At least this is not true everywhere. Most of the EULA are outlaw in many countries. Business laws exists everywhere that limits the restrictions the seller has the right to put on software or data.
If I want to rent a DVD, it is different from buying a DVD. The idea of licensing data is absurd, it is a vocabulary shift that gives undue power to the seller.
When you buy a big mac, you have the right to eat it, but also to use it for modern art. Do you need a license to prohibit the usage of big macs as a projectile ? When I buy a software, I want to be able to use it the way I want, to patch it if I want to increase its usefulness, to install it on two computers as long as the two installations are not used at the same time...
When I buy a DVD, I want to be able to use some pieces of it to make my holidays videos. I want to watch it with friends,...
Each time I violate a ridiculous clause of a license, I have to wonder if "fair use" is my side. This is scandalous. Licenses may be needed when it concerns specific commercial usages of software, but not for individual usage.
Old computers of Dell can still run OS/2 on their systems. Dell never did what is criticized to Sony.
Sony has sold PS3 with a feature written on the box and on the ads and on the technical descriptions. Many people have chosen the PS3 because of this feature.
The feature is removed after the sell. This is blatantly illegal. Sony has the right to remove feature in new PS3 but not in already sold ones.
Why do you post on/. without at least understanding the subject of the summary ?
I can't believe you have mod points, this should ruin your karma for years.
I think he does. Google is a white knight and that is what irritates so many people (apple,...). Google is not perfect, it has made a big mistake with buzz. Google has an ideological model that is very different from Microsoft.
For the moment, Google is very powerful and imagining this power in the hand of a company similar to Microsoft is very frightening.
Certainly, things will change (this is an old chinese proverb). Perhaps this will be because of lawyers.
Perhaps this will be for evil and we will regret to have given so much power to Google.
AFAIK, nobody can predict the future.
For the moment, Google succeed in improving progress rate of our society and this is very different from Microsoft that has hinder computer science progress during so many years.
I think we should be very grateful to Google and we must be very vigilant on every activities of Google. The cited scrutinity is legitimate and mandatory. It shall just be made in a fair spirit.
The main consequence of these "laws" will be the development of cryptography and anonymous browsing. As a result, real criminals will have better tools to hide their activity. Normal people will just lose a part of their liberties.
I do not know for other countries, but the level of vaccination in France has not been high enough to explain the foreseen catastrophe did not occur.
We are just lucky that it did not.
If this catastrophe did occur, the failure of the French health policy would be the issue : vaccines arriving too late and too many people reluctant to be vaccinated.
For me, the French government, despite all the money spent, has completely failed. Is it the same in your countries ? I have heard that the vaccination campaign in us was better. Is it correct ? What percentage of population get vaccinated ?
I have two screens attached to my PC. This seems standard nowadays. A usual configuration is TV (IP, DVD, BD,...) on one screen and work (eclipse java, virtual box running redhat and oracle,...) on the other. Sometimes in the background, I compress some videos to DIVX.
What kind of multitask would you accept as significant ?
I am French. Of course we are slightly better than the Americans, our laws are more fair and our politicians may be less subject to lobbying. We are also notably more pretentious.
Seriously, this is not important, the differences are narrowing and we are getting so badly that they may outperform us one day.
About "the spirit of the law", we have lost a lot when the French wording of the laws has been abandoned as reference text in favour of English in European Commission. I think that languages have a lot of influence on how we think about things. English fits very well for technical, German for philosophy, French for diplomacy, Italian for seduction,...
Perl for people with no background in computer science ? Are you serious ?
My experience is that people who do not like Perl are generally weak in computer science. Perl internal is more similar to lisp than to shell. For example, closures are very effective in Perl.
All the elegance of Perl need a good level of computer science to be fully understood.
The sysadmins I have met that had weak background in computer science hated Perl and were very proud of their shell hacks.
For me, the smart sysadmins solves quickly and elegantly the problem with Perl before the IT departement finished writing the specification of a steam engine.
