Yeah, sure, if you consider a whopping 8GB a "Full" harddrive. Yes, compared to the memory-cards it's huge, but as a hard-drive it's beyond ridicolous.
Chicken and egg situation. The *only* reason many games are not released for Linux, is because that market is so much smaller.
Thus, to say that "If only we had Windows-like selection of games, then we'd be ready to take over the world" is sorta self-defating. The games won't come before the people come, and the people, according to you, won't come before the games are already there, thus nothing changes.
Fortunately you're wrong. What happens instead is that every day Linux improves. (with Linux I really mean Linux + the apps) And with every improvement it becomes acceptable for more people. And with every new person who uses it, there's one more reason to consider making a game available also for Linux.
Norway is expensive, especially service-intensive stuff. It's not because of inflation though. That is a kinda stupid claim, because with inflation stuff would cost a lot of NOK, but those NOK would have a low value. NOK to $ has been quite stable
Instead services are expensive because of high wages, also for low-skilled work. The difference in salary between say a burger-flipper and a university professor is something like a factor of 2 here, in the US it's much bigger.
The practical upshot is that services; restaurants, hairdressers, taxis, services-in-general are expensive, but also that you can live decently being a burger-flipper.
You could say that USA is a good country to be rich in, while Norway is probably a much better country to live in if you are *not* among the rich. (the top 10% of the population has 20% of the total income in Norway, in USA they have more than 30% of the total income. The bottom 10% of the population has 4.5% of the total income in Norway, in USA they have less than half that.)
"A senior Comcast technician...but some abusers, he said, consume more than a terabyte of data each month"
That is simply not possible with a standard cable-connection, of the type Comcast sells as far as I can see from their website. They say they sell "25 times modem connection", and specify that with modem they mean 56K, so, they sell 1400Kbps, upload is capped at 256Kbps.
Thing is, with that speed, even at *full* download around the clock, the entire month, you would end up with around 420 GB in a month. This is very much, but it is not "over a terabyte"
Still, I take it you agree there's good reasons to be a little careful with strapping pounds of plutonium to the top of hundreds of tonnes of highly explosive rocket-fuel.
I don't think we really disagree that much. I agree that sometimes the environmental knee-jerk types go overboard. But I hope you also agree that sometimes the "Everything is Safe" types underestimate dangers which in the end turn out not to be so imaginary afterall.
That is nice. But that has got precisely nothing with Mandrake to do. The "Tainting" and "MODULE_LICENCE(char *)" function for declaring a modules license was introduced by the kernel-hackers as a method for sifting out the stream of useless bug-reports from people running proprietary (mostly Nvidia) kernel-modules.
It is perhaps a LITTLE unfair of accusing Mandrake of "pulling a Microsoft" when all that they did was include a function from the standard Linux kernel... Not that the claim makes any sense anyways as the main problem with Microsoft is their abuse of a dominant market-position, a position which no Linux-vendor has, and thus can't abuse.
Can you be a bit more spesific ? Your claim sounds more than a little dubious given the fact that Mandrake even *includes* proprietary drivers in its boxed sets. (and they're in "contrib" for those who use the download-edition.)
Well, plutonium in space is perfectly safe. The tricky thing is the launch.
Plutonium is dangerous stuff. Best estimates is that inhalation or consumption of 0.08 mg is sufficient that half of the people who do so will die (mostly form cancer) within a decade.
Thus, your, for example, 5 pounds of plutnium is sufficient to kill around 30 milion people, if all of it ended up inside human bodies.
That is offcourse patently absurd, in practice even if the rocket where to catastrophically explode shortly after take-off, the large majority of the plutnoium would end up somewhere else than in human bodies.
I agree people sometimes overreact. But I still think it's wise to be somewhat careful with putting a substance capable of killing millions of people on the top of a hundreds of tons of highly explosive rocket-fuel. Yes 5 pounds of plutonium exploded over Florida would be more likely to kill thousands than millions, but so did 9/11, and you see what big a deal that was.
Thing is, manned missions cost a large multiple more than unmanned ones, probably two orders of magnitude more or so. Because of the need for bigger payloads, better safety, and not the least, a return fligth.
