hsuwh - Slashdot User

Submission + - Apple says booting OS X makes an unauthorized copy 9

Submitted by recoiledsnake on Sunday November 01, 2009 @02:45PM

recoiledsnake writes: Groklaw has an extensive look at the latest developments in the Psystar vs. Apple story. There's a nice picture illustrating the accusation by Apple that Psystar makes three unauthorized copies of OS X. The most interesting however, is the last copy. From Apple's brief: "Finally, every time Psystar turns on any of the Psystar computers running Mac OS X, which it does before shipping each computer, Psystar necessarily makes a separate modified copy of Mac OS X in Random Access Memory, or RAM. This is the third unlawful copy." Psystar's response: "Copying a computer program into RAM as a result of installing and running that program is precisely the copying that Section 117 provides does not constitute copyright infringement for an owner of a computer program. As the Ninth Circuit explained, permitting copies like this was Section 117’s purpose." Is Apple seriously arguing that installing a third party program and booting OS X results in copyright infringement due to making a derivative work and an unauthorized copy?

Adobe Quietly Monitoring Software Use? 304

Posted by Zonk on Saturday December 29, 2007 @05:39PM from the probably-not-that-big-a-deal dept.

henrypijames writes "For months, users of Adobe Creative Suite 3 have been wondering why some of the applications regularly connect to what looks like a private IP address but is actually a public domain address belonging to the web analytics company Omniture. Now allegations of user spying are getting louder, prompting Adobe Photoshop product manager John Nack to respond, though many remain unsatisfied with his explanation."

Linux Gets Completely Fair Scheduler 274

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday July 10, 2007 @09:55PM from the take-turns-now dept.

SchedFred writes "KernelTrap is reporting that CFS, Ingo Molnar's Completely Fair Scheduler, was just merged into the Linux kernel. The new CPU scheduler includes a pluggable framework that completely replaces Molnar's earlier O(1) scheduler, and is described to 'model an "ideal, precise multi-tasking CPU" on real hardware. CFS tries to run the task with the "gravest need" for more CPU time. So CFS always tries to split up CPU time between runnable tasks as close to "ideal multitasking hardware" as possible.' The new CPU scheduler should improve the desktop Linux experience, and will be part of the upcoming 2.6.23 kernel."

Comment Now any old hack can delete all their email (Score 1) 204

by ksuMacGyver on Saturday March 10, 2007 @03:48PM (#18301344) Attached to: Windows Live OneCare Can Eat Your Email

Hmm, now's the time to send your Windows 'friends' who are using onecare a nice virus attachment surprise. :-P

Gentoo On Server Considered Harmful 372

Posted by kdawson on Sunday January 28, 2007 @11:24PM from the not-a-desktop dept.

Siker writes in to point out his blog post — Why Gentoo Shouldn't Be On Your Server — which seems to have stirred up a lot of discussion, including a thread on the Gentoo forums. From the post: "I firmly believe in updating server software only when you need to. If you don't need new features, and things are working, why change anything? If you update anything you will undoubtedly need to update configuration files. You will need to fix things that break in the upgrade process... This is hard with Gentoo. Gentoo wants you to change a lot of stuff. It wants to be bleeding edge."

Novell Injects MS Lawsuit Exploit Into Open Office 251

Posted by kdawson on Saturday November 18, 2006 @03:37PM from the danger-will-robinson dept.

F.M. Petain writes, "It looks like Microsoft's first move in the 'Linux owes us' game is to move a Pawn. A few days ago, a Novell programmer, Noel Power, submitted patches to add VBA compatibility to Open Office's spreadsheet module. This is great for people trying to convert the business desktop from closed source to open source, but is this gift really a ticking time bomb? What happens when Microsoft declares that the VBA code was stolen?" The patches may have been submitted only a few days ago, but the code must be considerably older; the article claims that nine distros in adition to SUSE already support the VBA extensions in their versions of Open Office. (Linux.com and Slashdot are both part of OSTG.)

Comment AI as a subarea of CS: popular vs. core topics (Score 1) 654

by hsuwh on Sunday September 11, 2005 @12:08PM (#13531908) Attached to: Computer Science Curriculum in College

I teach Bayesian networks and machine learning, two of the topics listed in the above article, in my undergrad and graduate courses in AI. In my opinion, these are subtopics and not core topics, and I will be the first to admit that they are by no means defining topics for a CS curriculum. People list them on resumes because they are hot topics in research, good for catching the eyes of graduate school admissions people and R&D managers.

The fundamental topcis, as the author notes, should be data structures (including graphs), applied math (including the graph theory, probability, discrete math, and linear algebra to support Bayesian networks), and basic programming and OO design. Of course, the author also has his dose of "hot topics" (XML rather than "data representation principles", abstract data types and metadata, etc.).

Graphical models are just one family of many important representations for reasoning and learning, and for computation in general, and learning is just one of a number of important computational mechanisms. Certainly, the modern computer scientist has to be aware of this.

If we look at intelligent systems as a branch of CS that is concerned with "human-like (cognitively plausible) and rational (utility-maximizing) problem solving", as Russell and Norvig set forth in the leading AI textbook ( Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach ), we see where the above topics are coming from. AI is popular. Many more people have superficial interests in AI than will actually take jobs in theoretical research or applied fields of "computational intelligence", and I think that is what this commentary illustrates.

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