Re: [GTALUG] Has the graphics-card world gone mad?

[Evan Leibovitch via talk]

On Tue, 30 Mar 2021 at 16:25, James Knott via talk  wrote:

Life may be good, but LG products aren't.  I've had a monitor and cell
> phone made by them.  I wasn't happy with either.
>


It seems like LG heard our comments and just gave up.


- Evan
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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[Nicholas Krause via talk]

On 4/7/21 5:44 PM, Lennart Sorensen via talk wrote:

On Wed, Apr 07, 2021 at 11:21:52AM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:

When I was an undergrad at University of Waterloo, we were required to
use FORTRAN (WatFiv).  I hated it.  I liked the notation of Algol
better and Algol-W (W for Wirth) was a good implementation for student
uses.  I even created a bit of a rebellion, but it was put down.

The answer was going to be PL/I.  But PLIWAT never got done.

(Luckily, I missed having WatBol (COBOL) imposed on me.  But I was
a spear carrier in that project.  I worked on optimizing COMASS
execution; COMASS was used to implement Z1, a systems implementation
language used to write WATBOL.)

In your era, did they forced JAVA on you?  If so, I would understand
hating it.


No java arrived as I was finishing, so I saw the awful plugin for the
browser and also saw javascript (livescript initially before marketing
at netscape renamed it to jump on the java bandwagon).  I did soon after
have to try to deal with people wanting to use java and the comptibility
issues it had.  It was all hype, and for some reason corporations fell
for the hype.  Now they have a ton of garbage they can't easily get
rid of.


Why, in particular, do you think JAVA is a bad general purpose
language for ordinary programmers?  Note: I don't actually know JAVA.


It tries to make everything a class, except when it doesn't (like integers
are not a class, while just about everything else is).  main is a class.
It takes all the object oriented things C++ got wrong, and borrows
those, rather than borrowing it from a language that got it right.
If you have to have object oriented programming, at least do it right,
not the C++ way.

While I would agree with your other points. The problem is you have two
choices either a) people have to learn a newer way of doing OO or b)
keep doing the same thing for the most part. Unfortunately, when designing
a new language you kinda have the advantage of being more popular if you
do a). Granted one thing that is much better about C++ is templates and now
concepts are expanded at compile time in Java it seems that generics aren't.
This can run into a runtime penalty, through C++ has the issue with try and
catch which is a problem in the embedded or real time world. I would through
not that I like C++'s OO if you've used C++20 considering some of it's
changes like concepts.

Nick



I know reasons why you or I might dislike it:

- essentially cannot be statically compiled


Definitely an annoyance at times.  Interestingly golang went the other
way and essentially can't by dynamically compiled and isn't objected
oriented (although it allows functions to be associated with types which
gives you most of the best parts of object oriented programming and
making types that can work across another set of types).


- uses UTF-16 (I think).  The worst representation of UNICODE.


It does.


- the library is a sprawling mess.  I'd guess that it is impossible to
   master

- traditional JAVA programming style creates a surfeit of
   abstractions, making it hard to understand what's actually going on

- implementations are very fat.  For performance reasons, jitting is
   used.  This adds another layer of separation between your program
   and real hardware.

- tuning JAVA program performance seems to too-often devolve into
   blindly twiddling knobs on the JVM.

- JAVA cannot be improved: so much inertia, so horrible governance.

What are your reasons?

Those reasons don't make it a horrible teaching language, especially
if you subset the library.


There are much better languages for teaching.  Many places have
fortunately switched to some of them.

The resources used by a java program are usually terrible, and there
is often not much you can do about it as a programmer.  The garbage
collection isn't great (not sure it ever is in any language).

