Apple has always bad luck when it comes to naming things. Does anyone remember the whole Carl Sagan/Butt-Head Astronomer deal? http://idiot-dog.com/humor/butthead.html
Of course, they've had problems with the Beatles since day one, due to Apple Records. Initially, there was an agreement that Apple Computers could use the Apple name only for computer products--not music-related enterprises. Can you say "iPod"?
http://www.forbes.com/2003/09/12/cx_ah_0912aapl.ht ml
Instead of bogus files, the best way to bring P2P to its knees would be to flood the internet with a large number of mostly valid, but slightly different, copies of the file. Anyone looking to d/l a copy would then have several thousand to choose from, all of which would be equally good, and all of which would have different checksums. This would kill the bandwidth sharing capabilities of Torrents, eDonkey, WinMX, etc., since everyone would be d/l'ing unique copies.
As an added bonus, toss in a few seconds worth of video overlays ("Piracy is bad!") or garbled audio. Finally, make the original source run slower as more data is d/l'ed, so people will have to decide whether to abandon a d/l whose sole provider has dropped to dialup speeds.
I have two no-name sub-$100 DVD players that I've never had a problem with. OTOH, I don't watch that many DVDs, prefering to use my PVR. I also have a Dell laptop with a DVD player that works OK, but again I don't use it for DVDs that often. I also have an HP Pavilion that came with two drives, one labeled 'hp cd-writer', the other 'dvd-rom'. I tend to use the DVD drive for everything, because its much quieter that the CD burner. I do tend to use the burner once every 90 days for backups.
Last week, I wanted to find some data from about four years ago, and to save time I decided to load disks into both drives at once. Imagine my surprise when the first two CD-Rs that I loaded into the burner were flagged as un-readable. Both were also unreadable by the DVD drive, so I tried one of the CD-Rs that the DVD drive had just read. It was also unreadable, and when I put it into the DVD drive, it was unreadable there as well!
Careful examination revealed that there was a band of what looks like scrapped plastic near the center of the CD-Rs. I grabbed one of my many AOL coasters and noticed that when it was readable, there were slight markings apearing on it was well. I presume that it was made using a harder plastic that the CD-Rs.
Needless to say, I'm a bit ticked off, plus I'm afraid to use the burner for backups anymore. I'm going to try waxing the CD-Rs to see if I can fix them long enough to recover the data, and I guess I'll be buying a new burner for my PC.
The space.com article also says that the timeline for the CEV (Crew Exploration Vehicle) will be revisited. I say, "Hurrah!"
Much has been said about how expensive it is to keep a spare shuttle ready for a rescue mission in case something happens in orbit. And yet the United States and Russia have kept thousands of missles thirty minutes from launch 24x7 for the past thirty years. There must be some way to deliver supplies to an ailing shuttle while a rescue mission is prepared, without endangering the second crew by rushing things. Really, all you need is a stack of solid-fuel boosters to get a capsule into orbit. The whole thing could be put together using off-the-shelf parts and kept parked on a launch pad for years.
Because he didn't know about it? The reporter may have tried to interview Moglen without much success, and then gotten a list of the people being talked to and found Olson to be the only one to return a call.
Editors want sensational stories that attract readers. The out-of-context Olson quote guarantees sensation.
The (allegedly) proposed terms would require companies that use GPL software to write web applications to either pay up or give away the core of their services for free. For example, this means Google would have to give away their search engine code free.
No, it means that Google's applicances and Google's servers would now be treated the same. For example, if Google changes Linux to run better inside the Googleplex, then those changes would have to be given back to the community. If Google writes a program from scratch that runs under Linux, then it will still be protected.
RTFA. Olson runs a company that writes *with no outside assistance* software that is then released under a GPL-like license. People who wish to, can pay the comapny money for a copy of the same software with a different license. This is something that a lot of companies are already doing, GPL3 would make it possible for them to use a common license instead of one that is rewritten by every company. Software with distributed authorship (i.e. Linux) wouldn't be able to take that path unless every author agreed to the alternat license *and* agreed on how the money should be distributed.
But who gets paid the money and who determines how much?
RTFA. The only discussion of money was from a person who runs a company that releases software under two licenses: One is a GPL clone, the other is a more "conventional" license available to anyone willing to pay. Kinda like certain databases or GUI toolkits. He'd like to see a new GPL to close something that he perceives as a loophole, in that people can use his software under the GPL in a for-profit enterprise without paying him anything.