1) fully agree, it was just for the joke
2) I disagree. The annoyance of too many comments for code reading is such an issue that development software provides options to hide comments. But these tools are imperfect, they can not hide bad comments and leave only the good ones. The tools only reduce the importance of the issue.
3) Can you elaborate why you think that "The redundancy is good" ? I have spend some years in database domain where redundancy shall be avoided like hell. And I continue to try to avoid redundancy. I am more in the mood that "small is beautiful" and "less is more" (less characters for solving cleanly the same problem results in more flexibility and more maintainability).
fully agree on the remaining, the use of word "strangely" was irony.
Comments shall be avoided as much as possible:
1) the code shall be simple and the name of variables and methods shall be self explanatory in most cases. When this is applied, there remains very few to explain at the code level. The reader of your code is not dumber than you (except when he is your boss).
2) the more you add comment lines, the less lines of code you can see on your screen. When you start scrolling continously, the speed of code production reduces significantly.
3) comments introduce a redundancy. What shall be trusted when code and comment differs. Is the code wrong or the comment outdated ?
4) comments in the code are often used as a substitute for a global software architecture description. In the example of the java api documentation, it is very hard to get a global view of a class with only class comments, we need additional documentation (the tutorials).
Joke apart, code often contains many comments because it shall comply to quality standards, but strangely, the parts of the code that are difficult to understand are generally not commented. It is a variant of Murphy law that is very useful when auditing code.
Microsoft was already evil before 90s.
Windows 3.1 had undocumented features that were used by Word and Excel to limit competition.
There were also a lot of legal fights between Microsoft, Apple and others software vendors.
Yes, 92 was a heaven for developpers
on
Jurassic Web
·
· Score: 1, Informative
finding open source software was a piece of cake with xarchie. Unix games were never binary, but sources;-) There were tenths of ftp sites which were miroring each others.
Finding the email adress of someone with only its name was easy: there was a site in australia (telnet on a port) just for that.
finger was working.
I have used xdvi remotly (display in Paris and xdvi running in Brest) to finish a project report without any latency.
xhtalk was very effective as IM.
usenet was a lot more polite and with very few spams.
IRC (I learned it only in 93) was also a good way to chat with girls;-)
Frameworks are great for rapid development, but are bad in the long run (as you explained better than I would because of my broken english).
I think that you should advertise the project developped with a framework as a prototype release (even if it provides the full specification). If the project is successful (many projects are disgarded because the specifications were wrong) and needs to be maintained, the migration to "own made software" can be scheduled and the workload is easier to justified.
People are very reluctant on the idea of "throwable software", but mistakes could be avoided by a prototype before deciding software architecture.
French language is a bit difficult, but you will very easily find jobs were english is the working language. Beeing a native speaker will be a real plus. You will have more spare time than in US: 25 paid leaves plus 10 days of "recuperations" and you almost never need to work more than 40 hours a week. Be warned that there may be a lot of administrative annoyance
reduce the quality to the subset that provides reasonnably working software.
I have some very good books about extreme programming. It strips away most of the non sense of quality to keep only what improves the quality of the produced software or reduce the workload.
Most of the principles are easy to apply and there is no cost (except for the project leader to learn the principles and the efforts to convince the management to give the freedom to apply them), only workload reduction and reliability increased.
My personnal 2c about COTS is that you know correctly a COTS only when you have used it on a project which has failed. As you are not in a software company, there is no point in using technology in the hype : try to rely on tools (and languages) that are already correctly mastered.
You can not enforce interdictions to publish information on internet. Interdictions will be violated either by ignorance or by malicious or by others countries that do not have to comply to your local laws.
Internet DOES NOT WORK like this. It is not an entity to whom you can ask something. Google is an entity. You can ask google to not reference sites that contain prohibited information, (but if I was google, I would ask money for this).
If the 9 year old boy wants to publish your hot chat, he can do it (and also in newspaper), he can prove that this is not defamation.
