For Chris: Commodore BASIC as a scripting language
This is not a place of honour:. https://github.com/mist64/cbmbasic Go do some damage!
| From: Stewart Russell via talk <talk@gtalug.org> | This is not a place of honour:. | | https://github.com/mist64/cbmbasic This doesn't have the Waterloo BASIC extensions to Commodore BASIC. Too bad.
On Wed, 14 Aug 2019, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
| From: Stewart Russell via talk <talk@gtalug.org>
| This is not a place of honour:. | | https://github.com/mist64/cbmbasic
This doesn't have the Waterloo BASIC extensions to Commodore BASIC. Too bad.
That was my first thought, too, although I used a clone of Waterloo BASIC that was available on a TPUG disc. -- Chris F.A. Johnson <http://cfajohnson.com/> =========================== Author: =============================== Shell Scripting Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (2005, Apress) Pro Bash Programming: Scripting the GNU/Linux shell (2009, Apress)
On Wed, 14 Aug 2019, Chris F.A. Johnson via talk wrote:
On Wed, 14 Aug 2019, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
| From: Stewart Russell via talk <talk@gtalug.org>
| This is not a place of honour:. | | https://github.com/mist64/cbmbasic
This doesn't have the Waterloo BASIC extensions to Commodore BASIC. Too bad.
That was my first thought, too, although I used a clone of Waterloo BASIC that was available on a TPUG disc.
It was Northcastle Structured BASIC, and here is the article I wrote on it for the TPUG Magazine: https://archive.org/details/tpug-newsletter-23/page/n21 -- Chris F.A. Johnson <http://cfajohnson.com/> =========================== Author: =============================== Shell Scripting Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (2005, Apress) Pro Bash Programming: Scripting the GNU/Linux shell (2009, Apress)
On 2019-08-14 6:34 p.m., Chris F.A. Johnson via talk wrote:
On Wed, 14 Aug 2019, Chris F.A. Johnson via talk wrote:
This doesn't have the Waterloo BASIC extensions to Commodore BASIC. Too bad. ... It was Northcastle Structured BASIC, and here is the article I wrote on it for the TPUG Magazine: https://archive.org/details/tpug-newsletter-23/page/n21
While TPUG frowns upon distributing whole disks from its library (we still have a positive income from selling the library CD, surprisingly), I found Northcastle Structured BASIC on another disk and uploaded it here: https://archive.org/details/qs-alliance-T217 (it doesn't work in the in-browser emulation for some reason that may be my fault setting up the upload) Chris B. may be amused to see that a dedicated nerd from the Raspberry Pi forums wrote a bignum-handling massive Fibonacci number calculator for "classic" BASIC. Size of result limited only by available memory: https://github.com/ZiCog/fibo_4784969/blob/master/BASIC/classic.bas I've been spending more time with BASIC on Linux than I should recently. Some of the actually useful BASIC interpreters include: * BBC BASIC for SDL 2.0 — http://www.bbcbasic.co.uk/bbcsdl/ - developed by Richard Russell, who was on the original steering committee for the language at the BBC before Acorn made the first implementation. Only really works from a GUI, but has some very whizzy 3D graphics routines (as might be expected, given Richard's work in video technology). * stardot/MatrixBrandy: Fork of Brandy BASIC V for Linux — https://github.com/stardot/MatrixBrandy - yet another BBC BASIC interpreter, but faster and lighter and under very active development. BBC BASIC has proper procedures and functions and even a very few matrix commands, as Full BASIC should. This is being developed so actively that it's the only package I auto-update via 'git pull' every day via a cron job. Just last week it grew full audio support overnight! * Bas - BASIC interpreter — http://www.moria.de/~michael/bas/ - *almost* ANSI Full BASIC interpreter. Text only. Does all the MAT matrix commands as BASIC should, but doesn't implement decimal arithmetic. Can't quite manage the "10PRINT" one-line in one line, though: 10 DIM a$(2) : a$(1)="╱" : a$(2)="╲" 20 PRINT a$(2+(rnd(101)>50)); : GOTO 20 * Decimal BASIC — https://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA008683/english/ - full ANSI BASIC with graphics and optional decimal arithmetic. English is not the author's first language, so documentation might not be where you'd want it. cheers, Stewart
| From: Stewart C. Russell via talk <talk@gtalug.org> | On 2019-08-14 6:34 p.m., Chris F.A. Johnson via talk wrote: | > It was Northcastle Structured BASIC, and here is the article I wrote | > on it for the TPUG Magazine: | > https://archive.org/details/tpug-newsletter-23/page/n21 Chris J: Thanks for the pointer. After I read your article, I looked at other parts of that issue. There were some authors names that I remembered, even though I wasn't a Commodore guy: Avy Moise (he was also an Atari ST guy) and the famous Jim Butterfield. | I've been spending more time with BASIC on Linux than I should recently. Why? Legacy code? I cannot think of anything better done in BASIC rather than in Python or Logo. And that's just for things in BASIC's niche. | Some of the actually useful BASIC interpreters include: Nice list. I have to admit that a good implementation of a bad language is often more useful than a bad implementation of a good language. PS: the most amazing thing about BASIC is that the first implemention was an incremental compiler, not an interpreter. One consequence was there were very few legal variable names (26 * (1 + 10) = 286). (Wikipedia says that the compiler was "load and go", but I think that is wrong.)
On 2019-08-16 11:52 a.m., D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
| I've been spending more time with BASIC on Linux than I should recently.
