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posted by janrinok on Saturday November 07 2015, @05:16AM   Printer-friendly
from the lawyers-rejoice! dept.

The TPP E-Commerce chapter has a provision banning requirements to transfer or provide access to software source code. This applies to "mass market software."

Article 14.17: Source Code
1. No Party shall require the transfer of, or access to, source code of software owned by a person of another Party, as a condition for the import, distribution, sale or use of such software, or of products containing such software, in its territory.
2. For the purposes of this Article, software subject to paragraph 1 is limited to mass-market software or products containing such software and does not include software used for critical infrastructure.
3. Nothing in this Article shall preclude:
(a) the inclusion or implementation of terms and conditions related to the provision of source code in commercially negotiated contracts; or
(b) a Party from requiring the modification of source code of software necessary for that software to comply with laws or regulations which are not inconsistent with this Agreement.
4. This Article shall not be construed to affect requirements that relate to patent applications or granted patents, including any orders made by a judicial authority in relation to patent disputes, subject to safeguards against unauthorised disclosure under the law or practice of a Party.

I'm wondering how the GPL fares here, and how much money Microsoft spent lobbying to get this included in the TPP, or if the NSA has a role in this. One aspect of this provision is that governments cannot insist on source code transparency, for mass market software, even to address concerns over security or interoperability.


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by AnonymousCowardNoMore on Saturday November 07 2015, @08:17AM

    by AnonymousCowardNoMore (5416) on Saturday November 07 2015, @08:17AM (#259871)

    You claim that there will be no need for graphics drivers, so each software author will write their own equations for a general-purpose processor (which now happens to do vectors)? We already had that—before GPUs were mainstream—and it sucked. Drivers exist precisely so that each program doesn't have to reinvent the wheel.

    As for what you call "real physics" in games, that's a pipe dream. Any game must decide on an appropriate level of abstraction given the processing power available and work within that. Any simple activity, like throwing a ball, can eat up more processing power than all the supercomputers in the world have if you just make it sufficiently detailed. A game needs something that is good enough for playability and willing suspension of disbelief. (And marketing.) In the same way, a scientific physics simulation needs something that is good enough to answer the question "What happens?" while ignoring as many variables as it can, because there are simply too many to simulate.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 07 2015, @10:04AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 07 2015, @10:04AM (#259895)

    As for what you call "real physics" in games, that's a pipe dream.

    For now.

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday November 07 2015, @11:36AM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Saturday November 07 2015, @11:36AM (#259913) Journal
      Forever.
      The cheapest way to "simulate" something with an absolute degree of exactitude is to actually let the system (the one you attempt to "simulate") evolve naturally.
      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 07 2015, @12:10PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 07 2015, @12:10PM (#259925)

        Forever.

        At least with our current level of technology, but since I cannot predict the future, I cannot know what it will hold. I am generally quite cautious about predicting what future technology will look like.

        The cheapest way to "simulate" something with an absolute degree of exactitude is to actually let the system (the one you attempt to "simulate") evolve naturally.

        That's cheaper, sure, but I do not speak of price.

        It doesn't really solve the problem of arbitrarily simulating alternate universes with similar physics to our own, though.

      • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday November 07 2015, @12:42PM

        by maxwell demon (1608) on Saturday November 07 2015, @12:42PM (#259938) Journal

        That misses the point, even for physics simulations.

        There are basically two reasons for doing physics simulations:

        The first one is to check theories. That is, you want to know whether your theory correctly describes the relevant aspects of the system. Now the system evolves not according to the theory, but according to the actual laws of physics; so while you certainly need the system to see what actually happens, that's in no way sufficient to see if your theory is good; you also need to know how the system would behave if your theory was true, in order to compare it with the results from the actual system. If the system is complicated enough, that means simulation. Note that this also includes the case where the simulation tells you what effect to look for in the real-world system, and then looking at the real-world system whether you can find that object.

        The second one is to get data where obtaining it from the real system would either not be feasible, would be too expensive, or would take too long. For example, if you build a nuclear reactor, you certainly want to know whether it will work or blow up before you actually build it, and you certainly will only build those designs which your simulations say won't blow up. And when doing hurricane forecast, of course the surest way to know how strong a hurricane will be and which way it will go is to wait and see; but at that time it's already too late; you want that information before the hurricane hits you.