The FSF has signalled its intentions, and forced these on the entire FSM , they've confirmed the worst fears of every tech legal counsel and CTO in the world - not only is the license legally suspect, its capricious and the parties behind the Free Software movement will act with malice.
I don't see where the FSF has signalled anything. One person (who owns a business based on the OSS) who is advising the FSF has gone on record with what he'd like to see to increase his business' revenue. I'm sure that other people have different views are are making them known as well.
Everyone is making a big deal about the Michael Olson qoute in the story, but you have to understand where he's coming from. You can read an interview with him here:
http://www.winterspeak.com/columns/102901.html
To summarize, when Olson talks about money, it's in the context of Sleepycat selling "versions" of Berkeley DB that aren't covered by the GPL. There's nothing to indicate that GPL 3 will require anyone to transfer money to anyone.
"If you look at the market, Yahoo, eBay, IBM, Amazon, Google, all sunk millions into the GPL infrastructure," Olson said. "Not only are we changing the rules, we are changing them retroactively. With the new way, it lets the customer pay with either their source code or with their wallet."
Note that this is the CEO of Sleepycat Software being quoted here, not Eben Moglen or RMS. Personally, I suspect that he's saying something sensationalistic just to work the crowd into a lather.
So what kind of email are you (and the original poster) sending that *has* to be delivered before Monday? I go days, sometimes weeks, without reading my email, and when I return I often just junk everything in my inbox. I've never regretted it, people who need to tell me something know to use the phone.
Actually, burning fossil fuels releases CO2 from carbon that's been sequestered for 70 million years or so, while burning renewable or sustainable plant matter simply recycles carbon that was sequestered within the past few months. In other words, burning fossil fuels increases the net CO2 in the atmosphere, which burning plant matter doesn't.
I use del.icio.us to access my bookmarks from anywhere, what I need is a way to access USENET from home and work without seeing the same posts over and over again.
First of all, I've never been on a flight that charged for a meal or a soda, although some of the food has been of such low quality that I'd have welcomed a chance to buy something better.
Booze, otoh, is usually expensive, but even then there are ways aroung it. It's been a while since I flew AirFrance, but as recently as the spring of 2002 they would give everyone a complimentary bottle of red wine and unlimited baguettes. A bit harder is to get bumped into first class where the booze is free, but to do that consistently usually requires that you fly so much that the people at the gates greet you by name (and, I guess, that you not be an asshole). And then there are the once-in-a-lifetime techniques: I once had a Delta ticket agent give me a fistful of complimentary drink coupons because my wife and I were adopting internationally; on the trip home, I was able to give a coupon to every new father on the flight (Moscow to NYC, known as the Baby Express because it's the flight that all the new parents take).
All property is a compromise. The reason we don't live in a socialist paradise (which we used to, a hundred thousand years ago before agriculture and the concept of 'property') is because without ownership, common assets lack stewardship and can be degraged. The tragedy of the commons...
Somehow, I suspect that the concept of property predates agriculture. It probably originated about the same time that someone discovered that this sharp stick is better at poking things than that one. Heck, all carnivores seem to understand "Go away, this is my slab of meat!" pretty well, and baby mammals born in a litter seem to understand "Hey, this is my teat!"
BTW, the tragedy of the commons occurs because it is so difficult to get entities to pay a reasonable price for natural resources. The whole "peak oil" meme is predicated on the idea that petroleum is being taken from a commons-like area without anyone worrying about what happens to the consumers when it runs dry.
This is a series of emails that discuss the burst. Interesting posts include the following:
There were a series of small bursts observed before the big one, but no one seems to have realized that they were precursors until after the big one arrived. "During 21 December more than 30 SGR-like bursts were detected by Konus-Wind and Helicon-Coronas-F" satellites.
The burst was detected by the Mars Odyssey spacecraft. "A very preliminary analysis indicates that the arrival time at Odyssey is indeed consistent with an arrival direction from SGR1806-20."
There is also discussion of an Earth-orbiting satellite that did not have a direct view of the flare; however, it picked up a faint echo 7.70 seconds after everyone else saw it. "This value corresponds exactly to burst travelling time from the Wind to the Moon and back to the Coronas-F."
Finally, serendipious observations were made by spacecraft whose primary mission is solar observation. "The SGR was 5 degrees from RHESSI's pointing axis which was directed toward the Sun."
