Why should we care if MS could have made a profit or not? OO is not developed or translated just to take profit away from MS (except for Sun maybe).
Selling swahili office programs may not be very lucrative, even though more people speak swahili than danish, and MS did translate its software to danish.
But hopefully OO will get a lot of Swahili speaking users, some of which will contribute back to OO.
What if you recieved an organically grown apple, a bottle of homemade beer, environment friendly soap, Max Havelaar coffee, etc?
Linux is not an actual religion. And there is nothing wrong in using you interest or hobby to make small gifts, especially if they are somewhat personal.
If anyone send me a good beer I will not take it as an insult or think the giver is concerned for my sould because I drink beer that taste like water.
>As fas as having untrackable cell phones: I'm not sure that's >possible. As long as you can be picked up by towers A and B but not C, >they can triangulate you.
No, they can track the phone I am carrying, not me. We just need a system that cannot link phones to persons or calls.
> And cars can already be tracked by radar guns. Only on public roads. And cars are not continually tracked by rader guns.
> You have a GPS or other location tracking system in your cell phone, >right?
No, I do not, but it can still be tracked.
> You do take your phone with you in the car, don't you?
But that is my choice. I would also object if I was required by law or insurance company to carry my cell-phone at all times so I could be tracked.
I would prefer a cell phone that could not be tracked. But that would require extra technology, whereas cars that cannot be tracked require less technology.
Many crimes (robberies, murders) are solved by tracking cell phones.
Re:I code C# for a living
on
Java 1.5 vs C#
·
· Score: 2, Informative
>Can somebody explain what you mean by the covariant and contravariant things.
In an OO language with objects and types we may say that a type, ST is a subtype of T. The meaning of this is that an object of type ST can be used where an object of type T is expected.
Objects of type ST can have more operations (functions) than objects of type T, but it must have the same operations as objects of type T. These operations must have the same number of arguments and results as operations in T. But the arguments to those operations does not necessarily have to be the same type.
Say T has an operation (signature): ft(a1:Ta) -> (r1:Tr) ST must then have an operation: ft(a1:STa) -> (r1:STr)
Results are easy. A program that do:
foo:T
bar:Tr = foo.ft(...)
requires that bar have a type that are a subtype of Tr therefore STr must be a subtype of Tr.
Arguments are more tricky: A program can do:
foo:T
ba:Ta...=foo.ft(ba)
foo can be of type T or ST therefore ba must work as an argument to ft in objects of type ST. This means that Ta must be a subtype of STa. This is contravariance. One consequense is that Array[T] is not a subtype of Array[ST] or the other way around. Because Array (or any other collection) must have both a set(T/ST) and get->(T/ST) functions and because of contravariance T must be a subtype of ST and ST a subtype of T, i.e. T==ST.
It does not work quite like that in Java, because in the foo.ft(ba) the "ft" function defined in the base class, T, would be used.
But in Java an array of a supertype is considered a supertype of an array of the subtype.
Object[] objects = new FooClass[10]; objects[0] = new Object();
In this part of the world (Europe) the US have been quite popular. Because of the size of the US and influential US medias, most people have a nuanced view of the country.
>Also anti-Bush does not necessarily mean pro-Kerry.
This close to election day it does. Although it really means anyone but Bush. Kerry, Dean, Nader, McCain, almost anyone.
I have had old laptops running as servers for years without any problems. There is not much airflow because there is no fans.
I wouldn't use my current AMD 1500+ laptop as a server because it does get warmer than the old ones, although the power throttling does help.
The disks could be a problem, but for eg a printserver you would have the disk spin down most of the time. And I did use a 2.5" disk in a desktop web-server for a couple of years.
Laptops are built to run anywhere including hot summer days in Spain, so running as servers in my dark basement in Denmark should not overheat them.
You might not need an old distribution if you tweek it a bit.
I made a 30MByte Debian unstable installation running X: http://www.agol.dk/elgaard/picframe.html It is running very few programs (X, feh, bash) and I did remove the Debian package list from the installation on the CFlash disk. Debootstrap+chroot is great because you can put the disk in a more powerful computer to do the installation.
