'' The FORTRAN compiler was probably written in C, but FORTRAN has language constructs that are more well-suited to numeric computation. ''
And the reply to this was:
' Are you an idiot? The birth of FORTAN predates C by more than 10 years (work started in 1953, first manual in 1956, first compiler in 1957. C was somewhat officially released [as in "C got powerful enough to rewrite the UNIX kernel in C] in 1973, and the K&R was only published in 1978...) '
Well, I have my own opinion who is the idiot here.
Apart from the fact that there are various versions of Fortran (II, '66, '77, '90, '95 and 2003), of which at least four are newer than the first C language, the Fortran language has lots of features that allow generation of more efficient code for mathematical problems.
1. DO-Loops vs. for-loops: In a DO loop, the number of iterations can _always_ be determined before the loop starts executing. For example, in DO 10 I = 1, N the number of iterations is N if N > 0 and 0 otherwise; this does NOT change if N is modified within the loop. In the C loop for (i = 0; i n; ++i) the compiler has to check whether n is constant within the loop which might be difficult.
2. Less strict rules for evaluation: A Fortran compiler is allowed by the language to replace any computation with a mathematically equivalent one, unlike C. For example, in x = a + b + c + d, the Fortran compiler is allowed to replace this with x = (a + b) + (c + d), which has lower latency than x = ((a + b) + c) + d which the C compiler is forced to do. More extreme, if you calculate x [i] = x [i] / z in a loop, a Fortran compiler is allowed to calculate 1 / z once and multiply each element by that value, which could be ten times faster than the division.
3. Aliasing rules: In Fortran, modifying the same variable through two different names leads to undefined behavior (unlike C), so the compiler can assume that the programmer doesn't do this. This leads to much more efficient code. For example, it makes vectorizing much easier (a C compiler would often have to do runtime checks that vectorizing is really allowed and have two versions of the code ready). This has just become part of C99 with the "restrict" qualifier.
4. Vector operations are built into the language of newer Fortran versions. Semantics of these vector operations allows faster code to be generated.
'' Do they? Do they really have to pay? Is the EU really in a position to block sales of the worlds most "popular" OS for business? I think while it would not endure Microsoft to the EU, they would be politically unable to ban Microsoft from selling their product to Europeans. ''
If a company refuses to pay a fine, they just send in the bailiffs. They go into all Microsoft offices anywhere in Europe and confiscate anything of value. Desks, chairs, any software lying around, computers. That stuff will then be auctioned off. You might be able to buy Microsoft Office quite cheaply. If that isn't enough money, they confiscate all money in bank accounts anywhere in Europe. Which means that Microsoft employees will not get paid. If that isn't enough money, they order all major customers to make payments not to Microsoft anymore. If that is not enough, bankruptcy proceedings will be started.
Not playing a fine is a very, very bad idea for any company.
''...Yes, if I were Microsoft, I'd simply have a so called "news leak" to the press suggeting that we, as Microsoft, are considering withdrawing our offending products from the European Union market. This would allow us "test" the waters and make EU officials think twice about their actions. How about that? ''
Excellent idea. The next time some government agency in Europe has to decide whether to use open source software or Microsoft software, we can just point out that Microsoft is considering withdrawing their products from Europe, so clearly Microsoft software has to be avoided at all cost to be future proof.
'' What would happen to the world if Microsoft said "Ok, enough's enough. 'Frig' you all!" and shuts down! They all have enough money to live comfortably for the rest of their lives (and then some). I think that a lot of people rely on MS software... ''
About two hours later there will be an hour long phone call between Michael Dell and Steve Jobs. One week later either all Dell computers ship with Linux, or they ship 50 percent with Linux and 50 percent with MacOS X, or they will all be able to dual-boot. Apple will invest about $100,000,000 in OpenOffice and in twelve months, the MacOS X version will run better than Microsoft Office ever did.
'' The same thing that happens whenever a big company doesnt pay a fine. Absolutly nothing. Since you cant put a corporate entity in jail, and current structures are such that shareholders and executives face few legal penalties for the actions of the corporation (rather than thier own personal actions, such as in the enron ordeal) there's little real incentive for them to actualy pay up. ''
The only thing that would happen if Microsoft refused to pay is a few letters sent to all the banks where Microsoft has accounts, a few letters sent to all their customers (like Dell) telling them where to send their money instead of to Microsoft, a hundred bailiffs turning up at Microsoft offices in Munich, London, whereever, and confiscating all the office equipment (and if you think you could have security stop them then the next thing coming will be hundred bailiffs and hundred armed policemen).
'' Does this teacher have a teenage child or, for that matter, any kids at all? I'm curious as to what experiences he is using to justify getting the school's higher ups involved. Obviously he believes there is a chance this kid might actually kill him... but what is it outside of the kid's icon that actually supports this idea in his mind?
If it turns out that this teacher doesn't have any children himself, does that mean Chicken Little's claims of the sky falling should be taken at face value rather than investigated further before validating it? ''
You are confusing things a lot. The question is not whether the kid is going to kill the teacher or not. The question is whether the teacher could reasonably believe that there is a risk. And if there is a death threat, then even if there is a 99 percent chance that this wasn't meant seriously, then that one percent is a considerable risk. Not anywhere near enough to claim that the kid intended to kill the teacher, but absolutely enough to make it a _threat_ that a reasonable person would have to take serious.
