If you take proof in the old meaning of test, I will accept that a court case constitutes proof.
However, it is a kind of proof that bears only a tenuous relationship to either the mathematical or the scientific, or the engineering uses of that term. Of these, only the engineering use appears practically adaptable to making judgments about reality in a condition of imperfect knowledge.
Engineering proofs are, even so, not adequate to addressing this kind of real world problem. That doesn't mean that I find judicial proof an acceptable substitute. I refuse to accept judicial proof as convincing evidence of either guilt or innocence. What they are proof of is likelihood of punishment. (Even there the correlation is sketchy. MS was convicted of being an abusive monopoly.)
Basically I'm a programmer. Secondarily I'm a statistician. As such I accept that in some large fraction of the cases before judges the convicted person is guilty. This doesn't mean that I accept that most such people deserve to be convicted. (I've seen no convincing evidence of that.) It doesn't mean that I accept that the majority of people charged who have political connections receive a just verdict. The evidence is quite equivocal. And it doesn't mean the the majority of people convicted who use the services of a public defender deserve to be convicted. I've seen little evidence of that, most of the evidence I've seen contradicts that presumption, but it's not sufficient to be convincing.
OTOH, I have noticed that currently the prisons are operated as slave labor camps. That in my state the prison guards union is reported to be the strongest in the state. And that while the state runs the prisons at a loss, the companies that contract out the prisoners are reported to make extraordinarily large profits. And to be large political contributors.
These all act to undermine my faith in the general honesty and integrity of the court system.
Now let's consider the current case of SCO vs. IBM. SCO has been running it's case on allegedly stolen money. Stolen from Novell. There is every evidence that SCO had known from the start that it's case was based solely on fraud.
If the court were to decide in favor of SCO, do you think that I would accept this as a just verdict? More strongly, if the court were to decide in favor of IBM, and award it only the entire corporate worth of SCO do you think I would accept this as a just verdict?
Consider how much IBM has already spent to defend itself in a case where the current evidence shows that the suer knew from the start the case was totally worthless and fraudulent. Do you believe that this would cover even the direct expenses?
Now consider if the suit had been launched at a smaller corporation or at an individual. What are their chances of receiving a fair verdict?
Michael Moorcock got this one right when he had the JusticeMaker (I forget his name, but he was one of the gods of Law) say "Justice does not exist, but with great work we may manufacture it in small quantities." Usually I think of him as too pessimistic, but here I fear he may be optimistic.
Skepticism, true skepticism, is laudable whether it be Politically Correct or not. Allegedly just means "I'm reporting what someone said, without committing myself as to whether it's true or not.
Thus in believing their statement, you are choosing to believe them, not necessarily whoever they are reporting on. And in doubting them, you are doubting that the mentioned person ever said any such thing.
The most common misuse of the term is to use it without specifying an alledger. This can be technically correct, but in that case it is equivalent to "gossip", and essentially worthless for most purposes.
There was a time several years ago when it wasn't clear that their claims were all hot air. To the observant and attentive this period lasted for about 4 months, ending in a January when SCO said that they couldn't produce the evidence that the court ordered because the responsible corporate officer was on Xmas vacation.
Even after that point there were several brief points of alarm after every major change in the story about what they were filing suit about, until those claims were debunked. Frequently the claims were so vague that one couldn't be quite certain as to WHAT they were charging. This had the effect that after awhile all reasonable grounds had been thoroughly covered, without finding any reasonable case. (Note that this was difficult largely because of the difference in what lawyers and programmers consider reasonable. There are sharp divergences. This made communication difficult at many points.)
One of the highlights was the unsealing of the BSD case (AT&T vs. the Regents of the University of California). Thank you, BSD, for having such a tangled history that NOBODY has any clear claim to most of it. It must have been nerve-wracking.
It's not at all obvious that Sun needed a Unix license. It's never been shown that they actually licensed anything that they didn't already have clear rights to. Possibly they needed to do it in order to put out "OpenSolaris", but that hasn't been demonstrated.