Nobody is obliged to write obsfucated perl code. When comparing "normal" perl code to normal C++ or Ada or Java code, the perl code is more concise. As a result, one line of perl take more time to write or to read. But the real thing is that the equivalent perl code takes far less time to write even if it takes the same time to read.
It is so easy to code in perl that people do a lot of error checking that are omited in other languages. I have always less bugs in my perl programs than in programs in C/C++ (in Ada, most of the bugs are found during compilation).
The benefits of perl are mainly time and bugs. You can't attack Perl on these.
In perl we use often regexp. Most of them are simple regexp. Some are complicated and are difficult to read (not to write). Add a comment to explain the regexp and stop complaining. The program using regexp is generally a lot more robust than the algorithm we would use in another language without regexp. Fewer bugs, better error checking, less code to maintain.
The only drawback is can imagine is that perl requires to have good bases in computer science and is old-fashioned. I would love to use a new language in the hype that would be as effective, but it remains to be invented.
I can't believe so few \. readers can write in Perl. That's the only explanation of the comments I read. I use Perl everydays. For example 30 minutes ago, a user has found an error in data (a bunch of text files with strange structure) and asked me how many times this error occured and if there was a systematic way to fix it. Less than 10 minutes and 20 lines latter, I gave the report. There is always a natural way to express your thinking in Perl. For me, a bad Perl program means that the programmer did not have a clear mind. For me, the problem with Perl is that instead of forcing rigid rules on input data, process, users, like we would do with most langages, it is easier to adapt the code to handle every cases. It is so easy and nice to code in perl. The result is that the users are happy, but it is very difficult to migrate to another langage (except Python, Ruby, OCAML and GHC but I dot want to start a troll)
There was a radio problem with an helicopter. The helicopter was able to ear but not emit. The controler asked the pilot to call him by phone. This happened near Paris a few years ago.
Slashdot Mirror
Use the identity of someone else to contribute to the GPL project.
At least this is not true everywhere. Most of the EULA are outlaw in many countries. Business laws exists everywhere that limits the restrictions the seller has the right to put on software or data.
... ...
If I want to rent a DVD, it is different from buying a DVD. The idea of licensing data is absurd, it is a vocabulary shift that gives undue power to the seller.
When you buy a big mac, you have the right to eat it, but also to use it for modern art. Do you need a license to prohibit the usage of big macs as a projectile ? When I buy a software, I want to be able to use it the way I want, to patch it if I want to increase its usefulness, to install it on two computers as long as the two installations are not used at the same time
When I buy a DVD, I want to be able to use some pieces of it to make my holidays videos. I want to watch it with friends,
Each time I violate a ridiculous clause of a license, I have to wonder if "fair use" is my side. This is scandalous. Licenses may be needed when it concerns specific commercial usages of software, but not for individual usage.
Old computers of Dell can still run OS/2 on their systems. Dell never did what is criticized to Sony.
/. without at least understanding the subject of the summary ?
Sony has sold PS3 with a feature written on the box and on the ads and on the technical descriptions. Many people have chosen the PS3 because of this feature.
The feature is removed after the sell. This is blatantly illegal. Sony has the right to remove feature in new PS3 but not in already sold ones.
Why do you post on
I can't believe you have mod points, this should ruin your karma for years.
Too sad I can not mod this up: score is already 5
This deserve more than 5.
If someone write something libelous on your wall. You are not guilty of anything as long as you do not wait too long before washing your wall.
It is just a matter of finding the appropriate metaphor and having a reasonable application of law.
I think he does. ...). Google is not perfect, it has made a big mistake with buzz. Google has an ideological model that is very different from Microsoft.
Google is a white knight and that is what irritates so many people (apple,
For the moment, Google is very powerful and imagining this power in the hand of a company similar to Microsoft is very frightening.
Certainly, things will change (this is an old chinese proverb). Perhaps this will be because of lawyers.
Perhaps this will be for evil and we will regret to have given so much power to Google.
AFAIK, nobody can predict the future.
For the moment, Google succeed in improving progress rate of our society and this is very different from Microsoft that has hinder computer science progress during so many years.
