Well, I think we can thank our lucky stars that copyright law wasn't around when the bible was written (not to mention modern life support technology)... I can just imagine the apostles and paul, kept in some kind of cryogenic pseudo-life state in the basement of the vatican, their hearts beating once a month a so, so that the vatican can keep collecting royalties on the bible ad infinitum...

Sure, but the point the original poster is trying to make is, when you're running more than a thousand servers to support your app, maybe it's worth thinking about optimization. Wouldn't you agree?

Additionally, you take a performance hit using the STL because stl classes have virtual method lookup tables.

Well, here you show that you form and express opinions even when you don't know what you are talking about. The whole point of Templates is the work gets done at compile time, not at runtime. no vtables.

As for your benchmarks, STL has nothing to do with windows, so I don't understand why you want to prove anything to windows wienies wrt to the STL. But your psychological picaddiloes are your business. More than likely though your benchmarks are foolish.

Since you don't understand how the STL works (i.e. you think it is based on inheritence and vtables, which is wrong), you probably used it badly. So that's an obvious potential source of skew in your benchmarks. Secondly, I could easily write a benchmark that would make my hand code beat the STL, or write code that beats an STL implementation for a given benchmark. That doesn't say anything about the real world performance however. The STL provides wonderful results for a wide range of applications, but it doesn't neccisarily provide the ideal solution for a particular problem. It's a wonderful tool, and if you know how to use it correctly, it will provide you wonderful benifits in your code. I personally would never hire a programmer who is unwilling to use, and unwilling to learn how to use the STL.

B. Stroustrup agrees that String class isn't perfect, as a result of trying to be very general, but I would still think carefully before rolling my own string class. But you don't have to use the string class to use the STL.

You don't need to be reading TR1, as you clearly aren't unerstanding it. I would suggest Scott Meyers "Effective STL" if you're interested in correcting this glaring shortcoming in your C++ expertise. If you don't understand the STL please don't call yourself a C++ programmer.

I agree with you about java though.

People seem to be missing the point of the OP.

If you're goal is to get a prototype, or low demand app out the door quickly, PHP is a much better choice than C++. But if you're a mega user like Facebook or google, maybe it becomes worthwhile to handcode custom containers, even do a little assembly, etc, focusing on machine efficiency rather than development efficiency. How can you tell whether this would be a good investment? Look at how many servers you could shut down: monetary savings, plus it's good for the environment.

Whether or not the original posters estimate is a good one, may be open to debate (although in my experience his estimate is conservative wrt to performance improvements). It's interesting food for thought though, and should be investigated further by large scale operators like Facebook, Google, Amazon...

This isn't a copyright claim (the headline is completely wrong). It's a trademark claim. Copyright is a TEMPORARY restriction to free speech to encourage creative works. Even though Disney et al have been expanding copyright lengths to keep from returning their copyrighted material to the public domain (where it belongs), copyright lengths are still less than a hundred years. So even if they wanted to, they couldn't make a copyright claim on stuff that's more than a thousand years old. Trademarks are a different story.

The distinction between copyright, trademark, and patent law is important in todays information wars.

This is a badly moderated post. It's not informative, since everyone knows this by now. I'd moderate it funny and insightful, but not informative.

I'm annoyed by the mantra:

Competition drives innovation and provides consumer choice. Finding ways to better use existing assets, including Universal Service, rights-of-way, spectrum, and others, will be essential to the success of the plan. The limited government funding that is available for broadband would be best used when leveraged with the private sector.'

Blech. Sometimes free markets and competition are the best way to accomplish a social goal. Sometimes they aren't. In particular, rural and poor neighbourhoods, which would profit most from broadband and are most poorly served under the current system, and I don't see shovelling money at providers doing much for that goal. I'd rather see that money used to address the most poorly served areas of the country, and provide some public competition to private provider plans.

Of course profiting off someone else's work is unfair.

That's an interesting assertion. I completely agree that profiting off of other people's work is pretty much the foundation of capitalism. Note that capitalism and free-market economy are not equivalent terms in this context. But every variation of "putting your capital to work" boils down to profiting off of the work of others, by virtue of having a capital advantage. I also agree that capitalism as a religion (which, imho, is the norm in the U.S., and the de-facto basis of the Republican party) is a pretty bad idea with very harmful characteristics.

