Posts by Doctor Syntax 33118 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
"it's off to the House of Lords next"
Then, assuming it gets Royal Assent, it'll be off the ECHR which also can't be scheduled yet. After that, in the absence of an unlikely outbreak of sanity in Whitehall, we go for another iteration of the loop.
Or, in event of a Brexit, the City will start screaming and lobbying as they realise that they can't meet EU requirements about personal data transfer.
"it has the potential to be a bit of a local envoriomental disaster area"
You didn't bother to quote what you were referring to but your "it" seems to be the Severn barrage. You're wrong, it wouldn't be just a local environmental disaster. The role of the Severn estuary in feeding migrating birds would make it a disaster on a continental scale..
Build nuclear now years ago.
The reason why we've been unnecessarily shoving valuable fossil hydrocarbons up power station chimneys for most of my adult life has been down to self-styled environmentalists objecting to nuclear power. We've missed out on decades of the investment needed to develop a mature technology with maximal safety and minimal environmental impact. When all else fails we'll end up with a desperate dash in which cost and any other concerns are disregarded because it's all been left too late.
"environmental impacts on wildlife"
ISTR reading about tests at Strangford quite some time ago which concluded that this wasn't really a problem. It's a good test site given that there's the QUB marine station immediately adjacent, that the turbines occupied a reasonable percentage of the opening and that the tidal flows are very strong with the entire tidal volume of the Lough rushing in and out through a very narrow opening.
"Just wondered why it's not even mentioned in the piece."
I think it's much less developed. It's a more hostile environment to place free-standing turbines. If you've got a bit of land in an exposed situation you could plant readily available wind turbines there and collect a nice subsidy for delivering an erratic supply of power. Submerged turbines in tidal races are only just getting towards production. The alternative of building tidal reservoirs is apt to cause real environmental problems because promising sites tend to be wild-life friendly places, something the pseudo-environmentalists are apt to overlook.
The other explanation might be that wind turbines and solar are easy to see so the p-es are reminded what they're getting for their our money.
ALM, DevOps - it all smacks of consultancies who seem to have had no previous experience of real life in IT.
Assuming the project isn't a death march and doesn't get canned after go-live initial development takes a reasonably short period compared with the time spent in production. During production it gets maintained as requirements change and get added to, and maybe well-hidden bugs become apparent. Hence my contention that development is the process of launching a software system into the maintenance cycle.
Periodically this normality is apparently rediscovered by people who appear to think they've made an astounding discovery and it's given a new name. The cynical*, of course, might think that they secretly knew about it all the time but just want to hang a few new tools, courses, consultancy jobs etc. round it. They're not really as deeply ignorant as they appear, they're just selling to PHBs who don't know any better.
*Cynical - moi?
"In reality, these stores will have just enough stock to satisfy the majority of customers"
That's the majority of self-selected customers. All those at the extremes of the distribution will go elsewhere. Unless you're a good match for the store buyer, just don't waste your time going to such places. Go somewhere that understands customers.
"They won't have the money to sue anyway"
If we're just talking about comms costs, bill them, 30 days to pay, then go to the small claims court. However much money MS's lawyers charge is of no relevance. Get a judgement & if they don't pay send the bailiffs into the local office to seize goods to the value.
"http://gojblog.net"
The blog starts by claiming Microsoft started this a couple of years ago. As it's less then one year that's a bad start. Having a glaring factual error just devalues the rest of it, especially when it's the first thing you read.
"So no sue-ball."
Depending on your jurisdiction over-wide terms might make the entire EULA unenforceable. A EULA which is only displayed after you've bought the product might have the same effect. But if suing is out - and even if it isn't - a charge of corporate manslaughter might still be possible,
" how do you handle THAT kind of opponent without losing yourself in paranoia?"
The first requirement is to realise that you have that kind of opponent.
Then you design the system to be secure rather than designing the system and trying to bolt security on afterwards.
"the Dutch people alone were given the vote in a referendum on future EU membership of the Eukraine"
I think this is the problem with the EU. There have been several updates to the treaty arrangements. Presentation for popular voting on these has been sporadic. When the Irish voted against the Lisbon treaty they were told to vote again until they came up with the right answer.
Each of the treaties should have required approval by an EU-side vote. That would have limited the politicians and officials to options which could command majorities, it would have encouraged them to keep in touch with the populus to determine what would and wouldn't fly and to explain what and why they were presenting for approval. For the officials requiring informed consent might have been a useful discipline.
"Never give unexpected callers the time of day."
No, I give them as much time as they're willing to take. Whilst they're hanging on "a moment" they're not scamming anyone else. I don't get too many; I'm convinced there are "don't bother calling" lists in circulation.
