The idea of having to put on a (C)Copyright on your works is outdated by soon a decade now I believe. Today when you create sourcecode, you own the copyright to it automatically. Of course, there's no disadvantage in making it clear who owns what, but this is one of the reasons you should always check out where you got your code from. It might bite you in the ass later (although it usually doesn't).
The GPL is a license with terms of modification and distribution (read it!), but the _author_ retains the actual copyright. If he wants, he may assign this to FSF, or perhaps his mother if he is so inclined. So the GPL is not the copyright. Copyleft is what you could say a twisted marriage between copyright and GPL, but don't say that in court.;-)
You forgot mentioning creating an AI-program that analyses the music from the compressed output and starts "fixing" what is missing. Oh wait, that was not funny. Oh well, forget it then.
A few outdated man-pages, HOWTOs and pointers to Web-URLs just won't cut it in this context. In Trusted systems you will need formal proof of ownership, wholistic design, white-box testing/analysis and black-box testing, plus other things I can't come up with now. Documentation on the whole process of conceiving and creating the system would be a great benefit. This would have to be Applied To The Whole Shebang(tm), down through every library, including formalization of every function and good comments on most of their lines.
Now doing this properly _after_ the actual implementation has always been a bad idea, and would further require much harder work than if it had been done in the first place. However, this is an impossibility when regarding how the Open Source-process really works. It would never be as good as it could have been.
If more companies started supporting Open Source solutions, they could perhaps fund this kind of work and release it to the public (either for free or for a fee). It could benefit these companies, because now they can Trust and use free software. Actually, I saw a book that documented the whole Linux kernel once, so I know that has been done successfully.
Of course, "trust" is a word of many meanings. I for one trust many Open Source solutions simply because I know they have stood the test of time again and again. However, I'm always aware that new versions may break things considerably, and the documentation is not always updated. That is why Open Source is not currently a good process for building really Trusted systems. (This has nothing to do wether you release the source or not, which should always be a benefit to trust.)
So to me personally it is good enough, and currently the Open Source-process has quite a few benefits over closed source in this context (and many more regarding price and freedom):
1) Peer review (less bloat, great functionality and inter-operability, harder to put in trojan-functionality) 2) Large techsavvy userbase (quicker bugfind- and fix cycle, easy to get help and gain a community) 3) Ability to find and fix errors or improve the system yourself (Although this should never be necessary in a trusted system. Doing so may also contaminate the system with eg. bad binaries. However, it can be done safely if you use the right process of doing so.)
Note that these points are connected to the very fundamentals of how Open Source works, and should be seriously considered by companies that not merely want to ride the "Open Source Wave".
However, if I were to buy a Trusted system from a company, I would make sure there was a contract that held them accountable. That would be one point to proprietary software I guess. I think it would be hard to find a company that wants to be held accountable for Open Source code (written by others) that they have merely certified..
And lastly, always remember this: There's no such thing as 100% security. You cannot prove security, only prove insecurities or specific lacks thereof.
This has nothing to do with the problem at all. It is a problem of correctly describing what a function does, what dependencies it requires, etc. In other words: more formalization. Neither Java or C++ have capabilities for this beyond the function prototypes.
"If you want your resources to automatically return themselves, wrap them in Java classes which return themselves during finalize(). I've been doing that with JDBC Connection objects for two years. Works like a charm."
Isn't the point of finalize() that you should clean up _memory_, not resources?
"If you want resources that are returned when a exceptional event occurs, take advantage of exception handling. I don't see what's so hard about this, and I don't see what a destructor would add."
It would add the benefit of automatic recycling of resources allocating their object-counterparts _on the stack_. It would be independent on syntax-scope and object-scope. It could also give you the convinience of telling the computer _excactly when_ the resource and object should be destructed, while retaining the formalization of the constructor/destructor concept, instead of calling an arbitrary Close().
People who haven't programmed in C++ really don't know what they've been missing out of. This is to much frustration of many C++ programmers that do see weaknesses in Java. Yes, there are many weaknesses in C++ too, so don't take it personally.
And stop calling people idiots, it only reflects on yourself.
People should stop confusing the terms of Programming Language, Development Environment, Runtime Environment, and all the implementations of these on one or more OSes.
Except that their policies are not enforced by any central body, not governments, not laws or anything. So whats from keeping them from lying a little? It's not like they haven't done that in the past.
Why the hell did your company need information about who downloads your "free" app anyways?