Why? Legacy code?
I thought you knew me well enough never to ask why, Hugh.
I cannot think of anything better done in BASIC rather than in Python or Logo. And that's just for things in BASIC's niche.
Find me a computer that booted from ROM into a Python or Logo REPL and I might believe you. There are some new tiny computer-like things shipping with MicroPython in flash, but Python lacks exuberance. No-one ever stayed up late trying to pack a Python program into a single < 255 character line limit because they could*.
I have to admit that a good implementation of a bad language is often more useful than a bad implementation of a good language.
BASIC isn't a bad language even if EWD had a hate-on for it. It's one of those get-the-job-done practical languages like Fortran, Cobol and Perl that seem to annoy computer scientists. I mean, you've got to love a language that when you ask it to reserve 10 array items it gives you 11, just so FOR i=1 TO 10 and FOR i=0 TO 9 won't fail … BASIC isn't rigidly defined, beyond a tiny subset lacking any useful library (ANSI X3.60-1978, with accompanying test suite NBS SP 500-70). It took Microsoft five versions before they hit that standard, just so they could sell BASIC systems to the US federal government. There is a current ISO BASIC standard, but I don't quite have enough interest to shell out the $$$ to find out what it includes. cheers, Stewart *: this one-liner, running in an emulated BBC Micro in a browser, remains one of my favourite games: <https://bbc.godbolt.org/?autorun&loadBasic=https://gist.githubusercontent.com/scruss/8ba31a3fc154042285d21cf7ffdfff69/raw/9007afc9d252f4866f93cfc8f474b1d8ea6a76ee/ASTER> (caution: loud beep at start. Hold Return to climb, let go to not-climb. Don't hit anything you can see. Space restarts. The game's called Asterisk Tracker, and was a major reason for broken Return keys and unfinished computer homework in the 1980s in the UK.)
On Wed, 14 Aug 2019 10:07:00 -0400 (EDT) "D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk" <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
| From: Stewart Russell via talk <talk@gtalug.org>
| This is not a place of honour:. | | https://github.com/mist64/cbmbasic
This doesn't have the Waterloo BASIC extensions to Commodore BASIC. Too bad. ---
I still have a book on Comal lying around somewhere. If you really need to program a C64, there is alway Vice... http://vice-emu.sourceforge.net/ -- Howard Gibson hgibson@eol.ca jhowardgibson@gmail.com http://home.eol.ca/~hgibson
On Tue, 13 Aug 2019 at 22:18, Stewart Russell via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
This is not a place of honour:.
https://github.com/mist64/cbmbasic
Go do some damage!
My first assumption had been that this wouldn't have any access out into the filesystem. Oh, my, given that it does allow opening files, you could indeed do some "real" tasks with this. And do some real damage! I don't want to think about looping through files, but it could reasonably be used to process a file! cbbrowne@cbbrowne2 ~/G/c/test> cat fileio.bas 130 master? 10 OPEN 1,1,1,"TEST.DAT" 20 PRINT#1, 1234 30 PRINT#1, "Hello" 40 CLOSE 1 50 OPEN 2,1,0,"TEST.DAT" 60 INPUT#2, A 70 INPUT#2, I$ 80 CLOSE 2 90 PRINT A 100 PRINT I$ The prime number sieve (which does not capture primes into an array, hence never speeds up searches by avoiding dividing by non-primes) is surprisingly fast, all given, finding the first 11302 primes in about 11 seconds. I'm with Hugh on being disappointed not to have the Waterloo "structured BASIC" extensions. That said, I hated Structured BASIC at the time; it prevented me from handing in assignments on tiny slips of paper, which inevitably led to the teacher losing my assignment because the piece of paper fell out when he was shuffling papers. Oh, the good times of doing matrix calculations in Grade 12 "Computer Science"... -- When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"
On 2019-08-14 01:24 PM, Christopher Browne via talk wrote:
Oh, the good times of doing matrix calculations in Grade 12 "Computer Science"...
Back in my Gr 12 computer programming class, we learned Fortran and used pencil mark cards for our programs. The teacher would then take our cards down to the board office, to compile them. As long as they compiled, they were OK. They could have been complete garbage programs, but as long as they compiled... ;-)
On Wed, 14 Aug 2019 at 13:33, James Knott via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
On 2019-08-14 01:24 PM, Christopher Browne via talk wrote:
Oh, the good times of doing matrix calculations in Grade 12 "Computer Science"...
Back in my Gr 12 computer programming class, we learned Fortran and used pencil mark cards for our programs. The teacher would then take our cards down to the board office, to compile them. As long as they compiled, they were OK. They could have been complete garbage programs, but as long as they compiled... ;-)
We did something like that in Gr 11, only the mark cards produced some form of mainframe-based BASIC code. We put the decks into a box, similar story... It was somewhat sensitive to quality of pencil marks, and an insufficiently darkened cell would turn out badly for the program :-(. When one fellow in the class was enough of an entitled twit (has anyone ever gained anything from telling the class how high their IQ was???) his decks got occasionally defaced, or cards swapped. -- When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"
On 2019-08-14 02:31 PM, Christopher Browne via talk wrote:
When one fellow in the class was enough of an entitled twit (has anyone ever gained anything from telling the class how high their IQ was???) his decks got occasionally defaced, or cards swapped.
