about what hundreds of millions of people think about your writing, and just focus on a few hundred? Here's a better idea: Don't worry about any of the above, because CRS's job is to inform congressman and their staffers on the issues so that they may legislative effectively.
In my stay at CRS, I learned a good amount about a part of our government which was previously entirely unknown to me. CRS does very good work for our congressman, and I was proud to build good software for CRS employees' and congressman to use alike.
Also, it's worth noting that 99.999% of what you'll find in CRS reports are gleaned from sourced that any Joe Q. Public could find anywhere. It's condensed into a format that lets congressman read a lot of facts at once, without having to go read 20-30 books/magazines/publications to glean the same content.
OpenCRS is probably as public as this stuff is ever going to get. This way, CRS still doesn't have to deal w/ the public. They can keep their target audience narrow and their coverage broad.
All this makes you wonder what other supercomputers are out there, not known to the press, and if it's time to increase the size of your private key and strengthen your encryption.
Increase the size of my private... and strengthen... wait a sec! Ya' trying to sneak some SPAM past us?
For the bottom-end of the same price ($399), you would have more than enough to buy a similarly equipped PC133 bus computer, used. And since your G4 is probably used as well, why have one machine when you can have two? Honestly, old PC-compatible machines running w/ a 133 Mhz FSB (*no* DDR, etc.) are fairly cheap these days.
I read the article. A very different socio-political environment indeed. And I think it sounds wonderful.
I honestly like what I'm hearing from Brazil though. This sounds beautiful. We all know that free software is a good thing. I don't think there's anything wrong w/ someone retaining rights to their intellectual property. The right thing to do if you don't agree w/ how they want to license the rights to use their product, is to *not* buy it. But I *do* think there's something strange w/ someone trying to tell me how many times I can read the e-Book I've purchased, or listen to the MP3 I've downloaded, until I have to buy a new one. One could of course, liken this to renting a movie, but it's still a bit different.
I think that what we're grasping at here all comes from the folly of trying to set up of a system of rules to govern the consumption of intangibles so that they can fit our existing econonmic model built largely around the consumption of tangibles.
That last bit doesn't make any sense to me. Writing a book about the subject doesn't mean that he's claiming to be part of the "in-crowd" during the subject's setting. It just means he's claiming to have knowledge of the subject.
Anyhow, I'm more interested in the subject itself than the author or his enemeies.
1) Java's finalization is non-deterministic, which makes it totally non-suitable for resource cleanup. There's no way to tell when a resource will be released and in fact there is no guarantee that it will EVER be released aside from program termination. This is what is called a "resource leak".
2) Because the designers of Java know this, they have try/finally instead, so you can explicitly clean everything.
Reponse-to-1)
Well, of course I realize that it's not the same and can leave resources lying around. That's why I mentioned that it wasn't suitable for expensive resources in my previous post.;-) Obviously, this also means that it's not suitable for things that must be cleaned up.
Also, it's worth mentioning that although the garbage collector is non-deterministic, if you leave a method with an object on the stack that has no references to it elsewhere... this object will be reaped very soon.
Reponse-to-2)
try/finally does *not* exist for the reasons you mentioned. It exists for exception handling. Not as some workaround for the lack of a destructor. The discussion that we've been having which links them is situational, not representative the "real purpose" of try/catch/finally blocks.
Reponse-to-your-summary)
Well, I actually agree with you so there's not much need for discussion here. I stand by what I said in my previous post. Java is a much better language than C/C++ for the vast majority of (but not all) business purposes, but C is still my favorite language.
Slashdot Mirror
When I see record-breaking revenue being referred to as recording-breaking profits, I must question the validity of the article: Revenue == Top-line (not profits) Earnings == Bottom-line (profits)
Simply import it into your own code base, and then review it as if it was written internally. Basically, learn it inside out, as if you wrote it yourself. If that is not legally sufficient, then the laws need to be rewritten since the lines they would be attempting to delineate would at this point be completely imaginary. It doesn't matter whose head it originates from, what matters is that it is fully reviewed and completely understood to the point where everyone on your team is prepared to stand behind the entire body of code. If that confidence comes from actual understand, it becomes irrelevant who wrote the code in the first place. How would it be any different if, instead, it was code written by somebody who no longer works at the company.
Wondering whether or not this crosses the line is, in fact, quite irrelevant. None of the data elements mentioned in the report were gathered illegally, and theoretically, could be available to any enterprising company. We need to stop expecting companies to be any more respecting of our privacy than we have previously asked them to be.