I've always hated sites requiring you to give up who you are. It's against the basic principles of Internet, or how the Internet used to be that is. Why do we want to limit something so great?
Anyone heard of the chaos theory here? Of course you have. Then you'll know that quantuum effects will propagate through all reality, not just even itself out over time. _Especially_ in the real world. (If you put things in a simulator, things _may_ converge on a grander scale, or not. It depends on the rules for feedback, what start-up conditions you begin with and what kind of number-system you use.)
So quantuum effects will always have _some_ effect. However, if it's big enough for dramatically changing how we think is another question. Alas, the whole sherade might not be so tied with our brain as we'd like to think either. Higher processing may manifest itself in quantuum effects in everything around us, including our whole body.
The problem is proving all this. Thank god everything can't be proved.
Well it sounds to me that that "final estimate" step if it exists at all is just a way to destroy the whole result! If someone is able to know the days of any date instantly (I have talked to a person like that), why would they want to degrade this into an "estimate"?
Yes, machines can estimate: For any result X just do an Y = X + random(d)-d/2, and add "I don't really know for sure, but I think it's....." to the result set. Or you might use this to every operation involved to get an even more fuzzy estimate..:-) A machine can have "feelings" too, in the same way. However, I believe anything we do with a machine is just a poor emulation on what's really going on in our brains. But it's still an emulation, and I believe it is possible to develop it so that we won't be able to distinguish it from a live person. Not in the near future though. (What are we really trying to create with neural nets? Copies of ourselves? Why not just procreate?)
Now, it seems we humans are dependent on being able to estimate things. It's a role of being flexible and adaptable. We have logic, but it's very fuzzy. This is an disadvantage when dealing with "digital" datasets, but not so when we're living our daily lives.
If we can trigger our "rainman" capabilities inside our brains and harmonize this with what we already got, will we ever need a computer again?
Just because a baby's response _acts_ like objects either exists or don't, doesn't necessarily means that the thought-processes of a baby (both conscious and unconscious) is limited by this. We don't really know all the thoughts of a baby -- not even our own thoughts. Just think of how much thoughts is hidden down in our brains, for example hidden trauma. The way we deal with these is to dream about them.
I can think of another answer to this: That the extreme short attention-span of babies make it more efficient for them to learn basic things faster. As we grow up however, we need attention-span to grow and become more abstract-thinking, to learn and reflect on more complex things. This is less efficient on more basic problems however (more overhead).
This argument is absurd for lots of reasons. Worth of life according to what?
Nothing has worth defined all by itself. This doesn't mean we don't have any worth, but that worth is arbitrary. It might be 0, 1, -13, yellow or infinite, but it's really undefined until we specify more. And when you do, you never define a universal worth.
Now an actual worth have no value in itself either. Just like the "infinite respect for worms"-argument. It doesn't tell you enough on how to live your life. Even when you know precisely how much it is (ie, work-hours, salary, bank-account, happiness, amount of sex, friends etc). What do you decide to do based on your assumptions and judgements of the world? Not only that, but you will also have assumptions on the results and consequences of your actions (which always turns up different than expected). Now what do you do with this information again? Do you want to maximize egotistical gains, do you want to share with others, become famous, listen to your parents, ride horses, etc, etc...
This is all the questions of life. We have free choice to respect worms more than we do humans. So in order to define the world around us, we need to decide how to live our lives and vica versa. It's an endless feedback process. There may be final universal values that are... universal. However, I don't think judgement (worth), doom, salvation and power have anything to do with them.
If you didn't catch all this, don't worry. I believe you're right that people who want to save worms are a tad hysterical, but nevertheless they are on to something. They give a different view of things that we should consider.
My point excactly. How will these radiation affect our nevral nets, how will it affect the inside of our nevrons? Of course we have a much higher tolerance of fault in our brain than electronic equipment, but that doesn't mean we're invulnerable.
But, anyhow, if we just ignore the problem it will probably go away huh?:-)
If this happens inside electronic equipment, wouldn't the same thing happen inside our brain and nerve-system?
- Steeltoe
Re:It doesn't look like this will happen but..
on
Akopia Buys Minivend
·
· Score: 1
They could just shut down support on the open source version. Why not? Companies shut down support on even their own proprietary "technology" all the time..
"To serve our paying customers with the highest quality service we can possibly offer, we have decided to not support a few obsolete hardware/software solutions. We are sorry for this inconvinience to many former customers, but we already got your money so you don't count anymore. Bye!
