At some point businesses are going to have to place a greater emphasis
on the importance of demanding quality software from their vendors and
quality configuration from their system administrators. At some point we're
going to have to be responsible consumers of technology, able to discern
that some new whiz-bang facility offered by ACME Software is just a
worm-propagation API in drag. We're going to have to recognize that
vulnerabilities can, in fact, stem from software design decisions and that
we can't just blame security heartaches on the ubiquity of the software.
I hope that we reach that point far in advance of advocating the death penalty for electronic trespassers. Even a fan of stiff penalties should pause and reflect
before going there based upon a dispassionate cost/benefit analysis.
The worse-than-death ideas in the article are amusing, though.
You're imagining a need for software emulation where none exists. You specifically mention multimedia instructions, which are handled by special instruction units, such as Altivec on the PPC.
It's not what you have, but how you use it. Slow programs can
be made in any programming language. Since Objective C is
a superset of C, there's no reason that performance-critical
section of code need to suffer any more overhead than a C
function call. In many cases, this can be done without even replacing your method with a C function, by way of holding
a reference to the method's selector, which allows you to avoid
the method-lookup overhead. For sections of your application that
are not "hot", there's no need to do this. The performance that you desired was within your reach without changing your language of implementation.
Here are some insights offered by someone who has written support for the Tulip ethernet chipset in IOKit. It's fun to read if you're into this kind of thing.
"The soul of the Mac is the operating system" - Steve Jobs, at the very end of the WWDC keynote, right before he says "thank you".
And look at their front page today, which features a Fox Trot comic strip that plugs the forthcomming "Leopard" version of OSX.
I think they're moving tap into a high-margin software revenue stream.
Apple is a hardware company. They make money from selling Macs, not OS X.
Although this is historically true, it would be foolish to assume that this would be true in perpetuity. The balance of revenue streams in a business does change over time, sometimes by the whims of market forces, and sometimes by deliberate strategy. Take the iPod/iTunes revenue stream, for example, which could be a deliberate attempt to grow a revenue stream that is large enough to ensure that Apple could survive a transition from the low-margin hardware arena enjoyed by the likes of Gateway and Dell to the high-margin software arena enjoyed by Microsoft. I'm not saying that this is the case...only that it could be the case.
No doubt MS hopes to profit from distribution of content. BT, however, operates without centralized control. If they have realized that large-volume content-distribution can easily happen without involvement from MS, they'll start a campaign to secure their interests, won't they?
No viable corporation would run an operation so inefficiently as the government of the United States.
No single viable corporation, perhaps. But the reality is that many corporations compete for influence, which creates the same kinds of inefficiencies that are present in committees, for example.
Your recollection of that moment in history is accurate, and I find it interesting because the BSD license is ostensibly "more free" than the GPL, because it doesn't require you to do a damned thing...but the surprising emergent property of using the BSD license is that improvements to the codebase did not flow as freely as did the changes to the linux kernel. There seems to be a tradeoff between the two licenses, and this is how the BSD license can work against you.
I see your point. My perspective: Whether something is quick & easy to learn is largley determined by whether someone believes they can achieve the goal. I find that the largest barrier to getting someone to practice something until it becomes automatic is a sense of discouragement...a weakening of confidence that comes from feeling like their time investment is not paying off. The web page is just trying to pump people up to get them to believe that they can do it. (And they can. Things are quick and easy to someone who knows how to practice.)
Common advice that is given to young musicians is to not overpractice...do a little every day, maybe a half an hour to an hour. 52 hours of practice could be done in 6.5 days (arguably 'several' days instead of 'a few')...but only if you put in 8 hours of practice each day. That's certainly possible, but it increases the risk of becomming convinced that you didn't want to learn it in the first place.
That really depends on how good you are at the art of practice, doesn't it? Training is not an instant thing where you open up a hole in the top of your head and pour in the knowledge at a guaranteed rate. Your mileage may vary.
Well, I can type in both querty and dvorak. From this vantage point, I see nothing strange about taking pleasure in the latter. Think about it like different guitar tunings. Some tunings are really fun for certain things (like open tunings, which are really good for slide guitar.) Dvorak makes english text flow out of my fingers better. I recall the moment of that discovery being joyful.
I think it's a mistake to base your analysis upon what Steve Jobs said. If they were planning to release their OS for generic hardware, it would not be in their interest to announce it at this time. That would be a bit like standing on the drawbridge of a castle that you plan on storming in a year's time and yelling "Yo, all you enemies behind the castle walls, we're gonna be here on June 27, 2007 at 5pm to take over this castle, so prepare to get your war on." Not the greatest strategic move.
Not only that, but you are also suggesting that Apple's hardware department could not be competitive against the hardware-design prowess of PC vendors. I think the history of Apple's hardware design shows otherwise, both in terms of innovative form factors and in terms of maximizing performance-per-watt rather than maximizing decibles-per-mip. Apple makes machines that people want to buy. They may not appeal to everyone, but they appeal to many.
Re:tilting at electronic windmills
on
Advocating Dvorak
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I've never understood how some people can be so vocal about wanting others to STFU.
Re:Dvorak is very good
on
Advocating Dvorak
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Yeah, because the only people who ever experience pleasure are cult members.
If it stops you from spending an hour on disinformative slashdot threads, yes.