They're using data which was voluntarily given to them by customers, and data which is publicly available on the web. If you really expect a company to not use any of this type of information for marketing purposes, you're being exceptionally naive.
The information is available, is completely legal to use, and some of it was even voluntarily given directly to Amazon by it's customers. The only thing which could ever prevent anything like this from happening in a case like this or at least limit it's use, would be to pass new laws limiting the usage of such information. Or, just don't voluntarily give information to companies if you don't want them to use it to market to you.
While the article (and the proof of concept) is impressive, you do NOT have to limit yourself to assembly to end up with machine code that is OS neutral. You can write a freestanding C program, and only use assembly to navigate linkage to system calls. The rest of your logic can safely be in C.
Claria's new business model is 'a new platform designed to provide consumers with a personalized Internet experience.'
Sounds like a recipe for failure to me. I doubt the value that they add is going to be enough to make people want to pay for their software. I doubt that very much.
Why would anybody pay for software to pre-populate fields w/ credit cards, addresses, etc. when Internet Explorer and Firefox can already do that for free? (If you're into that sort of thing.)
Hello toilet, goodbye Claria.
There's no need to rely on XmlHttpRequest. You can take advantage of a method of data transfer that does not require any DOM objects nor glue code to interface to the algorithms that manipulate them (neither or your own nor any 3rd-party request library). The server may simply respond with the JavaScript data structures (variables, array initializers, object initializers). And now, all of your variable data is happily parsed into the runtime environment's symbol tables.
No, I don't need to tell you that you're naive or academic.
I need to tell you that you've done quite a brilliant job... discussing the wrong thing.
While you discuss SOA's and the like, you forget... that we are not discussing a SOA.
We are discussing whether or not to use XML for user-interface interactions with the back-end server when NO other requirements call for it. Most SOA's require XML.
So we are back to previous points of mine: There is no need to introduce an additional level of abstraction with parsing and generating XML, if no components in the system require it. If the app does not need it, nobody has asked for it, and suggestions to the contrary are not agreed with, don't build it.
Okay, I have to reply, because now you're just rewording part of my statement in lieu of a useful reply.
I just _said_ that the XML isn't useful _unless_ you need/want communication with 3rd-party components that use XML.
Plus, you also seem to be hinting that one should always aspire to connect their app up to 3rd-party components or even that one should always do the work to make the app integratable w/ XML before even knowing that this is necessary or required.
I'm sorry, but this is just another example of wasted programming hours and wasted money spent on the same. If the app does not need it, nobody has asked for it, and suggestions to the contrary are not agreed with, don't build it.
If you're just communicating with other parts of your app instead of 3rd-party components, why use XML? Append a script tag to the document, using the DOM. Put as many GET request variables in the src attribute's URI as you need. Return JavaScript code from the server. Array initializers, object initializers, whatever. You can even put an onload handler on the script tag so you can execute code once the request has completed. This is what I do. There is reason to continually generate and parse XML here. It's just an extra unneeded step. No need to use XML unless you're dealing w/ 3rd-party components that expect it or you need to data that isn't easily packed into GET request variables.
I don't think that past ignorances will have an effect on future lawsuits. That's like saying "How can you arrest me for breaking into your house for the 3rd time? You didn't say anything the first two times!"
I couldn't agree more. I've worked for types of people like this. Always trying to find some way around the licensing agreement for software that they receive for FREE. In my opinion, this is tantamount to stealing from a charity.
I'm sure they understand, too. What's more, I'm sure that they also understand that others are getting away with the same illegal actions everyday, without facing any legal ramnifications. And this is the real problem: NOBODY WHO MATTERS IS DOING ANYTHING ABOUT IT. The GPL needs to be tested in court.
And to think that I wanted to buy one of these. Now, I just want them to comply or fry.
Unless they apologize on the nightly news program, there likely won't be much of an overlap between demographics. It's like apologizing to the person on your left after stepping on the foot of the person to your right.
The claim that this is the first time that Microsoft has included open source code in one of their products is completely inaccurate. Winsock is a BSD sockets derivative, and includes BSD code. I believe current versions of Windows have some code under the MIT license as well, but I could be wrong.
Instead of plugging your laptop in, now you plug yourself in
And how are the numbers tracked here? Is it based on an assumption of what percentage of audio media is used to record media which is then given to someone who is not the copyright holder? How staggering inaccurate.
Additionally, enough people make more than one backup of a CD, because their CD's get scratched often enough.
"Over time, CRS products might come to be written with a large public audience in mind and could no longer be focused solely on congressional needs," CRS Director Mulhollan said in a written statement yesterday. And the current congressional leadership apparently agrees.
