The US gummit, yes, but not, unfortunately, state governments. Fortunately, the widespread works by the University of California Regents that so many of us use (like the Berkeley socket API on every machine with TCP/IP) have licenses that mean that we're safe even if APIs magically become copyrightable.
And it's not just random APIs that will become copyrightable. There is precedent against that. Oracle is trying to argue that because their API is so big and complicated that it some how magically becomes more than just functional. Most APIs aren't that big or complicated. So it's not going to be the disaster that some imagine, if Oracle wins. But it will be a disaster.
APIs were supposed to be settled already. There's always the chance that someone will come up with some bizarre new argument that goes against all precedent (which is basically what happened in this case). You can't ever assume you're safe doing anything creative (not just coding). But if the judge follows all the ample precedent (and the EU decision, which he is aware of), then it'll be that much less likely that anyone will try something this ridiculous in the future.
Mounting a losing lawsuit is not cheap. And for a public company, it can make you look bad in front of the stockholders. Ol' Larry is likely to be facing some hard questions from his about this whole case, especially after the appeals are done.
Google may be copying original material from the websites of its competitors such as user reviews and using that material on its own sites without their prior authorisation.
Bah. If their competitors don't know how to use robots.txt, they're not competent enough to be competitors. On the other hand, if Google is ignoringrobots.txt, then I think that would count as unauthorized access, and, given Google's monopoly position, a matter of deep concern.
Note: I think a great deal of the anti-Google nonsense that gets posted on slashdot is total nonsense (if not outright astroturfing), but what the EU is looking at here is something I think they are fully justified in investigating: actual potential anti-competitive behavior that would make sense for Google to engage in. But I agree with you that investigate is the key word there.
Man, what are you on about? I'm not trying to define "star". I think the current definition is probably fine. I only mentioned an oversimplifed definition to contrast with my proposed definition of planet. If you've got a problem with the definition of star, talk to an astronomer. If you've got a problem with my proposed definition of planet, then I'm the one you should be pestering.:)
Reputed by whom? The best? I strongly beg to differ. He still has a good reputation, but he's also got a fairly long string recently of high-profile failures and mess-ups. He lost badly to MoFo in SCO v Novell, lost in Bush v Gore, managed to barely win against MS when they were doing everything they could to shoot themselves in the foot, looks likely to lose in SCO v IBM and Oracle v Google, and was recently sanctioned in Florida.
He was certainly one of the greatest once-upon-a-time, but he's a little too fond of ambush tactics that don't work well with modern discovery practice, and of trying to find novel legal theories to shape precedent, which doesn't sit well with judges who don't like the idea of "legislating from the bench" (the whole "APIs are copyrightable" thing just has the stench of Boies all over it). His style simply no longer works as well as it once did.
Personally, if money were no object, I'd try to get MoFo or the Nazgul long before I'd consider B&S, unless I thought I was so guilty that only really sleazy, weasely, sideways tactics would give me even half a chance. And even then, I'd have my fingers crossed the whole time, hoping his funky tactics wouldn't actually end up making things worse (as they arguably may have done in SCO v IBM).
I've certainly been in places where I had voice service but no internet. When I was staying at a friend's beach house, they had some sort of booster device which worked great for voice signal, but did nothing for internet. Apparently you can buy these things at Radio Shack or something.
Geeze, did you even see the headline here on Slashdot? It explicitly refers to "$87,000 in Bitcoins", which pretty strongly suggests that there is a non-zero value to a bitcoin.
In any case, if you don't like the line I quoted, go bitch at the guy who wrote the NewsTechnica article, not me. Though I might try investing in a sense of humor first, so the joke doesn't go over your head again.:)
If Bitcoin were a pump and dump don't you think it would have disappeared after the initial bubble?
No way. Why shut down a scam that's still working? Plus, it does bear some resemblance to a pyramid scheme in that the pumping isn't limited to the original schemers. Anyone can get in, pump for a while, then do some dumping. You can do it over and over. It's a scammer's dream, and it'll continue to work as long as people are willing to pay good money for the useless activity called "mining".