Way back when I was learning programming (8008 assembler) on a Datapoint 2200, I'd occasionally "accidentally" trip over the power cord for someone else's terminal. ;-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datapoint_2200
On Tue, Aug 13, 2019 at 10:17:36PM -0400, Stewart Russell via talk wrote:
This is not a place of honour:.
https://github.com/mist64/cbmbasic
Go do some damage!
You know, BASIC may come back to life in IofT and microprocessor boards. Because if you look at things you do with those boards, you certainly don't need Python (micro or not), those gas-guzzling IDE, or even C compilers. -- William Park <opengeometry@yahoo.ca>
On 2019-08-24 10:21 p.m., William Park via talk wrote:
On Tue, Aug 13, 2019 at 10:17:36PM -0400, Stewart Russell via talk wrote:
This is not a place of honour:.
https://github.com/mist64/cbmbasic
Go do some damage! You know, BASIC may come back to life in IofT and microprocessor boards. Because if you look at things you do with those boards, you certainly don't need Python (micro or not), those gas-guzzling IDE, or even C compilers.
Many of the very small devices are programmed in cross-compiled C. Karen McMurray, whom some you know, sells compilers and tools to this day from http://www.bytecraft.com/ in Waterloo --dave -- David Collier-Brown, | Always do right. This will gratify System Programmer and Author | some people and astonish the rest dave.collier-brown@indexexchange.com | -- Mark Twain CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE AND DISCLAIMER : This telecommunication, including any and all attachments, contains confidential information intended only for the person(s) to whom it is addressed. Any dissemination, distribution, copying or disclosure is strictly prohibited and is not a waiver of confidentiality. If you have received this telecommunication in error, please notify the sender immediately by return electronic mail and delete the message from your inbox and deleted items folders. This telecommunication does not constitute an express or implied agreement to conduct transactions by electronic means, nor does it constitute a contract offer, a contract amendment or an acceptance of a contract offer. Contract terms contained in this telecommunication are subject to legal review and the completion of formal documentation and are not binding until same is confirmed in writing and has been signed by an authorized signatory.
On Sun, 25 Aug 2019 09:52:39 -0400 Scott Allen via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
On Sun, 25 Aug 2019 at 09:30, Dave Collier-Brown via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
Many of the very small devices are programmed in cross-compiled C.
Or C++
Scott, Arduino boards are programmed in C++. C++ is an object oriented language. Arduino boards are used to execute simple procedures that don't require the effort of an object oriented language. My background here is automating AutoCAD using AutoLisp. When I encountered SolidWorks and Visual Basic, I was horrified. -- Howard Gibson hgibson@eol.ca jhowardgibson@gmail.com http://home.eol.ca/~hgibson
On Sun, 25 Aug 2019 at 11:56, Howard Gibson via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
C++ is an object oriented language. Arduino boards are used to execute simple procedures that don't require the effort of an object oriented language.
Arduino is an IDE and framework for development. One of the main intents is to make it easy for "makers" and others who wish to quickly create something to control hardware, and who may not be versed or interested in becoming highly experienced programmers. There are many boards, both official and third party, that are able to work in the Arduino environment and thus have had boot loaders written and libraries ported to allow them to do so. These range from being quite low power ones, such as the popular 8 bit Arduino ATmega328P based UNO, to some that are fairly powerful, such as the 32 bit ATSAMD51J20 ARM Cortex-M4F based SparkFun SAMD51 Thing Plus. Yes, C++ is the language used for Arduino but most documentation, examples and tutorials for end users tend to use non-object oriented C compatible programming style. That doesn't prevent the full use of all the language features, for those who wish to. Many of the available libraries are object oriented and/or take advantage of the additional features of C++ over C. If you're careful to avoid certain aspects of the language, such as those that make use of the heap, you can use objects and other C++ capabilities to write Arduino programs that compile to no more, or even less code than if written in true C, and can be easier to maintain and understand. -- Scott
On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 01:30:15PM +0000, Dave Collier-Brown via talk wrote:
On 2019-08-24 10:21 p.m., William Park via talk wrote:
On Tue, Aug 13, 2019 at 10:17:36PM -0400, Stewart Russell via talk wrote:
This is not a place of honour:.
https://github.com/mist64/cbmbasic
Go do some damage! You know, BASIC may come back to life in IofT and microprocessor boards. Because if you look at things you do with those boards, you certainly don't need Python (micro or not), those gas-guzzling IDE, or even C compilers.
Many of the very small devices are programmed in cross-compiled C.
Karen McMurray, whom some you know, sells compilers and tools to this day from http://www.bytecraft.com/ in Waterloo
At work, I once tried to use TI micro board (launchpad or something), and to program that, I have to download their IDE and edit through that, because only it knows which headers and libraries to pull in. Anything I do or learn, cannot translate to boards from other company. Eventually, I ended up using Beaglebone Black and wrote a little Python program. Geez! -- William Park <opengeometry@yahoo.ca>
On Sun, August 25, 2019 11:19 pm, William Park via talk wrote
At work, I once tried to use TI micro board (launchpad or something), and to program that, I have to download their IDE and edit through that, because only it knows which headers and libraries to pull in. Anything I do or learn, cannot translate to boards from other company. Eventually, I ended up using Beaglebone Black and wrote a little Python program. Geez!
I'm fitfully trying to cobble together a tool chain for the Teensy3.5 board. Prying loose a kinetis.h file has got me doing gcc compiles now. I'll count it a total success if I manage to avoid running somebody's opaque install program as root. I may just have to put up with a little failure to get a physical loader that works. I did it before, a long time ago, with Atmel SAM7's.