The University of Missouri at Rolla has a half-scale version of Stonehenge on campus. (See http://web.umr.edu/~stonehen/) This one is constructed from solid granite, not easily eroded sandstone (like the original), nor wood, drywall, and sprayed concrete (like the one in New Zealand). Sam Hill built his version of Stonehenge in Maryhill, Washington before anyone knew much about the original and so it has no astronomical alignments; UMR Stonehenge has additional features and alignments beyond the original.
I think WinAmp is still around, but NullSoft is a discontinued company. Paul Boutin also discusses that fact here:
http://slate.com/id/2109615/
No mention of Peak Oil
on
In the Year 2020
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Two points from the paper:
Despite the trend toward more efficient energy use, total energy consumed probably will rise by about 50 percent in the next two decades compared to a 34 percent expansion from 1980-2000, with an increasing share provided by petroleum.
According to the petroleum producers, at current rates of consumption the world's current petroleum reserves will be exhausted by 2040. A fifty percent increase in consumption will exhaust them much more quickly. A few back-of-the-spreadsheet calculations indicate that we could run out of oil by 2028.
The International Energy Agency assesses that with substantial investment in new capacity, overall energy supplies will be sufficient to meet growing global demand. Continued limited access of the international oil companies to major fields could restrain this investment, however, and many of the areas--the Caspian Sea, Venezuela, West Africa and South China Sea--that are being counted on to provide increased output involve substantial political or economic risk. Traditional suppliers in the Middle East are also increasingly unstable. Thus sharper demand-driven competition for resources, perhaps accompanied by a major disruption of oil supplies, is among the key uncertainties.
So the big question is, how big are the undiscovered reserves in the four areas mentioned above?
Slashdot Mirror
[1] "Vitamins" refers to items that a Non Neumann machine cannot produce on its own but which must be supplied from an external source. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clanking_replicator#A dvanced_Automation_for_Space_Missions
In this case, the vitamins would comprise an entire LEGO catalog.
Actually, they didn't win against Apple Records. There have been several lawsuits, and Apple Computers tends to settle for various large sums of money. http://www.forbes.com/2003/09/12/cx_ah_0912aapl.ht ml
Of course, they've had problems with the Beatles since day one, due to Apple Records. Initially, there was an agreement that Apple Computers could use the Apple name only for computer products--not music-related enterprises. Can you say "iPod"? http://www.forbes.com/2003/09/12/cx_ah_0912aapl.ht ml
As an added bonus, toss in a few seconds worth of video overlays ("Piracy is bad!") or garbled audio. Finally, make the original source run slower as more data is d/l'ed, so people will have to decide whether to abandon a d/l whose sole provider has dropped to dialup speeds.
Last week, I wanted to find some data from about four years ago, and to save time I decided to load disks into both drives at once. Imagine my surprise when the first two CD-Rs that I loaded into the burner were flagged as un-readable. Both were also unreadable by the DVD drive, so I tried one of the CD-Rs that the DVD drive had just read. It was also unreadable, and when I put it into the DVD drive, it was unreadable there as well!
Careful examination revealed that there was a band of what looks like scrapped plastic near the center of the CD-Rs. I grabbed one of my many AOL coasters and noticed that when it was readable, there were slight markings apearing on it was well. I presume that it was made using a harder plastic that the CD-Rs.
Needless to say, I'm a bit ticked off, plus I'm afraid to use the burner for backups anymore. I'm going to try waxing the CD-Rs to see if I can fix them long enough to recover the data, and I guess I'll be buying a new burner for my PC.
Much has been said about how expensive it is to keep a spare shuttle ready for a rescue mission in case something happens in orbit. And yet the United States and Russia have kept thousands of missles thirty minutes from launch 24x7 for the past thirty years. There must be some way to deliver supplies to an ailing shuttle while a rescue mission is prepared, without endangering the second crew by rushing things. Really, all you need is a stack of solid-fuel boosters to get a capsule into orbit. The whole thing could be put together using off-the-shelf parts and kept parked on a launch pad for years.
The person modeling the T-shirt has too many curves.
Editors want sensational stories that attract readers. The out-of-context Olson quote guarantees sensation.
No, it means that Google's applicances and Google's servers would now be treated the same. For example, if Google changes Linux to run better inside the Googleplex, then those changes would have to be given back to the community. If Google writes a program from scratch that runs under Linux, then it will still be protected.
