I completely and whole heartedly agree with you, the ground swell has to start someplace and this could very well be it and if nothing else they will more then likely come up with a great prototype.
Languages like python, ruby, php et. all. would be a great place to start prototyping these sorts of systems since they can provide critical proof of concept.
Once they get the process flow figured out and rock solid then you take that and prot it over to a proofable language and hardware. MANY such systems are created on vanilla PC hardware with scripting languages snd then when the whole thing is figured out, it is then ported to the hardware in a language that can be paired down to the bare essentials to get the job done.
I was thinking the same thing, then I went and looked at the code and saw this:
import os
import json
from django.template import Context, loader, RequestContext
from django.http import HttpResponse, HttpResponseRedirect, HttpRequest
from django.shortcuts import render_to_response
from django.conf import settings
from django.contrib.auth import authenticate, login, logout
from django.contrib.auth.decorators import login_required
Just as soon as I saw that, it was like, Ahh HELL NO!
I mean lets just throw in the entire kitchen sink! There is not a snowballs chance in hell of this EVER getting certified. JUST the holes/kludges in http & css will get you laughed out of the running!
You want the Federal Election Commission to trust a voting machine written in a language used by script-kiddies?! That is utterly laughable in light of the DIEBOLD VB/Access debacle
This needs to be a completely stripped down Linux core, NOTHING in it except what is EXACTLY need to do this. It needs to be written in C, not C++, and I mean COMPLETELY documented ( to the point of inanity), PLAINLY written, VERBOSE code and if you want a better chance write it in ADA, that is what the government is used to dealing with and the code MUST be open source
You need to go as far as stripping down the standard C libraries to ONLY the functions called by the SINGLE program that makes it work
EVERY buffer, EVERY array must be bounds checked. There can be NO POSSIBILITY of ANY kind of a buffer overflow attack.
If you are going to use an off the shelf MB any open slot and or connector not used by a component SPECIFICALLY required to make it work must by PHYSICALLY disabled ( cut the traces/wires or whatever ). The BIOS must be custom,designed and coded to do ONLY those functions require to boot the machine, further that BIOS must be OPEN SOURCE.
As others have pointed out the PROCESS must be VERIFIABLE, it must be RELIABLE, it must be PREDICTABLE 100% of the time. There can be NO race conditions, there can be NO un-handled exceptions, and EVERY exception must have a reliable, repeatable, reproduceable result, in other words "Kernel Panic" is NOT an option.
In short it must be a totally custom machine, and created by people 100% NOT interested in getting rich.
Sorry I cannot let this thread go by without commenting...
UAC is not the problem. Idiot developers are the problem.
I have written many many windows based programs and you can write a program that will do everything you need a program to do in USER mode!
Now to be certain half of the problem is Microsoft's but the other half sits directly in the developers lap. They either do not test the software in user mode, or if they do and see something balk, they simply elevate the the account to be a member of PowerUsers and call it a day. This is laziness at its worst.
I have had to trace down these types of problems far to many times and find that if they had granted permissions to the group USERS for the registry entry that they created then the problem goes away! Even MS-Word had this problem in one version and it was because word could not modify the registry entry for the Spell Check, but that was quickly fixed.
While UAC may not be perfect, it would be used FAR less if the developers that were writing programs gave specific instructions to the people writing the install scripts.
The problem could also be solved by idiot developers staying the hell out of the registry to store settings and just keeping them in config files in the program directory, but that is YAA ® ( Yet Another Argument ).
Yes you cannot invent more wireless spectrum so all you can do is try and figure out ways to minimize the bandwidth required for each discrete signal, or channel if you will that each device needs.
The problem is that as we push ever higher in frequency the amount you end up having things like trees and the like forming RF shadows. We have all experienced this problem as we go into elevators and our cell signal vanishes since as you push into the Gigahertz band we now are trying to make radar frequencies go through and object instead of reflect off of the object.
Those RF engineers are smart guys and will figure something out though. Who knows, this might lead us back to Packet Radio for phones!
YES DSL is delivered over your existing single pair copper wire phone lines.
DSL Currently has a MAX length from the DSLM, pronounced "dee-slam" of about 18,000 ft, or a little under 4 miles from the Central Office where the DSLM is located.
When DSL was first introduced the DSLM equipment was ALL located in the telephone companies Central Office or CO although it has since been pushed out farther from the CO as more and more fiber has begun replacing the main trunk lines. Prior to this, you could physically trace your pair of copper wires that you hooked your phone to all the way back to the central office.