If someone wants to assert that Sun paid the money to finance SCO's lawsuit, I've neither seen nor heard of any specific evidence that contradicts that assertion. Of course, supporting that assertion is another matter. The only evidence to support it is, frankly, speculative. One could equally well assert that SCO was blackmailing Sun, and this was the payoff. No evidence.
All we know is that Sun paid the money, and the timing was, frankly, suspicious. Suspicion isn't proof.
P.S.: To ease the paranoid mind the boiler the water was being pre-heated for could be a part of the reactor setup. This is just a bit of extra waste heat recovery, and there's no reason it couldn't be used to cut operating expenses in some secured area.
I'm not totally convinced that "passivated glass brick" is the optimum waste disposal. It's certainly, however, better than what we do with coal (dump it into the atmosphere). I'm also not convinced that it's feasible to safely bury CO2. Some of those disposals have failure modes that are quite frightening.
To me an optimal disposal method for radio waste would packetize it in a way that would allow it to be recovered if that became economically viable. (Say, for use in a fast-breeder.) But you also want it dispersed so that it didn't undergo "mini-chains" that caused it to burn itself up too quickly. Small blobs in flat sheets separated by about a foot (of plaster? cement?) sounds good. The sheets could be as large as is convenient to handle. Some PVC mimic would be a good choice for what to make them out of. That way they could be loosely rolled for transport. (Unless someone things it worthwhile to build a cadmium spiral cylinder to store them in. Or to transport them flat separated by cadmium sheets. Not likely. Just keep them separated, and make sure that no one sheet will go critical even if you roll it tightly--and then ensure that it is rolled loosely (with styrofoam spacers?. (That should be easy. This is waste, not fuel.)
The thing is, while the stuff is encased in plastic it's only dangerous to folk that are near it. It's not explosive. So you need to keep it cool enough to not melt the plastic...but you've already used it as throughly as is reasonably economic, so it's not super hot thermally.
OTOH, if you just want it to go away and never return, then passivated glass bricks are hard to beat. You could even use them to pre-heat water for a steam plant for the first decade or so. (I'm presuming that the passivation includes something like sealing the bricks in paraffin so that water can't leach through... if you plan for that, then you don't need to worry about it's happening accidentally. Then put the bricks in a plastic bag before you dump them in the water to heat it, and all should be well.)
Tax packages are tricky, and require constant updating. And they need to be timely. They aren't good candidates for a FOSS project. This doesn't mean it couldn't work, but it would definitely require subsidy, the provision of time from tax attorneys, etc.
There may also be legal issues particular to the preparation of taxes. That I'm not certain about, but governments may be touchy about limiting the liability of ANYONE involved in the process. Or they may want to certify the programs (and charge for the certification).
I'm not saying it can't be done...just that I suspect that tax programs are one of the last services that will transition to FOSS.
It's not bullshit, but they are businesses with the morals of businesses. And they do drop people unless contractual obligations require that they not.
That said, authors don't have much of a guild. I'd be surprised if they had a group insurance plan. Bob Wilson was crippled with polio as a child, and though he was able to overcome it for years, he also was subject to recurrence (of muscular weakness, not of polio). If he's now both old and sick, he probably can't walk. I'd be surprised if he was insurable for this problem, as it's... well, not congenital, but definitely pre-existing any possible insurance.
OTOH, a good health plan is contractually obligated to NOT drop you. Such exist. The good ones seem to do reasonably good jobs. (And hospitalization is STILL expensive.)
As for his savings...Bob's books may have sold well for a long period of time, but he was never at the top of the charts. He's never been wealthy, and often lived very near the edge. I'd be surprised if he had any savings. (I'm also fairly certain that the finances would have been managed by his wife, Arlen, who's been dead for years. Also a writer, "relatively successful" [i.e., she's been published in places that paid money, but I don't think enough to live on].)
Writers, painters, musicians...all of these can expect to end life as paupers...if they're lucky. There are exceptions, but that's what they should expect. If Bob was local I'd want to offer him a room and meals. I don't know if I'd be able to, but I'd want to. Unfortunately, he moved away decades ago, and I've lost track of him.
My idea was to send a larger package a bit slower...but to include some jets (scramjets?) to add the last boost. I *said* jato, but don't take that too literally. I was thinking, however, of an air-burning stage that would be dropped before 50 miles up. And maybe a SMALL final stage solid rocket.