On 2019-08-25 11:19 p.m., William Park via talk wrote:
At work, I once tried to use TI micro board (launchpad or something), and to program that, I have to download their IDE and edit through that, because only it knows which headers and libraries to pull in.
Ah yes: TI kind of went their own way and so the Energia IDE for MSP430 - https://energia.nu/, forked from Arduino years ago - never quite became compatible with Arduino. This is a shame, because almost every other microcontroller (except PIC) now has native plugins for the Arduino IDE so the basic functionality is the same across a huge range of hardware. Why Arduino uses its IDE is a messy story: partly because it wasn't meant for programmers but for creative technologists who use the Processing system, partly because the Arduino knocked off the fledgling Wiring IDE without much credit, and partly because the AVR chips that the first Wiring/Arduino systems used needed a very special rewrite of gcc to support those processors' Harvard architecture. But they are getting better in providing command line tools, if those are your jam. cheers, Stewart
On Sat, Aug 24, 2019 at 10:22 PM William Park via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
On Tue, Aug 13, 2019 at 10:17:36PM -0400, Stewart Russell via talk wrote:
This is not a place of honour:.
https://github.com/mist64/cbmbasic
Go do some damage!
You know, BASIC may come back to life in IofT and microprocessor boards. Because if you look at things you do with those boards, you certainly don't need Python (micro or not), those gas-guzzling IDE, or even C compilers.
I work in the IoT space and I have yet to read anything, credible or otherwise, that BASIC may be useful in that market. C, C++, Python and Micro Python, Go (Flogo framework), JavaScript (Node-Red framework), and Elixir/Erlang (Nerves framework) are credible choices. I find the Elixir/Erlang stack the most interesting of the lot. Regards, Clifford Ilkay +1 647-778-8696
-ish On Wed, Aug 28, 2019, 2:07 PM Clifford Ilkay via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
. I find the Elixir/Erlang stack the most interesting of the lot.
That does seem interesting. Is there a pretty tiny runtime for Erlang? I do recall someone doing a Kickstarter for a Pi-like board specifically attuned to Erlang use, makes plenty of sense with 32 bits of address space, but less so on highly constrained systems (e.g. 8bit)
Maybe not the original BASIC syntax, but you don't need all that much. Read from register, write to register, some math operations, few control statements, etc.--William Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android On Wed, Aug 28, 2019 at 2:07 PM, Clifford Ilkay<cilkay@gmail.com> wrote: On Sat, Aug 24, 2019 at 10:22 PM William Park via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote: On Tue, Aug 13, 2019 at 10:17:36PM -0400, Stewart Russell via talk wrote:
This is not a place of honour:.
https://github.com/mist64/cbmbasic
Go do some damage!
You know, BASIC may come back to life in IofT and microprocessor boards. Because if you look at things you do with those boards, you certainly don't need Python (micro or not), those gas-guzzling IDE, or even C compilers. I work in the IoT space and I have yet to read anything, credible or otherwise, that BASIC may be useful in that market. C, C++, Python and Micro Python, Go (Flogo framework), JavaScript (Node-Red framework), and Elixir/Erlang (Nerves framework) are credible choices. I find the Elixir/Erlang stack the most interesting of the lot. Regards, Clifford Ilkay +1 647-778-8696
I nominate Altair BASIC! ;-) http://altairbasic.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_BASIC On 2019-08-13 10:17 PM, Stewart Russell via talk wrote:
This is not a place of honour:.
https://github.com/mist64/cbmbasic
Go do some damage!
--- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
On Sun, Aug 25, 2019, 12:01 PM James Knott via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
I nominate Altair BASIC! ;-)
http://altairbasic.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_BASIC
Interesting how legal jargon influenced its development. Harvard at the time, did not have a written policy regarding authorized use of computers for commercial purposes. They have since written one. https://hls.harvard.edu/dept/its/its-policies/usage-policy This gives them a measure of control over the purpose of the academic research tools and the environment Harvard provides and protects the resultant research from unauthorized commercial explotation. You'd think Harvard Law school would have understood law at the time. There is a necessary legal implication when drafting policy, like trespass to private property. If the intent is to restrict use of private facilities, then that activity which is not specifically listed cannot be restricted under those writings. When MS and MITS went to arbitration over who owned the rights to BASIC under the purchase agreement MITS lost for not using their "best efforts" to market the product This situation resulted from someone having recovered the BASIC punch tape from Gates presentation at the Homebrew hobbyists convention. They did this because they were to have a BASIC code as part of the package they purchased and felt they had the rights to the property. Gates had written his famous inflamitory open letter to hobbyists. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists Losing control of that tape was probably the first identifiable securtity flaw in an M$ product. Gates set the tone of his companies response mechanisim in that letter and the rest is history. Nobody likes to be called a thief and a parasite by somebody. This situation, after Gates et. al. purloined acadamec knowledge for commercial endeavor, was kind of "the pot calling the kettle black," all things considered.
On 2019-08-13 10:17 PM, Stewart Russell via talk wrote:
This is not a place of honour:.
https://github.com/mist64/cbmbasic
Go do some damage!
--- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
--- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
On 2019-08-26 08:49 AM, Russell Reiter wrote:
Nobody likes to be called a thief and a parasite by somebody. This situation, after Gates et. al. purloined acadamec knowledge for commercial endeavor, was kind of "the pot calling the kettle black," all things considered.
Of course, we can't forget BG was a dumpster diver, looking for source code.
On Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 10:05 AM James Knott via talk, <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
On 2019-08-26 08:49 AM, Russell Reiter wrote:
Nobody likes to be called a thief and a parasite by somebody. This situation, after Gates et. al. purloined acadamec knowledge for commercial endeavor, was kind of "the pot calling the kettle black," all things considered.
Of course, we can't forget BG was a dumpster diver, looking for source code.
Sssh, you,re leaking M$ trade secrets. :-o
--- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
On 2019-08-26 11:34 AM, Russell Reiter wrote:
On Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 10:05 AM James Knott via talk, <talk@gtalug.org <mailto:talk@gtalug.org>> wrote:
On 2019-08-26 08:49 AM, Russell Reiter wrote: > Nobody likes to be called a thief and a parasite by somebody. This > situation, after Gates et. al. purloined acadamec knowledge for > commercial endeavor, was kind of "the pot calling the kettle black," > all things considered.
Of course, we can't forget BG was a dumpster diver, looking for source code.
Sssh, you,re leaking M$ trade secrets. :-o
It's not a secret to anyone who's used Windows. ;-)
"It's trivial to make fun of Microsoft products, but it takes a real hacker to make them work, and a god to make them do anything useful." - anonymous hacker Still true today? :-) On Mon, 26 Aug 2019 at 11:43, James Knott via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
On 2019-08-26 11:34 AM, Russell Reiter wrote:
On Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 10:05 AM James Knott via talk, <talk@gtalug.org <mailto:talk@gtalug.org>> wrote:
On 2019-08-26 08:49 AM, Russell Reiter wrote: > Nobody likes to be called a thief and a parasite by somebody. This > situation, after Gates et. al. purloined acadamec knowledge for > commercial endeavor, was kind of "the pot calling the kettle black," > all things considered.
Of course, we can't forget BG was a dumpster diver, looking for source code.
Sssh, you,re leaking M$ trade secrets. :-o
It's not a secret to anyone who's used Windows. ;-) --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
-- William Porquet, M.A. ⁂ mailto:william@2038.org ⁂ http://www.2038.org/ "I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them." (Isaac Asimov)
On Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 11:48 AM William Porquet via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
"It's trivial to make fun of Microsoft products, but it takes a real hacker to make them work, and a god to make them do anything useful." - anonymous hacker
Still true today? :-)
I'd say so, considering the corporation which basically said Linux was not secure, in order to keep their own market dominance, has now embraced Linux with its own WSL. Perhaps the gods have their own ways of making things useful.
On Mon, 26 Aug 2019 at 11:43, James Knott via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
On 2019-08-26 11:34 AM, Russell Reiter wrote:
On Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 10:05 AM James Knott via talk, <talk@gtalug.org <mailto:talk@gtalug.org>> wrote:
On 2019-08-26 08:49 AM, Russell Reiter wrote: > Nobody likes to be called a thief and a parasite by somebody. This > situation, after Gates et. al. purloined acadamec knowledge for > commercial endeavor, was kind of "the pot calling the kettle black," > all things considered.
Of course, we can't forget BG was a dumpster diver, looking for source code.
Sssh, you,re leaking M$ trade secrets. :-o
It's not a secret to anyone who's used Windows. ;-) --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
-- William Porquet, M.A. ⁂ mailto:william@2038.org ⁂ http://www.2038.org/ "I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them." (Isaac Asimov) --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
I've come to the realization that, in this day and age of hypervisors and virutalization, Windows has become a rather complex and somewhat buggy service that runs under Linux. Or is has for me, anyway. My CDN$0.02. William On Mon, 26 Aug 2019 at 12:31, Russell Reiter <rreiter91@gmail.com> wrote:
On Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 11:48 AM William Porquet via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
"It's trivial to make fun of Microsoft products, but it takes a real hacker to make them work, and a god to make them do anything useful." - anonymous hacker
Still true today? :-)
I'd say so, considering the corporation which basically said Linux was not secure, in order to keep their own market dominance, has now embraced Linux with its own WSL.
Perhaps the gods have their own ways of making things useful.
On Mon, 26 Aug 2019 at 11:43, James Knott via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
On 2019-08-26 11:34 AM, Russell Reiter wrote:
On Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 10:05 AM James Knott via talk, <talk@gtalug.org <mailto:talk@gtalug.org>> wrote:
On 2019-08-26 08:49 AM, Russell Reiter wrote: > Nobody likes to be called a thief and a parasite by somebody.
This
> situation, after Gates et. al. purloined acadamec knowledge for > commercial endeavor, was kind of "the pot calling the kettle black," > all things considered.
Of course, we can't forget BG was a dumpster diver, looking for source code.
Sssh, you,re leaking M$ trade secrets. :-o
It's not a secret to anyone who's used Windows. ;-) --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
-- William Porquet, M.A. ⁂ mailto:william@2038.org ⁂ http://www.2038.org/ "I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them." (Isaac Asimov) --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
-- William Porquet, M.A. ⁂ mailto:william@2038.org ⁂ http://www.2038.org/ "I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them." (Isaac Asimov)
On Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 12:35 PM William Porquet, <william@2038.org> wrote:
I've come to the realization that, in this day and age of hypervisors and virutalization, Windows has become a rather complex and somewhat buggy service that runs under Linux. Or is has for me, anyway.
My CDN$0.02.