There are still MANY MANY CO's that are still this way. If you are friends with a telephone company guy ask him if he can take you into the CO some time and what you will find is a hybrid system. Much of the original copper has been replaced with fiber as far as the main feed trunks go, but there is still quite a bit of copper running from the central office, inside you will see a VERY large "A" frame structure and that is the cross connect point between the phone switches and the copper pair that does, in point of fact, run from there, to your house where it terminates on your NI ( aka the Network Interface, aka the little gray box on the side of your house ) which a fancy name for a box that has some screw terminals in it and a relay. The relay is used so that when you call the telephone trouble line ( 611 in most of California anyway) the telephone company can simply send a signal down your line and "Loop the NI" to test from the CO to your house ( for you data guys it is the same thing as looping the "Smart Jack" for a T1 circuit )
Now then, since deregulation and the lawsuit, the result of which require the Bell companies to lease their copper from the CO to your house, all of the other DSL companies DSLM's were put into to locked enclosures in the CO as they were the property of Covad, SpeakEasy, Slip Net, etc. etc.. Now AT&T at least in the San Francisco Bay Area is replacing most of their Main Trunks with Fiber and creating what are essentially very tiny little CO's all over the place. They do not run fiber to your house, what they do with these little CO's is shorten the copper run to a under around 1000 feet or less in most cases less then 500 feet which is a completely new ball game, since in the case of hi speed signaling over copper, the shorter the run the better, since you have to change something when the run starts getting longer.
In the case of DSL the longer the run the slower your data right is OR you change from SDSL to ADSL (Symmetrical DSL and Asymmetrical DSL respectively).
So yes, you can have your plain old dial up fun on the same line as your Internet signal because they use very different frequency bands. POTS ( Plain Old Telephone Service ) occupies the lower frequencies and DSL occupies the upper frequencies that two pieces of copper wire can transmit.
I didn't think your response was a troll at all since most of the "modding" that gets done around here is done by fanbois.
And just for your edification, I am not any kind of a fanboi, but long ago I did learn not to make absolute statements regarding someones research as it is unwise.
And you might be correct that the process might not work.
And since you have zero cred ( at least as far as I can tell ) in the field, and Knight does ( hence my references ), coupled with the fact that the guy was accepted to MIT at the age of 14, his accomplishments are massive, he studied biology under a guy who is a very well respected professor in the field, I am thinking that I would not make the flat out assertion that he is dead wrong on pretty much ANY subject.
I suppose Knight could get a pHD in the subject(s) of biochemistry, genetics, and cellular biology if he felt it was a requirement, but since he is a principal investigator at CSAIL I think he might just be on the right track, BUT you could be correct.
I am not familiar with the inner workings of Wordpress at all but I will offer this observation.
Of the open source projects that I am familiar with, they work fine until something stops working, then your in a bit of a jam, since there is quite often no number to call to get the information that will lead you to the fix for the problem.
Mysql is a prime example. It works wonderfully for most things, but when you really start to put it up against the wall then there are all kinds of little things that really start to show. Not that they are show stoppers, but that are just problematic enough to cause things to run a bit out of sorts.
At that point you are left with only a couple of options, either hire someone who can dig into its guts, recompile it and hopefully solve that problem, without causing any other problems or... purchase a commercially supported version that includes a phone number and access to the guys in the back room who are actually designing and coding the program, and that is not an an inexpensive proposition.
So yes, open source is great and in many organizations it fits the bill, but it many other organizations they need to have a commercial product where they can pick up the phone and get the support they need, now. This is not to say one is superior to the other, it is simply the reality for some business models, although YMMV!
required, just cruise down to your local bookstore, support an author, buy a book, go sit under a tree and read. It is quite a pleasurable experience, even on a rainy day and more so on a rainy day with a nice cup of Earl Grey.
If I create a sculpture, a painting, a fine vase from rare porcelain it is, in point of fact, a one of a kind object. Anything else but the original is a copy, a knock off and if you claim it is the original it is a forgery and that has been established for centuries and forgery has been a crime in most all civilizations for centuries. If you try to sell it as the original, later bodies of law codified that as fraud, again a crime.
The very idea of the protection of copyright ( although it has been perverted, but that in and of itself does not give you the right to subvert it in a world where the vast majority of people have agreed that this protection is beneficial when applied for a limited amount of time to ensure that more creative works are created) is to ensure that creativity flourishes and your declaration is antithetical to that idea and will help to ensure that those with the ability and desire will think twice about doing it again if they cannot benefit from the labors of their thoughts and ideas.