I think we should be very grateful to Google and we must be very vigilant on every activities of Google. The cited scrutinity is legitimate and mandatory. It shall just be made in a fair spirit.
The main consequence of these "laws" will be the development of cryptography and anonymous browsing. As a result, real criminals will have better tools to hide their activity. Normal people will just lose a part of their liberties.
I do not know for other countries, but the level of vaccination in France has not been high enough to explain the foreseen catastrophe did not occur.
We are just lucky that it did not.
If this catastrophe did occur, the failure of the French health policy would be the issue : vaccines arriving too late and too many people reluctant to be vaccinated.
For me, the French government, despite all the money spent, has completely failed. Is it the same in your countries ? I have heard that the vaccination campaign in us was better. Is it correct ? What percentage of population get vaccinated ?
I have two screens attached to my PC. This seems standard nowadays. A usual configuration is TV (IP, DVD, BD, ...) on one screen and work (eclipse java, virtual box running redhat and oracle, ...) on the other. Sometimes in the background, I compress some videos to DIVX.
What kind of multitask would you accept as significant ?
I am French. Of course we are slightly better than the Americans, our laws are more fair and our politicians may be less subject to lobbying. We are also notably more pretentious.
...
Seriously, this is not important, the differences are narrowing and we are getting so badly that they may outperform us one day.
About "the spirit of the law", we have lost a lot when the French wording of the laws has been abandoned as reference text in favour of English in European Commission. I think that languages have a lot of influence on how we think about things. English fits very well for technical, German for philosophy, French for diplomacy, Italian for seduction,
Perl for people with no background in computer science ? Are you serious ?
My experience is that people who do not like Perl are generally weak in computer science. Perl internal is more similar to lisp than to shell. For example, closures are very effective in Perl.
All the elegance of Perl need a good level of computer science to be fully understood.
The sysadmins I have met that had weak background in computer science hated Perl and were very proud of their shell hacks.
For me, the smart sysadmins solves quickly and elegantly the problem with Perl before the IT departement finished writing the specification of a steam engine.
1) fully agree, it was just for the joke
2) I disagree. The annoyance of too many comments for code reading is such an issue that development software provides options to hide comments. But these tools are imperfect, they can not hide bad comments and leave only the good ones. The tools only reduce the importance of the issue.
3) Can you elaborate why you think that "The redundancy is good" ? I have spend some years in database domain where redundancy shall be avoided like hell. And I continue to try to avoid redundancy. I am more in the mood that "small is beautiful" and "less is more" (less characters for solving cleanly the same problem results in more flexibility and more maintainability).
fully agree on the remaining, the use of word "strangely" was irony.
Comments shall be avoided as much as possible :
1) the code shall be simple and the name of variables and methods shall be self explanatory in most cases. When this is applied, there remains very few to explain at the code level. The reader of your code is not dumber than you (except when he is your boss).
2) the more you add comment lines, the less lines of code you can see on your screen. When you start scrolling continously, the speed of code production reduces significantly.
3) comments introduce a redundancy. What shall be trusted when code and comment differs. Is the code wrong or the comment outdated ?
4) comments in the code are often used as a substitute for a global software architecture description. In the example of the java api documentation, it is very hard to get a global view of a class with only class comments, we need additional documentation (the tutorials).
Joke apart, code often contains many comments because it shall comply to quality standards, but strangely, the parts of the code that are difficult to understand are generally not commented. It is a variant of Murphy law that is very useful when auditing code.
I would like to give an answer, but this would remove all my hopes to recover a better karma
Microsoft was already evil before 90s. Windows 3.1 had undocumented features that were used by Word and Excel to limit competition. There were also a lot of legal fights between Microsoft, Apple and others software vendors.
I have lost mine with the same kind of remark.
finding open source software was a piece of cake with xarchie. Unix games were never binary, but sources ;-)
There were tenths of ftp sites which were miroring each others.
Finding the email adress of someone with only its name was easy: there was a site in australia (telnet on a port) just for that.
finger was working.