And the court case was not about whether the school reacted in a perfect way. It was about whether the school reacted in a way that was reasonable under the circumstances. The schools reaction was probably at the more serious end of the range of reasonable reactions, but the court said rightfully that it was within the range.
If you made a joke at school about killing a teacher (not a threat because a reasonable person would not think there is a risk of it being carried out), then making you stay at school and writing 1000 times "I must not make jokes about killing teachers" would be a reasonable thing to do. If you go beyond that, then you have to learn there are consequences in life.
>> The people who are running the AllOfMe site are making sizeable financial contributions to the people who decide Russian law. Either through taxes or bribes or a delicate combination of both.
I would be curious if you have any proof of this. Or if you can at least point to any evidence that makes it likely to be true. Or if this is just a statement that you fabricated out of thin air.
'' We should all of us contact a lawyer and have legal documents drawn up, and notorized that say something like "In the event that any digitally copyrighted material is found on this hard drive, let this document serve as a legally binding guarantee that said materials would never have been purchased otherwise and therefore no loss of revenue can possibly be proven solely based on the posession and or existance of these materials." ''
Great idea. At the end of your month, your boss won't give you a paycheck. Instead he will give you a legally binding guarantee that he never, ever would have paid you for any work you did this month. And it's not theft, because he doesn't take anything away from you.
'' It probably won't kill it, but it will vastly reduce the amount of 'native' software.
I think the vast majority of people will quite happily accept a 5-10% slowdown. ''
Customers who bought a Macintosh are very unlikely to accept software that runs 5-10% slower, and _in Windows_.
I expect that only a small percentage of Macintosh owners would be willing to _use_ Windows software. The percentage who would be willing to _buy_ Windows software, especially after a Macintosh product was abandoned, is miniscule.
'' If English is a second language for the submitter, fine. ''
Very unlikely. Look at the choice of words, things like "innards", "head over". This is written by someone who knows the language very well, but is simply too uneducated or too lazy to learn how to write correctly.
People who learned English as their second language very rarely use _bad_ English. They may have limited vocabulary, and you may spot typical mistakes that may even let you identify where someone comes from, but they won't get "their", "there" and "they're" wrong, and they won't get "a lot" wrong. If someone has English as a second language and can write like this, then they can do it without stupid mistakes.
'' It's a good article. I wonder why OSX isn't compiled with a larger heap threshold, though? I'd do with a 2x performance increase on common operations even if it cost more memory (in the form of fragmentation). My only guess is that in real world usage this is not common, and thus it wouldn't improve real-world performance much? ''
It is _not_ a common operation.
As that article explained, the developers of the software in question could have used Shark (comes for free with every Macintosh), and within 20 seconds they would have found that they are wasting tons of time by allocating and deleting memory again and again and again and again and again. Note that for calls to malloc () to make any noticable difference in execution time, you must make an awful lot of them. So twenty seconds of observation plus two hours of tweaking their code would have made their software substantially faster _on every_ platform.
Typical code has few large allocations, which stay around for long time, and possibly a huge number of small allocations that get allocated and freed very quickly. So an implementation does the small allocations itself (because it is quicker) and leaves the large allocations to the OS (because that helps with fragmentation), just as MacOS X does.
'' I'm not saying the judge made the wrong decision, but I don't understand how the GPL helps encourage competition. ''
Anyone producing software has many different choices how to benefit from it and how to compete in the market place. With the GPL, there is another choice how to compete: By allowing others to improve your software, by benefiting from open source mindshare, by getting a good reputation, and buy selling services or using the software to promote other things you sell. In other words, the GPL encourages competition.
'' What surprises me is not that Wallace was laughed out of court. That was almost certain for various reasons. What did surprise me is that the judge's comments showed that he really understood the GPL and its role in ensuring a competitive marketplace.''
It was reported on groklaw, that Wallace made the tactical mistake to attach a copy of the GPL to his claims. Why was that a mistake? At the very first stage of a court case, the judge must only decide whether a valid claim was made. He is not allowed to look at any evidence, that comes later. So normally, the judge would not have looked at the GPL or wouldn't even have been allowed to look at it, and without looking at it, it _might_ be possible that the GPL forces anti-competitive behavior. But since the GPL was attached to the claims and therefore part of the claims, the judge was not only allowed to, but required to read it and to decide whether it is anti-competitive. And I think the contents of the GPL is absolutely crystal clear to any judge. It is a purely legal paper and very easy to understand for any lawyer or judge.
Also, Wallace has mixed up everyday language and legal language quite badly. If A has a Formula I car, and B has a bicycle, and they decide to race each other, B might say "I cannot compete, because A has a Formula I car and I only have a bicycle". In the legal language, B is wrong. He can compete. He loses badly every time they race, and he has not the slightest chance to win, but there is nothing stopping him from competing. Or if you sell a widget for $100 each, and I figure out that it costs me $110 alone to produce it, I might claim that I cannot compete. In legal language, I can compete by selling my widgets for $150. Nobody will buy them, and I will go bankrupt doing it, but nothing stops me from competing. (Better ways of competing would be to find a way to build the widget for $50, or painting it in fashionable colors so people buy it at the higher price etc.)