I whole heartedly agree that the protection has been perverted and is serious need of reform, but your apparent actions and theories are intent upon removing all protections, in any form, and tha course will ensure that the production of creative works will once again be limited to those who can ingratiate themselves to those who can afford to but bread on the artists table and a roof over their head or those that are content living in a hovel. You have only but to remember the many very famous that died penniless and destitute or in an asylum.
I'm sorry, but what you are describing is not a market. Perhaps this will enlighten you as to what markets are and how they work at even the most basic levels.
As to you assertion that I have "no moral or ethical right to a copyright in the first place, ideas, images, and sounds naturally flow from one mind to another without restriction they don't belong to anyone" is specious as markets for knowledge and creative works have been around for centuries.
Your assertion is a simply a fundamentally flawed idea that because you have an internet connection you have the right to obtain, by any means available, the creative works of anyone and then distribute them as you see fit, to anyone you see fit.
Please tell me what ideology of a "market" do you base this upon?
They should be able to make whatever the market will bare. The free market. The one without government interference like copyright and patents.
I agree about patents, but there needs to be some protection from people who feel that they can give away anything they desire no matter what.
yes I want to charge what the market will bare; however, if someone out there decides they don't like the price I am charging, happens to work for a company that has acutely purchased said product then takes that product and slaps it up on TPB or some equivalent what is my recourse?
I personally think software patents are wrong and as many have so adroitly pointed out, the PTO is ill equipped to deal with them at best and even when they try to do the right thing they usually, regardless of their best efforts, still get it wrong.
On the other hand, the original intent of the protection of copyright ( to allow the author a limited amount of time to control the distribution and sale of his or her work ) before it passes into the public domain, I contend is necessary to promote the continuing creation of works that fall under the protection of copyright. Now it seems to be generally agreed ( at least within/. circles and wider ) that this ought to be around 16 years from the date of first publication.
If this were the actual case then Jay-Z could indeed make whatever remix he wanted from the White Album, publish that and he would then enjoy the protection of copyright for the prescribed amount of time.
But now lets take that a bit father and apply it to software. Windows 98 was originally published , in binary form, June 25 1998. So if the protection was 16 years the copyright protection would then expire on June 25th 2014 and would then pass into the public domain. Does this mean that on June 26th, 2014 an individual or company would then start selling copies of Windows 98? Would they have to original distribution CD's with the activation code? Could the crack the activation code (yes I know it has already been done, and there are enough OEM activation codes floating arount) and defeat it? Could they alter the original product? Could they start selling it on their own media? Would they have to call it Microsoft Windows 98 or could they call it something else entirely?
Now what about Microsoft Windows 98SE? It was first published in 1999, but one can argue that it is simply and updated version of the original. Should it be treated like the nth version of "The Joy of Cooking" and granted a new inception date for the protection of copyright?
Now all things being equal, how far should the government go in the prosecution of those violating the protection granted under copyright? How harsh should the penalties be? Should it be a criminal or civil offense?
There are so very very many questions needed to be answered before any serious reform of copyright ( which in my opinion is so very badly needed ) can be attempted but whatever the eventual conclusion it has to be enforced vigorously.
i mean of course its all bullshit. the concept of intellectual property makes no moral, financial, logical, or philosophical sense in the internet age. but i guess we have to wait a few years for the vanguard of ignorant dinosaurs to die off
Of course, you could not be more wrong if you tried. Those "dinosaurs" as you call them are being very quickly replaced by young 20 somethings that are creating new and interesting content. They need capitol to do this, they need to hire good coders, designers, graphic artists, admin's the entire gamete of people it takes to pull something like that together and get the attention of the audience, not to mention the cost of rendering farms and big internet pipes to distribute all this content. Like it or not, those people don't live on being "elites" or whatever the current cool phrase is for those with the drive and talent to create all of that content, they have mortgages to pay, insurance, you know like people who have actual lives
Rampant theft of the programs they write causes more then just people not making HUGE "profit" it causes the VC people to look elsewhere to invest which in turn causes all this new and interesting content to be still born.
Put yourself in the VC's place. You have the cash to invest, and someone comes to you with an actual business plan, backed up by a decent demo, with realistic projections for sales. The VC asks, "How are you going to control distribution?" The problem is there is no good answer to give. The VC thinks about it and simply decides that the risk outweighs the possible return and says, "Hey great idea, but with all the pirating out there, how many copies do you realy think you are going to sell? Sorry kid, great idea, but just can't risk the money."
