Hate to be nit-picky; but you have every right to have a copy of it on your machine without accepting into agreement with the GPL.
Quite wrong. Without the GPL, you have no right to copy the code at all. The GPL gives you that right; if you didn't accept it, you'd be violating the author's copyright.
In the case of DCA, if DCA is a cheap and inexpensive way of treating cancers, then medical insurance and HMOs will have an economic incentive in developing it further because it saves them money.
Even if there is no economic incentive for drug companies or HMOs to develop a drug like DCA, it can always be tested and approved based on tax-payer funded trials--in the end, that will save the tax payers a lot of money compared to having the drug patented and sold at a premium. Furthermore, often, such drugs somehow manage to get used even without approval through various programs and channels.
I have my doubts that DCA is the miracle drug the article suggests, but if it is, it's a good thing that it isn't patented: more people will be able to use it and it will cost less.
Oh man, this is *yet another* example of why you should keep your "hobbies" distinct from your job. If he had turned around and sold copies of it to other stations, not a problem, but once he deployed a single version at work, he opened up a world of pain for himself.
Well, it would have been a "problem" as well, it's just that it would have been harder for his employer to detect.
If you work on something job-related, it belongs to your employer unless there is a specific agreement to the contrary. The concept of "on your own time" only comes in if it's something unrelated to your job, and even then it can be a hard argument to make. That's the way the employer/employee relationship works, for everybody.
You're not an employee of a public school, you're a customer. When you're an employee of an organization, the organization generally owns what you create if it's related to your work; when you're a customer, they don't.
Sure, it applies to many people. None of them are in the target market for Fortess though. Fortress is aimed at mathematicians and scientists - the sort of people who are still using Fortran - and for them the math notation makes the whole thing much, much easier to read.
All the mathematicians and scientists I know use C and C++ when they can. The notion that there is some big C/C++-phobic subculture of mathematicians and scientists out there is a myth. And, no, adding math notation to programs doesn't make them easier to read, it just adds a whole, unnecessary layer of complexity to deal with.
The things that matter to me in a numerical programming language are simplicity, safety, performance, multidimensional arrays, efficient tuples, and easy hookup with existing C and Fortran code. Any extra language gimmicks are a net minus.
Fortress looks decent but wholly pointless. Numerical code these days has to co-exist with large C and C++ libraries and integrated into general purpose applications. Maybe a Fortress-to-JVM and Fortress-to-CLR compiler would be useful, but if Fortress lives in its own, separate world, they might as well not bother. As a language, I think it's unnecessarily complex. Fortran became popular because, as a language, it's dead simple; Fortress isn't.
Guy, fix Java, or start over with the next version of Java. Fortress is pointless.
As much as one might bitch and moan about Windows, the freedom in *nix does make for anarchy
The notion that Windows is consistent and "vanilla" is a pipe dream; Windows exists in dozens of different versions and configurations. Real Windows systems have dozens of package and upgrade systems, numerous duplicated and inconsistent APIs, inconsistent file system layout, and inconsistent GUI conventions.
UNIX and Linux each are models of stability and consistency compared to the mess Microsoft is delivering with Windows.
If you're wanting Linux to get popular on the desktop
Linux is popular on the desktop.
you need a universal API with a universal installation/uninstallation system
Well, since neither the Mac nor Windows have that, why should Linux bother? No, what Linux needs to compete even more with Apple has nothing to do with technology--technologically, it is already far ahead--it has to do with black turtlenecks, shiny boxes, and a huge marketing department. But I'm not sure it's worth bothering: let people like you use Macintosh; it saves the rest of us a lot of trouble.
No, someone else responded to the article's comment on desktop Linux becoming an anarchy of contradictory APIs, and I agreed.
Yeah, like you have a clue. You should worry more about your favorite platform going the way of OS 9: Apple ran one OS into the ground, and they are busy doing it with the next one as well.
