Owning a license is better than owning the real thing, if it's done properly. Think about it. If you lose your bank card, does that mean you've also lost the money in your account? No, because your account is effectively your license, so its physical representation, the card, can easily be replaced.
I am sorry but that is just broken. A license is never as good as the "real thing". First let us dismiss the set of licenses that the state grants, license to drive, practice medicine, law, blow things up etc etc, but worry about why the term should be the same. These are licenses in the traditional, perhaps even legitimate sense.
The banking analogy is not helpful, you are right about the abstract nature of the card, but that does not make it a license, my critical objection relates to a definition of license like "1 a : permission to act b : freedom of action" (www.m-w.com) because what we see when we talk about "licensing" in the posters terms is "Restriction from Action". That is, you are given everything you need to do a whole bunch of stuff with what you have purchased but the nature of the license restricts those freedoms to an extremely limited subset, this is _not_ better than unfettered access. By any definition.
Even more disturbing is a definition like "2 a : a permission granted by competent authority to engage in a business or occupation or in an activity otherwise unlawful b : a document, plate, or tag evidencing a license granted". Hmmm, otherwise unlawful, competant authority. Perhaps there is the root of the problem.
This result is really not very controversial. The court considered two questions (a) where did publication occur, and (b) is Australia an appropriate jurisdiction for the matter to be heard.
There is a "comprehension rule" that dictates that the location of a libel is NOT only by reference to the publishers actions, but where the material is understood and hence where the libel takes place.
However, the construction of the court is quite narrow and the fact that the subject of the libel will clearly narrow the scope of the jurisdiction, defeats the FUD of oh this means you will be libellous everywhere when you speak. Further, the actionss of the publisher seem to offer a complete defence if they are "reasonable" in the way they act.
There are real problems with defamation (in Australia in general and) wrt the internet, however it really isn't the place of the court to fix them and the result follows a long line of common law judgements about defamation and publication
Why not just put it in a vacuum tube of some kind. Use microwaves to transmit the energy across the vacuum to power the sound thingy and as long as the vacuum tube has some form of heat insulation between its two halves, one side should be hot and the other side cool. No Noise at all:-)
Except that Aliens is still the best military scifi to grace the silver screen?
Puh-lease! I hated it. The military and scientific flaws were so serious as to make the whole thing unwatchable (for me:-). To start with what is with going into a combat situation and sending _everyone_ I mean that is just soooo dumb. Second, the cost of sending a ship the size of the Solano (was that it's name?) to the planet that far away and sending only a few soldiers. It's just stoopid. The close air support and transport then "touching" down in hostile territory so the pilot can have a smoke, and therefore get fanged, what kind of moron space marine would do that? As for the motion detectors. I mean come on! They work through closed doors, but no capacity to detect elevation? What about the recon? Why no drones? Sending people on such a recon cannot be the way of the future? Some might argue the whole company conspiracy line. You know, to get a specimen back to earth and hence the limited resources. But the marines act as though their level of deployment is "normal" which if it is makes the whole thing militarily laughable.
There is more that is wrong with it, but that will do for starters. ("Am I being to harsh Roy? No I don't think so HG")
Don't get me wrong, I love SF. And for my money great SF is about grand ideas. Talk of characters et al, is not important.
Great literature is about the human condition, or about the magnificent use of words. It is not impossible for SF to be about either, but if it is then it is most likely that it need not be SF. Indeed, most every piece of SF I have ever read, from Benford, Bear and Bradbury through Herbert, Hoyle and Heinlein to Verne, Wells and Wyndham is not really about great literature (although some of the above have certainly approached the human condition in some of their work) but about grand ideas and the grandest ideas make the grandest SF.
I mean, Herbert's devices to eliminate technology as a factor in the Dune universe, genius. Bear's cosmic accounting to destroy planets, inspired. these are the ideas on which great SF is made.
For me, it is a tough call. I read and loved Wyndham's work when I was child, "The Chrysalids" and "Midwich Cuckoos" entranced me (perhaps because of the central role of children). But it was Dune that was the first universe that enthralled me, inspiring me to create within the constraints of that universe. I suspect that it will remain a classic, and remain read for many years to come. Perhap's that is the best measure of what makes SF great.
