> There only real risk is that maybe by some huge stroke of bad luck, some other plant (a weed, say) picks up glyphosate resistance from these genes
Well, I'm glad we have you to think through every single possible chemical, biological interaction between a genetically modified plant and the rest of the environment, which we humans understand and can model perfectly. Complex coupled system dynamics... easy for jeffmeden! Of course we can predict all the consequences of our actions, especially when applied on an industrial / global scale in a short few years. Why worry that there may be something that we haven't thought of which will manifest itself in a generation or two. After all, it's only the world's food supply and our life support system (the environment) that we're talking about here. If by some astronomically unlikely chance we've made a mistake we can just hit the reset button and try again. There is a reset button on the Earth, right?
Because 36,000km is where geostationary orbit is... the elevator is tied to the surface of the earth, and so makes one rotation per day. You *could* get off at 360km, but you'd be moving waaay below orbital speed and would fall straight (actually elliptically) back to earth. No chance of docking with the ISS, which makes an orbit approx every 90 minutes IIRC.
IBM's chairman did say that he saw a world market for maybe 5 computers - and this is the bit that is usually not quoted - for the next year - back in the 1950's or whenever.
Now, anyone want to explain to me how the efficiency of that works out- you capture power from the jet engine (which is, itself, a big fan) and use it to drive a bigger fan on top of regular exhaust ducting... apparently that recovers more power than just running the jets, but I'm not sure I get how?
Simple - It's the difference between power and thrust.
Thrust = Mass of air moved per second * Velocity Power = 1/2 * Mass flux * Velocity squared
Fighter jet engines accelerate a small mass of air to high velocities, giving them lots of power (and hence acceleration etc), and this is what the Boeing design does at all times. On the other hand the Lockheed design moves a large mass of air at lower velocities (by using the fans), giving the same thrust, but using a lot less power.
This works because the aircraft only need thrust downward at low velocities (ie hovering) instead of needing to accelerate fast directly upwards.
Note that commercial jets don't need that kind of power, so their engines are 'bypass engines', where a large fan at the front of the engine propels a large mass of air around the main engine and is not used for combustion.
Someone who is convicted of murder is a murderer. That is, until they win their appeal, after which they are not a murderer. Same with Monopolys. Just because a convicted criminal is not locked up does not mean that they are not a criminal.
A Monopoly doen not need to have 100% of the market. In legal terms, (at least here in the UK) a company can have a monopoly if it has a substantial portion of a market (about 25% iirc). The point is, the monopoly can _control_ the market. Microsoft having ~90% of the desktop OS market is most definitely a monopoly.
(PS I know the word _Mono_poly implies _one_ company, but that is not the legal definition.)
Also the fact is that Microsoft has been convicted of _illegaly_ maintaining its monopoly, so I can write that is it a monopolist without being sued. Notice how newspapers cover trials - a suspect is (for example) always an 'accused murderer', until that person has been convicted, after which he is a 'murderer'. - After a court has decided something, it can be quoted as a fact, and trying to disagree without reference to the court decision is just silly.
" The "real data" in this article is nothing more than statistics that are being presented from a biased source whose primary intention is to prove a point rather than fairly weigh out two options."
But this article draws statistics from all over the place - are you saying that all of the (tens) of them are biased sources? Have you read the article?
The article does not cover a lot of possible uses for computers (eg desktop usability etc.) but it doesn't on the other hand just focus on one or two particular instances where Free Software happens to be better than proprietary software - there are several important areas covered.
" but at least they would have done a proper evaluation instead of living off the lobbying that's now coming from both sides. "
Only a large business can afford to do a proper evaluation, for most SMEs it's much easier and quicker to use evaluations that someone else has done. Since companies will pay for lobbying for their product it is important that the opposite view (for FS) is represented - then companies have two oppositely balanced sources of information from which they can make a much better choice.
Obviously it's not prime time stuff, but it's still there and working in the real world (though debian developers are somewhat a minority). I'm not remotely suggesting that general elections use as crude a system as this, but I'd be concerned that if/when general elections are held electronically they will be far less secure than this.
