So in other words, we should find ways to seal off browsers from the normal desktop; lock it down in some low-rights, sandboxed safe environment planning that when it is hacked, it at least will be very limited in scope.
Except the browser is an excellent application to hack, even if sandboxed, because it has network access and is used for nearly everything these days, including online banking. If you want to be safer you'll have to use separate sandboxed browsers for finance vs email vs... vs random browsing.
You're making a legal claim as to what "a work based on the Program" means. Unless you can show a specific legal definition for that phrase, then it can easily be argued that slapping a GUI on top of another program to create a larger program is basing your work on somebody else's.
In fact, the paragraph I quoted specifically used the phrase "not derived" in the first sentence, and then made sure to use a different phrase in the second sentence where you were required to GPL the whole work. It seems clear to me that the whole point of this paragraph is to prevent "but I didn't derive from your work, so I can use it!" defense. Which makes complete sense, when you consider the point of the GPL. The LGPL was designed for wrapping, not the GPL.
In contract law, where there are complex terms and concepts in the contract, supporting documents are used to interpret their definitions. The FAQ you posted as a link is a pretty clear discussion about what is meant by "mere aggregation."
The FAQ says that ultimately a judge will decide, and only gives an opinion, and even then it doesn't give carte blanche for sockets. Besides the FAQ, there are the stated goals of the GPL and the GPL itself. The GPLv2, which you seem extremely averse to quoting, says the following:
"If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it."
Now what happens when I show the judge this license, show that the defendant slapped a proprietary GUI on top of my GPL program via sockets, and sold it as a whole? Do you think I might have cause for legal complaint, even if data structures were not shared?
You are looking as courts as the one's granting the rights, not the GPL and the FSF, this is the wrong approach. [...] This section of the FAQ is legal conjecture about what the FSF thinks might be an issue.
These are in contradiction. If there's a legal issue then the courts will ultimately decide, which will become case law to guide future interpretations.
It's ambiguous because the license itself is ambiguous on this issue.
again, FUD.
Then cite the GPLv2 where it makes it clear what is "mere aggregation" and what isn't. You'll find nowhere does it talk about sockets vs linking, for example. In fact, I think it was wisely made ambiguous to avoid loopholes like sockets or other technical variations.
And while I can see their point, in practice it would be difficult to keep with the separate process space guideline and "exchanging complex internal data structures" guideline without red flags going up as it would almost assuredly mean you are using common structure and data definitions during the build process which would be source of the GPL violation.
Then your simplistic advice which started this thread isn't so clear anymore, now is it?
Case law is important *only* if there is serious ambiguity and a hostile party. One can always ASK the FSF if they have an issue BEFORE it becomes an issue. The WANT to help!!
The FSF is not the only owner of GPL code. As an example, the Linux kernel has countless owners, since they don't get copyright assignments. Personally, if I was the author of a GPL program, and you trivially wrapped it with a proprietary GUI using sockets, I would definitely sue. Also, since ultimately the FSF desires more people to GPL their code, if there's any doubt they'll ask you to GPL.
Furthermore, the FUD thing is old.
What's old are people carelessly tossing around the words FUD and troll every time somebody disagrees with them.
Thus far the courts have ruled that the GPL is what it says it is and the language is plain enough. What organizations like Cisco are trying to to in the courts is limit the powers of the GPL, and are failing.
The basic idea of GPL is valid, but what I'm talking about are the finer issues, such as what constitutes "mere aggregation". If you can, cite a case law that covers something like using sockets to avoid GPLing your program.
Maybe you misunderstood my original post, but "combine the programs to create a greater program" is a bit ambiguous. I suspect intentionally so.
It's ambiguous because the license itself is ambiguous on this issue.
The GPL and its supporting documents describe exactly the methods by which programs can be created and how any encumbrances work. You are obscuring the facts in order to spread FUD.
Provide a quote then. Use GPLv2 please, since that's the version under suit, the one most commonly used, and the one I've studied in detail.
As long as the GPL program runs unmodified in its own process space, absolutely, yes.