As for Film and TV, most 50's SF (the "golden age") was just allegory and metaphor, nothing wrong with that, and indeed some of it was fabulous, but once the object of the allegory is lost then the story loses meaning. Star Wars changed the landscape forever, for that alone it will last and is great. Bab 5, loved it, loved the vision, loved the idea of using TV as the medium for a grand arc, but in truth it was again just the first, and it (hopefully) will not remain the best. Finally the one offs like Blade Runner and Alien (the sequels _DO NOT COUNT_), are they really SF? possibly. Are they great? Definitely.
Coming form a perspective of people believing that software should be free, the ransom name seems apt. In contrast, I suppose Microsoft would be using the slavery model:).
If there existed a way to automatically reformat a printed newspaper into a non-ads newspaper, they'd have to charge everyone more and due to reduced audience...
The advertising industry is a scam. The people who "objectively" evaluate the effecacy of advertising are those that have a vested interest in the increased use of advertising. If it were a real product most people would be more questioning.
Don't get me wrong. Advertising is a "good" thing, and a banner add is a classic example. If I see a banner add for something to scratch an itch that I have, then it will lead me to invesigate the solution to my problem (perhaps). Certainly if I block the add then I lose that option. However if I (and others) use a technique that removes the channel then you are right the advertising sponsored "vehicle" will suffer, but the classic development in this case is that the adverstising just becomes editorial content and the "information" is still disseminated. But the advent of popups, floaters, animated banners, active content etc etc, is just the bullshit of the industry arguing that "in your face" advertising is "more effective".
Look, one of the best examples in my mind comes from classified employment adds. Where I grew up it was (and to a greater or lesser extent still is) the case that if you were hiring you put an add (the channel) in the big Saturday paper (the vehicle), similarly if you were looking for a job you bought the paper to search. This process was so effective, that there were times when the paper in question was so large that the recycling value of the weight of the paper was greater than the cover price of the paper. Much of this largeness was due to the classifieds. Therefore the paper became a targeted channel. There is lots to be gained from the "internet" ability to accurately qualify different channesls (Slashdot readers are a fairly well targeted audience, adds for florists and hair products are unlikely to figure in the banner adds here:-) and it is this value of which I speak when I say that advertising is a good thing, it really can inform, however the idea that the kind of business in this story has about "theft" and the need for ways of "forcing the content" on the audience is the same kind of braindeadness that the other parts of the advertising industry have been peddling for years.
In general, I agree with you. Specifically, I do not believe that it is correct to have property in the output of intellect. I use the phrase "output of intellect" because it is neutral and as a result I kinda like the phrase intellectual property (IP) as the catch all for all the things that are bad about this area of the law, and more importantly, all that is bad about most peoples perception about the results of creative thought. As such I find it easy to say "I don't believe in intellectual property" and make my basic position clear to the layperson.
The reasons why I don't believe in IP are several but a critical factor for me is that the output of intellect is deficient in one of the necessary attributes of property. That attribute is exclusion. That is, it is not necessary to exclude another from your IP in order to retain your utility.
The history of real property (RP) is, for me, the basis for rejecting the existence of IP, Locke, Hobbes et al established the foundation for RP and whilst I have reservations about the specifics they used, I agree with the idea of RP and inherently private property, however these bases are pretty much missing from the IP world and as a result IP itself must be fatally flawed.
The FBI did have a legitimate national security interest in the Fischers. His mother lived and attended medical school in the Soviet Union. The KGB and GRU recruited agents from foreign students attending schools in the Soviet Union. His father fought against the fascists in the Spanish Civil War. That in itself isn't a problem, but it puts him in a group that was heavily infiltrated and influenced by the Communist Party and Soviet intelligence operations. The FBI didn't have the right to harass the Fischers, but I think they had a legitimate national security interest in investigating their activities to see if they were involved in espionage or other crimes.
Yeah, but he was a chess player for god's sake what possible national security issue could he raise? Maybe he was deep programmed to shove a bishop in the president's brain if he got close enough? Seriously though, the thing that really sticks in my craw about all this spying and stuff in the west is that the institutions of government, are really strong enough to survive most every attempt to "espionage" them. It is the ego (technical not derogatory definition) of the office holders that leads to the "questionable" activity. Indeed, institutions such as the "rule of law", "separation of powers" or for you American's the "Bill of Rights" and the "Constitution" are made stronger by their ability to survive the most serious attacks on their incumbants by being indifferent to the specific individuals excercising them (yeah, yeah I know it aint perfect). It is funny how the greatest threats to these way of life shaping facets of our socieities are the excesses of the incumbent office holders and their needs to "protect" us from ourselves or to "protect" the institutions that seem to do a pretty good job on their own.