I purchased a copy of Win4lin in 1999 so I could work on the software the NGO's I volunteered for were using. I use to resent being asked to install cracked copies of Windows, in the name of social justice or for any other reason for that matter. I deleted windows from my PC and could honestly say I dont have a copy and I can't do that for you in good conscience, even if you tell me the disks that you have are legal when I can see they are not. If I examine what I do know about Windows these days as a non-user In Practical Unix and Internet Security 2nd Ed. O REILLY et. al. on Pg 331 the authors wrote. "As a matter of good policy, new software should first be installed on some noncritical systems for testing and familiarisation. This practice gives you an opportunity to isolate problems, identify incompatibilities, an note quirks, Don’t install new software on a “live” production system! Note that you should not automatically trust software from a commercial firm or group. Sometimes commercial firms insert back doors into their code to allow for maintenance, or recovering lost passwords. These back doors might be secret today, but become well-known tomorrow. ...” Outside of whether Linux considers Windows TM a non critical system or not, the questions I have from a Linux perspective of WSL convergance are; will the corporation become more like the people accessing the technology? or, will the people become more like the corporation providing the technology? To make the argument for Open Source vs. Closed Source knowledge and intelligence, I always tell people that I chose Linux because I always learn something rather than just how to do something. I note some kernel now integrate ebpf tools, so the term trust but verify hasn't lost all meaning as a core value. https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/introduction-ebpf-red-hat-enterprise-linux-7
William
On Mon, 26 Aug 2019 at 12:31, Russell Reiter <rreiter91@gmail.com> wrote:
On Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 11:48 AM William Porquet via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
"It's trivial to make fun of Microsoft products, but it takes a real hacker to make them work, and a god to make them do anything useful." - anonymous hacker
Still true today? :-)
I'd say so, considering the corporation which basically said Linux was not secure, in order to keep their own market dominance, has now embraced Linux with its own WSL.
Perhaps the gods have their own ways of making things useful.
On Mon, 26 Aug 2019 at 11:43, James Knott via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
On 2019-08-26 11:34 AM, Russell Reiter wrote:
On Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 10:05 AM James Knott via talk, <talk@gtalug.org <mailto:talk@gtalug.org>> wrote:
On 2019-08-26 08:49 AM, Russell Reiter wrote: > Nobody likes to be called a thief and a parasite by somebody.
This
> situation, after Gates et. al. purloined acadamec knowledge for > commercial endeavor, was kind of "the pot calling the kettle black," > all things considered.
Of course, we can't forget BG was a dumpster diver, looking for source code.
Sssh, you,re leaking M$ trade secrets. :-o
It's not a secret to anyone who's used Windows. ;-) --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
-- William Porquet, M.A. ⁂ mailto:william@2038.org ⁂ http://www.2038.org/ "I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them." (Isaac Asimov) --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
-- William Porquet, M.A. ⁂ mailto:william@2038.org ⁂ http://www.2038.org/ "I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them." (Isaac Asimov)
On Mon, Aug 26, 2019 at 08:49:44AM -0400, Russell Reiter via talk wrote:
On Sun, Aug 25, 2019, 12:01 PM James Knott via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
I nominate Altair BASIC! ;-)
http://altairbasic.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_BASIC
Interesting how legal jargon influenced its development. Harvard at the time, did not have a written policy regarding authorized use of computers for commercial purposes. They have since written one.
https://hls.harvard.edu/dept/its/its-policies/usage-policy
This gives them a measure of control over the purpose of the academic research tools and the environment Harvard provides and protects the resultant research from unauthorized commercial explotation.
You'd think Harvard Law school would have understood law at the time.
The law has changed signficantly since then, and probably in no small part *because* of what happened also in the meantime. It can be a challenge to see that history clearly through the veil of what has happened since. The US Dole-Bayh Act (1980) really boosted creation of what we now know as the university "tech transfer" office, clarifying how universities can use the fruits of government-funded research. I find it an underappreciated, underdiscussed contributor to research climates, climates that in turn led--at least as I read the history--to the creation of the GNU project, the GPL, the Unix wars, etc. ... a kind of deregulatory-driven "land rush" if you will, in which it was clear maybe for the first time that universities were first-class participants. But that shift from collegiality to competition didn't suit everyone. Then Apple vs. Franklin (1983) clarified that software qualified as a literary work under US copyright law. That Harvard policy makes reference to the DMCA (1998) which as I recall gave the impetus to one of the most recent last big round of rewrites of acceptable use policies, which previously owed a lot to restrictions on commercial use of university Internet connections. Only a decade before had the US finally acceded to the Berne Convention. So, birthright copyright is comparably fairly new in the US (in contrast, Canada acceded in the 1920s). Amongst those of us of a certain age in the US, who don't have legal training, I suspect the lore persists that copyright restrictions apply only if the copyright for the work has been registered--this used to be true in living memory. How much this largely superseded notion continues to get passed along informally to subsequent generations one can only guess, but I think it remains prevalent, sometimes manifesting as shoot-the-messenger impatience in the face of licensing discussions: Those of us who prefer to use and create works with free licenses didn't make it inconveniently complicated, we're just trying to navigate an already complex situation in which works are born, as it were, non-free. -- Joe
There is a necessary legal implication when drafting policy, like trespass to private property. If the intent is to restrict use of private facilities, then that activity which is not specifically listed cannot be restricted under those writings.
| From: D. Joe via talk <talk@gtalug.org> An excellent and informative post. | Amongst those of us of a certain age in the US, who don't have legal | training, I suspect the lore persists that copyright restrictions apply | only if the copyright for the work has been registered--this used to be | true in living memory. Are you in the US? My understanding of US law (shaky!!) is that damages are limited if you didn't register the copyright. The other thing that USAnian (and Canadian) people don't understand is the "moral rights" component of copyright. The US copyright law got this concept by way of Berne. I had heard that US residents don't have moral rights under copyright law in the US but foreigners do. I don't think that these have been asserted often. Even in Canada, moral rights are pretty rarely invoked. I only remember one example: Michael Show vs Eaton Centre vis a vis ribons on the Canada Geese sculptures. (Snow won). I imagine that moral rights could be useful in the open source world.