I have used xdvi remotly (display in Paris and xdvi running in Brest) to finish a project report without any latency.
xhtalk was very effective as IM.
usenet was a lot more polite and with very few spams.
IRC (I learned it only in 93) was also a good way to chat with girls ;-)
has anyone tried to use MSVC to cross compile for linux in order to have a faire comparison ?
Frameworks are great for rapid development, but are bad in the long run (as you explained better than I would because of my broken english).
I think that you should advertise the project developped with a framework as a prototype release (even if it provides the full specification). If the project is successful (many projects are disgarded because the specifications were wrong) and needs to be maintained, the migration to "own made software" can be scheduled and the workload is easier to justified.
People are very reluctant on the idea of "throwable software", but mistakes could be avoided by a prototype before deciding software architecture.
French language is a bit difficult, but you will very easily find jobs were english is the working language. Beeing a native speaker will be a real plus.
You will have more spare time than in US: 25 paid leaves plus 10 days of "recuperations" and you almost never need to work more than 40 hours a week.
Be warned that there may be a lot of administrative annoyance
reduce the quality to the subset that provides reasonnably working software.
I have some very good books about extreme programming. It strips away most of the non sense of quality to keep only what improves the quality of the produced software or reduce the workload.
Most of the principles are easy to apply and there is no cost (except for the project leader to learn the principles and the efforts to convince the management to give the freedom to apply them), only workload reduction and reliability increased.
My personnal 2c about COTS is that you know correctly a COTS only when you have used it on a project which has failed. As you are not in a software company, there is no point in using technology in the hype : try to rely on tools (and languages) that are already correctly mastered.
You can not enforce interdictions to publish information on internet. Interdictions will be violated either by ignorance or by malicious or by others countries that do not have to comply to your local laws.
Internet DOES NOT WORK like this. It is not an entity to whom you can ask something. Google is an entity. You can ask google to not reference sites that contain prohibited information, (but if I was google, I would ask money for this).
If the 9 year old boy wants to publish your hot chat, he can do it (and also in newspaper), he can prove that this is not defamation.
Nobody is obliged to write obsfucated perl code.
When comparing "normal" perl code to normal C++ or Ada or Java code, the perl code is more concise.
As a result, one line of perl take more time to write or to read.
But the real thing is that the equivalent perl code takes far less time to write even if it takes the same time to read.
It is so easy to code in perl that people do a lot of error checking that are omited in other languages. I have always less bugs in my perl programs than in programs in C/C++ (in Ada, most of the bugs are found during compilation).
The benefits of perl are mainly time and bugs. You can't attack Perl on these.
In perl we use often regexp. Most of them are simple regexp. Some are complicated and are difficult to read (not to write).
Add a comment to explain the regexp and stop complaining.
The program using regexp is generally a lot more robust than the algorithm we would use in another language without regexp.
Fewer bugs, better error checking, less code to maintain.
The only drawback is can imagine is that perl requires to have good bases in computer science and is old-fashioned.
I would love to use a new language in the hype that would be as effective, but it remains to be invented.
I can't believe so few \. readers can write in Perl. That's the only explanation of the comments I read.
I use Perl everydays. For example 30 minutes ago, a user has found an error in data (a bunch of text files with strange structure) and asked me how many times this error occured and if there was a systematic way to fix it. Less than 10 minutes and 20 lines latter, I gave the report.
There is always a natural way to express your thinking in Perl. For me, a bad Perl program means that the programmer did not have a clear mind.
For me, the problem with Perl is that instead of forcing rigid rules on input data, process, users, like we would do with most langages, it is easier to adapt the code to handle every cases. It is so easy and nice to code in perl.
The result is that the users are happy, but it is very difficult to migrate to another langage (except Python, Ruby, OCAML and GHC but I dot want to start a troll)
There was a radio problem with an helicopter. The helicopter was able to ear but not emit. The controler asked the pilot to call him by phone. This happened near Paris a few years ago.