So,
Vacation. And everything, everywhere goes wrong. I had a long writeup on my first two days in London last week, however it's on my now dead netbook. I also had a lot of pictures of London, I'll let you guess where I had loaded those over too. ( I recovered most of them from the card, but I haven't had time to process them )
Now, Other than that, my Cellphone has been fucking me over, something like a priest in an orphanage. It's not likely to work, but I'm still waiting for the replacement, which is a month late or so.
Now then, London was nice, very nice until I slipped and hurt my knee, in the end I had to get a cane, go figure.
Work for a few days, rework the homepage and (attempt) to debug why the database is hitting horrid latencies. Now though, on to Thursday and we have the Stockholm Beer and Whisky Festival Followed by Front Line Assembly +Mind.in.a.Box at Debaser in Stockholm.
Now, I wish I could come with a larger writeup, but I'm busy packing, heading to Dublin on Sunday, to visit Inz, as well as head into lala-land and watch Porcupine Tree on one concert, and Killing Joke later in the week.
Seems I'm missing out on Front 242, but I can't have everything now, can I?
Now then, on to fill the bags with clothing, some electronics and camera equipment. And make a decent writeup on the Beer&Whisky festival, if I can.
Also to note, Ahni wrote a review about the FLA/Mind. concert over at Big Rock Candy Mountain
Directed to the sales folks at Stardock Games, makers of Impulse the gaming platform.
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I'm a bit miffed here. This weekend you announced "the Witcher,
special edition" which was one of those games that I still haven't
gotten around to playing.
As I had just finished enjoying the other other games I have at home
( Well, got annoyed with some of them, frankly fed up with Dragon Age
and its annoying sidequest that cannot be completed due to game
mechanics. Silly things that put me off a game completely) I wanted to
give it a try, and lets face it, 9.99$ was a steal for that game,
according to what I hear from friends at least.
Now, you already know when I sign up for mailings and such where I'm
based. Since I've done a purchase and have an impulse account ( Mostly
to buy Sins of a Solar empire, great fun that game.) So I go dig up my
account information, click the link for the sale on the lovely game.
Only to see:
Not available in your area.
So, it sells in North America, Russia and Eastern Europe, but not in
Western Europe?
Right, What the feck is this? Why do you even _BOTHER_ sending me the
announcement about games on sale which I then Cannot even Purchase?
Are you really hoping that I'll get stuck on your site and buy more
things cause of that? Perhaps Mass Effect2, the lovely smash hit from
Bioware? Or Dragon Age Origins ( which I seem to already have acquired)
or Divinity II, which also seemed interesting?
Right, I forget, There's not really a big chance I'd ever get around to
staying on Impulse _or_ purchasing more when you can't even offer me the
number one reason that I come there to me.
Frankly, if you can't even get around to actually selling me the things
you send me advertising about, do you really expect me to either
recommend you to others, or that I'd come back again?
I'm sad, disappointed, and annoyed, and obviously have to find another
digital download of the game if I want to play it. Perhaps the pirate
bay won't prevent me from getting it?
For a long time I've been trying to avoid pirating games, but since you
_actively_ taunt me with them and then won't even sell it, what am I to
do?
No, don't read this wrong, I do _not_ want you to stop mailing me
offers, notifications and sales.
I want you to STOP offering me games that you WILL NOT even sell to me.
"Oh, but that might require extra work? Like sorting the subscriber
databases between zones, and preparing different mailings?"
Well, rather that than disgusting your customers enough that they write
toxic rants back to you, perhaps?
It seems that the pirate bay aren't making a huge distinction whether
you are in Europe, Angola or Elsewhere if you wish to get the game.
Right, that might be.. unethical, of me. However, you can't really
complain that piracy hurts game distributors or creators, when the
distributors _WON'T SELL_ the game to people?
I'm a bit torn here, should I find a bittorrent client and see if I find
the game there, or will you fix it so I can actually get the game
officially?
Regards,
So. Why?