If you want to make a desktop app for Linux, right out of the gate you have to deal with competing desktop environments, competing APIs, and competing package managers.
Apparently, you're another one of those people who lives by the principle that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will start to believe it.
In fact, the Linux desktop is highly standardized. And if you want to do shitty Apple-style "drag-and-drop install" apps, you can do that, too, although on Linux, the shortcomings of that installation style relative to a real package manager become starkly obvious.
Besides, I suspect that Gnome alone has more commercial users than OS X.
Re:Because you'll end up at Lisp.
on
Lisp and Ruby
·
· Score: 1
What most people don't realize is that Lisp is the inherent representation of virtually all programming languages.
So is assembly. So is tiny little toggle switches, for that matter. But that doesn't make either a good choice for writing software.
What fewer people realize is that Smalltalk is Lisp with a slightly different syntax.
Well, it's actually a subset of Lisp with a different syntax. And both being a subset and using a different syntax make it a better language design.
Do you know what will happen next? They'll ask themselves what could be improved next.
Yes, and if they're smart, they will refuse to add gratuitous features or syntax from Lisp; Lisp's power and expressiveness make it a worse language than Smalltalk.
What an idiotic piece of Apple fanboyism. Apparently, according to that article, all the handheld and mobile phone market needs is for companies to stop letting people load applications on phones and then it will explode. Oh, wait.
In any case, Apple missed the boat technically on this one. Maybe they'll succeed based on brand name and usability, but if they do, they'll take us back technologically to 1995.
why not go all the way?
on
Lisp and Ruby
·
· Score: 2, Informative
If you're gonna have a "Ruby inspired by Smalltalk", why not be done with it and give it Smalltalk syntax as well? Smalltalk syntax is great: very readable, very simple. And with Objective C, it has enjoyed some resurgence.
The intent was clear, to use the beat, melody but also the distinctive chiptune sound touch.
Well, no, you don't know whether it was intentional. They may well have heard the track once and then recreated it, including "distinctive chiptune sound touch" without remembering where it came from.
So, even if the original track by Tempest, covered on the C64 by Grg, was inspired by Mozart or Haydn,
I wasn't saying that. I was saying that great musicians often have copied freely from one another.
Overall, I think if copyright and the legal system let people recover money for something like that, fine. But I won't get particularly upset about it artistically.
A Commodore 64 musician called 'grg' remade the song on the C64 (using the infamous SID soundchip); it is this that was stolen.
Really, who cares? That's generic synth music with a generic beat. I'm sure you could find half a dozen other tracks that sound so similar that most people couldn't tell. Even then, a lot of the great music in history was copied and put in a slightly different form, so if Mozart and Haydn did it, why is it all of a sudden so awful?
Note that it's clear that a lot of cases of this kind of "copyright violation" is actually just a case of failing memory: it's common for people to think they created something themselves even though they just remembered it.
Being an online-posting musician myself -- what rights do I have if this should ever happen to me, and what can be done to raise awareness about such things?"
Well, you have the rights guaranteed to you by copyright. You'll have to decide for yourself whether it's worth trying to enforce them. Maybe against Geffen it is.
You stand a better chance if you make something distinctive enough so that people actually recognize it as yours when someone else uses it. I don't think this counts.
whose underpinnings simply do not exist (BSD not running on ARM).
BSD is not the "underpinnings" of OS X; OS X is based on a heavily hacked Mach kernel. Only some parts of BSD sit on top of that as a compatibility layer.
Surely Apple's free to do what they want with their source code, unless it OSX is substantially based on code from elsewhere.
Big chunks of the OS X source code came from open source software (Mach, BSD, GNU), but they are complying with the licenses. A lot of the rest of the OS X source code came from NeXT.
So, a big part (I suspect the majority) of OS X source code was not developed at Apple, and Apple must comply with the third party licenses of that source code, and they apparently do. Many of those third party licenses simply don't require Apple to make available their modifications.
