bandushrew

Edit: yay! you changed your post while I wrote mine.

That is not the argument that Gruber is making. That is his factual summary of the current situation.

The argument that is being made is that Apple currently considers it a security risk to enable the new Nitro Javascript engine for all applications, preferring instead to enable it only for Safari Mobile, and leave other applications using the older javascript engine.

Possibly forever, destroying web apps on the iPhone completely, or possibly just until Apple is able to sort out the security implications of having to mark in memory pages as executable.

You get to chose which scenario you think is most plausible.

They lie, or publish unverified pap, whenever it suits their agenda.

I have no specific knowledge regarding whether, or how, this news article might fit their agenda,

Clearly in this situation it is appropriate to assume that they are lying, or at the very least publishing unverified pap, and to wait for evidence that may indicate they are not.

12 A steady, but not high, income comes in each month, the vast majority of the money fromsomething like 4 of them.

Unless I actually had a hit, I would have to publish something like 50-100 to have a livable income.

The GPL clearly does provide restrictions on the use of software released under it.

'people like myself who believe that freedom is an utmost concern'

which freedoms matter to you, and for whom? without context your statement is pretty much content free.

IME almost everyone believes that freedom is an utmost concern, even Brutalog, the Despotic Dictator Of Zoogtzargle believed that he was fighting the good fight for freedom.

The interesting differences seem to lie in the context under which they define the term.

There are many different kinds of freedom, it is true, I dont recall RMS ever talking about maximizing freedom in any kind of general sense, and I suspect it is because to do so would be nonsense. The phrase 'maximize freedom' is meaningless without context, too many freedoms are contradictory.

It is freedom as in speech, because it is the freedom for users of code to take that code and use it to express their own ideas, and to redistribute that expression to their friends and anyone else who may be interested. In that context, code is literally a form of speech, and the software an expression of an idea. Under the freedoms provided by something like the GPL I can take someone else's idea, change it to suit myself and redistribute that change.

The GPL clearly does not attempt to maximize the freedom of developers or distributors who wish to deny end users the freedoms that the GPL provides.

Again, this is ground that seems to be covered over and over. It is hard for me to believe that someone like you, who is clearly intelligent, has clearly thought about the subject and discussed it previously, has truly never had it explained to them, or has entirely failed to understand the distinction. I hope this has helped a little.

It always amazes me how frequently this question comes up. I cannot decide whether it is genuinely something lots of people fail to understand, or whether a certain type of person just enjoys pointing out that the GPL isn't 'free' according to their own personal definition.

But, to answer your question, Stallman is interested in the freedom of the end user to modify the code and redistribute the modifications to that code freely. He has been almost freakishly consistent on this topic for the last 200 years, restating that stance in a multitude of articles, interviews and talks.

Anything that ultimately results in code being 'locked down' and unavailable to the end user to modify and then redistribute, he has a problem with. This includes the public domain.

On 'average' nobody in the history of humanity has ever said a thing worth opening their mouths for.

places like 4chan are full of banality, sure, but the extremes are far higher (and lower) than you find on somewhere like HN.

Ive read stuff on 4chan/b that has made me piss myself with laughter, and cry (well, nearly, Im not a crying man, but the spirit was there). Ive read stuff on 4chan that provided amazing insight into the human soul....and stuff that made me realise what a bunch of animals we really are.

HN certainly does away with the banal posts (and the illegal ones) but the cost is obvious, and real.

I choose the times I go to 4chan (very rarely, these days) and I choose the times I go to HN, but they do both have a place.

hmmm? not that it is the slightest bit relevant, but I dont think webkit is a core component on mac os x, unless you are using the word differently than I would have expected?

You may come to that conclusion if you choose.

Its widely accepted that where an absence of evidence exists, it is logically and scientifically reasonable to come to a conclusion based on an individual's personal bias.

His answer is:

'If the system changes, then it produces a different set of results'

I could use my godlike powers to create a true democracy, a dictatorship or a theocracy. Different people would raise to the top in each case.

