[QUOTE]Why, oh why did javascript become the defacto client-side scripting language for the browser[/QUOTE]
Because way back when the alternative was VBScript... which would you choose?
I'm not sure that you understand Stallman's position at all if you think he is talking about the viability of free software.
He has consistently presented a case that it is unethical to distribute non-free software.
Since many people place pragmatic considerations over ideals, it is a message that will take more than just a couple of decades to become widely accepted. The politically sane prefer to reflect whatever their focus groups tell them to.
To be fair to Hawking (and contrary to the Guardian summary), he made a similar argument in A Brief History of Time. As I remember it, he concluded that it was unnecessary to postulate a creative big bang moment, because the 'beginning' of time was not a single point, and the whole of time could be described by modern physics.
Now his language in that last chapter of A Brief History was provocative (in its use of the term 'God'). But too many religious people have seen the 'big bang' as a creative moment that could not be understood using science, and so a 'proof' for God. This is a simplistic religious perspective and deserves to be challenged.
Hawkings ideas are neither a proof for or against God, but provide an explanation why the philosophical idea of a 'watchmaker God' is unnecessary. Indeed, I would argue that there can be no empirical proof of a transcendent being, because this would imply that the being has empirical properties (which by definition are not transcendent).
You write "Is he trying to claim that energy from gravity just spontaneously turned itself into all sorts of matter?", but your question itself does not make sense in Hawking's model of the universe. In his model, the universe is a self-contained space-time object with no sharp beginning, so the very idea of 'spontaneous' energy to matter conversion has no meaning. 'Spontaneous' implies a special point in time, and Hawking is pointing out that there is no special point.
I guess if we are comparing operating systems to religions it makes sense to compare Linux to an open source religion such as Christianity. I'd compare the Microsoft defenders to a closed source religion such as Scientology, but they'd probably sue the pants off me for breaking the license agreement, even though I haven't read it. And Apple. Well, Jim Jones and kool-aid comes to mind...
Philips might claim that their patent covers it, but only a court can make this determination.
If we are going to talk about software and patents, then just about every bit of software in the world potentially infringes some patent, so it is hardly notable to say that this bit of software does.
What is notable about the project is not the codecs, but the integration of a full GSM stack.
Not only that, but presumably the US administration/military is monitoring IPs that access wikileaks, and it will be easier for them to figure out the internal source of leaks if the IP list doesn't include a whole lot of their personnel just having a bit of a browse.
Exactly right. And in many places, a firm grip is a sign of aggression, not confidence. Handshakes aren't innate behaviours, they are part of culturally-defined communication.
To be fair, black box testing is the foundation of device testing in the health field. And for simple devices it is exactly what you want: making sure that the outcomes are as specified.
However, as any engineer knows, for complex devices there can be innumerable states, and no test can achieve good coverage of these states. So it is appropriate to vet the internals of these complex devices.
Just because companies wish to keep these details as trade secrets does not mean that it is in the public interest. At the very least, there should be third parties involved in checking the design and implementation, even if these details are not made public. If it is good enough for the gaming industry, it is good enough for the health industry.
As for keylogging, that would only be a vulnerability because the password is next to the machine, right? I don't know a whole lot about keyloggers other than I don't want one.:-)
There are hardware keyloggers (eg a dongle that fits to the end of the keyboard cable), that record all keystrokes internally. I think that is what was being referred to.
Moreover, any one with sufficient physical access to the machine can view all the files, by booting from a CD/USB, or even just removing the drive (unless the filesystem is encrypted).
Anyway, there is nothing to prevent you using a dual factor key: a first half that is randomly generated and written down, and a second half that is easily memorizable and not written down.
It isn't just the freedom to redistribute the source code. It is also the freedom for to make use of part of that code in something that the user intends to distribute. Or even just the freedom to allow a third party to make bug fixes (which means giving the third party access to a copy of the code).
Incidentally, the original developer has not lost their freedom to get recompense for their work. There is nothing to stop a free software developer from charging their users; not all free software is made publicly available. Notice that this is more of a service model than a manufacturing one.
However, I agree wholeheartedly that the term 'open source' is a misleading one, and shouldn't be used to imply other freedoms.