There are a great many things that can be produced from the effort of many people working small amounts of time, and over along period can produce something worth using. GIMP is a fine example, It took the efforts of a great many people, mostly working part time, a great deal of time to come up with something that comes close to challenging Photoshop. Unfortunately things likes games have a far shorter lifespan, whats col today might not be so cool 6 months from now and then its on the scrap heap but not because it was executed poorly or the writers and designers had poor imagination but because peoples taste in entertainment changes just that fast. When it coasts millions of dollars to put that one really cool game together, the people that made it happen want to make money and more then just breaking even because the risked a LOT to get it out the door.
So give me an actual reason why they should not profit from the efforts, why they should not earn whatever the market will bare on EVERY copy sold, and why they should expect people to buy one and then post it on TPB or some other equivalent?
Real actual reasons, not "information wants to be free" rhetoric but actual concrete logical reasons.
Get one you can still get a maintenance kit ( buy the kit) for and then buy as many toner cartridges as you can afford since the shelf life is damn near forever. I have an HP 5000 that is still chugging away and prints from EVERYTHING, Linux, Mac, Windoze and BEos to boot!
The best part is almost ALL of them will print with an HP Laseret III driver! You might be missing some of the fancy stuff, but it WILL work.
timestamp being unique is not the issue, since we are not seeking uniqueness. What we are seeking to know is, "Has then record been modified since I read it." and for that a millisecond is pretty darn granular don't you think?
Yes the httpRequest method is fine to do the occasional check to see if something has changed but I would caution you on the frequency of your checks since the httpRequest channel tends to freeze up the browser while waiting for the return.
Attempting to do any sort of pessimistic locking in a web environ can be accomplished but doing so is fraught with peril. You are building in a set of conditions that will cripple your database very quickly and I really don't see a way out of it without going though an awful lot of shenanigans.
Locks have been a problem since databases were invented. Row level locks, page level locks, byte range locks have all been implemented in some fashion but they all lead to the same problem, locked up records that are not available unless someone clears the lock, not viable in a huge multi-user database with massive concurrency requirements.
AJAX can go part of the way in solving the problem, but it has to heartbeat. The main problem is still the web execution model of "start run and be done". A lot of repeated AJAX calls can really stall out the browser if something is delayed on the server. For pessimistic locking to really work well, we need a better model.
Both the curse and the blessing of web applications. Most of the work is offloaded to the browser, thus not bogging down the database servers with keeping a ton of row level locks in memory, or even worse, page level locks.
For the programmers POV you use some back end language, php, java, ruby, python, it matters not, write a program, it launchs, connects to a database, ( no matter how much middle-ware you slap in ) sends it a query, gets the data, returns it for presentation, consideration and subsequent modification ( or not! ) by the user and then the program ends. You are no longer connected to the database, heck your browser is no longer connected to the server!
Some have mentioned AJAX <sigh...> AJAX is nothing but bundling together a few different bits of tech to do ONE thing, make a call to the server without refreshing the page. No matter how you slice it and dice it, thats all it does, it makes a call through the web server, to launch a program written in one of the afore mentioned languages and it follows the same set of steps, through either the post method or the get method and nothing has changed!
So you need a scheme to know if you can write to a record without overwriting someone else changes.
The only real choice is to use a timestamp value, all databases support them, usually down to the millisecond of accuracy. It is a simple process which you can make more complicated as you desire. As many have mentioned, you read the record making sure you get the timestamp of the last update. That timestamp gets sent to the browser along with the data. When the user clicks save the stored procedure that does the actual update then compares the timestamp you are sending with the one on the current record as in "select for update...." and if the one you are sending along does not match the one on the current record, then your update loses and the stored procedure reports that back and then you deal with the user feedback in any way you see fit. Typically this is done by sending back the record in is new state and telling the user, "sorry, but you have to star over.".
Now having said that there is nothing to say that you cannot be imaginative with a bit of javascript or something like that, or even with the php array_diff() function or an equivalent in some other language then insert some fields above or below the the data that was previously changed to at least have the conflicting data shown in both forms eg: what it is NOW and what they wanted it to BE.
There is much speculation that it was a project originally dreamed up at Borland. If you look closely at O Pascal ( aka Delphi, aka Object Pascal ) they are remarkably similar.
Given that they were both architected and written by the same guy, I would say that.Net is a knock off of Object Pascal.
Slashdot Mirror
I completely and whole heartedly agree with you, the ground swell has to start someplace and this could very well be it and if nothing else they will more then likely come up with a great prototype.
Languages like python, ruby, php et. all. would be a great place to start prototyping these sorts of systems since they can provide critical proof of concept.