Pointing to the people who have risen to the top for any one of those and saying 'if you changed the system, none of those people would be there' is simply a trivial truism, it is not an argument for not changing the system.

I may have got it.

The problem is that there is no gradient with computers.

I either control my computer, or I dont. There is no middle ground.

I can either surf the internet and post anonymously, or I cannot.

Nobody in power is fighting for my right to do those things.

Everybody is more concerned about their own petty little secrets than about the freedom that I care about.

'Mob Rule' has a bad name, but the simple truth is that democracy and freedom is based around it. Warlords and Dictators, oppressive governments and totalitarian states dont exist because of 'Mob Rule', they exist because of the absence of it.

Eqypt is just now fighting for 'Mob Rule', and it is doing so with a mob.

'Mob Rule' is just another name for democracy.

Sometimes the mob can be ugly, when they hang witches or crucify innocent people, but it can also be awesomely constructive.

Freedom is like that.

Im very sorry, I have no idea what you are trying to say.

You are assuming that 'CommanderX' had a clue what he was talking about. A perfectly reasonable interpretation of those logs simply assumes that 'CommanderX' rather liked the idea that Aaron thought he was some kind of super criminal, and didn't see any reason to deny it. A second perfectly reasonable interpretation of that conversation is simply that 'CommanderX' thought Aaron was a twat and pretended to be some kind of leader for the 'lulz'

If you are inclined to believe that CommanderX is a criminal mastermind, then the conversation could certainly be interpreted that way. Personally I struggle with the idea that a criminal mastermind would simply reveal himself to anybody who asked him about it.

My own interpretation of that conversation is that CommanderX said what he thought Aaron wanted to hear, and implied things that flattered his own ego.

Which speaks not at all to the actual level of involvement CommanderX may have had in the events that transpired, or his knowledge of them.

I am sympathetic to the side of 'Anonymous' because the only way to stop them is to destroy the freedom of the internet.

To me the statement 'Information wants to be free' isn't the statement it appears to be. It is a statement of policy and intent, not of literal fact.

It is not a true statement because I actually believe that every piece of data in the world literally should be available in the public domain, it is a true statement because the only way to achieve the alternative is to lock down and destroy a world of freedom and information that I have come to love with an abiding passion.

Successfully solving the problem of securing private government data from anonymous release over the internet requires that the internet as it exists now be destroyed.

Stopping me from freely copying music that exists on my computer requires that full control of my computer be unavailable to me.

Successfully solving the problem of ensuring centralised and secure online identification of individuals to stop online libel destroys the freedom of anonymous political dissent and organization.

I am deeply sympathetic to the political ideals of 'Anonymous' not because they are always right but because the nobody else in any position of authority or power appears to even recognise the problem.

Effectively, I am sympathetic to 'Anonymous' because there is no way for me not to be without also being against the freedoms that make them possible.

could we skip the shocked outrage part of the discussion?

Tax dollars go on random, pointless crap pretty much most of the time, and to be honest if I had to choose between, say, paying for the govt to invade Iraq or paying for someone without a computer to view pornography or visit facebook, I would choose the latter without hesitation.

Its a shame you dont approve of how others utilise their available resources, but maybe you could discuss the issue without faux-outrage. Its a boring and (these days) over used means of communication.

"it was in support of the notion popularly supported by anti-vaxers that parents should make medical decisions after "educating" themselves, instead of heeding the advice of trained medical professionals."

I, for one, entirely believe that parents should make medical decisions after educating themselves, instead of blindly heeding the advice of trained medical professionals.

I am also very, very strongly pro vaccinations.

I also refused to give my children specific vaccinations when they were very young, preferring instead to wait until their systems were more developed.

The responsibility for the health of my children belongs to me, and I take that responsibility very seriously.

which means that not one of the tablet/mobile devices out there right now supports webM.

is that true? how many released mobile devices have hardware support for the webM decoder?

the government is the worst possible decider of the level of disclosure that it wishes to maintain.