Being able to share the source (both as it is or with modifications) is considered a freedom because it allows you to benefit others in the community. You still need permission from the original author (because copyright remains with the author), which is what the libre style licences provide.
Having access to the source certainly gives you more freedom than many licences provide. But freedom has more than once facet.
Now it may be that you think the author of software deserves recompense for their work, and I agree with this. But that does not mean that the correct way to manage this recompense is by placing restrictions on the users.
I suspect the efficiency gap between C and C++ is smaller than you think. Even if you are very strict about encapsulation of objects, you'd be very unlikely to add more than 10% to the run time. And as others have pointed out, making use of features such as templating can actually help the compiler generate more efficient code.
C++ was designed so that it adds no overheads to imperative code, while the OOP constructs such as member functions have only one extra parameter (and one level of indirection for virtual functions). Often the extra parameter would have been passed in C anyway, as a pointer to some data structure.
There are more prosaic reasons why C has persisted. There is the inertia of a large group of programmers who have grown up on procedural languages, with a significant learning curve to switch from this to object oriented programming (even in the scripting world, one sees the still widespread use of imperative paradigms such as in PHP). There is the widespread availability of good C compilers. There are the improvements in the C language, including some features adopted back from C++. There is the existing body of code. There is the historical lack of support for objects in operating systems and associated libraries, so that link formats are oriented towards C procedure calls rather than C++ objects. But these reasons have nothing to do with raw speed.
Where scalability is less important, I can see why Java (in a web context) or languages based on.NET (in a Windows context) might be seen as alternatives. But I would suggest that this is because they integrate better into their context, rather than because speed doesn't matter.
Slashdot Mirror
sadly, that photograph was also in the linked article, but the submitter only read the first half...
perhaps they'll ban Conway's "Game of Life" next...
[QUOTE]Why, oh why did javascript become the defacto client-side scripting language for the browser[/QUOTE] Because way back when the alternative was VBScript... which would you choose?
If I flash my privates in house but have the curtains open
I for one am not that interested in the privates of small furry creatures...
"Your plastic pal who's fun to be with".
Does this mean that Microsoft will have to change the name of their ECMA-376 standard to "Office Libre XML" to keep us all confused?
I'm not sure that you understand Stallman's position at all if you think he is talking about the viability of free software.
He has consistently presented a case that it is unethical to distribute non-free software.
Since many people place pragmatic considerations over ideals, it is a message that will take more than just a couple of decades to become widely accepted. The politically sane prefer to reflect whatever their focus groups tell them to.
To be fair to Hawking (and contrary to the Guardian summary), he made a similar argument in A Brief History of Time. As I remember it, he concluded that it was unnecessary to postulate a creative big bang moment, because the 'beginning' of time was not a single point, and the whole of time could be described by modern physics.
Now his language in that last chapter of A Brief History was provocative (in its use of the term 'God'). But too many religious people have seen the 'big bang' as a creative moment that could not be understood using science, and so a 'proof' for God. This is a simplistic religious perspective and deserves to be challenged.
Hawkings ideas are neither a proof for or against God, but provide an explanation why the philosophical idea of a 'watchmaker God' is unnecessary. Indeed, I would argue that there can be no empirical proof of a transcendent being, because this would imply that the being has empirical properties (which by definition are not transcendent).
You write "Is he trying to claim that energy from gravity just spontaneously turned itself into all sorts of matter?", but your question itself does not make sense in Hawking's model of the universe. In his model, the universe is a self-contained space-time object with no sharp beginning, so the very idea of 'spontaneous' energy to matter conversion has no meaning. 'Spontaneous' implies a special point in time, and Hawking is pointing out that there is no special point.
don't know why they bother with an expensive radio... when they could just post the message to slashdot
I guess if we are comparing operating systems to religions it makes sense to compare Linux to an open source religion such as Christianity. I'd compare the Microsoft defenders to a closed source religion such as Scientology, but they'd probably sue the pants off me for breaking the license agreement, even though I haven't read it. And Apple. Well, Jim Jones and kool-aid comes to mind...
Oh wait, is this a bad analogy?
Philips might claim that their patent covers it, but only a court can make this determination.