So while I agree with you that a manned mission has it's place, saving money ain't it. It's sorta self-defeating to use a $5 billion mission to solve a problem in a $50 million mission if you see what I mean. Thing is, you could send, refine, improve and resend several dozen probes of various types, and it'd still be hell of a lot cheaper than putting one or more persons on mars.
But another, much more common problem is sadly not adressed by the article
The article does hint that whoever pays for a report may also get undue influence on the outcome. If not for any other reason than that the research-firm wishes to get similar tasks in the future.
But much more blatant is the influence of the commissioner on the questions asked in the research.
Thus the "Get the Facts" website has reports with summaries like:
Microsoft-sponsored benchmarks prove that multiple Windows Web servers perform better than a Linux mainframe acting as a Web server consolidator.
Thing is, that's not comparing Windows to Linux. That is comparing the cost-structure of "Mainframe" computers with "heaps of cheap boxes". It is well-known that generic boxes provides unparallelled price/performance for tasks that are easily divisible, such as web-serving.
Had you asked the oposite question, you'd have gotten the same answer:
"Eivind-sponsored benchmarks prove that multiple Linux Web servers perform better than a Windows mainframe acting as a Web server consolidator.
What is the value of a study where you can swap the words "Linux" and "Windows", and get the same result ? Other than if you're wondering what is cheapest as a webserver for static web-pages: a mainframe, or half a dozen generic x86-boxen. But noone is really wondering about that anyways.
This is only one example, there are many.
My point is that even if the commissioner does not unduly influence the research, he still has a huge influence simply in deciding which questions to ask.
That's not it. You see, for a comparison to be fair you need to include all of the stuff you have to pay for yourself but which is covered under "tax" in Scandinavia.
What does an average American spend on education ? In Scandinavia it's free. What does a average American spend on living-costs during the studies ? In Scandinavia you get around 1/3rd as a stipendium from state, the rest as a interest-free loan.
I don't know. I never lived in the US, but the *impression* you get is that stuff like College fees plays a quite significant role in many family-budgets.
In any case I was in the first place comparing Germany to Norway, which are the two countries I have lived long enough in to know them well. Germany does have lower taxes, but also *lots* (as in atleast 20% of your gross) higher "insurances" (which are state-mandated and migth aswell be relabeled "tax" if that wasn't politically unacceptable), and also lots lower service-level from the state in the first place, so lots of things you gotta pay yourself, eating further into your saved "tax-money".
Well, in general "taxes" are quite a bit higher in Scandinavia than many other places. Before I actually moved to Germany I used to think taxes are lower here. They are too, it's just that people conveniently forget to include what are included in those taxes.
So, while the "tax" here is pretty low, in addition you have to pay:
Health-insurance (typically like 13%)
Unemployment-insurance
Pension-insurance
Care-insurance (which somehow is not the same as "health")
Dental insurance
All of which are included under the label "tax" in Norway. So, while I used to pay something like 35% tax in Norway, and here it is only 18%, after you add up all those other "non-tax-but-still-money" costs, it ends up costing the same thing, if not more.
If you define "tax" as "The difference between what my employer pays, and what I get", then the taxrate in Scandinavia is not that bad at all. In the end it makes little difference if you call it "tax" or "tax+X+Y+Z" except in the latter case you can claim to have "low taxes".
You can generally choose your own "free lawyer", the state will cover your costs up to a set maximum/hour, (I believe there migth also be a maximum number of hours, based on the severity of the crime you're accused of).
So, only if you choose a lawyer who charges more than this, or want him to spend more hours than is alloted, you'll need to pay the rest yourself.
The US is crazy: Even if you win, a court-case will in many cases more or less bankrupt you. The very threat of filing thus works to be very intimidating, regardless of actual merits of the case. This allows rich/resourceful companies/persons to use the courts for legalised extortion of less rich entities. "Do as we say or we'll sue you into the ground. We probably won't win, but we'll certainly bankrupt you."
First, there typically is a minimum fine you get if your income is under a certain limit. Thus, being a poor college-student or whatever won't get you off the hook.
