Re:The future? Just like the past should be...
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More on Columbia
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· Score: 1
indigo asserts:
[Bounty for private space flight] not worth it to any single company right now. Only boeing has the resources,
Not true, first off, if such bounties were available, companies (or consoritums of companies) will be coming out of the woodwork to try for them. Secondly, there are companies other than Boeing there right now that are in a position to start working on this, big ones like Lockheed Martin, to little ones like Scaled Composites and XCOR. A bounty for successful milestones would make VC funds more accessible to companies with good ideas.
The problem I see with this is: a bounty for successful milestones would also make VC funds more accessible to companies with bad ideas. Companies working with a focus on the bottom line cut corners; in space travel, corners cut cost lives. Seven astronauts who knew the risks was bad enough; I don't want to see some moron going up on a half designed rocket, having a guidance failure and crashing in a crowded city center, taking out people who were just trying to go to work.
This is not about us getting a sig. It's about us getting a way to legitimately hack the X-Box, by having MS deny the sig. Unless they grant the sig, in which case there's no need to;-)
Speaking of which, the C|Net article claims the sig is for the entire operating system. I hope the sig is just for the boot loader, and not for a particular set of boot loader, kernel and apps, otherwise they might just grant the sig just to watch people squirm as the software gets outdated.
I studied Computer Science in College, and currently work as a Programmer/Analyst for a non-profit organization (Desktop, Web and Server-based systems). Yes, all of the above encourage a "black box" model to design and coding. Furthermore, I am guilty of perpetuating this to the people forced to listen to me blather, and will continue to do so until I see a better way.
I understand that it hides some bugs. I don't like this. On the other hand, we can never have enough staff to make sure we have people expert on not only each system used but on each interface between the system to do a good integrated system.
So what we do is take some premade components (eg. hardware, OS kernel, C library, certain widget libraries, web server, etc), and say "OK, assume these work according to these specifications, we're going to work on adding a piece that does this". When the premade component deviates from the specifications, we fix the component or update the specs.
As much as possible, we make use of open standards and free software so that if we need to, we can open up the black box and fix something. However, the more we can assume that a component is a black box that will just do what it's supposed to do, the faster we can develop the "interesting" bits.
The bottom line for us is to manage complexity. The more complexity that we can abstract away, the faster we can work on the custom stuff unique to our organization. A "black box" model works well for us, but yes, it does cause some bugs that need to get cleaned up after the fact. Most organizations I've seen make a similar design choice (or blunder into it blindly), and most schools teach their courses with a similar mindset.
If we were to develop a truly critical system, one that lives or big bucks depended on, we ought to take a different approach for that system, but we aren't likely to work on such a system for a while.
Because the vast majority of spam is sent by Americans, advertising products sold by other Americans and hoping to sell them to still more Americans.
Actually, I'm an American and at least one third of the spam I get is sent from Korea, advertising in Korean, presumably for Korean products. This spam is completely unreadable by me (I have friends who can read Chinese and Japanese, but none who read Korean).
I don't see Korea caring what laws the US passes regarding forged headers. Might help with the rest of my spam tho.
Re:Give us a phone number to call this company
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Kevin Mitnick Answers
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· Score: 1
Yeah, I answer to trolls on occasion (I generally try to point out that I'm aware it's a troll, as I did in the above post).
There are plenty of newbies and clueless people who, when they see a troll in a visible spot, don't recognize it as such and read it. If there isn't a post correcting it, they all too often believe it, causing problems later. If the post is incorrect enough for this to be an issue, I respond.
That wasn't the case here, though; if I let this post slide, even the most clueless newbie ought to go "here's another moron taking random potshots from Anonymous Coward". In this case, I was board and annoyed, and I figured I'd use the troll as an excuse to spread some recognition for a (often unrecognized) person who has affected my life in a good way.
Re:Give us a phone number to call this company
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Kevin Mitnick Answers
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· Score: 4, Informative
Anonymous Coward trolls: Give us a phone number to call this company: Well Jim, I would love to confirm your employment when Kevin damaged your system. I imagine your full of it. Just my personal opinion.
Well first off, to confirm that the account belongs to Jim Gettys, this account has been posting to slashdot for years, including posting in articles about himself and his work, and you are the first person I've seen accuse him of being "full of it". If the jg account on slashdot were a fake, I'm certain there would be a number of his friends and coworkers pointing this out. There haven't been, so I will assume it's him.
Secondly, since you appear to have been asleep for the past ten years, you cannot call Digital Equipment Corporation, because they no longer exist. They were acquired by Compaq, which was acquired by Hewlett Packard. Sure enough, Mr. Gettys works for Hewlett Packard now, in the HP Labs division.
His employment at Digital is a matter of public record. He's even listed as a DEC employee in RFC 2068. If you really want to confirm his employment, I suggest you hunt down HP's Human Resources (or Media Relations, they might have a biography) department yourself.
While I am aware that Kevin Mitnick is a more recognized name for many people, Jim Gettys is far more deserving of fame. Both The X Window System and HTTP are the way they are today partially due to his hard work. Kevin Mitnick did something stupid, got caught doing it, and was abused by the government; Jim Gettys actually created things we use every day.
Pretty much my understanding, but with one caviat:
If person C has downloaded program Y before person B was slapped with an injunction preventing distribution, my understanding is that nobody has the legal right to go to C's house and reclaim that copy of the code. So, in one sense, C does have the code.
However, the license on Y is null and void, so C can't distribute the code, or do anything outside the bounds of Fair Use; C certainly doesn't have a GPL on Y, only on the original X.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, the above should not be construed as legal advice.
I agree with your skepticism, Lanier is spouting vague principals with little basis in real systems. He ought not to say "we should go there" until "there" is somewhat mapped out and not a big spot on the map labeled "here there be dragons". However, I do have some things to say about your comments.
Our computers, our CPUs, our ICs, at the end of the day they're just a bundle of very, very tiny on/off switches - pure binary logic.
Our DNA, the genetic code that is used to make the building blocks that make us us, and make chimpanzees chimpanzees, is essentially a number in base 4, manipulated by molecules that are either completely hardcoded, or defined within that base 4 number, and influenced by chaotic forces in the world at large..
Mathematically and logically speaking, there is no difference between a base 4 number and a base 2 number. Nature uses base 4 because she had 4 nucleotides to play with, we use base 2 because it's cheaper to design and build; they are the same numbers.
When we develop code for this environment, we have to develop according to those binary rules.
Perhaps, but there are some things that need to be kept in mind here. As Lanier points out, much of what we consider "this environment" is the biproduct of business decisions, not the essential nature of binary computing, for example, processor registers, one dimentional memory, the four ring security model, interrupts, files, these can all be done differently.
