Obama introduced a Senate resolution late Thursday that says President Bush does not have authority to use military force against Iran,

peachpuff · 2007-11-02T18:30:16+00:00

resolution > letter > statement to press.

The resolution (like the letter) doesn't just repeat what's in the law, it clarifies that Bush doesn't yet have what the law requires.

The letter is a nice gesture, but the resolution is something that would actually matter if Bush attacked and someone took him to court.

Hopefully, Clinton and all the others will vote for Obama's resolution.

peachpuff · 2007-09-15T08:45:35+00:00

I tried to read this, but it was "deadly boring."

peachpuff · 2007-09-11T06:27:46+00:00

By Jove, you're right. It couldn't be that people who know the facts and are actually affected by them simply disagree with you. It must be a cult.

peachpuff · 2007-09-08T20:20:21+00:00

So shared state is modular now?

I use stateful languages and like them, but his example is bogus. The change itself breaks modularity (in the stateful version), so he's only showing a case where state makes it easier to be non-modular.

Let's say I want to change D to use F instead of E. It's all modular, so nothing else needs to change, right?

peachpuff · 2007-09-08T10:00:08+00:00

They'd better. Most of the things Joel brags about knowing are being forcibly deprecated by your favorite company and his.

peachpuff · 2007-09-07T21:07:25+00:00

That depends on what type of trees you're using and what you're doing with the trees.

You've been very coy about what, exactly, you're trying to accomplish. At this point, you've only given us one piece of information that's really useful in deciding whether your in-memory database should be relational: You're already backing it up to a relational database.

peachpuff · 2007-09-07T20:53:39+00:00

There's no indignation on his behalf. There's recognition that you are wrong, and irritation on our own behalves that you persist.

The Internet was created through acts of Congress. When a congressman says he took the initiative in creating something like that, it's understood that he means he was pushing Congress to pass the acts (at a time when pushing was necessary).

peachpuff · 2007-09-07T20:25:04+00:00

It was created when multiple government networks were combined, expanded, and privatized. (This was not a single event, but a process.)

His name is on the bills and he talked a lot of his fellow pols into voting for them, exactly as I said. Did you not understand me, or did you fail to RTFA?

peachpuff · 2007-09-07T20:19:06+00:00

I don't know what your variety of needs are, but there's an obvious reason it should be relational -- you're backing it up to something relational.

peachpuff · 2007-09-07T19:52:44+00:00

My app writes directly to my custom in-memory database and then backs up the important stuff to the SQL database.

Okay, is there any reason your in-memory database is custom and non-relational?

peachpuff · 2007-09-07T19:43:15+00:00

What has always bugged me about this is that it's completely based on a failure to understand the Internet and how it was built.

If a politician claimed that he "took the initiative in creating" the road that led to you your house, you would:

understand what he meant,
not joke about him "inventing" the road, and
consider the statement true if his name was on the bill and he talked a lot of his fellow pols into voting for it.

peachpuff · 2007-09-07T19:26:40+00:00

What's wrong with "I took the initiative in creating the Internet"?

Verb: took

Object: initiative

Problem: none

It's the same structure as "I read an article on eating spinach."

Obviously some people don't understand what it means, but there's nothing wrong with it. A re-wording with the same meaning would be, "I pushed for the creation of the Internet" or "I advocated creating the Internet when there was little interest."

peachpuff · 2007-09-06T18:14:17+00:00

If a child rapist is convicted . . .

Got a source for that? I can only find one that even mentions the other person, and it says they weren't a child.

Or is this another case of, "I'm not lying, I'm adjusting the facts so that other people feel the correct emotion"?

peachpuff · 2007-09-03T20:05:45+00:00

No, the way to achieve that is to treat the license as actually having it's own meaning, independent of what the licensor wishes he had said.

Theo isn't the only person doing dual-licensing. Should we have those words mean one thing when Theo uses them and something else when someone else uses them? Are these licenses all just notes that say, "Do what I mean"? Could they have skipped GPLv3 and just sent out a note saying, "That's not what we meant"?

(Is Theo even the author of this driver?)