I am impressed by the way the voting system works in Debian, it appears to solve any obvious fraud problems associated with e-voting:
Each developer's vote has to be signed by their gpg secret key (the key itself signed by other debian developers and on the public debian keyring), so votes cannot be faked by developers.
Each developer is sent a secret token, which is hashed with their uid and a list of hashes against votes is publically posted - so each developer can check their vote has been counted correctly, without being able to determine whose the other votes were.
Are there any other electronic voting systems that do as well as this?
Debian gets around this lack of.debs by providing a source package, which downloads the nvidia.tgz (or asks you to, I can't remember which) and takes it apart and automagically builds it into a.deb on your machine. This way it is almost like installing a real.deb package. I thought this was pretty clever when I encountered it.
The gas tax thing has been tried for so long it's not even funny. Petrol at the momentis 74p a litre which is about $1.10 per litre which is about $4.15 per (US)gallon, about 70% of which is tax. This doesn't work, you just have to pay more to make the journeys you have to make and I'm a lot poorer.
Taxing congestion is a much better idea because I can journey at different times, even the most congested roads are probably only congested for a couple of hours each day, leaving lots of time when they are clear - balancing this out would be a lot more efficient for everyone.
I know there are privacy issues, but these are so blatant that the government cannot ignore/hide them, they will have to come up with a solid way for protection of privacy (else the plan could never happen).
A local compromise gives you root on the machine.
A remote compromise gives you root on the machine because even if it only gets a regular account a local compromise can then be used to get root.
DoSs don't count as security vulnerabilities for this purpose.
These are the commonly understood meanings of these terms... (AFAIK)
Everyone is missing a big point that the.deb package format has many more features than.rpm. I'm not saying this to start a flamewar, but.debs have more advanced dependancy information such as depends, suggests, conflicts, replaces, provides etc, many scripts to run pre/post install, the scripts look after package config files well, also installation ordering, smooth upgrades between different versions of the same package etc. etc.
I would not not want to take a step back by switching to.rpms (unless RedHat or Connectiva hack in all these extra features, which would make them incompatible anyway and need everyone to upgrade so what's the point?)
Re:how to play without a CD?
on
Uplink
·
· Score: 1
The Linux version comes as a.zip file, just copy it across a network or something, and unzip it to the directory you want. the CD isn't needed for playing Uplink.
Re:I found it dissapointing :(
on
Uplink
·
· Score: 1
But for $25 including shipping from the UK, you can hardly say the game is too short - I think it's definitely good value for money.
Umm, yes,the FBI can crash into your server room, so you can buy motion detecting cameras and self-destruct devices to remove the evidence before they can get it. Though I'm not sure who fits self-destruct devices to their computers in RL;)
There isn't a contract involved in using open source, so no-one can be held liable.
Closed software vendors on the other hand should be held liable because you have paid them for a particular piece of software, and there is no way they should be allowed to get away with a clause in the license that says "we make no guarantee that this software works or does anything useful..." (or similar).
By paying for something you expect the goods to be of saleable quality, and if they are not then you can return them and get your money back, or if it causes you losses (by not being secure for example), then you should be able to sue the manufacturers. This is the way it works in every other industry, and software should be no exception.
Bear in mind that because no money is exchanged for Free Software, it is perfectly fair for there to be no guarantee or implied guarantee that it works.
In the traditional world of copyright, goods are not licenced, they are sold. I can pay money to buy a book or CD or whatever and I do not have to agree to a licence or anything similar, I am just bound by regular copyright laws. So why do software companies think they can get away with not selling me software but making me pay for a 'licence' to use the software, while by law, it is only copyrighted?
I do not think licences for copyrighted works should be upheld by law. I'd like to buy software, and copyright law will tell me what I can and cannot do with it, not some stupid shrinkwrapped, denying everything, click-through EULA.