Also, as has been demonstrated in numerous ways, just because you are using a binary device doesn't mean that you must be develop based on binary logic, people aren't toggling the boot loader via the switches in front of the computer anymore. In binary, someone can develop an environment that is much much richer than binary. Then, separately, anyone can develop for that environment without having to worry about the binary details.
We even have the technology to, given sufficent computing power, completely model any non-chaotic analog environment and have it work right (just keep making the bit lengths longer until you are safely well under whatever error tolerance you have). Chaotic analog environments are harder, but people are working on it; we've got the technology to make something that looks like the chaotic environment, but is missing out on much of the richness.
We can't say "here's a rock", but we can say "turn on these switches and those switches such so that it indicates that we are pointing to a location in memory that represents a rock".
But we can. When you write a paragraph of text in HTML, you don't say "turn on these switches and those switches such that it indicates that we are pointing to a location in memory that represents a paragraph", you say "here is a paragraph, here's the text in the paragraph". You can make an environment where you can say "here is a rock" (but until we get better at chaos, it will look and act at best almost, but not quite, like a rock).
which is why instead of griping about sales tax, a few of us nerds should organize a small web application which would keep track of such things with annual/semi-annual updates to be downloaded from our website.
Not good enough. First of all, states differ not only in what their salses tax rate is, but also in what they cover, for example, New York has sales tax on clothing, New Jersey doesn't.
Secondly, Not all states have a uniform sales tax rate. For example, if I recall correctly, New York state has a 4% sales tax, plus the county sales tax which differs from county to county, plus many municipalities (including, but not limited to New York City) have their own sales tax added on top. There are places where you can walk a mile and have walked through three different sales tax zones.
Thirdly, the tax rate might change more frequently than can be handled by "semi-annual updates", for example, in New York, there have been a few weekends where sales tax was waived on clothing and a few other items.
As far as I know, none of these issues are tracked statewide in an easy to parse format. I assume other states have tax laws at least as convoluted as New York.
Are you sure you want to develop such a system? Think of the liability if you give your clients bad tax advice.
It's interesting to note that had BSDI, Coherent, Dell Unix, whatever been available back in 1992 for about $100, chances are Linux would never have come to fruition.
It would still have been written, but it probably wouldn't have been as popular among developers as quickly; so it wouldn't have gotten as good as it has.
Also, don't forget SCO, almost certainly the most popular x86 unix in 1992. If they had made cheap or free student and developer versions, and had lower prices for production versions, the x86 unix market could look very different today. Not that I'm complaining, I much prefer Linux (or even BSDI) to SCO;-).
Many of the GNU tools would then not have seen widespread use, even gcc if the compiler had only been $50 or so.
Emacs and gcc had widespread use on commercial Unixes (including BSDI) in 1992. The BSDI boxes that I have used all had both programs installed.
I can just picture it, the people at the Highlands Group sitting around, clients gone for the recession, playing video games to pass the time. Then one of them goes, "Hey, the Pentagon is spending billions to fight terrorism, let's try to get them to pay us to play these games!"
I've gotta wonder, have you ever worked with a client? On software development projects, yes. Not on web development, though. You think clients are any less demanding when it comes to their user interfaces?
99% of people do not care one tiny bit about any of the problems you mention. I must have had better than average clients, or they got worse since I left the consulting field, because most of them cared when I told them that a request was impossible to implement. Clients generally want to get something done, rather than funnelling money into an unfeasable task (like making websites identical across browsers).
And Lexus or Sony give a rats ass about blind people when? When did that start. Never got that memo. I assume Lexus has little attention for blind people, for obvious reasons. Sony, however has a fairly navigable site, and has portions of their charter devoted to making their products "Barrier Free", allowing easy use by handicapped and elderly customers. They may not succeed all the time, but they recognize the issues and officially care.
Your pureist/elitest ideas are +nice+ but really unworkable in the (unfortunatly) real world. I don't consider it purist or elitist to give clients feedback on their project, to make sure they get a result that they are actually happy with, rather than the gibberish they thought they wanted when they called. I don't consider it purist or elitist to expect people to learn how to use the tools given, and use them properly, rather than pounding on the screws with the screwdriver as if it were a hammer. I have, however, found my attitude quite workable in the real world. By refraining from blowing sunshine up my clients asses, I would get repeat business and avoid lawsuits.
BTW, half the web designers I know have been out of work for a year+, Not surprising, even without the "Tech Bubble" bursting, there were far too many "web designers" for a while there. Many of the ones I've encountered had only a limited grasp of both the web and design. There were good ones too, but the people who took a few weeks of courses and tried to pass themselves off as professionals deserve to be out their jobs (not saying that this is representative of the designers you know).
maybe where you are, people still have jobs with clients who care about standards. Here, it's "will you work for $12/hr?". Next, can I move where you are? sounds nice. I like where I live, the economy doesn't suck even though I'm less than three hours from NYC, the people are friendly, it's a good place to live. This summer, they're going to start building an incubator for IC designers. I certainly won't stop you from moving here.
I'd also like to point out that some webdesigners actually develop websites as a job for real living customers. Who pay them. For making websites look like what they want. Pretty websites. I'm with you so far.
And sometimes those pretty websites require absolutely (does that work as an adverb?) sized tables. A professional web designer has a responsibility to tell their customer that there is no such animal. If the customer demands that their product specification table be 830 pixels wide in all browsers, they need to be told that:
It won't be 830 pixels wide in a text-to-speech processor, or a Braile screen.
It won't be 830 pixels wide on the browser of the 80 year old man who has his font size set to 30 points so he can hope to read things.
It will upset people with 800x600 screens, 640x480, and PDA viewers.
The fact is, browsers are *still* not all behaving the same way, And they never will, for the above-mentioned reasons and more.
and the only safe way to have a site appear correctly is to use absolute pixels. No, that's a dangerous way that is guaranteed to piss off a percentage of your page's viewers. Stop worrying about getting the perfect look, because you will never ever achieve it. Make something that is informative on all browsers and decent looking on the popular ones.
Stylesheets are nice for simple text styling, but can't even be depended on for font sizes! (Don't believe me? Set up a web page with a style BODY { font-size: medium } And see how it shows up on IE, IE for Mac, Netscape, and Netscape for Mac. They'll all be different sizes, last time I checked.) Good, now go into your preferences, and change your default font size. Guess what, it will be still yet one more size. Imagine that, something that is specified as being user-defined isn't consistant between manufacturers.
