There are a small-but-growing number of so-called "pundits" who like to make outrageous, offensive statements in what appears to be purely an attempt to drive more (outraged) traffic to their sites, in order to sell ad-space. Several of the pro-SCO "journalists" appear to fall into this camp, for example. Many people, including me, make it a point to not visit any site which is reported to be spewing this sort of stupidity, simply to deny the author/troll the extra hits. This goes beyond the usual slashdotter's reluctance to RTFM, so thank you for answering the question, and no, I will not be reading the article, now or at any time in the forseeable future. (Even though it does seem less likely than usual that this is merely another page-hit-driven troll, I don't want to give this toad even the personal satisfaction of seeing another hit on his page counter.)
Oh come on. The acting was pretty much as good as the script would allow. When it comes to character development and dialog, I think Lucas can give Jim Theis a run for his money. ("By the surly beard of Mrifk!") To call the dialog wooden is to insult writers of wooden dialog everywhere. I think the actors deserve an award simply for their ability to deliver those lines with a straight face. I'm not sure I could, no matter how many takes I was given.:)
Just a rough estimate of course, but I suspect that no more than about 5% of the people who would fall for a phishing attack in the first place have the basic wit and knowledge required to check the URL. To say that this will help is only true in the "technically-yes-but" sense that finding a dollar on the street will help you buy that new Ferrari you've always wanted.
> "They only have to distribute the source to those they distributed the binaries to, NOT anyone with binaries."
That's not true. If they distributed the binaries and source together, they're under no further obligation to anyone, but if they distributed the binaries without source, then they must accompany it with "a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code". (GPLv2, section 3b, emphasis mine.)
> "I don't think $30 for a USB key with the source code counts as 'a medium customarily used for software distribution'"
I think a USB key is certainly a medium customarily used for software distribution", but I don't think $30 counts as "no more than [their] cost of physically performing source distribution." On the other hand, I don't think it's insanely out of line either. And technically, the fee only needs to be paid once, since the first person who gets a copy can legally post it on the net for everyone else.
I find their refusal to provide the source to anyone who asks far more troubling than the mere $30 price tag.
Well, first and foremost, some people seem to prefer one over the other. God only knows why, but they do. That alone would be reason enough. Second of all, while they have many similarities, they also have many differences, and they're not particularly compatible. Having FLOSS support for both means software written in either can be free. That's a big deal too. It's basically the same reason that the Gnu Compiler Collection includes Fortran as well as C. And finally, while the Java spec was (and as far as I know, still is) under the control of one company, and is subject to change at a whim, Mono is (believe it or not) based on a public standard. It's a fuzzy standard from a dubious standards body (ECMA) that tends to be a bit of a corporate lapdog, and it only covers parts of what MS calls ".NET", but it is a standard, and FLOSS folks tend to really like public standards.
But really, the first one is the biggie. Why have Perl AND Tcl AND Python AND Ruby? Why have Gnome AND Kde AND Xfce AND GnuStep? Why have Emacs AND vi? Why have bash AND tcsh AND zsh? Why have Sendmail AND Postfix AND Exim? Why have MySQL AND PostgreSQL AND Firebird? Because people aren't all the same, and have different preferences, and, at some level, FLOSS is supposed to be, at least in part, about choice and freedom.
Except that the rules are different for libraries and archives, and the Internet Archive is a non-profit, registered member of the American Library Association, primarily funded by the Smithsonian Institution. Libraries routinely make copies for archival purposes (i.e. transferring newspapers to microfiche), and their right to do so is spelled out in the copyright laws. What she's done is the equivalent of putting "Anyone who reads this must pay the author five dollars" at the beginning of a book, then suing a library which carries a copy of that book. (Or, for a slightly closer analogy, placing a classified ad in a local newspaper with a notice that anyone who copies it must pay you, and then suing the local library for their microfiched copy of the newspaper.)
