I can understand pulling it from the repositories for future installs, but from a user that installed it while the license was still in effect? Really uncool.
Its a security update, where, had they still had a license to distribute the software, they would have removed the old version and replaced it with the fixed version. Since they don't have the license, you have to do the second part yourself if you apply the update. Like all updates, you can choose not to apply it.
It's not about them no longer supplying it, but actually ripping it out of your box. They've already distributed it, and under an appropriate license- it wasn't leased out and the license doesn't require removal once the license is retired.
It does not make any sense to do what Canonical's doing here.
Canonical is only indirectly removing it because of licensing issues. They are directly removing it because of critical security issues. Were it not for licensing issues, they could distribute the newer version of Sun (now Oracle) Java which fixes the security issues, but because they can't, the security fix is to push an update which removes the critically-vulnerable software as a security update.
Obviously, if one is actively reviewing updates before applying them, as one should be on any non-toy system, this won't be an issue. You'll either apply the update and then and download updated Java from Oracle if you are dependent on the Oracle JVM, or if you really want to keep the existing version for some arcane reason, you just won't apply the update.
If it's nothing more than a method for switching between automatic and manual driving, then why isn't KITT from Knight Rider prior art?
Because (1) KITT isn't a real vehicle that had a mechanism to do that, but a fictional one which presumed the existence of such a mechanism in the fiction, and (2) there is no evidence that the mechanism KITT used is the mechanism claimed in the patent. The idea of switching from manual to automatic driving isn't patented, a specific mechanism for enabling that is.
Take a look at this patent..... It could as well be the instructions someone gives to their son/daughter to go to the grocery store and back. it is only THAT complicated and specific/technical.
Um, no.
I think you are confusing the example task described in TFS with "the patent". That task described in the patent as an example of a single instance of an "autonomous vehicle instruction", but what is patented isn't the ability to execute either that instruction or autonomous vehicle instructions in general, but instead a mechanism for transitioning between autonomous and manual operations, and the example autonomous vehicle instruction is simply an illustration what "autonomous operation" is in that context.
Tuesday, the FCC passed the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act, or CALM.
Wrong. Congress passed the 2010 Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act and it was signed by the President on December 15, 2010, a year ago tomorrow.
What the FCC did yesterday was to adopt rules restricting loud commercials, as it was required to under the CALM Act, which will become effective one year after adoption, on December 13, 2012.
Not needed you say? Okay, can you find the error i made in the paragraph above? (I'm not joking, start a timer, how long did it take you to find? It's there!).
Which error? Are you referring to the "then/than" error, the sentence fragment, or the doubled comma, or the complete mess that the last sentence becomes after "approaches,"?
I mean, that's all I found in 30 seconds, there might be more.
"This programming philosophy will allow you to develop high quality software really quickly, and on the cheap" is the equivalent of a politician promising to fix every problem in the country with no sacrifices required, and put chocolate milk in all the water fountains to boot.
It might be, but II've never seen that as the main promise of agile . The big value I've seen from agile is that small, independent iterations reduce the cycle time from the investment of resources to getting some return, and manage risk of change by not devoting lots of effort to things that might be not needed by the time they are delivered.
It doesn't get you better software, cheaper, and faster than, e.g., waterfall if you have requirements handed down on gold plates in advance, it just avoids some of the waste that results from front-loading planning and analysis in an environment of uncertainty or evolving challenges.
(Which also highlights where it isn't useful: if you've got something where the detailed requirements are handed down in advance as unchangeable Holy Writ for some reason, and where there isn't independent value that can be derived from delivery of some distinct subset of the whole feature set, agile doesn't have a whole lot to offer. In most business software scenarios -- and, more broadly, in most software development to serve the ongoing operational needs of a going concern -- the factors which favor agile over front-loaded planned projects exist. But there are certainly circumstances where they are absent or at least less prominent, and where the smallest meaningful unit of work is the whole enchilada.)
Well, according to law professor Eric Goldman, ordering someone to delete their blog IS rare and perhaps unprecedented.
Probably because someone establishing a blog for the sole purposes of harassing someone they are already under a restraining order not to harrss, and then setting up sock-puppet accounts on social networking sites to relay the harassing blog posts to the family and friends of the victim isn't the kind of violation of a restraining order that has come up all that much in the past.
