"am constantly annoyed by people who assert that C++ is just C with a few bits added"
No one was asserting such a thing here. The poster was talking about "general purpose C/C++ code" which is as perfectly valid as, for example, someone talking about website scripting in perl/php, also two completely different languages, but with overlap of what they can be used for, and it's that overlap that's referenced as the subject. However different they can be, C/C++ have undeniable massive overlap. Grouping and generalising are perfectly valid legal communicating constructs completely necessary in the conveying of ideas. Complaining that differences between elements within a generalisation are omitted, when the differences fall outside the context of what is being discussed, is basically just waving a big "missed the point" flag, which happens... but it doesn't have to be accompanied by abrasion.
Hypocracy? You seem to be under delusions of what the driving forces are behind the "you can't have" mantra. It's nothing to do with whether it's right or wrong in the world, it's whether it's a threat or not. If your interests are "what are the threats to us?", then:
Own nukes: not a problem ("we're not gonna launch 'em at ourselves"). Other's nukes: are a problem ("they could launch them at us").
So, as you can see, there's absolutely no hypocracy there at all, because hypocracy requires applying different rules to yourself as to others, whereas this is one rule applied to both, with different results, and opinion is based on that result... and that rule is simply, "if it's a threat to us, we're gonna have a problem".
"First off, there is no such language as "C/C++"."
Now, see, that just makes you sound like an idiot, trying to be clever. If you were aiming for humour, swing/miss. Next you gonna tell us there's no such word as 'swing/miss'? Jeez.
Wow, if only you'd realised that it wasn't the operating system's fault, but the filesystem's, and started to write your own, databased, journaled filsystem. How things could've been different...
Oh, or just disable auto-run. You can keep autodetection, but still have autorun disabled. Tweakui (of powertoys) is how I do it.
"Indeed you can. Little known to most, the floppy drive was hot-swap:-)"
As with PCI devices. I haven't tried this again with newer OSs, but with Win95, I was able to add/remove sound and network cards to a running system. Adding would require slotting in the card, then clicking the 'scan for new devices' in the device manager. Removing required disabling/uninstalling the driver in device manager, and then it could be removed. Probably not something to recommend people try if you care about the system and what's running on it, but purely experimentally, it worked completely fine.
I don't think real mode had anything to do with it. The IO address space that the floppy controller lies on is 16 bit, it's a seperate address space to that of memory, so changes to the MMU mode (real/protected, segment/selector) make no difference, apart from specifying wither a default register operand to the IN/OUT instructions (where the operand is the data to be sent/received, not the address) would be 16 or 32 bit. The IO address was always 16 bit.
You're suggesting I talk about experiences that aren't my own? That society would be better for this? Sorry but I don't believe assisted ignorance, either through action or just passively, is good for people. Perhaps if people stopped thinking that people needed protecting from fact and responsibility, people would be a lot better at handling fact and responsibility. Therefore, I believe your suggestion would actually yield the complete opposite effect to the one you say you desire.
"The reason for 3) is that people will always think, often mistakenly, that the same concession applies to them"
No I don't play that game. I do not believe that keeping people ignorant to things that they can do wrong is a good method of getting those people to not do wrong. People need to grow up and be able to decide things for themselves, that's the only way we're gonna advance as a species. The idea of sheilding people from responsibility is plain wrong, and bad (in my belief).
Well, my personal case, I download tv shows 'n the occassional movie (I don't need to download music, my personal tastes are fulfilled by stuff my friends make 'n dj etc). Much (although recently, not all) of that is illegal downloads, which with the state of business at the moment, I literally couldn't afford to buy. As they fall outside of my budget, I legally have no right to view, but I just don't consider it wrong enough for it to bother me. An example, I download and watch 24, without subscribing to a network it broadcasts on, something I currently cannot afford to do. If I really wanted to watch it and cared that I was breaking the law, I could cycle the short distance to my parents around the time it's broadcast, and watch it on their TV at the time they watch it. I still haven't spent anything, but I'm no longer breaking the law... the only differene me not downloading it has made, is that I'm no longer watching it in the comfort of my own home.
I'm not gonna pretend it's not wrong for me to be downloading it illegally, but does that make it bad (ie, does it have negative consequences on the world)? The cast 'n producers etc still seem to be paid pretty damn well, they're definitely not suffering, and so the level of which it is wrong purely isn't enough to bother me, and I'm not exactly a non-principled person. If I don't feel bad about it (outside of personal pride, in that I'm currently failing to earn a proper living through my business) but I do feel bad about other injustices in the world, perhaps this just isn't an injustice?
