"for example, how Caldera won a settlement against Microsoft, which led him to believe that the SCO Group (successor of Caldera) might actually win."
Which even at the time, to the 'nerds' was an obviously wrong conclusion... Caldera bought DR-DOS from Novell (which had acquired digital research), and then proceeded to sue somebody 'not Novell'... In this case, they only thought they bought something from Novell and threatened an industry Novell was operating in (Linux), and early in the case, December 22 of 2003, Novell actuall already stated that SCO was wrong... The Forbes journalist chose to ignore that for four years...
"a liability to Forbes as a trustworthy news source."
You're too optimistic about Forbes. You just *think* that they are right when they talk about things you don't know much about. I've seen Forbes act similar as he 'Lyon case' in other situations. They don't care about being right, they just care about reporting about it, and put it on glossy papers for the uninformed to become no smarter.
Linux supports so many platforms, it can be used as an OS on pretty much anything that needs an OS. Not everything that needs an OS is a desktop, so not every OS is a desktop OS, and most of them don't need a GUI.
"I think he's got a perfectly fine understanding of what 'culture' is. You just seem to misunderstand the fundamental fact that he is trying to point out..."
Think it may be related to him beginnig with Engineering will not give you "a satisfying life". and ending with Engineering does not produce culture.?
Anyway... Culture is the projection of society. Engineering, as part of society is part of culture. As is creatively depicting/modeling feelings, observations, concepts etc (e.g. art), as is religion, as is bureacracy, as is law, as is porn.
Our culture is what we are. Some of us are engineering. Engineering is part of culture.
Culture can _not_ be 'created' culture exists. Anybody trying to 'create culture', while still part of culture, is really just creating. It's no more culture than the work of engineer that designed the Chrysler Building, for example...
Read your statement again, you said: "If that were true, there would be a trade surplus, not the gigantic deficit of today..."
That is false. You CAN produce more than you consume without having a trade surplus. You didn't say anything about a "good indicator".
Your claim that the US consumes more than it produces requires a lot more analysis than you have provided, or a reference that substantiates the specific claim that: "on average, US citizens consume more than they produce". If it's a reference, please refer me to the specific page on which they make that specific claim.
My claim simply opposes your claim. I have given an indicator that supports my position. All you are doing is attacking my indicator. You're still coming up short.
"Not true. Your standard doesn't even pass the most basic reasoning. For instance, the trade balance of the planet Earth is exactly zero. Does that mean that humans always consume exactly as much as they produce?"
You made the point that the people in the US produce more than they consume. I gave you a good indicator of the opposite: International trade balances are extremely good indicators of where the balance between producing and consuming lay...
Ignore reality at your own peril.
If you look at the numbers, you can see that the currency imbalance resulting from the trade deficit is coming back in the form of mainly Japan and China buying US bonds: Yes, they are lending the US its money back...
The US is currently doing the 'country' equivalent of charging everything on the credit card.
The dollar has already devaluating significantly as a result, and will continue to do so until the US start improving its production/consumption balance.
Until an enterprising young student finds the magical command 'apt-get install antiword' on an archive of this obscure thing called 'a website' with the name slashdot.org, and upon trying discovers the command still works...
"The bank of memory that I was experimenting with had its own refresh controller. The address decoding logic prevented it from being refreshed by memory accesses to other banks of memory. The board's keyboard monitor software was running in a different bank of memory."
That doesn't matter. A read or write to a row of DRAM has a side-effect: it refreshes the line...
You can actually stop doing DRAM refresh cycles alltogether, and as long as you access each DRAM row before the refresh time is exceeded, the data will be guaranteed equally stable as it is with refresh enabled.
That article is wrong. A coax is analog and in order to use it for digital signals you need a modem, period. A 'digital TV channel' is modulated using QAM (ATSC) or QPSK (DVB) too...
I'm not trying to be pedantic, but "modulation" for the devices originally called "modems" means altering the pitch of the audio signal. They were analog devices by definition. But I guess times are a changin'.
Nope...Altering the pitch? Only FM does purely that (frequency modulation), and even telephone modems have used more advanced method than that for any speed over 1200 bps...
PSK = Phase shift keying: modulates the phase
AM = Amplitude modulation (...)
QAM (as used in both your telephone modem and also in cable modems) = Quadrature _AMPLITUDE_ modulation... modulates the IQ (amplitude and phase together)...
"In telecommunications, modulation is the process of varying a periodic waveform, i.e. a tone, in order to use that signal to convey a message, in a similar fashion as a musician may modulate the tone from a musical instrument by varying its volume, timing and pitch."
