Posts by Tim Parker 858 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Apr 2007
"First point: it spells zor not zion."
Top to bottom, left to right, scanned as four letters *could* - in the wildest of captcha-esque reading - possibly be 'zion'.
Of course the whole bru-haha is 'Clearly rubbish' - but I can't help thinking that had Iran said that they weren't attending because the logo was too shite - well, I don't think anyone would have taken issue with that at all...
"Start coding properly in parallel."
.. well that's only going to really help where the work-load is itself parallelizable - and even when it is, it's often far from easy to actually implement sensibly... it's awfully easy (and, come on, a tad glib) to say 'do it properly', but that's not always possible or practical.
"That is too difficult, is it?"
No, no - and I didn't mean to suggest that it is absolutely impossible to connect the two - I was merely attempting to highlight the fact that some bits of kit can read SD cards without shelling out another 25-30 quid... it's not beyond the wit of man to think of reasons out why Apple might want to stop easy connection to mass storage - but makes for amusing watching the hoops that are required...
..and yes, I *do* like the iPad and indeed nearly all of Apples kit, but i'm not blind to some of more irritating points either, that's all.
'"app" is not a noun, it is an abbreviation for application.'
'app' is an abbreviation, yes, but application is a noun in this context (as a term referring to a computer program). I can't find a dictionary so far that doesn't classify it as such. If that quote from the OED is accurate, viz 'Computing a program', then I would suggest it is wrong.
"We don't need no stinking threads to do multi-tasking. We have Node.js running in only one thread."
..you need multiple execution streams of some sort for useful multi-tasking, even if it's just the
data + instruction block for the CPU - the fact that the 'scheduler' (The Node application in this case) is running on a single thread doesn't alter that, regardless of whether the execution streams are asynchronous or not.
"All these guys slagging off JavaScript need to wake up and start living in today's world. JavaScript is Turing complete.."
Great - so you have a conditional, some sort of jump instruction and can write to a memory address - please excuse me whilst I put the bunting up.
"Html5 WebSockets rule "
I think that sets the intellectual and technical level quite nicely for the next bit...
"especially when I can simulate VoIP with them!"
(..rummages for more bunting and perhaps a couple of flags..)
"Html5 WebSockets will revolutionise the web more so than Ajax."
My cat could probably 'revolutionise the web more so than Ajax'.
And I don't even have one.
"We have the technology now."
The technology is as old as the hills - this has been gone over by many folk already - the packaging into a single stack is convenient though.
"We just need to write the apps."
That would probably be a good idea.
"PS Event driven' is not dependent on multi-threading."
I don't think anybody really thought it was.
"We are not simplifying multi-threading here. We are abolishing it."
You may be choosing not to use it for this framework (and quite a nice framework it is too IMO) but if you somehow think this is new and edgy then, as has already been mentioned several times, think again. Is it useful ? Undoubtedly. Is is revolutionary ? Yeah... right.
"What's that doctor, ... you're saying that breast milk is actually safer for babies than processed cows milk?"
No - it's almost certainly not in general. It's certainly better for babies - modulo factors like toxic chemical pass-through or biological contamination - but safer as is ? No... part of the 'problem' people have pointed out with processed milk is that it's been so highly treated that hardly any self-respecting organism are going to want to be found alive in it, but the taste has become a poor substitute for the real thing in the process.
This whole story is a tale of ridiculously over-eager nannying, to be sure, but that doesn't make your comment any more correct.
"Oh my God...."
"What is it ?"
"I think... I think... ohmygod... I *think* it's an Andrew Orlowski comments section... "
"Oh for Lords sake man, don't be so stupid - those are just old wives tales - no such thing - absolutely ridiculous. For one minute I thought we had something important to.. "
"No NO - seriously ! Look, over there, the mummified body .. "
"What - the one holding the hockey stick ?"
"Yes - i'm sure that's one those fabled people who did Believe the Great Truth Of Andrews View Of All Climate Science... they were supposedly responsible for him closing the comments sections in the first place with their never ending attempts at reasoned debate and use of science.. oh course they were doomed, even if they were right - which was a cause of great debate back then"
"Doomed - why man, why ?"
"Well for one - they couldn't shout as loudly as the True Believers of Andrew - that's what seemed to be the one of the main factors in deciding a winner in the Comments.... secondly, they all froze to death during the little Ice Age during the Page minimum of the early 21st century..."
"What happened to them then, all gone ?"