* Companies is a law firm * Company holds several or many patents * None of the inventors actually work for company, all the patents were acquired * Company does not actually produce any of the patented products * Actually, company doesn't produce anything * Company prominently features "licensing" in its revenue report
5 or more checks and you have a 95% certainty that you have a patent troll. ''
That would give a nice criterion whether an injunction should be allowed or not: If a company has aquired a patent, and tries to sue someone for using the patent, a court should assume that the loss of that company if their patent is truly infringed upon is limited to whatever payment was made to the original inventor of the patent. The company that is sued can prevent an injunction by paying that amount of money into an account kept with the court.
Example: Patent Trolls Inc. buys thousands of patents for $1000 each. They sue Microsoft, Apple and Sun over use of one of those patents and demand that all three companies stop selling operating systems and pay them one billion dollar each. Microsoft, Apple and Sun give $1000 each to the court, thus stopping the injunction.
'' All ATi needs to do is release enough specs that we can write our own damn driver without having to waste time reverse-engineering the thing! ''
Good luck to that. I mean, what can be so difficult about writing a driver for a modern 3D graphics card, and what can be so difficult about keeping up with changes for the next generation that comes out six months later for the rest of time?
'' Perhaps the first point of call is that the nVidia license permits the re-distribution of their driver in Linux distributions. Surely if it was a GPL violation they are not allowed to do this, or perhaps it's just down to the distro maintainer to see if the GPL overrides other package licenses. ''
As you kindly noticed, nVidia permits the re-distribution of _their_ driver in Linux distributions. nVidia holds the copyright to the nVidia drivers, they have the right to allow or disallow any distribution of their drivers in any way they like. Quite possibly there are some kinds of distribution that would violate the rights of other copyright holders, but that is not nVidias business. Obviously if you want to distribute software, you have to respect the rights of _all_ copyright holders simultaneously. If one copyright holder gives you permission to distribute (nVidia), and another copyright holder doesn't, then you must not distribute. But nVidia is free to allow you the distribution.
It seems that nVidia supplies tools that turn a freely distributable (under GPL) Linux system without nVidia drivers into a modified Linux system with nVidia drivers that cannot be legally distributed. The unmodified Linux plus the nVidia tools can be distributed together (Linux under GPL, nVidia stuff under nVidia license). The problem is that someone created the modified Linux system that cannot be legally distributed, and started distributing it.
'' Apple signed a contract that said they would not get in the music business. That is sign, promote and distribute their own artists, as far as I know the agreement never states that Apple is prohibited from being a retail outlet of the music business. ''
Actually, I could imagine that Apple Computer could be quite keen to create its own record label. And there would be three ways to do this: 1. Buy Apple Records. 2. Pay Apple Records for the right to use the Apple Computer trademark anywhere they like, including the record business. 3. Start the "iTunes Record Company", carefully avoiding any mentioning of Apple in the process.
If Apple Computer can convince Apple Records that they are willing to do (3), they might be able to make them agree to (2) for a reasonable price.
'' Allofmp3.com has a license to sell music in Russia. Importing (most of) this music to the US is not legal. The same goes for many other developed countries. ''
You are right, but missing the point. Bringing music into your country for personal use is not "importing". Downloading music from allofmp3.com and then selling it on would be importing and therefore illegal (even if you don't keep a copy for yourself). Actually, flying to London, buying 100 CDs in a record store at full UK price, flying to New York and selling them there would be "importing" and therefore illegal. But personal use is not "importing".
'' I wrote this C router in Darwin and then tried to take the code and compile it on the Solaris box and some of Darwin's warnings became Solaris's errors. ''
If you used XCode, just turn on the option "Treat warnings as errors".
'' Just as you are free to buy any OS you want. You don't HAVE to buy Windows, you can buy a Mac or any number of flavors of Linux. So I guess MS isn't a monopoly either, huh?
Or are you going to use some of that self-serving Mac fanboy logic on me to argue that MS is a greedy, evil company; while Apple is a philanthropy that just wants to make the world a better place? ''
You didn't get it, right? If you are the only one out of 100 people having an MP3 player of brand X and buying from online store Y, and everyone else uses player A and buys from store B, the fact that you are the only one is of no disadvantage for you whatsoever. Even though store Y has a tiny market share, it has all the music available that the other store has. Even though your MP3 player has a tiny market share, no band in the world makes music that it cannot play. You can't swap music with the other 99 people, but those other 99 people will get a visit from the RIAA if they start swapping.
'' Are you saying that the Apple iPod, which makes up over 80% of the MP3 player market and the *ONLY* legal online music service that it will work with (iTunes) don't represent a monopoly? Name one other legal music service that will work with iPod.
