There haven't been any algorithmic breakthroughs in many years for most of the computer science field? I find that hard to believe. Back in 1993, I was taking a graduate level course in algorithms, and the professor told us about at least one algorithm for multiplying ridiculously large matrices had been developed and published within the prior year (maybe it was 2 years at that time) by a Russian PhD. Granted, this particular algorithm didn't provide a speed benefit over other techniques until you hit matrix sizes of a million by a million, something on that order. But that's not the point.

You'd also be amazed at what effect seemingly insignificant choices in the implementation of an algorithm can make. The most extreme case I ever saw like that was something like a factor of 2 difference in speed. You might chalk that up to bad coding, but when that code is locked away inside libraries that ship with the language, rank-and-file developers might get stuck with a suboptimal implementation. So it's not just the algorithms themselves that yield new wins, it's careful analysis and improvement of older implementations.

Getting back to the topic of this article, I want to point out that I actually used NIO in a project in a corporate environment, and it seemed to give us wins in stability, thread utilization, and memory consumption, among other things. For the environment, it was probably the right choice. Had we been dealing with a newer Linux environment, or a less heavily loaded server, I suppose going with the "old" pre-NIO way of doing socket I/O would have been better.

Had we been on a Solaris system, I'm told the NIO way would have been the best choice hands down, but the company was moving away from Solaris. Still, this raises a valid point -- in the end, you need to tune your code for the environment in which it's running. So if the OS can't do threads well, the whole thread-per-socket approach will stink compared to select-based semantics. I haven't fully read the PDF yet, but it seems like most of this testing was done in Linux. Results for other OSes are not guaranteed to be the same.

Maybe I missed some humor here (aside from the played out "get off my lawn" crap), but retorting to a reply with "Nuh-uh!" doesn't make for effective counter-argument.

Fully expecting someone to reply to me with "Nuh-uh!" C'mon, you know you want to...

Java may not be "sexy" anymore (or "all the rage" as you put it), but it is not exactly a niche language. It still runs in surprisingly many places, like cell phone apps (yes, a lot of us still use regular cell phones, and Android is Java-ish but with some tweaks), and more importantly just about every corporate data center uses Java. That last "niche" is pretty huge, and the only thing that threatens Java in that space is dot-Net, the Java platform clone.

Java, like it or not, has become the COBOL of the 21st century. It's ubiquitous.

I agree that Perl makes code hard to maintain (especially in the sense that one developer won't necessarily readily understand another's Perl code, since everyone has his own favorite idiom), but you make a lot of claims that I don't see supported by facts. Perl CGI might be frowned on these days in some circles, but there are plenty of sites that use Perl as a basis -- including this one, Slashdot. So saying Perl is no longer used for CGI scripts is probably false, as there are plenty of folks who clearly think it's "good enough."

You're trying to make Perl and Java both sound like fads, but the truth is neither language is going away anytime soon, as each is too useful for too large a segment of the developer population.

It's only funny if you didn't grow up decades ago watching 4:3 TV sets. (The first TV I remember my family owning was black and white, and it had vacuum tubes. One of the best Zenith TVs we ever owned.) For some of us, this new 16:9 screen format isn't "TV." For me, it's "high def TV," and the old format will always be plain old "TV" to me.

I should also point out that digital vs. analog doesn't enter into it, because 480i/480p content still dominates many networks -- and I'm saying this as a DirecTV subscriber. Those black side bars have become a common sight on my HDTV screen, since I absolutely can't stand seeing 4:3 content stretched horizontally unless some kind of "smart stretch" algorithm is applied (where the distortion increases toward the left and right edges of the display, but is zero at the center).

I should also point out that many laptop manufacturers deliberately choose 16:10 aspect ratio for their screens because their customers demand the extra real-estate, and because such designs allow widescreen HD content to be rendered while leaving room at the bottom or top for player HUD, controls, or for other use. Apple uses 16:10 for the MacBook Pro, for example.