"Pretty much - yeah. When the Great Doors of the Comments were closed, the ones left that survived the freeze had to listen the the preaching of The Andrew without any chance of debate - drove 'em mad. Occasionally one of them would send protestations to The Andrew via the E.Mail - they were either ignored or worse, He would choose a couple of words from the E.Mail - such as 'bottom' and 'goats' - and publish it in the name of the protester. That shut'em up pretty quick"
"I'd imagine - so what are we going do with this now then ?"
"Buggered if I know - there's no real point in telling anybody we've found Andrew Orlowskis Comment Section - they'd never believe us..."
"True.."
"I find acronyms are typically classified as initialisms which result in words"
Sorry - not strictly right and not what I intended. What I was trying to say was that acronyms can be, and often are, initialisms (but may use more letters, as in 'radar') but they should result in a 'word'. Initialisms, as far as i've come across, are not acronyms, e.g. IBM is probably not going to be a word (you never know though..) whereas RIM/rim (lip, edge etc) is not only pronouncable but already a proper word (cf. NATO which never was, until it was)
> "...or because it's the correct way of representing it, given that it's an acronym ? I'm not aware
> of any rule that says you can't try and pronounce an ancronym - indeed it's often the fact that they
> facilitate vocal recounting that drives their construction."
> Yes, you mean like LASER, RADAR, SONAR, etc.? Oh, wait...
Yep - you're right - they have become commonly used words now - doesn't stop the acronym properly being represented in capitals however, and as time progresses and RIM becomes more such a word i'll stop being such a prig (probably). That said, it could be argued the initialism/acronyms for things like laser should have been in lower case (as both types involve the initial letters of the words comprising the resulting acronym/initialism, and all the words in, e.g. laser are properly lower case modulo initial capitalisation) whereas Research In Motion (as capitalised by the company themselves) would result in either giving an upper case result.
> If I remember right, acronym means a shortened form of a phrase, spoken as a word, and
> RIM pronounced R-I-M (as I do, actually), would be an initialism.
There is quite a debate about the precise meaning of acronym vs initialism - I find acronyms are typically classified as initialisms which result in words (rather than collections of letters). You pronounce RIM as arr-aye-emm, so initialism is appropriate - I say 'rim', as does the article I was referring to, so acronym would (arguably) seem closer.
Whatever. 'Rim' just seems shit to me.
> But carry on...
I will - tah.
"But a number of readers don't like this approach, preferring 'RIM', even though it is still spoken and read as a word, because they are either used to seeing it that way in print, or because they feel it mocks their favoured smartphone platform."
...or because it's the correct way of representing it, given that it's an acronym ? I'm not aware of any rule that says you can't try and pronounce an ancronym - indeed it's often the fact that they facilitate vocal recounting that drives their construction.
You _could_ choose you own way of doing things of course, and ignore what most of the rest of the universe does, nothing wrong with that at all - no no - but in this case it just comes across as a rather juvenile "Yeah i'm different - look at me, man - all edgy and different and cool n'that"... at least to my mind.
Oh yes - and you don't tend to use Rim instead of RIM anyway, do you ?... even in those stories whose title has 'Rim' in it.
"The first paragraph of that just reinforces that this is the same action as Apple had to take with the VLC mess."
Yep
"The problem doesn't seem to be the license, or that you can distribute the source, the problem is that you cannot redistribute the downloaded binary because it is DRMed, "
The agreement states that the application must be signed - whether this equates to DRM in this context I don't know. It also states (4.b)
"If you provide your own license agreement, your license must, at a minimum, (a) permit the Purchaser to download the Application on up to five (5) mobile devices associated with that Purchaser’s Windows Live ID,without payment of any additional fees to you"
..which doesn't preclude redistribution of a signed binary.
"I can't imagine there's anything actually stopping you from releasing your source code"
True - but that wouldn't necessarily be an option for a proprietary (but freely distributable) binary-only application
It may be aimed at GPLv3, but it doesn't appear to be limited to that. Each of the sub-clauses of section 1.l is sufficient in itself to cause the license to be classified as an Excluded License - in particular 1.l.(iii) has a much, much further reach than any of the GPL licenses. Whether anyone at Microsoft would enforce it on, e.g. a application containing or dependant upon BSD licensed software, is an interesting point - but the conditions are there to allow it AFAICS.
Hi Chris,
I read your article and don't disagree with the reasoning.. however 1.l.(iii) applies (very) broadly to most of the major open source licenses and a few proprietary ones i've seen - AFAICS the wording of that section would indicate that redistribution without charge is a sufficient condition in and of itself, and is quite separate from any parts of the (L)GPLv3, such as section 6, that would cause a problem.