But does that mean that profiting off of someone else's work or innovation is unfair? I have to disagree most strongly. Profiting off of others innovation and work is the single thing that makes civilization, science, art, and technology possible. Remember Newton? "If I have seen farther than others, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants". If we didn't profit off of other peoples work, whether that be creative work or manual labor, we wouldn't get anywhere. Every one of us would have to re-create language, the ability to make fire, learn how to make simple tools, and figure out how to feed and shelter ourselves. Hardly a desirable direction to take.

In all of these discussions about copyright violation, patent violation, or trademark infringement, I think it's a tricky issue to determine what is "fair". Honestly, the word "fair" is just a little to ephemeral and subjective to be used productively in such conversations. When we discuss the ethics and practice of copyright, trademark or patent law, the question has to be whether or not the issue at hand profits society.

In the world today, anyone who claims that such "IP" laws are working, are in the best interests of society, are "fair", is either a deeply interested party, or is not thinking clearly. It is precisely with the intent of muddling the thoughts of observers that the interested parties start bandying about phrases like "intellectual property theft". It introduces a linguistic hook to our cultures deeply rooted, emotionally charged concept of personal property.

When discussing such things though, don't think it's a good idea to make claims like "If the world were "fair" every single human would have as an inalienable right free access to decent food, housing, healthcare, and security and working beyond that would be an optional choice to better their life.". This may be a worth ideal to strive for, but I don't think it's relevant to the issue at hand, and helps people pigeonhole those of us who work for copyright and patent law reform as "pinko hippie idealists", or some variant on that theme.

What I feel very comfortable calling "unfair", in that it is inequitable, is our tendency to forget that everything we have is built on the work of others, and that the best way to progress society is keep on building on others work. Making a temporary delay in the time it takes for a creative work to enter the public domain is probably a good idea socially speaking. But the laws governing this borrowing from the public domain must always into account the cost to the public domain. In the case of copyright law, the problem is the length of the copyright. In the case of patent law, length is probably an issue, but breadth is the real problem.

Come now. Cut with the "CHINEZE ARE TEH EVILZ!" crap. If you want to point fingers at other nations and go around spreading your brand of Democracy (tm) then make sure you get it right first.

I quite agree. Pointing fingers at oneself can be productive. Pointing fingers at others is usually just a way to self-deception. I always liked what Einstein said, i.e. "I think the only way to teach another is by example, even if it's an example of what not to do".

Despite the fact that it's Microsoft doing the crime, the crime is not theft, the crime is copyright violation. In this case it's copyright violation with the intent for commercial gain, and directly impacts the victim in more ways than the usual denial of revenue stream, so I'm sure other crimes apply.

But copyright violation != theft. Theft denies the original owner use of the good being stolen. It's important to distinguish between the two ideas as the two crimes have different impacts on society, are covered by different laws, and their enforcement have different social impacts.

My post doesn't discuss whether copyright violation is ok or not. It states that copyright violation is not theft. My post doesn't rely on any of the silly strawman argument you have set up. I find it difficult to believe that you don't understand the difference. For one thing, they are covered by different laws. If I steal your wallet, your keys, your anything, that's theft. I have denied you the use of your property in order to enrich myself.

Copyright violation is fundamentally different. Copyright violation does not deny the original owner the use of their product. If I steal your CD that's theft. If I copy your CD that's the copyright violation. What's the difference? In copyright violation you still have your CD. If I steal your stocks or bonds, you no longer have your stocks or bonds. If I copy your bonds, that's forgery, not theft. If I copy your painting, that's forgery not theft. Get it?

Now it's true that copyright violation has a negative financial impact on the copyright holder. It's also true that Copyright is a restriction of your right to free speech. The civilized world has pretty much reached the uniform conclusion that restricting free speech, in the form of copyright, is a worthwhile trade off in order to encourage creative works and to encourage industry in the distribution of creative works. However, that restriction should not be too onerous, so originally copyright provided certain exceptions for fair-use and was limited in duration 10-20 years.