Totally agree. Please forgive my lack of clarity in the original post. I did not mean to suggest that a single thread removes all deadlocks and race conditions, rather that when having multiple threads you have these problems often a single thread will (as you pointed out, the locked data structure for example) not.
The classical example in my experience is an application that did not even have to consider a whole bunch of contention issues because we chose the single threaded (for the transaction part) implementation. This also brought benefits by allowing zero "legging" risk when performing transactions across the instances of objects that might ordinarily be partitioned along thread lines. No IPC, no locking, all good. The trade offs in such a choice are straightforward and often quite cost (in all senses) effective.
Many coders are disinclined to use threads, because they don't necessarily improve code speed.
Further there are a number of examples where writing a single threaded application has definitive benefits. For example applications where deadlocks or race conditions would be an integral problem in a multithreaded implementation whilst a single thread has none of these problems.
Lot's of people I know criticize Free/Open Source Software just rips stuff off, and doesn't innovate
It is an interesting critcism and it misses the critical point about Free Software. By it's disposition towards "zealots" funded by their own resources (be it spare time, hobby time, independent wealth or roving mandate) it has the oppirtunity to develop ideas and projects that are not otherwise economically viable.
Look at it this way, the net social utility of the participants in the project is increased by their "enjoyment" of working on the project, the net social utility of society is increased by the output of their project (regardless of its term) and the cost to society in terms of allocating capital to projects that may not succeed is reduced. It is just a totally winning situation. This multiplier effect to the economic utility makes this kind of approach to software development (and content creation since the same model applies to the content on the net) a _truly_ wonderful thing and it may just save our world.
I concurr. I finally stopped buying DVD, CD's I stopped a long while ago (although I might consider non-industry CD's in future). Because I figured if I really objected to the MPAA et al screwing us over then I really ought not to fund them by paying the exorbitant DVD tax:-)
The problem is that I can't stop going to the cinema. I at least draw some solace from the fact that the cinema proprietor will eventually get some money out of my ticket (and I do know how movie distribution is priced at it way sucks as well) particularly if I resort to waiting a couple of weeks to see the latest releases.
I heartily endorse the sentiment of voting with our dollars. The short term pain ("Legend" came out the week I started my boycott, bugger) will be worth it in the long run.
Of course they seed the yard. You don't just find rolls of mylar film lying around when you are looking for a balloon skin.
Ever noticed how they also always take two different approaches to solve the same problem? I would argue that a more interesting question is "Do the teams get to pick which of the two solutions they implement or is it assigned by the producer"
It's not just about allowing you to login, but one of the fundamental problems of the "internet" is the proof of identity. As more and more important services become online, it becomes more and more important to be confident that Jo Public is actually a) Jo Public and not Mary Citizen and b) The Jo Public of 23 Main Street Bigtown.
In meatspace, you prove identity by a "collection" of evidence from relatively trusted sources, a bank account, a gas bill and something with a photo. In the on line world being able to go to an online vendor and do a similar thing where you can prove that BANK A, utility co B and Company X all know about a Jo Public of 23 Main Street obviates the need for a "central" repository of identity, which, if you ask me, is a good thing (TM) (ie not having one is a good thing:-)
So in addition to the peoples points about using multiple machines (an excellent point by the way), proof if identity is the killer app INM(NS)HO.
At the risk of getting modded -1 flame for taking a politically incorrect position in a slashdot post, I feel compelled to point out that there is nothing wrong with software patents.
Wrong. There is something inherently wrong with software patents. Even in the US there has long been a recognised exemption for patents in mathematics. Software is mathematics. The good reasons for the mathematical exemptions are good reasons for software exemptions.
Without intellectual property protection, how is the small guy to protect himself from the bigger companies with better market presence who can just copy the product wholesale, put their name on it, and sell it?