One person's unnecessary distinction may be another person's critical distinction. I don't have a strong preference myself, so I prefer to let those who care fight it out. Hence my use of the word "or".:)
I don't see any can of worms. You can still get a fairly traditional list by referring to "planets which orbit the Sun" to distinguish from planets (like Luna and Ganymede) that orbit other planets. You can also distinguish planets in the core system from planets in the Kuiper belt.
Adding orbital characteristics is what seems to open a can of worms to me. Suddenly all sorts of things that are identical to planets in any reasonable respect (like "rogue planets") lose that classification. To what end? None that I can see.
Firstly what is wrong, is that there are stars that do not undergo fusion...
If you mean brown dwarfs, I'm open to tweaking the definitions to fit them in in either category, though I'd personally tend towards categorizing them as planets. If you're referring to ex-stars, I was glossing over that for simplicity's sake. Let's say, round and big enough to have triggered fusion at some point. Or you could simply call them ex-stars.:)
You do realize that the 9 lines were absolutely trivial and unimportant
Huh? Oh, sorry, I was distracted by realizing that my silly joke above somehow got moderated "Informative". I really have to wonder what the mods are on sometimes!
Yeah, trivial and unimportant. Trivial enough that any programmer (I won't even bother to qualify that with "competent") could probably reproduce in no more than five minutes just from the name alone. Trivial enough that to get nine lines, they must have been counting whitespace and braces. Yeah, nine dollars is probably more than it's worth. I just thought it would be funny--and Google sure doesn't care about the difference between $9 and 90 cents.:)
I don't see what would put Ceres and Pluto in different categories under any system.
How about composition and origin? Ceres is a rocky object, similar to Mercury or Io. Pluto is a giant snowball--basically a big-ass comet. Ditto for Eris, which isn't subject to your objection about its binary-system status.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson uses the "Pluto is just a big comet" as one of his main excuses for defending the decision to stop calling Pluto a planet. Well, guess what? That doesn't apply to Ceres. But it is still an important distinction between Pluto and all the objects we historically refer to as planets. Which is why I say I'd find such a definition acceptable.
Of course, if you're going by compositional similarity, then putting Mercury and Jupiter in the same category is also silly. Which is why my preferred solution is to make "planet" a super-category that includes 1) gas giants, 2) round rocky objects, and 3) round comet-like objects. I wouldn't bother to mention orbits at all. Orbital characteristics should be part of a separate classification system, IMO.
And would change what we call it change that? Why should orbital characteristics be a factor in planethood at all? Of course, calling it a planet won't make it stop being a moon of Saturn. By why should it only be known as a moon? There are plenty of moons that couldn't meet the definition of dwarf planet (let alone planet) even if they did orbit the sun directly. Phobos and Deimos, for example. Why not say that Titan is both a small planet and a moon of Saturn?
What would you call a large object the exact size of Earth that wasn't orbiting anything, but was just travelling on its own through interstellar space? I think it should be called a planet, but for some reason, the IAU doesn't think that's acceptable.
I think it would be much simpler and more sensible to have the word planet describe the object itself, and not some unrelated factors like how and what it orbits. Stars are round and big enough to trigger fusion. Planets are round and don't fuse. Asteroids aren't round. What's wrong with that definition?
Ceres couldn't clear its orbit, therefore it's not a planet.
Only if you accept the rather silly requirement that something clear its orbit before being considered a planet. In another system with a lot more debris, it's possible that an Earth-sized planet couldn't clear its orbit, especially if there were interference from nearby super-Jovians keeping things in a state of flux.
It's just another member of the asteroid belt
No it's not. There's a reason Ceres isn't classified as an asteroid. There's a reason it's classified as a dwarf planet. (Though the whole idea that a dwarf planet isn't a planet is nomclature abuse, but that's a separate matter.) Ceres is very much not "just another member". It's a very different sort of object. In fact, the one thing it most closely resembles is Mercury. Which, in turn, is far more similar to Ceres than to most other things called planets (especially the gas giants).