Furthermore, Samsung widescreen monitors are often 16:10 (I own one for a desktop machine, purchased within the last year). I could go on. There's nothing preventing the display of 16:9 content on a 16:10 screen -- those extra scanlines are either going to be letterbox area, or they'll be used for controls or information. It's not the huge swath of black that letterboxing on a 4:3 screen causes.

I don't think your supposition on the market size for 16:10 monitors (or "non-16:9 widescreen," as you describe them) is supportable, considering how many 16:10 devices are on the market right now.

Ah, wish I had the points to give you a +1 Insightful or something equally appropriate.

Unfortunately, there isn't also a +1 Pedantic. ;-) But then you'd lose that point because you didn't also point out that the Gregorian Calendar doesn't have a year zero.

Speaking of pedantry... your ordinal number is wrong. It should be 21st, not "21th." It goes 21st, 22nd, 23rd, 24th.

So how will the judgment against Spamhaus be enforced? How will anyone force Spamhaus to pay, assuming they don't voluntarily fork over the money?

I'm not talking about what you think is right and wrong. (And on a personal note, I am perfectly OK with ignoring or disregarding laws I personally think are unjust, or which I do not generally agree with. But that's not terribly relevant either.) What I am asking is, very simply, how anyone can force Spamhaus to honor this judgment and pay up.

Since I don't think they have any U.S. assets of any kind whatsoever, nothing can be seized in the U.S. I suppose the spammers here who brought the suit could agitate for "justice" and try to squeeze blood from a turnip, but how? They could go to the UK and petition the courts there, I suppose, but the UK courts aren't obligated to enforce a civil ruling from a U.S. jurisdiction.

Similarly, your Microsoft analogy from a couple posts back is flawed, because Microsoft is a true multinational corporation with a real presence in Germany, and they have real assets that can be seized there. But while Germany might have the power to seize assets of Microsoft in Germany, it certainly can't seize assets held in another country without the cooperation of that country.

Your talk about what is OK or not OK to "publish" in various locales/jurisdictions is interesting but hardly relevant. I publish material routinely on my blog which is legal in the U.S., but is illegal in many other countries. If someone sues me in Turkey for something I post that he believes is defamatory to Islam, or the country of Turkey (it's illegal by Turkish law to disparage Turkey or "Turkishness"), do you think I'm going to hop on a plane and submit to their legal system? Absolutely not. Do you think I'm going to pay up if they fine me? No way. Would I deliver myself to their prison system? I don't think so!

So, I can totally understand why the Spamhaus folks would choose not to show up in a U.S. court to defend themselves and run the risk of lending more credence to an already questionable legal proceeding.

The problem with the notion of "universal competency" (courts that claim competency to hear cases outside their national borders) and so-called "long arm" legal tactics is that national sovereignty suffers as a result. I might add that sovereignty is something guaranteed by the UN, at least in principle.

You speak of how doing business in another country opens a company up to that country's laws. True enough, but again, it's a matter of enforcement. China prohibits direct access to all kinds of things, but the U.S. State Department actively works to make resources illegally available to Chinese citizens. OK, so this is lawbreaking sponsored by a government, not a company, but the principle applies similarly. Furthermore, while the ABC Company might be headquartered in Nebraska but do business in Thailand, that doesn't mean ABC Company has to have a physical presence in Thailand to do business there. If ABC Company runs afoul of some law in Thailand, they might be fined for it (especially if it's a civil and not a criminal matter). Should they choose not to pay the fine, there are many means that the country could bring to bear -- network filtering for an internet company, or blocking shipments of physical goods at the border. But they can't go to the State of Nebraska, or the U.S. federal government, and demand that money. (Well, they can, but they probably won't get it...)

And anyway, since it has been stated numerous times (including in articles linked from this Slashdot story) that there's no way for this judgment to be enforced in any way against Spamhaus, I have to ask again, how exactly can Spamhaus be forced to do anything in this matter? They can't. I challenge you to explain, in detail, what mechanism that could be brought to bear and force them to accept the judgment and pay the fine?

This has nothing to do with right and wrong. This has nothing to do with petty grudges, or what you or I personally feel about either party involved. (Personally, I think spammers were scum, but I have read that Spamhaus essentially forced or blackmailed many ISPs into using their services, basically by blocking any ISPs that didn't join up. So I don't see how either party has clean hands.) My one and only interest is in determining how this judgment can be enforced.