If she were to sue anyone, she should have sued Google, who, as a for-profit information service selling advertisements, cannot claim to be a public library, and whose copy of her site is every bit as much a re-publication as the Archive's, but without the defenses spelled out in copyright law that the Archive has.
The claim that MSOXML is completely unnecessary because ODF exists is quaint! Even if it were correct (and it's not an unreasonable opinion, and certainly one to which PJ is sympathetic), it ignores certain political realities. MSOXML is clearly on the table because MS wishes to avoid providing its competitors with a level playing field at all costs. The opinion would be quaint no matter who said it! World power or otherwise. So why don't you take the bloody chip of your shoulder, old chap?
"It says in the book here that He made us all to be just like Him So... if we're dumb, then God is dumb! And maybe even a little ugly on the side"
-- from "Dumb All Over", by Frank Zappa
IBM's been like that for a long time. Remember when the PC division refused to sell the company's own operating system? (Of course, the PC division ended up being sold to a Chinese company, so I guess the OS/2 developers got the last laugh, but a bit too little too late.)
Big, diverse companies often seem to be going in several directions at once, and in this industry, pretty much nobody is bigger or more diverse than IBM (still).
For several years now, I've been naming my linux boxes after King Crimson songs (Red, Starless, BBoom, Neurotica, Thrak, etc.). Now that Fripp has gone over to the Dark Side, I may have to rethink my naming scheme. Dammit!:)
> Under the upcoming GPL v. 3, accepting e.g. a GPLd webserver will force me to distribute the source of my programs that run ON TOP OF IT
Pure and unmitigated bullshit! That's not even possible, since the GPL doesn't force anything! It relies on copyright law for its teeth, and your programs on top of the web server would not be derivative works as defined by copyright law, so there's no way for the GPL to affect them! What will change in the GPLv3 is that if the webserver (or a webapp) comes with a built-in option to download its own source, you will not be able to remove that option, and must ensure that any modifications you make to the server (or app) itself are reflected in the source that gets automatically downloaded, but there's absolutely nothing about magical "infection" of unrelated products. And that only applies to programs which already include the option to automatically download their own sources--a pretty small list indeed.
ALL of us? There's probably nothing they can do. IBM still has fervent detractors after two decades of trying to improve their image. However, I see little sign that MS is even trying. This, as others have noticed, is a fairly trivial thing they've done here, misreported, and quite possibly designed as an attack on VMWare, not a generous giveaway.
> Each thing they do is met with people saying they're JUST doing it to increase market share, or to trap customers into certain situation, or to extinguish competition.
Yes, and IBM still gets a lot of that too. And available evidence suggests that it's still sometimes true for IBM, and still usually true for MS. MS has proven, repeatedly, that they're willing to lie, cheat and steal to get what they want. And they've proven that they're willing to give stuff away solely for the purpose of undermining their competitors. The fact is that they've been utter rat-bastards for nearly three decades, and it only looks like they're changing if you squint funny and try to ignore a whole lot of stuff.
> It's been a while since I've seen a company go out of business because of Microsoft.
Then you haven't been looking very hard. Of course, they're going after some tougher nuts these days. Symantec and Google aren't going to simply fold up and blow away at the first adverse wind. And Nintendo and Sony have a lot of experience with tough compettion. But a lot of smaller A/V companies (just as a for-example) are dropping off the map.
> Microsoft's past practices now involve a couple of years of doing the right thing.
While I agree that there are signs they're trying to do better (amazing what a major investigation by the EU will do), their current practices still involve lots of questionable stuff. They've got a long way to go before you can even begin to pretend that the balance of their behavior is "the right thing". And even then, it's going to be a long time before they make up for the harm they've done, and even longer before some people are going to be willing to forgive and forget. Again, just ask IBM about that last.
You seem to think that any little not-wrong thing they do should be an enough to make us forget all the harm they've done in the past, and all the harm they appear to be continuing to do. Well, sorry, bub, we're not that stupid or gullible. Maybe it's time you took a more balanced outlook instead of immediately assuming the best!
