The creators of the calendar are not selling Ford calendars, nor are they using a trademark in a way that would be likely to make a purchaser of the calendar believe that Ford Motor Company created the calendar. I think that what you meant to say is: "They're selling calendars, not Fords".
If these guys were selling japanese made cars under the hoods of pseudo-fords, then they'd be violating Fords trademarks. Other than that, I think that Ford's legal department has been drinking too much left-over rum/eggnog since the new year, and their PR department is still suffering a holiday hangover.. not realizing what's happening yet.
If the surface gravity of a black hole is always infinite, then how does hawkings radiation word? It depends on the fact that the gravity gradient at the event horizon is much larger for small black holes than it is for large ones. I think that you're confusing the fact that equations diverges (which rather implies a problem with the chosen coordinate system) with the actual gravity that would be experienced.
Which is roughly my calculation (I just forgot to update my post). Way back when I calculate 3 light-months as being the size that would have a surface gravity of 1G. I just don't remember the mass needed... It now looks like something near 800billion solar masses would do the trick. (just a guestimate, not a calculation).
No. It doesn't take infinite thrust to hover at the Horizon. It takes infinite energy to escape from the black hole, once you're at the horizon. It would also take infinite energy to slow yourself to a stop at the event horizon (if you arrived in a freefall from a roughly infinite distance, you should be accelerated to apx. Light speed by the time you get there), but if you managed to bring yourself to a stop at the event horizon of a large-enough black hole, you'd need very little energy to just stay at the horizon.
Now, if the Black Hole were reduced to a neutron Star density, then the gravity at the theoretical physical surface of any non-primordial black hole would be enormously high, but as a black hole gets bigger, the average density, and the 'surface' gravity drop until you reach something approximating the density (and gravitational gradient) of our universe.
Remember: The Universe may be one meta-supermasive black hole. If your premise were accurate, we should all have been violently sucked into the center of The Universe a long time ago.
For a blackhole this size, the event horizon is going to have something in the range of a one light-year radius. Try calculating the Gravity for 18billion solar masses at a distance of one Light year, and see what you get. (I get.002G)
units 18billion*solarmass*G/'(1lightyear)^2' gravity * 0.0027219506 / 367.3836
Ah, nevermind... I answered my question myself -- It looks like nominal surface gravity would be ~90G.
I once did some calculations about black hole gravity gradients, and calculated that you could end up with a black hole with a gravity at it's "surface" (Schwarzschild radius) of less than earth's gravity (and that the diameter would be approximately one light-month).
As I remember it, I figured that the mass of that black hole would be just a couple of GigaSols (it was a LONG time ago, so I no longer have the exact numbers). If my calculations (and memory) were correct, then this extra-super-massive blackhole should have a surface gravity that we could stand in (presuming, of course, that you could get a stationary platform at the Schwarzschild radius).
You don't want to mlock huge chunks of memory if all you want to do is ensure that your ram is allocated. Mlocking doesn't just force the memory to be allocated -- it prevents it being paged out, which is a far more strict result than is desired -- it costs you the advantages of VM. Far better to do something like:
The purpose of patents is to provide protection to someone who creates something truly unique such that they have the ability to develop that innovation in peace. The example that you provide ("orders of magnitude faster than [current methods]) is an example of the kind of thing that patents were originally intended, and designed, to protect -- something truly new and unique that would probably never have been developed and brought to market if it hadn't been for the protection of patents.
But, the ultimate intent of a patent is to force that innovation to be documented, so that -- once the initial patent period expires -- everybody will then be able to replicate and use that new technology (in a competitive manner)
What is happening with patents, now, however, is that people are getting away with patenting things like the one-click patent that does little more than use a standard (cookies) in the way that they were intended to be used (to store informaiton across and within HTML sessions).
part of the intent of patents was that they were meant for things that would not have been otherwise invented -- In other words, If I was to tell you (in general terms) what a patented invention does, most experts in the field should not be able to figure out how it was done without reading the patent....
In other words, things like patent trolls and submarine patents are repugnant to the intent and purpose of the patent system. If, despite the fact that you've never produced a product with your patent protection, a huge number of people have been using 'your' so-called innovation without having to read your patent documents (or your patent documents are so opaque that nobody would have been able to do anything with it anyways), then your patent is not forwarding innovation and should never have been issued in the first place.