I worked as a contractor at Congressional Research Services for a bit over a year, so let me put in my two cents.
Of course they agree, because it's an obvious truth. When does a author not consider their audience when writing a document? How hard would it be to try not to consider your audience when writing a piece? Furthermore, how cumbersome do you think it would be, administratively, to effectively convince one's employees not to worry about what hundreds of millions of people think about your writing, and just focus on a few hundred? Here's a better idea: Don't worry about any of the above, because CRS's job is to inform congressman and their staffers on the issues so that they may legislative effectively.
In my stay at CRS, I learned a good amount about a part of our government which was previously entirely unknown to me. CRS does very good work for our congressman, and I was proud to build good software for CRS employees' and congressman to use alike.
Also, it's worth noting that 99.999% of what you'll find in CRS reports are gleaned from sourced that any Joe Q. Public could find anywhere. It's condensed into a format that lets congressman read a lot of facts at once, without having to go read 20-30 books/magazines/publications to glean the same content.
OpenCRS is probably as public as this stuff is ever going to get. This way, CRS still doesn't have to deal w/ the public. They can keep their target audience narrow and their coverage broad.
All this makes you wonder what other supercomputers are out there, not known to the press, and if it's time to increase the size of your private key and strengthen your encryption.
Increase the size of my private ... and strengthen ... wait a sec! Ya' trying to sneak some SPAM past us?
You can get progressive scan HDTV in North America, no?
Yeah, but that would be even *harder* to do here. (read: impossible)
Once someone posts how to do this with NTSC (which you'll need if you're in the U.S. like me), I'll be all over this! Anyone? Enlighten me...
For the bottom-end of the same price ($399), you would have more than enough to buy a similarly equipped PC133 bus computer, used. And since your G4 is probably used as well, why have one machine when you can have two? Honestly, old PC-compatible machines running w/ a 133 Mhz FSB (*no* DDR, etc.) are fairly cheap these days.
I read the article. A very different socio-political environment indeed. And I think it sounds wonderful.
I honestly like what I'm hearing from Brazil though. This sounds beautiful. We all know that free software is a good thing. I don't think there's anything wrong w/ someone retaining rights to their intellectual property. The right thing to do if you don't agree w/ how they want to license the rights to use their product, is to *not* buy it. But I *do* think there's something strange w/ someone trying to tell me how many times I can read the e-Book I've purchased, or listen to the MP3 I've downloaded, until I have to buy a new one. One could of course, liken this to renting a movie, but it's still a bit different.
I think that what we're grasping at here all comes from the folly of trying to set up of a system of rules to govern the consumption of intangibles so that they can fit our existing econonmic model built largely around the consumption of tangibles.
You can already do this with Oracle RAC. We run this at the office. Works great.
That last bit doesn't make any sense to me. Writing a book about the subject doesn't mean that he's claiming to be part of the "in-crowd" during the subject's setting. It just means he's claiming to have knowledge of the subject. Anyhow, I'm more interested in the subject itself than the author or his enemeies.
Or is it already?
If sending your computer's configuration to Microsoft in the background was found to be illegal by the courts back in the Win95 days...
Wouldn't sending configuration information PLUS document contents be considered illegal today?
I mean, come on now, this couldn't possibly be happening, and out in the open to boot?
1) Java's finalization is non-deterministic, which makes it totally non-suitable for resource cleanup. There's no way to tell when a resource will be released and in fact there is no guarantee that it will EVER be released aside from program termination. This is what is called a "resource leak".
2) Because the designers of Java know this, they have try/finally instead, so you can explicitly clean everything.
Reponse-to-1) ;-) Obviously, this also means that it's not suitable for things that must be cleaned up.
Well, of course I realize that it's not the same and can leave resources lying around. That's why I mentioned that it wasn't suitable for expensive resources in my previous post.
Also, it's worth mentioning that although the garbage collector is non-deterministic, if you leave a method with an object on the stack that has no references to it elsewhere... this object will be reaped very soon.
Reponse-to-2)
try/finally does *not* exist for the reasons you mentioned. It exists for exception handling. Not as some workaround for the lack of a destructor. The discussion that we've been having which links them is situational, not representative the "real purpose" of try/catch/finally blocks.
Reponse-to-your-summary)
Well, I actually agree with you so there's not much need for discussion here. I stand by what I said in my previous post. Java is a much better language than C/C++ for the vast majority of (but not all) business purposes, but C is still my favorite language.