You are right, but perhaps it's not such a big deal. If a company wants to create a proprietary fork, all they need to do is get a license from the copyright-holder (assuming IP was not transferred to FSF). Of course, you would have to start at the earliest version again + owner's own modifications, because the public "owns" their own changes. I'm not sure in what way though, could a company ask each individual for a license to their patches too?
Then again, who is stupid enough to run code noone knows what is doing? Oh, yeah, I forgot, the whole world...
The point was maybe that a combination of these could make it more difficult to crack. With more layers of encryption, you wouldn't know if you've actually partially decrypted the signature successfully or not, or would you? I'm awfully behind on this topic I'm afraid.
Why should people have to pay-per-play for music they already own? That is supposedly how my.mp3.com works, and that is the argument they've been trying to make (because they know people wouldn't use the service much otherwise).
You could just as well been meaning it. It's a most valid argument and solution to the problem. IF you have no problem with trampling peoples privacy and general rights.
"More realistic, he says, is connecting electronic devices such as mobile phones directly into our brains."
I sure hope they get down the radiation from cellulars before then, and put up a heavy firewall so some script kiddie won't hack into my brain!
An even better commercial use is to put advertisement into our brain _unconsciously_! Then we wouldn't have to watch all those lengthy commercials anymore. We could live happily doing everything we want to do for free, sponsored by unconscious advertising!
Liff sure will be great in a few years! Can hardly wait..
Slashdot Mirror
The idea of having to put on a (C)Copyright on your works is outdated by soon a decade now I believe. Today when you create sourcecode, you own the copyright to it automatically. Of course, there's no disadvantage in making it clear who owns what, but this is one of the reasons you should always check out where you got your code from. It might bite you in the ass later (although it usually doesn't).
;-)
The GPL is a license with terms of modification and distribution (read it!), but the _author_ retains the actual copyright. If he wants, he may assign this to FSF, or perhaps his mother if he is so inclined. So the GPL is not the copyright. Copyleft is what you could say a twisted marriage between copyright and GPL, but don't say that in court.
- Steeltoe
Emil, I learned that you call strcpy() instead of such horrible statements, and that you call printf() for your example ;-)
Too bad I got tired of such games after coding in assembler, or I would have fun encoding my name like this too!
- Steeltoe
You forgot mentioning creating an AI-program that analyses the music from the compressed output and starts "fixing" what is missing. Oh wait, that was not funny. Oh well, forget it then.
If humans can do it, computers can too.
- Steeltoe
"How do you think we can address his criticisms?"
A few outdated man-pages, HOWTOs and pointers to Web-URLs just won't cut it in this context. In Trusted systems you will need formal proof of ownership, wholistic design, white-box testing/analysis and black-box testing, plus other things I can't come up with now. Documentation on the whole process of conceiving and creating the system would be a great benefit. This would have to be Applied To The Whole Shebang(tm), down through every library, including formalization of every function and good comments on most of their lines.
Now doing this properly _after_ the actual implementation has always been a bad idea, and would further require much harder work than if it had been done in the first place. However, this is an impossibility when regarding how the Open Source-process really works. It would never be as good as it could have been.
If more companies started supporting Open Source solutions, they could perhaps fund this kind of work and release it to the public (either for free or for a fee). It could benefit these companies, because now they can Trust and use free software. Actually, I saw a book that documented the whole Linux kernel once, so I know that has been done successfully.
Of course, "trust" is a word of many meanings. I for one trust many Open Source solutions simply because I know they have stood the test of time again and again. However, I'm always aware that new versions may break things considerably, and the documentation is not always updated. That is why Open Source is not currently a good process for building really Trusted systems. (This has nothing to do wether you release the source or not, which should always be a benefit to trust.)
So to me personally it is good enough, and currently the Open Source-process has quite a few benefits over closed source in this context (and many more regarding price and freedom):
1) Peer review (less bloat, great functionality and inter-operability, harder to put in trojan-functionality)
2) Large techsavvy userbase (quicker bugfind- and fix cycle, easy to get help and gain a community)
3) Ability to find and fix errors or improve the system yourself (Although this should never be necessary in a trusted system. Doing so may also contaminate the system with eg. bad binaries. However, it can be done safely if you use the right process of doing so.)
Note that these points are connected to the very fundamentals of how Open Source works, and should be seriously considered by companies that not merely want to ride the "Open Source Wave".