Once they get the process flow figured out and rock solid then you take that and prot it over to a proofable language and hardware. MANY such systems are created on vanilla PC hardware with scripting languages snd then when the whole thing is figured out, it is then ported to the hardware in a language that can be paired down to the bare essentials to get the job done.
To err is human, to really screw things up takes a computer.
I was thinking the same thing, then I went and looked at the code and saw this:
import os
import json
from django.template import Context, loader, RequestContext
from django.http import HttpResponse, HttpResponseRedirect, HttpRequest
from django.shortcuts import render_to_response
from django.conf import settings
from django.contrib.auth import authenticate, login, logout
from django.contrib.auth.decorators import login_required
Just as soon as I saw that, it was like, Ahh HELL NO!
I mean lets just throw in the entire kitchen sink! There is not a snowballs chance in hell of this EVER getting certified. JUST the holes/kludges in http & css will get you laughed out of the running!
Oh for fucks sake, you have to be kidding me!
You want the Federal Election Commission to trust a voting machine written in a language used by script-kiddies?! That is utterly laughable in light of the DIEBOLD VB/Access debacle
This needs to be a completely stripped down Linux core, NOTHING in it except what is EXACTLY need to do this. It needs to be written in C, not C++, and I mean COMPLETELY documented ( to the point of inanity), PLAINLY written, VERBOSE code and if you want a better chance write it in ADA, that is what the government is used to dealing with and the code MUST be open source
You need to go as far as stripping down the standard C libraries to ONLY the functions called by the SINGLE program that makes it work
EVERY buffer, EVERY array must be bounds checked. There can be NO POSSIBILITY of ANY kind of a buffer overflow attack.
If you are going to use an off the shelf MB any open slot and or connector not used by a component SPECIFICALLY required to make it work must by PHYSICALLY disabled ( cut the traces/wires or whatever ). The BIOS must be custom,designed and coded to do ONLY those functions require to boot the machine, further that BIOS must be OPEN SOURCE.
As others have pointed out the PROCESS must be VERIFIABLE, it must be RELIABLE, it must be PREDICTABLE 100% of the time. There can be NO race conditions, there can be NO un-handled exceptions, and EVERY exception must have a reliable, repeatable, reproduceable result, in other words "Kernel Panic" is NOT an option.
In short it must be a totally custom machine, and created by people 100% NOT interested in getting rich.
Joanna Rutkowska in a very tiny French Maid outfit? Ohhh yes.
Sorry I cannot let this thread go by without commenting...
UAC is not the problem. Idiot developers are the problem.
I have written many many windows based programs and you can write a program that will do everything you need a program to do in USER mode!
Now to be certain half of the problem is Microsoft's but the other half sits directly in the developers lap. They either do not test the software in user mode, or if they do and see something balk, they simply elevate the the account to be a member of PowerUsers and call it a day. This is laziness at its worst.
I have had to trace down these types of problems far to many times and find that if they had granted permissions to the group USERS for the registry entry that they created then the problem goes away! Even MS-Word had this problem in one version and it was because word could not modify the registry entry for the Spell Check, but that was quickly fixed.
While UAC may not be perfect, it would be used FAR less if the developers that were writing programs gave specific instructions to the people writing the install scripts.
The problem could also be solved by idiot developers staying the hell out of the registry to store settings and just keeping them in config files in the program directory, but that is YAA ® ( Yet Another Argument ).
Yes you cannot invent more wireless spectrum so all you can do is try and figure out ways to minimize the bandwidth required for each discrete signal, or channel if you will that each device needs.
The problem is that as we push ever higher in frequency the amount you end up having things like trees and the like forming RF shadows. We have all experienced this problem as we go into elevators and our cell signal vanishes since as you push into the Gigahertz band we now are trying to make radar frequencies go through and object instead of reflect off of the object.
Those RF engineers are smart guys and will figure something out though. Who knows, this might lead us back to Packet Radio for phones!
Good grief....
YES DSL is delivered over your existing single pair copper wire phone lines.
DSL Currently has a MAX length from the DSLM, pronounced "dee-slam" of about 18,000 ft, or a little under 4 miles from the Central Office where the DSLM is located.
When DSL was first introduced the DSLM equipment was ALL located in the telephone companies Central Office or CO although it has since been pushed out farther from the CO as more and more fiber has begun replacing the main trunk lines. Prior to this, you could physically trace your pair of copper wires that you hooked your phone to all the way back to the central office.