Java also is rather terrible at interfacing with other languages.
It wanted to be its own ecosystem that didn't deal with anyone else.
I guess to do the 'run anywhere' idea required that, even though that
hardly ever worked.  The fact features keep getting deprecated means
many older java programs don't run anywhere anymore (good luck if you
used jfx)


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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Wed, Apr 07, 2021 at 11:21:52AM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
> When I was an undergrad at University of Waterloo, we were required to
> use FORTRAN (WatFiv).  I hated it.  I liked the notation of Algol
> better and Algol-W (W for Wirth) was a good implementation for student
> uses.  I even created a bit of a rebellion, but it was put down.
> 
> The answer was going to be PL/I.  But PLIWAT never got done.
> 
> (Luckily, I missed having WatBol (COBOL) imposed on me.  But I was
> a spear carrier in that project.  I worked on optimizing COMASS
> execution; COMASS was used to implement Z1, a systems implementation
> language used to write WATBOL.)
> 
> In your era, did they forced JAVA on you?  If so, I would understand
> hating it.

No java arrived as I was finishing, so I saw the awful plugin for the
browser and also saw javascript (livescript initially before marketing
at netscape renamed it to jump on the java bandwagon).  I did soon after
have to try to deal with people wanting to use java and the comptibility
issues it had.  It was all hype, and for some reason corporations fell
for the hype.  Now they have a ton of garbage they can't easily get
rid of.

> Why, in particular, do you think JAVA is a bad general purpose
> language for ordinary programmers?  Note: I don't actually know JAVA.

It tries to make everything a class, except when it doesn't (like integers
are not a class, while just about everything else is).  main is a class.
It takes all the object oriented things C++ got wrong, and borrows
those, rather than borrowing it from a language that got it right.
If you have to have object oriented programming, at least do it right,
not the C++ way.

> I know reasons why you or I might dislike it:
> 
> - essentially cannot be statically compiled

Definitely an annoyance at times.  Interestingly golang went the other
way and essentially can't by dynamically compiled and isn't objected
oriented (although it allows functions to be associated with types which
gives you most of the best parts of object oriented programming and
making types that can work across another set of types).

> - uses UTF-16 (I think).  The worst representation of UNICODE.

It does.

> - the library is a sprawling mess.  I'd guess that it is impossible to
>   master
> 
> - traditional JAVA programming style creates a surfeit of
>   abstractions, making it hard to understand what's actually going on
> 
> - implementations are very fat.  For performance reasons, jitting is
>   used.  This adds another layer of separation between your program
>   and real hardware.
> 
> - tuning JAVA program performance seems to too-often devolve into
>   blindly twiddling knobs on the JVM.
> 
> - JAVA cannot be improved: so much inertia, so horrible governance.
> 
> What are your reasons?
> 
> Those reasons don't make it a horrible teaching language, especially
> if you subset the library.

There are much better languages for teaching.  Many places have
fortunately switched to some of them.

The resources used by a java program are usually terrible, and there
is often not much you can do about it as a programmer.  The garbage
collection isn't great (not sure it ever is in any language).

Java also is rather terrible at interfacing with other languages.
It wanted to be its own ecosystem that didn't deal with anyone else.
I guess to do the 'run anywhere' idea required that, even though that
hardly ever worked.  The fact features keep getting deprecated means
many older java programs don't run anywhere anymore (good luck if you
used jfx)

-- 
Len Sorensen
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Re: [GTALUG] RMS on britannica.com

[Karen Lewellen via talk]

Stewart is absolutely correct.
Making this  online reference far from a suitable means of clearing up 
anything  regarding rMS as a person.

Kare



On Wed, 7 Apr 2021, Stewart Russell via talk wrote:


On Wed, 7 Apr 2021 at 10:21, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk 
wrote:



The article seems to be mostly limited to non-controversial and positive
things.  It seems to be written very sympathetically.  That's probably
appropriate.



Britannica doesn't really rank as a quality reference work. It was more
concerned with selling sets door-to-door than what was in it. Sure, they'd
sometimes pay well-known people to write high profile articles, but the
fact-checking wasn't always there. For decades in the mid twentieth
century, for example, they'd happily print whatever the Soviet news agency
would feed them with no reference checks. I believe that Brittanica even
gave Lysenkoism??  a non-critical entry for a while.

cheers,
Stewart


??: Lysenkoism ??? a political movement against scientific (Mendelian)
genetics and farming methods that was supported by Stalin and promoted by
Trofim Lysenko, director of genetics at the Academy of Sciences in the
USSR. Scientists who disagreed with Lysenko faced exile and many were
executed. Lysenko's theories set back food production in Soviet-aligned
countries for decades, and may have contributed to the famines in China
from 1959???61.
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Re: [GTALUG] Cert Advisory FortiOS APT