If you somehow thing I'm wrong or evil for thinking any of that, you'll probably be even more horrified to find that I think that Ganymede and Luna should be classified as planets.
Oh piffle. The real mistake was back when they decided to classify poor Ceres as an asteroid. The whole nonsense about Pluto appears to be nothing but fallout from that earlier mistake, compounded by a reluctance to grant Ceres the full planetary status it so richly deserves. Ceres is more like Mercury than Mercury is like Jupiter or Pluto.
The old list you learned which included Pluto but not Ceres was simply arbitrary, wrong, and stupid. The current classification is certainly no worse, and is arguably somewhat better, even though I think it could be greatly improved.
The abstract specifically says that Vesta is not an asteroid. When Ceres was reclassified as a dwarf planet, there was some question about Vesta, because it's not a proper spheroid. The question is: was it deformed by external forces or was it just never able to form a proper spheroid?
Since "baby planet" is not a proper IAU category, I think this means either A) it's a dwarf planet, like Pluto or Ceres, or B) the question is still open, but we've learned something new about its origin--a completely separate matter.
I think the IAU definitions are extremely silly, but I also think it's extremely silly think that Pluto is special, or any more deserving of planet status than Ceres, which was not considered a planet for many, many years. Personally, I'd rather see a definition of planet that includes Ceres and excludes Pluto than the reverse. (Though I'm also open to a definition that includes Ceres, Pluto, Luna, Ganymede, Titan, and more.)
It's hard to tell from looking at it now, just how much of a revelation Wolfenstein3D really was. Compared to modern games, the graphics look like crap, and even back then, we had games with better graphics in the cut scenes, but we all knew that cut-scenes were pre-rendered, slowly, on much bigger machines. The idea that our simple desktop systems could create that level of 3D realism on the fly was astonishing! The first time I saw it, I kept wondering if it was going to make my CPU explode from all the calculations it must be performing.
TFA was great--TFS not so much. I agree that bufferbloat.net doesn't seem to be as useful as I thought on a first glance, but the Bufferbloat FAQ would have been a good resource.
Heh, I know exactly what you mean. The same thought definitely crossed my mind. Fortunately, if you read carefully, you'll see that they seem to be releasing their code as open source.
"The open source project CeroWrt is using OpenWrt to explore solutions to bufferbloat. A CoDel implementation is in the works, after which real-world data can be studied. We plan to make our ns-2 simulation code available, as well as some further results."
It is definitely a terrible summary, but the ACM article it links to is actually quite interesting. (You do know what the ACM is, don't you?) And bufferbloat has nothing to do with discs, so your objection is completely off base. It certainly would have helped if the summary had given you any idea what bufferbloat is, of course, so I understand your confusion. But it's a real thing. The problem is that the design of TCP/IP includes built-in error correction and speed adjustments. Large buffers hide bottlenecks, making TCP/IP overcorrect wildly back and forth, resulting in bursty, laggy transmission.
According to researchers, the cause is persistently full buffers.
should be "a cause".
Lame, misleading summaries is par for the course around here, though. But look on the bright side--it helps keep us on our toes, sorting sense from nonsense, and helps us spot the real idiots in the crowd.:)
At least this one had a link to a fairly reliable source. It wasn't just blog-spam to promote some idiot's misinterpretation of the facts. Might have been nice to also provide a link to bufferbloat.net or Wikipedia on bufferbloat, as well, for background information, but what can you do?
Slashdot Mirror
The US gummit, yes, but not, unfortunately, state governments. Fortunately, the widespread works by the University of California Regents that so many of us use (like the Berkeley socket API on every machine with TCP/IP) have licenses that mean that we're safe even if APIs magically become copyrightable.