Downtown LA strikes me as a particularly bad suggestion for certainreasons, but in general, the idea sounds reasonable. I think you'd be better off proposing this for New York, Chicago, or London, though, rather than listing LA as your primary example.:)
> I said that most theories on time travel involve surpassing the speed of light.
Yes, and I don't disagree with that part, but it has nothing to do with the topic under discussion, which is electrons NOT going faster than the speed of light. (And thus, being unable to form electron shells around untrioctium nuclei.)
> Now, possibly, researchers can test those theories.
Researchers already have access to electrons NOT going faster than the speed of light. They're quite common, in fact.:)
> No wonder your web site link is www.SPEAKeasy.net, all your about is talk I see.
Saying, "it can't be done because it would involve speeds faster than light" does not lead us to time travel! Sheesh!:)
Re:It's the innermost electrons that have the prob
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Element 118 Created
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· Score: 1
> "You're thinking of electrons as little planet-like objects orbiting the nucleus."
No. I am a layman, but I do understand at least some of the implications of the double-slit experiments and the creation of Bose-Einstein condensates. My mental image of electrons around a nucleus is more like clouds blurring and spreading to form a fuzzy, translucent shell. Which is probably also a flawed model, but closer, I think, than the planet-model. I admit that it was some fairly Newtonian thinking that led me to speculate that higher-energy orbits might be related to higher velocity, but nothing quite as simple as you suggest. Anyway, thanks for the clarification. If I weren't already a participant in this thread, I'd give you some "informative" mod points.
Of course, you've left me with some new questions, but I suspect that there are better places than slashdot for me to go for answers.:)
If Spamhaus does this voluntarily, just to prove a point, and the results are as bad as some predict (overloaded servers losing emails resulting in financial damages to companies in the millions or hundreds of millions of dollars), Spamhaus could be in much worse legal trouble than they are right now. On the other hand, if they do it involuntarily because the US courts force their domain to be shut down, then they can't be held liable for the consequences of that action. The US government, on the other hand...
If I (still) worked for a huge email or Internet service provider, I would have my team on full alert, and would be busy talking to legal about our possible options for trying to prevent anyone (Spamhaus or the courts) from abruptly shutting down this service, and to vendors and the finance department about the possibility of getting emergency extra storage if needed. I'm surprised I haven't heard of some big ISPs trying to get the injunction blocked already. (Although, since I don't still work for a huge email provider, I don't know what legal's response would have been, which might explain it.)
Re:It's the innermost electrons that have the prob
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Element 118 Created
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· Score: 2, Interesting
It's the innermost electrons that have the problem? Are you sure about that? I would expect that the outermost electrons would have the farthest to travel, and would therefore need the greatest speed, so removing electrons from the outer shells would solve the problem. The outer electrons are higher energy, and I would assume that this is partly related to them having higher velocity. But I can see arguments for the other way around too, and I don't know which is correct.
I agree that electron capture is another interesting issue here. And it is curious that 137 is the nearest whole number to the inverse of the fine structure constant.
do limitations on electrons count?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I'm not a particle physicist, but from what I can see, it's saying that the problem is that some of the electrons would have to be moving faster than the speed of light. But is that really an issue? Maybe you can only have positive ions of elements above that, but they'd still be atoms of those elements. Heck, even with no electrons at all, it would still just be an extremely positive ion! At least as I understand matters. Basically, unless I'm misunderstanding or misinterpreting, 137 or 138 is the heaviest element for which a neutral atom can exist, but there should be no limit to elements for which positive ions can exist up till you reach the point where gravity starts to become a larger factor than the strong nuclear force.