[Russell Reiter via talk]

On Wed, Apr 7, 2021, 10:03 AM D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk, 
wrote:

> | From: Russell Reiter via talk 
> |
> | The advisory says even if your org doesn't use the os you should apply
> | mitigations.
> |
> |
> https://siliconangle.com/2021/04/04/hackers-actively-targeting-fortios-vulnerabilities-warn-fbi-cisa/
>
> I was not aware of FortiOS.  I found that it is "the Heart of the Fortinet
> Security Fabric" which doesn't help me.  I conclude: I don't care.
>

Ok, I can accept that you don't care about this WSL topic.

>
> The advisory that lists mitigations:
> 
>
> It seems to say
>
> 1) if you run FortiOS, you may have a few problems
>
> 2) even if you don't run it, you should "add key artifact files used by
>FortiOS to your organization’s execution denylist." [I don't have an
>execution denylist.]
>
> 3) the usual Good Things, none specific to this vulnerability.
>
> Nothing struck me as interesting.  Is there something I'm missing?---


It's the WSL implications of the company's abstract layer which attracted
my attention. Multiplatform support is fraught with it's own difficulties.

Also allegorical descriptions of harmonic balancing of video transmission
across multiple infrastructure networks piqued my interest enough when I
checked out the organization's statement of self. I struggle with some of
my own issues with display management on linux. Although not from the
framework of something not broken, whether using linux or windows.

Sinusoidal wave interference ie. RMS power as it is framed as SNR, causes
one type of video flickering interference. This is not the same as screen
blanking, which is typically a software issue but not necessarily an
interference. There is a wealth of stuff on this list where the poster
couldn't abstract the problem correctly. ie. provide enough information
about the problem from an linux engineering point of view. Describe dbus
and HAL issues correctly if you will.

It is fairly typical of life that, If you don't know how to ask the
question, there is a high probability any answer you arrive at will be
wrong.

A key linux question for me is whether a signal is triggered from the
leading edge of a signal or the trailing edge or the peak RMS value.

I try to stay distro neutral from an init perspective. From the perspective
of timing and signals, I try to follow a few basic rules in harmonic
balance. In terms of reliability my 1st order is sine, 2nd order is cosine.
Pid (eins) and pid (zwei) if you want to rethink init.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cis_(mathematics)

However I think this following page is more euler's formula visual
adaptation of periodic time regression. It doesn't address SNR but it's
animated graphic does indicate peak power level, at top dead centre of the
wave. ELINT enabled video as opposed to stand alone viewing of fig 1, fig 2
etcetera etcetra etc.

https://setosa.io/ev/sine-and-cosine/

The third option in signal mapping I think this factor depends on the first
wave generation. I believe that is the abstraction where sine intersects
with it's other two complementary characteristics. cosine it's two
complements and; T transition object is (i) fully described logically at
the centre of all three mains postulates. Seven characteristics in all. The
three primary objects, the three secondary objects and i in the centre
validated as the third harmonic generated by the first wave. Although I
could be wrong.

In my mind I call these sigint characteristics id the ego and the superego
of computing.

AC/DC transformations
https://www.electronics-tutorials.ws/accircuits/harmonics.html

>From my perspective time is what stands still, everything else moves
through time. This is why time is mapped only in regression by humans, we
monitor past events and then we try to predict the future.

One kernel developer on this list, tried to tell me that systemd was going
to fix a hardware issue. I'm still waiting to see how that is going to
happen on a cpu hash he isn't even aware of. Except to build more fences.

My problems are small compared to his.

Personally, I'm just trying to solve an argument between Plymouth, anaconda
and my display; systemd and SElinux; because Wayland fixed most of my
display issues when I opted out of the proprietary drivers for NVIDIA after
I upgraded to F32.

However the upgrade dist function of dnf reintroduced an old fedora bug and
on F33 I'm hung on basic target because I installed from live media. I
think I'll install the beta and try to move forward from there.