And it's not just random APIs that will become copyrightable. There is precedent against that. Oracle is trying to argue that because their API is so big and complicated that it some how magically becomes more than just functional. Most APIs aren't that big or complicated. So it's not going to be the disaster that some imagine, if Oracle wins. But it will be a disaster.
APIs were supposed to be settled already. There's always the chance that someone will come up with some bizarre new argument that goes against all precedent (which is basically what happened in this case). You can't ever assume you're safe doing anything creative (not just coding). But if the judge follows all the ample precedent (and the EU decision, which he is aware of), then it'll be that much less likely that anyone will try something this ridiculous in the future.
Mounting a losing lawsuit is not cheap. And for a public company, it can make you look bad in front of the stockholders. Ol' Larry is likely to be facing some hard questions from his about this whole case, especially after the appeals are done.
Google may be copying original material from the websites of its competitors such as user reviews and using that material on its own sites without their prior authorisation.
Bah. If their competitors don't know how to use robots.txt, they're not competent enough to be competitors. On the other hand, if Google is ignoring robots.txt, then I think that would count as unauthorized access, and, given Google's monopoly position, a matter of deep concern.
Note: I think a great deal of the anti-Google nonsense that gets posted on slashdot is total nonsense (if not outright astroturfing), but what the EU is looking at here is something I think they are fully justified in investigating: actual potential anti-competitive behavior that would make sense for Google to engage in. But I agree with you that investigate is the key word there.
Man, what are you on about? I'm not trying to define "star". I think the current definition is probably fine. I only mentioned an oversimplifed definition to contrast with my proposed definition of planet. If you've got a problem with the definition of star, talk to an astronomer. If you've got a problem with my proposed definition of planet, then I'm the one you should be pestering. :)
Reputed by whom? The best? I strongly beg to differ. He still has a good reputation, but he's also got a fairly long string recently of high-profile failures and mess-ups. He lost badly to MoFo in SCO v Novell, lost in Bush v Gore, managed to barely win against MS when they were doing everything they could to shoot themselves in the foot, looks likely to lose in SCO v IBM and Oracle v Google, and was recently sanctioned in Florida.
He was certainly one of the greatest once-upon-a-time, but he's a little too fond of ambush tactics that don't work well with modern discovery practice, and of trying to find novel legal theories to shape precedent, which doesn't sit well with judges who don't like the idea of "legislating from the bench" (the whole "APIs are copyrightable" thing just has the stench of Boies all over it). His style simply no longer works as well as it once did.
Personally, if money were no object, I'd try to get MoFo or the Nazgul long before I'd consider B&S, unless I thought I was so guilty that only really sleazy, weasely, sideways tactics would give me even half a chance. And even then, I'd have my fingers crossed the whole time, hoping his funky tactics wouldn't actually end up making things worse (as they arguably may have done in SCO v IBM).
I've certainly been in places where I had voice service but no internet. When I was staying at a friend's beach house, they had some sort of booster device which worked great for voice signal, but did nothing for internet. Apparently you can buy these things at Radio Shack or something.
Geeze, did you even see the headline here on Slashdot? It explicitly refers to "$87,000 in Bitcoins", which pretty strongly suggests that there is a non-zero value to a bitcoin.
In any case, if you don't like the line I quoted, go bitch at the guy who wrote the NewsTechnica article, not me. Though I might try investing in a sense of humor first, so the joke doesn't go over your head again. :)
If Bitcoin were a pump and dump don't you think it would have disappeared after the initial bubble?
No way. Why shut down a scam that's still working? Plus, it does bear some resemblance to a pyramid scheme in that the pumping isn't limited to the original schemers. Anyone can get in, pump for a while, then do some dumping. You can do it over and over. It's a scammer's dream, and it'll continue to work as long as people are willing to pay good money for the useless activity called "mining".
