If you're the kind of gamer that cares about graphics performance, then Linux isn't your platform anyway.
Likewise for the workstation market - if you want CAD, you're doing stuff with closed source NVidia drivers or not.
Yes, because they're the only ones there are.
I think you fail to appreciate how many people are actually using Linux in research and at universities, who'd even be willing to pay a little extra. There is enough of a market out there for a high-performance open source 3D solution (much of the code exists already anyway). But as long as people can get proprietary nVidia cards and drivers at rock-bottom prices, no vendor is going to fill that niche.
The fact that companies at a whole are subject to market forces doesn't change the fact that they are internally organized and run as top-down hierarchies, with all the political and ideological problems that entails.
Then what is Java, if not just another C++ with less features.
Actually, Java has considerably more features than C++, including garbage collection, runtime safety, well-defined dynamic loading, full reflection, and runtime code generation.
With a tool like Ruby, someone has created these "library" routines for him.
Ruby's libraries are poor compared to Perl's or Python's, so if it all were up to library code, Ruby wouldn't be popular.
so, what innovation did C/C++ give us? General Purpose tools. The fact that these can turn their hand to anything, is, IMHO, the reason they're so popular today compared to any other language that can do X, Y, or Z better.
Neither C nor C++ were the first general purpose languages by a long shot, nor have they ever been the best. The thing that made C popular was that it was free with UNIX to universities and was easy to implement. The thing that made C++ popular was that it was a simple (simplistic, as it turned out) extension of C that was fully backwards compatible. That's all. There was no innovation in either of those languages.
Yes, what nVidia has done probably satisfies the legal requirements of the GPL. But let's not kid ourselves: it profoundly violates the spirit of the GPL, and it's a bad thing for free software in the long run. If it weren't for nVidia's half-assed solution, there'd be a significant market for a truly open source solution that another vendor would fill by now.
Furthermore, if Kororaa actually made an all-binary distribution, then they are probably violating the GPL. nVidia's legal hack likely only works because they are distributing the shim in source form and the user compiles it himself whenever it gets installed.
Last I installed their software, nVidia did not distribute a binary module, they distributed a module in source form that uses their binary driver. I think that gets around the GPL restrictions.
But, to be clear, the problem here is nVidia, not the GPL.
There's nothing "outdated" about it; the definition in terms of interbreeding comes from Mayr, one of the top evolutionary biologists of the 20th century.
Like many real-world definitions, there are some fringe cases it doesn't handle well. In those cases, it's OK to say "we can't decide whether these are the same species". That doesn't invalidate the fundamental importance and validity of his definition of "species".
If I chose to live in an area inhabited by polar bears we are in competition and therefore I have a right to assure my survival.
Humanity can't survive if we settle every habitable square mile of the earth--we need large portions of the earth to remain uninhabited in order to ensure that we get the climate stability and natural resources that our continued survival as a species requires.
So, in effect, people who behave like you are killing our species. But, hey, by your reasoning, I should be able to go out an kill you, since I have "a right to assure my survival", too, and you are threatening it a lot more than polar bears.
Of course, call me a soft-hearted, liberal environmentalist, but I think we should not actually kill people like you, but we don't have a choice but to keep people like you from destroying humanity through political means.
The term "wealthy trophy hunter" tells us that the guy had a free choice--that's why the financial status of the person matters. Disapproving of that choice has nothing to do with "class warfare", it's a simple recognition that motivation matters.
People like you just find it convenient to deflect from their reprehensible behavior by saying "you'd do this, too, if you only had the money". Well, sorry to burst your bubble, but that's wrong: while we excuse bad choices made under economic or other duress to some degree, when people have a free choice and choose badly, we disapprove.
And it's natural that the wealthy should be under increased scrutiny and criticism, since they can choose freely in many more matters than people of more limited means. That's why, when you are wealthy, there is a special moral responsibility on you to behave properly. Many wealthy people recognize that and behave accordingly, but I suppose some don't even grasp the concept of personal responsibility for their actions.
Your use of the term "class envy" implies that you think that people disapprove of this kind of behavior because they want to do it themselves but can't. Sorry, but that's wrong.
The fact that a "wealthy trophy hunter" shot it carries a lot of information about the motivations of the person behind the gun. Talking about a him this way is a perfectly reasonable and legitimate way to summarize this.
More generally, disapproval of such frivolous behavior often has nothing to do with envy. Many people could afford to do this kind of hunting and still disapprove. Many other people have chosen not to be wealthy because they simply lack the desire for the activities that wealth enables.