Since clients want pretty layouts, which includes, necessarily, the use of tables, from time to time absolute pixel widths have to be used. Clients want pretty layouts, but pretty layouts don't require the use of tables, much less absoulte pixel widths. Check out this article (excuse the color selection, the HTML/CSS layout and the actual content of the article are what I'm referring you to): http://www.alistapart.com/stories/journey/.
Our technique for getting around the 100% of 800 = 805 problem is to set the table to 95% instead of 100%, and then center it on the screen. It also adds to the whitespace on the left and right, so it's actually a pretty good thing. That's off to a start, at least.
Lord Of The Rings is not backwards-thinking
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David Brin On LOTR
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I don't read the Lord of the Rings trillogy as backwards thinking at all, in fact one of it's central points is that some progress is worth self-destruction for.
The people in power in the Third Age, the elves and wizards and such, made a right botch of things, with Sauron's rise to power being the most visible representation of the errors of the third age, but the behaviour of Saruman, and even Elrond and Galadriel are also symptoms of the same sickness.
The more progressive minded of the Third Age elite (eg. Gandalf, Elrond, Galadriel) realize that they've made such a botch of things that, in order to fix things (oust Sauron, and other troublemakers), they need to destroy the base of their own power. Basically, in order for the world to be livable, they need to commit political suicide. They accept this, and do so, both by destroying the magical core of their power (the ring), and by amassing a huge army around an independant man who has a vested interest in ending the Third Age (Aragorn).
The story, far from glorifying the past, condemns it, and reaffirms the point that sometimes radical change is necessary; even to the point of self-inflicted pain.
glesga_kiss asks: Has MSG always been a natural component of East Asian food, or is it a modern additive?
Sort of both.
Glutamates are naturally occuring substances that "enhance" flavor (although the exact mechanics of how are subject to debate). They exist naturally in many foods, and some methods of processing foods generate more glutamates. Various seaweeds, which are high in glutamates, are commonly used in Japanese cooking; other Asian cuisines use them as well.
MSG is a refined glutamate salt discovered/developed in 1906 at the University of Tokyo. So, MSG itself isn't natural, but it's a refined version of something that is natural and common in East Asian cooking.
NineNine wrote: No, but copyrights do protect the creators. If not for copyright, who's to say that Tolkein's books would ever have been written?
For what it's worth, in the 60's, Ace Books used loopholes in the US copyright law to legally publish the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, without concent of JRR Tolkien (or Allen & Unwin) and with no intent to pay royalties.
Tolkien had no legal stand to fight the publishing, but spread the word that the Ace edition was unauthorized, and that he was receiving no royalties. Ace was eventually pressured by the publicity backlash to pay him royalties and to cease publishing.
Ironically, a good deal of his popularity in the United States could be argued to be due to the swarms of college students buying the cheap (75 cent) unauthorized Ace Books versions.
As for whether or not the books would be written, the Hobbit was written for Tolkien's children, the decision to publish it came later. the Silmarillion seems to be written for himself, without regard to publication (he occasionally attempted to get it published, but nobody was interested until his death). The Lord of the Rings trilogy, however, was written at least partially due to the encouragement of Allen & Unwin (the publishers of the Hobbit in England), and thus copyright could easily be considered one of the motives. Likewise with his short stories.
khyber asks: Am I the only one who thinks CORBA for local system calls is gross? I wonder what the overhead to draw a pixel is like.
Several portions of GNOME, including the GNOME panel, use CORBA for local system calls. It's not quite as responsive as direct X calls, but even on a K6-400 I find it quite usable.
Desktops are so overpowered in regards to normal use, it's perfectly reasonable in my mind to use some of that power to make things:
1) More flexible
2) Easier to develop
So, please name a few examples of what's innovative in Hurd.
Let's see:
Translators: userspace programs programs to act as a file or a hierarchical directory. Device drivers, filesystems, etc are implemented as translators in Hurd.
A security structure to allow arbitrary users to install arbitrary translators as needed to the system without compromising security or system integrity.
Multiple authentication servers, allowing different parts of the system to have completely different security models.
A very flexible interprocess communication model.
Many other, more subtle, innovations I don't have time to list.
Basically, the Hurd offers a much more flexible operating environment, one that can move beyond most of the restrictions of *nix, while still looking like Unix to the users and developers.
I think civil disobedience IS an option over here.. when Judges' Common Sense reeaches zero (just for listening to such a lawsuit!), something must be done.
As far as I know, none of these lawsuits have been looked at by a judge. You don't need a judge's approval to file a lawsuit. I really don't see any role of Civil Disobedience here beyond merely ignoring the suit and hope Novak's uninterested in spending money to push the issue.
The initial question is whether the GPL has been violated by the UL guys as a result of their closed beta with an NDA.
Yes.
Such closed betas are not uncommon, even of GPL'd code.
Which is why the FSF, whenever they find out that such a distribution has occurred, goes out of their way to make sure that the company has made it clear to their beta testers that the NDA does not cover GPL/LGPL code.
It is apparent that some of us believe this to be legal, others don't. I think everyone agrees up to the point where we ask whether a closed beta is distribution, or not. There is a fine line to be drawn.
I see the situation differently, it looks to me that some people here feel it ought to be legal to NDA GPL code in a "closed beta", and are coming up with spurious arguments with little to basis in fact, in an attempt to convince themselves that it is legal. I have yet to see a credible argument that it is legal.
I am in the camp that believes that as a result of the NDA, the beta-testers should be considered as part of the organisation preparing the software for release.
Part of the organization how? You have a contract with the company, that doesn't make you an employee of the company. Even a contractor doing a work-for-hire for a company, invokes the GPL when releasing that work to the company. How does being someone who managed to get on the beta test program make you more a part of the company than someone doing work for the company?
Therefore, the GPL is not violated since the software is only being distributed internally, which I think everyone agrees is allowed.
I agree that internal use is allowed, but I don't agree that you can declare use outside the company to be "internal use" so trivially.
Other people (probably the majority) believe that the beta-testers are not part of the organisation and therefore the GPL is clearly violated.
I would like to point out that among the people who feel that a beta test is not internal use is the FSF, the authors of the GPL, and the single largest copyright holder of GPL software.
It would be nice to know which side of the argument is correct.
I would like to hear the argument. You've asserted that you think it's internal use, but you haven't offered any argument that would make it internal use.
In UL's case the spirit of the GPL isn't broken anyway because they have already announced that all source will be freely available for download once they are ready to make a proper release.
In UL's case the contract of the GPL probably isn't broken, because chances are they will make a statement clarifying that their NDA doesn't cover GPL/LGPL code, just like Corel did in the same situation.