So I suppose that is why they based OS X on BSD, give their developer tools away for free
Apple is using a bunch of open source libraries, software, and open standards, but so is Microsoft.
Apple deliberately keeps key parts of their platform proprietary, thereby effectively making the entire platform proprietary. And they do that even when equivalent or better open source alternatives are available.
But what choice do those poor people have? After all, according to Cingular and Apple, Cingular apparently has such a flaky network that if you allow any third party applications on it, the entire network will go down, and Apple's platform is so susceptible to viruses that the only way to secure it is to lock it down.
One of open source's most touted benefits is its price. Download the software, install it--and don't pay a penny. That's the theory.
No, that's not the theory. Open source would be a better deal even if you paid the same for the software initially as you did for an equivalent commercial package. Why? Because open source reduces your long-term risks and costs.
We are not looking the philosofical part of the questin (this is OS, this is not). We literally don't care for that.
Nobody does. The reason people started open source and the reason it keeps going strong are sound business reason, not philosophy.
We look at what does the job best. And we buy and use it. And don't care for the price.
Well, then your university is irresponsible and not doing its job.
When a new, better iPod comes out, it will be able to play the same files. You can authorize an unlimited number of iPods. It would be a bigger deal if someone could touch Apple.
Yes, but I can't put them on any other player. For example, Apple doesn't have a widescreen video player with hard disk, Creative and others do.
Basically, what you're saying would be like buying DVDs from Sony and only being able to play them on Sony DVD players. It's evil.
The bottom line is that Apple, Microsoft, et al may be shipping insidious DRM technologies, but there's no obligation to use them.
But there is less and less of a choice. Over the next few years, increasingly, tracks are going to be released online-only and DRM-only, and then there will be an obligation to use them if you want to listen to music at all.
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Hate to be nit-picky; but you have every right to have a copy of it on your machine without accepting into agreement with the GPL.
Quite wrong. Without the GPL, you have no right to copy the code at all. The GPL gives you that right; if you didn't accept it, you'd be violating the author's copyright.
In the case of DCA, if DCA is a cheap and inexpensive way of treating cancers, then medical insurance and HMOs will have an economic incentive in developing it further because it saves them money.
Even if there is no economic incentive for drug companies or HMOs to develop a drug like DCA, it can always be tested and approved based on tax-payer funded trials--in the end, that will save the tax payers a lot of money compared to having the drug patented and sold at a premium. Furthermore, often, such drugs somehow manage to get used even without approval through various programs and channels.
I have my doubts that DCA is the miracle drug the article suggests, but if it is, it's a good thing that it isn't patented: more people will be able to use it and it will cost less.
the two languages happen to be C and Java--then, dementia sets in instantly (I should know!). Fortunately, it's partially reversible.
(c) there is a signed written specific instrument of conveyance
There is: his employment contract.
Oh man, this is *yet another* example of why you should keep your "hobbies" distinct from your job. If he had turned around and sold copies of it to other stations, not a problem, but once he deployed a single version at work, he opened up a world of pain for himself.
Well, it would have been a "problem" as well, it's just that it would have been harder for his employer to detect.
If you work on something job-related, it belongs to your employer unless there is a specific agreement to the contrary. The concept of "on your own time" only comes in if it's something unrelated to your job, and even then it can be a hard argument to make. That's the way the employer/employee relationship works, for everybody.
You're not an employee of a public school, you're a customer. When you're an employee of an organization, the organization generally owns what you create if it's related to your work; when you're a customer, they don't.
Sure, it applies to many people. None of them are in the target market for Fortess though. Fortress is aimed at mathematicians and scientists - the sort of people who are still using Fortran - and for them the math notation makes the whole thing much, much easier to read.
All the mathematicians and scientists I know use C and C++ when they can. The notion that there is some big C/C++-phobic subculture of mathematicians and scientists out there is a myth. And, no, adding math notation to programs doesn't make them easier to read, it just adds a whole, unnecessary layer of complexity to deal with.