Difficult as that may be for your shallow, ideologically driven mind to grasp, the world is not divided into the rich and those that envy them; in fact, in my opinion, most people who have a compulsion to earn money and display it are trying to compensate for something; they are to be pitied, not envied.
I think the vast majority of developers out there are far more interested in getting their damn job done, and couldn't care less if Sun GPL'd the Java sources.
Yes, I'm sure many young real-world developers think that way. Now, they should think about what happens when Sun goes out of business, or when they sell Java to Microsoft, or when they just can't afford to pour money into Java anymore, or any of a number of other possibilities. Think it can't happen?
Well, back in the day, we didn't think it would happen to companies like DEC or Symbolics, but it did. That's why real-world developers, after getting screwed by companies like Sun, decided to rely increasingly on open source software, because in the long run, it gets the job done more predictably and with less risk.
Using and contributing to open source software for most people is just business: it primarily reduces risk by ensuring long-term availability and stability of a platform, in a way that no company has ever been able to.
C/C++ is taught because it does teach you everything.
I think you just made the GP's point: you are living in ignorance. Obviously, something has gone wrong with your education.
I am interested to see what concepts from the 1970s you think people are reinventing in C,given that C was made in the 1970s.
One can't fit several years of education into a single/. posting. The question really ought to be: what innovations do you think C and C++ actually contributed to the world of computing? Mediate on that for a while and try to substantiate your ideas with references. I think you'll be disappointed: languages like C and C++ were obsolete the day they were created.
People get appointed to positions because of government connections and ideaology. Unfortunately, these appointees often aren't the most qualified people, and they are usually amoral.
And how do you think this differs from your average corporate hierarchy? Ideology and connections are the prime mechanisms of power in any society.
We see the same thing in the United States when government gets involved in economic development activities.
You're apparently not familiar with the way democratic governments in free market economies "get involved". Let me give you a hint: they don't involved by appointing individuals, they get involved by creating conditions under which the market solves problems.
The penalty will be permeant bar on publication in any journal, which rules out any sort of scientific career.
People don't generally get penalized by having a formal bar on publication. Someone guilty of scientific misconduct will probably find it a lot harder to publish or get grant money, and specific publications may refuse to accept papers from them. But to the degree that that is happening, it's itself a sign that the system is not working; ideally, who you are or what you have done in the past shouldn't matter in science.
Of course, what angry Chinese government officials will do to this guy is another question, but it's not a question that has anything to do with the scientific community.
Computing devices seem to be following that same general curve...becoming more specialized, embedded, and specific-to-task
That process has already gone to completion. What's on your desk now is an "information appliance"; more specialized appliances for that niche have failed and continue to fail in the market.
And one reason why Macs and PCs have been so successful is precisely because they are not being used as computational tools--people who have to do heavy-duty computation do so by logging into UNIX and Linux servers (Apple and Microsoft advertising notwithstanding).
They point to pool.ntp.org, which is designed expressly for this purpose.
On Ubuntu, go to Time and Date Settings > Select Servers, and you'll get a long list of host names all over the world; pool.ntp.org isn't even listed.
They universally point to SourceForge, which was specifically designed for this exact purpose.
They didn't use to. Furthermore, any one of those sites could turn around and say "we didn't give permission to X" after the fact.
Evaluating who can do what based on a vague understanding what things are "meant for", "announced as", or "designed for" is just a bad idea. Either you run an open site and regulate your user behavior technologically, or you should have people explicitly agree to a usage agreement.
It's not the government's responsibility to protect you from yourself. If you install spyware or click on the wrong ads, it's your own damned fault, and if you keep paying Yahoo! or anybody else for ads that aren't working, that's your own stupidity, too.
It's not Google that's dirty, it's your company that's stupid. Google delivers exactly what they promise: impressions and click-throughs, and they give you near real-time reports. They also let you set spending limits. If it's not working for you, you can figure that out long before you spend $25k.
I'm sorry, I think there are lots of things the different branches of the government should do. Trying to adjudicate puerile squabbles between lawyers isn't one of them. Neither is resolving disputes about on-line advertising, unless they have something to do with anti-trust enforcement or blatant trademark infringement.
These people ought to know a little more history. We have had big democracies "go bad" before. People always think that it only happens elsehwere--until it's too late. Terms like "leader" and "national security" send chills down people's spines when translated into other languages, but Americans are still so naive about it.
Can you give an example of a project that hardcodes a network address that they don't explicit permission to use?
Ubuntu and Debian ship with time servers preconfigured; I doubt they have written permission for all of them. I also don't believe it would be good if we ended up in a world where the use of open services requires written permission if you don't want to get sued.