I mean, how can I pay money for software whose licence tells me that it is not guaranteed to work, or even do anything, that there is no warranty or expectation that it wil be useful, that I can only use it in certain restricted ways (eg can't publish benckmarks, write disparaging articles about M$ etc), that I may not resell it and generally that having bought it I have no rights and cannot expect anything from it.
I'm not sure of the solution to this, or how GPL software would work if there were no software licences, but I do know that currently, the way software is 'licenced', just using copyright law, is pretty flawed.
For all I know maybe we need a new form of IP, somewhere between copyright and patents, which is uniform and which all software should be sold under, the same way all books, music and art are currently sold under copyright law (ie without the possibility of the publisher/author tagging a 'licence' or T&Cs with it too). Conversely, another form of IP would be between copyright and public domain, for Free (libre) software, which recognises that this software is meant to be modified and extended while recognising those individuals whose work it is.
(pure) users can't program thus their "freedom" is a 1:1 coupling to the freedom of the programmer that is their "supplier".
This doesn't matter at all - if a user can't program they can hire a programmer to modify the code as they wish, and it does not have to be the programmer that is their 'supplier' - it can be anyone, from IBM to a friend who hacks code.
This is just like getting a car serviced - you can take it to a Ford garage (the suppliers) to get it fixed, or you can take it to Joe Bloggs mechanic down the street - you have the choice and this is a 'good thing' TM.
Thus no-one expects all or even just some users to program (or fix cars), but they have the choice of who does it, and thus there is competition which is what makes a market work (rather than being tied in to one supplier eg M$).
If the FSF is so interested in free information, it could contribute materially to that goal by publishing on the web its complete financials -- every penny that comes in, and from whom, and every penny paid out, and to whom.
(emphasis added)
I agree that knowing where the money goes is useful information, and should be available from a public serving institution.
Slashdot Mirror
> There only real risk is that maybe by some huge stroke of bad luck, some other plant (a weed, say) picks up glyphosate resistance from these genes
Well, I'm glad we have you to think through every single possible chemical, biological interaction between a genetically modified plant and the rest of the environment, which we humans understand and can model perfectly. Complex coupled system dynamics ... easy for jeffmeden! Of course we can predict all the consequences of our actions, especially when applied on an industrial / global scale in a short few years. Why worry that there may be something that we haven't thought of which will manifest itself in a generation or two. After all, it's only the world's food supply and our life support system (the environment) that we're talking about here. If by some astronomically unlikely chance we've made a mistake we can just hit the reset button and try again. There is a reset button on the Earth, right?
Because 36,000km is where geostationary orbit is ... the elevator is tied to the surface of the earth, and so makes one rotation per day. You *could* get off at 360km, but you'd be moving waaay below orbital speed and would fall straight (actually elliptically) back to earth. No chance of docking with the ISS, which makes an orbit approx every 90 minutes IIRC.
> (vim's buffers seem to require that I save the file before switching to another buffer)
try ':set hidden' to allow unsaved buffers to be backgrounded in vim
IBM's chairman did say that he saw a world market for maybe 5 computers - and this is the bit that is usually not quoted - for the next year - back in the 1950's or whenever.
> Those details are not provided.
Yes they are, see the sections about hardware and how the submissions are judged on the support FAQs.
Now, anyone want to explain to me how the efficiency of that works out- you capture power from the jet engine (which is, itself, a big fan) and use it to drive a bigger fan on top of regular exhaust ducting... apparently that recovers more power than just running the jets, but I'm not sure I get how?
Simple - It's the difference between power and thrust.
Thrust = Mass of air moved per second * Velocity
Power = 1/2 * Mass flux * Velocity squared
Fighter jet engines accelerate a small mass of air to high velocities, giving them lots of power (and hence acceleration etc), and this is what the Boeing design does at all times. On the other hand the Lockheed design moves a large mass of air at lower velocities (by using the fans), giving the same thrust, but using a lot less power.
This works because the aircraft only need thrust downward at low velocities (ie hovering) instead of needing to accelerate fast directly upwards.
Note that commercial jets don't need that kind of power, so their engines are 'bypass engines', where a large fan at the front of the engine propels a large mass of air around the main engine and is not used for combustion.