One person's unnecessary distinction may be another person's critical distinction. I don't have a strong preference myself, so I prefer to let those who care fight it out. Hence my use of the word "or". :)
I don't see any can of worms. You can still get a fairly traditional list by referring to "planets which orbit the Sun" to distinguish from planets (like Luna and Ganymede) that orbit other planets. You can also distinguish planets in the core system from planets in the Kuiper belt.
Adding orbital characteristics is what seems to open a can of worms to me. Suddenly all sorts of things that are identical to planets in any reasonable respect (like "rogue planets") lose that classification. To what end? None that I can see.
Another Bitcoin story, another opportunity to learn about pyramid schemes and how they never work out for most people...
"It is completely incorrect to describe Bitcoin as a 'pyramid scheme.' Technically, it’s a 'pump-and-dump.'"
From: http://newstechnica.com/2011/06/18/bitcoin-to-revolutionise-the-economy/
Firstly what is wrong, is that there are stars that do not undergo fusion...
If you mean brown dwarfs, I'm open to tweaking the definitions to fit them in in either category, though I'd personally tend towards categorizing them as planets. If you're referring to ex-stars, I was glossing over that for simplicity's sake. Let's say, round and big enough to have triggered fusion at some point. Or you could simply call them ex-stars. :)
You do realize that the 9 lines were absolutely trivial and unimportant
Huh? Oh, sorry, I was distracted by realizing that my silly joke above somehow got moderated "Informative". I really have to wonder what the mods are on sometimes!
Yeah, trivial and unimportant. Trivial enough that any programmer (I won't even bother to qualify that with "competent") could probably reproduce in no more than five minutes just from the name alone. Trivial enough that to get nine lines, they must have been counting whitespace and braces. Yeah, nine dollars is probably more than it's worth. I just thought it would be funny--and Google sure doesn't care about the difference between $9 and 90 cents. :)
I don't see what would put Ceres and Pluto in different categories under any system.
How about composition and origin? Ceres is a rocky object, similar to Mercury or Io. Pluto is a giant snowball--basically a big-ass comet. Ditto for Eris, which isn't subject to your objection about its binary-system status.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson uses the "Pluto is just a big comet" as one of his main excuses for defending the decision to stop calling Pluto a planet. Well, guess what? That doesn't apply to Ceres. But it is still an important distinction between Pluto and all the objects we historically refer to as planets. Which is why I say I'd find such a definition acceptable.
Of course, if you're going by compositional similarity, then putting Mercury and Jupiter in the same category is also silly. Which is why my preferred solution is to make "planet" a super-category that includes 1) gas giants, 2) round rocky objects, and 3) round comet-like objects. I wouldn't bother to mention orbits at all. Orbital characteristics should be part of a separate classification system, IMO.
Titan does not orbit the sun directly...
Wow, really? :)
And would change what we call it change that? Why should orbital characteristics be a factor in planethood at all? Of course, calling it a planet won't make it stop being a moon of Saturn. By why should it only be known as a moon? There are plenty of moons that couldn't meet the definition of dwarf planet (let alone planet) even if they did orbit the sun directly. Phobos and Deimos, for example. Why not say that Titan is both a small planet and a moon of Saturn?
What would you call a large object the exact size of Earth that wasn't orbiting anything, but was just travelling on its own through interstellar space? I think it should be called a planet, but for some reason, the IAU doesn't think that's acceptable.
I think it would be much simpler and more sensible to have the word planet describe the object itself, and not some unrelated factors like how and what it orbits. Stars are round and big enough to trigger fusion. Planets are round and don't fuse. Asteroids aren't round. What's wrong with that definition?
Ceres couldn't clear its orbit, therefore it's not a planet.
Only if you accept the rather silly requirement that something clear its orbit before being considered a planet. In another system with a lot more debris, it's possible that an Earth-sized planet couldn't clear its orbit, especially if there were interference from nearby super-Jovians keeping things in a state of flux.