Secondly, did it ever occur to you that the purpose of traffic-fines is not primarily to make money for the state ?
Infact, to try to limit the profit-making motive in the minds of police-constables most european countries strictly decouple the polices financial resources from their fines. That is, neither the policeman himself, nor his local police-station, nor the police in general will get to keep any of the fines they collect. You want them to worry about law, about safety, about being reasonable, you/don't/ want them worrying about "making enough money this week".
Doing this helps prevent shivering, which saps EVEN MORE energy from you
Wow. Big letters. You think you actually have a point or something ?
First, we're talking of keeping warm, nor preserving energy. preserving energy is not an issue for most of us staying or working outside. Extreme survival-situations are not exactly the norm, and most of us eat (more than) enough.
Secondly, shivering is the body sacrificing energy to gain heat. That is, it's essentially doing wasted muscle-movements, burning energy for no purpose, other than letting your muscles produce heat.
Third, If you believe it or not, there *is* a difference between sufficient core-temperature, sufficient in-sum heat production and extremity-temperature.
You don't need very much experimentation to reach the conclusion that it is not only perfectly possible, but infact *common* to be in a situation where your body produces more than enough heat in total, but you're still freezing on your fingers/toes. Anyone who's tried for example skiing or jogging in cold temperatures can attest to this. It is, infact, perfectly common to be warm and even sweaty to the point where you need to *remove* clothing from the torso, and nevertheless freeze on your toes/fingers.
I can see how it'd work in free-fall, if one end is significantly above the boiling-point for the medium, and the other is under, condensation and boiling will occur.
It's harder to see how it'd work for transfering heat downwards in the presence of gravity. The top end, containing gas, will be heated, so stays gas, the bottom end, containing liquid, will be cooled, so stays liquid.
Depending on circumstances there migth be some mixing, but it's hard to imagine how it'd be very effective. My guess is that for heat-transfer downwards a pure, unboiling, liquid would likely do just as well, if not better.
No reason really. They used to think Alcohol made you warm, because of the subjective feeling you get when you drink it. I'm sure you know it, a person who's had a drink is frequently warm and flustered in the cheeks for example.
Thing is, the alcohol doesn't actually make your body produce any extra heat, what it does is make the small blood-vessels directly under the skin widen. The extra circulation makes your skin warm (and probably your face red)
So far so good, problem is that higher skin-temperature translates to increased heat-loss. So while the person will indeed feel warmer, he will also loose more heat than before. Those small blood-vessels under the skin had contracted for a reason...
So, alcohol will make you colder, while making you feel warmer. A dangerous combination if you're outside in the cold. Making your judgement poorer, your balance to hell and easen your fears is also no bonus -- unless you just want to lie down and die in peace.
Much better would be a termos with something a) warm and b) sweet that gives energy and heat.
Noone has suggested that you should always buy the absolute cheapest parts available.
What people have suggested is that with open, competitive x86-hardware you have a large choise of suppliers, in different price and quality-categories, the practical offshot of which is that you get more for your money.
That is, for the same money, you get better hardware if you buy it in a competitive market (such as for example x86-computers) rather than a market controlled by a single entity. This is hardly surprising.
You also make the classical mistake of comparing apple wintel as if "Wintel" was a single company, comparable to apple.
Thing is, it isn't. And it never was. There are a multitude of suppliers for every single component in a x86-machine. You're free to pick and choose to your liking. There are also multiple suppliers of software for these machines. Windows is by far the most popular OS (and *does* suffer from monopoly-pricing like Macs do), but that's not particularily relevant for all of us who choose not to use Windows.
Sure, you could run Linux on a Mac. It'd cost double for comparable performance and quality. But atleast you'd get a pretty box for it.
Re:Let me explain why your observation is wrong.
on
Darl & SCO Overview
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· Score: 1
Well, that was sort of the point of my comment: It's not sufficient for SCO to win this case if it wants normal Linux-users to start paying licenses, or BSD to start worrying.
To accomplish that, a lot of other things, unrelated to this case, also has to come true. Such as the kernel-hackers being unable to replace, rewrite or do without code that is SCO-tainted.