Name one other MP3 player that will play iTunes files besides the iPod. ''
No, it is not a monopoly. High market share doesn't make it a monopoly. What would make it a monopoly would be if consumers are forced to use it because of the huge market share, or if entrance to the market would be difficult.
The market share of iPod and the iTunes Music Store doesn't force a consumer to do anything. Music that you buy from any music store is exclusively for you. You cannot share it legally. Therefore it isn't any inconvenience for you if you cannot share it. If you think that a Creative MP3 player is better than an iPod, and Napster suits you better than the iTunes Music Store, you can go ahead and buy a Creative MP3 player and download music from Napster. It doesn't make any difference whatsoever whether your music player has 0.1%, 1.0%, 10 percent or 99 percent marketshare. You are free to choose whatever music player and music store you want.
For the same reason, there is no problem with entering the market. Apple has two products that work together. But anybody can enter the market by opening a music store and creating MP3 players. The entry into the market is actually a lot easier than years ago when Apple started. There are companies that will provide you with ready-made MP3 players complete with DRM software, where you only need to add your company logo, the rest is already done for you, and there are plenty of online music stores that will cater for your player. Or you can open your own music store; you don't need to do all the complicated negotiations that Apple had to do; they did all the legwork to sort out all the copyright problems for you.
Of course, making a product that is better than iPod + iTMS is a bit difficult. Apple doesn't make it difficult at all for you to compete; if they tried to stop you from competing, that would be illegal. But Apple makes it damned hard for you to beat them, and they are absolutely right to do that.
'' Nobody has an Ipod full of I tunes tracks. Nobody is that rich. ''
I believe that Steve Jobs said quite a while ago in public that their best iTMS customer had bought over $30,000 worth of music. And that was a few years ago.
'' Do you think that oh, maybe that is the EFF's point? If the people who are already under contract aren't willing to play along with such invasive tactics, why then should the website owners, who have no contract with Apple, be required to do so? ''
No, that wasn't EFF's point at all. Their point seems to be that Apple in their opinion should first do anything to get the truth out of its developers, no matter what the cost to the company and the developers (and the cost if Apple did what EFF wants them to do would be enormous), even though these people are - except for one - completely innocent, instead of going after the website owners, who have supported and benefitted from criminal actions.
Protect the criminals, and let the victims pay, seems to be what the EFF is asking for.
'' Before you claim it is not the same thing, think about it - leaks are the bread and butter of a rumours website, thus the identity of leakers is probably one of their closest held secrets. ''
So you are saying that the identiy of the hackers is a trade secret? If Apple's trade secrets are published, then surely you won't mind if the rumors website's trade secrets are published as well.
'' While for employees, if they did not leak the document then they barely even have a dog in the fight. '' This is truly pathetic.
Really, they are nonsense. Whether a blogger is a journalist or not is a completely unimportant sidenote in this whole case. It is 99.9 percent sure that the decision will be absolutely the same, whether a journalist publishes trade secrets or a blogger. The only difference is that an experienced journalist would most likely not have the stupidity to do such a thing, and a journalist working for any newspaper would be confronted by the newspaper's legal team that would stop him before he gets everyone into trouble.
Then EFF's brilliant argument that Apple should have had all their employees pass lie detector tests or ask them to declare under oath that it wasn't them who leaked the information. So what would happen if Apple tried that?
Where I work this would happen:
Lawyer: Dear developer #1, please take this lie detector test. Developer #1: F*** off. Lawyer: Take this lie detector test or you will be fired. Manager: F*** off. You are not going to fire any of my developers.
Lawyer: Dear developer #2, please take this lie detector test. Developer #2: F*** off.
And so on. Seriously, would any of the readers here be willing to take a lie detector test in a situation like that? What a piece of nonsense.
'' That is EXACTLY what Apple is trying to get decided by the lawsuit. Many other people, including print journalists, disagree with you and Apple on this matter. If a "sixpack blogger" (your definition) is not a journalist, at what point does a blogger become a journalist? ''
You are wrong. Go to groklaw, have a look at _real_ court documents that you can find there. What happens in any court case is that the claimant makes a huge list of claims with everything they can think of. The defendant then comes up with a huge list of any possible defence they can think of, and the claimant than comes with a list of everything they can think of why these defenses should not apply.
So in this case, most likely the defendant said: "I don't have to tell them my sources because I am a journalist". So Apple's lawyers, same as any other lawyers would do, come up with a list of one hundred reasons why the defendant should tell them who his sources are, and at the very very end of the list it says: "And by the way, even if reason 1 to 99 would not apply, the guy is not a journalist but a blogger, so he still has to tell us". They _must_ write down every single reason that they can think of, because once the case is going they cannot add anything.
The press, of course, reads through that court document, and out of reasons 1 to 100 they pick the one that makes the best news and publish it. What has happened in this case already is that some lower court decided that he has to give his sources, whether he is a journalist or not, and therefore _no decision was made_ whether reason number 100 applies or not. If a higher court should decide that a journalist in this situation doesn't have to give his sources, then that court will have to decide whether a blogger is a journalist or not. Apple seems to think that this will not happen.