        Indeed I'm not sure that simply observing where the hurricane goes is even the cheapest alternative. While predicting simulations certainly cost money, in the end the money you save by having the forecast available may be more than the cost of the forecast. The same is true of course of the nuclear reactor: A simulated meltdown is relatively cheap, a real one is expensive.

        --
        The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
        • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday November 07 2015, @01:24PM

          by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Saturday November 07 2015, @01:24PM (#259947) Journal

          There are basically two reasons for doing physics simulations:

          That misses the point, even if I took the trouble to emphasize it. Take your example of hurricane simulation: if it's a good one, you'll get the scale of damage, but you aren't going to know which buildings will certainly collapse and which won't maybe a shack that normally would be blown away will survive due to the truck that just happens to be parked in front of it? You know? That truck that the simulation ihknre nothing sd the moment od s9mulstuin.

          --
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 07 2015, @03:19PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 07 2015, @03:19PM (#259982)

            You know? That truck that the simulation ihknre nothing sd the moment od s9mulstuin.

            Its like you suddenly got drunk mid-post.

            • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday November 08 2015, @06:01AM

              by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 08 2015, @06:01AM (#260250) Journal
              No, I fell asleep. Literally.
              --
              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 07 2015, @11:09PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 07 2015, @11:09PM (#260137)

        I'd like to borrow your time machine.

  • (Score: 2) by zugedneb on Saturday November 07 2015, @04:47PM

    by zugedneb (4556) on Saturday November 07 2015, @04:47PM (#260014)

    Look, it is not that complicated. I have not until now seen change for rational reasons. It went something like this:
    people wanted Iphones -> better signal processors and better monitor manufacturing technology...
    people torrent crap -> more research into harddrives...
    people want electric cars -> research to store electricity...

    And finally the software culture. I will summarize it like this: there is no need for 3 kinds of friction 3 kinds of light scattering and so forth when implementing physics. It is enough that it looks real in the sense of "consistence"; that is angles at collision and deceleration of gliding objects and flow looks at leas remotely consistent. Bit like pong really...
    And so, since I think the killer of monopoly is "the general":
    people wanted physics in game and to run that same game on any platform -> general processors with general OS.

    The reinventing the wheel part is necessary. Otherwise, you have some who work, and lot who just turn pages in textbooks.
    To know, you must do, and if you have nothing left to do, there is nothing left to know.

    --
    old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
  • (Score: 2) by Gravis on Sunday November 08 2015, @12:04AM

    by Gravis (4596) on Sunday November 08 2015, @12:04AM (#260158)

    You claim that there will be no need for graphics drivers

    what i inferred was that instead of the GPU being separate from the CPU, they would become integrated so that GPU operations would simply be an extension of the instruction set.

    so each software author will write their own equations for a general-purpose processor (which now happens to do vectors)?

    the libraries still exist, so you can use one of those.

    We already had that—before GPUs were mainstream—and it sucked.

    actually, what we had was CPUs with a single pipeline. by integrating CPU and GPU instruction sets, you would be able to use many vector specific pipelines at the same time.

    Drivers exist precisely so that each program doesn't have to reinvent the wheel.

    no, drivers exist to interface with non-standard hardware.

    As for what you call "real physics" in games, that's a pipe dream. Any game must decide on an appropriate level of abstraction given the processing power available and work within that.

    i do believe what he is saying is there will be an implementation of classical physics and depending on the processor, you could process X number of "atoms" in real-time. i do not think he is implying a 1:1 simulation in the number of atoms.

    Any simple activity, like throwing a ball, can eat up more processing power than all the supercomputers in the world have if you just make it sufficiently detailed.

    to be fair, a single GPU IC has more processing power than all the supercomputers in the world of yesteryear. what if CPUs of tomorrow have billions of vector specific pipelines and together they can simulate millions of atoms? while you may not be simulating a 1:1 representation of an environment, you could certainly simulate a miniature version of it.