On Tue, 27 Aug 2019 at 10:07, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
I imagine that moral rights could be useful in the open source world.
It's the most slippery of slopes but IMO a non-issue. Consider the biggest philosophical difference between the open-source/free-software worlds and the Creative Commons world. Both the open source definition <https://opensource.org/osd> and the FSF four freedoms <https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html> explicitly disclaim restrictions on how code is used so long as the appropriate copying/sharing provisions are maintained. Thus the mainly (but not exclusively) European concept of "authors rights <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors%27_rights>" would be extremely difficult to assert and would likely be seen within the broader community in the same light as someone trying to embed patented code inside a FOSS project. By contrast, by far the most-implemented clause in Creative Commons licenses is "no commercial use". To me, this is a fatal flaw in CC and why it will never really take off, in contrast to open source which is already mainstream. CC people are obsessed with their work being abused or that someone other than the original author would profit from a work, a completely different ethos from that behind FOSS. -- Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada @evanleibovitch or @el56
Moral rights are most frequently applied to things like reports that people are contracted to write (so that the contracting agency can’t change the sense of the report in a press release, for example. Moral rights cannot be sold/assigned, but can be waived. People hired to write reports are sometimes required to waive their moral rights as part of the contract to hire them. Which makes one absolutely an expert for hire…. I was unaware of the limited protection of moral rights in the US, but according to https://library.osu.edu/site/copyright/2017/07/21/moral-rights-in-the-united... it only applies to visual works - not other forms of copyrighted work (such as articles, reports, or code). ../Dave On Aug 27, 2019, 4:06 PM +0200, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk <talk@gtalug.org>, wrote:
| From: D. Joe via talk <talk@gtalug.org>
An excellent and informative post.
| Amongst those of us of a certain age in the US, who don't have legal | training, I suspect the lore persists that copyright restrictions apply | only if the copyright for the work has been registered--this used to be | true in living memory.
Are you in the US?
My understanding of US law (shaky!!) is that damages are limited if you didn't register the copyright.
The other thing that USAnian (and Canadian) people don't understand is the "moral rights" component of copyright. The US copyright law got this concept by way of Berne.
I had heard that US residents don't have moral rights under copyright law in the US but foreigners do. I don't think that these have been asserted often.
Even in Canada, moral rights are pretty rarely invoked. I only remember one example: Michael Show vs Eaton Centre vis a vis ribons on the Canada Geese sculptures. (Snow won).
I imagine that moral rights could be useful in the open source world. --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
On Tue, Aug 27, 2019 at 10:06:26AM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
| From: D. Joe via talk <talk@gtalug.org>
An excellent and informative post.
Thanks!
| Amongst those of us of a certain age in the US, who don't have legal | training, I suspect the lore persists that copyright restrictions apply | only if the copyright for the work has been registered--this used to be | true in living memory.
Are you in the US?
Most of the time, yes.
My understanding of US law (shaky!!) is that damages are limited if you didn't register the copyright.
That's what I understand, yes, that unregistered, birthright copyright is mostly good for injunctive relief ("stop using that!"). Since use is freedom 0 that seems enough of a problem for free software, though.
moral rights
Looks like folks have gotten a good bead on this elsethread, but yeah, good point.
ETOn Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 5:11 PM D. Joe, <gtalug@etrumeus.com> wrote:
On Mon, Aug 26, 2019 at 08:49:44AM -0400, Russell Reiter via talk wrote:
On Sun, Aug 25, 2019, 12:01 PM James Knott via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
I nominate Altair BASIC! ;-)
http://altairbasic.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_BASIC
Interesting how legal jargon influenced its development. Harvard at the time, did not have a written policy regarding authorized use of computers for commercial purposes. They have since written one.
https://hls.harvard.edu/dept/its/its-policies/usage-policy
This gives them a measure of control over the purpose of the academic research tools and the environment Harvard provides and protects the resultant research from unauthorized commercial explotation.
You'd think Harvard Law school would have understood law at the time.
The law has changed signficantly since then, and probably in no small part *because* of what happened also in the meantime. It can be a challenge to see that history clearly through the veil of what has happened since.
I think this is why, in academic environments, security of tenure was established. Ideally it allowed teachers to be able to challange the status quo, who's stylings may change with each new administraton, in order to provide a continuity of thought, through the right to freely express oneself without the fear of censure or censorship outside the rule of law. This holds true even if the terms of a signed contract of service to the institution imply otherwise. These days academic freeedom of expression seems to be only a matter of what words a union will support or challange in the courts of justice, given that few academics have the individual enconomic power to complete an appeal to the SCC.
The US Dole-Bayh Act (1980) really boosted creation of what we now know as the university "tech transfer" office, clarifying how universities can use the fruits of government-funded research.