You completely missed the point. I don't object to the slashdot article (in fact, I think it's fairly interesting, for much the same reasons that you do). What I object to is the sheer idiocy of providing links to a site that's complaining about too much misdirected traffic! As for my grammar or sentence structure--I'm not claiming to be a professional writer, nor asking for payment for my writing, so your arguments there are moot. But at least I can spell "grammar". Ask me if I'm concerned about criticism of my sentence structure from someone who can't!:p;)
Well, actually several, but mostly it boils down to the utter lack of editorial standards. Bad grammar, bad spelling, slashvertisements, links to semi-literate amateur blogs for stories carried by decent, high-quality sites, and... sheer idiocy like this. I enjoy slashdot. It's an interesting diversion. And I've been around for a long time, and I still haven't given up on it. But the complete and utter lack of editorial common sense or professionalism is simpy infuriating at times! I would miss slashdot if it disappeared, but there's no way I'm willing to pay for something this poorly produced. And that's the bottom line.
However, at least this time I can be proud to announce that I did not RTFA!:)
I liked the name when I first heard it suggested, months and months ago. It sounds like something out of a great, tragic, Russian novel. So, I renamed Firefox to Iceweasel on my system, right then and there. If only I knew that changing the name of a file on my system was going to help "closed source win", I never would have done anything so horrible. I'm obviously a totally evil person, helping closed source win, and all that. I wonder if I'm helping the terrorists win, too? And what about the children--don't forget the children!
Let me take this opportunity to thank the helpful people at engtech.wordpress.com, better known as NAMBLA.:)
> If you're a developer for a platform that needs to run signed code, could you use software under the GPLv3
Yes!
> or does the GPLv3 (at its current, unreleased state) truly inhibit your control as a developer over your device?"
No! Any more questions?:)
(Ok, if you want to get picky: it doesn't inhibit your control over "your" device, but it may inhibit your ability to inhibit others. You know--the people who actually OWN "your" device! But that's the whole point!)
This whole "requires releasing digital keys" nonsense has to go! Whoever invented that meme should be shot. And I don't care how many of you like his fucking kernel!:) Me--I consider myself a pragmatist too. I've used the BSD license, GPL, Apache, and many more, not to mention semi-free and proprietary licenses. I base my decisions on what I think is appropriate for the project I'm working on. Not on what a bunch of fanatics tell me. But the GPLv3 seems perfectly in line with the GPLv2 to me. It closes a couple of obvious loopholes, and little more. When I get some code released under the GPL, I expect to be able to fix it. TiVo showed us all that that wasn't necessarily true. If it were my code they were using, I'd be pissed as hell!
Everyone's talking like this is going to have huge effects. The fact is that there is really, so far, only one company that would have been affected, and they won't be affected because the Linux kernel devs long ago decided to stick with v2. And now the devs want to justify that decision by pointing out all the supposed flaws with v3. I'm not impressed with their reasoning.
People talk about voting machines. The solution there is easy. The software needs to provide a signature of the results AND the software together. Then you can easily detect tampering while still providing all the freedom necessary to fix problems.
Going with GPLv2-only is the WORST possible solution, as far as I can tell. That will guarantee license-incompatibility in the future. Frankly, I see nothing in the GPLv3 draft that would justify the kind of headaches that going to GPLv2-only would cause. In fact, I see nothing in the GPLv3 worth bitching about. Yes, it's new, yes, there's some controversy, but my god, I was there when the original GPL was released, and this controversy ain't nothin' compared to the shitstorm of controversy back then! Well, Stallman turned out to be basically right about the GPL in the first place, and, by comparison, I see nothing but tiny, incremental improvements this time around.
The GPLv3 will be happening, and I, and probably tens of thousands of others, will be using it. Get used to it!
By the end of the next decade, I predict that people choosing GPLv2-only licenses will be being cursed as roundly and solidly as those who chose non-dual-licensed MPL or Artistic are today.