"By contrast, pipes, sockets and command-line arguments are communication mechanisms normally used between two separate programs. So when they are used for communication, the modules normally are separate programs. But if the semantics of the communication are intimate enough, exchanging complex internal data structures, that too could be a basis to consider the two parts as combined into a larger program."
While I am not a lawyer, I have worked with several IP lawyers in creating GPL compliance guidelines.
You are citing authorities I have no way to verify. Furthermore, lawyers can be wrong, just like anybody else, and case law is what counts.
I've done a lot of commercial software that uses LGPL and GPL code, and its not rocket science.
It's quite debatable what all the terms mean and what you are allowed to do. Most of the issues have not been settled in court. Personally, I think your advice is simplistic and wrong, though it does seem to be commonly accepted.
RMS himself even says that "mere aggregation" is not a problem.
This is like compiling a shareware disk where the programs aren't related. Once you combine the programs to create a greater program, you are no longer "merely aggregating".
If it is GPL, make it a service and call it through a socket.
This doesn't save you. If you slap a GUI on top of a GPLd program and use sockets, do you really think your program is "mere aggregation"?
Shouldn't we fight for freedom, Liberty, and democracy?
We only care about that when trade isn't beneficial. You won't see the United States supporting a coup of the king in any Middle Eastern country that we have favorable trade with. By the way, Chavez was democratically elected.
You talk about sophistry when you constantly pander to the free-music crowd? When you make grand claims of innocence based on superficial evidence, when you highlight a sad case out of 1,000s, when you make up statistics about 1/2 to 3/4 innocence?
The fact is technology has made it trivial for an ordinary person to break the law on a massive scale, and the RIAA is trying to stop it. There's a reasonable discussion to be had here, but you're too full of emotion and bias to have it.
It is neither elegant nor simple, though compared to C++ I guess it would look that way. You've got C's byzantine declarations, cryptic syntactic symbols, pointer madness, goto, the C-preprocessor, unions, pea soup of signed/unsigned integer and float types, implicit conversions and casting, undefined or platform defined behavior, null-terminated strings, and the hack #include instead of a real module system.
C has been best described as a portable assembly language.
Those industries exist to concentrate wealth into the hands of people like Jobs. The fact that we get new toys to play with is almost incidental...
They go hand-in-hand.
Economy of scale. Hobbyist pursuit vs wide-market pursuit. The fact is Woz hanging out at a computer enthusiasts group doesn't get his machine into millions of homes without somebody like Jobs to expand the vision, get investment, hire other people, etc.
I know it's easy to hate rich business people, and there's a lot of bad with the good, but there are tangible benefits.
because of his leech-like attachment to Wozniak and his ability to manipulate him.
Woz made his choices. He was an adult. He seems to have done ok by Jobs. Maybe you should ask Woz himself if he agrees with your sentiments. He's already posted once in this thread.
the fact that the Church has nearly two millenia of recorded miracles suggests that the early stories are accurate.
Sorry, a handful of "miracle" stories is extremely weak evidence. People get fooled into believing all kinds of stuff. People believed in vampires, spontaneous combustion, and have tried and burned witches. If Christ was making weekly appearances at cities around the world that would be a different story.
the Church collected and maintained the accounts from their inception
They were written down decades later. People decided what was canon and what wasn't. Of course that was 2,000 years ago, now you just have what remains as the final product. There's also the problem of translation and lack of context.
Think about it this way: you wouldn't deny that science is valid because various physicists had different theories with regard to star formation; why would religion be any different?
Because religion purports to be the word of God -- you know, that divine truth that you are absolutely sure about.
What I've come to realize is that most who don't believe in God do so not out of reasoned inquiry, but because they simply don't possess - nor desire to possess - an understanding that would allow them to discover the answer.
I suspect most people believe because that's what they were raised to, not out of reasoned inquiry. They also believe because it gives them comfort. I was taught to believe. I made the reasoned inquiry. I rejected religion as mythology.
I need not exclude any evidence to maintain my faith in God.
Everybody makes the facts fit into their own belief system. Like for you the different religions are just one of those questions that have yet to be answered, but to me is just an obvious indication that people, left to themselves, came up with different answers, just like they developed their own languages.
However, I suspect that unbelievers must go to considerable lengths to discredit evidentiary sources with whom they disagree.