"The PC market is slowing, so what's needed is a cool, compelling new version of Windows that makes people say "wow!" and enables really exciting new usages"
If W7 has been doing pretty well what its users need then I can't see most users regarding anything as cool or compelling (unless you're thinking of enticing Apple users to move over ;). New uses, yes, if they need something that wasn't in W7 or, even better in their existing PC hardware(because it's sales of PC that the industry needs to stimulate.
However I don't think anyone has invented anything in that category for a good while now. Innovation seems to have moved over to what can be done online. If that needs a PC then the existing PCs are capable enough but the indications are that most such innovations can be done with a tablet, phone or chromebook.
"It would have been better for everyone but the lawyers if Google had struck a licensing deal with Sun or Oracle"
IIRC they tried to but Sun/Oracle wouldn't licence the particular subset. They'd licence something that was too small or too big to fit in the memory that Google wanted. So Google implemented their own chosen subset. In hindsight maybe they should have changed a lot of the identifiers* to produce an incompatible library. The resulting split in the Java development library might not have been to Oracle's liking, but then, why should Google care?
* There's a limit as to how much you can do that. If everyone else uses max(), for instance, and has done long before the Java API used it, then why use something different.
"Not all of Oracle's claims are supportable, particularly the claim made at Arse that last week's trial sets a legal precedent. It doesn't at all."
Quite right, it doesn't. The existing precedent is that of the appeal against the decision of the existing jury. That flew in the face of the development world's custom and practice in regard to APIs. That was a dangerous precedent which why just about everyone else in that world outside the Oracle camp is concerned about this.
What happens to this appeal - does it go to the same court as the previous appeal? If not is there a chance that the appeal might take another look at the whole case and reinstate the original jury's verdict?
"Either way, Oracle wins."
No. If they win they have to GPL any currently proprietary code that calls GPLed library. They're not going to like that.
Google, meanwhile have to change the APIs to their implementation of the Java/Dalvic library and then carry on as before. It creates a big disconnect between versions. The two implementations of the language then start to drift apart. Maybe new developers might look at the Android market and just stick with that so Oracle loses mind-share.
It could be a Pyrrhic victory.
"If Google wins I can pinch 11,000 lines of someone else's copyrighted OSS code and disregard the license terms entirely. And if 11,000, why not 12,000. And if it's widely distributed already, why not the whole lot?"
If Google wins you can use an API of any length. That doesn't mean you can use the code that implements the API and disregard the license terms.
If Google lose it means you can't code against some library without having permission from the copyright holder(s) of that library. What's that you say? I already have a licence for the library so I have a licence for the APL? Not necessarily. You might be a third party developer; your customer has the licence, you don't - now how do you do your job?
Be careful what you wish for - you might just get it.
The original case, AFAICR had a number of amicus briefs on behalf of the argument that an API should not be regarded as copyright. That is because any piece of software using a library needs to incorporate at least some of the declarations contained in the API so that the constants, variables and methods used in the API can be referred to in the code.* If the API is copyright then nobody can write code against it without being granted a licence to do so. It would be a major impediment to software development. Software development custom has been to regard the API as being outside the scope of the copyright on the implementing code.
The original instruction to the jury by the judge - who appears to be not in the least confused - was to this effect and the jury so found. The problem arose because the appeal overturned this and, IIRC, SCOTUS refused to hear an appeal against that. This left a very serious situation for software developers - they would routinely have to infringe copyright simply to do their jobs.
The present decision is nothing more than damage limitation by making use of the API fair use. It's not ideal. If this is overturned then everyone's in trouble. The best that can then come out of it is that Oracle will find themselves in as much trouble as anyone else. If APIs are covered by copyright and use is subject to licence than that extends to the APIs on all GPLed code Oracle use. Oracle would then need to abide by the GPL and provide, under GPL, the source to any currently proprietory code which calls GPLed code. The penalty for not doing so would be revocation of the licence to use that GPLed code.
This is in danger of turning into an intractable mess if Oracle do win at appeal and SCOTUS don't overturn it. The best that can be said about it is that it would be restricted to the US (unless some other court accepts the US court decision as a precedent). It means software development there would become very difficult. It would also mean that it would become difficult to supply software developed outside the danger zone into the US; restricting the software market to the rest of the world. At some point the US would have to introduce legislation to overturn it. Ideally the Berne convention needs an addendum to clarify the situation.
There is, of course, the possibility that an appeal would review the entire case, overturn the previous appeal and reinstate the original jury's finding of fact. That would be by far the best outcome.
*Not universally true. Languages which allow identifiers to be used without prior declaration don't need it. Anyone who's made much use of such languages will almost certainly recall the bugs they created by simply mistyping a variable name.
"I'm always amazed at the miracles people expect you to work when it comes to spam-filtering."
What amazes me is that the one thing Microsoft let through is the one thing they ought to find easiest to filter out: spam pretending to come from them telling me to click to here or my account would be deleted or that my mail box is full. They ought to be able to filter it because they should be able to work out that they didn't send it.
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