What has happened however is large corporations have banded together to pervert the original intent of copyright. They have become so powerful, both polically and culturally that they now own the concept of copyright. They have weakened fair-use to the point where it is practically non-existant. They have extended copyright to the point where it is effectively infinite. Every time a major piece of IP is about to enter the public domain, they start lobbying to have the copyright lifetime extended. At the same time they create oligarchist distribution mechanisms that allow them to pressure artists into unfair and exploitive conditions. These insanely long (90 years and climbing!) copyright terms are counter-productive, and they rob from the public domain. Are you familiar with the public domain and the purpose it serves?

In addition, information distribution has changed drastically. We as a culture should be pushing for weaker and shorter copyright laws, not stronger and longer. It's in the best interests of society. Certainly original fair-use doctrine needs to be reinstated, and copyright should probably be shortened down to 10 years, but even 20 would be a good start.

These arguments are a far cry from saying that it's okay to violate copyright. I am not making that argument. I am however making the argument that copyright violation != theft. This is not a statement of opinion, it's a statement of logical and legal fact.

Listen, I'm begging you. Please stop posting knee-jerk, reactionary, bloody stupid posts that just repeat the propaganda being spewed by the RIAA et al. Copyright reform is an important issue that has HUGE effects on our society. We need to talk about these issues like intelligent adults, not like propaganda departments of cold war countries. Copyright is a TRADEOFF between free speech, and providing incentives for creative works. It is not the same thing as property law. While the copyright oligarchists have been sadly successful in their attempts to frame the argument as a property-rights argument, it simply is not the case. When they come to charge me for copying that CD, I'm not being charged with property theft. If that were the case it wouldn't be necessary to create special laws which force jail time for copyright violation. They charge me with copyright violation which is a very different crime.

It's important to frame the discussion in neutral, factual tones, so we can arrive at decisions which benefit society as a whole.

Nothing in my post indicates that I am against copyright law. I am against equating copyright violation with theft, and I strongly oppose criminal charges and jail time for people engaging in copyright violation. What I have complained about in my post is the dishonest and disingenuous attempt to cast copyright violation as theft. The intent is clear: As a society we have very strong emotional reactions regarding property rights. If the copyright oligarchs succeed in getting the vast majority of us to think of copyright violation as being equivalent to theft, at least at an emotional level, this gives them tremendous power in preserving their financial empires. So this kind of newspeak manipulation should be fought against.

I don't have the answer to the question of the future of copyright. I am convinced however that we (as a society) arrive at better systems when we consider issues factually, based on their costs and benefits. When interested parties use emotional and fallacious arguments and associations to manipulate the public, this results in sub-optimal systems. In some cases it results in extremely harmful systems. This is the case with copyright and patent law in the United States (and elsewhere too of course). Our copyright and patent systems are sick, and if they are going to get better we have to get off of our asses and educate ourselves about the issues and consider and evaluate alternatives. Simplistic, misleading, fallacious, ill-intentioned attempts at manipulation like casting copyright violation as theft impair the process and should be scorned wherever they occur. The costs associated with our system need also to be fairly and completely considered.

Now your rant is pretty poorly thought out and emotional, so it's difficult to know how to respond to your questions per se. But I'll give it a bit of a go, with the understanding that I don't have the final answers, I just understand the issue well enough to know that it isn't simple, and that optimal solution is NOT to maximize copyright and copyright enforcement. It's an optimization problem. Those are complex, and there may not be a unique solution.

1. What is my solution? I discussed that above
2. Do I still want these 'oligarchs' to fund the creation of the content I want? That's a weird question. I find oligarchy to be a bad idea that leads to a lot of problems, so no I don't want these oligarchs to fund the content I want. I personally find that the mass-media mega-money era of cultural promulgation has led to a lot of pretty disappointing art and culture, and that the cultural influence has been by and large harmful. I think we'd see better stuff by self-organized, more small scale projects. In fact, technology is making it easier and easier for small scale projects with less funding to produce really credible and enjoyable films,music and video games. I do think that financial remuneration for creativity is a good idea, however the current reward system is a poor one, particularly in the music industry.
3. Why would they do so if there was no possibility of a return on their investment? This question, and the subsequent ones assume a positive answer to your first question. Since I don't want large commercial interests responsible for my society's culture, I'll answer a different question, which I think is more the question you should be asking: what would motivate people to creative work? Or more to the point, how would any creative work get done if people didn't think that they would get rich doing it? People have, for thousands of years, produced and performed creative works without the promise of obscene wealth, or the machinery of copyright. They are doing so now (see youtube, the creative commons, and any free software project). Why would they do so? Because artists get social recognition, which is a powerful motivator, and because artists get laid, and because they love their work and the act of creation. I don't however want to remove all possibility of financial rewards, and I'm not advocating the repeal of copyright. I am convinced that Copyright should be less than 20 years, and that penalties for copyright violation are out of control.
4. Am I aware that projects fail, what would inspire people to take the risk? These are essentially the previous question repeated, no?
5. More government?