"Since they carry digital data over a digital medium, I would disagree. They aren't "modulating" anything."
The 'cable' is coax, which is an analog medium, not digital. The 'cable modem' modulates (QPSK/QAM, etc) the bits into an analog signal that then again is modulated into a fixed channel (usually 5MHz wide) and puts it onto the coax...
There really is a lot of 'modem' (MOdulator DEModulator) activity going in in a cable modem...
"Power conversion efficiencies from these cells are typically below 4% (eg. 1.8% original report, Sun et. al Nano Lett 3, 961). A good crystalline silicon cell will give you 12-15%."
2007/04/18: -> "Plastic solar cell efficiency breaks record at WFU nanotechnology center"
The global search for a sustainable energy supply is making significant strides at Wake Forest University as researchers at the university's Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials have announced that they have pushed the efficiency of plastic solar cells to more than 6 percent.
Because they are flexible and easy to work with, plastic solar cells could be used as a replacement for roof tiling or home siding products or incorporated into traditional building facades. These energy harvesting devices could also be placed on automobiles. Since plastic solar cells are much lighter than the silicon solar panels structures do not have to be reinforced to support additional weight.
Ok, there you may have a point. Agreed, when "The Linux Fund" started times were different, and the card did seem to give Linux more crediblity. At least, the penguin was so new, it _was_ 'cool' just to see Tux on a card.
Is your point that they should be considered grandfathered in, and it should be fine for them to now also support Soy Milk and "I can't believe it's not Linux"?
Ok, maybe they should be the grandfathered in because of their early involvement. I guess I have no new arguments to make, so I'll just say I'd hope this not to be the beginning of hijacking of the name "Linux" in ways similar to how the media hijacked the word "Hacker" (or how anything annoying, hurtful, or illegal is now suddenly called a form of 'terrorism'). Let's not begin calling everything "Linux", or show Tux just because the penguin looks cute.
The bottom part of your post did say more about what 'The Linux Fund' was and that, as a fund, they do good things... But it also it shows again that "The Linux Fund" is simply using the word Linux and the penguin mascotte. Sure, maybe using the name "Linux" and showing the "cute pengiun" may be a nice thing for the fund, but just using the name and not owing up to it is a form of abuse. They are abusing the trademark and logo, which was my point all along.
"'LinuxFund isn't "a part of" the Linux community in any official way"
The Linux fund uses the Linux trademark and the penguin mascotte Tux, as the central word in its name, on the website, and on the card.
"rather, it's a nonprofit that advertised itself as an easy way to financially support what folks who are in the Linux community consider worthy causes by giving members the ability to vote on the direction of funds.'"
I have seen the 'Linux fund' credit card offers, and that that is not how it adversitses itself at all. In fact, the mission on the Linuxfund website says 'To promote the use and development of OpenSource Software, Documentation, Data, and other information by assisting the OpenSource Community [snip] and by giving grants and gifts to important OpenSource organizations'...
The Linux fund does not require or suggest that it's donors are members of the Linux community.
All I'm saying that "The Linux Fund" should be named differently...
Google is important to the Linux community too. So are Mozilla and Openoffice.org. Why should OpenSSH get stable long-term money from "The Linux Fund" but the others not?
The answer is probably that Google, Mozilla, and Openoffice.org have alternative sources for funding, and OpenSSH needs it more... Sure, they probably do. But OpenSSH should be getting it from the project they are part of: OpenBSD, which is a different community than the Linux community...
Or the "Linux Fund" should change their name to something more appropriate.
"but their margins on Office and Windows are like 85%!!! That means HOW much of Microsoft's business is simply abusing their monopoly money to put other people out of work?"
I think we sort of agree (about your entire post), but about the quoted part, you can't look at just the margins on the profitable parts. They now have that large margin on 'Office' because they poured money they made from 'Windows' into it back in the day to push Lotus and WordPerfect out... If they get their way, by the time they're done, they will have large profit margins on the 'Xbox 1080' and the 'MSN Adcenter' after they push google, sony, and nintendo out of that competition...
Slashdot Mirror
But, nobody uses Excel for important business or financial decisions, do they?
OOOPS!
- "by MyLongNickName (822545)" "on 10:40 PM"
- "by 644bd346996 (1012333)" "on 10:49 PM"
Wow, all that in only 9 minutes?
"for example, how Caldera won a settlement against Microsoft, which led him to believe that the SCO Group (successor of Caldera) might actually win."