Getting things up to 2000g severely limits the mass of the items that you launch...if you could cut it down to 30g, or even 100, then you could reasonably launch much larger packages.
OTOH...I wonder how practical it would be to build an evacuated tube up the mountain...and pump it out again from scratch after every launch (UGH!). If it's not going to be evacuated, then streamlining is a real problem...and so are energy losses during acceleration.
Perhaps you could use the "laser powered rocket" trick and hit it with a heavy duty laser after it was airborne? That might be a good substitute for both the jato units and the final stage, but then the size of the package that you can launch is determined by the power of your launching lasers.
This should really be built up the side of Everest or K2...something that will get you above as much air as possible before you start depending on pure momentum. (OTOH, Cheyenne Mountain is already high security.)
You could still start with a small centrifuge to get up the initial speed, and add jato units for continuing thrust after you were "emitted".
Probably not practical, but it might get the thrust down to, say 30g's. (It would require a lot of resculpting of the mountain side, but we've got loads of freeway engineers.)
You may have notices that MANY refuse to accept the Sun Java terms. gcj and Apachy Harmony come to mind. Of course this is partially because the terms under which Java is offered are onerous (not in all circumstances, but in some circumstances).
Don't use Java as an argument for accepting Intel's actions. Sun's actions are also, at best, dubious. Yes, they are to the short term advantage of many people...but the long term benefit appears distinctly dubious. (Personally I switched to Python as soon as it was feasible, and haven't regretted it. Whenever I think of using Java I wonder how the Harmony project is progressing. [Well, I have a history of flitting between programming languages. But I haven't seriously been back to Java since I dropped it a few years ago...I've even been back to Ada more recently.])
No, sorry. I *don't* have to "assume that the specification itself provides significant insight into some "whiz-bang" hardware implementation". It could be true, but it's NOT something I feel any desire or obligation to assume...or even believe. I'm open to proof, but somehow I doubt that will be forthcoming.
What I really presume is that most of these decisions are made by managers who don't know what's important, so they are practicing CYA. I see no reason to look for a deeper explanation. Amd if you want me to believe a deeper explanation, a simple assertion won't suffice. I'll need, if not proof, at least something that makes a plausible case.
I don't know about you, but I count heat lost through the exhaust as a part of the inefficiency. (Wearing out, though, that could be significant. And one might wonder about failure modes, e.g., could it burst into flames or explode like a battery...)
Well, if it's going to succeed, it has to be better than the competition. If it's going to succeed IN A NICHE it merely needs to be significantly better than the competition in that niche. There are definitely a lot of places where it would be nice to be able to store several thousand kilowatt/hours at a draw rate of 100 watts. If nothing else, what about emergency lights in underground caverns. (True, that's a bit extreme...but I was trying to rule out all possible competition.) Now this assumes that you either have access to air (it's not in case of cave-in, it's in case you get lost), and it assumes that the bearings don't get sticky after a few decades (magnetic suspension?).
Well, we'll see how it does. Not everything promising works out...but some of it does, and this might be one of those pieces that does.
After l'affair SONY rootkit where all of those companies conspired to exploit the end users in default of their clear obligations, I want to see them ALL dragged through the mud. Thoroughly. And stepped on by swine. And sexually assaulted by hogs.
Every single one of those companies took people's money, and then betrayed them. MS, McAfee, and Symantec are only some of the unindicted co-conspirators, of course. But their names are at the head of the list.
That's what I believed about the Firefox licensing, but when I went to the Firefox page recently to check out the licensing (somebody challenged me when I said it was GPL & MPL), that's not what was implied by the language there. I left it confused about the licensing, but thankful that Seamonkey had branched off. If they *do* mean for the Firefox code to be tri-licensed, then they need to be clearer about it. As it is, I'll only trust it when it is transmitted through an intermediary that I have separate reasons to trust...like Debian.
I probably subsumed the LGPL into the GPL, since I only think of the LGPL with respect to libraries.
Mozilla was under GPL/MPL (dual licensed). I believe that SeaMonkey is also. FireFox has a different license. The license terms are "near GPL", but aren't the same at all.