As another example, many Linux distributions point to a download site for Microsoft msttcorefonts. Do you think they have permission? I don't think so. Do you want Microsoft to be able to sue over this?
That doesn't make sense. Cell phone tower emissions may well "cause" cancer, but in the sense of a small increase in risk; and the increase has to be small because it has been hard to demonstrate experimentally.
If there is a common cause for these cases, it's more likely to be some kind of chemical pollutant or biological agent. Chemicals, fungi, and viruses can and do cause cancer at high rates. I'd rather look to the chemistry department or the biology labs than the cell phone tower for a cause.
This appears to affect RealVNC. That's a big problem for RealVNC; even if a similar bug existed in other VNC implementations, it wouldn't matter there.
Why? For other VNC implementations, people have to use ssh tunneling (no built-in encryption), but RealVNC is supposed to offer secure end-to-end encryption without ssh tunneling. If that doesn't work or if the RealVNC developers can't be trusted not to screw up, the whole raison d'etre for RealVNC goes away. And, in fact, RealVNC is built into devices (e.g. intelligent KVM switches) because it has encryption built in.
Note that RealVNC is not really open source; its more advanced features are under other licenses.
Are you saying that unless you and I have an agreement explicitly forbidding me to do so, I am free to hack into your computer, ping flood you off the net and torch your mother's house?
Why are you asking? Are you stupid enough to think that that's what I said?
Are you somebody who hates open source software and who wants Microsoft and others to be able to shut down open source projects on a whim?
Because that's what it comes down to if you say that Kamp should have been able to sue and win: Debian, Ubuntu, Firefox, and many other free software projects have hardcoded network services in their distributions, and if Kamp could prevail in demanding damages, so could the companies these distributions point to. See, their usage agreements even say that you promise them your firstborn if you do. Didn't notice that before? Too bad.
Or maybe you want to shut down del.icio.us, because people sharing their bookmarks publicly might also be construed as starting an attack on the bookmarked sites. See, the usage agreements for the target sites even say (somehwere) that you can't do what you just did.
So, what's your secret angle? Which open source projects do you want to destroy? Which abusive sites and usage agreements are you trying to support?
Sad as it is, we can't punish what D-Link did to Kamp without opening the doors for a lot of other people to do harm to things we want to be able to do.
Slashdot Mirror
none of them are worth buying if you're a gamer.
If you're the kind of gamer that cares about graphics performance, then Linux isn't your platform anyway.
Likewise for the workstation market - if you want CAD, you're doing stuff with closed source NVidia drivers or not.
Yes, because they're the only ones there are.
I think you fail to appreciate how many people are actually using Linux in research and at universities, who'd even be willing to pay a little extra. There is enough of a market out there for a high-performance open source 3D solution (much of the code exists already anyway). But as long as people can get proprietary nVidia cards and drivers at rock-bottom prices, no vendor is going to fill that niche.
Yeah, except for the nVidia drivers.
I don't see your point. Maybe you can elaborate? Are you saying the government should simply not have provided any aid? Or what are you suggesting?
The fact that companies at a whole are subject to market forces doesn't change the fact that they are internally organized and run as top-down hierarchies, with all the political and ideological problems that entails.
Then what is Java, if not just another C++ with less features.
Actually, Java has considerably more features than C++, including garbage collection, runtime safety, well-defined dynamic loading, full reflection, and runtime code generation.
With a tool like Ruby, someone has created these "library" routines for him.
Ruby's libraries are poor compared to Perl's or Python's, so if it all were up to library code, Ruby wouldn't be popular.
so, what innovation did C/C++ give us? General Purpose tools. The fact that these can turn their hand to anything, is, IMHO, the reason they're so popular today compared to any other language that can do X, Y, or Z better.
Neither C nor C++ were the first general purpose languages by a long shot, nor have they ever been the best. The thing that made C popular was that it was free with UNIX to universities and was easy to implement. The thing that made C++ popular was that it was a simple (simplistic, as it turned out) extension of C that was fully backwards compatible. That's all. There was no innovation in either of those languages.
Yes, what nVidia has done probably satisfies the legal requirements of the GPL. But let's not kid ourselves: it profoundly violates the spirit of the GPL, and it's a bad thing for free software in the long run. If it weren't for nVidia's half-assed solution, there'd be a significant market for a truly open source solution that another vendor would fill by now.
Furthermore, if Kororaa actually made an all-binary distribution, then they are probably violating the GPL. nVidia's legal hack likely only works because they are distributing the shim in source form and the user compiles it himself whenever it gets installed.
Last I installed their software, nVidia did not distribute a binary module, they distributed a module in source form that uses their binary driver. I think that gets around the GPL restrictions.