As stated in the agreement, the question of redistribution does not specify where that distribution takes place or how - so buying an application under a permissive license and, say, passing it on (legally) to others could be argued as constituting a redistribution, and would cause the license to classified as Excluded.
That said IANAL but i've been through enough similar legal paperwork to recognise some of the more obvious wriggle room - whether this is intentional or not (probably not in this case).
"Means that GPLv2 and possibly even LGPL are excluded too."
..and MIT, BSD, Apache, Mozilla... in fact pretty much anything you want if you're allowed to redistribute the application without charge. It's not just a GPL3 thing, regardless of what the original intent was.
The Microsoft Windows® Phone Marketplace Application Provider Agreement actually applies not just to open-source applications, but any applications which can be redistributed without charge - be they open source or proprietary binaries. So if you want to allow your users to, e.g. share that application directly with others without recompense, then you can't put on the marketplace. The relevant sections would seem to be 1.l.(iii) and 5.e listed below [esp. note the use of the word 'or' in 1.l.(iii)]
--
Terms and Conditions
1. Definitions.
...
l. “Excluded License” means any license requiring, as a condition of use, modification and/or distribution of the software subject to the license, that the software or other software combined and/or distributed with it be (i) disclosed or distributed in source code form; (ii) licensed for the purpose of making derivative works; or (iii) redistributable at no charge. Excluded Licenses include, but are not limited to the GPLv3 Licenses. For the purpose of this definition, “GPLv3 Licenses” means the GNU General Public License version 3, the GNU Affero General Public License version 3, the GNU Lesser General Public License version 3, and any equivalents to the foregoing.
...
5. Application Requirements.
Each Application you submit to Microsoft for distribution through the Windows Phone Marketplace must comply with the following requirements (the “Application Requirements”):
...
e. The Application must not include software, documentation, or other materials that, in whole or in part, are governed by or subject to an Excluded License, or that would otherwise cause the Application to be subject to the terms of an Excluded License.
"In the demo I saw there was a balesio run against a couple of images. The resulting output files were much smaller than the input files. "
I can show this with compression and file optimizations for certain files, but not in general. There's a reason for that.
"Also, just to enjoy a tart comment for a second, there was no press release, the story being based on an interview."
Fair enough - i'll adjust my comment - "sounding like a press release". If you know anything about compression, file formats and/or information theory - which i'm sure you do - i'd hope you could see the lack of any useful analysis on this "technology", and why it doesn't (cannot) work in general as well as portrayed.
"I dunno, the assertion that Oracle broke rules seems a bit contentious."
Not really - and there's form on this from Sun. A bit of reading around will fill in the details for you, but in brief - there was an obligation to provide test suites in some circumstances (which Apache complied with), often touted as an incentive for 3rd party implementations, but Sun refused to supply. Oracle was one of a number of JCP members who cried foul. Forward on in time, Oracle owns the JCP process and goes back on it's stance.
"If they broke a rule, then why no lawsuit to that effect? "
Lots of reasons, including the depth of pockets, whether it's enforceable in the first place and futility (rules can and will be changed)
"Many companies, to take one, IBM, would like to see Java under the ASL."
IBM ?... maybe a while ago - they've since been 'persuaded' to march under the OpenJDK banner...
(Thufir Hawat - there's a name i've not seen in a long while !)
BRIAN: I haven't got anything against the VAX. Consider the Alpha.
ARTHUR: He's having a go at the Alpha now !
------%<------
BTW what do you have against the Alpha ? My only personal memories were of a 500MHz Alpha Firestorm workstation I used that was the fastest thing I saw for years... and they seem very well respected in the HPC community.. so what gives ?
> "you should never do anything"
> That's actually what non-trained people should do. Always.
Indeed, except for obvious exceptions, but this person was trained - and actually would prefer to watch someone die than help *at all*, *ever* - that is my objection. I'm aware of the first aid advice to some degree so i'm not picking at that, even though folk are propounding it in an overly simplistic manner in the interest of brevity - all I wanted to hear was a confirmation, or denial, from the OP that they would not do anything to prevent a death, no matter what.
"And this is taught in First Aid Courses..."
Some sensible advice in that which is hardly new, agreed, but what is not taught in first aid courses, last I looked, was that you should never do anything - which is what Wommit seemed to be proposing, and what I was objecting to. There are too many obvious counter arguments to that to make any sense.
"This is purly another article that has an itresting point of view."
It has interesting findings in it, yes indeed...