The action you have just described is called fraud and it is a crime, the civil recourse is normal damages. One does not need another wrong to be created when one already exists for the purpose. If M$ copied the code, acknowledged the author, and sent out the package then I'm all for it, (all derogatory comments about M$ aside) if you got your name on every copy of M$ Blah, it would make you famous. In a world where your repute is your income (which is the world that we would be in without patents, even with them to some extent) then being able to say on you resume, "oh yeah, just do an 'about' on M$ Blah, yep, thats me," is money in the bank. Even before considering the value of knowing the "intimacies" of the algorithm. So the critical factor is that the developers of software must be full in their disclosure, or be compelled to be full when enquired (ie i can see that genuine omissions might be troublesome).
I remember when we went for holidays one year, and came back to find that the drop had fallen! Everyone was a bit pissed (understandably) that it had fallen during uni hols.
Sheesh, an Australian university, surely you have about a 50/50 chance it will happen during holidays given that they have about 26 week holiday a year!!!
Exactly. I have a real problem with a sport in which there is no time limit.
Intesting, I think what you mean is you don't like long games. Baseball lasts fourish hours, there are other games that last much longer and yet have limited time (for example test match cricket five days, golf four days, even limited overs cricket, six hours). I am no particular fan of MLB (or baseball in general for that matter), in fact _every_ thing that is good about baseball I think is better in limited overs cricket (particularly the "if you get hit by the ball you get a walk" wimpiness. I mean for god's sake if you are too stupid to get out of the way you deserve everything you get:-), however I don't think it's primary flaw is the length of the game, indeed it is precisely the length of test match cricket that makes it such an extraordinary contest.
I mean, you ain't seen the human condition until you see a guy who has batted for a day and a half in the heat of the indian summer puking his guts up whilst on his way to a big double ton [on ya deano], or someone who had his jaw broken by a ball one day coming back out to bat the next to try and salvage a result for his team [nice one Mr McCosker]. Awesome.
How does money work? I give you some money, you put it in the bank, it earns you interest. If you don't need to spend it you keep it, because it'll be worth more in the long run.
Who decided it should be that way? There are hundreds of examples from the last few hundred years of communities and regions implementing an alternative currency - one with a state imposed depreciation rate. I give you $10 in August, its worth $9 in September, and $5 by new year. I'll bet you spend it in August!
Er, well um yes, but then it isn't money. There are traditionally four purposes of money;
medium of exchange
unit of account
standard of deferred payment
store of value
Clearly the last of these is somewhat incompatible with your world. In all seriousness though and nit picking aside, all you are really describing is a tax on savings so you will find that people just find an alternative store of value, stock, precious metals, etc. What's even more interesting is that you will then find that there is a market that appears with people who have guaranteed income next month willing to sell it to people who have cash this month at a premium approaching the discount rate you choose and so it wont really have the effect you desire.
In truth the way to deal with your issue is a) eliminate capital (been tried, didn't work very well:-) b) use progressive taxation, death duties and gift taxes to redistribute the "money" from those who do, to those who don't, have it. We all gripe about that one, but in many countries outside the US there is much less griping and much better social services... hmmm...
This is one of my absolute pet peeves. www.caching.com/caching101.htm is a starting point for one of the factors that soooo many web designers seem to miss and that is that a page once created, can be cached _appropriately_ very easily of you just do the cache a favour and give static content a static URL. That way you are doing your server a favour as well since someone else can serve your page once someone nearby has asked for it.
I get so pissed off at sights that hide the true URL of a document behind bullshit asp/pl/dynamic URLs. It is just so brain dead. I know all the arguments that people will come back with from the commercial to the "deep linking" to the ease of dynamics, but I just think it would be easier to write out a physical page once and then serve it from there. I mean a catalogue is the perfect example of this point.
Because it is a measure of how much you are willing to piss away to make women happy. That is why women like the perishable low ticket (flowers, perfume etc) or big ticket unresaleable items (diamonds etc). The measure of how much you are willing to piss away on women is correlated to how long you have to work to keep women happy and we all no that idle hands are the devil's playground (or is it that busy hands are god's workshop:-).
Slashdot Mirror
Owning a license is better than owning the real thing, if it's done properly. Think about it. If you lose your bank card, does that mean you've also lost the money in your account? No, because your account is effectively your license, so its physical representation, the card, can easily be replaced.