The fact that people are 'violating' patents without ever looking them up is actually proof that the patent system is broken for software patents, not proof that developers are flagrant infringers. It means that, rather than providing a protective bridge for true innovators to be able to get their product to market, patents have become more of a minefield to be used against anybody who really does produce an innovative product but doesn't have enough money to document the hundreds of obstructive and obvious patents that are required to successfully wage a patent war against another big company.
If all you're doing is playing Quake, then 8GB should be more than enough
If, on the other hand, you're doing 3D visualization of a 2Kx2Kx2K cube, then you're looking at 8GB per 'picture'. In a case like that, you'd probably want 16-24GB of ram so that you can keep your source, destination and some working data in RAM all at the same time. Once you start working with multi-dimensional information, it's really easy to get into a situation where you've got over 8GB worth of working set.
Deprecating the functions doesn't mean that MS isn't going to be using them -- it just means that they don't want anybody else to use them. It's also possible that, by removing those functions to other sections, they're removing what little patent protection developers might have for implementing that functionality.... That's because MS's patent protection only clearly applies to features that are well-documented in the definition documents.
So: The results of this deprecation could be (in the worst case):
Developers will be deluded into believing that MS isn't going to be using this functionality (e.g. how Ashton Tate was convinced, by Microsoft to focus their Lotus 123 efforts on OS/2, while MS was focusing their Excel development on Windows 3).
Developers who develop for those capabilities could face enhanced legal exposure
documentation for this functionality could be decreased rather than increased (which is what most people want -- given that MS is currently using this functionality).
It's getting harder and harder to deny that MS is attempting to create a standard that their software will neither read nor write properly -- but that they can claim that they're using (because they control both the trademark and the "defacto standard" implementation of).
Yeppers.. They're not bricking the laptop, they're just bricking Windows.
Now, there's a part of me that wants to give a medal to anybody that does that... but, for hacking other people's computers, I think I'd be more likely to give in to the part of me that wants to beat him (her?) to a bloody pulp.
"Ummm....sir....how did you even put OS X on a Compaq?" yeppers, that probably voids the warranty right there..... On the other hand, if you're buying the OS separately from the computer, there's nothing to legally stop you from putting it on alien hardware... they just don't expect it.
I think you should include a copy of Knoppix, or the Ubuntu live CD, because -- remember -- the OS has now been trashed, so how else are you going to copy all of your data of now?
well, as someone else pointed out, Technetium-99m -- which is used for most medical procedures -- has a half life of about 6 hours, which would mean that, if they started out with a stockpile of 1millionKG -- (and ignored problems of the stockpile going critical), by now they'd be looking at a stockpile of ((( uhm, 10^6/2^96.... convert to miligrams..... ))) a couple hundred atoms -- give or take on order of magnitude, or so.
Luckily, they actually produce Molybdenum-99, which has a liftime of 66hours, which, over 25 days only degrades by a factor of about 1-500
In other words, if they started out with a (probably still supercritical) stockpile of 1KG, they'd now be left with a bit less than a thimble-full (not including actual world-wide usage).
Add to this the fact that they only expected a, reasonably handleable, 1-week shutdown, (only a 1-3 degradation of Molybdenum-99)... until they figured out that nobody bothered to install the emergency backup pumps when they originally built the plant... and you've got a bit of a SNAFU.
Thus it is, that we've passed a law allowing the plant to run for a few months as-is... and we're gonna pray that there'll be no need, in the interim, to run the (non-existent) emergency cooling pumps that nobody's notice were missing for the last 2 decades, anyways.
If this bug was in RedHat 5.2, there would be no issue about getting this critical bug fixed. If nothing else, I could just fix it myself -- and put the necessary patches to the source packages on my website.
No worries about whether or not it's even legal to fix a machine that I'm using to run my business.
Write some letters "on behalf of the 300million Americans affected by over-broad copyright laws", and ask their attitudes on criminalizing fair and reasonable uses for copyright materials (as well as problems like orphan works, and the loss of historic works).
You can't use the Shift key installing a drive because that also disables DRM software -- as such, if you get caught holding down the shift key, you might be mistaken for an RIAA-hating music pirate and sued for millions of dollars.
In other words, the only legal solution is to install the new hard drive, let it infect your machine, and then wipe your whole storage system and re-install it with a new OS.