Slashdot Mirror
'' The FORTRAN compiler was probably written in C, but FORTRAN has language constructs that are more well-suited to numeric computation. ''
And the reply to this was:
' Are you an idiot? The birth of FORTAN predates C by more than 10 years (work started in 1953, first manual in 1956, first compiler in 1957. C was somewhat officially released [as in "C got powerful enough to rewrite the UNIX kernel in C] in 1973, and the K&R was only published in 1978...) '
Well, I have my own opinion who is the idiot here.
Apart from the fact that there are various versions of Fortran (II, '66, '77, '90, '95 and 2003), of which at least four are newer than the first C language, the Fortran language has lots of features that allow generation of more efficient code for mathematical problems.
1. DO-Loops vs. for-loops: In a DO loop, the number of iterations can _always_ be determined before the loop starts executing. For example, in DO 10 I = 1, N the number of iterations is N if N > 0 and 0 otherwise; this does NOT change if N is modified within the loop. In the C loop for (i = 0; i n; ++i) the compiler has to check whether n is constant within the loop which might be difficult.
2. Less strict rules for evaluation: A Fortran compiler is allowed by the language to replace any computation with a mathematically equivalent one, unlike C. For example, in x = a + b + c + d, the Fortran compiler is allowed to replace this with x = (a + b) + (c + d), which has lower latency than x = ((a + b) + c) + d which the C compiler is forced to do. More extreme, if you calculate x [i] = x [i] / z in a loop, a Fortran compiler is allowed to calculate 1 / z once and multiply each element by that value, which could be ten times faster than the division.
3. Aliasing rules: In Fortran, modifying the same variable through two different names leads to undefined behavior (unlike C), so the compiler can assume that the programmer doesn't do this. This leads to much more efficient code. For example, it makes vectorizing much easier (a C compiler would often have to do runtime checks that vectorizing is really allowed and have two versions of the code ready). This has just become part of C99 with the "restrict" qualifier.
4. Vector operations are built into the language of newer Fortran versions. Semantics of these vector operations allows faster code to be generated.
'' Do they? Do they really have to pay? Is the EU really in a position to block sales of the worlds most "popular" OS for business? I think while it would not endure Microsoft to the EU, they would be politically unable to ban Microsoft from selling their product to Europeans. ''
If a company refuses to pay a fine, they just send in the bailiffs. They go into all Microsoft offices anywhere in Europe and confiscate anything of value. Desks, chairs, any software lying around, computers. That stuff will then be auctioned off. You might be able to buy Microsoft Office quite cheaply. If that isn't enough money, they confiscate all money in bank accounts anywhere in Europe. Which means that Microsoft employees will not get paid. If that isn't enough money, they order all major customers to make payments not to Microsoft anymore. If that is not enough, bankruptcy proceedings will be started.
Not playing a fine is a very, very bad idea for any company.
'' ...Yes, if I were Microsoft, I'd simply have a so called "news leak" to the press suggeting that we, as Microsoft, are considering withdrawing our offending products from the European Union market. This would allow us "test" the waters and make EU officials think twice about their actions.
How about that? ''
Excellent idea. The next time some government agency in Europe has to decide whether to use open source software or Microsoft software, we can just point out that Microsoft is considering withdrawing their products from Europe, so clearly Microsoft software has to be avoided at all cost to be future proof.
'' What would happen to the world if Microsoft said "Ok, enough's enough. 'Frig' you all!" and shuts down! They all have enough money to live comfortably for the rest of their lives (and then some). I think that a lot of people rely on MS software... ''
About two hours later there will be an hour long phone call between Michael Dell and Steve Jobs. One week later either all Dell computers ship with Linux, or they ship 50 percent with Linux and 50 percent with MacOS X, or they will all be able to dual-boot. Apple will invest about $100,000,000 in OpenOffice and in twelve months, the MacOS X version will run better than Microsoft Office ever did.
'' The same thing that happens whenever a big company doesnt pay a fine. Absolutly nothing.
Since you cant put a corporate entity in jail, and current structures are such that shareholders and executives face few legal penalties for the actions of the corporation (rather than thier own personal actions, such as in the enron ordeal) there's little real incentive for them to actualy pay up. ''
The only thing that would happen if Microsoft refused to pay is a few letters sent to all the banks where Microsoft has accounts, a few letters sent to all their customers (like Dell) telling them where to send their money instead of to Microsoft, a hundred bailiffs turning up at Microsoft offices in Munich, London, whereever, and confiscating all the office equipment (and if you think you could have security stop them then the next thing coming will be hundred bailiffs and hundred armed policemen).
'' Does this teacher have a teenage child or, for that matter, any kids at all? I'm curious as to what experiences he is using to justify getting the school's higher ups involved. Obviously he believes there is a chance this kid might actually kill him... but what is it outside of the kid's icon that actually supports this idea in his mind?
If it turns out that this teacher doesn't have any children himself, does that mean Chicken Little's claims of the sky falling should be taken at face value rather than investigated further before validating it? ''
You are confusing things a lot. The question is not whether the kid is going to kill the teacher or not. The question is whether the teacher could reasonably believe that there is a risk. And if there is a death threat, then even if there is a 99 percent chance that this wasn't meant seriously, then that one percent is a considerable risk. Not anywhere near enough to claim that the kid intended to kill the teacher, but absolutely enough to make it a _threat_ that a reasonable person would have to take serious.