However, if I were to buy a Trusted system from a company, I would make sure there was a contract that held them accountable. That would be one point to proprietary software I guess. I think it would be hard to find a company that wants to be held accountable for Open Source code (written by others) that they have merely certified..
And lastly, always remember this: There's no such thing as 100% security. You cannot prove security, only prove insecurities or specific lacks thereof.
So don't put your trust arbitrarily.
- Steeltoe
This has nothing to do with the problem at all. It is a problem of correctly describing what a function does, what dependencies it requires, etc. In other words: more formalization. Neither Java or C++ have capabilities for this beyond the function prototypes.
- Steeltoe
"If you want your resources to automatically return themselves, wrap them in Java classes which return themselves during finalize(). I've been doing that with JDBC Connection objects for two years. Works like a charm."
Isn't the point of finalize() that you should clean up _memory_, not resources?
"If you want resources that are returned when a exceptional event occurs, take advantage of exception handling. I don't see what's so hard about this, and I don't see what a destructor would add."
It would add the benefit of automatic recycling of resources allocating their object-counterparts _on the stack_. It would be independent on syntax-scope and object-scope. It could also give you the convinience of telling the computer _excactly when_ the resource and object should be destructed, while retaining the formalization of the constructor/destructor concept, instead of calling an arbitrary Close().
People who haven't programmed in C++ really don't know what they've been missing out of. This is to much frustration of many C++ programmers that do see weaknesses in Java. Yes, there are many weaknesses in C++ too, so don't take it personally.
And stop calling people idiots, it only reflects on yourself.
- Steeltoe
People should stop confusing the terms of Programming Language, Development Environment, Runtime Environment, and all the implementations of these on one or more OSes.
Just my 2c.
- Steeltoe
Except that their policies are not enforced by any central body, not governments, not laws or anything. So whats from keeping them from lying a little? It's not like they haven't done that in the past.
- Steeltoe
Why the hell did your company need information about who downloads your "free" app anyways?
I've always hated sites requiring you to give up who you are. It's against the basic principles of Internet, or how the Internet used to be that is. Why do we want to limit something so great?
- Steeltoe
Anyone heard of the chaos theory here? Of course you have. Then you'll know that quantuum effects will propagate through all reality, not just even itself out over time. _Especially_ in the real world. (If you put things in a simulator, things _may_ converge on a grander scale, or not. It depends on the rules for feedback, what start-up conditions you begin with and what kind of number-system you use.)
So quantuum effects will always have _some_ effect. However, if it's big enough for dramatically changing how we think is another question. Alas, the whole sherade might not be so tied with our brain as we'd like to think either. Higher processing may manifest itself in quantuum effects in everything around us, including our whole body.
The problem is proving all this. Thank god everything can't be proved.
- Steeltoe
Well it sounds to me that that "final estimate" step if it exists at all is just a way to destroy the whole result! If someone is able to know the days of any date instantly (I have talked to a person like that), why would they want to degrade this into an "estimate"?
....." to the result set. Or you might use this to every operation involved to get an even more fuzzy estimate.. :-) A machine can have "feelings" too, in the same way. However, I believe anything we do with a machine is just a poor emulation on what's really going on in our brains. But it's still an emulation, and I believe it is possible to develop it so that we won't be able to distinguish it from a live person. Not in the near future though. (What are we really trying to create with neural nets? Copies of ourselves? Why not just procreate?)
Yes, machines can estimate: For any result X just do an Y = X + random(d)-d/2, and add "I don't really know for sure, but I think it's
Now, it seems we humans are dependent on being able to estimate things. It's a role of being flexible and adaptable. We have logic, but it's very fuzzy. This is an disadvantage when dealing with "digital" datasets, but not so when we're living our daily lives.
If we can trigger our "rainman" capabilities inside our brains and harmonize this with what we already got, will we ever need a computer again?
- Steeltoe
Just because a baby's response _acts_ like objects either exists or don't, doesn't necessarily means that the thought-processes of a baby (both conscious and unconscious) is limited by this. We don't really know all the thoughts of a baby -- not even our own thoughts. Just think of how much thoughts is hidden down in our brains, for example hidden trauma. The way we deal with these is to dream about them.
I can think of another answer to this: That the extreme short attention-span of babies make it more efficient for them to learn basic things faster. As we grow up however, we need attention-span to grow and become more abstract-thinking, to learn and reflect on more complex things. This is less efficient on more basic problems however (more overhead).