That was my point. Even in Bizarro-world where SCO wins a full victory over IBM. Even there they don't get to influence Linux or BSD at all, unless multiple additional very unlikely things *also* occur.
Re:Let me explain why your observation is wrong.
on
Darl & SCO Overview
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· Score: 3, Insightful
The problem with your argument is that it reads alot like "What if 2+2 is really 5?"
There's a long chain of events required, and every step of it is highly unlikely:
SCO manages to prove that IBM contributed code to Linux, and that doing so violated a agreement they had with SCO.
SCO manages to convince the court that they own the 3-decades-old unix-code to begin with, and not only limited rigths to it as Novell claims.
The Linux kernel-hackers does not manage to rewrite, replace or live without the contributions of IBM.
SCO manages to proove that it owns BSD code that was released years before they acquired any rigths to any historic unix.
SCO convinces the court that the fact that they themselves distributed, and contributed to Linux under the GPL does not mean they actually meant to give away their code under the GPL.
SCO manages to convince the court that all of its mutually exclusive statements are true at the same time. That is, public on-the-record statements from Darl made *after* the current cases started should be disregarded. Statements like: "users have a choise - they can go back to using 2.2, we don't have a issue with that" conflict rather badly with current claims to own ABI's that have been in Linux since 0.01
SCO manages to convince the court that public facts, publically known and used for decades are subject to copyrigths. (Normally copyrigth covers only the *expression* of an idea, not the idea itself) #define ENOACCESS 3 cannot normally come in under copyrigth-law.
They manage to proove all of the above also in other countries, not only the US. (If not, Linux-development will thrive in the rest of the world, and at most the US will suffer a setback.)
IF, and only IF, they manage ALL of these, there migth be a problem. That is, assuming there aren't any obvious ones I missed.
Ofcourse you don't need a law-degree to estimate the probability of this as pretty darn close to zero. Infact, my guess is that they will not manage to establish a single one of these points.
realising that there was no way Wright could tie up all the loose ends in the few pages remaining.
*grin* Did you ever read any from Peter Hamilton ? For example The Reality Dysfunction, The Nano Flower or A Quantum murder ?
I've been thinking what you where thinking when reading Hamilton on a few occasions. For example The Reality Dysfunction..
SPOILER ALERT...
...is a trilogy, 3 *thick* books, 1000 pages each or more. And yet, when there's like 50 pages left you start wondering if he ain't going to start wrapping up all the loose ends at some point.
He does. But he spends about 3 pages doing so. And does so by the simple expediment of proclaiming: "Hero met a God, the God set everything back in order." Like really. Even the bad guys go to heaven. The past is undone where wished for, solar-systems are moved around with abandon and whatnot.
Best of all is that the "God" didn't really play a part at all in the series otherwise, it *really* feels like "Hell, I don't know where I'm going with this, but I gotta end it somehow, so..."
His other books aren't that extreme, but they all share this stopping-by-running-into-a-wall feeling. A pity too, because the books themselves are higly entertaining, if yo can live with the sucky/non-existant endings.
This is true -- Service is often proportional to expected spendings.
Having a broken harddrive replaced is *never * aproblem when you can call someone and say: "Remember those 70 harddrives we bougth in february ? Well, 2 of them have developed problems.."
Goes for banks too by the way, It's *amazing* how it is not only quite possible, but infact no problem at all to transfer 100K to a given account in a different country within one hour when you ask for speedy handling, while it's seemingly impossible to transfer $100 from one account to another account *in*the*same*bank* in less time than 2-3 days, even if you point out to them that it's urgent.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, sure, if you consider a whopping 8GB a "Full" harddrive. Yes, compared to the memory-cards it's huge, but as a hard-drive it's beyond ridicolous.
Thus, to say that "If only we had Windows-like selection of games, then we'd be ready to take over the world" is sorta self-defating. The games won't come before the people come, and the people, according to you, won't come before the games are already there, thus nothing changes.
Fortunately you're wrong. What happens instead is that every day Linux improves. (with Linux I really mean Linux + the apps) And with every improvement it becomes acceptable for more people. And with every new person who uses it, there's one more reason to consider making a game available also for Linux.