While you're at it, you might want to switch to a virus-resistant system like Linux. :-)
That would explain the 'Schrodinger cat' issue. In the parts of the universe that don't 'care' about the state of the cat, you don't have to branch. You only have to branch those parts of the universe that are affected by the state of the cat.
Thus, until you observe the cat, you are in an unforked portion of the universe (with respect to the (un)dead cat). Once you observe the cat, your section of the universe forks into either the branch where it died, or the branch where it lived.
Microsoft entered into the deal to distribute GPL2 software, and as long as they limit themselves to (legacy) GPL2 software, you're right that there's nothing to stop them from doing that.
If, on the other hand, they want their customers to have the full value of the newest versions of some software, then they're gonna have to swallow the GPL pill.
Things to remember here:
1: The general feeling is that the MS/Novell agreement was designed to violate the basic spirit of the GPL2. No judge is going to take umbrage at the fact that the people providing this valuable software closed a loophole in their license.
2: Microsoft is paying someone to manufacture and distribute a third party's software. If that third party is unhappy with what Microsoft is returning to them, they're free to say no.
A judge is about as likely to force the FLOSS community to distribute their software under the GPL2 as they are to force Microsoft to distribute their software under the GPL2. (unless, of course, Microsoft decides to affirmatively claim that they're distributing their software under the GPL2, in which case they'll be bound by the legal principle of estopel.
Again: as long as Microsoft remains within the bounds of bare copyright law, they can do whatever copyright allows, and the GPL can't touch them. (actually, the GPL allows MS to do some things which would be illegal under bare copyright law without imposing any constraints).
You claim that MS never had (much) control over the GPL3 -- that may be true, but neither did the GPL2 community have any input into the MS/Novell deal. If the GPL community decides to change their license to more clearly enforce the purpose of their original license, a judge who gets the case will be left dealing with the intent of the original authors of the software, vs. some company that wants to make money off of the original artist's work, without paying them anything, agreeing to their license for the software or even abiding by copyright law.
I don't think it'll be a hard call for any sane judge.
I fully agree that MS doesn't have to agree to the GPL 3 and is free to argue that it'd not going to accept it. If you argue that MS isn't bound by the GPL3, then they're not protected by it, either.
If you're not protected by the GPL3, then anything that you do to cause GPL3 software to be distributed and copied is subject to normal copyright rules -- I.E. a violation of copyright. It's no different than having someone distribute a Rolling Stones CD for you -- or a copy of Pirates of the Caribbean 3. If you're not doing it under the protection of some legitimate license, then you're liable for all sorts of civil and criminal penalties.
Remember, nobody has an intrinsic right to distribute GPL software without the protection of the GPL. If you don't agree to the GPL3, then you're not protected by it. This is very different from the normal EULA, which tries to take away your rights, and give you nothing in return. If you weasel out of MS's EULA, then you're left with your rights under copyright -- which is noticeably more than what you have if you agree to it.
The Internet allows artists to get their work out without signing away their copyrights to the big media companies for a song and a prayer. That's what scares them. If they're not necessary for artists to make it big, then they're not going to be able to goad those artists into contracts that leave artists with a double-platinum album deep in debt to the record company.
The crime of copyright violation does exist, and if it's done for commercial gain, the penalties increase.
Novell may not be bound to breach the law to complete a contract, but -- if MS enters into a contract with Novell that requires them to violate copyright to fulfill the contract, and Novell does so, in the completion of said contract, Microsoft is going to be vicariously liable for the copyright infringement. It's actually more culpable than Napster, which simply distributed software that allowed people to violate copyright -- knowing that it was extrememly likely -- and just implicitly encouraged the violation.
Now,.... yeah, Microsoft might be able to get away with this.. but, with billions possibly onthe line, it's not likely worth the rather substantial risk of losing in court.
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If these guys were selling japanese made cars under the hoods of pseudo-fords, then they'd be violating Fords trademarks. Other than that, I think that Ford's legal department has been drinking too much left-over rum/eggnog since the new year, and their PR department is still suffering a holiday hangover.. not realizing what's happening yet.