This, however, is a dispute about trademarks. Even GPL software can have trademarks.
He wasn't describing relative power. NATO had so many more troops than the Serbs did that it could probably have won if it had armed the troops with willow switches. He was describing tactical brilliance. Don't put yourself down. Being assaulted by someone five times out of your weight class means that if he can get hold of you, skill won't help. It doesn't imply lack of skill.
You're confusing intelligence with several other factors. One is what effectors it has available, i.e., what mechanisms could it use to "breaks out of a research lab and starts a mission of doom". Another is motivations. Why would it want to do that.
Note that robots have effectors, so that's not an insurmountable problem, merely a very different one (that's already being worked on). Note also how completely separated it is from intelligence.
Then there's motivation. Why should an AI want to do any particular thing? Being intelligent enough to solve that problem if it wanted to doesn't cause it to want to do so. This is, again, a totally separate problem. Getting the answer to this one correct is vital to human survival. Nearly everyone appears to be ignoring it.
As to how long we have to get it right... my guess would be decades, but not a large number of them. And there are several different modes of failure. Some will cause the computer to disassemble itself. (This doesn't even require intelligence, it's already happened, but doing it intentionally does.) Some will cause the computer to freeze in mental development. This happens to people too, so I don't consider it unlikely, even when the answer is "almost right". Some will cause the computer to attempt to "take over the world" (for varying different reasons, but I suspect that paranoia covers most of the likely ones).
Don't try to understand in detail WHY a computer might do something unless you know it's motivational structure. If you do, you MIGHT get as close as you can with, say, the leader of a foreign country. If you don't, you may get as close as when you attempt to understand why a social wasp does something. (Note that in both cases you are missing significant clues...you don't have the same sensory apparatus as a wasp, e.g., so you can't know what it's "smelling".)
Sorry, I know you weren't being serious...but this is something that programmers SHOULD be serious about (at least occasionally).
It's not less hypocritical. Merely (usually) less violent. Sometimes less oppressive. Rarely more oppressive.
That may be faint praise, but it's honest praise. "We aren't as bad as the other guys!" doesn't ring when you shout it, but it's true...mostly. There's a few places that could honestly claim it was a lie, and with good evidence to back it.
Unfortunately, there's also a few places where there IS no good solution. If you choose to back either side in any of those places, we will inevitably end up being seen as bad guys by most dispassionate observers. And we frequently DO pick a side. This is unwise...but it can be politically popular among powerful segments of the population. So...well, our politicians almost always go for politically advantageous rather than wise action for a nation to take. Stupid, but that's what the system is set up to favor.
And then there's the occasional period when we get an out and out paranoid loonie in charge of the govt. That happens everywhere. There's got to be a decent way of weeding them out...but nobody seems to have managed.
You're cherry picking. If you were to start the chart from right before the sale then SCOX would only recently have gone negative. (It was somewhere around $2.00/share before Darl took over.)
What this chart shows is that a bunch of speculators bought stock at inflated prices on the strength of this lawsuit. We may speculate as to their motives. Their actions are evident. So is the fact that the company is now in worse shape than it was before everything started. But it's the people who sold near the top that are interesting...well, as well as those who were both well informed, and yet still bought stock at higher than any reasonable value.
Currently the only reasonable price for SCOX stock is 0...or even negative if you hold any large amount of it. (Then you could potentially be held partially liable for any corporate misdeeds...so I'm talking somewhere over 10%. I'm not just sure exactly where, since I've never paid close attention to THAT part of the stock regulations.)
Realistically, I don't believe that supercapacitors will be powering cars next year. We'll see them in portable computers first. (And electric drills and flashlights and...)
OTOH, I keep hearing wonderful things about them...and keep expecting them to show up SOMEWHERE!!! soon.
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If you take proof in the old meaning of test, I will accept that a court case constitutes proof.
However, it is a kind of proof that bears only a tenuous relationship to either the mathematical or the scientific, or the engineering uses of that term. Of these, only the engineering use appears practically adaptable to making judgments about reality in a condition of imperfect knowledge.