Those are my personal problems in using linux, finding the point on my
machine where PID (drei) telemetric audit trails begin and where IT ends;
answering for myself the age old question why use telinit when init is
shorter and easier to type.

I still haven't figured all the math on that one, however I am trying to
learn more as I go along.

Maybe I'll never get to that final answer because I'm so very bad at math,
but 

Re: [GTALUG] RMS on britannica.com

[Stewart Russell via talk]

On Wed, 7 Apr 2021 at 10:21, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk 
wrote:

>
> The article seems to be mostly limited to non-controversial and positive
> things.  It seems to be written very sympathetically.  That's probably
> appropriate.
>

Britannica doesn't really rank as a quality reference work. It was more
concerned with selling sets door-to-door than what was in it. Sure, they'd
sometimes pay well-known people to write high profile articles, but the
fact-checking wasn't always there. For decades in the mid twentieth
century, for example, they'd happily print whatever the Soviet news agency
would feed them with no reference checks. I believe that Brittanica even
gave Lysenkoism¹  a non-critical entry for a while.

cheers,
 Stewart


¹: Lysenkoism — a political movement against scientific (Mendelian)
genetics and farming methods that was supported by Stalin and promoted by
Trofim Lysenko, director of genetics at the Academy of Sciences in the
USSR. Scientists who disagreed with Lysenko faced exile and many were
executed. Lysenko's theories set back food production in Soviet-aligned
countries for decades, and may have contributed to the famines in China
from 1959–61.
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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[Russell Reiter via talk]

On Wed, Apr 7, 2021, 2:11 PM D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk, 
wrote:

> | From: Evan Leibovitch via talk 
>
> | Since copyright terms exist for many years after the creator's death,
> that
> | fact is far less relevant than one might think.
>
> Absolutely correct.  I was trying to be funny, responding literally to
> what was said.
>
> The work is now in the public domain since Brendan Behan died in 1964
> and the copyright term is death + 50 years.
>

I think that depends on the jurisdiction. Lifetime against all persons +70
years after death in the US.

Of course there is no international copyright protection. The rights must
be registered in every jurisdiction which supports the concept and may be
extended a further 25 years after that on special request of the estate
holder.


> Behan was in jail a bunch of times, but mostly for IRA activities.  He
> was in Borstal for an attempt to set off a bomb at the Liverpool
> docks.  His punishment was pretty mild considering that this was in
> 1939, when World War II started (he was 16 at the time).
> ---
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>

Russell

“Th’ newspaper does ivrything f’r us. It runs th’ polis foorce an’ th’
banks, commands th’ milishy, controls th’ ligislachure, baptizes th’ young,
marries th’ foolish, comforts th’ afflicted, afflicts th’ comfortable,
buries th’ dead an’ roasts thim aftherward.” F. P. Dunne
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Re: [GTALUG] RMS on britannica.com

[Russell Reiter via talk]

On Wed, Apr 7, 2021, 10:21 AM D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk, 
wrote:

> | From: Russell Reiter via talk 
> |
> | I stumbled across this. I think it's concise and well written. Cuts
> through
> | the fud pretty well.
> |
> | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Richard-Stallman
>
> I don't know exactly what you are referring to as "FUD" (fear,
> uncertainty, and doubt).
>

Fear that Stallman has no moral centre of self abounds on this list and
elsewhere.

Uncertantity that the real evidence may not absolutely validate his ouster.

Doubt must be reasonable.

I mean when someone on this list asks me to tell them I am a white racisist
so they can send me to /dev/null over an offhand remark I made about the
issue. I can say without a doubt, I know there is something terribly wrong.

Not with me, or the list. I would place that statement, which was directed
to me, at the heart of the ethical source of the controversy. This comes
from my personal expierence of this kind of hate on this list.

I have a couple of mantras which I use to overcome such adversity. One such
mantra is;

If you give sharp tools to blunt minds, chaos is the only expected result.

Remember not everyone on this list is an elite kernel hacker, as some
others hold themselves out to be. Some of us are just users trying to keep
linux working on our desktop.

Sometimes against all odds, or so it seems.