The spirit of the GPL isn't "It'll be Free soon"; the spirit is: whoever uses the software has the freedom to use, examine, modify and redistribute the software. An NDA takes away that freedom. By using an NDA at all, UnitedLinux makes it clear that they are not interested in "the spirit of the GPL", but at least the law of the GPL can be enforced.
Many Linux distributions first see light of day as closed betas.
The fact that it's a "closed beta" is not the issue here.
For example, the Xandros betas have been available to only a small number of people,
What Xandros has or hasn't done also isn't the issue here. I don't know any details about what Xandros did, but I remember hearing that they talked to key Debian and FSF people. I would be surprised if they released GPL software under additional restrictions (particularly since an earlier version of their distribution got slammed for doing the exact same thing back when it was first beta tested by Corel).
all of whom have signed NDAs.
That is the issue. It is perfectly legal to release your own code under an NDA, or your distribution of BSD-licensed code. However, the GPL does not permit you to redistribute the software with additional restrictions, so wrapping a distribution of GPL software in an NDA is solidly illegal.
It should be fairly simple for them to write the NDA containing appropriate holes for the GPL to peek through, something along the lines of "This NDA does not cover the software in this distribution licensed under the GPL, LGPL or any other license that explicitly precludes additional restrictions". This way, you still get a "closed beta", since nobody can redistribute the whole thing, but if people feel the need to redistribute a GPL'ed bit from inside the distribution, they retain the legal right to, as required by the GPL.
As I understand it, the FSF is merely asking to see the text of the NDA, to ensure that it is worded so as not to violate the GPL.
As I see it, a closed beta is not a public release, and therefore not violating the GPL in any way.
The GPL does not say anything about "public release", it is a license for distribution, and a beta distribution, even a "closed" beta distribution, is still a distribution.
In these situations, making the full source available would not help anybody
I disagree, I have found source code helpful in many unexpected situations.
Your comment here makes me wonder if you understand the situation, the question isn't "is source code helpful", the question is "is UnitedLinux violating the GPL". I'll do a simplified rundown: take Alice, Bob, Carol and Doug. Alice writes a piece of software, and releases it under the GPL. Bob creates a software distribution containing precompiled binaries of many different programs under many different licenses, and sells a copy to Carol. Neither Bob, Carol nor Doug have any interaction with Alice or her legal representatives.
In order to legally distribute his package to Carol, Bob has accepted the GPL, and must abide by its terms (this is called a contract of adhesion). One of the terms is that he is legally obligated to make the source available to Carol (Section 3). Another is that along with the distribution, he must pass on a copy of the license to Carol, with no additional restrictions (Section 6). This ensures that, if Carol wishes, she can also accept the GPL and give a copy of Alice's software to her friend, Doug.
If Bob distributes his collection under an NDA, that doesn't change his legal obligations to Alice. It doesn't matter that Carol can get the source from SourceForge, Bob is obligated to make it available to her himself. It doesn't matter that Bob wants to keep the details of his collection under wraps, he is required to give Carol a GPL, unencumbered by the NDA or any other additional restrictions. He can legally use the NDA to cover other parts of his collection, but not Alice's GPLed software.
If Bob violates these terms, Alice has the legal right to sue, seek injunctions against Bob's distribution of her software, and so forth.
The current Bob (UnitedLinux) is not necessarily violating the GPL, the FSF is trying to determine if they are or aren't. I assume, given past history, if the FSF determines that UnitedLinux is in violation, they will offer advice on how to do what they want to do without violating the GPL, and not go farther unless UL makes no attempt to fix the situation.
(1. slower development due to extra hassle,
Cost of doing business.
2. most code is available from original sources anyway,
As described above, it doesn't matter. UnitedLinux has the legal obligation to make all the source code used to produce the GPL software they distribute available to the people they distribute to.
3. modified code will be in a state of unstable flux
That's an easy one, the source code to make available is the source used to create the binaries being distributed. If your code is in such "unstable flux" that you don't know what you compiled in order to make the binaries, then you certainly shouldn't be doing a commercial beta distribution.
At the point of full release, well, that's a different matter.
No, it isn't. The GPL makes no distinction between distribution to one person, and distribution to the general public.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, the above should not be construed as legal advice. If you have an NDA to write, I strongly recommend you consult a real lawyer for advice on how to appropriately word it.
You're forgetting that with cardboard voting forms the votes would take a while longer to count. The media wouldn't be able to whoop up the frenzy they do following (halfway through) all elections.
My understanding is that Canada uses paper ballots. The results of their most recent national elections was counted within four hours. Some non-contested states in the US took over a day to finish their count.
Nothing seems to indicate he's moved elsewhere. Still working in Australia, heretic?
But he said he was in a "small western nation". Austrialia is so far east it's approaching the International Date Line. It also is over 7.6 million square kilometers, the sixth largest country in the world; I wouldn't call it small.
And CTalkobt responded with: Gah, Length Length lenghty... how about: printf( "This location contains %d pallete%s", numP, numP > 1 ? "s" : "" );
Use the language - don't go the long road by using functions such as ngettext and don't write code to support to implement a feature that the language already represents. If however, use of the language feature would cause confusion or code to be easily misread, then go ahead and implement your own ( eg: use if's instead of nested ?'s).
Well, aside from the obvious problem (The "?:" construct was explicitly disallowed in the Original Example), I wouldn't do it that way anyway.
The next most obvious issue is that ngettext() supports interntationalization and "?:" doesn't, but internationalization might not be an issue in the code.
You say "don't write code...to implement a feature that the language already represents", but what does "?:" represent, really? The "?:" construct represents any raw conditional, while ngettext() explicitly identifies a singlular form of a string, a plural form of a string and a number used to select which form to use. The problem is much more explicitly represented using ngettext() than "?:".
There are more advantages to ngettext() in this case. By using "?:" you hardcode program logic into the text string, if the content of the message changes you need to go into the code, change the text, evaluate whether or not the logic for making the text plural needs to change, change that, recompile, and redistribute. With ngettext, you can change the text string without touching code (IIRC, you can change it at run time without even recompiling or redistributing binaries).
Also, the example specified that most of the programmers in question are from a COBOL background, using lots of if statements or "?:" constructs breaks the text string up and pieces it together at runtime. The ngettext() function cleanly supports storing the simple text contstants elsewhere in the program, as a COBOL programmer used to a DATA DIVISION section might be more comfortable with.