Engineering proofs are, even so, not adequate to addressing this kind of real world problem. That doesn't mean that I find judicial proof an acceptable substitute. I refuse to accept judicial proof as convincing evidence of either guilt or innocence. What they are proof of is likelihood of punishment. (Even there the correlation is sketchy. MS was convicted of being an abusive monopoly.)
Basically I'm a programmer. Secondarily I'm a statistician. As such I accept that in some large fraction of the cases before judges the convicted person is guilty. This doesn't mean that I accept that most such people deserve to be convicted. (I've seen no convincing evidence of that.) It doesn't mean that I accept that the majority of people charged who have political connections receive a just verdict. The evidence is quite equivocal. And it doesn't mean the the majority of people convicted who use the services of a public defender deserve to be convicted. I've seen little evidence of that, most of the evidence I've seen contradicts that presumption, but it's not sufficient to be convincing.
OTOH, I have noticed that currently the prisons are operated as slave labor camps. That in my state the prison guards union is reported to be the strongest in the state. And that while the state runs the prisons at a loss, the companies that contract out the prisoners are reported to make extraordinarily large profits. And to be large political contributors.
These all act to undermine my faith in the general honesty and integrity of the court system.
Now let's consider the current case of SCO vs. IBM. SCO has been running it's case on allegedly stolen money. Stolen from Novell. There is every evidence that SCO had known from the start that it's case was based solely on fraud.
If the court were to decide in favor of SCO, do you think that I would accept this as a just verdict?
More strongly, if the court were to decide in favor of IBM, and award it only the entire corporate worth of SCO do you think I would accept this as a just verdict?
Consider how much IBM has already spent to defend itself in a case where the current evidence shows that the suer knew from the start the case was totally worthless and fraudulent. Do you believe that this would cover even the direct expenses?
Now consider if the suit had been launched at a smaller corporation or at an individual. What are their chances of receiving a fair verdict?
Michael Moorcock got this one right when he had the JusticeMaker (I forget his name, but he was one of the gods of Law) say "Justice does not exist, but with great work we may manufacture it in small quantities." Usually I think of him as too pessimistic, but here I fear he may be optimistic.
Skepticism, true skepticism, is laudable whether it be Politically Correct or not.
Allegedly just means "I'm reporting what someone said, without committing myself as to whether it's true or not.
Thus in believing their statement, you are choosing to believe them, not necessarily whoever they are reporting on. And in doubting them, you are doubting that the mentioned person ever said any such thing.
The most common misuse of the term is to use it without specifying an alledger. This can be technically correct, but in that case it is equivalent to "gossip", and essentially worthless for most purposes.
There was a time several years ago when it wasn't clear that their claims were all hot air. To the observant and attentive this period lasted for about 4 months, ending in a January when SCO said that they couldn't produce the evidence that the court ordered because the responsible corporate officer was on Xmas vacation.
Even after that point there were several brief points of alarm after every major change in the story about what they were filing suit about, until those claims were debunked. Frequently the claims were so vague that one couldn't be quite certain as to WHAT they were charging. This had the effect that after awhile all reasonable grounds had been thoroughly covered, without finding any reasonable case. (Note that this was difficult largely because of the difference in what lawyers and programmers consider reasonable. There are sharp divergences. This made communication difficult at many points.)
One of the highlights was the unsealing of the BSD case (AT&T vs. the Regents of the University of California). Thank you, BSD, for having such a tangled history that NOBODY has any clear claim to most of it. It must have been nerve-wracking.
It's not at all obvious that Sun needed a Unix license. It's never been shown that they actually licensed anything that they didn't already have clear rights to. Possibly they needed to do it in order to put out "OpenSolaris", but that hasn't been demonstrated.
If someone wants to assert that Sun paid the money to finance SCO's lawsuit, I've neither seen nor heard of any specific evidence that contradicts that assertion. Of course, supporting that assertion is another matter. The only evidence to support it is, frankly, speculative. One could equally well assert that SCO was blackmailing Sun, and this was the payoff. No evidence.
All we know is that Sun paid the money, and the timing was, frankly, suspicious. Suspicion isn't proof.