There are still MANY MANY CO's that are still this way. If you are friends with a telephone company guy ask him if he can take you into the CO some time and what you will find is a hybrid system. Much of the original copper has been replaced with fiber as far as the main feed trunks go, but there is still quite a bit of copper running from the central office, inside you will see a VERY large "A" frame structure and that is the cross connect point between the phone switches and the copper pair that does, in point of fact, run from there, to your house where it terminates on your NI ( aka the Network Interface, aka the little gray box on the side of your house ) which a fancy name for a box that has some screw terminals in it and a relay. The relay is used so that when you call the telephone trouble line ( 611 in most of California anyway) the telephone company can simply send a signal down your line and "Loop the NI" to test from the CO to your house ( for you data guys it is the same thing as looping the "Smart Jack" for a T1 circuit )
Now then, since deregulation and the lawsuit, the result of which require the Bell companies to lease their copper from the CO to your house, all of the other DSL companies DSLM's were put into to locked enclosures in the CO as they were the property of Covad, SpeakEasy, Slip Net, etc. etc.. Now AT&T at least in the San Francisco Bay Area is replacing most of their Main Trunks with Fiber and creating what are essentially very tiny little CO's all over the place. They do not run fiber to your house, what they do with these little CO's is shorten the copper run to a under around 1000 feet or less in most cases less then 500 feet which is a completely new ball game, since in the case of hi speed signaling over copper, the shorter the run the better, since you have to change something when the run starts getting longer.
In the case of DSL the longer the run the slower your data right is OR you change from SDSL to ADSL (Symmetrical DSL and Asymmetrical DSL respectively).
So yes, you can have your plain old dial up fun on the same line as your Internet signal because they use very different frequency bands. POTS ( Plain Old Telephone Service ) occupies the lower frequencies and DSL occupies the upper frequencies that two pieces of copper wire can transmit.
I didn't think your response was a troll at all since most of the "modding" that gets done around here is done by fanbois.
And just for your edification, I am not any kind of a fanboi, but long ago I did learn not to make absolute statements regarding someones research as it is unwise.
I replied do to your overwhelming bombast.
And you might be correct that the process might not work.
And since you have zero cred ( at least as far as I can tell ) in the field, and Knight does ( hence my references ), coupled with the fact that the guy was accepted to MIT at the age of 14, his accomplishments are massive, he studied biology under a guy who is a very well respected professor in the field, I am thinking that I would not make the flat out assertion that he is dead wrong on pretty much ANY subject.
I suppose Knight could get a pHD in the subject(s) of biochemistry, genetics, and cellular biology if he felt it was a requirement, but since he is a principal investigator at CSAIL I think he might just be on the right track, BUT you could be correct.
Obigitory - "didn't look very hard before spouting off did ya."
You might want to give a read here.
Ohhh and maybe heretoo.
Or here.
These two guys are formidable minds, so ya just might want to think before you blast your mouth off.
I am not familiar with the inner workings of Wordpress at all but I will offer this observation.
Of the open source projects that I am familiar with, they work fine until something stops working, then your in a bit of a jam, since there is quite often no number to call to get the information that will lead you to the fix for the problem.
Mysql is a prime example. It works wonderfully for most things, but when you really start to put it up against the wall then there are all kinds of little things that really start to show. Not that they are show stoppers, but that are just problematic enough to cause things to run a bit out of sorts.
At that point you are left with only a couple of options, either hire someone who can dig into its guts, recompile it and hopefully solve that problem, without causing any other problems or... purchase a commercially supported version that includes a phone number and access to the guys in the back room who are actually designing and coding the program, and that is not an an inexpensive proposition.
So yes, open source is great and in many organizations it fits the bill, but it many other organizations they need to have a commercial product where they can pick up the phone and get the support they need, now. This is not to say one is superior to the other, it is simply the reality for some business models, although YMMV!
required, just cruise down to your local bookstore, support an author, buy a book, go sit under a tree and read. It is quite a pleasurable experience, even on a rainy day and more so on a rainy day with a nice cup of Earl Grey.
Once again your argument fails and this is why:
If I create a sculpture, a painting, a fine vase from rare porcelain it is, in point of fact, a one of a kind object. Anything else but the original is a copy, a knock off and if you claim it is the original it is a forgery and that has been established for centuries and forgery has been a crime in most all civilizations for centuries. If you try to sell it as the original, later bodies of law codified that as fraud, again a crime.
The very idea of the protection of copyright ( although it has been perverted, but that in and of itself does not give you the right to subvert it in a world where the vast majority of people have agreed that this protection is beneficial when applied for a limited amount of time to ensure that more creative works are created) is to ensure that creativity flourishes and your declaration is antithetical to that idea and will help to ensure that those with the ability and desire will think twice about doing it again if they cannot benefit from the labors of their thoughts and ideas.