Someone who is convicted of murder is a murderer. That is, until they win their appeal, after which they are not a murderer. Same with Monopolys. Just because a convicted criminal is not locked up does not mean that they are not a criminal.
A Monopoly doen not need to have 100% of the market. In legal terms, (at least here in the UK) a company can have a monopoly if it has a substantial portion of a market (about 25% iirc). The point is, the monopoly can _control_ the market. Microsoft having ~90% of the desktop OS market is most definitely a monopoly.
(PS I know the word _Mono_poly implies _one_ company, but that is not the legal definition.)
Also the fact is that Microsoft has been convicted of _illegaly_ maintaining its monopoly, so I can write that is it a monopolist without being sued. Notice how newspapers cover trials - a suspect is (for example) always an 'accused murderer', until that person has been convicted, after which he is a 'murderer'. - After a court has decided something, it can be quoted as a fact, and trying to disagree without reference to the court decision is just silly.
" The "real data" in this article is nothing more than statistics that are being presented from a biased source whose primary intention is to prove a point rather than fairly weigh out two options."
But this article draws statistics from all over the place - are you saying that all of the (tens) of them are biased sources? Have you read the article?
The article does not cover a lot of possible uses for computers (eg desktop usability etc.) but it doesn't on the other hand just focus on one or two particular instances where Free Software happens to be better than proprietary software - there are several important areas covered.
" but at least they would have done a proper evaluation instead of living off the lobbying that's now coming from both sides. "
Only a large business can afford to do a proper evaluation, for most SMEs it's much easier and quicker to use evaluations that someone else has done. Since companies will pay for lobbying for their product it is important that the opposite view (for FS) is represented - then companies have two oppositely balanced sources of information from which they can make a much better choice.
Obviously it's not prime time stuff, but it's still there and working in the real world (though debian developers are somewhat a minority).
I'm not remotely suggesting that general elections use as crude a system as this, but I'd be concerned that if/when general elections are held electronically they will be far less secure than this.
I am impressed by the way the voting system works in Debian, it appears to solve any obvious fraud problems associated with e-voting:
Each developer's vote has to be signed by their gpg secret key (the key itself signed by other debian developers and on the public debian keyring), so votes cannot be faked by developers.
Each developer is sent a secret token, which is hashed with their uid and a list of hashes against votes is publically posted - so each developer can check their vote has been counted correctly, without being able to determine whose the other votes were.
Are there any other electronic voting systems that do as well as this?
Debian gets around this lack of .debs by providing a source package, which downloads the nvidia.tgz (or asks you to, I can't remember which) and takes it apart and automagically builds it into a .deb on your machine. This way it is almost like installing a real .deb package. I thought this was pretty clever when I encountered it.
or in this case make a link from /c to /mnt/c
The gas tax thing has been tried for so long it's not even funny. Petrol at the momentis 74p a litre which is about $1.10 per litre which is about $4.15 per (US)gallon, about 70% of which is tax. This doesn't work, you just have to pay more to make the journeys you have to make and I'm a lot poorer.
Taxing congestion is a much better idea because I can journey at different times, even the most congested roads are probably only congested for a couple of hours each day, leaving lots of time when they are clear - balancing this out would be a lot more efficient for everyone.
I know there are privacy issues, but these are so blatant that the government cannot ignore/hide them, they will have to come up with a solid way for protection of privacy (else the plan could never happen).
A local compromise gives you root on the machine.
A remote compromise gives you root on the machine because even if it only gets a regular account a local compromise can then be used to get root.
DoSs don't count as security vulnerabilities for this purpose.
These are the commonly understood meanings of these terms... (AFAIK)
Everyone is missing a big point that the .deb package format has many more features than .rpm. I'm not saying this to start a flamewar, but .debs have more advanced dependancy information such as depends, suggests, conflicts, replaces, provides etc, many scripts to run pre/post install, the scripts look after package config files well, also installation ordering, smooth upgrades between different versions of the same package etc. etc.