P.S.: To ease the paranoid mind the boiler the water was being pre-heated for could be a part of the reactor setup. This is just a bit of extra waste heat recovery, and there's no reason it couldn't be used to cut operating expenses in some secured area.
I'm not totally convinced that "passivated glass brick" is the optimum waste disposal. It's certainly, however, better than what we do with coal (dump it into the atmosphere). I'm also not convinced that it's feasible to safely bury CO2. Some of those disposals have failure modes that are quite frightening.
To me an optimal disposal method for radio waste would packetize it in a way that would allow it to be recovered if that became economically viable. (Say, for use in a fast-breeder.) But you also want it dispersed so that it didn't undergo "mini-chains" that caused it to burn itself up too quickly. Small blobs in flat sheets separated by about a foot (of plaster? cement?) sounds good. The sheets could be as large as is convenient to handle. Some PVC mimic would be a good choice for what to make them out of. That way they could be loosely rolled for transport. (Unless someone things it worthwhile to build a cadmium spiral cylinder to store them in. Or to transport them flat separated by cadmium sheets. Not likely. Just keep them separated, and make sure that no one sheet will go critical even if you roll it tightly--and then ensure that it is rolled loosely (with styrofoam spacers?. (That should be easy. This is waste, not fuel.)
The thing is, while the stuff is encased in plastic it's only dangerous to folk that are near it. It's not explosive. So you need to keep it cool enough to not melt the plastic...but you've already used it as throughly as is reasonably economic, so it's not super hot thermally.
OTOH, if you just want it to go away and never return, then passivated glass bricks are hard to beat. You could even use them to pre-heat water for a steam plant for the first decade or so. (I'm presuming that the passivation includes something like sealing the bricks in paraffin so that water can't leach through... if you plan for that, then you don't need to worry about it's happening accidentally. Then put the bricks in a plastic bag before you dump them in the water to heat it, and all should be well.)
Tax packages are tricky, and require constant updating. And they need to be timely. They aren't good candidates for a FOSS project. This doesn't mean it couldn't work, but it would definitely require subsidy, the provision of time from tax attorneys, etc.
There may also be legal issues particular to the preparation of taxes. That I'm not certain about, but governments may be touchy about limiting the liability of ANYONE involved in the process. Or they may want to certify the programs (and charge for the certification).
I'm not saying it can't be done...just that I suspect that tax programs are one of the last services that will transition to FOSS.
Sorry, I didn't mean that it was an option for you. I meant that not using GMail meant that it has appeared to be still working to me.
I can easily believe that the problem is created by SourceForge, and that for a project maintainer it could be quite difficult.
I've never managed a project. As a USER of projects, I prefer the Sourceforge interface.
OTOH, Trac is usable. I don't know how it scales.
Well, one thing it means is that I'm glad I don't use GMail.
And it appears to mean that you shouldn't use GMail if you want to talk to SourceForge.
Presumably things will eventually be fixed, but for now that looks like the proper "answer".
It's not bullshit, but they are businesses with the morals of businesses. And they do drop people unless contractual obligations require that they not.
... well, not congenital, but definitely pre-existing any possible insurance.
That said, authors don't have much of a guild. I'd be surprised if they had a group insurance plan. Bob Wilson was crippled with polio as a child, and though he was able to overcome it for years, he also was subject to recurrence (of muscular weakness, not of polio). If he's now both old and sick, he probably can't walk. I'd be surprised if he was insurable for this problem, as it's
OTOH, a good health plan is contractually obligated to NOT drop you. Such exist. The good ones seem to do reasonably good jobs. (And hospitalization is STILL expensive.)
As for his savings...Bob's books may have sold well for a long period of time, but he was never at the top of the charts. He's never been wealthy, and often lived very near the edge. I'd be surprised if he had any savings. (I'm also fairly certain that the finances would have been managed by his wife, Arlen, who's been dead for years. Also a writer, "relatively successful" [i.e., she's been published in places that paid money, but I don't think enough to live on].)
Writers, painters, musicians...all of these can expect to end life as paupers...if they're lucky. There are exceptions, but that's what they should expect. If Bob was local I'd want to offer him a room and meals. I don't know if I'd be able to, but I'd want to. Unfortunately, he moved away decades ago, and I've lost track of him.