(Then again, I could swear I've seen several news stories over the year on Slashdot of cases when harassing or threatening webages were ordered to be taken down by courts -- perhaps not in cases involving a pre-existing restraining order -- so the only thing here that would seem to be potentially unprecedented is that the webpage used for harassment happened to be a blog rather than some other style of page, or perhaps the particular context of the harassment which resulted in the order. This would seem to be lowering the bar on "unprecedented" quite a bit.)
Book readers predate the iPad. This is perhaps just a slightly better Book reader and is sized and priced accordingly
The Kindle Fire (like the Nook Color and Nook Tablet from B&N) are marketed as tablets (the Nook Color was originally marketed as "the reader's tablet"), and marketing for both the Amazon and B&N devices often includes the e-Ink devices from the same vendors as preferred devices as readers while the LCD devices are pushed as tablets.
While the iPad may not be the most relevant comparison for any of these devices (their closest competitors are each other rather than anything from Apple), it is the marketing from the vendors that has invited them being compared for features as tablets rather than as "book readers".
With the Nook Color, you don't have access to any content delivered by Amazon, such as their streaming video and movie service, you wouldn't be able to access any existing Amazon content you own (such as books), and you wouldn't get their accelerated browser (which supposedly works well now that they've fixed it).
Well, since Amazon has a free Android app and you can use a Nook Color as a regular Android tablet with the OS on an SD card, that's not entirely true; also, the converse is true with regard of B&N content on the Amazon Fire.
But I don't think the Nook is clearly superior. (It's also $50 more expensive, for what that is worth)
The Nook Color is $199 just like the Fire. (It used to be $249, but the price was dropped when the Nook Tablet was introduced, replacing the NC at the $249 price point.)
Most reviews I've seen have given the Nook Tablet, which is $50 more expensive than the fire, better reviews than the Fire for everything except interacting with existing Amazon content and some positive notes on the Silk web browser.
Its harder to find NC v. Amazon Fire comparisons, but I suspect those would be more mixed -- the Color has most of the features that are behing the Tablet being rated better than the Fire in most of the comparisons I've seen, but also is underpowered compared to the Fire or Nook Tablet when it comes to CPU,
Sicker yet of all the frigin people complaining about a $200 dollar device because they think it should be as polished and as feature rich as a $500+ device.
Many of the articles I've seen have been noting that while it's been hyped as an iPad killer, not only is it not in that league, its also got some work to do to catch up with the $250 Nook Tablet from B&N.
The iPad comparison is one that Amazon has invited because it would rather be granted passes based on how much cheaper it is than the iPad than be looked at head-to-head with the devices that are in its price range.
The volume button position is weird, but you can simply turn the device over and the screen flips. It's no issue. Some people bellyache about the external volume control, but so what? Does that kill a device that comes in a less than half it's competitors' price point?
The most direct competitor to the Kindle Fire is either the B&N Nook Color ($50 more than Fire when Fire was launched, now the same price, lower hardware specs in general, but does have an SD card slot, and many reviews have the Kindle Fire performing worse on many common tasks) and the B&N Nook Tablet (released shortly after the fire, at a $50 higher price point, similar processor specs to the Kindle Fire, but more RAM, local storage, SD card slot, and most head-to-heads I've seen find it performs better overall.)
Neither B&N device has the power button placement issues or lack of external volume controls that the Fire has, either.
Amazon clearly wants people to compare the Fire to the iPad on price, because a not-quite-iPad at half the price sounds like a good value proposition, and the best chance Amazon has at succeeding with the Fire is if that's how people see it, but its closest competitors on price, form factor, and features aren't from Apple.
Microsoft has language in its agreement that excludes GPL.
The interpretation would only be valid if distributing GPL software via the store would magically infect other Microsoft software with the GPL. While that's a myth that some parties have spread about the GPL, its not generally true.
OTOH, its at least plausible that the manner in which Microsoft distributes software via the Win8 store would involve integrating some Microsoft code with the distributed app in a manner which would be more than mere aggregation and which might at least raise issues under the GPL. But I haven't seen anything concrete suggesting that would be the case, so at best as I am seeing the claim about the GPL in the article you link as being speculation on the impact of the language it points to for which no evidence is either offered or apparent.