Slashdot Mirror
indigo asserts:
[Bounty for private space flight] not worth it to any single company right now. Only boeing has the resources,
Not true, first off, if such bounties were available, companies (or consoritums of companies) will be coming out of the woodwork to try for them. Secondly, there are companies other than Boeing there right now that are in a position to start working on this, big ones like Lockheed Martin, to little ones like Scaled Composites and XCOR. A bounty for successful milestones would make VC funds more accessible to companies with good ideas.
The problem I see with this is: a bounty for successful milestones would also make VC funds more accessible to companies with bad ideas. Companies working with a focus on the bottom line cut corners; in space travel, corners cut cost lives. Seven astronauts who knew the risks was bad enough; I don't want to see some moron going up on a half designed rocket, having a guidance failure and crashing in a crowded city center, taking out people who were just trying to go to work.
Piquan writes:
;-)
This is not about us getting a sig. It's about us getting a way to legitimately hack the X-Box, by having MS deny the sig.
Unless they grant the sig, in which case there's no need to
Speaking of which, the C|Net article claims the sig is for the entire operating system. I hope the sig is just for the boot loader, and not for a particular set of boot loader, kernel and apps, otherwise they might just grant the sig just to watch people squirm as the software gets outdated.
I studied Computer Science in College, and currently work as a Programmer/Analyst for a non-profit organization (Desktop, Web and Server-based systems). Yes, all of the above encourage a "black box" model to design and coding. Furthermore, I am guilty of perpetuating this to the people forced to listen to me blather, and will continue to do so until I see a better way.
I understand that it hides some bugs. I don't like this. On the other hand, we can never have enough staff to make sure we have people expert on not only each system used but on each interface between the system to do a good integrated system.
So what we do is take some premade components (eg. hardware, OS kernel, C library, certain widget libraries, web server, etc), and say "OK, assume these work according to these specifications, we're going to work on adding a piece that does this". When the premade component deviates from the specifications, we fix the component or update the specs.
As much as possible, we make use of open standards and free software so that if we need to, we can open up the black box and fix something. However, the more we can assume that a component is a black box that will just do what it's supposed to do, the faster we can develop the "interesting" bits.
The bottom line for us is to manage complexity. The more complexity that we can abstract away, the faster we can work on the custom stuff unique to our organization. A "black box" model works well for us, but yes, it does cause some bugs that need to get cleaned up after the fact. Most organizations I've seen make a similar design choice (or blunder into it blindly), and most schools teach their courses with a similar mindset.
If we were to develop a truly critical system, one that lives or big bucks depended on, we ought to take a different approach for that system, but we aren't likely to work on such a system for a while.
meringuoid wrote:
Because the vast majority of spam is sent by Americans, advertising products sold by other Americans and hoping to sell them to still more Americans.
Actually, I'm an American and at least one third of the spam I get is sent from Korea, advertising in Korean, presumably for Korean products. This spam is completely unreadable by me (I have friends who can read Chinese and Japanese, but none who read Korean).
I don't see Korea caring what laws the US passes regarding forged headers. Might help with the rest of my spam tho.
Yeah, I answer to trolls on occasion (I generally try to point out that I'm aware it's a troll, as I did in the above post).
There are plenty of newbies and clueless people who, when they see a troll in a visible spot, don't recognize it as such and read it. If there isn't a post correcting it, they all too often believe it, causing problems later. If the post is incorrect enough for this to be an issue, I respond.
That wasn't the case here, though; if I let this post slide, even the most clueless newbie ought to go "here's another moron taking random potshots from Anonymous Coward". In this case, I was board and annoyed, and I figured I'd use the troll as an excuse to spread some recognition for a (often unrecognized) person who has affected my life in a good way.
Anonymous Coward trolls:
Give us a phone number to call this company:
Well Jim, I would love to confirm your employment when Kevin damaged your system. I imagine your full of it. Just my personal opinion.
Well first off, to confirm that the account belongs to Jim Gettys, this account has been posting to slashdot for years, including posting in articles about himself and his work, and you are the first person I've seen accuse him of being "full of it". If the jg account on slashdot were a fake, I'm certain there would be a number of his friends and coworkers pointing this out. There haven't been, so I will assume it's him.
Secondly, since you appear to have been asleep for the past ten years, you cannot call Digital Equipment Corporation, because they no longer exist. They were acquired by Compaq, which was acquired by Hewlett Packard. Sure enough, Mr. Gettys works for Hewlett Packard now, in the HP Labs division.
His employment at Digital is a matter of public record. He's even listed as a DEC employee in RFC 2068. If you really want to confirm his employment, I suggest you hunt down HP's Human Resources (or Media Relations, they might have a biography) department yourself.
While I am aware that Kevin Mitnick is a more recognized name for many people, Jim Gettys is far more deserving of fame. Both The X Window System and HTTP are the way they are today partially due to his hard work. Kevin Mitnick did something stupid, got caught doing it, and was abused by the government; Jim Gettys actually created things we use every day.
Pretty much my understanding, but with one caviat:
If person C has downloaded program Y before person B was slapped with an injunction preventing distribution, my understanding is that nobody has the legal right to go to C's house and reclaim that copy of the code. So, in one sense, C does have the code.
However, the license on Y is null and void, so C can't distribute the code, or do anything outside the bounds of Fair Use; C certainly doesn't have a GPL on Y, only on the original X.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, the above should not be construed as legal advice.I agree with your skepticism, Lanier is spouting vague principals with little basis in real systems. He ought not to say "we should go there" until "there" is somewhat mapped out and not a big spot on the map labeled "here there be dragons". However, I do have some things to say about your comments.
Our computers, our CPUs, our ICs, at the end of the day they're just a bundle of very, very tiny on/off switches - pure binary logic.
Our DNA, the genetic code that is used to make the building blocks that make us us, and make chimpanzees chimpanzees, is essentially a number in base 4, manipulated by molecules that are either completely hardcoded, or defined within that base 4 number, and influenced by chaotic forces in the world at large..
Mathematically and logically speaking, there is no difference between a base 4 number and a base 2 number. Nature uses base 4 because she had 4 nucleotides to play with, we use base 2 because it's cheaper to design and build; they are the same numbers.
When we develop code for this environment, we have to develop according to those binary rules.
Perhaps, but there are some things that need to be kept in mind here. As Lanier points out, much of what we consider "this environment" is the biproduct of business decisions, not the essential nature of binary computing, for example, processor registers, one dimentional memory, the four ring security model, interrupts, files, these can all be done differently.
Also, as has been demonstrated in numerous ways, just because you are using a binary device doesn't mean that you must be develop based on binary logic, people aren't toggling the boot loader via the switches in front of the computer anymore. In binary, someone can develop an environment that is much much richer than binary. Then, separately, anyone can develop for that environment without having to worry about the binary details.