With the java GPL licensing from SUN and the patent exception _ONLY_ for non mobile versions. The Mobile JVM still has separate licensing requirements. Claiming yourself to be JAVA means you have to fulfill a standards compatibility test by SUN.
Google released Dalvik under an Apache license, thereby not granting patent protection to sub licensees. Google did not go with JVM for android because of the Java-Mobile licensing issues.
Next up, by filing suit now against Google and prolonging the court case, they can fire against the handset developers for more licensing costs. ( Remember the 1.x bn $ cashflow that SUN got from Microsoft in the Java deal in the past? Look for numbers like that. )
If Google fold, Oracle can then aim for all handset distributors, basically fragmenting and ruining the Android market. If Google fight, Oracle can show the cash for lawsuit defense vs. the small cost of buying a license to the handset developers, and do SCO style attacks by sending invoices to the hardware manufacturers. It's the same Lawfirms and Lawyers, so that's a valid assumption to go on.
Google had the chance to buy SUN but decided not to, And now it's coming in to haunt them... Badly. So, It's a mess of patents and licensing. The copyright claims will be interesting, but it seems as if Oracle has decided to kill off Java as an open platform. Looks as if Python is the way now?
So, techincally, Google can start modifying the JVM under GPL License and push that as a Dalvik replacement, Maybe. Otherwise, write a .class => .pyc recompiler, inspired by Jython?
Other than that, I'm not too sure what to make of this. Oracle wants money to recap the purchase, the question is if this is a sane strategy for them? They will gut the Java market, however, it's been on steady decline as they failed to keep it sexy. Even symbian is moving away from it. Most probably because of compability issues, slowness and failed licensing problems. Java is no longer a prime factor on the *nix side, after Oracle killing off the SUN Solaris customers by attempting to gut them for cash.
Dalvik can always be modified some more, push out some updates and make it even more unlike the JVM, thereby going around the patents. No doubt, this has already been done in some cases.
Google countersuing Oracle is another interesting concept.
Now, I wonder when someone will invoke the dead ghost of SCO Unix, along with the IBM lawsuits?
So, Oracle brought in the Big Guns. MoFo and David Boies in their lawsuit against Google for android.
Now, I don't really like patents, however, I'll take some time to read what I understand here and explain a few clarifications re. the lawsuits.
Back in 1997 Sun filed a suit against Microsoft, which they won. This is _NOT_ the same as what is going on right now. Back then, it was contract breach, about Microsoft calling their "Java" "Java 1.1" while not implementing the standard completely, thereby destroying the value of "java" and breaking their agreement.
This is a pure patent trolling from Oracles side. I see mentions about copyright inside the complaint, but no real numbers anywhere as to what, that'll have to be worked on separately, as Google _are_ shipping java development tools.
On to the development. Dalvik is a VM, it runs binary blobs in a virtual machine. However, Dalvik lacks it's own compiler, and only works by re-encoding Java classes in the Java Byte Format into the Dalvik Byte Format.
This means, to develop for Dalvik, you need to first make a normal, compileable, java-program using the official java compiler. This is then transformed into Dalvik runtime code. Please note that this is quite important in this case. The Dalvik tools do not compile or transform the source code, that is left to the _classical_ java tools to do.
So, onwards. "Method and system for performing static initialization" Claims as #1 that it "compiling the source code containing the array" .... Well, This isn't done by Dalvik at all. However, I have not read the rest of how Dalvik does it ( Does it initialize the arrays and "play execute" them as the patent claims? I don't know, but let's just leave it that google do not use their own compiler for Dalvik.
Next up, Method and apparatus for pre-processing and packaging class files
computer usable medium having computer readable program code embodied therein for pre-processing class files, said computer program product comprising:
computer readable program code configured to cause a computer to determine a plurality of duplicated elements in a plurality of class files;
computer readable program code configured to cause a computer to form a shared table comprising said plurality of duplicated elements;
computer readable program code configured to cause a computer to remove said duplicated elements from said plurality of class files to obtain a plurality of reduced class files; and
computer readable program code configured to cause a computer to form a multi-class file comprising said plurality of reduced class files and said shared table.