RTFA. Olson runs a company that writes *with no outside assistance* software that is then released under a GPL-like license. People who wish to, can pay the comapny money for a copy of the same software with a different license. This is something that a lot of companies are already doing, GPL3 would make it possible for them to use a common license instead of one that is rewritten by every company. Software with distributed authorship (i.e. Linux) wouldn't be able to take that path unless every author agreed to the alternat license *and* agreed on how the money should be distributed.
RTFA. The only discussion of money was from a person who runs a company that releases software under two licenses: One is a GPL clone, the other is a more "conventional" license available to anyone willing to pay. Kinda like certain databases or GUI toolkits. He'd like to see a new GPL to close something that he perceives as a loophole, in that people can use his software under the GPL in a for-profit enterprise without paying him anything.
I don't see where the FSF has signalled anything. One person (who owns a business based on the OSS) who is advising the FSF has gone on record with what he'd like to see to increase his business' revenue. I'm sure that other people have different views are are making them known as well.
To summarize, when Olson talks about money, it's in the context of Sleepycat selling "versions" of Berkeley DB that aren't covered by the GPL. There's nothing to indicate that GPL 3 will require anyone to transfer money to anyone.
Note that this is the CEO of Sleepycat Software being quoted here, not Eben Moglen or RMS. Personally, I suspect that he's saying something sensationalistic just to work the crowd into a lather.
So what kind of email are you (and the original poster) sending that *has* to be delivered before Monday? I go days, sometimes weeks, without reading my email, and when I return I often just junk everything in my inbox. I've never regretted it, people who need to tell me something know to use the phone.
Actually, burning fossil fuels releases CO2 from carbon that's been sequestered for 70 million years or so, while burning renewable or sustainable plant matter simply recycles carbon that was sequestered within the past few months. In other words, burning fossil fuels increases the net CO2 in the atmosphere, which burning plant matter doesn't.
I use del.icio.us to access my bookmarks from anywhere, what I need is a way to access USENET from home and work without seeing the same posts over and over again.
Booze, otoh, is usually expensive, but even then there are ways aroung it. It's been a while since I flew AirFrance, but as recently as the spring of 2002 they would give everyone a complimentary bottle of red wine and unlimited baguettes. A bit harder is to get bumped into first class where the booze is free, but to do that consistently usually requires that you fly so much that the people at the gates greet you by name (and, I guess, that you not be an asshole). And then there are the once-in-a-lifetime techniques: I once had a Delta ticket agent give me a fistful of complimentary drink coupons because my wife and I were adopting internationally; on the trip home, I was able to give a coupon to every new father on the flight (Moscow to NYC, known as the Baby Express because it's the flight that all the new parents take).
He doesn't say that he's driving, just commuting. Lots of people spend hours on the train commuting between Connecticut and NYC, for instance.
BTW, the tragedy of the commons occurs because it is so difficult to get entities to pay a reasonable price for natural resources. The whole "peak oil" meme is predicated on the idea that petroleum is being taken from a commons-like area without anyone worrying about what happens to the consumers when it runs dry.
This is a series of emails that discuss the burst. Interesting posts include the following:
There were a series of small bursts observed before the big one, but no one seems to have realized that they were precursors until after the big one arrived. "During 21 December more than 30 SGR-like bursts were detected by Konus-Wind and Helicon-Coronas-F" satellites.
The burst was detected by the Mars Odyssey spacecraft. "A very preliminary analysis indicates that the arrival time at Odyssey is indeed consistent with an arrival direction from SGR1806-20."
There is also discussion of an Earth-orbiting satellite that did not have a direct view of the flare; however, it picked up a faint echo 7.70 seconds after everyone else saw it. "This value corresponds exactly to burst travelling time from the Wind to the Moon and back to the Coronas-F."
Finally, serendipious observations were made by spacecraft whose primary mission is solar observation. "The SGR was 5 degrees from RHESSI's pointing axis which was directed toward the Sun."
... and that they eat at Taco Bell!
The University of Missouri at Rolla has a half-scale version of Stonehenge on campus. (See http://web.umr.edu/~stonehen/) This one is constructed from solid granite, not easily eroded sandstone (like the original), nor wood, drywall, and sprayed concrete (like the one in New Zealand). Sam Hill built his version of Stonehenge in Maryhill, Washington before anyone knew much about the original and so it has no astronomical alignments; UMR Stonehenge has additional features and alignments beyond the original.