And the court case was not about whether the school reacted in a perfect way. It was about whether the school reacted in a way that was reasonable under the circumstances. The schools reaction was probably at the more serious end of the range of reasonable reactions, but the court said rightfully that it was within the range.
If you made a joke at school about killing a teacher (not a threat because a reasonable person would not think there is a risk of it being carried out), then making you stay at school and writing 1000 times "I must not make jokes about killing teachers" would be a reasonable thing to do. If you go beyond that, then you have to learn there are consequences in life.
>> The people who are running the AllOfMe site are making sizeable financial contributions to the people who decide Russian law. Either through taxes or bribes or a delicate combination of both.
I would be curious if you have any proof of this. Or if you can at least point to any evidence that makes it likely to be true. Or if this is just a statement that you fabricated out of thin air.
'' We should all of us contact a lawyer and have legal documents drawn up, and notorized that say something like "In the event that any digitally copyrighted material is found on this hard drive, let this document serve as a legally binding guarantee that said materials would never have been purchased otherwise and therefore no loss of revenue can possibly be proven solely based on the posession and or existance of these materials." ''
Great idea. At the end of your month, your boss won't give you a paycheck. Instead he will give you a legally binding guarantee that he never, ever would have paid you for any work you did this month. And it's not theft, because he doesn't take anything away from you.
'' It probably won't kill it, but it will vastly reduce the amount of 'native' software.
I think the vast majority of people will quite happily accept a 5-10% slowdown. ''
Customers who bought a Macintosh are very unlikely to accept software that runs 5-10% slower, and _in Windows_.
I expect that only a small percentage of Macintosh owners would be willing to _use_ Windows software. The percentage who would be willing to _buy_ Windows software, especially after a Macintosh product was abandoned, is miniscule.
'' If English is a second language for the submitter, fine. ''
Very unlikely. Look at the choice of words, things like "innards", "head over". This is written by someone who knows the language very well, but is simply too uneducated or too lazy to learn how to write correctly.
People who learned English as their second language very rarely use _bad_ English. They may have limited vocabulary, and you may spot typical mistakes that may even let you identify where someone comes from, but they won't get "their", "there" and "they're" wrong, and they won't get "a lot" wrong. If someone has English as a second language and can write like this, then they can do it without stupid mistakes.
'' It's a good article. I wonder why OSX isn't compiled with a larger heap threshold, though? I'd do with a 2x performance increase on common operations even if it cost more memory (in the form of fragmentation). My only guess is that in real world usage this is not common, and thus it wouldn't improve real-world performance much? ''
It is _not_ a common operation.
As that article explained, the developers of the software in question could have used Shark (comes for free with every Macintosh), and within 20 seconds they would have found that they are wasting tons of time by allocating and deleting memory again and again and again and again and again. Note that for calls to malloc () to make any noticable difference in execution time, you must make an awful lot of them. So twenty seconds of observation plus two hours of tweaking their code would have made their software substantially faster _on every_ platform.
Typical code has few large allocations, which stay around for long time, and possibly a huge number of small allocations that get allocated and freed very quickly. So an implementation does the small allocations itself (because it is quicker) and leaves the large allocations to the OS (because that helps with fragmentation), just as MacOS X does.
'' I'm not saying the judge made the wrong decision, but I don't understand how the GPL helps encourage competition. ''
Anyone producing software has many different choices how to benefit from it and how to compete in the market place. With the GPL, there is another choice how to compete: By allowing others to improve your software, by benefiting from open source mindshare, by getting a good reputation, and buy selling services or using the software to promote other things you sell. In other words, the GPL encourages competition.
'' What surprises me is not that Wallace was laughed out of court. That was almost certain for various reasons. What did surprise me is that the judge's comments showed that he really understood the GPL and its role in ensuring a competitive marketplace.''
It was reported on groklaw, that Wallace made the tactical mistake to attach a copy of the GPL to his claims. Why was that a mistake? At the very first stage of a court case, the judge must only decide whether a valid claim was made. He is not allowed to look at any evidence, that comes later. So normally, the judge would not have looked at the GPL or wouldn't even have been allowed to look at it, and without looking at it, it _might_ be possible that the GPL forces anti-competitive behavior. But since the GPL was attached to the claims and therefore part of the claims, the judge was not only allowed to, but required to read it and to decide whether it is anti-competitive. And I think the contents of the GPL is absolutely crystal clear to any judge. It is a purely legal paper and very easy to understand for any lawyer or judge.
Also, Wallace has mixed up everyday language and legal language quite badly. If A has a Formula I car, and B has a bicycle, and they decide to race each other, B might say "I cannot compete, because A has a Formula I car and I only have a bicycle". In the legal language, B is wrong. He can compete. He loses badly every time they race, and he has not the slightest chance to win, but there is nothing stopping him from competing. Or if you sell a widget for $100 each, and I figure out that it costs me $110 alone to produce it, I might claim that I cannot compete. In legal language, I can compete by selling my widgets for $150. Nobody will buy them, and I will go bankrupt doing it, but nothing stops me from competing. (Better ways of competing would be to find a way to build the widget for $50, or painting it in fashionable colors so people buy it at the higher price etc.)