I'd say there is so little evidence for religion as truth, and so much against it, that evidence has to meet a very high threshold to be believable. It's like believing in extra-sensory perception. There are plenty of frauds, bad studies, and anecdotal stories, but not much in the way of credible evidence.
You have the divine revelation type of knowledge. It is known to be true because of the source; it is confirmed true in the passage of time and lives of the believers.
Ah, so old religions must be true? History is an extremely noisy channel. All you have is a bunch of stories passed down through time. In fact, the older it is, the harder it is to verify and the more likely errors have crept in.
(That is, you can't mathematically verify it, but you can observe that the theology accurately describes reality.)
This is where religion falls down for the logically inclined. It doesn't do a very good job at describing reality (see God of the gaps).
Of course, the difficulty with divine revelation is distinguishing between those who merely claim to have it and those who really do have it.
Some people believe because they interpret things as "signs" from God. Some believe others who have received "signs" from God. Faith is often talked about, because the fact is most people just don't have any divine revelation, or even if they do they can't be sure. Most people believe the religion they were raised in (surprise). People all around the world have come up with different religions (surprise). You'll scoff at mythology, witch doctors, modern day religions, but yours is special, right?
This involves what most people would call common sense, and if you can't tell the difference between a charlatan exploiting the religious nature of people to his own benefit and someone genuinely committed to the service of God, you need to ask your university for a refund.
If "common sense" was so common there wouldn't be so many people who have gotten suckered in by so many charlatans. Besides the charlatans, there are the true believers, who might just be crazy or misinterpreting things.
This was all planned. In "Between Two Ages" by Zbigniew Brzezinski he predicted the internet and the rise in free speech. This take down of the free internet is just the next step. Get us all hooked, get the world using it, then transform it into the greatest propaganda tool ever invented.
Or, people like to form networks, bad things can happen on networks, and government likes to regulate bad things. Somehow I don't think the Internet was planned as a propaganda tool.
Not to say that governments won't use it as propaganda, or regulate free speech, but that doesn't mean it was planned that way from the start. Seems kind of foolish to give everybody a free speech platform and then try to take it away after the fact. They would have built in controls from the beginning if that was their intent.
It involved three-four deities (Tangra, Athena, Poseidon and the Lady) and the appropriate sacrifices I should perform for my pretty damn miraculous survival.
Ok, don't leave us hanging. What were the sacrifices, and did you perform them?
For a finite investment, you get an infinite return. You have a guaranteed return on your investment.
You don't know that. That's the whole point.
Religion still (in most cases) makes one a better person.
Arguable, in the sense that Santa Clause encourages kids to behave. I'd rather teach principles based on concern for yourself, others, and society than a the wrath of a whimsical god that certain people claim to have authority on.
Can't beat the peace and joy religion brings in times of suffering. Those without any hope for the future fare a lot worse than those with hope. Religion has a social value apart from its religious message.
Perhaps. Then again, it also encourages people to get sucked in by faith healers and the like.
For all the complaints about religion, participation is much more voluntary than participation in government.
Depends on the religion, time, and place. Many religions are dogmatic and have the concept of blasphemy.
As a believer, if I'm wrong about God's existence, I'll never know the difference. An atheist wrong about God's existence is in for a very rude awakening. In short, you risk a lot more through unbelief than belief.
This is just Pascal's Wager. Been refuted for ages. Maybe you risk eternal Hell for believing in a false god for the wrong reasons.
Could it be that believers are simply applying the same principles to their lives as a whole?
As a non-believer, I came to that position by applying my principles. Every time I looked critically at the evidence, religion came up empty. It seemed best explained as mythology.
It seems like if one would attend a University to expand one's capacity for thought, it would be only logical to attend a church, to believe in a God, in order to expand one's capacity for virtue.
The logical thing would be to study philosophy -- it's like religion without the dogma.
As someone who's teaching this stuff, the second is easier to explain in detail and doesn't rely on saying "don't worry what System.out is".