Apple does add additional terms which violate the GPL (and especially v3)
The additional terms violate GPLv2 at least as much as they violate the GPLv3, since one of the changes made in GPLv3 was creating some allowance for additional terms, whereas the GPLv2 expressly disallowed distributors from adding restrictions (without exceptions.)
When HP announced it would release webOS as open source, it added a competitor to a narrow niche: there's already Tizen, the descendant of MeeGo, which is, like webOS, an open source Linux-based operating system for smartphones.
I think there might be another open-source, Linux-based operating systems for smartphones besides Tizen or webOS, called something like Robot or Cyborg -- not either of those exactly, but something in the same vein...
How long do you think it would take you to become proficient in COBOL, RPG2, Ada or LISP, if all you knew was Java and C?
Substantially less time than it would take me if I didn't know Java and C, and significantly more time than if I already knew Pascal, C, C++, Java, Ruby, and Python, and a bunch of other languages.
Certainly, my experience has been that the more languages I've learned, the easier it is to pick up new ones.
The shell company that technically owns the jets and that will be using 2/3rds of the hangar has an odd relationship with NASA, refurbishing old jets, from small fighters to Boeing 767's, and turning them into "science" planes. It's more like this company is subsidizing the government.
Its even more like ultra-rich geeks are spending lots of money on a hobby that happens to align with the objectives of a public agency.
The Google-NASA public-private partnership for "science" or "research" may be a way of hiding expensive and highly experimental espionage programs from auditors by keeping programs off the public books.
Well, except that the agreements and payments in the partnership are on the public books, rather than off them, and it isn't a NASA-Google partnership, as Google isn't actually involved (a separate company co-owned by people who also happen to be Google executives is.)
There could, of course, be undisclosed payments through the black budget to H211 LLC (the company through which the Googlers own the planes) outside of the NASA partnership, but the same is true of any private venture whether or not it has an overt partnership with a government agency.
And, of course, the purpose of the on-the-books expenditures could be an elaborate deception, but that's true of every other on-the-books government expenditure, too.
And there's only PL/SQL if you are using Oracle, though many databases have SQL-derived procedural languages (mutually incompatible ones, moreso even than the SQL dialects themselves are.)
One of the problems with this business is the continuing preference for the "new and shiny" at the expense of proven quality. COBOL is -very good- at a significant class of problems, and there are a lot of geezers who are very good at it.
COBOL is very good at something any language is good at: that is, once its been used for a long-enough time in an environment with reasonably stable requirements, and the bugs in the code worked out, its very good at plugging away and doing the same thing reliably.
Since COBOL hasn't been the first choice for new development of much of anything for quite some time, most of remaining COBOL applications are in that kind of environment, and so they work really well.
That's not really a testament to COBOL.
One of the problems with new languages is that everyone starts out stupid.
I don't think that's really true. There's obviously some learning curve, but its hardly the case that programming knowledge is all (or even mostly) tied to a particular language.
Can someone describe the differences between NaCl (Salt?) and ActiveX?
Native Client (NaCl) is a sandboxed environment that verifies and then executes a safe subset of x86 code. It is an open source technology integrated into Chrome that works pretty much everywhere Chrome does, and is a bridge to the real goal, which is Portable Native Client, which does similar things but uses LLVM bit code and client-side compilation so it isn't dependent on actually running on an x86 machine (opening it up to ARM-based devices, particularly.)
What are the ways Google's offering is superior?
Its not proprietary (in the non-open sense), it doesn't rely on the client running Windows.
Slashdot Mirror
Its a security update, where, had they still had a license to distribute the software, they would have removed the old version and replaced it with the fixed version. Since they don't have the license, you have to do the second part yourself if you apply the update. Like all updates, you can choose not to apply it.
Canonical is only indirectly removing it because of licensing issues. They are directly removing it because of critical security issues. Were it not for licensing issues, they could distribute the newer version of Sun (now Oracle) Java which fixes the security issues, but because they can't, the security fix is to push an update which removes the critically-vulnerable software as a security update.
Obviously, if one is actively reviewing updates before applying them, as one should be on any non-toy system, this won't be an issue. You'll either apply the update and then and download updated Java from Oracle if you are dependent on the Oracle JVM, or if you really want to keep the existing version for some arcane reason, you just won't apply the update.
Because (1) KITT isn't a real vehicle that had a mechanism to do that, but a fictional one which presumed the existence of such a mechanism in the fiction, and (2) there is no evidence that the mechanism KITT used is the mechanism claimed in the patent. The idea of switching from manual to automatic driving isn't patented, a specific mechanism for enabling that is.