The things that matter to me in a numerical programming language are simplicity, safety, performance, multidimensional arrays, efficient tuples, and easy hookup with existing C and Fortran code. Any extra language gimmicks are a net minus.
Fortress looks decent but wholly pointless. Numerical code these days has to co-exist with large C and C++ libraries and integrated into general purpose applications. Maybe a Fortress-to-JVM and Fortress-to-CLR compiler would be useful, but if Fortress lives in its own, separate world, they might as well not bother. As a language, I think it's unnecessarily complex. Fortran became popular because, as a language, it's dead simple; Fortress isn't.
Guy, fix Java, or start over with the next version of Java. Fortress is pointless.
As much as one might bitch and moan about Windows, the freedom in *nix does make for anarchy
The notion that Windows is consistent and "vanilla" is a pipe dream; Windows exists in dozens of different versions and configurations. Real Windows systems have dozens of package and upgrade systems, numerous duplicated and inconsistent APIs, inconsistent file system layout, and inconsistent GUI conventions.
UNIX and Linux each are models of stability and consistency compared to the mess Microsoft is delivering with Windows.
If you're wanting Linux to get popular on the desktop
Linux is popular on the desktop.
you need a universal API with a universal installation/uninstallation system
Well, since neither the Mac nor Windows have that, why should Linux bother? No, what Linux needs to compete even more with Apple has nothing to do with technology--technologically, it is already far ahead--it has to do with black turtlenecks, shiny boxes, and a huge marketing department. But I'm not sure it's worth bothering: let people like you use Macintosh; it saves the rest of us a lot of trouble.
No, someone else responded to the article's comment on desktop Linux becoming an anarchy of contradictory APIs, and I agreed.
Yeah, like you have a clue. You should worry more about your favorite platform going the way of OS 9: Apple ran one OS into the ground, and they are busy doing it with the next one as well.
If you want to make a desktop app for Linux, right out of the gate you have to deal with competing desktop environments, competing APIs, and competing package managers.
Apparently, you're another one of those people who lives by the principle that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will start to believe it.
In fact, the Linux desktop is highly standardized. And if you want to do shitty Apple-style "drag-and-drop install" apps, you can do that, too, although on Linux, the shortcomings of that installation style relative to a real package manager become starkly obvious.
Besides, I suspect that Gnome alone has more commercial users than OS X.
What most people don't realize is that Lisp is the inherent representation of virtually all programming languages.
So is assembly. So is tiny little toggle switches, for that matter. But that doesn't make either a good choice for writing software.
What fewer people realize is that Smalltalk is Lisp with a slightly different syntax.
Well, it's actually a subset of Lisp with a different syntax. And both being a subset and using a different syntax make it a better language design.
Do you know what will happen next? They'll ask themselves what could be improved next.
Yes, and if they're smart, they will refuse to add gratuitous features or syntax from Lisp; Lisp's power and expressiveness make it a worse language than Smalltalk.
What an idiotic piece of Apple fanboyism. Apparently, according to that article, all the handheld and mobile phone market needs is for companies to stop letting people load applications on phones and then it will explode. Oh, wait.
In any case, Apple missed the boat technically on this one. Maybe they'll succeed based on brand name and usability, but if they do, they'll take us back technologically to 1995.
If you're gonna have a "Ruby inspired by Smalltalk", why not be done with it and give it Smalltalk syntax as well? Smalltalk syntax is great: very readable, very simple. And with Objective C, it has enjoyed some resurgence.
The intent was clear, to use the beat, melody but also the distinctive chiptune sound touch.
Well, no, you don't know whether it was intentional. They may well have heard the track once and then recreated it, including "distinctive chiptune sound touch" without remembering where it came from.
So, even if the original track by Tempest, covered on the C64 by Grg, was inspired by Mozart or Haydn,
I wasn't saying that. I was saying that great musicians often have copied freely from one another.