The US patent office and also I presume the Canadian and other Five Eyes partners, vette patents through a national security lense before granting an open patent on a technologically driven invention. No matter what the object is, the open patent can be denied in the interests of protecting the nations security. However knowledge is the genie in the bottle and only its master can keep it in the bottle. Government can even use the information in the patent application in subrogation and provide that information to its military establishment for national defense purposes, without paying royalties to the author or informing them the information is now classified as a military secret. If you could find out that is what happened to your work and could prove it on a balance of probabilities, you could sue to recover your loss. This is the crux of an issue currently under debate in North America regarding Huawei deploying a system of 4g devices in the US. China is arguing any restrictions would be undue restraint of trade. The US security establishment (in fairness this is just one part of governmental interest in the matter) would be arguing the chinese position is a red herring, in order to throw the scent off a hidden military purpose of gathering SIGINT meta-data and perhaps even the data itself.
I find it an underappreciated, underdiscussed contributor to research climates, climates that in turn led--at least as I read the history--to the creation of the GNU project, the GPL, the Unix wars, etc. ... a kind of deregulatory-driven "land rush" if you will, in which it was clear maybe for the first time that universities were first-class participants. But that shift from collegiality to competition didn't suit everyone.
Then Apple vs. Franklin (1983) clarified that software qualified as a literary work under US copyright law.
Its interesting and not perhaps well understood that all written works are fiction. Facts are established by finders of fact. People and organizations may agree on what any literary works represent. When disagreements occur it is is the trier of fact, through the Courts of Justice, who make the final determinations during the essential parts of a trial; preliminary hearings, motions, disclosure, agreed upon facts etc. Judges may rely on the evidence, sometimes using experts on the forecasting of allowable subject matter at trial. They then determine what the true facts are. Expert testimony is allowed under DELPHI consensus, in the belief that a structured groupthink is preferable to an unstructured groupthink. There is even a CRC process in play here, in that a decision of a lower divisional court is reversibile on an appeal and that reversion may be appealed to the Supreme court who will be the final deciders if they so choose. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphi_method
That Harvard policy makes reference to the DMCA (1998) which as I recall gave the impetus to one of the most recent last big round of rewrites of acceptable use policies, which previously owed a lot to restrictions on commercial use of university Internet connections.
Only a decade before had the US finally acceded to the Berne Convention. So, birthright copyright is comparably fairly new in the US (in contrast, Canada acceded in the 1920s).
Canada is a creation of administrative letters patent under an Imperial doctrine. Our recent constitutional documentation was a sort of an afterthought, inspired in part by US authorities established in support of equality in human rights. Browder v Gayle et al. On the other hand Plessy v. Ferguson aka Separate but Equal, has never been fully repudiated by the US Supreme Court and still stands today, although it is described as historically the worst decision of the US Supreme court. One recent change of Canadian legal expression will come of age soon, bill 154 has passed, after many years of delay. https://theonn.ca/our-work/our-regulatory-environment/onca/ The term letters patent, coined at a time of imperial doctrine in 1947, will be changed to "articles of incorporation." This following statute regulating NGO/NPO's is expected to be affirmed in 2020, although it is leading the current policy of governance in Ontario since 2010. https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/10n15
Amongst those of us of a certain age in the US, who don't have legal training, I suspect the lore persists that copyright restrictions apply only if the copyright for the work has been registered--this used to be true in living memory. How much this largely superseded notion continues to get passed along informally to subsequent generations one can only guess, but I think it remains prevalent, sometimes manifesting as shoot-the-messenger impatience in the face of licensing discussions: Those of us who prefer to use and create works with free licenses didn't make it inconveniently complicated, we're just trying to navigate an already complex situation in which works are born, as it were, non-free.
There is state societal doctrine which says that just because you originate an idea you don't necessarily own that idea; that all ideas flow from state provided benefit, and any profits then flow back to the state for the communal good. Todays Isims. https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Today%27s_Isms This was an interesting read in its day. Governmental Activisim vs. Governmental Passivisim are not explicitly addressed, however it sort of restates the idea that history is the propaganda of the victors; albeit in that sense of the economics of providing writings of histories. At one time who but a monarch could afford to pay a writer, much less underwrite printing of a publication. These days the isims are piling up, ableisim is described as discrimination in favour of able bodied people; ageisim as discrimination against a person based on that persons age; nameisim is discrimination against people with certain names. etc... Its interesting how expression changes. I have a friend who is called to the bar and also uses Linux to some extent. He once said to me law is like a shell script. I thought about that for quite some time and came to the realization that law is a kernel. It is the forms which law uses in its balancing of discrete preferences, which are akin to shell scripts. Each type of form used in arguments of legal fact melds with the others to confirm the validity of facts in question. A statement either passes the sum of the tests and is validated or does not pass and is invalidated. Remedy is argued again in further submissions. Perhaps legal citations in written arguments in front of the courts were an early example in the development of object oriented references in programming. It is the final objective of legal decisions to modify the objectional behaviour of people, at least within the boundaries of their own jurisdiction.
-- Joe
There is a necessary legal implication when drafting policy, like trespass to private property. If the intent is to restrict use of private facilities, then that activity which is not specifically listed cannot be restricted under those writings.
participants (17)
-
Chris F.A. Johnson -
Christopher Browne -
Clifford Ilkay -
D. Hugh Redelmeier -
D. Joe -
Dave Collier-Brown -
David Mason -
Evan Leibovitch -
Howard Gibson -
James Knott -
mwilson＠Vex.Net -
Russell Reiter -
Scott Allen -
Stewart C. Russell -
Stewart Russell
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William Park -
William Porquet