I feel slightly stupider for having read it.

He constructs, at great length, a random array of straw men and then carries through by failing to demolish them.

To put it another way, the article completely mischaracterises the arguments of everyone he doesn't disagree with and then fails to defeat the arguments he has constructed.

This wouldn't be so bad if the article was shorter.

If their work is of sufficiently high value that the consumer is willing to pay for it, then it will survive.

isn't that capitalism 101?

"both stable and squeaky clean"

where by 'squeaky clean' you mean 'has not been accused of any crime by anyone? is that a state of being outside of the control of the person being accused?

"Being polite would be to say "Just visiting for fun".

thats not being polite, that is answering the question and thereby opening yourself up to accusations that you were being misleading.

"None of your business" was a simple statement of fact, neither rude nor polite.

Our parents and grand parents worked so hard to give us more choices than they had, and now that we have them and are choosing to navigate them in our own way, there is a whole class of people who think that is wrong.

Choice. Its a powerful word, and many in this generation have more choices than in any other generation before, or (quite likely) after.

Good on them, I hope they enjoy the hell out of it.

its a crock.

it means if I want to compete with AT & T's 'official' TV service delivered over IP, I have to do so only within the confines offered by the 'Internet' service.

This is a total crock that relies on everyone interpreting 'The Internet' as being the world wide web, and conveniently forgetting the rest.

Its not the downmodding I am pissed at, its the lack of decent conversational skills.

wow. the downvoters are strong in HN tonight.

an actual discussion would be an interesting thing.

sure, its easier to just downvote someone as you go past without actually engaging sufficiently to understand or discuss the issues, but ask yourself...is that really who you want to be?

sorry? why am I being downvoted? surely if you think Ive missed something in the above summary it would be more constructive to post a reply?

The call for great quantities of hard evidence that is occuring on both sides is both entirely reasonable and utterly unrealistic.

These are two good developers who are drawing on their real life experiences to develop their opinions, backed up with some simple tests performed on local machines.

While it would be pleasant if they could provide hard data for a wide range of webservers to 'prove' their opinions it is hardly a realistic option for either of them without investing a degree of time and effort that is far greater in scope than the work being discussed.

I would prefer to see less of a cry for hard evidence of real life usage patterns from either side, and a greater acceptance of the fact that this is simply an interesting discussion of technical possibilities by some good developers.

He says "Also, you should take under consideration the workload of your system, if you are sure that you will have a very large portion of your fds active most of the time and that your worker pool is sufficiently large compared to the number of connections that you have that there is no reason not to use poll (think media/file servers), whereas if you are fairly sure that the majority of your fds are inactive and/or that the size of your workerpool is substantially smaller than the number of fds that you have open (think web servers) that there is no reason why you shouldn't use epoll.

That's the precise reason those two calls exist in the first place, and which one is 'best' (for whatever bit of extra throughput you can squeeze out of a machine because of this optimization) depends on your traffic."

To me it sounds as if overall he is saying roughly two things: (1) "There are server conditions where epoll works better, and server conditions where poll works better,"

and (2) "I dont believe that web servers specifically under real-life conditions are likely to be improved much by poll"

Clearly he and Zed agree on (1), that being the point of the related Zed post, and (2) might well be true, but I dont think it necessarily speaks directly to the use cases that Zed is hoping will eventuate for mongrel2.

Zed used a web server to test the differences between epoll and poll, and that has clearly focused the discussion somewhat, but from what I gleaned by reading his ongoing 'The Coming Of Mongrel2' series, he has a wider range of possible uses in mind for Mongrel2, and I am wondering whether that is where his and jacques conclusions are differing.

[1] I mean, clearly they are both entirely insane in a very real sense, but I do love to pretend that those around me are rational actors and enjoy projecting rational explanations for their behavior upon them.