"since their sharing directly and positively affects their own personal bottom lines"
Only if they're downloading stuff they would otherwise be buying. If they're spending the same amount on music (even if that's nothing) and downloading is supplimenting that, then their bottom line remains unaffected (unless your definition of "bottom line" includes the richness of a persons music collection, in which case, yep of course that's affected).
"It's still a selfish action at its core"
yeah but... isn't selfishness sometimes alright? If someone poor and can't afford to buy music, it might be technically wrong for them to download it without paying, it'd be tragic if said person wasn't able to experience music. I would hope that musicians would charitably allow some people to enjoy their works without coughing up the cash, as long as enough people who can, do, allowing the musician to still cover costs and earn a living of standard relative to the quality of their work. Sure, musicians have the right to not be charitable, and they inspire me into being inconsiderate to them, I'm not gonna be charitable and defend them for nothing! I'm also not defending people who don't contribute to a works that they can afford, that's just slack.
I guess people, depending on their walks thru life etc, will feel different things over the issue, and as with most instances of 'feeling' things, it's based on perception rather than fact, so things that sway perception (such as doing it purely for money, not for sharing or passion for the arts) get pulled into the debate.
The apple isn't gone anywhere... the nutrition becomes part of you, powering you to do something. It's whatever you decide that "something" to be that decides how wasted the apple was or not. If you use the energy or whatever to help you be creative/constructive, and you produce something with value greater than an apple, then there is a net plus in cases where there is a supply of apples sufficient for the demand.
Maybe doing something because you want to share with people is considered better than exploiting the situation for profit? A good (or less-bad) intention behind an action makes people feel more lenient towards someones.
No, going after someone who's a threat to your business isn't considered defensive use of patents... that's just normal use. Defensive use it to fend off litigation attacks, like what redhat et al wanna build up defensive patent portfolios for. It's not in microsoft's interest to stop people wanting to use vfat, after all, then they'd have to add support for the filesystem everyone else is using (and possibly pay royalties on it) or get left behind everyone else. And I think someone mentioned 2013 for the patent to expire... so it's either wait 4 years til you can use vfat and still be able to sue MS for using your IP if they don't license it from you (if you're into using something without giving in return) or spend even longer trying to switch.
Of course there are filesystems that OEM's could stick on machines which would then leave out everyone who buys an operating system to install themselves... and everyone who's already got a load of other devices (camera, mp3 player...) that they don't want to have to repurchase just to use a different filesystem. It's cheaper for them to pay any royalties on the next device they buy for it to support the same thing too. Then you also have to get manufacturers to agree on a single filesystem that they're gonna put effort into to make it the next big vfat, and good luck with that... you know Sony won't play ball for a start, they'll just have to come up with their own format like they do with everything. Manufacturers aren't choosing vfat, vfat's choosing them. If everyone now decides that everything released from now is going to have support for a new filesystem, it's still going to be 10 years before vfat's ditchable, because of the inertia to overcome, and by that time, the patents will have expired anyway. The best way forward as I said is for companies to not try getting into patent wars with microsoft, because microsoft have a rather healthy patent portfolio that they use defensively.
But you can't guarentee it. What if someone uses the usb stick somewhere without autorun, or a non windows machine? Effectively having a tool you have to use instead of the operating systems filesystem support to read/write to the memory stick defeats the whole point of it using a ubiquitous filesystem in the first place. All it would take is a rename on a system where tomtom's own short to long filemapping doesn't get updated, and filenames become orphaned or worst still, start pointing to the wrong data on stick. Your choices are simple. Either update the LFN and SFN directory entries at the same time, use the drive ONLY in readonly, or completely exclude LFN support on the media (which may not be an option). You can't have one dataset being treated differently by different pieces of software and rely on it. This is why we have protocols for doing things. The lesson here is don't try and sue Microsoft for patent infringement, because they can play that game too, and they can play it well. Let sleeping beasts lie.
This is not to do with having long filename support; TomTom could store short filenames with a textfile containing short to long filename mapping, but then those long filenames wouldn't be consistent on your desktop if you renamed them etc. The patent is for the particular method of supporting long filenames (which IIRC uses volume label entries in the directory structure to contain the extra filename info). Patents aren't what you accomplish, they're how you accomplish it.