Hilarious. And what will you say if they encounter an error like the following? The error in this case is that bar is missing parenthesis, as it's a function and not data. I ran into this just yesterday:
cout << foo.bar << endl;
$ g++ foo.cpp foo.cpp: In function 'int main()': foo.cpp:28: error: no match for 'operator<<' in 'std::cout << foo.Foo::bar' /usr/include/c++/4.3/ostream:112: note: candidates are: std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& (*)(std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>&)) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>] /usr/include/c++/4.3/ostream:121: note: std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(std::basic_ios<_CharT, _Traits>& (*)(std::basic_ios<_CharT, _Traits>&)) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>]
15 more lines of the same follow. I'd give you the whole thing, but if I do Slashdot says: "Filter error: Please use fewer 'junk' characters."
I say the argument relies on ignorance. He doesn't need to be ignorant himself to make the argument (though it helps).
Well that's a subtle point. Your statement could have been interpreted either way.
If you were a carrier, why would you not simply say, "OK, I'm hitting my limit, no more traffic without more money?"
His argument is that turning on UDP for BitTorrent will kill apps that actually need UDP like voice over IP when the ISPs smack it down. He states that 2% of traffic today is UDP, 50% is P2P, and that by moving to UDP the BitTorrent guys are acting irresponsibly.
On the other hand, if you could tell me where he's right on the facts, and I've gone wrong, that would be more helpful.
If you're going to slam the guy for being ignorant about networks, and then be told he's quite knowledgeable, the least you can do is read the fucking article. He addresses your "I read the summary" points on page 2:
"ISPs which throttle users based on raw traffic volume (as the new Comcast system will do) are protected from the effects of the massive use of aggressive UDP inside their networks. And they should be, as these private networks aren't internets in and of themselves. The damage is going to appear inside the core internet links connecting ISPs, which will become much less responsive to load management." [emphasis mine]
Maybe you can read the rest of the article and post a more nuanced reply than your knee-jerk response.
Applications that aren't a good fit for TCP often abuse the protocol, e.g. by disabling Nagling and tinkering with other parameters in an effort to make it work more like, well, UDP.
People disable Nagle because it's a common source of performance problems because of ACK delays.
Slashdot Mirror
So in other words, we should find ways to seal off browsers from the normal desktop; lock it down in some low-rights, sandboxed safe environment planning that when it is hacked, it at least will be very limited in scope.
Except the browser is an excellent application to hack, even if sandboxed, because it has network access and is used for nearly everything these days, including online banking. If you want to be safer you'll have to use separate sandboxed browsers for finance vs email vs ... vs random browsing.
You're making a legal claim as to what "a work based on the Program" means. Unless you can show a specific legal definition for that phrase, then it can easily be argued that slapping a GUI on top of another program to create a larger program is basing your work on somebody else's.
In fact, the paragraph I quoted specifically used the phrase "not derived" in the first sentence, and then made sure to use a different phrase in the second sentence where you were required to GPL the whole work. It seems clear to me that the whole point of this paragraph is to prevent "but I didn't derive from your work, so I can use it!" defense. Which makes complete sense, when you consider the point of the GPL. The LGPL was designed for wrapping, not the GPL.
In contract law, where there are complex terms and concepts in the contract, supporting documents are used to interpret their definitions. The FAQ you posted as a link is a pretty clear discussion about what is meant by "mere aggregation."
The FAQ says that ultimately a judge will decide, and only gives an opinion, and even then it doesn't give carte blanche for sockets. Besides the FAQ, there are the stated goals of the GPL and the GPL itself. The GPLv2, which you seem extremely averse to quoting, says the following:
"If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it."
Now what happens when I show the judge this license, show that the defendant slapped a proprietary GUI on top of my GPL program via sockets, and sold it as a whole? Do you think I might have cause for legal complaint, even if data structures were not shared?
You are looking as courts as the one's granting the rights, not the GPL and the FSF, this is the wrong approach. [...] This section of the FAQ is legal conjecture about what the FSF thinks might be an issue.
These are in contradiction. If there's a legal issue then the courts will ultimately decide, which will become case law to guide future interpretations.
It's ambiguous because the license itself is ambiguous on this issue.
again, FUD.
Then cite the GPLv2 where it makes it clear what is "mere aggregation" and what isn't. You'll find nowhere does it talk about sockets vs linking, for example. In fact, I think it was wisely made ambiguous to avoid loopholes like sockets or other technical variations.