Overall, I think if copyright and the legal system let people recover money for something like that, fine. But I won't get particularly upset about it artistically.
A Commodore 64 musician called 'grg' remade the song on the C64 (using the infamous SID soundchip); it is this that was stolen.
Really, who cares? That's generic synth music with a generic beat. I'm sure you could find half a dozen other tracks that sound so similar that most people couldn't tell. Even then, a lot of the great music in history was copied and put in a slightly different form, so if Mozart and Haydn did it, why is it all of a sudden so awful?
Note that it's clear that a lot of cases of this kind of "copyright violation" is actually just a case of failing memory: it's common for people to think they created something themselves even though they just remembered it.
Being an online-posting musician myself -- what rights do I have if this should ever happen to me, and what can be done to raise awareness about such things?"
Well, you have the rights guaranteed to you by copyright. You'll have to decide for yourself whether it's worth trying to enforce them. Maybe against Geffen it is.
You stand a better chance if you make something distinctive enough so that people actually recognize it as yours when someone else uses it. I don't think this counts.
whose underpinnings simply do not exist (BSD not running on ARM).
BSD is not the "underpinnings" of OS X; OS X is based on a heavily hacked Mach kernel. Only some parts of BSD sit on top of that as a compatibility layer.
Surely Apple's free to do what they want with their source code, unless it OSX is substantially based on code from elsewhere.
Big chunks of the OS X source code came from open source software (Mach, BSD, GNU), but they are complying with the licenses. A lot of the rest of the OS X source code came from NeXT.
So, a big part (I suspect the majority) of OS X source code was not developed at Apple, and Apple must comply with the third party licenses of that source code, and they apparently do. Many of those third party licenses simply don't require Apple to make available their modifications.
Darwin, the BSD based operating system that underlies what Apple has previously been calling OS X
Darwin has a significant amount of BSD code in it, but it is based on Mach.
said Frosty Hardison, a parent of seven who also said that he believes the Earth is 14,000 years old.
Everybody knows that God created the earth 6000 years ago! The Bible says so!
So I suppose that is why they based OS X on BSD, give their developer tools away for free
Apple is using a bunch of open source libraries, software, and open standards, but so is Microsoft.
Apple deliberately keeps key parts of their platform proprietary, thereby effectively making the entire platform proprietary. And they do that even when equivalent or better open source alternatives are available.
and innovate heavily in open standards?
Like what?
But what choice do those poor people have? After all, according to Cingular and Apple, Cingular apparently has such a flaky network that if you allow any third party applications on it, the entire network will go down, and Apple's platform is so susceptible to viruses that the only way to secure it is to lock it down.
One of open source's most touted benefits is its price. Download the software, install it--and don't pay a penny. That's the theory.
No, that's not the theory. Open source would be a better deal even if you paid the same for the software initially as you did for an equivalent commercial package. Why? Because open source reduces your long-term risks and costs.
We are not looking the philosofical part of the questin (this is OS, this is not). We literally don't care for that.
Nobody does. The reason people started open source and the reason it keeps going strong are sound business reason, not philosophy.
We look at what does the job best. And we buy and use it. And don't care for the price.
Well, then your university is irresponsible and not doing its job.
When a new, better iPod comes out, it will be able to play the same files. You can authorize an unlimited number of iPods. It would be a bigger deal if someone could touch Apple.
Yes, but I can't put them on any other player. For example, Apple doesn't have a widescreen video player with hard disk, Creative and others do.
Basically, what you're saying would be like buying DVDs from Sony and only being able to play them on Sony DVD players. It's evil.
The bottom line is that Apple, Microsoft, et al may be shipping insidious DRM technologies, but there's no obligation to use them.
But there is less and less of a choice. Over the next few years, increasingly, tracks are going to be released online-only and DRM-only, and then there will be an obligation to use them if you want to listen to music at all.