Re:the code of conduct for free software distribut
on
Drafting GPL3
·
· Score: 1
The beauty of the BSD license in this context is that the reference implementation can be mutated into any different implementation. So long as the intended invariants are maintained (proper ogg behavior, in this case) then derivations into proprietary instances should be allowed and encouraged, as a thriving ecosystem of competing implementations only helps the adoption of the format. The LGPL would only allow, for example, a non-free Ogg player to invoke the free LGPL library. Modifications to the library would have to be released as LGPL, which is a restriction that discourages forking of the reference implementation. (Forking in the case ofreference implementations is very desireable, including forking into non-free variants.)
Slashdot Mirror
I hope that we reach that point far in advance of advocating the death penalty for electronic trespassers. Even a fan of stiff penalties should pause and reflect before going there based upon a dispassionate cost/benefit analysis.
The worse-than-death ideas in the article are amusing, though.
In a grandparent post, forgoil wrote: "Let's face it, going through code isn't that much fun".
You're imagining a need for software emulation where none exists. You specifically mention multimedia instructions, which are handled by special instruction units, such as Altivec on the PPC.
Are you sure? How can that be the case if reading source code isn't fun for the auditors?
You probably missed the subject line: "I'd side with people who RTFA".
It's not what you have, but how you use it. Slow programs can be made in any programming language. Since Objective C is a superset of C, there's no reason that performance-critical section of code need to suffer any more overhead than a C function call. In many cases, this can be done without even replacing your method with a C function, by way of holding a reference to the method's selector, which allows you to avoid the method-lookup overhead. For sections of your application that are not "hot", there's no need to do this. The performance that you desired was within your reach without changing your language of implementation.
Here are some insights offered by someone who has written support for the Tulip ethernet chipset in IOKit. It's fun to read if you're into this kind of thing.
"The soul of the Mac is the operating system" - Steve Jobs, at the very end of the WWDC keynote, right before he says "thank you". And look at their front page today, which features a Fox Trot comic strip that plugs the forthcomming "Leopard" version of OSX. I think they're moving tap into a high-margin software revenue stream.
Although this is historically true, it would be foolish to assume that this would be true in perpetuity. The balance of revenue streams in a business does change over time, sometimes by the whims of market forces, and sometimes by deliberate strategy. Take the iPod/iTunes revenue stream, for example, which could be a deliberate attempt to grow a revenue stream that is large enough to ensure that Apple could survive a transition from the low-margin hardware arena enjoyed by the likes of Gateway and Dell to the high-margin software arena enjoyed by Microsoft. I'm not saying that this is the case...only that it could be the case.
No doubt MS hopes to profit from distribution of content. BT, however, operates without centralized control. If they have realized that large-volume content-distribution can easily happen without involvement from MS, they'll start a campaign to secure their interests, won't they?
No single viable corporation, perhaps. But the reality is that many corporations compete for influence, which creates the same kinds of inefficiencies that are present in committees, for example.
Perhaps, but his opinion of religion was spot-on.
Yeah, apparently he picked it up for a paltry 10 million dollars in 1986, according to this
Your recollection of that moment in history is accurate, and I find it interesting because the BSD license is ostensibly "more free" than the GPL, because it doesn't require you to do a damned thing...but the surprising emergent property of using the BSD license is that improvements to the codebase did not flow as freely as did the changes to the linux kernel. There seems to be a tradeoff between the two licenses, and this is how the BSD license can work against you.
A link for the curious... PAR
I think cremier was making a tongue-in-cheek comment about the dubious use of the name 'Java' in 'JavaScript'.
Common advice that is given to young musicians is to not overpractice...do a little every day, maybe a half an hour to an hour. 52 hours of practice could be done in 6.5 days (arguably 'several' days instead of 'a few')...but only if you put in 8 hours of practice each day. That's certainly possible, but it increases the risk of becomming convinced that you didn't want to learn it in the first place.
That really depends on how good you are at the art of practice, doesn't it? Training is not an instant thing where you open up a hole in the top of your head and pour in the knowledge at a guaranteed rate. Your mileage may vary.
Well, I can type in both querty and dvorak. From this vantage point, I see nothing strange about taking pleasure in the latter. Think about it like different guitar tunings. Some tunings are really fun for certain things (like open tunings, which are really good for slide guitar.) Dvorak makes english text flow out of my fingers better. I recall the moment of that discovery being joyful.
Not only that, but you are also suggesting that Apple's hardware department could not be competitive against the hardware-design prowess of PC vendors. I think the history of Apple's hardware design shows otherwise, both in terms of innovative form factors and in terms of maximizing performance-per-watt rather than maximizing decibles-per-mip. Apple makes machines that people want to buy. They may not appeal to everyone, but they appeal to many.
I've never understood how some people can be so vocal about wanting others to STFU.
Yeah, because the only people who ever experience pleasure are cult members.
Don't feel bad. At least you displayed patience and tenacity by giving it a whole 'few days' worth of effort.
If it stops you from spending an hour on disinformative slashdot threads, yes.
The beauty of the BSD license in this context is that the reference implementation can be mutated into any different implementation. So long as the intended invariants are maintained (proper ogg behavior, in this case) then derivations into proprietary instances should be allowed and encouraged, as a thriving ecosystem of competing implementations only helps the adoption of the format. The LGPL would only allow, for example, a non-free Ogg player to invoke the free LGPL library. Modifications to the library would have to be released as LGPL, which is a restriction that discourages forking of the reference implementation. (Forking in the case ofreference implementations is very desireable, including forking into non-free variants.)