And while I can see their point, in practice it would be difficult to keep with the separate process space guideline and "exchanging complex internal data structures" guideline without red flags going up as it would almost assuredly mean you are using common structure and data definitions during the build process which would be source of the GPL violation.
Then your simplistic advice which started this thread isn't so clear anymore, now is it?
Case law is important *only* if there is serious ambiguity and a hostile party. One can always ASK the FSF if they have an issue BEFORE it becomes an issue. The WANT to help!!
The FSF is not the only owner of GPL code. As an example, the Linux kernel has countless owners, since they don't get copyright assignments. Personally, if I was the author of a GPL program, and you trivially wrapped it with a proprietary GUI using sockets, I would definitely sue. Also, since ultimately the FSF desires more people to GPL their code, if there's any doubt they'll ask you to GPL.
Furthermore, the FUD thing is old.
What's old are people carelessly tossing around the words FUD and troll every time somebody disagrees with them.
The GPL defines what rights you have to GPL code.
That's why I've been asking you to cite it.
Thus far the courts have ruled that the GPL is what it says it is and the language is plain enough. What organizations like Cisco are trying to to in the courts is limit the powers of the GPL, and are failing.
The basic idea of GPL is valid, but what I'm talking about are the finer issues, such as what constitutes "mere aggregation". If you can, cite a case law that covers something like using sockets to avoid GPLing your program.
Maybe you misunderstood my original post, but "combine the programs to create a greater program" is a bit ambiguous. I suspect intentionally so.
It's ambiguous because the license itself is ambiguous on this issue.
The GPL and its supporting documents describe exactly the methods by which programs can be created and how any encumbrances work. You are obscuring the facts in order to spread FUD.
Provide a quote then. Use GPLv2 please, since that's the version under suit, the one most commonly used, and the one I've studied in detail.
As long as the GPL program runs unmodified in its own process space, absolutely, yes.
The FSF disagrees with you:
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggregation
"By contrast, pipes, sockets and command-line arguments are communication mechanisms normally used between two separate programs. So when they are used for communication, the modules normally are separate programs. But if the semantics of the communication are intimate enough, exchanging complex internal data structures, that too could be a basis to consider the two parts as combined into a larger program."
While I am not a lawyer, I have worked with several IP lawyers in creating GPL compliance guidelines.
You are citing authorities I have no way to verify. Furthermore, lawyers can be wrong, just like anybody else, and case law is what counts.
I've done a lot of commercial software that uses LGPL and GPL code, and its not rocket science.
It's quite debatable what all the terms mean and what you are allowed to do. Most of the issues have not been settled in court. Personally, I think your advice is simplistic and wrong, though it does seem to be commonly accepted.
RMS himself even says that "mere aggregation" is not a problem.
This is like compiling a shareware disk where the programs aren't related. Once you combine the programs to create a greater program, you are no longer "merely aggregating".
If it is GPL, make it a service and call it through a socket.
This doesn't save you. If you slap a GUI on top of a GPLd program and use sockets, do you really think your program is "mere aggregation"?
Shouldn't we fight for freedom, Liberty, and democracy?
We only care about that when trade isn't beneficial. You won't see the United States supporting a coup of the king in any Middle Eastern country that we have favorable trade with. By the way, Chavez was democratically elected.
It's interesting you mention FP.
Yes, what a strange coincidence that functional programming has something to do with "higher order".
There's always going to be a tension between process and creativity.
Interesting sophistry
You talk about sophistry when you constantly pander to the free-music crowd? When you make grand claims of innocence based on superficial evidence, when you highlight a sad case out of 1,000s, when you make up statistics about 1/2 to 3/4 innocence?
The fact is technology has made it trivial for an ordinary person to break the law on a massive scale, and the RIAA is trying to stop it. There's a reasonable discussion to be had here, but you're too full of emotion and bias to have it.
C has this elegant simplicity going for it.
It is neither elegant nor simple, though compared to C++ I guess it would look that way. You've got C's byzantine declarations, cryptic syntactic symbols, pointer madness, goto, the C-preprocessor, unions, pea soup of signed/unsigned integer and float types, implicit conversions and casting, undefined or platform defined behavior, null-terminated strings, and the hack #include instead of a real module system.