>
> The article seems to be mostly limited to non-controversial and positive
> things.  It seems to be written very sympathetically.  That's probably
> appropriate.
>

I wouldn't necessatily say sympathetically. I would say journalism's
ethical cannons were well preserved in the telling.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_ethics_and_standards

>
> I certainly object to "One of the last of the “hackers,” computer
> programmers who strongly believed in freely modifying and sharing computer
> code,".  That's nonsense unless qualified somehow.
>

It is an opinion, perhaps nonsensical but only an opinion.

>
> The covering of the Epstein / Minsky issue is very superficial and
> consequently probably not misleading.  I've avoided studying the
> underlying story so I cannot say much.
>
> It has NO coverage of the other controversial issues.
>

Well the controversy is steeped in ongoing virtue signaling and emotional
values related to universities, engineers, carreers and associated career
retardation and advancement; not my balliwick.

Personally on this list, I just hack away using linux and furthering my
understanding of the tools that come with it.

The other contraversial issues stem from the vanity press of the interweb.
I got my kickstart recognising digital vanities on bbs, then by reading
usenet posts, so I fend off the trolls as best I can.
.

>
> So, no, I don't think that this cuts through the FUD.
> I don't know that all the controversy is FUD.---


True, not repeating the fud doesnt cut through it. However, it can serve to
stem a rising tide when viewed in the proper context.

Call it more of a dignifed telling from someone who is not one of Stallmans
friends talking about him, or someone who has just met him casually
relating one hearsay or another.

When the wagons are circled around a business friend it is often a career
limiting move to remain friendly to that person.

This is the sad fact of politics of administration at University's and any
of the the other corporations which enable them. Especially those state
actors in the US and perhaps other jurisdictions as well.

When I am personally attacked on this list for proffering my opinion and I
am offered the choice to vacate the list or /dev/null. I always choose
/dev/null

Heck I've even sent procmail rules to the haters on this list, to make it
easier for them to avoid abusing me for my having my own opinion on what is
and is not linux topicality and the proper framing of referential objects.

But thats just me, others might not have such thick skins and silently
leave.

However I fully believe that perception is not reality; in my own case
fending off the trolls or Richard Stallmans issues with the totum of his
current troubles, whatever they may finally turn out to be.


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>
> Russell

“Th’ newspaper does ivrything f’r us. It runs th’ polis foorce an’ th’
banks, commands th’ milishy, controls th’ ligislachure, baptizes th’ young,
marries th’ foolish, comforts th’ afflicted, afflicts th’ comfortable,
buries th’ dead an’ roasts thim aftherward.” F. P. Dunne
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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk]

| From: Evan Leibovitch via talk 

| Since copyright terms exist for many years after the creator's death, that
| fact is far less relevant than one might think.

Absolutely correct.  I was trying to be funny, responding literally to
what was said.

The work is now in the public domain since Brendan Behan died in 1964
and the copyright term is death + 50 years.

Behan was in jail a bunch of times, but mostly for IRA activities.  He
was in Borstal for an attempt to set off a bomb at the Liverpool
docks.  His punishment was pretty mild considering that this was in
1939, when World War II started (he was 16 at the time).
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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[Evan Leibovitch via talk]

On Wed, 7 Apr 2021 at 10:42, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk 
wrote:


> | I'm not sure that Brendan Behan would object to the Toronto Irish Players
> | copying the script of Borstal Boy to introduce it to the citizens of
> | Toronto, but I might be wrong about that as well.
>
> Since he is dead, you can be sure that he wouldn't object.  (His body is
> probably well-preserved due to its alcohol content.)
>

Since copyright terms exist for many years after the creator's death, that
fact is far less relevant than one might think.

Marvin Gaye may well have been fine with the song "Blurred Lines" copying
the style of "Got to Give it Up" (no melody or lyrics were copied, just the
style ). But his heirs were
not, and successfully sued for infringement.