I whole heartedly agree that the protection has been perverted and is serious need of reform, but your apparent actions and theories are intent upon removing all protections, in any form, and tha course will ensure that the production of creative works will once again be limited to those who can ingratiate themselves to those who can afford to but bread on the artists table and a roof over their head or those that are content living in a hovel. You have only but to remember the many very famous that died penniless and destitute or in an asylum.
I'm sorry, but what you are describing is not a market. Perhaps this will enlighten you as to what markets are and how they work at even the most basic levels.
As to you assertion that I have "no moral or ethical right to a copyright in the first place, ideas, images, and sounds naturally flow from one mind to another without restriction they don't belong to anyone" is specious as markets for knowledge and creative works have been around for centuries.
Your assertion is a simply a fundamentally flawed idea that because you have an internet connection you have the right to obtain, by any means available, the creative works of anyone and then distribute them as you see fit, to anyone you see fit.
Please tell me what ideology of a "market" do you base this upon?
Don't waste your breath on Jah-Wren Ryel (80510) this clown is a cretin, he is 100% troll and 100% flame bait.
They should be able to make whatever the market will bare. The free market. The one without government interference like copyright and patents.
I agree about patents, but there needs to be some protection from people who feel that they can give away anything they desire no matter what.
yes I want to charge what the market will bare; however, if someone out there decides they don't like the price I am charging, happens to work for a company that has acutely purchased said product then takes that product and slaps it up on TPB or some equivalent what is my recourse?
First of all thanks for the great response.
I personally think software patents are wrong and as many have so adroitly pointed out, the PTO is ill equipped to deal with them at best and even when they try to do the right thing they usually, regardless of their best efforts, still get it wrong.
On the other hand, the original intent of the protection of copyright ( to allow the author a limited amount of time to control the distribution and sale of his or her work ) before it passes into the public domain, I contend is necessary to promote the continuing creation of works that fall under the protection of copyright. Now it seems to be generally agreed ( at least within /. circles and wider ) that this ought to be around 16 years from the date of first publication.
If this were the actual case then Jay-Z could indeed make whatever remix he wanted from the White Album, publish that and he would then enjoy the protection of copyright for the prescribed amount of time.
But now lets take that a bit father and apply it to software. Windows 98 was originally published , in binary form, June 25 1998. So if the protection was 16 years the copyright protection would then expire on June 25th 2014 and would then pass into the public domain. Does this mean that on June 26th, 2014 an individual or company would then start selling copies of Windows 98? Would they have to original distribution CD's with the activation code? Could the crack the activation code (yes I know it has already been done, and there are enough OEM activation codes floating arount) and defeat it? Could they alter the original product? Could they start selling it on their own media? Would they have to call it Microsoft Windows 98 or could they call it something else entirely?
Now what about Microsoft Windows 98SE? It was first published in 1999, but one can argue that it is simply and updated version of the original. Should it be treated like the nth version of "The Joy of Cooking" and granted a new inception date for the protection of copyright?
Now all things being equal, how far should the government go in the prosecution of those violating the protection granted under copyright? How harsh should the penalties be? Should it be a criminal or civil offense?
There are so very very many questions needed to be answered before any serious reform of copyright ( which in my opinion is so very badly needed ) can be attempted but whatever the eventual conclusion it has to be enforced vigorously.
Nice deflection, but no reason. A true TBP fan boi if one ever existed.
i mean of course its all bullshit. the concept of intellectual property makes no moral, financial, logical, or philosophical sense in the internet age. but i guess we have to wait a few years for the vanguard of ignorant dinosaurs to die off
Of course, you could not be more wrong if you tried. Those "dinosaurs" as you call them are being very quickly replaced by young 20 somethings that are creating new and interesting content. They need capitol to do this, they need to hire good coders, designers, graphic artists, admin's the entire gamete of people it takes to pull something like that together and get the attention of the audience, not to mention the cost of rendering farms and big internet pipes to distribute all this content. Like it or not, those people don't live on being "elites" or whatever the current cool phrase is for those with the drive and talent to create all of that content, they have mortgages to pay, insurance, you know like people who have actual lives
Rampant theft of the programs they write causes more then just people not making HUGE "profit" it causes the VC people to look elsewhere to invest which in turn causes all this new and interesting content to be still born.
Put yourself in the VC's place. You have the cash to invest, and someone comes to you with an actual business plan, backed up by a decent demo, with realistic projections for sales. The VC asks, "How are you going to control distribution?" The problem is there is no good answer to give. The VC thinks about it and simply decides that the risk outweighs the possible return and says, "Hey great idea, but with all the pirating out there, how many copies do you realy think you are going to sell? Sorry kid, great idea, but just can't risk the money."