I am sorry but that is just broken. A license is never as good as the "real thing". First let us dismiss the set of licenses that the state grants, license to drive, practice medicine, law, blow things up etc etc, but worry about why the term should be the same. These are licenses in the traditional, perhaps even legitimate sense.
The banking analogy is not helpful, you are right about the abstract nature of the card, but that does not make it a license, my critical objection relates to a definition of license like "1 a : permission to act b : freedom of action" (www.m-w.com) because what we see when we talk about "licensing" in the posters terms is "Restriction from Action". That is, you are given everything you need to do a whole bunch of stuff with what you have purchased but the nature of the license restricts those freedoms to an extremely limited subset, this is _not_ better than unfettered access. By any definition.
Even more disturbing is a definition like "2 a : a permission granted by competent authority to engage in a business or occupation or in an activity otherwise unlawful b : a document, plate, or tag evidencing a license granted". Hmmm, otherwise unlawful, competant authority. Perhaps there is the root of the problem.
This result is really not very controversial. The court considered two questions (a) where did publication occur, and (b) is Australia an appropriate jurisdiction for the matter to be heard.
There is a "comprehension rule" that dictates that the location of a libel is NOT only by reference to the publishers actions, but where the material is understood and hence where the libel takes place.
However, the construction of the court is quite narrow and the fact that the subject of the libel will clearly narrow the scope of the jurisdiction, defeats the FUD of oh this means you will be libellous everywhere when you speak. Further, the actionss of the publisher seem to offer a complete defence if they are "reasonable" in the way they act.
There are real problems with defamation (in Australia in general and) wrt the internet, however it really isn't the place of the court to fix them and the result follows a long line of common law judgements about defamation and publication
The judgement can be found at www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/high_ct/2002/56.ht ml
Fair comment. On the silver screen I am struggling to find anything that gets above my not so humble threshold.
Why not just put it in a vacuum tube of some kind. Use microwaves to transmit the energy across the vacuum to power the sound thingy and as long as the vacuum tube has some form of heat insulation between its two halves, one side should be hot and the other side cool. No Noise at all :-)
Except that Aliens is still the best military scifi to grace the silver screen?
Puh-lease! I hated it. The military and scientific flaws were so serious as to make the whole thing unwatchable (for me :-). To start with what is with going into a combat situation and sending _everyone_ I mean that is just soooo dumb. Second, the cost of sending a ship the size of the Solano (was that it's name?) to the planet that far away and sending only a few soldiers. It's just stoopid. The close air support and transport then "touching" down in hostile territory so the pilot can have a smoke, and therefore get fanged, what kind of moron space marine would do that? As for the motion detectors. I mean come on! They work through closed doors, but no capacity to detect elevation? What about the recon? Why no drones? Sending people on such a recon cannot be the way of the future? Some might argue the whole company conspiracy line. You know, to get a specimen back to earth and hence the limited resources. But the marines act as though their level of deployment is "normal" which if it is makes the whole thing militarily laughable.
There is more that is wrong with it, but that will do for starters. ("Am I being to harsh Roy? No I don't think so HG")
Don't get me wrong, I love SF. And for my money great SF is about grand ideas. Talk of characters et al, is not important.
Great literature is about the human condition, or about the magnificent use of words. It is not impossible for SF to be about either, but if it is then it is most likely that it need not be SF. Indeed, most every piece of SF I have ever read, from Benford, Bear and Bradbury through Herbert, Hoyle and Heinlein to Verne, Wells and Wyndham is not really about great literature (although some of the above have certainly approached the human condition in some of their work) but about grand ideas and the grandest ideas make the grandest SF.
I mean, Herbert's devices to eliminate technology as a factor in the Dune universe, genius. Bear's cosmic accounting to destroy planets, inspired. these are the ideas on which great SF is made.
For me, it is a tough call. I read and loved Wyndham's work when I was child, "The Chrysalids" and "Midwich Cuckoos" entranced me (perhaps because of the central role of children). But it was Dune that was the first universe that enthralled me, inspiring me to create within the constraints of that universe. I suspect that it will remain a classic, and remain read for many years to come. Perhap's that is the best measure of what makes SF great.