Basically, de-duplication in the compiling process of javac. Which, as we know from above, Goog/Android lets javac do by itself... I doubt this will be a problem. Maybe because you can combine multiple .class files into a single dalvik Executable?
Controlling access to a resource This probably requires more insight into how the Dalvik VM functions. However it requires hardware cooperation in certain ways that I cannot tell on how it would work.
Protection domains to provide security in a computer system Basically tagging sourcecode with a code to reference which domain it will be ran in. Uncertain if it will apply due to lacking a source stage for the Dalvik system.... Also, same questions as on previous one apply for me, I don't know if it creates runtime domains and how it manages the keying and sourcing of such codes. ( Mentioning source of codes and source code in the same sentence makes my head hurt)
Interpreting functions utilizing a hybrid of virtual and native machine Might be interesting. Offloading VM instructions into native to increase speed. From 2002, I wonder if this is really that unique. Maybe because it mentions specifically "wherein the virtual machine instruction are Java virtual machine instructions" Hmmm. It's basically the improved JIT-compiler, transforming JVM instructions into others, rearranging pointers, executing the new ones. Eventually replacing some JVM instructions with "real" ones.
System and method for dynamic preloading of classes through memory space cloning of a master runtime system process Cloning a process without using COW... By cloning the whole JVM in address space? or doing it with COW. Details about the JVM galore, I wonder what dalvik does.
Hmm, Overall, quite a lot of them are specific to how Java's VM works, (stack based VM) vs. Dalvik's Register Based VM.
How Google routed around SUn's IP-based licensing restrictions on Java ME" might also be interesting
Well, seems there is a twitter plugin, just testing.
There, now the old blog completely redirects to this place as well, So hopefully that makes the last.
I swapped out the theme here a bit, but I shall have to work on getting it sorted. Basically, had to do some bashing on a simple dark one in order to make it not completely horrid, but it's a bit of a mess of unix&dos line breaks, combined with pixel positioning almost everywhere. Not too spiffy.
So, From now and onwards I'm on vacation. Heading to Holland tomorrow, going to GUADEC and visiting people in the areas.
If you want to, get in touch. Mail me, spider@ and the skuggor.se domain.
Anything else? dunno. Lets have fun.
I can't seem to let go of work lately, and I'm completely uninspired to do much at all. Help?
So, over the last couple of days I've had some more and more interesting errors on my computer.
Symptoms: Hang in bios, after CPU detect, writing "Memor" and then hanging.
Symptoms happen in situations of: Computer been off for 10+ hours, just rebooted, powercycled, pulled cord for a few minutes. No real pattern there. And then sometimes it comes up again and just works.
Tried to remove the RAM, move in one piece at the time to different slots. Still bugs out.
Tried resetting BIOS, Still hangs at times.
Tried reflashing the BIOS. Still hangs at times.
So now I'm sitting here scratching my head without a friggin' clue on what to do. New mainboard, it would seem. Which is unfortunate, because I rather like my current one ( Gigabyte, GA-P35-DS4 ). So, Now I'm looking for recommendations on a new mainboard.
Requirements: Onboard LAN, Audio, Firewire, USB, 6x or more SATA-ports.
Requirements: socket 775 4x RAM slots, DDR2.
Preferrably something that has more space between the RAM slots so I could run my current ones at full speed rather than have them overheat horribly due to being nested too close.
I'm not a fan of SLI, so that's no real necessity (meaning I could just as well go for P43 as P45 ) and since it's a somewhat older Core2 duo ( 6600@2.40GHz) and I'm not _that_ inclined to getting new RAM/Mainboard/CPU at this time (well wonder?)
So. First phase complete, Zen gallery has been transferred to the new host, redirects are in place from http://spider.alternating.net/ -> here, at least for the gallery URL's. And I think most ( all?) of the old URL's in place now work properly too.