There are a great many things that can be produced from the effort of many people working small amounts of time, and over along period can produce something worth using. GIMP is a fine example, It took the efforts of a great many people, mostly working part time, a great deal of time to come up with something that comes close to challenging Photoshop. Unfortunately things likes games have a far shorter lifespan, whats col today might not be so cool 6 months from now and then its on the scrap heap but not because it was executed poorly or the writers and designers had poor imagination but because peoples taste in entertainment changes just that fast. When it coasts millions of dollars to put that one really cool game together, the people that made it happen want to make money and more then just breaking even because the risked a LOT to get it out the door.
So give me an actual reason why they should not profit from the efforts, why they should not earn whatever the market will bare on EVERY copy sold, and why they should expect people to buy one and then post it on TPB or some other equivalent?
Real actual reasons, not "information wants to be free" rhetoric but actual concrete logical reasons.
Get one you can still get a maintenance kit ( buy the kit) for and then buy as many toner cartridges as you can afford since the shelf life is damn near forever. I have an HP 5000 that is still chugging away and prints from EVERYTHING, Linux, Mac, Windoze and BEos to boot!
The best part is almost ALL of them will print with an HP Laseret III driver! You might be missing some of the fancy stuff, but it WILL work.
timestamp being unique is not the issue, since we are not seeking uniqueness. What we are seeking to know is, "Has then record been modified since I read it." and for that a millisecond is pretty darn granular don't you think?
Yes the httpRequest method is fine to do the occasional check to see if something has changed but I would caution you on the frequency of your checks since the httpRequest channel tends to freeze up the browser while waiting for the return.
Attempting to do any sort of pessimistic locking in a web environ can be accomplished but doing so is fraught with peril. You are building in a set of conditions that will cripple your database very quickly and I really don't see a way out of it without going though an awful lot of shenanigans.
Locks have been a problem since databases were invented. Row level locks, page level locks, byte range locks have all been implemented in some fashion but they all lead to the same problem, locked up records that are not available unless someone clears the lock, not viable in a huge multi-user database with massive concurrency requirements.
AJAX can go part of the way in solving the problem, but it has to heartbeat. The main problem is still the web execution model of "start run and be done". A lot of repeated AJAX calls can really stall out the browser if something is delayed on the server. For pessimistic locking to really work well, we need a better model.
Optimistic Concurrency
Both the curse and the blessing of web applications. Most of the work is offloaded to the browser, thus not bogging down the database servers with keeping a ton of row level locks in memory, or even worse, page level locks.
For the programmers POV you use some back end language, php, java, ruby, python, it matters not, write a program, it launchs, connects to a database, ( no matter how much middle-ware you slap in ) sends it a query, gets the data, returns it for presentation, consideration and subsequent modification ( or not! ) by the user and then the program ends. You are no longer connected to the database, heck your browser is no longer connected to the server!
Some have mentioned AJAX <sigh...> AJAX is nothing but bundling together a few different bits of tech to do ONE thing, make a call to the server without refreshing the page. No matter how you slice it and dice it, thats all it does, it makes a call through the web server, to launch a program written in one of the afore mentioned languages and it follows the same set of steps, through either the post method or the get method and nothing has changed!
So you need a scheme to know if you can write to a record without overwriting someone else changes.
The only real choice is to use a timestamp value, all databases support them, usually down to the millisecond of accuracy. It is a simple process which you can make more complicated as you desire. As many have mentioned, you read the record making sure you get the timestamp of the last update. That timestamp gets sent to the browser along with the data. When the user clicks save the stored procedure that does the actual update then compares the timestamp you are sending with the one on the current record as in "select for update ...." and if the one you are sending along does not match the one on the current record, then your update loses and the stored procedure reports that back and then you deal with the user feedback in any way you see fit. Typically this is done by sending back the record in is new state and telling the user, "sorry, but you have to star over.".
Now having said that there is nothing to say that you cannot be imaginative with a bit of javascript or something like that, or even with the php array_diff() function or an equivalent in some other language then insert some fields above or below the the data that was previously changed to at least have the conflicting data shown in both forms eg: what it is NOW and what they wanted it to BE.
There is much speculation that it was a project originally dreamed up at Borland. If you look closely at O Pascal ( aka Delphi, aka Object Pascal ) they are remarkably similar.
Given that they were both architected and written by the same guy, I would say that .Net is a knock off of Object Pascal.