C has been best described as a portable assembly language.
Those industries exist to concentrate wealth into the hands of people like Jobs. The fact that we get new toys to play with is almost incidental...
They go hand-in-hand.
Economy of scale. Hobbyist pursuit vs wide-market pursuit. The fact is Woz hanging out at a computer enthusiasts group doesn't get his machine into millions of homes without somebody like Jobs to expand the vision, get investment, hire other people, etc.
I know it's easy to hate rich business people, and there's a lot of bad with the good, but there are tangible benefits.
because of his leech-like attachment to Wozniak and his ability to manipulate him.
Woz made his choices. He was an adult. He seems to have done ok by Jobs. Maybe you should ask Woz himself if he agrees with your sentiments. He's already posted once in this thread.
I make a mistake and don't make it again.....
A sentence ends in a single period.
my code is some of the best in the company
I bet you're an excellent driver, too.
But people like Jobs start industries which lead to cool toys for good prices, available for the masses.
the fact that the Church has nearly two millenia of recorded miracles suggests that the early stories are accurate.
Sorry, a handful of "miracle" stories is extremely weak evidence. People get fooled into believing all kinds of stuff. People believed in vampires, spontaneous combustion, and have tried and burned witches. If Christ was making weekly appearances at cities around the world that would be a different story.
the Church collected and maintained the accounts from their inception
They were written down decades later. People decided what was canon and what wasn't. Of course that was 2,000 years ago, now you just have what remains as the final product. There's also the problem of translation and lack of context.
Think about it this way: you wouldn't deny that science is valid because various physicists had different theories with regard to star formation; why would religion be any different?
Because religion purports to be the word of God -- you know, that divine truth that you are absolutely sure about.
What I've come to realize is that most who don't believe in God do so not out of reasoned inquiry, but because they simply don't possess - nor desire to possess - an understanding that would allow them to discover the answer.
I suspect most people believe because that's what they were raised to, not out of reasoned inquiry. They also believe because it gives them comfort. I was taught to believe. I made the reasoned inquiry. I rejected religion as mythology.
I need not exclude any evidence to maintain my faith in God.
Everybody makes the facts fit into their own belief system. Like for you the different religions are just one of those questions that have yet to be answered, but to me is just an obvious indication that people, left to themselves, came up with different answers, just like they developed their own languages.
However, I suspect that unbelievers must go to considerable lengths to discredit evidentiary sources with whom they disagree.
I'd say there is so little evidence for religion as truth, and so much against it, that evidence has to meet a very high threshold to be believable. It's like believing in extra-sensory perception. There are plenty of frauds, bad studies, and anecdotal stories, but not much in the way of credible evidence.
You have the divine revelation type of knowledge. It is known to be true because of the source; it is confirmed true in the passage of time and lives of the believers.
Ah, so old religions must be true? History is an extremely noisy channel. All you have is a bunch of stories passed down through time. In fact, the older it is, the harder it is to verify and the more likely errors have crept in.
(That is, you can't mathematically verify it, but you can observe that the theology accurately describes reality.)
This is where religion falls down for the logically inclined. It doesn't do a very good job at describing reality (see God of the gaps).
Of course, the difficulty with divine revelation is distinguishing between those who merely claim to have it and those who really do have it.
Some people believe because they interpret things as "signs" from God. Some believe others who have received "signs" from God. Faith is often talked about, because the fact is most people just don't have any divine revelation, or even if they do they can't be sure. Most people believe the religion they were raised in (surprise). People all around the world have come up with different religions (surprise). You'll scoff at mythology, witch doctors, modern day religions, but yours is special, right?
This involves what most people would call common sense, and if you can't tell the difference between a charlatan exploiting the religious nature of people to his own benefit and someone genuinely committed to the service of God, you need to ask your university for a refund.
If "common sense" was so common there wouldn't be so many people who have gotten suckered in by so many charlatans. Besides the charlatans, there are the true believers, who might just be crazy or misinterpreting things.