But, to be clear, the problem here is nVidia, not the GPL.
There's nothing "outdated" about it; the definition in terms of interbreeding comes from Mayr, one of the top evolutionary biologists of the 20th century.
Like many real-world definitions, there are some fringe cases it doesn't handle well. In those cases, it's OK to say "we can't decide whether these are the same species". That doesn't invalidate the fundamental importance and validity of his definition of "species".
If I chose to live in an area inhabited by polar bears we are in competition and therefore I have a right to assure my survival.
Humanity can't survive if we settle every habitable square mile of the earth--we need large portions of the earth to remain uninhabited in order to ensure that we get the climate stability and natural resources that our continued survival as a species requires.
So, in effect, people who behave like you are killing our species. But, hey, by your reasoning, I should be able to go out an kill you, since I have "a right to assure my survival", too, and you are threatening it a lot more than polar bears.
Of course, call me a soft-hearted, liberal environmentalist, but I think we should not actually kill people like you, but we don't have a choice but to keep people like you from destroying humanity through political means.
The term "wealthy trophy hunter" tells us that the guy had a free choice--that's why the financial status of the person matters. Disapproving of that choice has nothing to do with "class warfare", it's a simple recognition that motivation matters.
People like you just find it convenient to deflect from their reprehensible behavior by saying "you'd do this, too, if you only had the money". Well, sorry to burst your bubble, but that's wrong: while we excuse bad choices made under economic or other duress to some degree, when people have a free choice and choose badly, we disapprove.
And it's natural that the wealthy should be under increased scrutiny and criticism, since they can choose freely in many more matters than people of more limited means. That's why, when you are wealthy, there is a special moral responsibility on you to behave properly. Many wealthy people recognize that and behave accordingly, but I suppose some don't even grasp the concept of personal responsibility for their actions.
Your use of the term "class envy" implies that you think that people disapprove of this kind of behavior because they want to do it themselves but can't. Sorry, but that's wrong.
The fact that a "wealthy trophy hunter" shot it carries a lot of information about the motivations of the person behind the gun. Talking about a him this way is a perfectly reasonable and legitimate way to summarize this.
More generally, disapproval of such frivolous behavior often has nothing to do with envy. Many people could afford to do this kind of hunting and still disapprove. Many other people have chosen not to be wealthy because they simply lack the desire for the activities that wealth enables.
Difficult as that may be for your shallow, ideologically driven mind to grasp, the world is not divided into the rich and those that envy them; in fact, in my opinion, most people who have a compulsion to earn money and display it are trying to compensate for something; they are to be pitied, not envied.
I think the vast majority of developers out there are far more interested in getting their damn job done, and couldn't care less if Sun GPL'd the Java sources.
Yes, I'm sure many young real-world developers think that way. Now, they should think about what happens when Sun goes out of business, or when they sell Java to Microsoft, or when they just can't afford to pour money into Java anymore, or any of a number of other possibilities. Think it can't happen?
Well, back in the day, we didn't think it would happen to companies like DEC or Symbolics, but it did. That's why real-world developers, after getting screwed by companies like Sun, decided to rely increasingly on open source software, because in the long run, it gets the job done more predictably and with less risk.
Using and contributing to open source software for most people is just business: it primarily reduces risk by ensuring long-term availability and stability of a platform, in a way that no company has ever been able to.
C/C++ is taught because it does teach you everything.
/. posting. The question really ought to be: what innovations do you think C and C++ actually contributed to the world of computing? Mediate on that for a while and try to substantiate your ideas with references. I think you'll be disappointed: languages like C and C++ were obsolete the day they were created.
I think you just made the GP's point: you are living in ignorance. Obviously, something has gone wrong with your education.
I am interested to see what concepts from the 1970s you think people are reinventing in C,given that C was made in the 1970s.
One can't fit several years of education into a single
People get appointed to positions because of government connections and ideaology. Unfortunately, these appointees often aren't the most qualified people, and they are usually amoral.
And how do you think this differs from your average corporate hierarchy? Ideology and connections are the prime mechanisms of power in any society.
We see the same thing in the United States when government gets involved in economic development activities.
You're apparently not familiar with the way democratic governments in free market economies "get involved". Let me give you a hint: they don't involved by appointing individuals, they get involved by creating conditions under which the market solves problems.
The penalty will be permeant bar on publication in any journal, which rules out any sort of scientific career.
People don't generally get penalized by having a formal bar on publication. Someone guilty of scientific misconduct will probably find it a lot harder to publish or get grant money, and specific publications may refuse to accept papers from them. But to the degree that that is happening, it's itself a sign that the system is not working; ideally, who you are or what you have done in the past shouldn't matter in science.