Which even at the time, to the 'nerds' was an obviously wrong conclusion... Caldera bought DR-DOS from Novell (which had acquired digital research), and then proceeded to sue somebody 'not Novell'... In this case, they only thought they bought something from Novell and threatened an industry Novell was operating in (Linux), and early in the case, December 22 of 2003, Novell actuall already stated that SCO was wrong... The Forbes journalist chose to ignore that for four years...
"a liability to Forbes as a trustworthy news source."
You're too optimistic about Forbes. You just *think* that they are right when they talk about things you don't know much about. I've seen Forbes act similar as he 'Lyon case' in other situations. They don't care about being right, they just care about reporting about it, and put it on glossy papers for the uninformed to become no smarter.
Linux supports so many platforms, it can be used as an OS on pretty much anything that needs an OS. Not everything that needs an OS is a desktop, so not every OS is a desktop OS, and most of them don't need a GUI.
Did you refer their legal department to their entry on the gpl-violations.org website? Which company is it?
"I think he's got a perfectly fine understanding of what 'culture' is. You just seem to misunderstand the fundamental fact that he is trying to point out..."
Think it may be related to him beginnig with Engineering will not give you "a satisfying life". and ending with Engineering does not produce culture.?
Anyway... Culture is the projection of society. Engineering, as part of society is part of culture. As is creatively depicting/modeling feelings, observations, concepts etc (e.g. art), as is religion, as is bureacracy, as is law, as is porn.
Our culture is what we are. Some of us are engineering. Engineering is part of culture.
Culture can _not_ be 'created' culture exists. Anybody trying to 'create culture', while still part of culture, is really just creating. It's no more culture than the work of engineer that designed the Chrysler Building, for example...
Read your statement again, you said: "If that were true, there would be a trade surplus, not the gigantic deficit of today..."
That is false. You CAN produce more than you consume without having a trade surplus. You didn't say anything about a "good indicator".
Your claim that the US consumes more than it produces requires a lot more analysis than you have provided, or a reference that substantiates the specific claim that: "on average, US citizens consume more than they produce". If it's a reference, please refer me to the specific page on which they make that specific claim.
My claim simply opposes your claim. I have given an indicator that supports my position. All you are doing is attacking my indicator. You're still coming up short.
"Not true. Your standard doesn't even pass the most basic reasoning. For instance, the trade balance of the planet Earth is exactly zero. Does that mean that humans always consume exactly as much as they produce?"
You made the point that the people in the US produce more than they consume. I gave you a good indicator of the opposite: International trade balances are extremely good indicators of where the balance between producing and consuming lay...
Ignore reality at your own peril.
If you look at the numbers, you can see that the currency imbalance resulting from the trade deficit is coming back in the form of mainly Japan and China buying US bonds: Yes, they are lending the US its money back...
The US is currently doing the 'country' equivalent of charging everything on the credit card.
The dollar has already devaluating significantly as a result, and will continue to do so until the US start improving its production/consumption balance.
"In the US, for the most part, people produce more than they consume."
If that were true, there would be a trade surplus, not the gigantic deficit of today...
"Engineering does not produce culture. Engineering produces the time and security that people need to produce culture."
You, sir, have a fundamental misunderstanding of what 'culture' is.
Engineering is a very fundamental part of culture ever since there was... engineering...
Actually, it might even increase sales, which all goes to show how DRM isn't good for hardware sales.
Since DRM is about selling the customer _less_, how is it a surprise that DRM isn't good for sales?
Until an enterprising young student finds the magical command 'apt-get install antiword' on an archive of this obscure thing called 'a website' with the name slashdot.org, and upon trying discovers the command still works...
"The bank of memory that I was experimenting with had its own refresh controller. The address decoding logic prevented it from being refreshed by memory accesses to other banks of memory. The board's keyboard monitor software was running in a different bank of memory."
That doesn't matter. A read or write to a row of DRAM has a side-effect: it refreshes the line...
You can actually stop doing DRAM refresh cycles alltogether, and as long as you access each DRAM row before the refresh time is exceeded, the data will be guaranteed equally stable as it is with refresh enabled.
That article is wrong. A coax is analog and in order to use it for digital signals you need a modem, period. A 'digital TV channel' is modulated using QAM (ATSC) or QPSK (DVB) too...
I'm not trying to be pedantic, but "modulation" for the devices originally called "modems" means altering the pitch of the audio signal. They were analog devices by definition. But I guess times are a changin'.
Nope...Altering the pitch? Only FM does purely that (frequency modulation), and even telephone modems have used more advanced method than that for any speed over 1200 bps...
PSK = Phase shift keying: modulates the phase
AM = Amplitude modulation (...)