"i like that the authors don't have an axe to grind in either direction"
...ah, you're new around here, yes ? (or you're Andrew Orlowski and ICMFP)
"anyone who reads that is pro or against need a step later to get off their horse."
I would normally be tempting to believe so, although given the interesting selection of articles from El Reg about the climate i'd suggest that the benefit of the doubt has been well and truly spent...
For a less tabloid treatment of such matters from an IT site, i'd perhaps suggest Ars Technica, if not for the sole view then as a potentially useful foil - the article related to this paper is below
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/02/cleaning-up-dirty-coal-could-lead-to-temperature-spike-in-a-few-decades.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss
"It was all a lie and was just spin by the previous government"
"The MOD could never get 22 Chinooks into service to make a difference in Afghanistan "
"They are probably realising that they have the money for the Chinooks, but they have not funded the extra enginners or pilots to fly them! Something the previous Government completely ignored!"
"Jeez, try and report facts not speculation and spin!"
OOOOOooo irony - thy name is neb.
"Funny that some of the most precise miniaturised mechanical machines, ie: watch movements, are put together exclusively with slot screws. I suspect the skill of the artificer has a lot to do with whether they're considered and abomination."
Seconded. Many of the cross-head screw layouts were done to deliberately encourage cam-out, to deter knuckle-dragger operators/Conan the Chippy from blindly over-tightening, so can hardly be held up as a pinnacle of design...
"Apple has been using torx screws for many, many years, making early Macs tricky for anyone but an authorised repair engineer to open.
The access the internet brought to Asian markets eventually made torx screwdrivers available to anyone keen enough to seek them out, and they're now readily available from many hardware shops."
Um - not to appear too picky - but Torx wrenches and drivers have been readily available for donkeys years - how far back are you thinking ? (I used to use them to open up HP HVD SCSI drives for amusement, rune inspection etc)
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' " By adopting an Apache license thay have gone to the other extreme and basically given away all their work to any proprietary shark that wants to freeload on the tax payers' dollar and take the whole shebang private. "
What kind of "argument" is that? Even if MS were to "embrace and extend" OpenStack, it won't stop others from using the official OpenStack data and competing with their *own* contributions to the project.'
--------
I expect the worry is not that extensions will be added that can compete on merit - but that some entity will introduce them under highly restrictive conditions (if at all) and use a dominant position in a particular market to make them a de facto standard; a 'standard' which others cannot comply with. The sentence quoted does not specifically mention Microsoft and, although they could arguably make an easy "go to" villian in the first instance, the argument is applicable to anyone with sufficient leverage.
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'I keep reading variations on this bizarre logic from pro-GPL advocates, but they've never once managed to provide any evidence that this anything other than a straw-man 'problem'.'
--------
I don't think this is just limited to pro-GPL advocates (or supporters of any other licensing style) and I believe there is plenty of evidence (both direct and circumstantial) of this happening; with respect to Microsoft you may care to remember e.g. some of the details of the DoJ vs Microsoft anti-trust trial or the Halloween documents (c.f. the discussion of the "de-commoditization" of protocols and applications).
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'Even Public Domain greatly predates the GPL, but it's still working just fine today.'
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I'm not sure this sentence really makes any sense - perhaps you could eloborate ?
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' Personally, the only reason I can see for such vocal advocacy of GPL licensing is egotism.'
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I agree that the noise coming from people that seem believe that the GPL is the only possible license for any situation is irritating but, alas, the most vocal supporters of a belief are often not those most qualified to explain it - and I don't believe that is limited to any particular 'side' of any argument. That said, i'm sure that few people - either for or against the licensing style used in the GPL - believe that egotism is really is the only reason for advocating it.
"I was just wondering about the time taken to cover 200 miles at mach 5. Turns out it's about 3.15 seconds."
Unless i'm musch missteakin - 3.15 seconds at Mach 5 would get you about 17,500 feet at sea level on an average-ish hyper-sonic projectile flinging day. That's about 3 Nautical miles which, though quite a fair distance, is a tad shy of 200 miles (Statute or otherwise)
Canada, though jolly enormous, is not the worlds largest country - at least that's what the most of the references i've seen and (more importantly) the CIA reckon...
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2147rank.html
..and even if the CIA are wrong, i'm not going to be the one to tell them :)
I'm not really a football fan, but lets have a look....
"Oh yay, even the Register's joining in what appears to be the new national hobby - blaming the BBC for the failed World Cup bid."
I thought John Leyden said..