Of course, what angry Chinese government officials will do to this guy is another question, but it's not a question that has anything to do with the scientific community.
Computing devices seem to be following that same general curve...becoming more specialized, embedded, and specific-to-task
That process has already gone to completion. What's on your desk now is an "information appliance"; more specialized appliances for that niche have failed and continue to fail in the market.
And one reason why Macs and PCs have been so successful is precisely because they are not being used as computational tools--people who have to do heavy-duty computation do so by logging into UNIX and Linux servers (Apple and Microsoft advertising notwithstanding).
They point to pool.ntp.org, which is designed expressly for this purpose.
On Ubuntu, go to Time and Date Settings > Select Servers, and you'll get a long list of host names all over the world; pool.ntp.org isn't even listed.
They universally point to SourceForge, which was specifically designed for this exact purpose.
They didn't use to. Furthermore, any one of those sites could turn around and say "we didn't give permission to X" after the fact.
Evaluating who can do what based on a vague understanding what things are "meant for", "announced as", or "designed for" is just a bad idea. Either you run an open site and regulate your user behavior technologically, or you should have people explicitly agree to a usage agreement.
It's not the government's responsibility to protect you from yourself. If you install spyware or click on the wrong ads, it's your own damned fault, and if you keep paying Yahoo! or anybody else for ads that aren't working, that's your own stupidity, too.
It's not Google that's dirty, it's your company that's stupid. Google delivers exactly what they promise: impressions and click-throughs, and they give you near real-time reports. They also let you set spending limits. If it's not working for you, you can figure that out long before you spend $25k.
I'm sorry, I think there are lots of things the different branches of the government should do. Trying to adjudicate puerile squabbles between lawyers isn't one of them. Neither is resolving disputes about on-line advertising, unless they have something to do with anti-trust enforcement or blatant trademark infringement.
These people ought to know a little more history. We have had big democracies "go bad" before. People always think that it only happens elsehwere--until it's too late. Terms like "leader" and "national security" send chills down people's spines when translated into other languages, but Americans are still so naive about it.
Can you give an example of a project that hardcodes a network address that they don't explicit permission to use?
Ubuntu and Debian ship with time servers preconfigured; I doubt they have written permission for all of them. I also don't believe it would be good if we ended up in a world where the use of open services requires written permission if you don't want to get sued.
As another example, many Linux distributions point to a download site for Microsoft msttcorefonts. Do you think they have permission? I don't think so. Do you want Microsoft to be able to sue over this?
That doesn't make sense. Cell phone tower emissions may well "cause" cancer, but in the sense of a small increase in risk; and the increase has to be small because it has been hard to demonstrate experimentally.
If there is a common cause for these cases, it's more likely to be some kind of chemical pollutant or biological agent. Chemicals, fungi, and viruses can and do cause cancer at high rates. I'd rather look to the chemistry department or the biology labs than the cell phone tower for a cause.
This appears to affect RealVNC. That's a big problem for RealVNC; even if a similar bug existed in other VNC implementations, it wouldn't matter there.
Why? For other VNC implementations, people have to use ssh tunneling (no built-in encryption), but RealVNC is supposed to offer secure end-to-end encryption without ssh tunneling. If that doesn't work or if the RealVNC developers can't be trusted not to screw up, the whole raison d'etre for RealVNC goes away. And, in fact, RealVNC is built into devices (e.g. intelligent KVM switches) because it has encryption built in.
Note that RealVNC is not really open source; its more advanced features are under other licenses.
Are you saying that unless you and I have an agreement explicitly forbidding me to do so, I am free to hack into your computer, ping flood you off the net and torch your mother's house?
Why are you asking? Are you stupid enough to think that that's what I said?
Are you somebody who hates open source software and who wants Microsoft and others to be able to shut down open source projects on a whim?
Because that's what it comes down to if you say that Kamp should have been able to sue and win: Debian, Ubuntu, Firefox, and many other free software projects have hardcoded network services in their distributions, and if Kamp could prevail in demanding damages, so could the companies these distributions point to. See, their usage agreements even say that you promise them your firstborn if you do. Didn't notice that before? Too bad.
Or maybe you want to shut down del.icio.us, because people sharing their bookmarks publicly might also be construed as starting an attack on the bookmarked sites. See, the usage agreements for the target sites even say (somehwere) that you can't do what you just did.
So, what's your secret angle? Which open source projects do you want to destroy? Which abusive sites and usage agreements are you trying to support?
Sad as it is, we can't punish what D-Link did to Kamp without opening the doors for a lot of other people to do harm to things we want to be able to do.