It's just another member of the asteroid belt
No it's not. There's a reason Ceres isn't classified as an asteroid. There's a reason it's classified as a dwarf planet. (Though the whole idea that a dwarf planet isn't a planet is nomclature abuse, but that's a separate matter.) Ceres is very much not "just another member". It's a very different sort of object. In fact, the one thing it most closely resembles is Mercury. Which, in turn, is far more similar to Ceres than to most other things called planets (especially the gas giants).
If you somehow thing I'm wrong or evil for thinking any of that, you'll probably be even more horrified to find that I think that Ganymede and Luna should be classified as planets.
I'm thinking that $9 (one dollar for each copied line) sounds like a nice number. :)
Oh piffle. The real mistake was back when they decided to classify poor Ceres as an asteroid. The whole nonsense about Pluto appears to be nothing but fallout from that earlier mistake, compounded by a reluctance to grant Ceres the full planetary status it so richly deserves. Ceres is more like Mercury than Mercury is like Jupiter or Pluto.
The old list you learned which included Pluto but not Ceres was simply arbitrary, wrong, and stupid. The current classification is certainly no worse, and is arguably somewhat better, even though I think it could be greatly improved.
The abstract specifically says that Vesta is not an asteroid. When Ceres was reclassified as a dwarf planet, there was some question about Vesta, because it's not a proper spheroid. The question is: was it deformed by external forces or was it just never able to form a proper spheroid?
Since "baby planet" is not a proper IAU category, I think this means either A) it's a dwarf planet, like Pluto or Ceres, or B) the question is still open, but we've learned something new about its origin--a completely separate matter.
I think the IAU definitions are extremely silly, but I also think it's extremely silly think that Pluto is special, or any more deserving of planet status than Ceres, which was not considered a planet for many, many years. Personally, I'd rather see a definition of planet that includes Ceres and excludes Pluto than the reverse. (Though I'm also open to a definition that includes Ceres, Pluto, Luna, Ganymede, Titan, and more.)
It's hard to tell from looking at it now, just how much of a revelation Wolfenstein3D really was. Compared to modern games, the graphics look like crap, and even back then, we had games with better graphics in the cut scenes, but we all knew that cut-scenes were pre-rendered, slowly, on much bigger machines. The idea that our simple desktop systems could create that level of 3D realism on the fly was astonishing! The first time I saw it, I kept wondering if it was going to make my CPU explode from all the calculations it must be performing.
That may--barely--excuse the lack of context-providing links. It doesn't excuse the misstatements and misinformation in the summary.
TFA was great--TFS not so much. I agree that bufferbloat.net doesn't seem to be as useful as I thought on a first glance, but the Bufferbloat FAQ would have been a good resource.
Heh, I know exactly what you mean. The same thought definitely crossed my mind. Fortunately, if you read carefully, you'll see that they seem to be releasing their code as open source.
"The open source project CeroWrt is using OpenWrt to explore solutions to bufferbloat. A CoDel implementation is in the works, after which real-world data can be studied. We plan to make our ns-2 simulation code available, as well as some further results."
Not a guarantee, but it sounds promising.
It is definitely a terrible summary, but the ACM article it links to is actually quite interesting. (You do know what the ACM is, don't you?) And bufferbloat has nothing to do with discs, so your objection is completely off base. It certainly would have helped if the summary had given you any idea what bufferbloat is, of course, so I understand your confusion. But it's a real thing. The problem is that the design of TCP/IP includes built-in error correction and speed adjustments. Large buffers hide bottlenecks, making TCP/IP overcorrect wildly back and forth, resulting in bursty, laggy transmission.
Yup, and another error in TFS is:
According to researchers, the cause is persistently full buffers.
should be "a cause".
Lame, misleading summaries is par for the course around here, though. But look on the bright side--it helps keep us on our toes, sorting sense from nonsense, and helps us spot the real idiots in the crowd. :)
At least this one had a link to a fairly reliable source. It wasn't just blog-spam to promote some idiot's misinterpretation of the facts. Might have been nice to also provide a link to bufferbloat.net or Wikipedia on bufferbloat, as well, for background information, but what can you do?