Then, when you finally realize that enforcement of judgments is what gives courts their power, maybe you'll understand that yes, Spamhaus really can ignore the U.S. courts in this case. The same way I happily ignore the laws and courts of repressive countries every day of my life. Maybe when the commandos come in the night and take me away to face trial or prison somewhere else, then they'll have the jurisdiction they need. Until then...

First off, here is the corrected link for that article:

LICRA vs. Yahoo

(This is why it pays to preview, and it pays to not use the auto-linking feature when the URL contains weird punctuation like the exclamation point.)

Secondly, although Yahoo! lost in civil court in France, it did not lose in criminal court.

Thirdly, Yahoo! was being somewhat disingenuous in how it handled matters, because it could have easily implemented controls to prevent French citizens from accessing the U.S. version of its auction site. (The article notes that locale-specific advertising appeared on the site, which hurt Yahoo's case.)

Fourth, Yahoo! was threatened with fines; although they could have simply refused to pay, they would have had to give up any subsidiaries in France or any other EU country that France could reasonably exert influence through in order to obtain fines. It's also likely that any Yahoo! corporate office, such as the President, would have to think twice before visiting France. (Although since this was a civil matter, and Yahoo! prevailed on the criminal grounds, so perhaps the President of Yahoo! didn't have to worry about being arrested.)

Fifth, when Yahoo! brought its case to a U.S. district court in the hopes that the French ruling would be effectively declared unenforceable in the U.S., Yahoo! initially prevailed. This case was then appealed by LICRA and the UEJF on the grounds that the court had no personal jurisdiction over them. So it's very interesting to me that the French courts claim expansive jurisdiction over U.S. corporations and citizens, yet the interested parties in France apparently have no shame over claiming U.S. courts have no jurisdiction over them. The appeals court accepted the personal jurisdiction argument.

Lastly, Yahoo! chose to comply with the French court by banning all auctions of Nazi memorabilia, rather than blocking French users from accessing such auctions. While they technically could have merely restricted French users from accessing such auctions, or all auctions altogether, there were technical issues at stake (e.g., insufficiency of geolocation based on IP address, which was only 70% effective at the time, or reliably tagging auctions of banned material).

This has the effect of chilling protected speech in the United States, a constitutional matter due to the First Amendment. The problem with so-called claims of "universal competence" by courts is that this very concept violates the notion of national sovereignty, something even the United Nations pays lip-service to.

My take? As an individual, or even as a corporation located solely within the United States, if I were faced with a fine or other legal ruling arrived at in another country, I'd simply say "Fine me all you like" and never pay. And then make sure I never set foot in that country again.

And when Apple's legal theory is tested and vindicated in a court, then (and only then, unless there's an appeal) is it a settled matter of law. Otherwise, Apple doesn't get to act like an authority and claim to tell you what is legal and what isn't.

Since their claims haven't been tested, their stated position is merely interesting. I certainly wouldn't automatically buy their position. At stake is the principle of "I get to do whatever I want with whatever I buy."

Also note that Apple is claiming that the jailbreaking procedure is a violation of copyright. However, if the jailbreak is performed by you, the end user, on your own hardware, and was not distributed in any way, there is no dissemination of copyrighted material without permission, and therefore no copyright violation. Jailbreaking in this case is akin to scribbling in a book you bought.

The EFF article you link to goes into other justifications that I won't bother to enumerate here, like reverse engineering (which is explicitly legal in the United States, though perhaps not in other countries).

Since when are lobotomies considered minimally invasive?

Well, in actuality, a lobotomy can be performed as an outpatient procedure -- and this was done quite a lot in the late 19th/early 20th centuries. Basically, you insert a long, slender needle or other cutting instrument in through the ocular orbit (the bone is thin near the top of each socket), punch through the bone and tissue and then swipe the needle across the inside of the skull to sever the frontal lobe. Controlling the angle of insertion lets you control how far back you cut...