If we are going to talk about software and patents, then just about every bit of software in the world potentially infringes some patent, so it is hardly notable to say that this bit of software does.
What is notable about the project is not the codecs, but the integration of a full GSM stack.
Debian releases are so far apart that you get pretty used to the release name before the next one arrives...
Not only that, but presumably the US administration/military is monitoring IPs that access wikileaks, and it will be easier for them to figure out the internal source of leaks if the IP list doesn't include a whole lot of their personnel just having a bit of a browse.
Point to the pole star?
I'm in the southern hemisphere, you insensitive clod!
Exactly right. And in many places, a firm grip is a sign of aggression, not confidence. Handshakes aren't innate behaviours, they are part of culturally-defined communication.
To be fair, black box testing is the foundation of device testing in the health field. And for simple devices it is exactly what you want: making sure that the outcomes are as specified.
However, as any engineer knows, for complex devices there can be innumerable states, and no test can achieve good coverage of these states. So it is appropriate to vet the internals of these complex devices.
Just because companies wish to keep these details as trade secrets does not mean that it is in the public interest. At the very least, there should be third parties involved in checking the design and implementation, even if these details are not made public. If it is good enough for the gaming industry, it is good enough for the health industry.
As for keylogging, that would only be a vulnerability because the password is next to the machine, right? I don't know a whole lot about keyloggers other than I don't want one. :-)
There are hardware keyloggers (eg a dongle that fits to the end of the keyboard cable), that record all keystrokes internally. I think that is what was being referred to.
Moreover, any one with sufficient physical access to the machine can view all the files, by booting from a CD/USB, or even just removing the drive (unless the filesystem is encrypted).
Anyway, there is nothing to prevent you using a dual factor key: a first half that is randomly generated and written down, and a second half that is easily memorizable and not written down.
It isn't just the freedom to redistribute the source code. It is also the freedom for to make use of part of that code in something that the user intends to distribute. Or even just the freedom to allow a third party to make bug fixes (which means giving the third party access to a copy of the code).
Incidentally, the original developer has not lost their freedom to get recompense for their work. There is nothing to stop a free software developer from charging their users; not all free software is made publicly available. Notice that this is more of a service model than a manufacturing one.
However, I agree wholeheartedly that the term 'open source' is a misleading one, and shouldn't be used to imply other freedoms.
Being able to share the source (both as it is or with modifications) is considered a freedom because it allows you to benefit others in the community. You still need permission from the original author (because copyright remains with the author), which is what the libre style licences provide.
Having access to the source certainly gives you more freedom than many licences provide. But freedom has more than once facet.
Now it may be that you think the author of software deserves recompense for their work, and I agree with this. But that does not mean that the correct way to manage this recompense is by placing restrictions on the users.
I suspect the efficiency gap between C and C++ is smaller than you think. Even if you are very strict about encapsulation of objects, you'd be very unlikely to add more than 10% to the run time. And as others have pointed out, making use of features such as templating can actually help the compiler generate more efficient code.
C++ was designed so that it adds no overheads to imperative code, while the OOP constructs such as member functions have only one extra parameter (and one level of indirection for virtual functions). Often the extra parameter would have been passed in C anyway, as a pointer to some data structure.
There are more prosaic reasons why C has persisted. There is the inertia of a large group of programmers who have grown up on procedural languages, with a significant learning curve to switch from this to object oriented programming (even in the scripting world, one sees the still widespread use of imperative paradigms such as in PHP). There is the widespread availability of good C compilers. There are the improvements in the C language, including some features adopted back from C++. There is the existing body of code. There is the historical lack of support for objects in operating systems and associated libraries, so that link formats are oriented towards C procedure calls rather than C++ objects. But these reasons have nothing to do with raw speed.
Where scalability is less important, I can see why Java (in a web context) or languages based on .NET (in a Windows context) might be seen as alternatives. But I would suggest that this is because they integrate better into their context, rather than because speed doesn't matter.
Is this a metaphorical swept under the carpet?
The adjective "moot" has two meanings.
Of course, if you are referring to the use of "you're", then feel free to be a genocidal grammaticist...
This place too...
groups of retirees
loitering around bus stops
Vivaldi's bullies
I just keep a couple of RPG dice in my top drawer...