@morbiuswilters said:
@anonymous234 said:http://string-emil.de/0_0
[url=http://string-emil.de/Im_Bad/]He's bad[/url]
@morbiuswilters said:
@anonymous234 said:http://string-emil.de/0_0
[url=http://string-emil.de/Im_Bad/]He's bad[/url]
The universe [i]is[/i] inherently unsuitable for life. We've known that since 400 BCE. Did you miss the memo?
@too_many_usernames said:
Second, if the old "32-bit" way of doing things was "Folder A", it's an idiotic decision to say "going forward, new 64 bit things are in 'Folder A' and we're going to start putting 32 bit things in 'Folder B' " - why would you force old stuff to move, instead of putting new stuff in a new place?
Because it maintains a simple canonical name for the "main" one. Presumably, Microsoft will continue this strategy as architectures change, so we might have ended up with "Program Files (128)", "Program Files (256)", etc. Instead of having ever increasing "version numbers" for a name, they have the "main" one and the exceptions.
That said, it was still bad design. Why should the typical user care about the architecture? Why should "program data" even have a name as far as the typical user is concerned? Windows has a good registry system, a few new keys could configure settings to reveal metadata to interested parties (your boss, etc).
@morbiuswilters said:
@MiffTheFox said:Honestly, my opinion on whether global warming (really climate change, although i call it climate destabilization) is natural is that it doesn't fucking matter. It's messing up our quality of life.Bullshit. Even the climate alarmists admit there's been no climate change thus far.
This is nonsense. The southern US has been in a long drought for the last 10 years. Billions of dollars are being spent to divert water to the region, to support agriculture and growing urbanization. On top of the infrastructure investment, water prices are rising on the west coast as demand picks up.
http://climate.nasa.gov/effects:
[blockquote]
Global climate change has already had observable effects on the environment. Glaciers have shrunk, ice on rivers and lakes is breaking up earlier, plant and animal ranges have shifted and trees are flowering sooner.
Effects that scientists had predicted in the past would result from global climate change are now occurring: loss of sea ice, accelerated sea level rise and longer, more intense heat waves.
[/blockquote]
Siberian permafrost is melting, and is releasing massive amounts of methane.
@morbiuswilters said:
@poopdeville said:
The GPL is not a EULA. It is a distribution license, not a contract. Its enforcability comes directly from copyright law, not contract law. The GPL places no restrictions on the end user.They are the same thing. There is no such thing as "enforceability" of a license within copyright law. License enforceability comes into play because you do not own the software that you purchase / download. Instead, you are permitted to use the software so long as you follow a certain set of legal obligations, but you do not own it like you do a book or movie or other creative work that is government by copyright law.
No, you are wrong.
The GPL sets limits on a DISTRIBUTOR'S right to reproduce or distribute a "product". It does not place limits on the "end user's" ability to use or modify the software. This is what distinguishes the GPL from an END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT, which place legal obligations on the USER.
The "enforcability" of the GPL derives from copyright law -- if a distributor does not want to comply with the GPL, the distributor must comply with "regular" copyright law, where "All Rights (are) Reserved" by default. In this case, the distributor has no right to distribute the software unless he is in fact the copyright holder to begin with. This is unlike EULA's, where you can be obligated to NOT use software you hold the copyright for in certain ways -- say, because of contractual obligations. Consider a work for hire, where the contractor negotiated that only up to 10 users can use it.
@morbiuswilters said:
@poopdeville said:
various unconscionable clauses in "standard" EULASLike what? I'm not aware of anything that isn't legal under contract law within standard EULAs, but if there were such things, they would simply be unenforceable, just like any illegal clause of any contract.
No right to sue, no guarantee for fitness of purpose, etc.
Not that there [i]is[/i] a standard EULA. But these kinds of clauses are relatively common, and render entire real-world contracts unenforcable.
@wikipedia said:
The enforceability of an EULA depends on several factors, one of them being the court in which the case is heard. Some courts that have addressed the validity of the shrinkwrap license agreements have found some EULAs to be invalid, characterizing them as contracts of adhesion, unconscionable, and/or unacceptable pursuant to the U.C.C. —see, for instance, Step-Saver Data Systems, Inc. v. Wyse Technology (939 F.2d 91), Vault Corp. v. Quaid Software Ltd. (at harvard.edu) and Rich, Mass Market Software and the Shrinkwrap License (23 Colo. Law 1321.17). Other courts have determined that the shrinkwrap license agreement is valid and enforceable: see ProCD, Inc. v. Zeidenberg (at findlaw.com), Microsoft v. Harmony Computers (846 F. Supp. 208, 212, E.D.N.Y. 1994), Novell v. Network Trade Center (at harvard.edu), and Arizona Cartridge Remanufacturers Association Inc. v. Lexmark International Inc. may have some bearing as well. No Court has ruled on the validity of EULAs generally; decisions are limited to particular provisions and terms.
@morbiuswilters said:
Software licenses have been tested in US courts and are valid contracts. The GPL is one such license.
The GPL is not a EULA. It is a distribution license, not a contract. Its enforcability comes directly from copyright law, not contract law. The GPL places no restrictions on the end user.
EULAs as contracts have been tested in [i]some[/i] state courts. The concept fails as often as it passes. There are serious problems with EULAs as contracts -- specifically that you pay for the software before you can read the EULA, you don't sign your EULA like you would a contract, various unconscionable clauses in "standard" EULAS, and a few other things that sane contract law requires.
It doesn't make a difference in this case, since each function call to your QS implementation partitions and compares. So you will have O(n log n) comparisons if you have O(n log n) calls. I admitted my mistake when I realized this. Combinatorics can be a tricky thing, especially when combined with Landau symbols.
On the other hand, conditionals in code can make the number of "significant" operations different from the number of function calls for that operation. Algorithms that cache the results of expensive computations, for example.
Well, I was mistaken anyway, but the reason you want to restrict yourself to some operations and not others is that some are slow (and thus significant) and some are fast. Time is always relativized to the number of times an operation of a certain class is performed. A function call is fast, but interchanging array values is slow.
Call analysis and comparison analysis are not the same. And TIME is relativized to the sort of operation you are analyzing.
QS can sort a list in n comparisons, even though it goes through O(n log n) calls.
@ounos said:
QuickSort has a best case of Θ(nlogn). Enough said.
Your assertion implies that O(n log n) = O(n^2). Trivially false.