Re: Thought for the day

On Tue, 21 Oct 2008 17:49:35 +0000 (UTC),
Seth <sethb@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in
<gdl4nf$22v$5@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

In article <gdj7il$243$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Anthony de Boer - USEnet <abuse@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Mike Andrews posted thus:
Brian Kantor <brian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
We did APL in a cryptography class a coupla years later. Arrgh.

If you were using APL in a crypto class, it must have been old-style
character-based ciphers, not the modern stuff. Correlation, man,
correlation's the thing. Except, of course, when it's not the thing.

Well, then there's the theory that if you're writing APL or even trying
to understand it, you're doing crypto already.

Some time back, IBM would only sell software as object code, not
source. They had a system written in APL they wanted to sell. The
lawyers opined that removing the comments would suffice; uncommented
APL was object code.

Ah, yes, PMF. FSVO "sell" that was much more like "license at a truly
exorbitant price". I think I've written earlier about the truly huge
battle over which group got the job of writing it.

And they locked the workspace: it wasn't editable or otherwise (by me,
anyway) viewable, though I'm sure someone could come up with something
to unlock a workspace trivially, or to ignore whatever the locking
mechanism might have been.

--
I seem to have my life in reverse. When I was a wee'un, it seemed perfectly
normal that one could pick up the phone and speak to anybody else in the
world who also has a phone. Now I'm older and more experienced, I'm amazed
that this could possibly work. -- Peter Corlett, in the Monastery
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Thought for the day
    ... If you were using APL in a crypto class, ... then there's the theory that if you're writing APL or even trying ... Some time back, IBM would only sell software as object code, not ...
    (alt.sysadmin.recovery)
  • Re: Thought for the day
    ... They had a system written in APL they wanted to sell. ... lawyers opined that removing the comments would suffice; ... IBM's business model for years. ...
    (alt.sysadmin.recovery)
  • Re: Is there an APL system that is free for commercial use for linux?
    ... This market is just too small for any commercial grade APL system to be ... If APL were the catalyst needed to sell something else, ... Any organisation which makes money off its APL ...
    (comp.lang.apl)
  • Re: ibm apl2 version 1
    ... It would be better to have APL at a low price or free and then sell ... J is free and it also allows you to build applications that the user ... I guess that some people consider APL to be an application and for many ... It is obviously very hard to sell APL applications if you do have to ...
    (comp.lang.apl)