5 MByte RAM would not run much especially because there would be almost no swapspace. Maybe if you used an old kernel compiled with few options.
>they are quick to jump all over google for >following the laws in a country so they can >operate sucessfully there.
1. Which law is that and what does it say? 2. Why does Google not just return a page saying: "this link and its cache is censored by your governement"? 3. If Google is censoring and they are just following chinese laws, then why are they keeping it secret.
Again its a real "if" in 3. Google may not be censoring.
>"we obey local governments and make money" is what >every company does
Not every company. Many companies are owned by foundations that have other goals than making money.
Many companies do have an ethic besides making money. E.g. you would probably argue that producers of organic food just makes money that way. But most producers would not use pesticides even if it would make them more money.
>but since you're an american I am not an american.
If a companys ethics aligns with every country it operates in, it is not really ethics.
Then they should change the slogan to "we obey local governments and make money".
The Chinese people or government may have different values (that can be wrong). But the same company cannot believe that censorship is wrong in Denmark and OK in China.
(this is all hypothetical, I don't know what Google is doing).
>Many copies will be installed on multiple machines
Yes, or the machines will be boot from one network image. But if you run Redhat og Suse enterprise products they would probably all be counted in statistics like this.
>or just downloaded for free.
Even if you buy 100 machines from Dell, and plan for format the drives and put Debian/Fedora/Gentoo on them, you might still order them with Linux just to make sure the hardware is compatible.
Actually some of the 61% increase might be that Dell machines bought to run Linux that used to come with a FreeDos CD, but now often come with RedHat.
Here (Denmark) cell-phones are probably as reliable as land-lines.
I use VoIP, http://www.musimi.dk (in Danish but works like sipphone.com). I set it up so that if there is a problem with my IP phone, the network etc, the call is forwarded to my cell-phone. If the phone company (Musimi) is down the caller would have to manually try my cell-phone number. So for incoming calls there are two almost independent ways of routing the call to me. For outgoing calls I have two options.
I consider this setup more reliable than just a land-line. E.g. it will survive what happened to a neighbour; a gartner was trimming some plants growing on the outside wall and unknowingly cut her phone line.
This month lightning took out 2000 land-line phones for a week.
>If the VoIP world goes the way of SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) then everyone will need to use >a service provider to assist in routing calls outside of a business network.
Not neccessarily. You could just have one free ENUM database and have all phones call each other directly. Many SIP phones are set up to accepts calls from any other phone. But phones would only ring if they see their own phone no/username.
So it is a bit like email: you can run your own mailserver or use a SMTP provider. And spammers could harvest or guess your SIP-address.
>That provider will assign a charge, albeit a >small one, to each call.
My provider (www.musimi.dk) does not assign a charge for VoIP calls.
>Personally, this is just FUD I agree. It is one-sided.
>but shouldn't there be more attention directed to >more pressing problems.
I am sure the people at the workshop would tell you that they would make lousy doctors or construction workers.
Besides the most pressing problems might not be the most important. Which is also why poor countries should not close the shools and have kids and teachers work in the fields instead.
=== There was a recent accident in Noord Holland, car overtook, misjudged, 4 people killed. Now the black box advocates are suggesting that they got the solution and you are their prime example. ===
And the driver of that car survived and went unpunished because there was no black box to prove he was speeding?
Slashdot Mirror
Why should we care if MS could have made a profit or not? OO is not developed or translated just to take profit away from MS (except for Sun maybe).
Selling swahili office programs may not be very lucrative, even though more people speak swahili than danish, and MS did translate its software to danish.
But hopefully OO will get a lot of Swahili speaking users, some of which will contribute back to OO.
>but I also think there's something to be said for having the courage of
>your convictions and using your name.
yes, but it is only courage if you have the choice.
What if you recieved an organically grown apple, a bottle of homemade beer, environment friendly soap, Max Havelaar coffee, etc?
Linux is not an actual religion. And there is nothing wrong in using you interest or hobby to make small gifts, especially if they are somewhat personal.