Hehe, reminds me of a joke I'm just going to slightly modify to crowbar in here... what's the difference between women and sand? You can pick up women with a pitchfork! *woot*
"Show me a scientific test to prove that one wrong, baby"
You just wanna see nude children running around under lawn sprinklers using the ONE fear that people have that's even greater than their fear of paedophilic science... GLOBAL WARMING! Nice try, but it's all about the economy now... you're gonna have to offer parents financial security if you wanna use their kids in this way.
Focus stealing prevention all the way man! Should never have a button popup underneith your downward moving finger, the solid or flashing blue taskbar entry to signify "this app wants focus" works much better.
Nah, other guy's definitely right for advanced users. My brain queues up actions that I'm going to perform next. I'm not thinking one thing at a time, and so a consistent interface really speeds things up, because I can move my hands to where they need to be whilst processing some other information on the screen for example. If I have to stop and process the 'breadcrum' bar to see where to click, I have to wait until I've finished processing whatever I am, before I can instruct my mouse pointer where exactly to move to. With a consistently positioned Up arrow, I don't need the 'text processing services' parts of my brain to be free to interface with it... it's more like muscle memory. It's like the difference between me being able to reach to my left of my bed in the dark and turn the lamp on, because I know exactly where the switch is, and me having to use another light to see where on the lamp a moving switch is and press that. The latter IS slower for and advanced user, there's no two ways about it.
Have you tried 2003? I dropped XP and went back to 2000 and stuck with 2000 until I tried 2003 and have stuck with that. Disable the 'themes' service and the GUI runs much quicker 'n smoother, and there's much else which brings its performance back towards the 2000, whilst still gaining from additions post 2000, such as asynchronous service start/stopping which really does improve boot (and shutdown) time.
Yes but less people are willing to properly test something labeled 'beta' than 'RC'... is I believe the mentality behind the increased RC labeling of stuff these days (look at the linux kernel cycle).
Slashdot Mirror
"a Linux binary would no more run under a BSD kernel than it would under DOS"
Errr... yeah... that's not completely accurate.
First po<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/technologynews/5105
"am constantly annoyed by people who assert that C++ is just C with a few bits added"
No one was asserting such a thing here. The poster was talking about "general purpose C/C++ code" which is as perfectly valid as, for example, someone talking about website scripting in perl/php, also two completely different languages, but with overlap of what they can be used for, and it's that overlap that's referenced as the subject. However different they can be, C/C++ have undeniable massive overlap. Grouping and generalising are perfectly valid legal communicating constructs completely necessary in the conveying of ideas. Complaining that differences between elements within a generalisation are omitted, when the differences fall outside the context of what is being discussed, is basically just waving a big "missed the point" flag, which happens... but it doesn't have to be accompanied by abrasion.
Hypocracy? You seem to be under delusions of what the driving forces are behind the "you can't have" mantra. It's nothing to do with whether it's right or wrong in the world, it's whether it's a threat or not. If your interests are "what are the threats to us?", then:
Own nukes: not a problem ("we're not gonna launch 'em at ourselves").
Other's nukes: are a problem ("they could launch them at us").
So, as you can see, there's absolutely no hypocracy there at all, because hypocracy requires applying different rules to yourself as to others, whereas this is one rule applied to both, with different results, and opinion is based on that result... and that rule is simply, "if it's a threat to us, we're gonna have a problem".
"First off, there is no such language as "C/C++"."
Now, see, that just makes you sound like an idiot, trying to be clever. If you were aiming for humour, swing/miss. Next you gonna tell us there's no such word as 'swing/miss'?
Jeez.
Wow, if only you'd realised that it wasn't the operating system's fault, but the filesystem's, and started to write your own, databased, journaled filsystem. How things could've been different...
Oh, or just disable auto-run. You can keep autodetection, but still have autorun disabled. Tweakui (of powertoys) is how I do it.
"Indeed you can. Little known to most, the floppy drive was hot-swap :-)"
As with PCI devices. I haven't tried this again with newer OSs, but with Win95, I was able to add/remove sound and network cards to a running system. Adding would require slotting in the card, then clicking the 'scan for new devices' in the device manager. Removing required disabling/uninstalling the driver in device manager, and then it could be removed. Probably not something to recommend people try if you care about the system and what's running on it, but purely experimentally, it worked completely fine.