I think you're misguided. Did you read TFA? The Emily Howell program uses a different approach from Cope's previous work. It's entirely different work, sounding nothing like an existing composer. The new approach seems much more interactive, and involves machine learning, so the new program seems even more strong-AI-ish and more creative than the older, retired program that generated Mozart-like sonatas.

TFA spends a fair bit of time talking about how the software has been tuned to break the rules creatively, and is able to determine when it's OK to do so -- the older software did so to a degree, the newer software (Emily Howell) even moreso.

Cope is still right about one thing -- we are what we eat, and with music, we are what we hear. Or rather, we compose what we hear. Sometimes that inspiration comes from birds (Beethoven's Fifth comes to mind) or other environmental sounds. Usually, it comes from other humans. So yeah, there are going to be social, cultural, and regional influences... on stuff that various societies, cultures, and regions pick up from other societies, cultures, and regions. Nothing is created in a vacuum, and there is very little that is novel or original in music that isn't derived from something else. That's more of an evolutionary process, not spontaneous generation of art from pure nothingness.

So let me turn your assertion around: Humans won't be able to tread where humans haven't, since we only know the rules we give ourselves. Sounds a little absurd? Maybe. But largely a correct assertion. True innovation enters the system only slowly, usually introduced by some inspiration that impinges upon humans -- natural phenomena, new discoveries (scientific, philosophical, etc.) that shake our cultural foundations, even disasters.

At worst, you can say it's a highly repentant, largely accidental monopolist.

This is such a skewed view of reality, I had to laugh -- it's something only an engineer working within Microsoft could write, completely ignoring (just to pick one predatory example) the kinds of lopsided contracts that Microsoft's business side was penning with all sorts of hardware manufacturers, prohibiting them from shipping computers with rival operating systems or web browsers...

There was very little "accidental" about these predatory moves, and the monopoly trial very clearly showed that this was a pattern of behavior.

Contrast with:

The problem comes when the [internal] competition becomes uncontrolled and destructive. At Microsoft, it has created a dysfunctional corporate culture in which the big established groups are allowed to prey upon emerging teams, belittle their efforts, compete unfairly against them for resources, and over time hector them out of existence. It's not an accident that almost all the executives in charge of Microsoft's music, e-books, phone, online, search and tablet efforts over the past decade have left.

Gee, that sounds like the same kinds of behavior, just writ small. This strikes me as one of those "you reap what you sow" type of situations. Definitely, the offspring-eating behavior is well ingrained in the DNA of this particular organism...

The poetic justice is delicious. Pity that the author of TFA doesn't see it.

Anyone who still clings to the largely irrelevant requirement of technical skill [...]

That's what you wrote previously.

It sure seems that you're arguing the "relevance of skill," so it's a bit amusing that you'd contradict yourself in a subsequent comment and say you're not arguing the relevance of skill. Yes, you did clarify your previous intention, so we now know you meant that Duchamp had obvious technical skill, and so should not be dismissed. (Picasso had some great technical skill, too -- some of his earliest works looked photo-realistic to me.)

But it also seems that you're claiming one does not need technical skill to make art, that technical skill is "largely irrelevant." So you're also kind of saying, "Hey, you unwashed heathens, here's this artist who is acknowledged as being great, and I know you judge technical skill, so don't dismiss this guy on the grounds of technical skill... even though technical skill is irrelevant anyway, and you're all mistaken for judging by that metric."

I used to date someone at Syracuse University who was an art major there. I was shown all kinds of student art projects, and there was one that made me scratch my head -- some student was doing oil paintings of printed circuit boards. Now, I personally like the look of printed circuit boards, and I even find them aesthetically pleasing enough to put them on display occasionally. But I found the paintings to be sterile and aesthetically displeasing. When I commented that I found them to be the antithesis of art, what was I told? "You lack training in art, so nothing you say about these paintings is valid, except for your own personal aesthetic."

I still like to date artists, but that pretentious attitude was a bit much to handle. Just because I lacked the proper terminology and framework for doing "real" art criticism doesn't mean I have no valid opinions aside from what pleases me aesthetically.