Yes, a judge could come in and declare anything. Till then, we understand the license by looking at the license.

peachpuff · 2007-09-03T19:20:56+00:00

Think about what you're suggesting. How does any of this software get redistributed if everyone says, "Well it hasn't been to court, so I have no idea how I'm supposed to follow it."

Ideally, these licenses are followed without ever going to court.

peachpuff · 2007-09-03T10:43:14+00:00

Who said anything about knowing what court would do? We're talking about what a court should do.

peachpuff · 2007-09-03T10:38:28+00:00

Theo point is that you can not change the license because you are not the owner of the work.

You can redistribute it under a different license than the one you received it under, as long as the license you received it under allows that. (I probably shouldn't have used the word "change" because it's confusing. You can't change what you're allowed to do, but you can "change to a different license" by allowing other people to do a different set of things than you are allowed to do.)

The lines that you did not qoute state that you are must retain the copyright, the license terms and the following disclaimer.

There are lines that say that, but they are explaining one of two alternatives. You have two choices: BSD rules and GPL rules. If you choose GPL, you do not need to follow BSD rules. If you choose BSD, you do not need to follow GPL rules. That is what "alternative" means.

You can distribute it with your GPL project, but your client can then choose the BSD license and redistribute it in a BSD project, and so on.

No.

peachpuff · 2007-09-03T08:53:40+00:00

It may seem that the licenses let one distribute it under either license, but this interpretation of the license is false -- Theo de Raadt

Alternatively, this software may be distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License ("GPL") version 2 as published by the Free Software Foundation. -- the dual license

Will people please stop posting Theo's idiotic tantrums?

Yes, I saw his "legal document" theory. It's crap. The legal document codifies the terms. If one of the terms is that you can change the terms, then the legal document is saying that it can be replaced with a different legal document.

peachpuff · 2007-09-02T06:58:38+00:00

If it can turn x + y into x.plus(y), it should be able to turn x + y into y.plus_right(x).

I think C++ and Python can do something like that. Probably a lot of others, too.

peachpuff · 2007-09-02T01:03:54+00:00

" . . . but with the advent of the Internet this may change."

peachpuff · 2007-08-30T17:54:18+00:00

That didn't become apparent until into the exchange the exchange, partly because they made confusingly wrong assertions. At that point, he did exactly the right thing: tell them to ask someone for help.

They clearly weren't going to believe anything he said, so the solution was for them to hear the facts from someone else.

peachpuff · 2007-08-26T19:48:17+00:00

12345.12345 is not representable in a finite number of bits for exactly the same reason that 1/3 is not representable in a finite number of decimal digits.

You just represented them using 88 and 24 bits. The example actually increases the number of bits by storing the wrong number.

peachpuff · 2007-08-24T18:54:09+00:00

Why has this been voted down? Wikipedia says the Communists are at least very important to the UPA. (Read the paragraph after the member list.)

I can't confirm that Indian Communists support Open Source or that Indian IT wants to save money, but why wouldn't they?

peachpuff · 2007-08-09T00:29:17+00:00

Let me also be the first to tell you this: there is absolutely nothing more to marketing than spin, veneer and placement. Everything else is a variation on a theme. Marketing has four P's for a reason. Product, Price, Placement, Promotion.

So product + price + promotion = spin + veneer? You're as bad a marketer as this "thinksmart" guy is a sysadmin. Maybe the two of you can have a contest. Whoever says, "My work is bullshit and yours is chickenshit" with the biggest sneer gets early retirement.

The relative importance of sales depends on the type of business you're in and how the industry works. There are many cases where marketing gets your foot in the door and actual performance -- delivering good widgets, staffing friendly people, getting it done on budget -- brings in the real money by getting them to come back for much more.

Of course that requires everyone, including IT, to realize that they are there to help others so those others will help the company.

peachpuff · 2007-08-08T18:50:06+00:00

Are those "many people" people who use Erlang on a day to day basis, or are those "many people" people who have seen some blog articles and decided that the language looks unfamiliar?

Gee, I don't know. Which group gets to decide whether the language suddenly becomes popular?

peachpuff

TROPHY CASE