Being a Borstal boy, he probably wasn't particularly concerned with laws.
>
> More generally: a certain amount of copyright leakage is actually good for
> the creator.  Microsoft dominates in the third world due to piracy.  If
> copyright were enforced, Linux would dominate.
>

I can vouch for that particular comment based on first-hand experience.
Over the last while, MS has even been making it easier for savvy users to
legally(*) use its wares for a fraction of published prices. One such
policy is enabling licenses for retail (not OEM) Windows 10 to be fully
transferable, enabling niche services that extract license keys from
trashed PCs and resell them for less than $
3. (I can verify
that it works.) And then there's the "Home and Student" version of MS
Office that of course will never be used for small businesses or WFH.
- Evan

(*) The legalities have never been confirmed or denied and likely never
will, because there are no instances of MS pursuing perceived abuse in
these cases. At worst they're a contravention of T rather than piracy,
contract issues rather than copyright infringement.
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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[Howard Gibson via talk]

On Wed, 7 Apr 2021 10:41:22 -0400 (EDT)
"D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk"  wrote:

> The copyright law is quite draconian.  People violate it on a regular
> basis (well documented in many articles).  That's the only way it
> becomes bearable.

Hugh,

   Here is a nice article from Web Pages that Suck...

   http://www.websitesthatsuck.com/no-music-files-on-web-sites.html

-- 
Howard Gibson 
hgib...@eol.ca
jhowardgib...@gmail.com
http://home.eol.ca/~hgibson
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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[James Knott via talk]

On 2021-04-07 11:21 a.m., D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:

When I was an undergrad at University of Waterloo, we were required to
use FORTRAN (WatFiv).  I hated it.


I got that at Ryerson.  Back then, I used to do my homework on a VAX 11/780.

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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk]

| From: Lennart Sorensen via talk 

| Many languages (probably most of them) prevent many of the bugs C makes
| easy to create.  Many of them are better than java.

When I was an undergrad at University of Waterloo, we were required to
use FORTRAN (WatFiv).  I hated it.  I liked the notation of Algol
better and Algol-W (W for Wirth) was a good implementation for student
uses.  I even created a bit of a rebellion, but it was put down.

The answer was going to be PL/I.  But PLIWAT never got done.

(Luckily, I missed having WatBol (COBOL) imposed on me.  But I was
a spear carrier in that project.  I worked on optimizing COMASS
execution; COMASS was used to implement Z1, a systems implementation
language used to write WATBOL.)

In your era, did they forced JAVA on you?  If so, I would understand
hating it.

Why, in particular, do you think JAVA is a bad general purpose
language for ordinary programmers?  Note: I don't actually know JAVA.

I know reasons why you or I might dislike it:

- essentially cannot be statically compiled

- uses UTF-16 (I think).  The worst representation of UNICODE.

- the library is a sprawling mess.  I'd guess that it is impossible to
  master

- traditional JAVA programming style creates a surfeit of
  abstractions, making it hard to understand what's actually going on

- implementations are very fat.  For performance reasons, jitting is
  used.  This adds another layer of separation between your program
  and real hardware.

- tuning JAVA program performance seems to too-often devolve into
  blindly twiddling knobs on the JVM.

- JAVA cannot be improved: so much inertia, so horrible governance.

What are your reasons?

Those reasons don't make it a horrible teaching language, especially
if you subset the library.
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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk]

| From: Russell Reiter via talk 

| I may be wrong. I was a member of an amature theatre group, we photocopied
| the stuff anyway. I think it was one of the teachers in that heritage group
| who put it that way to me, as a cultural right.

I'm pretty sure that that's wishful thinking.  Rationalization.

The copyright law is quite draconian.  People violate it on a regular
basis (well documented in many articles).  That's the only way it
becomes bearable.

DRM is so uncomfortable because (parts of) copyright law are enforced
automatically.  (Not to mention that all kinds of bizarre other things
being enforced, like watching FBI warnings.)

Rationalization is a natural part of internalizing laws.  Judging from
our traffic, most people believe in speed limits, but increase the
numbers by perhaps 20%.

This impulse to rationalize is a problem when applied to natural laws.
That's one reason why COVID hygeine rules are hard to follow.

(I cheat at solitare.  But I have rules about cheating.)

| I'm not sure that Brendan Behan would object to the Toronto Irish Players
| copying the script of Borstal Boy to introduce it to the citizens of
| Toronto, but I might be wrong about that as well.

Since he is dead, you can be sure that he wouldn't object.  (His body
is probably well-preserved due to its alcohol content.)