If the surface gravity of a black hole is always infinite, then how does hawkings radiation word? It depends on the fact that the gravity gradient at the event horizon is much larger for small black holes than it is for large ones. I think that you're confusing the fact that equations diverges (which rather implies a problem with the chosen coordinate system) with the actual gravity that would be experienced.
Now, if the Black Hole were reduced to a neutron Star density, then the gravity at the theoretical physical surface of any non-primordial black hole would be enormously high, but as a black hole gets bigger, the average density, and the 'surface' gravity drop until you reach something approximating the density (and gravitational gradient) of our universe.
Remember: The Universe may be one meta-supermasive black hole. If your premise were accurate, we should all have been violently sucked into the center of The Universe a long time ago.
For a blackhole this size, the event horizon is going to have something in the range of a one light-year radius. Try calculating the Gravity for 18billion solar masses at a distance of one Light year, and see what you get. (I get .002G)
Ah, nevermind... I answered my question myself -- It looks like nominal surface gravity would be ~90G.I once did some calculations about black hole gravity gradients, and calculated that you could end up with a black hole with a gravity at it's "surface" (Schwarzschild radius) of less than earth's gravity (and that the diameter would be approximately one light-month).
As I remember it, I figured that the mass of that black hole would be just a couple of GigaSols (it was a LONG time ago, so I no longer have the exact numbers). If my calculations (and memory) were correct, then this extra-super-massive blackhole should have a surface gravity that we could stand in (presuming, of course, that you could get a stationary platform at the Schwarzschild radius).
(and, -- yeah, you can just make that loop into a subroutine).
But, the ultimate intent of a patent is to force that innovation to be documented, so that -- once the initial patent period expires -- everybody will then be able to replicate and use that new technology (in a competitive manner)
What is happening with patents, now, however, is that people are getting away with patenting things like the one-click patent that does little more than use a standard (cookies) in the way that they were intended to be used (to store informaiton across and within HTML sessions).
part of the intent of patents was that they were meant for things that would not have been otherwise invented -- In other words, If I was to tell you (in general terms) what a patented invention does, most experts in the field should not be able to figure out how it was done without reading the patent....
In other words, things like patent trolls and submarine patents are repugnant to the intent and purpose of the patent system. If, despite the fact that you've never produced a product with your patent protection, a huge number of people have been using 'your' so-called innovation without having to read your patent documents (or your patent documents are so opaque that nobody would have been able to do anything with it anyways), then your patent is not forwarding innovation and should never have been issued in the first place.
The fact that people are 'violating' patents without ever looking them up is actually proof that the patent system is broken for software patents, not proof that developers are flagrant infringers. It means that, rather than providing a protective bridge for true innovators to be able to get their product to market, patents have become more of a minefield to be used against anybody who really does produce an innovative product but doesn't have enough money to document the hundreds of obstructive and obvious patents that are required to successfully wage a patent war against another big company.
If, on the other hand, you're doing 3D visualization of a 2Kx2Kx2K cube, then you're looking at 8GB per 'picture'. In a case like that, you'd probably want 16-24GB of ram so that you can keep your source, destination and some working data in RAM all at the same time. Once you start working with multi-dimensional information, it's really easy to get into a situation where you've got over 8GB worth of working set.
So: The results of this deprecation could be (in the worst case):
- Developers will be deluded into believing that MS isn't going to be using this functionality (e.g. how Ashton Tate was convinced, by Microsoft to focus their Lotus 123 efforts on OS/2, while MS was focusing their Excel development on Windows 3).
- Developers who develop for those capabilities could face enhanced legal exposure
- documentation for this functionality could be decreased rather than increased (which is what most people want -- given that MS is currently using this functionality).
It's getting harder and harder to deny that MS is attempting to create a standard that their software will neither read nor write properly -- but that they can claim that they're using (because they control both the trademark and the "defacto standard" implementation of).<>
Oh. I was talking about voiding the (support) warranty on OS-X
Now, there's a part of me that wants to give a medal to anybody that does that ... but, for hacking other people's computers, I think I'd be more likely to give in to the part of me that wants to beat him (her?) to a bloody pulp.
I think you should include a copy of Knoppix, or the Ubuntu live CD, because -- remember -- the OS has now been trashed, so how else are you going to copy all of your data of now?
There are, however other religious nuts who insist on ignoring both science and the pope.