If anyone send me a good beer I will not take it as an insult or think the giver is concerned for my sould because I drink beer that taste like water.
>As fas as having untrackable cell phones: I'm not sure that's
>possible. As long as you can be picked up by towers A and B but not C,
>they can triangulate you.
No, they can track the phone I am carrying, not me.
We just need a system that cannot link phones to persons or calls.
> And cars can already be tracked by radar guns.
Only on public roads.
And cars are not continually tracked by rader guns.
>What's getting me down though are the viruses
I can recommend running VirusSnag (http://www.spamless.us/vsnag) before spamassassin.
> You have a GPS or other location tracking system in your cell phone,
>right?
No, I do not, but it can still be tracked.
> You do take your phone with you in the car, don't you?
But that is my choice. I would also object if I was required by law or insurance company to carry my cell-phone at all times so I could be tracked.
I would prefer a cell phone that could not be tracked. But that would require extra technology, whereas cars that cannot be tracked require less technology.
Many crimes (robberies, murders) are solved by tracking cell phones.
>Can somebody explain what you mean by the covariant and contravariant things.
...=foo.ft(ba)
In an OO language with objects and types we may say that a type, ST is a subtype of T.
The meaning of this is that an object of type ST can be used where an object of type T is expected.
Objects of type ST can have more operations (functions) than objects of type T, but it must have the same operations as objects of type T. These operations must have the same number of arguments and results as operations in T. But the arguments to those operations does not necessarily have to be the same type.
Say T has an operation (signature): ft(a1:Ta) -> (r1:Tr)
ST must then have an operation: ft(a1:STa) -> (r1:STr)
Results are easy. A program that do:
foo:T
bar:Tr = foo.ft(...)
requires that bar have a type that are a subtype of Tr therefore
STr must be a subtype of Tr.
Arguments are more tricky: A program can do:
foo:T
ba:Ta
foo can be of type T or ST therefore ba must work as an argument to ft in objects of type ST.
This means that Ta must be a subtype of STa.
This is contravariance.
One consequense is that Array[T] is not a subtype of Array[ST] or the other way around. Because Array (or any other collection) must have both a set(T/ST) and get->(T/ST) functions and because of contravariance T must be a subtype of ST and ST a subtype of T, i.e. T==ST.
It does not work quite like that in Java, because in the foo.ft(ba) the "ft" function defined in the base class, T, would be used.
But in Java an array of a supertype is considered a supertype of an array of the subtype.
Object[] objects = new FooClass[10];
objects[0] = new Object();
Will give a runtime ArrayStoreException
>The US isn't that popular with most of the world
In this part of the world (Europe) the US have been quite popular. Because of the size of the US and influential US medias, most people have a nuanced view of the country.
>Also anti-Bush does not necessarily mean pro-Kerry.
This close to election day it does.
Although it really means anyone but Bush. Kerry, Dean, Nader, McCain, almost anyone.
One explanation is that not everyone here live in the US. Outside the US Bush is not popular, left or right.
I have had old laptops running as servers for years without any problems. There is not much airflow because there is no fans.
I wouldn't use my current AMD 1500+ laptop as a server because it does get warmer than the old ones, although the power throttling does help.
The disks could be a problem, but for eg a printserver you would have the disk spin down most of the time. And I did use a 2.5" disk in a desktop web-server for a couple of years.
Laptops are built to run anywhere including hot summer days in Spain, so running as servers in my dark basement in Denmark should not overheat them.
You might not need an old distribution if you tweek it a bit.
I made a 30MByte Debian unstable installation running X: http://www.agol.dk/elgaard/picframe.html
It is running very few programs (X, feh, bash) and I did remove the Debian package list from the installation on the CFlash disk. Debootstrap+chroot is great because you can put the disk in a more powerful computer to do the installation.
5 MByte RAM would not run much especially because there would be almost no swapspace. Maybe if you used an old kernel compiled with few options.
Not really.
And why would you need new hardware for that?
TCPA does not give you more control than a boot-cd.
>they are quick to jump all over google for
>following the laws in a country so they can
>operate sucessfully there.