We even have the technology to, given sufficent computing power, completely model any non-chaotic analog environment and have it work right (just keep making the bit lengths longer until you are safely well under whatever error tolerance you have). Chaotic analog environments are harder, but people are working on it; we've got the technology to make something that looks like the chaotic environment, but is missing out on much of the richness.
We can't say "here's a rock", but we can say "turn on these switches and those switches such so that it indicates that we are pointing to a location in memory that represents a rock".
But we can. When you write a paragraph of text in HTML, you don't say "turn on these switches and those switches such that it indicates that we are pointing to a location in memory that represents a paragraph", you say "here is a paragraph, here's the text in the paragraph". You can make an environment where you can say "here is a rock" (but until we get better at chaos, it will look and act at best almost, but not quite, like a rock).
Kaz Riprock suggests:
which is why instead of griping about sales tax, a few of us nerds should organize a small web application which would keep track of such things with annual/semi-annual updates to be downloaded from our website.
Not good enough. First of all, states differ not only in what their salses tax rate is, but also in what they cover, for example, New York has sales tax on clothing, New Jersey doesn't.
Secondly, Not all states have a uniform sales tax rate. For example, if I recall correctly, New York state has a 4% sales tax, plus the county sales tax which differs from county to county, plus many municipalities (including, but not limited to New York City) have their own sales tax added on top. There are places where you can walk a mile and have walked through three different sales tax zones.
Thirdly, the tax rate might change more frequently than can be handled by "semi-annual updates", for example, in New York, there have been a few weekends where sales tax was waived on clothing and a few other items.
As far as I know, none of these issues are tracked statewide in an easy to parse format. I assume other states have tax laws at least as convoluted as New York.
Are you sure you want to develop such a system? Think of the liability if you give your clients bad tax advice.
sheldon wrote:
;-).
It's interesting to note that had BSDI, Coherent, Dell Unix, whatever been available back in 1992 for about $100, chances are Linux would never have come to fruition.
It would still have been written, but it probably wouldn't have been as popular among developers as quickly; so it wouldn't have gotten as good as it has.
Also, don't forget SCO, almost certainly the most popular x86 unix in 1992. If they had made cheap or free student and developer versions, and had lower prices for production versions, the x86 unix market could look very different today. Not that I'm complaining, I much prefer Linux (or even BSDI) to SCO
Many of the GNU tools would then not have seen widespread use, even gcc if the compiler had only been $50 or so.
Emacs and gcc had widespread use on commercial Unixes (including BSDI) in 1992. The BSDI boxes that I have used all had both programs installed.
I can just picture it, the people at the Highlands Group sitting around, clients gone for the recession, playing video games to pass the time. Then one of them goes, "Hey, the Pentagon is spending billions to fight terrorism, let's try to get them to pay us to play these games!"
And they did.
Anonymous Coward wrote:
I've gotta wonder, have you ever worked with a client?
On software development projects, yes. Not on web development, though. You think clients are any less demanding when it comes to their user interfaces?
99% of people do not care one tiny bit about any of the problems you mention.
I must have had better than average clients, or they got worse since I left the consulting field, because most of them cared when I told them that a request was impossible to implement. Clients generally want to get something done, rather than funnelling money into an unfeasable task (like making websites identical across browsers).
And Lexus or Sony give a rats ass about blind people when? When did that start. Never got that memo.
I assume Lexus has little attention for blind people, for obvious reasons. Sony, however has a fairly navigable site, and has portions of their charter devoted to making their products "Barrier Free", allowing easy use by handicapped and elderly customers. They may not succeed all the time, but they recognize the issues and officially care.
Your pureist/elitest ideas are +nice+ but really unworkable in the (unfortunatly) real world.
I don't consider it purist or elitist to give clients feedback on their project, to make sure they get a result that they are actually happy with, rather than the gibberish they thought they wanted when they called. I don't consider it purist or elitist to expect people to learn how to use the tools given, and use them properly, rather than pounding on the screws with the screwdriver as if it were a hammer.
I have, however, found my attitude quite workable in the real world. By refraining from blowing sunshine up my clients asses, I would get repeat business and avoid lawsuits.
BTW, half the web designers I know have been out of work for a year+,
Not surprising, even without the "Tech Bubble" bursting, there were far too many "web designers" for a while there. Many of the ones I've encountered had only a limited grasp of both the web and design. There were good ones too, but the people who took a few weeks of courses and tried to pass themselves off as professionals deserve to be out their jobs (not saying that this is representative of the designers you know).
maybe where you are, people still have jobs with clients who care about standards. Here, it's "will you work for $12/hr?".
Next, can I move where you are? sounds nice.
I like where I live, the economy doesn't suck even though I'm less than three hours from NYC, the people are friendly, it's a good place to live. This summer, they're going to start building an incubator for IC designers. I certainly won't stop you from moving here.
I'd also like to point out that some webdesigners actually develop websites as a job for real living customers. Who pay them. For making websites look like what they want. Pretty websites.
I'm with you so far.
And sometimes those pretty websites require absolutely (does that work as an adverb?) sized tables.
A professional web designer has a responsibility to tell their customer that there is no such animal. If the customer demands that their product specification table be 830 pixels wide in all browsers, they need to be told that:
The fact is, browsers are *still* not all behaving the same way,
And they never will, for the above-mentioned reasons and more.
and the only safe way to have a site appear correctly is to use absolute pixels.
No, that's a dangerous way that is guaranteed to piss off a percentage of your page's viewers. Stop worrying about getting the perfect look, because you will never ever achieve it. Make something that is informative on all browsers and decent looking on the popular ones.
Stylesheets are nice for simple text styling, but can't even be depended on for font sizes! (Don't believe me? Set up a web page with a style
BODY { font-size: medium }
And see how it shows up on IE, IE for Mac, Netscape, and Netscape for Mac. They'll all be different sizes, last time I checked.)
Good, now go into your preferences, and change your default font size. Guess what, it will be still yet one more size. Imagine that, something that is specified as being user-defined isn't consistant between manufacturers.
Since clients want pretty layouts, which includes, necessarily, the use of tables, from time to time absolute pixel widths have to be used.
Clients want pretty layouts, but pretty layouts don't require the use of tables, much less absoulte pixel widths. Check out this article (excuse the color selection, the HTML/CSS layout and the actual content of the article are what I'm referring you to): http://www.alistapart.com/stories/journey/.
Our technique for getting around the 100% of 800 = 805 problem is to set the table to 95% instead of 100%, and then center it on the screen. It also adds to the whitespace on the left and right, so it's actually a pretty good thing.