As for Film and TV, most 50's SF (the "golden age") was just allegory and metaphor, nothing wrong with that, and indeed some of it was fabulous, but once the object of the allegory is lost then the story loses meaning. Star Wars changed the landscape forever, for that alone it will last and is great. Bab 5, loved it, loved the vision, loved the idea of using TV as the medium for a grand arc, but in truth it was again just the first, and it (hopefully) will not remain the best. Finally the one offs like Blade Runner and Alien (the sequels _DO NOT COUNT_), are they really SF? possibly. Are they great? Definitely.
Coming form a perspective of people believing that software should be free, the ransom name seems apt. In contrast, I suppose Microsoft would be using the slavery model :).
No, microsoft would be extorsionware
If there existed a way to automatically reformat a printed newspaper into a non-ads newspaper, they'd have to charge everyone more and due to reduced audience ...
The advertising industry is a scam. The people who "objectively" evaluate the effecacy of advertising are those that have a vested interest in the increased use of advertising. If it were a real product most people would be more questioning.
Don't get me wrong. Advertising is a "good" thing, and a banner add is a classic example. If I see a banner add for something to scratch an itch that I have, then it will lead me to invesigate the solution to my problem (perhaps). Certainly if I block the add then I lose that option. However if I (and others) use a technique that removes the channel then you are right the advertising sponsored "vehicle" will suffer, but the classic development in this case is that the adverstising just becomes editorial content and the "information" is still disseminated. But the advent of popups, floaters, animated banners, active content etc etc, is just the bullshit of the industry arguing that "in your face" advertising is "more effective".
Look, one of the best examples in my mind comes from classified employment adds. Where I grew up it was (and to a greater or lesser extent still is) the case that if you were hiring you put an add (the channel) in the big Saturday paper (the vehicle), similarly if you were looking for a job you bought the paper to search. This process was so effective, that there were times when the paper in question was so large that the recycling value of the weight of the paper was greater than the cover price of the paper. Much of this largeness was due to the classifieds. Therefore the paper became a targeted channel. There is lots to be gained from the "internet" ability to accurately qualify different channesls (Slashdot readers are a fairly well targeted audience, adds for florists and hair products are unlikely to figure in the banner adds here :-) and it is this value of which I speak when I say that advertising is a good thing, it really can inform, however the idea that the kind of business in this story has about "theft" and the need for ways of "forcing the content" on the audience is the same kind of braindeadness that the other parts of the advertising industry have been peddling for years.
In general, I agree with you. Specifically, I do not believe that it is correct to have property in the output of intellect. I use the phrase "output of intellect" because it is neutral and as a result I kinda like the phrase intellectual property (IP) as the catch all for all the things that are bad about this area of the law, and more importantly, all that is bad about most peoples perception about the results of creative thought. As such I find it easy to say "I don't believe in intellectual property" and make my basic position clear to the layperson.
The reasons why I don't believe in IP are several but a critical factor for me is that the output of intellect is deficient in one of the necessary attributes of property. That attribute is exclusion. That is, it is not necessary to exclude another from your IP in order to retain your utility.
The history of real property (RP) is, for me, the basis for rejecting the existence of IP, Locke, Hobbes et al established the foundation for RP and whilst I have reservations about the specifics they used, I agree with the idea of RP and inherently private property, however these bases are pretty much missing from the IP world and as a result IP itself must be fatally flawed.
The FBI did have a legitimate national security interest in the Fischers. His mother lived and attended medical school in the Soviet Union. The KGB and GRU recruited agents from foreign students attending schools in the Soviet Union. His father fought against the fascists in the Spanish Civil War. That in itself isn't a problem, but it puts him in a group that was heavily infiltrated and influenced by the Communist Party and Soviet intelligence operations. The FBI didn't have the right to harass the Fischers, but I think they had a legitimate national security interest in investigating their activities to see if they were involved in espionage or other crimes.
Yeah, but he was a chess player for god's sake what possible national security issue could he raise? Maybe he was deep programmed to shove a bishop in the president's brain if he got close enough? Seriously though, the thing that really sticks in my craw about all this spying and stuff in the west is that the institutions of government, are really strong enough to survive most every attempt to "espionage" them. It is the ego (technical not derogatory definition) of the office holders that leads to the "questionable" activity. Indeed, institutions such as the "rule of law", "separation of powers" or for you American's the "Bill of Rights" and the "Constitution" are made stronger by their ability to survive the most serious attacks on their incumbants by being indifferent to the specific individuals excercising them (yeah, yeah I know it aint perfect). It is funny how the greatest threats to these way of life shaping facets of our socieities are the excesses of the incumbent office holders and their needs to "protect" us from ourselves or to "protect" the institutions that seem to do a pretty good job on their own.