I might be wrong, but so might 1.000 scientists.
- Steeltoe
Nothing has worth defined all by itself. This doesn't mean we don't have any worth, but that worth is arbitrary. It might be 0, 1, -13, yellow or infinite, but it's really undefined until we specify more. And when you do, you never define a universal worth.
Now an actual worth have no value in itself either. Just like the "infinite respect for worms"-argument. It doesn't tell you enough on how to live your life. Even when you know precisely how much it is (ie, work-hours, salary, bank-account, happiness, amount of sex, friends etc). What do you decide to do based on your assumptions and judgements of the world? Not only that, but you will also have assumptions on the results and consequences of your actions (which always turns up different than expected). Now what do you do with this information again? Do you want to maximize egotistical gains, do you want to share with others, become famous, listen to your parents, ride horses, etc, etc...
This is all the questions of life. We have free choice to respect worms more than we do humans. So in order to define the world around us, we need to decide how to live our lives and vica versa. It's an endless feedback process. There may be final universal values that are... universal. However, I don't think judgement (worth), doom, salvation and power have anything to do with them.
If you didn't catch all this, don't worry. I believe you're right that people who want to save worms are a tad hysterical, but nevertheless they are on to something. They give a different view of things that we should consider.
- Steeltoe
and where does happiness come in in your world?
Not saying wether it is positive or negative, just that productivity isn't everything.
- Steeltoe
My point excactly. How will these radiation affect our nevral nets, how will it affect the inside of our nevrons? Of course we have a much higher tolerance of fault in our brain than electronic equipment, but that doesn't mean we're invulnerable.
:-)
But, anyhow, if we just ignore the problem it will probably go away huh?
- Steeltoe
If this happens inside electronic equipment, wouldn't the same thing happen inside our brain and nerve-system?
- Steeltoe
They could just shut down support on the open source version. Why not? Companies shut down support on even their own proprietary "technology" all the time..
"To serve our paying customers with the highest quality service we can possibly offer, we have decided to not support a few obsolete hardware/software solutions. We are sorry for this inconvinience to many former customers, but we already got your money so you don't count anymore. Bye!
With the best regards from,
Evil Corp."
- Steeltoe
You are right, but perhaps it's not such a big deal. If a company wants to create a proprietary fork, all they need to do is get a license from the copyright-holder (assuming IP was not transferred to FSF). Of course, you would have to start at the earliest version again + owner's own modifications, because the public "owns" their own changes. I'm not sure in what way though, could a company ask each individual for a license to their patches too?
Then again, who is stupid enough to run code noone knows what is doing? Oh, yeah, I forgot, the whole world...
- Steeltoe
Try the same stunt with "Gee-Pee-El".
- Steeltoe
The point was maybe that a combination of these could make it more difficult to crack. With more layers of encryption, you wouldn't know if you've actually partially decrypted the signature successfully or not, or would you? I'm awfully behind on this topic I'm afraid.
- Steeltoe
Why should people have to pay-per-play for music they already own? That is supposedly how my.mp3.com works, and that is the argument they've been trying to make (because they know people wouldn't use the service much otherwise).
- Steeltoe
"I'm a big debian advocate..."
/.?
:-)
Don't you hate it when packet-loss in your brain causes words to be left out while you mindlessly write something on
It happens to me more often now than before, it must be a sign of the world coming to an end pretty soon. Or maybe Word 2002 will provide a fix?
- Steeltoe
You could just as well been meaning it. It's a most valid argument and solution to the problem. IF you have no problem with trampling peoples privacy and general rights.
- Steeltoe
"More realistic, he says, is connecting electronic devices such as mobile phones directly into our brains."
I sure hope they get down the radiation from cellulars before then, and put up a heavy firewall so some script kiddie won't hack into my brain!
An even better commercial use is to put advertisement into our brain _unconsciously_! Then we wouldn't have to watch all those lengthy commercials anymore. We could live happily doing everything we want to do for free, sponsored by unconscious advertising!
Liff sure will be great in a few years! Can hardly wait..
- Steeltoe
Prophets of secularism, what the hell is that? I've only seen it in the Troll FAQ here on /., dunno what it is though.
Just too bad there's always some truth in every post, even yours.. Think about that.
I hardly think you can call computers deterministic though. Just install Micros~1 software, and your problems with determinism is over.
- Steeltoe