That's off to a start, at least.
I don't read the Lord of the Rings trillogy as backwards thinking at all, in fact one of it's central points is that some progress is worth self-destruction for.
The people in power in the Third Age, the elves and wizards and such, made a right botch of things, with Sauron's rise to power being the most visible representation of the errors of the third age, but the behaviour of Saruman, and even Elrond and Galadriel are also symptoms of the same sickness.
The more progressive minded of the Third Age elite (eg. Gandalf, Elrond, Galadriel) realize that they've made such a botch of things that, in order to fix things (oust Sauron, and other troublemakers), they need to destroy the base of their own power. Basically, in order for the world to be livable, they need to commit political suicide. They accept this, and do so, both by destroying the magical core of their power (the ring), and by amassing a huge army around an independant man who has a vested interest in ending the Third Age (Aragorn).
The story, far from glorifying the past, condemns it, and reaffirms the point that sometimes radical change is necessary; even to the point of self-inflicted pain.
glesga_kiss asks:
/ Emily.html
Has MSG always been a natural component of East Asian food, or is it a modern additive?
Sort of both.
Glutamates are naturally occuring substances that "enhance" flavor (although the exact mechanics of how are subject to debate). They exist naturally in many foods, and some methods of processing foods generate more glutamates. Various seaweeds, which are high in glutamates, are commonly used in Japanese cooking; other Asian cuisines use them as well.
MSG is a refined glutamate salt discovered/developed in 1906 at the University of Tokyo. So, MSG itself isn't natural, but it's a refined version of something that is natural and common in East Asian cooking.
Some more info can be found at http://www.ecit.emory.edu/ECIT/chem_ram/receptors
Incidentally, Italian restaurants and pizza places often use MSG as well, and tomatos are also high in glutamates.
NineNine wrote:
No, but copyrights do protect the creators. If not for copyright, who's to say that Tolkein's books would ever have been written?
For what it's worth, in the 60's, Ace Books used loopholes in the US copyright law to legally publish the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, without concent of JRR Tolkien (or Allen & Unwin) and with no intent to pay royalties.
Tolkien had no legal stand to fight the publishing, but spread the word that the Ace edition was unauthorized, and that he was receiving no royalties. Ace was eventually pressured by the publicity backlash to pay him royalties and to cease publishing.
Ironically, a good deal of his popularity in the United States could be argued to be due to the swarms of college students buying the cheap (75 cent) unauthorized Ace Books versions.
As for whether or not the books would be written, the Hobbit was written for Tolkien's children, the decision to publish it came later. the Silmarillion seems to be written for himself, without regard to publication (he occasionally attempted to get it published, but nobody was interested until his death). The Lord of the Rings trilogy, however, was written at least partially due to the encouragement of Allen & Unwin (the publishers of the Hobbit in England), and thus copyright could easily be considered one of the motives. Likewise with his short stories.
khyber asks:
:-)
Am I the only one who thinks CORBA for local system calls is gross? I wonder what the overhead to draw a pixel is like.
Several portions of GNOME, including the GNOME panel, use CORBA for local system calls. It's not quite as responsive as direct X calls, but even on a K6-400 I find it quite usable.
Desktops are so overpowered in regards to normal use, it's perfectly reasonable in my mind to use some of that power to make things:
1) More flexible
2) Easier to develop
Fresco might just offer that
So, please name a few examples of what's innovative in Hurd.
Let's see:
- Translators: userspace programs programs to act as a file or a hierarchical directory. Device drivers, filesystems, etc are implemented as translators in Hurd.
- A security structure to allow arbitrary users to install arbitrary translators as needed to the system without compromising security or system integrity.
- Multiple authentication servers, allowing different parts of the system to have completely different security models.
- A very flexible interprocess communication model.
- Many other, more subtle, innovations I don't have time to list.
Basically, the Hurd offers a much more flexible operating environment, one that can move beyond most of the restrictions of *nix, while still looking like Unix to the users and developers.Much more detailed information can be found at http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/docs.html.
kipple wrote:
I think civil disobedience IS an option over here.. when Judges' Common Sense reeaches zero (just for listening to such a lawsuit!), something must be done.
As far as I know, none of these lawsuits have been looked at by a judge. You don't need a judge's approval to file a lawsuit. I really don't see any role of Civil Disobedience here beyond merely ignoring the suit and hope Novak's uninterested in spending money to push the issue.
leastsquares wrote:
The initial question is whether the GPL has been violated by the UL guys as a result of their closed beta with an NDA.
Yes.
Such closed betas are not uncommon, even of GPL'd code.
Which is why the FSF, whenever they find out that such a distribution has occurred, goes out of their way to make sure that the company has made it clear to their beta testers that the NDA does not cover GPL/LGPL code.
It is apparent that some of us believe this to be legal, others don't. I think everyone agrees up to the point where we ask whether a closed beta is distribution, or not. There is a fine line to be drawn.
I see the situation differently, it looks to me that some people here feel it ought to be legal to NDA GPL code in a "closed beta", and are coming up with spurious arguments with little to basis in fact, in an attempt to convince themselves that it is legal. I have yet to see a credible argument that it is legal.
I am in the camp that believes that as a result of the NDA, the beta-testers should be considered as part of the organisation preparing the software for release.
Part of the organization how? You have a contract with the company, that doesn't make you an employee of the company. Even a contractor doing a work-for-hire for a company, invokes the GPL when releasing that work to the company. How does being someone who managed to get on the beta test program make you more a part of the company than someone doing work for the company?
Therefore, the GPL is not violated since the software is only being distributed internally, which I think everyone agrees is allowed.
I agree that internal use is allowed, but I don't agree that you can declare use outside the company to be "internal use" so trivially.
Other people (probably the majority) believe that the beta-testers are not part of the organisation and therefore the GPL is clearly violated.
I would like to point out that among the people who feel that a beta test is not internal use is the FSF, the authors of the GPL, and the single largest copyright holder of GPL software.
It would be nice to know which side of the argument is correct.
I would like to hear the argument. You've asserted that you think it's internal use, but you haven't offered any argument that would make it internal use.
In UL's case the spirit of the GPL isn't broken anyway because they have already announced that all source will be freely available for download once they are ready to make a proper release.
In UL's case the contract of the GPL probably isn't broken, because chances are they will make a statement clarifying that their NDA doesn't cover GPL/LGPL code, just like Corel did in the same situation.