Being a Borstal boy, he probably wasn't particularly concerned with
laws.

More generally: a certain amount of copyright leakage is actually good
for the creator.  Microsoft dominates in the third world due to
piracy.  If copyright were enforced, Linux would dominate.
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Re: [GTALUG] RMS on britannica.com

[D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk]

| From: Russell Reiter via talk 
| 
| I stumbled across this. I think it's concise and well written. Cuts through
| the fud pretty well.
| 
| https://www.britannica.com/biography/Richard-Stallman

I don't know exactly what you are referring to as "FUD" (fear, 
uncertainty, and doubt).

The article seems to be mostly limited to non-controversial and positive 
things.  It seems to be written very sympathetically.  That's probably 
appropriate.

I certainly object to "One of the last of the “hackers,” computer 
programmers who strongly believed in freely modifying and sharing computer 
code,".  That's nonsense unless qualified somehow.

The covering of the Epstein / Minsky issue is very superficial and 
consequently probably not misleading.  I've avoided studying the 
underlying story so I cannot say much.

It has NO coverage of the other controversial issues.

So, no, I don't think that this cuts through the FUD.
I don't know that all the controversy is FUD.---
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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Tue, Apr 06, 2021 at 06:10:25PM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
> I wasn't there, but...
> 
> Background:
> 
> I think Sun was a great proponent of open standards.  They won for a long 
> time by introducing new ones and always being a step ahead of the other 
> workstation and server vendors.
> 
> The idea seemed to be that a standard and the code were a bit tied 
> together.  If other companies wanted NFS, they licensed the code.  For 
> quite reasonable rates, I think.

Oh yes the "wonderful" things sun gave us like nfs, portmap, nis, etc.
I am trying to think of something they gave is that I would actually
like to see on my system these days.  They did try though.

> The first stumble was with their Windowing system NeWS.  Nobody adopted it 
> because they thought it would make Sun too powerful.  But I think that it 
> was a good system -- better than X.

There is certainly a lot wrong with X, so it could have been better.

> The Windowing system on NeXT seemed to me to be, to a first approximation, 
> inspired by NeWS.  NeWS used a language a lot like PostScript (Forth); 
> NeXT used Display PostScript.
> 
> Eventually, almost all competitors refused to have anything to do with 
> Sun initiatives.  Sun got in partnership with ATT in a way that alienated 
> all other UNIX vendors.
> 
> End of Background.
> 
> Sun released Java and pushed it hard.  Introducing a new platform takes a 
> lot of promotion.  It was open but there was only one implementation.  
> Amazingly, it took off.
> 
> - for embedded systems
> 
> - for terminal servers (not completely successful, but a good run)
> 
> - for client-side programs (in the browser).  This started out well but 
>   JavaScript has completely replaced it.  I'm not sure that this this 
>   replacement was a Good Thing

At least javascript you can see and potentially debug or do something
about.  Not so with the dreadful java browser apps.

> - for server side-programming (this surprised me)
> 
> - lots of general corporate programming.  For example, Bank software is 
>   written by large armies of programmers, usually in Java
> 
> IBM had an implementation of its own, but I think that they paid royalties 
> (I'm not sure).
> 
> Sun got in financial trouble.  Their one clearly winning product was Java.  
> How could they monitise it.  Especially since this was against their 
> previous ethos.  They struggled.
> 
> Oracle bought them and the culture changed.  Fetters were released.  
> Doing unconscionable things seems to come naturally to Oracle.

Yes Oracle is very good at that.

> Why is Java so fat?  Because the original libraries didn't do enough and a 
> replacement was needed in a hurry.  And a replacement for the replacement.  
> A do-over would be great but the amount of legacy code makes this 
> unlikely.

Certainly compatibility was a huge mess early on and of course java
developers could never be bothered to tell you what version their code
required to run (they apparentlty assumed everyone would always use the
newest one like they did).

> Java seems to be hated.  But there's a lot good about it.  It prevents a 
> wlot of bugs that come naturally to C.  (I don't use it.)

Many languages (probaby most of them) prevent many of the bugs C makes
easy to create.  Many of them are better than java.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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