That reflects more on you than Duchamp

That's a great way to blame someone for their own ignorance. What's the poor guy supposed to do, absorb that information by osmosis? Pick up a random art book and hope it teaches him about the "right" masters?

There was an art appreciation class at MIT that a friend of mine took. He told me the students in it called it "clapping for credit." I wanted to focus on writing and literature, so I skipped that class. Maybe taking it would have enriched me a great deal, but I have never had much regard for what amounts to learning a bunch of names and dates. "This guy was a really important 20th century artist." OK, because you (or someone) decided this guy was important. But was his importance for a particular reason, or some historical accident? A combination in Duchamp's case, it would seem -- and it's interesting to note that some of his works were rejected as "not being art" by artists of his time,

Some of us were discouraged from learning about things like art history by our families or our chosen academic careers. Rather than making smarmy comments about how ill-bred or ill-educated we are, maybe you could simply try to enlighten others and explain why some viewpoint is relevant or actually important.

And apparently, many people here on Slashdot and elsewhere reject the notion that art is whatever an artist says it is. Merely reiterating that statement over and over, and then saying "some important dude named Duchamp said so, so this must be a true statement," is not an argument. (Well, it's a fallacious argument.) Repeating something doesn't make it true, and citing an "authority" that is only recognized among artists and those who collect or appreciate art is an appeal to false authority, not a proof.

In short, for those of us who value logic and empiricism, there is little value in these claims.

Now, it might be true that art is important (whatever that means), or that it exists as more than just a perceptual construct of the human mind, or even that merely calling something art makes it so. But don't be shocked that rationalists are going to act skeptical of such claims, and don't go blaming said rationalists for their perceptions.

Note that I'm not actually taking a side here, just pointing out that those perpetuating this viewpoint, citing Duchamp etc., seem just as entrenched in a viewpoint that they're not willing to give up, as those they are arguing against.

Speaking to the point of authorities -- in most disciplines, there is the notions that practitioners of the discipline recognize some figures as authorities, but in the scientific and mathematical disciplines (including computer science), there are some things which are provable without appealing to any authority. So while an art authority is only recognized within the world of art, and his statements may be taken as truth by those who accept them within that realm, the truths expressed in mathematics are provable to anyone, by anyone. while in the sciences, what was received wisdom one day is a rejected notion the next. You can't do that for art, so people who are hyper-rational thinkers are not going to accept claims based on Marcel Duchamp's say-so. Or Frank Zappa's.

In earlier ages, the reason why you were supposed to be quiet in a library was because some people were there to do research and couldn't check out all the reference books they could possibly need. Who needs that, now that we have the Internet?

Anyone who needs to use a primary source that isn't available online. I'm not talking about encyclopedias or other "reference" books that are a good first step to finding out what you need, but rather, source books which may be out of print, or which are so specialized that few people other than librarians would ever consider purchasing them. Some of these books are rare enough that they'll never be put in circulation. And believe me, high school English teachers can be very insistent that you use those obscure primary sources for term papers and so forth.

And if your library has the materials to support the sort of hard-core research that requires dead-tree copies of things that aren't on the Internet yet, they probably have quiet research rooms.

But many libraries are under-funded, or too small to justify creating or adding on a dedicated research room. My home town library was like that, and it was once a mansion. (The children's library was built as an addition.) The Phoenix Public Library, main branch, has been in decline for years -- they spent a fortune creating a really lovely space inside with a waterfall or fountain type structure around a stairwell, though I've never seen it fully running. It totally doesn't surprise me that many patrons are rude, talking on cellphones or letting their children run wild. I needed to do research for my boss a few years back, and he sent me to the library to go find some journal articles and a book or two; the library staff actually kind of sneered at me, and told me that the library had "changed its mission" (focusing less on obscure publications and more on books, periodicals, and other activities that were deemed beneficial to the community at large). The stuff I needed had to be obtained from other libraries in other locales, through inter-library loan. Maybe the Phoenix Public Library, which the GP sort of mentioned, has some quiet research rooms, but my impression was that there was precious little dedicated space for such things -- you were expected to photocopy what you needed and take that with you.