The spirit of the GPL isn't "It'll be Free soon"; the spirit is: whoever uses the software has the freedom to use, examine, modify and redistribute the software. An NDA takes away that freedom. By using an NDA at all, UnitedLinux makes it clear that they are not interested in "the spirit of the GPL", but at least the law of the GPL can be enforced.
leastsquares writes:
Many Linux distributions first see light of day as closed betas.
The fact that it's a "closed beta" is not the issue here.
For example, the Xandros betas have been available to only a small number of people,
What Xandros has or hasn't done also isn't the issue here. I don't know any details about what Xandros did, but I remember hearing that they talked to key Debian and FSF people. I would be surprised if they released GPL software under additional restrictions (particularly since an earlier version of their distribution got slammed for doing the exact same thing back when it was first beta tested by Corel).
all of whom have signed NDAs.
That is the issue. It is perfectly legal to release your own code under an NDA, or your distribution of BSD-licensed code. However, the GPL does not permit you to redistribute the software with additional restrictions, so wrapping a distribution of GPL software in an NDA is solidly illegal.
It should be fairly simple for them to write the NDA containing appropriate holes for the GPL to peek through, something along the lines of "This NDA does not cover the software in this distribution licensed under the GPL, LGPL or any other license that explicitly precludes additional restrictions". This way, you still get a "closed beta", since nobody can redistribute the whole thing, but if people feel the need to redistribute a GPL'ed bit from inside the distribution, they retain the legal right to, as required by the GPL.
As I understand it, the FSF is merely asking to see the text of the NDA, to ensure that it is worded so as not to violate the GPL.
As I see it, a closed beta is not a public release, and therefore not violating the GPL in any way.
The GPL does not say anything about "public release", it is a license for distribution, and a beta distribution, even a "closed" beta distribution, is still a distribution.
In these situations, making the full source available would not help anybody
I disagree, I have found source code helpful in many unexpected situations.
Your comment here makes me wonder if you understand the situation, the question isn't "is source code helpful", the question is "is UnitedLinux violating the GPL". I'll do a simplified rundown: take Alice, Bob, Carol and Doug. Alice writes a piece of software, and releases it under the GPL. Bob creates a software distribution containing precompiled binaries of many different programs under many different licenses, and sells a copy to Carol. Neither Bob, Carol nor Doug have any interaction with Alice or her legal representatives.
In order to legally distribute his package to Carol, Bob has accepted the GPL, and must abide by its terms (this is called a contract of adhesion). One of the terms is that he is legally obligated to make the source available to Carol (Section 3). Another is that along with the distribution, he must pass on a copy of the license to Carol, with no additional restrictions (Section 6). This ensures that, if Carol wishes, she can also accept the GPL and give a copy of Alice's software to her friend, Doug.
If Bob distributes his collection under an NDA, that doesn't change his legal obligations to Alice. It doesn't matter that Carol can get the source from SourceForge, Bob is obligated to make it available to her himself. It doesn't matter that Bob wants to keep the details of his collection under wraps, he is required to give Carol a GPL, unencumbered by the NDA or any other additional restrictions. He can legally use the NDA to cover other parts of his collection, but not Alice's GPLed software.
If Bob violates these terms, Alice has the legal right to sue, seek injunctions against Bob's distribution of her software, and so forth.
The current Bob (UnitedLinux) is not necessarily violating the GPL, the FSF is trying to determine if they are or aren't. I assume, given past history, if the FSF determines that UnitedLinux is in violation, they will offer advice on how to do what they want to do without violating the GPL, and not go farther unless UL makes no attempt to fix the situation.
(1. slower development due to extra hassle,
Cost of doing business.
2. most code is available from original sources anyway,
As described above, it doesn't matter. UnitedLinux has the legal obligation to make all the source code used to produce the GPL software they distribute available to the people they distribute to.
3. modified code will be in a state of unstable flux
That's an easy one, the source code to make available is the source used to create the binaries being distributed. If your code is in such "unstable flux" that you don't know what you compiled in order to make the binaries, then you certainly shouldn't be doing a commercial beta distribution.
At the point of full release, well, that's a different matter.
No, it isn't. The GPL makes no distinction between distribution to one person, and distribution to the general public.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, the above should not be construed as legal advice. If you have an NDA to write, I strongly recommend you consult a real lawyer for advice on how to appropriately word it.
SN74S181 wrote:
You're forgetting that with cardboard voting forms the votes would take a while longer to count. The media wouldn't be able to whoop up the frenzy they do following (halfway through) all elections.
My understanding is that Canada uses paper ballots. The results of their most recent national elections was counted within four hours. Some non-contested states in the US took over a day to finish their count.
Samrobb wrote:
Nothing seems to indicate he's moved elsewhere. Still working in Australia, heretic?
But he said he was in a "small western nation". Austrialia is so far east it's approaching the International Date Line. It also is over 7.6 million square kilometers, the sixth largest country in the world; I wouldn't call it small.
I wrote:
printf( ngettext("This location contains %d pallete", "This location contains %d pallettes", numP), numP );
And CTalkobt responded with:
Gah, Length Length lenghty... how about:
printf( "This location contains %d pallete%s", numP, numP > 1 ? "s" : "" );
Use the language - don't go the long road by using functions such as ngettext and don't write code to support to implement a feature that the language already represents. If however, use of the language feature would cause confusion or code to be easily misread, then go ahead and implement your own ( eg: use if's instead of nested ?'s).
Well, aside from the obvious problem (The "?:" construct was explicitly disallowed in the Original Example), I wouldn't do it that way anyway.
The next most obvious issue is that ngettext() supports interntationalization and "?:" doesn't, but internationalization might not be an issue in the code.
You say "don't write code...to implement a feature that the language already represents", but what does "?:" represent, really? The "?:" construct represents any raw conditional, while ngettext() explicitly identifies a singlular form of a string, a plural form of a string and a number used to select which form to use. The problem is much more explicitly represented using ngettext() than "?:".
There are more advantages to ngettext() in this case. By using "?:" you hardcode program logic into the text string, if the content of the message changes you need to go into the code, change the text, evaluate whether or not the logic for making the text plural needs to change, change that, recompile, and redistribute. With ngettext, you can change the text string without touching code (IIRC, you can change it at run time without even recompiling or redistributing binaries).
Also, the example specified that most of the programmers in question are from a COBOL background, using lots of if statements or "?:" constructs breaks the text string up and pieces it together at runtime. The ngettext() function cleanly supports storing the simple text contstants elsewhere in the program, as a COBOL programmer used to a DATA DIVISION section might be more comfortable with.
Or even more generally:
printf( ngettext("This location contains %d pallete", "This location contains %d pallettes", numP), numP );