Slashdot Mirror
There are a small-but-growing number of so-called "pundits" who like to make outrageous, offensive statements in what appears to be purely an attempt to drive more (outraged) traffic to their sites, in order to sell ad-space. Several of the pro-SCO "journalists" appear to fall into this camp, for example. Many people, including me, make it a point to not visit any site which is reported to be spewing this sort of stupidity, simply to deny the author/troll the extra hits. This goes beyond the usual slashdotter's reluctance to RTFM, so thank you for answering the question, and no, I will not be reading the article, now or at any time in the forseeable future. (Even though it does seem less likely than usual that this is merely another page-hit-driven troll, I don't want to give this toad even the personal satisfaction of seeing another hit on his page counter.)
Oh come on. The acting was pretty much as good as the script would allow. When it comes to character development and dialog, I think Lucas can give Jim Theis a run for his money. ("By the surly beard of Mrifk!") To call the dialog wooden is to insult writers of wooden dialog everywhere. I think the actors deserve an award simply for their ability to deliver those lines with a straight face. I'm not sure I could, no matter how many takes I was given. :)
Just a rough estimate of course, but I suspect that no more than about 5% of the people who would fall for a phishing attack in the first place have the basic wit and knowledge required to check the URL. To say that this will help is only true in the "technically-yes-but" sense that finding a dollar on the street will help you buy that new Ferrari you've always wanted.
> "They only have to distribute the source to those they distributed the binaries to, NOT anyone with binaries."
That's not true. If they distributed the binaries and source together, they're under no further obligation to anyone, but if they distributed the binaries without source, then they must accompany it with "a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code". (GPLv2, section 3b, emphasis mine.)
> "I don't think $30 for a USB key with the source code counts as 'a medium customarily used for software distribution'"
I think a USB key is certainly a medium customarily used for software distribution", but I don't think $30 counts as "no more than [their] cost of physically performing source distribution." On the other hand, I don't think it's insanely out of line either. And technically, the fee only needs to be paid once, since the first person who gets a copy can legally post it on the net for everyone else.
I find their refusal to provide the source to anyone who asks far more troubling than the mere $30 price tag.
Well, first and foremost, some people seem to prefer one over the other. God only knows why, but they do. That alone would be reason enough. Second of all, while they have many similarities, they also have many differences, and they're not particularly compatible. Having FLOSS support for both means software written in either can be free. That's a big deal too. It's basically the same reason that the Gnu Compiler Collection includes Fortran as well as C. And finally, while the Java spec was (and as far as I know, still is) under the control of one company, and is subject to change at a whim, Mono is (believe it or not) based on a public standard. It's a fuzzy standard from a dubious standards body (ECMA) that tends to be a bit of a corporate lapdog, and it only covers parts of what MS calls ".NET", but it is a standard, and FLOSS folks tend to really like public standards.
But really, the first one is the biggie. Why have Perl AND Tcl AND Python AND Ruby? Why have Gnome AND Kde AND Xfce AND GnuStep? Why have Emacs AND vi? Why have bash AND tcsh AND zsh? Why have Sendmail AND Postfix AND Exim? Why have MySQL AND PostgreSQL AND Firebird? Because people aren't all the same, and have different preferences, and, at some level, FLOSS is supposed to be, at least in part, about choice and freedom.
Except that the rules are different for libraries and archives, and the Internet Archive is a non-profit, registered member of the American Library Association, primarily funded by the Smithsonian Institution. Libraries routinely make copies for archival purposes (i.e. transferring newspapers to microfiche), and their right to do so is spelled out in the copyright laws. What she's done is the equivalent of putting "Anyone who reads this must pay the author five dollars" at the beginning of a book, then suing a library which carries a copy of that book. (Or, for a slightly closer analogy, placing a classified ad in a local newspaper with a notice that anyone who copies it must pay you, and then suing the local library for their microfiched copy of the newspaper.)
If she were to sue anyone, she should have sued Google, who, as a for-profit information service selling advertisements, cannot claim to be a public library, and whose copy of her site is every bit as much a re-publication as the Archive's, but without the defenses spelled out in copyright law that the Archive has.