Can we break those intermediate steps into seven phases or so and declare each of those a "day", get a copy to the Pope, andLuckily, they actually produce Molybdenum-99, which has a liftime of 66hours, which, over 25 days only degrades by a factor of about 1-500
In other words, if they started out with a (probably still supercritical) stockpile of 1KG, they'd now be left with a bit less than a thimble-full (not including actual world-wide usage).
Add to this the fact that they only expected a, reasonably handleable, 1-week shutdown, (only a 1-3 degradation of Molybdenum-99) ... until they figured out that nobody bothered to install the emergency backup pumps when they originally built the plant ... and you've got a bit of a SNAFU.
Thus it is, that we've passed a law allowing the plant to run for a few months as-is ... and we're gonna pray that there'll be no need, in the interim, to run the (non-existent) emergency cooling pumps that nobody's notice were missing for the last 2 decades, anyways.
No worries about whether or not it's even legal to fix a machine that I'm using to run my business.
Then, of course, blog about the results you get.
In other words, the only legal solution is to install the new hard drive, let it infect your machine, and then wipe your whole storage system and re-install it with a new OS.
While you're at it, you might want to switch to a virus-resistant system like Linux.
:-)
Thus, until you observe the cat, you are in an unforked portion of the universe (with respect to the (un)dead cat). Once you observe the cat, your section of the universe forks into either the branch where it died, or the branch where it lived.
Sigh... but it was a nice last image.
If, on the other hand, they want their customers to have the full value of the newest versions of some software, then they're gonna have to swallow the GPL pill.
Things to remember here:
1: The general feeling is that the MS/Novell agreement was designed to violate the basic spirit of the GPL2. No judge is going to take umbrage at the fact that the people providing this valuable software closed a loophole in their license.
2: Microsoft is paying someone to manufacture and distribute a third party's software. If that third party is unhappy with what Microsoft is returning to them, they're free to say no.
A judge is about as likely to force the FLOSS community to distribute their software under the GPL2 as they are to force Microsoft to distribute their software under the GPL2. (unless, of course, Microsoft decides to affirmatively claim that they're distributing their software under the GPL2, in which case they'll be bound by the legal principle of estopel.
Again: as long as Microsoft remains within the bounds of bare copyright law, they can do whatever copyright allows, and the GPL can't touch them. (actually, the GPL allows MS to do some things which would be illegal under bare copyright law without imposing any constraints).
You claim that MS never had (much) control over the GPL3 -- that may be true, but neither did the GPL2 community have any input into the MS/Novell deal. If the GPL community decides to change their license to more clearly enforce the purpose of their original license, a judge who gets the case will be left dealing with the intent of the original authors of the software, vs. some company that wants to make money off of the original artist's work, without paying them anything, agreeing to their license for the software or even abiding by copyright law.
I don't think it'll be a hard call for any sane judge.
If you're not protected by the GPL3, then anything that you do to cause GPL3 software to be distributed and copied is subject to normal copyright rules -- I.E. a violation of copyright. It's no different than having someone distribute a Rolling Stones CD for you -- or a copy of Pirates of the Caribbean 3. If you're not doing it under the protection of some legitimate license, then you're liable for all sorts of civil and criminal penalties.
Remember, nobody has an intrinsic right to distribute GPL software without the protection of the GPL. If you don't agree to the GPL3, then you're not protected by it. This is very different from the normal EULA, which tries to take away your rights, and give you nothing in return. If you weasel out of MS's EULA, then you're left with your rights under copyright -- which is noticeably more than what you have if you agree to it.
The Internet allows artists to get their work out without signing away their copyrights to the big media companies for a song and a prayer. That's what scares them. If they're not necessary for artists to make it big, then they're not going to be able to goad those artists into contracts that leave artists with a double-platinum album deep in debt to the record company.
It's about control, not justice.
Novell may not be bound to breach the law to complete a contract, but -- if MS enters into a contract with Novell that requires them to violate copyright to fulfill the contract, and Novell does so, in the completion of said contract, Microsoft is going to be vicariously liable for the copyright infringement. It's actually more culpable than Napster, which simply distributed software that allowed people to violate copyright -- knowing that it was extrememly likely -- and just implicitly encouraged the violation.
Now, .... yeah, Microsoft might be able to get away with this.. but, with billions possibly onthe line, it's not likely worth the rather substantial risk of losing in court.