This was all planned. In "Between Two Ages" by Zbigniew Brzezinski he predicted the internet and the rise in free speech. This take down of the free internet is just the next step. Get us all hooked, get the world using it, then transform it into the greatest propaganda tool ever invented.
Or, people like to form networks, bad things can happen on networks, and government likes to regulate bad things. Somehow I don't think the Internet was planned as a propaganda tool.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet
Not to say that governments won't use it as propaganda, or regulate free speech, but that doesn't mean it was planned that way from the start. Seems kind of foolish to give everybody a free speech platform and then try to take it away after the fact. They would have built in controls from the beginning if that was their intent.
It involved three-four deities (Tangra, Athena, Poseidon and the Lady) and the appropriate sacrifices I should perform for my pretty damn miraculous survival.
Ok, don't leave us hanging. What were the sacrifices, and did you perform them?
For a finite investment, you get an infinite return. You have a guaranteed return on your investment.
You don't know that. That's the whole point.
Religion still (in most cases) makes one a better person.
Arguable, in the sense that Santa Clause encourages kids to behave. I'd rather teach principles based on concern for yourself, others, and society than a the wrath of a whimsical god that certain people claim to have authority on.
Can't beat the peace and joy religion brings in times of suffering. Those without any hope for the future fare a lot worse than those with hope. Religion has a social value apart from its religious message.
Perhaps. Then again, it also encourages people to get sucked in by faith healers and the like.
For all the complaints about religion, participation is much more voluntary than participation in government.
Depends on the religion, time, and place. Many religions are dogmatic and have the concept of blasphemy.
As a believer, if I'm wrong about God's existence, I'll never know the difference. An atheist wrong about God's existence is in for a very rude awakening. In short, you risk a lot more through unbelief than belief.
This is just Pascal's Wager. Been refuted for ages. Maybe you risk eternal Hell for believing in a false god for the wrong reasons.
Could it be that believers are simply applying the same principles to their lives as a whole?
As a non-believer, I came to that position by applying my principles. Every time I looked critically at the evidence, religion came up empty. It seemed best explained as mythology.
It seems like if one would attend a University to expand one's capacity for thought, it would be only logical to attend a church, to believe in a God, in order to expand one's capacity for virtue.
The logical thing would be to study philosophy -- it's like religion without the dogma.
No more tags!
Sweet!
As someone who's teaching this stuff, the second is easier to explain in detail and doesn't rely on saying "don't worry what System.out is".
Hilarious. And what will you say if they encounter an error like the following? The error in this case is that bar is missing parenthesis, as it's a function and not data. I ran into this just yesterday:
15 more lines of the same follow. I'd give you the whole thing, but if I do Slashdot says: "Filter error: Please use fewer 'junk' characters."
Indeed.
what with System being an object
It's actually a class.
I say the argument relies on ignorance. He doesn't need to be ignorant himself to make the argument (though it helps).
Well that's a subtle point. Your statement could have been interpreted either way.
If you were a carrier, why would you not simply say, "OK, I'm hitting my limit, no more traffic without more money?"
His argument is that turning on UDP for BitTorrent will kill apps that actually need UDP like voice over IP when the ISPs smack it down. He states that 2% of traffic today is UDP, 50% is P2P, and that by moving to UDP the BitTorrent guys are acting irresponsibly.
On the other hand, if you could tell me where he's right on the facts, and I've gone wrong, that would be more helpful.
If you're going to slam the guy for being ignorant about networks, and then be told he's quite knowledgeable, the least you can do is read the fucking article. He addresses your "I read the summary" points on page 2:
"ISPs which throttle users based on raw traffic volume (as the new Comcast system will do) are protected from the effects of the massive use of aggressive UDP inside their networks. And they should be, as these private networks aren't internets in and of themselves. The damage is going to appear inside the core internet links connecting ISPs, which will become much less responsive to load management." [emphasis mine]
Maybe you can read the rest of the article and post a more nuanced reply than your knee-jerk response.
Applications that aren't a good fit for TCP often abuse the protocol, e.g. by disabling Nagling and tinkering with other parameters in an effort to make it work more like, well, UDP.
People disable Nagle because it's a common source of performance problems because of ACK delays.