QAM (as used in both your telephone modem and also in cable modems) = Quadrature _AMPLITUDE_ modulation... modulates the IQ (amplitude and phase together)...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modulation
"In telecommunications, modulation is the process of varying a periodic waveform, i.e. a tone, in order to use that signal to convey a message, in a similar fashion as a musician may modulate the tone from a musical instrument by varying its volume, timing and pitch."
"Since they carry digital data over a digital medium, I would disagree. They aren't "modulating" anything."
The 'cable' is coax, which is an analog medium, not digital. The 'cable modem' modulates (QPSK/QAM, etc) the bits into an analog signal that then again is modulated into a fixed channel (usually 5MHz wide) and puts it onto the coax...
There really is a lot of 'modem' (MOdulator DEModulator) activity going in in a cable modem...
If your board was still running, it was still accessing memory, causing refreshes as part of the access cycles...
Please stop spreading blatant disinformation.
"Power conversion efficiencies from these cells are typically below 4% (eg. 1.8% original report, Sun et. al Nano Lett 3, 961). A good crystalline silicon cell will give you 12-15%."
2007/04/18: -> "Plastic solar cell efficiency breaks record at WFU nanotechnology center"
The global search for a sustainable energy supply is making significant strides at Wake Forest University as researchers at the university's Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials have announced that they have pushed the efficiency of plastic solar cells to more than 6 percent.
http://www.wfu.edu/news/release/2007.04.18.n.php
Because they are flexible and easy to work with, plastic solar cells could be used as a replacement for roof tiling or home siding products or incorporated into traditional building facades. These energy harvesting devices could also be placed on automobiles. Since plastic solar cells are much lighter than the silicon solar panels structures do not have to be reinforced to support additional weight.
"You might try taking history into account."
Ok, there you may have a point. Agreed, when "The Linux Fund" started times were different, and the card did seem to give Linux more crediblity. At least, the penguin was so new, it _was_ 'cool' just to see Tux on a card.
Is your point that they should be considered grandfathered in, and it should be fine for them to now also support Soy Milk and "I can't believe it's not Linux"?
Ok, maybe they should be the grandfathered in because of their early involvement. I guess I have no new arguments to make, so I'll just say I'd hope this not to be the beginning of hijacking of the name "Linux" in ways similar to how the media hijacked the word "Hacker" (or how anything annoying, hurtful, or illegal is now suddenly called a form of 'terrorism'). Let's not begin calling everything "Linux", or show Tux just because the penguin looks cute.
The bottom part of your post did say more about what 'The Linux Fund' was and that, as a fund, they do good things... But it also it shows again that "The Linux Fund" is simply using the word Linux and the penguin mascotte. Sure, maybe using the name "Linux" and showing the "cute pengiun" may be a nice thing for the fund, but just using the name and not owing up to it is a form of abuse. They are abusing the trademark and logo, which was my point all along.
"'LinuxFund isn't "a part of" the Linux community in any official way"
The Linux fund uses the Linux trademark and the penguin mascotte Tux, as the central word in its name, on the website, and on the card.
"rather, it's a nonprofit that advertised itself as an easy way to financially support what folks who are in the Linux community consider worthy causes by giving members the ability to vote on the direction of funds.'"
I have seen the 'Linux fund' credit card offers, and that that is not how it adversitses itself at all. In fact, the mission on the Linuxfund website says 'To promote the use and development of OpenSource Software, Documentation, Data, and other information by assisting the OpenSource Community [snip] and by giving grants and gifts to important OpenSource organizations'...
The Linux fund does not require or suggest that it's donors are members of the Linux community.
All I'm saying that "The Linux Fund" should be named differently...
Google is important to the Linux community too. So are Mozilla and Openoffice.org. Why should OpenSSH get stable long-term money from "The Linux Fund" but the others not?
The answer is probably that Google, Mozilla, and Openoffice.org have alternative sources for funding, and OpenSSH needs it more... Sure, they probably do. But OpenSSH should be getting it from the project they are part of: OpenBSD, which is a different community than the Linux community...
Or the "Linux Fund" should change their name to something more appropriate.
"but their margins on Office and Windows are like 85%!!! That means HOW much of Microsoft's business is simply abusing their monopoly money to put other people out of work?"
I think we sort of agree (about your entire post), but about the quoted part, you can't look at just the margins on the profitable parts. They now have that large margin on 'Office' because they poured money they made from 'Windows' into it back in the day to push Lotus and WordPerfect out... If they get their way, by the time they're done, they will have large profit margins on the 'Xbox 1080' and the 'MSN Adcenter' after they push google, sony, and nintendo out of that competition...
That's obviously their plan anyway...