The claim that MSOXML is completely unnecessary because ODF exists is quaint! Even if it were correct (and it's not an unreasonable opinion, and certainly one to which PJ is sympathetic), it ignores certain political realities. MSOXML is clearly on the table because MS wishes to avoid providing its competitors with a level playing field at all costs. The opinion would be quaint no matter who said it! World power or otherwise. So why don't you take the bloody chip of your shoulder, old chap?
"It says in the book here that He made us all to be just like Him ... if we're dumb, then God is dumb!
So
And maybe even a little ugly on the side"
-- from "Dumb All Over", by Frank Zappa
Yeah, 'cause clearly, nothing is more secure than a closed source solution. Security by obscurity is the ONLY ANSWER! And advice on computer security by random slashdot posters is far more trustworthy than anything from a company that's been making secure systems for longer than most of us have been alive.
IBM's been like that for a long time. Remember when the PC division refused to sell the company's own operating system? (Of course, the PC division ended up being sold to a Chinese company, so I guess the OS/2 developers got the last laugh, but a bit too little too late.)
Big, diverse companies often seem to be going in several directions at once, and in this industry, pretty much nobody is bigger or more diverse than IBM (still).
For several years now, I've been naming my linux boxes after King Crimson songs (Red, Starless, BBoom, Neurotica, Thrak, etc.). Now that Fripp has gone over to the Dark Side, I may have to rethink my naming scheme. Dammit! :)
> Under the upcoming GPL v. 3, accepting e.g. a GPLd webserver will force me to distribute the source of my programs that run ON TOP OF IT
Pure and unmitigated bullshit! That's not even possible, since the GPL doesn't force anything! It relies on copyright law for its teeth, and your programs on top of the web server would not be derivative works as defined by copyright law, so there's no way for the GPL to affect them! What will change in the GPLv3 is that if the webserver (or a webapp) comes with a built-in option to download its own source, you will not be able to remove that option, and must ensure that any modifications you make to the server (or app) itself are reflected in the source that gets automatically downloaded, but there's absolutely nothing about magical "infection" of unrelated products. And that only applies to programs which already include the option to automatically download their own sources--a pretty small list indeed.
Where do people come up with this crap?
> What would MS have to do to please all of you?
ALL of us? There's probably nothing they can do. IBM still has fervent detractors after two decades of trying to improve their image. However, I see little sign that MS is even trying. This, as others have noticed, is a fairly trivial thing they've done here, misreported, and quite possibly designed as an attack on VMWare, not a generous giveaway.
> Each thing they do is met with people saying they're JUST doing it to increase market share, or to trap customers into certain situation, or to extinguish competition.
Yes, and IBM still gets a lot of that too. And available evidence suggests that it's still sometimes true for IBM, and still usually true for MS. MS has proven, repeatedly, that they're willing to lie, cheat and steal to get what they want. And they've proven that they're willing to give stuff away solely for the purpose of undermining their competitors. The fact is that they've been utter rat-bastards for nearly three decades, and it only looks like they're changing if you squint funny and try to ignore a whole lot of stuff.
> It's been a while since I've seen a company go out of business because of Microsoft.
Then you haven't been looking very hard. Of course, they're going after some tougher nuts these days. Symantec and Google aren't going to simply fold up and blow away at the first adverse wind. And Nintendo and Sony have a lot of experience with tough compettion. But a lot of smaller A/V companies (just as a for-example) are dropping off the map.
> Microsoft's past practices now involve a couple of years of doing the right thing.
While I agree that there are signs they're trying to do better (amazing what a major investigation by the EU will do), their current practices still involve lots of questionable stuff. They've got a long way to go before you can even begin to pretend that the balance of their behavior is "the right thing". And even then, it's going to be a long time before they make up for the harm they've done, and even longer before some people are going to be willing to forgive and forget. Again, just ask IBM about that last.