'' Hm, want a checklist?
* Companies is a law firm
* Company holds several or many patents
* None of the inventors actually work for company, all the patents were acquired
* Company does not actually produce any of the patented products
* Actually, company doesn't produce anything
* Company prominently features "licensing" in its revenue report
5 or more checks and you have a 95% certainty that you have a patent troll. ''
That would give a nice criterion whether an injunction should be allowed or not: If a company has aquired a patent, and tries to sue someone for using the patent, a court should assume that the loss of that company if their patent is truly infringed upon is limited to whatever payment was made to the original inventor of the patent. The company that is sued can prevent an injunction by paying that amount of money into an account kept with the court.
Example: Patent Trolls Inc. buys thousands of patents for $1000 each. They sue Microsoft, Apple and Sun over use of one of those patents and demand that all three companies stop selling operating systems and pay them one billion dollar each. Microsoft, Apple and Sun give $1000 each to the court, thus stopping the injunction.
'' All ATi needs to do is release enough specs that we can write our own damn driver without having to waste time reverse-engineering the thing! ''
Good luck to that. I mean, what can be so difficult about writing a driver for a modern 3D graphics card, and what can be so difficult about keeping up with changes for the next generation that comes out six months later for the rest of time?
'' Perhaps the first point of call is that the nVidia license permits the re-distribution of their driver in Linux distributions. Surely if it was a GPL violation they are not allowed to do this, or perhaps it's just down to the distro maintainer to see if the GPL overrides other package licenses. ''
As you kindly noticed, nVidia permits the re-distribution of _their_ driver in Linux distributions. nVidia holds the copyright to the nVidia drivers, they have the right to allow or disallow any distribution of their drivers in any way they like. Quite possibly there are some kinds of distribution that would violate the rights of other copyright holders, but that is not nVidias business. Obviously if you want to distribute software, you have to respect the rights of _all_ copyright holders simultaneously. If one copyright holder gives you permission to distribute (nVidia), and another copyright holder doesn't, then you must not distribute. But nVidia is free to allow you the distribution.
It seems that nVidia supplies tools that turn a freely distributable (under GPL) Linux system without nVidia drivers into a modified Linux system with nVidia drivers that cannot be legally distributed. The unmodified Linux plus the nVidia tools can be distributed together (Linux under GPL, nVidia stuff under nVidia license). The problem is that someone created the modified Linux system that cannot be legally distributed, and started distributing it.
'' Apple signed a contract that said they would not get in the music business. That is sign, promote and distribute their own artists, as far as I know the agreement never states that Apple is prohibited from being a retail outlet of the music business. ''
Actually, I could imagine that Apple Computer could be quite keen to create its own record label. And there would be three ways to do this: 1. Buy Apple Records. 2. Pay Apple Records for the right to use the Apple Computer trademark anywhere they like, including the record business. 3. Start the "iTunes Record Company", carefully avoiding any mentioning of Apple in the process.
If Apple Computer can convince Apple Records that they are willing to do (3), they might be able to make them agree to (2) for a reasonable price.
'' Allofmp3.com has a license to sell music in Russia. Importing (most of) this music to the US is not legal. The same goes for many other developed countries. ''
You are right, but missing the point. Bringing music into your country for personal use is not "importing". Downloading music from allofmp3.com and then selling it on would be importing and therefore illegal (even if you don't keep a copy for yourself). Actually, flying to London, buying 100 CDs in a record store at full UK price, flying to New York and selling them there would be "importing" and therefore illegal. But personal use is not "importing".
'' I wrote this C router in Darwin and then tried to take the code and compile it on the Solaris box and some of Darwin's warnings became Solaris's errors. ''
If you used XCode, just turn on the option "Treat warnings as errors".
'' Just as you are free to buy any OS you want. You don't HAVE to buy Windows, you can buy a Mac or any number of flavors of Linux. So I guess MS isn't a monopoly either, huh?
Or are you going to use some of that self-serving Mac fanboy logic on me to argue that MS is a greedy, evil company; while Apple is a philanthropy that just wants to make the world a better place? ''
You didn't get it, right? If you are the only one out of 100 people having an MP3 player of brand X and buying from online store Y, and everyone else uses player A and buys from store B, the fact that you are the only one is of no disadvantage for you whatsoever. Even though store Y has a tiny market share, it has all the music available that the other store has. Even though your MP3 player has a tiny market share, no band in the world makes music that it cannot play. You can't swap music with the other 99 people, but those other 99 people will get a visit from the RIAA if they start swapping.
'' Are you saying that the Apple iPod, which makes up over 80% of the MP3 player market and the *ONLY* legal online music service that it will work with (iTunes) don't represent a monopoly?
Name one other legal music service that will work with iPod.