My idea was to send a larger package a bit slower...but to include some jets (scramjets?) to add the last boost. I *said* jato, but don't take that too literally. I was thinking, however, of an air-burning stage that would be dropped before 50 miles up. And maybe a SMALL final stage solid rocket.
Getting things up to 2000g severely limits the mass of the items that you launch...if you could cut it down to 30g, or even 100, then you could reasonably launch much larger packages.
OTOH...I wonder how practical it would be to build an evacuated tube up the mountain...and pump it out again from scratch after every launch (UGH!). If it's not going to be evacuated, then streamlining is a real problem...and so are energy losses during acceleration.
Perhaps you could use the "laser powered rocket" trick and hit it with a heavy duty laser after it was airborne? That might be a good substitute for both the jato units and the final stage, but then the size of the package that you can launch is determined by the power of your launching lasers.
This should really be built up the side of Everest or K2...something that will get you above as much air as possible before you start depending on pure momentum. (OTOH, Cheyenne Mountain is already high security.)
Cheyenne Mountain?
You could still start with a small centrifuge to get up the initial speed, and add jato units for continuing thrust after you were "emitted".
Probably not practical, but it might get the thrust down to, say 30g's. (It would require a lot of resculpting of the mountain side, but we've got loads of freeway engineers.)
You may have notices that MANY refuse to accept the Sun Java terms. gcj and Apachy Harmony come to mind. Of course this is partially because the terms under which Java is offered are onerous (not in all circumstances, but in some circumstances).
Don't use Java as an argument for accepting Intel's actions. Sun's actions are also, at best, dubious. Yes, they are to the short term advantage of many people...but the long term benefit appears distinctly dubious. (Personally I switched to Python as soon as it was feasible, and haven't regretted it. Whenever I think of using Java I wonder how the Harmony project is progressing. [Well, I have a history of flitting between programming languages. But I haven't seriously been back to Java since I dropped it a few years ago...I've even been back to Ada more recently.])
No, sorry. I *don't* have to "assume that the specification itself provides significant insight into some "whiz-bang" hardware implementation". It could be true, but it's NOT something I feel any desire or obligation to assume...or even believe. I'm open to proof, but somehow I doubt that will be forthcoming.
What I really presume is that most of these decisions are made by managers who don't know what's important, so they are practicing CYA. I see no reason to look for a deeper explanation. Amd if you want me to believe a deeper explanation, a simple assertion won't suffice. I'll need, if not proof, at least something that makes a plausible case.
I don't know about you, but I count heat lost through the exhaust as a part of the inefficiency. (Wearing out, though, that could be significant. And one might wonder about failure modes, e.g., could it burst into flames or explode like a battery...)
Well, if it's going to succeed, it has to be better than the competition. If it's going to succeed IN A NICHE it merely needs to be significantly better than the competition in that niche. There are definitely a lot of places where it would be nice to be able to store several thousand kilowatt/hours at a draw rate of 100 watts. If nothing else, what about emergency lights in underground caverns. (True, that's a bit extreme...but I was trying to rule out all possible competition.) Now this assumes that you either have access to air (it's not in case of cave-in, it's in case you get lost), and it assumes that the bearings don't get sticky after a few decades (magnetic suspension?).
Well, we'll see how it does. Not everything promising works out...but some of it does, and this might be one of those pieces that does.
After l'affair SONY rootkit where all of those companies conspired to exploit the end users in default of their clear obligations, I want to see them ALL dragged through the mud. Thoroughly. And stepped on by swine. And sexually assaulted by hogs.
Every single one of those companies took people's money, and then betrayed them. MS, McAfee, and Symantec are only some of the unindicted co-conspirators, of course. But their names are at the head of the list.
That's what I believed about the Firefox licensing, but when I went to the Firefox page recently to check out the licensing (somebody challenged me when I said it was GPL & MPL), that's not what was implied by the language there. I left it confused about the licensing, but thankful that Seamonkey had branched off. If they *do* mean for the Firefox code to be tri-licensed, then they need to be clearer about it. As it is, I'll only trust it when it is transmitted through an intermediary that I have separate reasons to trust...like Debian.