6. You are aware that it takes additional government to impose and enforce copyright law are you not? You are aware that jailing people for copyright law requires more government than not jailing people for copyright law? If you advocate minimal government you should advocate the repeal of copyright law, and support free-market solutions such as the one discussed in the article, and drm. You should also be aware (but probably are not) that copyright laws are a restriction on your free speech. This is not a controversial wing-nut opinion. When the possibility of copyright law was discussed, it was discussed in precisely this context. It was thought to be a reasonable and productive temporary restriction on free speech, which would encourage creative endeavours. At the time it was almost certainly a good idea, however over the years weakness in the implementation has been discovered, the temporary nature has all but disappeared, as has the concept of fair use. The result is MORE government.

7. Magic fairy dust? Bullshit fantasy land?: when an individual resorts to this kind of silly polemic in a debate about a complex issue, they are revealing they don't have a good understanding of the issue, are unable to frame a discussion based on facts or reasoning, and have an opinion which is grounded in emotion not reason.

The lawyers at the FSF going after people for violating the GNU aren't going into court charging violators with theft. They are charging them with copyright violation. Since you are using the word "violating", one would think you would see the distinction. My conclusion is you are speaking (typing) without thinking.

I find people who do that tend to have opinions which are poorly thought out. It indicates that the individual in question is not in the habit of thinking critically about their own thought processes.

And when you steal from us, you steal from them. Having said that, there's a lot of people who do.'

I'm sure the EA lawyers didn't go into court calling their copyright infringement theft either. I would really like to see the press (at least the technical press) conditioned to call the PR assholes on their use of "theft" as a synonym for copyright infringement. The two things are legally and conceptually different. We live in an age where copyright laws, distribution models and our attitudes towards "intellectual property" desperately need to evolve and be rethought. Changes in technology have drastically transformed the cost function for distribution of idea and information distribution, and the old ways of doing things are, simply, harmful and holding us back. When I think that people's lives are being ruined (financially and through prison and social condemnation) i an attempt to keep oligarchs in power and wealth, well, it breaks my heart. At the very least we need to fight against this newspeak conditioning by the PR asshats.

Of course "and when you violate our copyrights, you steal from them..." doesn't carry the same punch does it?

You aren't the only one that feels that way. From the article:

Brad Niesluchowski has resigned from the Higley Unified School District in Gilbert after allegedly downloading software that seeks out alien life forms. "We support educational research and certainly would have supported cancer research," said Higley superintendent Denise Birdwell. "However, as an educational institution we do not support the search for E.T."

... Birdwell said the massive software slowed down educational programs in every classroom and cost the district more than $1 million in added utility fees and computer replacement parts.

Niesluchowski's wife, Susan... said the software was authorized by a previous administration and her husband has better things to do to than look for aliens.

I personally disagree with your view, although I respect your opinion. I do take umbrage at the tone of the article, which seems to imply that participitating in the SETI@home project means you probably wear tinfoil hats, speak klingon, and possibly stand out in fields at night looking for visitors.

Searching for evidence of extraterestrial intelligence is a perfectly respectable area of scientific research. A lot of good science has come out of SETI, including the SETI@home project, which was pioneering work in distributed computing. The pioneering work of SETI@home made BOINC and folding@home possible, for example.

You might prioritize cancer research, and that's a respectable point of view. But the SETI project isn't crackpottery, and deserves a certain amount of respect for their scientific work, and their mission.