Um, no.
I think you are confusing the example task described in TFS with "the patent". That task described in the patent as an example of a single instance of an "autonomous vehicle instruction", but what is patented isn't the ability to execute either that instruction or autonomous vehicle instructions in general, but instead a mechanism for transitioning between autonomous and manual operations, and the example autonomous vehicle instruction is simply an illustration what "autonomous operation" is in that context.
Wrong. Congress passed the 2010 Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act and it was signed by the President on December 15, 2010, a year ago tomorrow.
What the FCC did yesterday was to adopt rules restricting loud commercials, as it was required to under the CALM Act, which will become effective one year after adoption, on December 13, 2012.
Which error? Are you referring to the "then/than" error, the sentence fragment, or the doubled comma, or the complete mess that the last sentence becomes after "approaches,"?
I mean, that's all I found in 30 seconds, there might be more.
Its most critical to realize that neither of those numbers is fixed; the first is "at most" and the last is "at least".
I've certainly seen projects where, in regard to the last trio, all three were chosen (or, at least, achieved.)
It might be, but II've never seen that as the main promise of agile . The big value I've seen from agile is that small, independent iterations reduce the cycle time from the investment of resources to getting some return, and manage risk of change by not devoting lots of effort to things that might be not needed by the time they are delivered.
It doesn't get you better software, cheaper, and faster than, e.g., waterfall if you have requirements handed down on gold plates in advance, it just avoids some of the waste that results from front-loading planning and analysis in an environment of uncertainty or evolving challenges.
(Which also highlights where it isn't useful: if you've got something where the detailed requirements are handed down in advance as unchangeable Holy Writ for some reason, and where there isn't independent value that can be derived from delivery of some distinct subset of the whole feature set, agile doesn't have a whole lot to offer. In most business software scenarios -- and, more broadly, in most software development to serve the ongoing operational needs of a going concern -- the factors which favor agile over front-loaded planned projects exist. But there are certainly circumstances where they are absent or at least less prominent, and where the smallest meaningful unit of work is the whole enchilada.)
Probably because someone establishing a blog for the sole purposes of harassing someone they are already under a restraining order not to harrss, and then setting up sock-puppet accounts on social networking sites to relay the harassing blog posts to the family and friends of the victim isn't the kind of violation of a restraining order that has come up all that much in the past.
(Then again, I could swear I've seen several news stories over the year on Slashdot of cases when harassing or threatening webages were ordered to be taken down by courts -- perhaps not in cases involving a pre-existing restraining order -- so the only thing here that would seem to be potentially unprecedented is that the webpage used for harassment happened to be a blog rather than some other style of page, or perhaps the particular context of the harassment which resulted in the order. This would seem to be lowering the bar on "unprecedented" quite a bit.)
The Kindle Fire (like the Nook Color and Nook Tablet from B&N) are marketed as tablets (the Nook Color was originally marketed as "the reader's tablet"), and marketing for both the Amazon and B&N devices often includes the e-Ink devices from the same vendors as preferred devices as readers while the LCD devices are pushed as tablets.
While the iPad may not be the most relevant comparison for any of these devices (their closest competitors are each other rather than anything from Apple), it is the marketing from the vendors that has invited them being compared for features as tablets rather than as "book readers".
Well, since Amazon has a free Android app and you can use a Nook Color as a regular Android tablet with the OS on an SD card, that's not entirely true; also, the converse is true with regard of B&N content on the Amazon Fire.
The Nook Color is $199 just like the Fire. (It used to be $249, but the price was dropped when the Nook Tablet was introduced, replacing the NC at the $249 price point.)
Most reviews I've seen have given the Nook Tablet, which is $50 more expensive than the fire, better reviews than the Fire for everything except interacting with existing Amazon content and some positive notes on the Silk web browser.
Its harder to find NC v. Amazon Fire comparisons, but I suspect those would be more mixed -- the Color has most of the features that are behing the Tablet being rated better than the Fire in most of the comparisons I've seen, but also is underpowered compared to the Fire or Nook Tablet when it comes to CPU,
Many of the articles I've seen have been noting that while it's been hyped as an iPad killer, not only is it not in that league, its also got some work to do to catch up with the $250 Nook Tablet from B&N.