I probably subsumed the LGPL into the GPL, since I only think of the LGPL with respect to libraries.
Mozilla was under GPL/MPL (dual licensed). I believe that SeaMonkey is also. FireFox has a different license. The license terms are "near GPL", but aren't the same at all.
This, however, is a dispute about trademarks. Even GPL software can have trademarks.
He wasn't describing relative power. NATO had so many more troops than the Serbs did that it could probably have won if it had armed the troops with willow switches. He was describing tactical brilliance. Don't put yourself down. Being assaulted by someone five times out of your weight class means that if he can get hold of you, skill won't help. It doesn't imply lack of skill.
Another good reason not to have anything to do with Microsoft.
Did you need another? Don't worry, they'll come up with one for you.
You're confusing intelligence with several other factors. One is what effectors it has available, i.e., what mechanisms could it use to "breaks out of a research lab and starts a mission of doom". Another is motivations. Why would it want to do that.
Note that robots have effectors, so that's not an insurmountable problem, merely a very different one (that's already being worked on). Note also how completely separated it is from intelligence.
Then there's motivation. Why should an AI want to do any particular thing? Being intelligent enough to solve that problem if it wanted to doesn't cause it to want to do so. This is, again, a totally separate problem. Getting the answer to this one correct is vital to human survival. Nearly everyone appears to be ignoring it.
As to how long we have to get it right... my guess would be decades, but not a large number of them. And there are several different modes of failure. Some will cause the computer to disassemble itself. (This doesn't even require intelligence, it's already happened, but doing it intentionally does.) Some will cause the computer to freeze in mental development. This happens to people too, so I don't consider it unlikely, even when the answer is "almost right". Some will cause the computer to attempt to "take over the world" (for varying different reasons, but I suspect that paranoia covers most of the likely ones).
Don't try to understand in detail WHY a computer might do something unless you know it's motivational structure. If you do, you MIGHT get as close as you can with, say, the leader of a foreign country. If you don't, you may get as close as when you attempt to understand why a social wasp does something. (Note that in both cases you are missing significant clues...you don't have the same sensory apparatus as a wasp, e.g., so you can't know what it's "smelling".)
Sorry, I know you weren't being serious...but this is something that programmers SHOULD be serious about (at least occasionally).
It's not less hypocritical. Merely (usually) less violent. Sometimes less oppressive. Rarely more oppressive.
That may be faint praise, but it's honest praise. "We aren't as bad as the other guys!" doesn't ring when you shout it, but it's true...mostly. There's a few places that could honestly claim it was a lie, and with good evidence to back it.
Unfortunately, there's also a few places where there IS no good solution. If you choose to back either side in any of those places, we will inevitably end up being seen as bad guys by most dispassionate observers. And we frequently DO pick a side. This is unwise...but it can be politically popular among powerful segments of the population. So...well, our politicians almost always go for politically advantageous rather than wise action for a nation to take. Stupid, but that's what the system is set up to favor.
And then there's the occasional period when we get an out and out paranoid loonie in charge of the govt. That happens everywhere. There's got to be a decent way of weeding them out...but nobody seems to have managed.
You're cherry picking. If you were to start the chart from right before the sale then SCOX would only recently have gone negative. (It was somewhere around $2.00/share before Darl took over.)
What this chart shows is that a bunch of speculators bought stock at inflated prices on the strength of this lawsuit. We may speculate as to their motives. Their actions are evident. So is the fact that the company is now in worse shape than it was before everything started. But it's the people who sold near the top that are interesting...well, as well as those who were both well informed, and yet still bought stock at higher than any reasonable value.
Currently the only reasonable price for SCOX stock is 0...or even negative if you hold any large amount of it. (Then you could potentially be held partially liable for any corporate misdeeds...so I'm talking somewhere over 10%. I'm not just sure exactly where, since I've never paid close attention to THAT part of the stock regulations.)
Realistically, I don't believe that supercapacitors will be powering cars next year. We'll see them in portable computers first. (And electric drills and flashlights and...)
OTOH, I keep hearing wonderful things about them...and keep expecting them to show up SOMEWHERE!!! soon.