You seem to think that any little not-wrong thing they do should be an enough to make us forget all the harm they've done in the past, and all the harm they appear to be continuing to do. Well, sorry, bub, we're not that stupid or gullible. Maybe it's time you took a more balanced outlook instead of immediately assuming the best!
Downtown LA strikes me as a particularly bad suggestion for certain reasons, but in general, the idea sounds reasonable. I think you'd be better off proposing this for New York, Chicago, or London, though, rather than listing LA as your primary example. :)
> Who are you quoting?
:)
:)
Myself.
> I said that most theories on time travel involve surpassing the speed of light.
Yes, and I don't disagree with that part, but it has nothing to do with the topic under discussion, which is electrons NOT going faster than the speed of light. (And thus, being unable to form electron shells around untrioctium nuclei.)
> Now, possibly, researchers can test those theories.
Researchers already have access to electrons NOT going faster than the speed of light. They're quite common, in fact.
> No wonder your web site link is www.SPEAKeasy.net, all your about is talk I see.
Tee-hee. You're silly. I like you.
Saying, "it can't be done because it would involve speeds faster than light" does not lead us to time travel! Sheesh! :)
> "You're thinking of electrons as little planet-like objects orbiting the nucleus."
:)
No. I am a layman, but I do understand at least some of the implications of the double-slit experiments and the creation of Bose-Einstein condensates. My mental image of electrons around a nucleus is more like clouds blurring and spreading to form a fuzzy, translucent shell. Which is probably also a flawed model, but closer, I think, than the planet-model. I admit that it was some fairly Newtonian thinking that led me to speculate that higher-energy orbits might be related to higher velocity, but nothing quite as simple as you suggest. Anyway, thanks for the clarification. If I weren't already a participant in this thread, I'd give you some "informative" mod points.
Of course, you've left me with some new questions, but I suspect that there are better places than slashdot for me to go for answers.
cheers
If Spamhaus does this voluntarily, just to prove a point, and the results are as bad as some predict (overloaded servers losing emails resulting in financial damages to companies in the millions or hundreds of millions of dollars), Spamhaus could be in much worse legal trouble than they are right now. On the other hand, if they do it involuntarily because the US courts force their domain to be shut down, then they can't be held liable for the consequences of that action. The US government, on the other hand...
If I (still) worked for a huge email or Internet service provider, I would have my team on full alert, and would be busy talking to legal about our possible options for trying to prevent anyone (Spamhaus or the courts) from abruptly shutting down this service, and to vendors and the finance department about the possibility of getting emergency extra storage if needed. I'm surprised I haven't heard of some big ISPs trying to get the injunction blocked already. (Although, since I don't still work for a huge email provider, I don't know what legal's response would have been, which might explain it.)
It's the innermost electrons that have the problem? Are you sure about that? I would expect that the outermost electrons would have the farthest to travel, and would therefore need the greatest speed, so removing electrons from the outer shells would solve the problem. The outer electrons are higher energy, and I would assume that this is partly related to them having higher velocity. But I can see arguments for the other way around too, and I don't know which is correct.
I agree that electron capture is another interesting issue here. And it is curious that 137 is the nearest whole number to the inverse of the fine structure constant.
I'm not a particle physicist, but from what I can see, it's saying that the problem is that some of the electrons would have to be moving faster than the speed of light. But is that really an issue? Maybe you can only have positive ions of elements above that, but they'd still be atoms of those elements. Heck, even with no electrons at all, it would still just be an extremely positive ion! At least as I understand matters. Basically, unless I'm misunderstanding or misinterpreting, 137 or 138 is the heaviest element for which a neutral atom can exist, but there should be no limit to elements for which positive ions can exist up till you reach the point where gravity starts to become a larger factor than the strong nuclear force.