Totally agree. Please forgive my lack of clarity in the original post. I did not mean to suggest that a single thread removes all deadlocks and race conditions, rather that when having multiple threads you have these problems often a single thread will (as you pointed out, the locked data structure for example) not.
The classical example in my experience is an application that did not even have to consider a whole bunch of contention issues because we chose the single threaded (for the transaction part) implementation. This also brought benefits by allowing zero "legging" risk when performing transactions across the instances of objects that might ordinarily be partitioned along thread lines. No IPC, no locking, all good. The trade offs in such a choice are straightforward and often quite cost (in all senses) effective.
Many coders are disinclined to use threads, because they don't necessarily improve code speed.
Further there are a number of examples where writing a single threaded application has definitive benefits. For example applications where deadlocks or race conditions would be an integral problem in a multithreaded implementation whilst a single thread has none of these problems.
Lot's of people I know criticize Free/Open Source Software just rips stuff off, and doesn't innovate
It is an interesting critcism and it misses the critical point about Free Software. By it's disposition towards "zealots" funded by their own resources (be it spare time, hobby time, independent wealth or roving mandate) it has the oppirtunity to develop ideas and projects that are not otherwise economically viable.
Look at it this way, the net social utility of the participants in the project is increased by their "enjoyment" of working on the project, the net social utility of society is increased by the output of their project (regardless of its term) and the cost to society in terms of allocating capital to projects that may not succeed is reduced. It is just a totally winning situation. This multiplier effect to the economic utility makes this kind of approach to software development (and content creation since the same model applies to the content on the net) a _truly_ wonderful thing and it may just save our world.
I concurr. I finally stopped buying DVD, CD's I stopped a long while ago (although I might consider non-industry CD's in future). Because I figured if I really objected to the MPAA et al screwing us over then I really ought not to fund them by paying the exorbitant DVD tax :-)
The problem is that I can't stop going to the cinema. I at least draw some solace from the fact that the cinema proprietor will eventually get some money out of my ticket (and I do know how movie distribution is priced at it way sucks as well) particularly if I resort to waiting a couple of weeks to see the latest releases.
I heartily endorse the sentiment of voting with our dollars. The short term pain ("Legend" came out the week I started my boycott, bugger) will be worth it in the long run.
Of course they seed the yard. You don't just find rolls of mylar film lying around when you are looking for a balloon skin.
Ever noticed how they also always take two different approaches to solve the same problem? I would argue that a more interesting question is
"Do the teams get to pick which of the two solutions they implement or is it assigned by the producer"
It's not just about allowing you to login, but one of the fundamental problems of the "internet" is the proof of identity. As more and more important services become online, it becomes more and more important to be confident that Jo Public is actually a) Jo Public and not Mary Citizen and b) The Jo Public of 23 Main Street Bigtown.
:-)
In meatspace, you prove identity by a "collection" of evidence from relatively trusted sources, a bank account, a gas bill and something with a photo. In the on line world being able to go to an online vendor and do a similar thing where you can prove that BANK A, utility co B and Company X all know about a Jo Public of 23 Main Street obviates the need for a "central" repository of identity, which, if you ask me, is a good thing (TM) (ie not having one is a good thing
So in addition to the peoples points about using multiple machines (an excellent point by the way), proof if identity is the killer app INM(NS)HO.
Yeah, but he is MD of a _Hedge Fund_ :-)
At the risk of getting modded -1 flame for taking a politically incorrect position in a slashdot post, I feel compelled to point out that there is nothing wrong with software patents.
Wrong. There is something inherently wrong with software patents. Even in the US there has long been a recognised exemption for patents in mathematics. Software is mathematics. The good reasons for the mathematical exemptions are good reasons for software exemptions.
Without intellectual property protection, how is the small guy to protect himself from the bigger companies with better market presence who can just copy the product wholesale, put their name on it, and sell it?