"If you stayed in real mode"
I don't think real mode had anything to do with it. The IO address space that the floppy controller lies on is 16 bit, it's a seperate address space to that of memory, so changes to the MMU mode (real/protected, segment/selector) make no difference, apart from specifying wither a default register operand to the IN/OUT instructions (where the operand is the data to be sent/received, not the address) would be 16 or 32 bit. The IO address was always 16 bit.
You're suggesting I talk about experiences that aren't my own? That society would be better for this? Sorry but I don't believe assisted ignorance, either through action or just passively, is good for people. Perhaps if people stopped thinking that people needed protecting from fact and responsibility, people would be a lot better at handling fact and responsibility. Therefore, I believe your suggestion would actually yield the complete opposite effect to the one you say you desire.
"The reason for 3) is that people will always think, often mistakenly, that the same concession applies to them"
No I don't play that game. I do not believe that keeping people ignorant to things that they can do wrong is a good method of getting those people to not do wrong. People need to grow up and be able to decide things for themselves, that's the only way we're gonna advance as a species. The idea of sheilding people from responsibility is plain wrong, and bad (in my belief).
Well, my personal case, I download tv shows 'n the occassional movie (I don't need to download music, my personal tastes are fulfilled by stuff my friends make 'n dj etc). Much (although recently, not all) of that is illegal downloads, which with the state of business at the moment, I literally couldn't afford to buy. As they fall outside of my budget, I legally have no right to view, but I just don't consider it wrong enough for it to bother me. An example, I download and watch 24, without subscribing to a network it broadcasts on, something I currently cannot afford to do. If I really wanted to watch it and cared that I was breaking the law, I could cycle the short distance to my parents around the time it's broadcast, and watch it on their TV at the time they watch it. I still haven't spent anything, but I'm no longer breaking the law... the only differene me not downloading it has made, is that I'm no longer watching it in the comfort of my own home.
I'm not gonna pretend it's not wrong for me to be downloading it illegally, but does that make it bad (ie, does it have negative consequences on the world)? The cast 'n producers etc still seem to be paid pretty damn well, they're definitely not suffering, and so the level of which it is wrong purely isn't enough to bother me, and I'm not exactly a non-principled person. If I don't feel bad about it (outside of personal pride, in that I'm currently failing to earn a proper living through my business) but I do feel bad about other injustices in the world, perhaps this just isn't an injustice?
"since their sharing directly and positively affects their own personal bottom lines"
Only if they're downloading stuff they would otherwise be buying. If they're spending the same amount on music (even if that's nothing) and downloading is supplimenting that, then their bottom line remains unaffected (unless your definition of "bottom line" includes the richness of a persons music collection, in which case, yep of course that's affected).
"It's still a selfish action at its core"
yeah but... isn't selfishness sometimes alright? If someone poor and can't afford to buy music, it might be technically wrong for them to download it without paying, it'd be tragic if said person wasn't able to experience music. I would hope that musicians would charitably allow some people to enjoy their works without coughing up the cash, as long as enough people who can, do, allowing the musician to still cover costs and earn a living of standard relative to the quality of their work. Sure, musicians have the right to not be charitable, and they inspire me into being inconsiderate to them, I'm not gonna be charitable and defend them for nothing! I'm also not defending people who don't contribute to a works that they can afford, that's just slack.
I guess people, depending on their walks thru life etc, will feel different things over the issue, and as with most instances of 'feeling' things, it's based on perception rather than fact, so things that sway perception (such as doing it purely for money, not for sharing or passion for the arts) get pulled into the debate.
The apple isn't gone anywhere... the nutrition becomes part of you, powering you to do something. It's whatever you decide that "something" to be that decides how wasted the apple was or not. If you use the energy or whatever to help you be creative/constructive, and you produce something with value greater than an apple, then there is a net plus in cases where there is a supply of apples sufficient for the demand.
Maybe doing something because you want to share with people is considered better than exploiting the situation for profit? A good (or less-bad) intention behind an action makes people feel more lenient towards someones.
