Slashback: Hagiography, Oracle, Fusion

Slashback with updates on RMS's biography, PVRs vs. the endangered edifice of Western Civilization, Oracle's funny deal with California, cold fusion and more. Read on for the details! Can't we please have a picture of the winner? obsidianpreacher writes: "Apparently, SETI@Home has just recently released who the winner of the 500 millionth result "contest" is, and posted the news on the SETI@Home site. Too bad it wasn't me (or one of the people who turn in 300 bajillion results per day)."

Even lukewarm fusion would be satisfy me. driggers writes: "I wrote a review of the book "Excess Heat" for /. last year. I thought you might (or might not :) be interested to learn that the U.S. Navy in February 2002 issued Technical Report No. 1862 titled "Thermal and Nuclear Aspects of the Pd/D2O System," Vol. 1 of which summarizes A Decade of Research at Navy Laboratories."

Dr. Frank Gordon, Head, Navigation and Applied Sciences Department, concludes his foreword with the remark, "It is time for the government funding organizations to invest in this research."

If you modify the source you must keep it accurate, like a Mad Lib. An Anonymous Coward writes "I just noticed the biography of Richard M. Stallman, "Free as in Freedom" by Sam Williams is online at oreilly, released under the GNU Free Documentation License."

What vapors rule the modern day Oracle? MarkedMan writes: "The following CNET article outlines Oracle's reply to the State of California's announcement it was canceling a nearly $100 million dollar contract. It should not come as a surprise, as few companies would give up that kind of money without a fight, not to mention the domino effect if they just rolled over. It would be a tacit admission that they ripped off naive customers."

Comments

Re:very brief review of the Stallman biography

[Paul Fernhout]

I agree; it's a good read.

I think a key point of the "Free as in Freedom" book was the description of the concept of the GPL as codifying a hacker culture of sharing. Certainly the GPL has been an effective and appropriate response to what Richard Stallman apparently saw as essentially the destruction of the MIT AI Lab (and elsewhere) as an academic home for cooperative sharing and collaborative construction. However, it is unfortunate Sam Williams in the book does not touch on the significance of the Bayh-Dole act of 1980 which perhaps unintentionally helped destroy the university culture of sharing in many other places than the MIT AI lab at about the same time. See an article called 'The Kept University' from the Atlantic Monthly: http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/03/press.ht m Perhaps it was not entirely coincidental the AI lab exodus happened shortly after this law was passed (prior to the act there was not as much incentive for universities to withhold information or make special deals with companies directly). In a future edition, relating Richard Stallman's efforts to that larger legal context of the 1980 Bayh-Dole might be interesting (I didn't remember it mentioned and the Bayh-Dole act isn't in the index).

Of course, since the book is under the Gnu Free Documentation License, I guess anyone could make that change -- but then there would need to be somewhere to post updates -- like Savannah?