The action you have just described is called fraud and it is a crime, the civil recourse is normal damages. One does not need another wrong to be created when one already exists for the purpose. If M$ copied the code, acknowledged the author, and sent out the package then I'm all for it, (all derogatory comments about M$ aside) if you got your name on every copy of M$ Blah, it would make you famous. In a world where your repute is your income (which is the world that we would be in without patents, even with them to some extent) then being able to say on you resume, "oh yeah, just do an 'about' on M$ Blah, yep, thats me," is money in the bank. Even before considering the value of knowing the "intimacies" of the algorithm. So the critical factor is that the developers of software must be full in their disclosure, or be compelled to be full when enquired (ie i can see that genuine omissions might be troublesome).
I remember when we went for holidays one year, and came back to find that the drop had fallen! Everyone was a bit pissed (understandably) that it had fallen during uni hols.
Sheesh, an Australian university, surely you have about a 50/50 chance it will happen during holidays given that they have about 26 week holiday a year!!!
Exactly. I have a real problem with a sport in which there is no time limit.
Intesting, I think what you mean is you don't like long games. Baseball lasts fourish hours, there are other games that last much longer and yet have limited time (for example test match cricket five days, golf four days, even limited overs cricket, six hours). I am no particular fan of MLB (or baseball in general for that matter), in fact _every_ thing that is good about baseball I think is better in limited overs cricket (particularly the "if you get hit by the ball you get a walk" wimpiness. I mean for god's sake if you are too stupid to get out of the way you deserve everything you get :-), however I don't think it's primary flaw is the length of the game, indeed it is precisely the length of test match cricket that makes it such an extraordinary contest.
I mean, you ain't seen the human condition until you see a guy who has batted for a day and a half in the heat of the indian summer puking his guts up whilst on his way to a big double ton [on ya deano], or someone who had his jaw broken by a ball one day coming back out to bat the next to try and salvage a result for his team [nice one Mr McCosker]. Awesome.
Actually the BK HJ relationship is vastly more complex than that http://hsc.ozlpn.com/courses/arts/legal/2002_Legal _A_Law_Society_Guirguis.pdf
How does money work? I give you some money, you put it in the bank, it earns you interest. If you don't need to spend it you keep it, because it'll be worth more in the long run. Who decided it should be that way? There are hundreds of examples from the last few hundred years of communities and regions implementing an alternative currency - one with a state imposed depreciation rate. I give you $10 in August, its worth $9 in September, and $5 by new year. I'll bet you spend it in August!
Er, well um yes, but then it isn't money. There are traditionally four purposes of money;
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medium of exchange
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unit of account
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standard of deferred payment
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store of value
Clearly the last of these is somewhat incompatible with your world. In all seriousness though and nit picking aside, all you are really describing is a tax on savings so you will find that people just find an alternative store of value, stock, precious metals, etc. What's even more interesting is that you will then find that there is a market that appears with people who have guaranteed income next month willing to sell it to people who have cash this month at a premium approaching the discount rate you choose and so it wont really have the effect you desire.In truth the way to deal with your issue is a) eliminate capital (been tried, didn't work very well :-) b) use progressive taxation, death duties and gift taxes to redistribute the "money" from those who do, to those who don't, have it. We all gripe about that one, but in many countries outside the US there is much less griping and much better social services... hmmm...
This is one of my absolute pet peeves. www.caching.com/caching101.htm is a starting point for one of the factors that soooo many web designers seem to miss and that is that a page once created, can be cached _appropriately_ very easily of you just do the cache a favour and give static content a static URL. That way you are doing your server a favour as well since someone else can serve your page once someone nearby has asked for it.
I get so pissed off at sights that hide the true URL of a document behind bullshit asp/pl/dynamic URLs. It is just so brain dead. I know all the arguments that people will come back with from the commercial to the "deep linking" to the ease of dynamics, but I just think it would be easier to write out a physical page once and then serve it from there. I mean a catalogue is the perfect example of this point.
Because it is a measure of how much you are willing to piss away to make women happy. That is why women like the perishable low ticket (flowers, perfume etc) or big ticket unresaleable items (diamonds etc). The measure of how much you are willing to piss away on women is correlated to how long you have to work to keep women happy and we all no that idle hands are the devil's playground (or is it that busy hands are god's workshop :-).