"Rumours from Zurich suggest voters punished England for its media's "hostile" coverage of allegations of corruption"
(that's rumours, from elsewhere) and
"The Beeb's decision to air an edition of Panorama on Monday .. may have been particularly untimely."
'may' - good word that, ask any lawyer. Regardless of the whinging from elsewhere, i'm not convinced John said the bid failed because of the Beeb - no. Your reading and opinion, obviously, differs - fair enough. Right, where were we ?...
"It couldn't be because...the infrastructure's not there,"
No - or at least highly unlikely given the comments from FIFA
"and we're still trying to figure out how the fuck we're going to get everything done and paid for before the Olympics,"
..probably not, no..
"and England fans are notoriously fickle and would likely cease to give a shit/support the event/spend any money on it as soon as England get knocked out (as they inevitably will, let's be honest), could it?"
No. We would have, they wouldn't.
"No no, it must've been because of those allegations of corruption recently. "
No (this is getting fun!)
"Because it's not like anyone else has ever suggested FIFA were a corrupt bunch of thieving, self-serving shitehawks, is it?"
No indeed - absolutely right on that last one.
Interesting you have all the figures to hand, I didn't. My first attempt at Googling for more information used this phrase
'proportion of distracted driving accidents caused by cell phone use'
The top hit on from that search was a Washington Post article from January this year that started..
"Twenty-eight percent of traffic accidents occur when people talk on cellphones or send text messages while driving, according to a study released [Tuesday Jan 12th 2010] by the National Safety Council."
Further articles from that search show similar results.
Now this is the internet i'm looking on, granted, but pray tell - what authoritative figures do you have that leads you to pronounce the number 'trivial' ? I'm not denying there are other issues, far from it, but this vague denial seems to be more opinion - and poorly sourced opinion at that - than fact.
"First, you install the OS, then on top of that, you install the server applications – say Apache to serve web pages or whatever – and hand-write the config files to make it do what you need. Then you modify more config files and settings to lock down the machine's security, possibly install some monitoring tools and deploy it."
What utter nonsense - for example, much as generally dis-like SuSE these days it has, for a long while now, been ridiculously easy to set-up a number of the basic networking services from the GUI (under YaST), e.g. file/print sharing, DHCP/DNS/NIS, NFS, FTP... and i'm not sure what server distributions (or, indeed, many others) _don't_ install all the usual suspects for you... Configuration of Apache may need more work to set-up as you wish - TBH I don't know as I generally don't need it to do anything other than the most very basic serving (which can also be done graphically, with ease), if anything at all - but to generalise that to all server services is just daft.
I'm not taking anything away from the specialist Unix/Linux distros - i've used a couple myself when it's suited my needs, and i've been very pleased with them - but the situation outlined above from the article is not based in reality IME.
Ummm - this is news ?.. The proliferation of new flora variants and adaptation of existing ones to higher levels of temperature and CO2 is a given, has been for.... umm pretty much as long as I can remember - and I wasn't aware that it was being disputed now by anyone - regardless of their stance on anthropogenic climate change.
It also only a small part of the debate about possible global changes - some beneficial to some areas, some not.
Interesting, for sure, but what was the point that i've missed ?
I dropped off the end of that one - here's the fellow in full :-
"In light of Oracle Corporation failing to uphold their responsibilities as a Specification Lead under the JSPA and breaking their signed covenants with the Apache Software Foundation that are the conditions under which we agreed to participate in the JCP, we call upon the Executive Committee of the JCP to continue its clear, strong and public support for Java as an open specification ecosystem that is a level playing field for participants in order to ensure that anyone -- any individual or commercial, academic or non-profit entity -- is able to implement and distribute Java specifications under terms of their choice."
https://blogs.apache.org/foundation/entry/statement_by_the_asf_board1
"They want everyone bright and shiny-eyed at their press conference on the 9th (that would be... today). So I certainly haven't read the report, but I can still tell you roughly what I think it's going to say"
As the report is out today [0], why not just wait until you've read it and then finish off your article - i'm reasonably sure the desperately expectant readership could have just about hung on a wee bit longer without descending into total anarchy ....
[0] http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/
"As an F# developer"
..that neatly answers my question, "Does anybody actually use F# ?" :) I've heard a bit of press about it from time to time (including as part of a series on influential programming languages !) - but not about any real world adopters. I'd be interested in hearing from others as to it's uptake.
"Time to look at what Scala is all about"
To it's credit, it's been going for nearly 10 years and doesn't have any sign of disappearing any time soon - so hopefully, if nothing else, it might make you feel a little more secure in it's longevity.
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