1. Which law is that and what does it say?
2. Why does Google not just return a page saying:
"this link and its cache is censored by your governement"?
3. If Google is censoring and they are just following chinese laws, then why are they keeping it secret.
Again its a real "if" in 3. Google may not be censoring.
>"we obey local governments and make money" is what
>every company does
Not every company. Many companies are owned by foundations that have other goals than making money.
Many companies do have an ethic besides making money. E.g. you would probably argue that producers of organic food just makes money that way. But most producers would not use pesticides even if it would make them more money.
>but since you're an american
I am not an american.
If a companys ethics aligns with every country it operates in, it is not really ethics.
Then they should change the slogan to "we obey local governments and make money".
The Chinese people or government may have different values (that can be wrong). But the same company cannot believe that censorship is wrong in Denmark and OK in China.
(this is all hypothetical, I don't know what Google is doing).
>Many copies will be installed on multiple machines
Yes, or the machines will be boot from one network image.
But if you run Redhat og Suse enterprise products they would probably all be counted in statistics like this.
>or just downloaded for free.
Even if you buy 100 machines from Dell, and plan for format the drives and put Debian/Fedora/Gentoo on them, you might still order them with Linux just to make sure the hardware is compatible.
Actually some of the 61% increase might be that Dell machines bought to run Linux that used to come with a FreeDos CD, but now often come with RedHat.
I noticed CCTV in the toilets in Belfast central station this summer.
Here (Denmark) cell-phones are probably as reliable as land-lines.
I use VoIP, http://www.musimi.dk (in Danish but works like sipphone.com). I set it up so that if there is a problem with my IP phone, the network etc, the call is forwarded to my cell-phone. If the phone company (Musimi) is down the caller would have to manually try my cell-phone number. So for incoming calls there are two almost independent ways of routing the call to me. For outgoing calls I have two options.
I consider this setup more reliable than just a land-line. E.g. it will survive what happened to a neighbour; a gartner was trimming some plants growing on the outside wall and unknowingly cut her phone line.
This month lightning took out 2000 land-line phones for a week.
Maybe those who paid for the song after 1973 want their money back.
>Do you have your network printer on an external IP address?
No, but I would if I had IPv6 og an extre IPv4 address. Instead I go through SSH each time I have to use it while not at home.
It is connected via a CUPS server so I would not worry about giving it an external address.
If someone really wanted to waste my paper they would just fax me.
It would be especially difficult for SCO to argue they own e.g. the Mwave modem driver.
I dont think there are too many winmodems in AIX boxes.
>The only way I can see this resolved quickly is if SCO just folds
I am sure this "valuable" asset of court cases would go to Baystar if SCO folds up.
It would just mean even more delays.
Last month I used was in a internet Cafe in Dublin, that used CenturySurf Linux/firfox PCs. The only program they could was Firefox.
I can see someone installing 1000's of public PC's wanting to put ads on them.
>If the VoIP world goes the way of SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) then everyone will need to use
>a service provider to assist in routing calls outside of a business network.
Not neccessarily. You could just have one free ENUM database and have all phones call each other directly.
Many SIP phones are set up to accepts calls from any other phone. But phones would only ring if they see their own phone no/username.
So it is a bit like email: you can run your own mailserver or use a SMTP provider. And spammers could harvest or guess your SIP-address.
>That provider will assign a charge, albeit a
>small one, to each call.
My provider (www.musimi.dk) does not assign a charge for VoIP calls.
>Personally, this is just FUD
I agree. It is one-sided.
>but shouldn't there be more attention directed to
>more pressing problems.
I am sure the people at the workshop would tell you that they would make lousy doctors or construction workers.
Besides the most pressing problems might not be the most important. Which is also why poor countries should not close the shools and have kids and teachers work in the fields instead.
===
There was a recent accident in Noord Holland, car overtook, misjudged, 4 people killed. Now the black box advocates are suggesting that they got the solution and you are their prime example.
===
And the driver of that car survived and went unpunished because there was no black box to prove he was speeding?
If not, I do not see your point.