No, going after someone who's a threat to your business isn't considered defensive use of patents... that's just normal use. Defensive use it to fend off litigation attacks, like what redhat et al wanna build up defensive patent portfolios for. It's not in microsoft's interest to stop people wanting to use vfat, after all, then they'd have to add support for the filesystem everyone else is using (and possibly pay royalties on it) or get left behind everyone else. And I think someone mentioned 2013 for the patent to expire... so it's either wait 4 years til you can use vfat and still be able to sue MS for using your IP if they don't license it from you (if you're into using something without giving in return) or spend even longer trying to switch.
Of course there are filesystems that OEM's could stick on machines which would then leave out everyone who buys an operating system to install themselves... and everyone who's already got a load of other devices (camera, mp3 player...) that they don't want to have to repurchase just to use a different filesystem. It's cheaper for them to pay any royalties on the next device they buy for it to support the same thing too. Then you also have to get manufacturers to agree on a single filesystem that they're gonna put effort into to make it the next big vfat, and good luck with that... you know Sony won't play ball for a start, they'll just have to come up with their own format like they do with everything. Manufacturers aren't choosing vfat, vfat's choosing them. If everyone now decides that everything released from now is going to have support for a new filesystem, it's still going to be 10 years before vfat's ditchable, because of the inertia to overcome, and by that time, the patents will have expired anyway.
The best way forward as I said is for companies to not try getting into patent wars with microsoft, because microsoft have a rather healthy patent portfolio that they use defensively.
But you can't guarentee it. What if someone uses the usb stick somewhere without autorun, or a non windows machine? Effectively having a tool you have to use instead of the operating systems filesystem support to read/write to the memory stick defeats the whole point of it using a ubiquitous filesystem in the first place. All it would take is a rename on a system where tomtom's own short to long filemapping doesn't get updated, and filenames become orphaned or worst still, start pointing to the wrong data on stick. Your choices are simple. Either update the LFN and SFN directory entries at the same time, use the drive ONLY in readonly, or completely exclude LFN support on the media (which may not be an option). You can't have one dataset being treated differently by different pieces of software and rely on it. This is why we have protocols for doing things.
The lesson here is don't try and sue Microsoft for patent infringement, because they can play that game too, and they can play it well. Let sleeping beasts lie.
How's that relevant?
This is not to do with having long filename support; TomTom could store short filenames with a textfile containing short to long filename mapping, but then those long filenames wouldn't be consistent on your desktop if you renamed them etc. The patent is for the particular method of supporting long filenames (which IIRC uses volume label entries in the directory structure to contain the extra filename info). Patents aren't what you accomplish, they're how you accomplish it.
Hehe, reminds me of a joke I'm just going to slightly modify to crowbar in here... what's the difference between women and sand? You can pick up women with a pitchfork! *woot*
"Show me a scientific test to prove that one wrong, baby"
You just wanna see nude children running around under lawn sprinklers using the ONE fear that people have that's even greater than their fear of paedophilic science... GLOBAL WARMING! Nice try, but it's all about the economy now... you're gonna have to offer parents financial security if you wanna use their kids in this way.
Focus stealing prevention all the way man! Should never have a button popup underneith your downward moving finger, the solid or flashing blue taskbar entry to signify "this app wants focus" works much better.
Nah, other guy's definitely right for advanced users. My brain queues up actions that I'm going to perform next. I'm not thinking one thing at a time, and so a consistent interface really speeds things up, because I can move my hands to where they need to be whilst processing some other information on the screen for example. If I have to stop and process the 'breadcrum' bar to see where to click, I have to wait until I've finished processing whatever I am, before I can instruct my mouse pointer where exactly to move to. With a consistently positioned Up arrow, I don't need the 'text processing services' parts of my brain to be free to interface with it... it's more like muscle memory. It's like the difference between me being able to reach to my left of my bed in the dark and turn the lamp on, because I know exactly where the switch is, and me having to use another light to see where on the lamp a moving switch is and press that. The latter IS slower for and advanced user, there's no two ways about it.
Have you tried 2003? I dropped XP and went back to 2000 and stuck with 2000 until I tried 2003 and have stuck with that. Disable the 'themes' service and the GUI runs much quicker 'n smoother, and there's much else which brings its performance back towards the 2000, whilst still gaining from additions post 2000, such as asynchronous service start/stopping which really does improve boot (and shutdown) time.
Yes but less people are willing to properly test something labeled 'beta' than 'RC'... is I believe the mentality behind the increased RC labeling of stuff these days (look at the linux kernel cycle).