.rpms (unless RedHat or Connectiva hack in all these extra features, which would make them incompatible anyway and need everyone to upgrade so what's the point?)
I would not not want to take a step back by switching to
The Linux version comes as a .zip file, just copy it across a network or something, and unzip it to the directory you want. the CD isn't needed for playing Uplink.
But for $25 including shipping from the UK, you can hardly say the game is too short - I think it's definitely good value for money.
Umm, yes,the FBI can crash into your server room, so you can buy motion detecting cameras and self-destruct devices to remove the evidence before they can get it. Though I'm not sure who fits self-destruct devices to their computers in RL ;)
There isn't a contract involved in using open source, so no-one can be held liable.
Closed software vendors on the other hand should be held liable because you have paid them for a particular piece of software, and there is no way they should be allowed to get away with a clause in the license that says "we make no guarantee that this software works or does anything useful..." (or similar).
By paying for something you expect the goods to be of saleable quality, and if they are not then you can return them and get your money back, or if it causes you losses (by not being secure for example), then you should be able to sue the manufacturers. This is the way it works in every other industry, and software should be no exception.
Bear in mind that because no money is exchanged for Free Software, it is perfectly fair for there to be no guarantee or implied guarantee that it works.
to do text links in mozilla i just select the text and middle-click anywhere on the browser window - so any url selectable in X is easy to use...
In the traditional world of copyright, goods are not licenced, they are sold. I can pay money to buy a book or CD or whatever and I do not have to agree to a licence or anything similar, I am just bound by regular copyright laws. So why do software companies think they can get away with not selling me software but making me pay for a 'licence' to use the software, while by law, it is only copyrighted?
I do not think licences for copyrighted works should be upheld by law. I'd like to buy software, and copyright law will tell me what I can and cannot do with it, not some stupid shrinkwrapped, denying everything, click-through EULA.
I mean, how can I pay money for software whose licence tells me that it is not guaranteed to work, or even do anything, that there is no warranty or expectation that it wil be useful, that I can only use it in certain restricted ways (eg can't publish benckmarks, write disparaging articles about M$ etc), that I may not resell it and generally that having bought it I have no rights and cannot expect anything from it.
I'm not sure of the solution to this, or how GPL software would work if there were no software licences, but I do know that currently, the way software is 'licenced', just using copyright law, is pretty flawed.
For all I know maybe we need a new form of IP, somewhere between copyright and patents, which is uniform and which all software should be sold under, the same way all books, music and art are currently sold under copyright law (ie without the possibility of the publisher/author tagging a 'licence' or T&Cs with it too). Conversely, another form of IP would be between copyright and public domain, for Free (libre) software, which recognises that this software is meant to be modified and extended while recognising those individuals whose work it is.
anyway, enough of my ranting now.
But you can't have a business that exists to develop software.
Yes you can, ask any software consultancy. They get paid to write software, regardless of the licence the software is subsequently put under.
(pure) users can't program thus their "freedom" is a 1:1 coupling to the freedom of the programmer that is their "supplier".
This doesn't matter at all - if a user can't program they can hire a programmer to modify the code as they wish, and it does not have to be the programmer that is their 'supplier' - it can be anyone, from IBM to a friend who hacks code.
This is just like getting a car serviced - you can take it to a Ford garage (the suppliers) to get it fixed, or you can take it to Joe Bloggs mechanic down the street - you have the choice and this is a 'good thing' TM.
Thus no-one expects all or even just some users to program (or fix cars), but they have the choice of who does it, and thus there is competition which is what makes a market work (rather than being tied in to one supplier eg M$).
I often connect through my GSM mobile phone, and I'm lucky if I get 9600 through that! 9600 is very real for me...
at least things then were optimised for 9600 or slower
Page 2 of the article, paragraph 10:
If the FSF is so interested in free information, it could contribute materially to that goal by publishing on the web its complete financials -- every penny that comes in, and from whom, and every penny paid out, and to whom.
(emphasis added)
I agree that knowing where the money goes is useful information, and should be available from a public serving institution.