Name one other MP3 player that will play iTunes files besides the iPod. ''
No, it is not a monopoly. High market share doesn't make it a monopoly. What would make it a monopoly would be if consumers are forced to use it because of the huge market share, or if entrance to the market would be difficult.
The market share of iPod and the iTunes Music Store doesn't force a consumer to do anything. Music that you buy from any music store is exclusively for you. You cannot share it legally. Therefore it isn't any inconvenience for you if you cannot share it. If you think that a Creative MP3 player is better than an iPod, and Napster suits you better than the iTunes Music Store, you can go ahead and buy a Creative MP3 player and download music from Napster. It doesn't make any difference whatsoever whether your music player has 0.1%, 1.0%, 10 percent or 99 percent marketshare. You are free to choose whatever music player and music store you want.
For the same reason, there is no problem with entering the market. Apple has two products that work together. But anybody can enter the market by opening a music store and creating MP3 players. The entry into the market is actually a lot easier than years ago when Apple started. There are companies that will provide you with ready-made MP3 players complete with DRM software, where you only need to add your company logo, the rest is already done for you, and there are plenty of online music stores that will cater for your player. Or you can open your own music store; you don't need to do all the complicated negotiations that Apple had to do; they did all the legwork to sort out all the copyright problems for you.
Of course, making a product that is better than iPod + iTMS is a bit difficult. Apple doesn't make it difficult at all for you to compete; if they tried to stop you from competing, that would be illegal. But Apple makes it damned hard for you to beat them, and they are absolutely right to do that.
'' Nobody has an Ipod full of I tunes tracks. Nobody is that rich. ''
I believe that Steve Jobs said quite a while ago in public that their best iTMS customer had bought over $30,000 worth of music. And that was a few years ago.
'' Do you think that oh, maybe that is the EFF's point? If the people who are already under contract aren't willing to play along with such invasive tactics, why then should the website owners, who have no contract with Apple, be required to do so? ''
No, that wasn't EFF's point at all. Their point seems to be that Apple in their opinion should first do anything to get the truth out of its developers, no matter what the cost to the company and the developers (and the cost if Apple did what EFF wants them to do would be enormous), even though these people are - except for one - completely innocent, instead of going after the website owners, who have supported and benefitted from criminal actions.
Protect the criminals, and let the victims pay, seems to be what the EFF is asking for.
'' Before you claim it is not the same thing, think about it - leaks are the bread and butter of a rumours website, thus the identity of leakers is probably one of their closest held secrets. ''
So you are saying that the identiy of the hackers is a trade secret? If Apple's trade secrets are published, then surely you won't mind if the rumors website's trade secrets are published as well.
'' While for employees, if they did not leak the document then they barely even have a dog in the fight. ''
This is truly pathetic.
Really, they are nonsense. Whether a blogger is a journalist or not is a completely unimportant sidenote in this whole case. It is 99.9 percent sure that the decision will be absolutely the same, whether a journalist publishes trade secrets or a blogger. The only difference is that an experienced journalist would most likely not have the stupidity to do such a thing, and a journalist working for any newspaper would be confronted by the newspaper's legal team that would stop him before he gets everyone into trouble.
Then EFF's brilliant argument that Apple should have had all their employees pass lie detector tests or ask them to declare under oath that it wasn't them who leaked the information. So what would happen if Apple tried that?
Where I work this would happen:
Lawyer: Dear developer #1, please take this lie detector test.
Developer #1: F*** off.
Lawyer: Take this lie detector test or you will be fired.
Manager: F*** off. You are not going to fire any of my developers.
Lawyer: Dear developer #2, please take this lie detector test.
Developer #2: F*** off.
And so on. Seriously, would any of the readers here be willing to take a lie detector test in a situation like that? What a piece of nonsense.
'' That is EXACTLY what Apple is trying to get decided by the lawsuit. Many other people, including print journalists, disagree with you and Apple on this matter. If a "sixpack blogger" (your definition) is not a journalist, at what point does a blogger become a journalist? ''
You are wrong. Go to groklaw, have a look at _real_ court documents that you can find there. What happens in any court case is that the claimant makes a huge list of claims with everything they can think of. The defendant then comes up with a huge list of any possible defence they can think of, and the claimant than comes with a list of everything they can think of why these defenses should not apply.
So in this case, most likely the defendant said: "I don't have to tell them my sources because I am a journalist". So Apple's lawyers, same as any other lawyers would do, come up with a list of one hundred reasons why the defendant should tell them who his sources are, and at the very very end of the list it says: "And by the way, even if reason 1 to 99 would not apply, the guy is not a journalist but a blogger, so he still has to tell us". They _must_ write down every single reason that they can think of, because once the case is going they cannot add anything.
The press, of course, reads through that court document, and out of reasons 1 to 100 they pick the one that makes the best news and publish it. What has happened in this case already is that some lower court decided that he has to give his sources, whether he is a journalist or not, and therefore _no decision was made_ whether reason number 100 applies or not. If a higher court should decide that a journalist in this situation doesn't have to give his sources, then that court will have to decide whether a blogger is a journalist or not. Apple seems to think that this will not happen.