The iPad comparison is one that Amazon has invited because it would rather be granted passes based on how much cheaper it is than the iPad than be looked at head-to-head with the devices that are in its price range.
Purchasing stuff from Amazon?
The most direct competitor to the Kindle Fire is either the B&N Nook Color ($50 more than Fire when Fire was launched, now the same price, lower hardware specs in general, but does have an SD card slot, and many reviews have the Kindle Fire performing worse on many common tasks) and the B&N Nook Tablet (released shortly after the fire, at a $50 higher price point, similar processor specs to the Kindle Fire, but more RAM, local storage, SD card slot, and most head-to-heads I've seen find it performs better overall.)
Neither B&N device has the power button placement issues or lack of external volume controls that the Fire has, either.
Amazon clearly wants people to compare the Fire to the iPad on price, because a not-quite-iPad at half the price sounds like a good value proposition, and the best chance Amazon has at succeeding with the Fire is if that's how people see it, but its closest competitors on price, form factor, and features aren't from Apple.
The interpretation would only be valid if distributing GPL software via the store would magically infect other Microsoft software with the GPL. While that's a myth that some parties have spread about the GPL, its not generally true.
OTOH, its at least plausible that the manner in which Microsoft distributes software via the Win8 store would involve integrating some Microsoft code with the distributed app in a manner which would be more than mere aggregation and which might at least raise issues under the GPL. But I haven't seen anything concrete suggesting that would be the case, so at best as I am seeing the claim about the GPL in the article you link as being speculation on the impact of the language it points to for which no evidence is either offered or apparent.
The additional terms violate GPLv2 at least as much as they violate the GPLv3, since one of the changes made in GPLv3 was creating some allowance for additional terms, whereas the GPLv2 expressly disallowed distributors from adding restrictions (without exceptions.)
I think there might be another open-source, Linux-based operating systems for smartphones besides Tizen or webOS, called something like Robot or Cyborg -- not either of those exactly, but something in the same vein...
Substantially less time than it would take me if I didn't know Java and C, and significantly more time than if I already knew Pascal, C, C++, Java, Ruby, and Python, and a bunch of other languages.
Certainly, my experience has been that the more languages I've learned, the easier it is to pick up new ones.
Just as a note, its not a subsidiary. Its an LLC directly owned by the Google founders, not a subsidiary of Google or some other company.
Its even more like ultra-rich geeks are spending lots of money on a hobby that happens to align with the objectives of a public agency.
Well, except that the agreements and payments in the partnership are on the public books, rather than off them, and it isn't a NASA-Google partnership, as Google isn't actually involved (a separate company co-owned by people who also happen to be Google executives is.)
There could, of course, be undisclosed payments through the black budget to H211 LLC (the company through which the Googlers own the planes) outside of the NASA partnership, but the same is true of any private venture whether or not it has an overt partnership with a government agency.
And, of course, the purpose of the on-the-books expenditures could be an elaborate deception, but that's true of every other on-the-books government expenditure, too.
"Procedural" and "Complex" aren't the same thing.
And there's only PL/SQL if you are using Oracle, though many databases have SQL-derived procedural languages (mutually incompatible ones, moreso even than the SQL dialects themselves are.)
COBOL is very good at something any language is good at: that is, once its been used for a long-enough time in an environment with reasonably stable requirements, and the bugs in the code worked out, its very good at plugging away and doing the same thing reliably.
Since COBOL hasn't been the first choice for new development of much of anything for quite some time, most of remaining COBOL applications are in that kind of environment, and so they work really well.
That's not really a testament to COBOL.
I don't think that's really true. There's obviously some learning curve, but its hardly the case that programming knowledge is all (or even mostly) tied to a particular language.
You do realize that improving by 1 time is doubling, right?
Pepper is the plug-in API that NaCl modules use to communicate with browser-managed resource, JS, etc.
Native Client (NaCl) is a sandboxed environment that verifies and then executes a safe subset of x86 code. It is an open source technology integrated into Chrome that works pretty much everywhere Chrome does, and is a bridge to the real goal, which is Portable Native Client, which does similar things but uses LLVM bit code and client-side compilation so it isn't dependent on actually running on an x86 machine (opening it up to ARM-based devices, particularly.)
Its not proprietary (in the non-open sense), it doesn't rely on the client running Windows.