You completely missed the point. I don't object to the slashdot article (in fact, I think it's fairly interesting, for much the same reasons that you do). What I object to is the sheer idiocy of providing links to a site that's complaining about too much misdirected traffic! As for my grammar or sentence structure--I'm not claiming to be a professional writer, nor asking for payment for my writing, so your arguments there are moot. But at least I can spell "grammar". Ask me if I'm concerned about criticism of my sentence structure from someone who can't! :p ;)
Well, actually several, but mostly it boils down to the utter lack of editorial standards. Bad grammar, bad spelling, slashvertisements, links to semi-literate amateur blogs for stories carried by decent, high-quality sites, and ... sheer idiocy like this. I enjoy slashdot. It's an interesting diversion. And I've been around for a long time, and I still haven't given up on it. But the complete and utter lack of editorial common sense or professionalism is simpy infuriating at times! I would miss slashdot if it disappeared, but there's no way I'm willing to pay for something this poorly produced. And that's the bottom line.
:)
However, at least this time I can be proud to announce that I did not RTFA!
I liked the name when I first heard it suggested, months and months ago. It sounds like something out of a great, tragic, Russian novel. So, I renamed Firefox to Iceweasel on my system, right then and there. If only I knew that changing the name of a file on my system was going to help "closed source win", I never would have done anything so horrible. I'm obviously a totally evil person, helping closed source win, and all that. I wonder if I'm helping the terrorists win, too? And what about the children--don't forget the children!
:)
Let me take this opportunity to thank the helpful people at engtech.wordpress.com, better known as NAMBLA.
Ah yes, the old classic science fiction plot:
Boy meets girl.
Boy loses girl.
Boy builds girl.
Thanks to T.A. Waters (no relation) for the above.
> If you're a developer for a platform that needs to run signed code, could you use software under the GPLv3
:)
:) Me--I consider myself a pragmatist too. I've used the BSD license, GPL, Apache, and many more, not to mention semi-free and proprietary licenses. I base my decisions on what I think is appropriate for the project I'm working on. Not on what a bunch of fanatics tell me. But the GPLv3 seems perfectly in line with the GPLv2 to me. It closes a couple of obvious loopholes, and little more. When I get some code released under the GPL, I expect to be able to fix it. TiVo showed us all that that wasn't necessarily true. If it were my code they were using, I'd be pissed as hell!
Yes!
> or does the GPLv3 (at its current, unreleased state) truly inhibit your control as a developer over your device?"
No! Any more questions?
(Ok, if you want to get picky: it doesn't inhibit your control over "your" device, but it may inhibit your ability to inhibit others. You know--the people who actually OWN "your" device! But that's the whole point!)
This whole "requires releasing digital keys" nonsense has to go! Whoever invented that meme should be shot. And I don't care how many of you like his fucking kernel!
Everyone's talking like this is going to have huge effects. The fact is that there is really, so far, only one company that would have been affected, and they won't be affected because the Linux kernel devs long ago decided to stick with v2. And now the devs want to justify that decision by pointing out all the supposed flaws with v3. I'm not impressed with their reasoning.
People talk about voting machines. The solution there is easy. The software needs to provide a signature of the results AND the software together. Then you can easily detect tampering while still providing all the freedom necessary to fix problems.
Going with GPLv2-only is the WORST possible solution, as far as I can tell. That will guarantee license-incompatibility in the future. Frankly, I see nothing in the GPLv3 draft that would justify the kind of headaches that going to GPLv2-only would cause. In fact, I see nothing in the GPLv3 worth bitching about. Yes, it's new, yes, there's some controversy, but my god, I was there when the original GPL was released, and this controversy ain't nothin' compared to the shitstorm of controversy back then! Well, Stallman turned out to be basically right about the GPL in the first place, and, by comparison, I see nothing but tiny, incremental improvements this time around.
The GPLv3 will be happening, and I, and probably tens of thousands of others, will be using it. Get used to it!
By the end of the next decade, I predict that people choosing GPLv2-only licenses will be being cursed as roundly and solidly as those who chose non-dual-licensed MPL or Artistic are today.