Instead services are expensive because of high wages, also for low-skilled work. The difference in salary between say a burger-flipper and a university professor is something like a factor of 2 here, in the US it's much bigger.
The practical upshot is that services; restaurants, hairdressers, taxis, services-in-general are expensive, but also that you can live decently being a burger-flipper.
You could say that USA is a good country to be rich in, while Norway is probably a much better country to live in if you are *not* among the rich. (the top 10% of the population has 20% of the total income in Norway, in USA they have more than 30% of the total income. The bottom 10% of the population has 4.5% of the total income in Norway, in USA they have less than half that.)
That is simply not possible with a standard cable-connection, of the type Comcast sells as far as I can see from their website. They say they sell "25 times modem connection", and specify that with modem they mean 56K, so, they sell 1400Kbps, upload is capped at 256Kbps.
Thing is, with that speed, even at *full* download around the clock, the entire month, you would end up with around 420 GB in a month. This is very much, but it is not "over a terabyte"
I don't think we really disagree that much. I agree that sometimes the environmental knee-jerk types go overboard. But I hope you also agree that sometimes the "Everything is Safe" types underestimate dangers which in the end turn out not to be so imaginary afterall.
It is perhaps a LITTLE unfair of accusing Mandrake of "pulling a Microsoft" when all that they did was include a function from the standard Linux kernel... Not that the claim makes any sense anyways as the main problem with Microsoft is their abuse of a dominant market-position, a position which no Linux-vendor has, and thus can't abuse.
Can you be a bit more spesific ? Your claim sounds more than a little dubious given the fact that Mandrake even *includes* proprietary drivers in its boxed sets. (and they're in "contrib" for those who use the download-edition.)
You're pointing out that Windows on a Mainframe gives zero performance, that minor detail, however, does nothing to discredit my conclusion.
Plutonium is dangerous stuff. Best estimates is that inhalation or consumption of 0.08 mg is sufficient that half of the people who do so will die (mostly form cancer) within a decade.
Thus, your, for example, 5 pounds of plutnium is sufficient to kill around 30 milion people, if all of it ended up inside human bodies.
That is offcourse patently absurd, in practice even if the rocket where to catastrophically explode shortly after take-off, the large majority of the plutnoium would end up somewhere else than in human bodies.
I agree people sometimes overreact. But I still think it's wise to be somewhat careful with putting a substance capable of killing millions of people on the top of a hundreds of tons of highly explosive rocket-fuel. Yes 5 pounds of plutonium exploded over Florida would be more likely to kill thousands than millions, but so did 9/11, and you see what big a deal that was.
So while I agree with you that a manned mission has it's place, saving money ain't it. It's sorta self-defeating to use a $5 billion mission to solve a problem in a $50 million mission if you see what I mean. Thing is, you could send, refine, improve and resend several dozen probes of various types, and it'd still be hell of a lot cheaper than putting one or more persons on mars.
The article does hint that whoever pays for a report may also get undue influence on the outcome. If not for any other reason than that the research-firm wishes to get similar tasks in the future.
But much more blatant is the influence of the commissioner on the questions asked in the research.
Thus the "Get the Facts" website has reports with summaries like:
Microsoft-sponsored benchmarks prove that multiple Windows Web servers perform better than a Linux mainframe acting as a Web server consolidator.
Thing is, that's not comparing Windows to Linux. That is comparing the cost-structure of "Mainframe" computers with "heaps of cheap boxes". It is well-known that generic boxes provides unparallelled price/performance for tasks that are easily divisible, such as web-serving.
Had you asked the oposite question, you'd have gotten the same answer: "Eivind-sponsored benchmarks prove that multiple Linux Web servers perform better than a Windows mainframe acting as a Web server consolidator.
What is the value of a study where you can swap the words "Linux" and "Windows", and get the same result ? Other than if you're wondering what is cheapest as a webserver for static web-pages: a mainframe, or half a dozen generic x86-boxen. But noone is really wondering about that anyways.
This is only one example, there are many.
My point is that even if the commissioner does not unduly influence the research, he still has a huge influence simply in deciding which questions to ask.
What does an average American spend on education ? In Scandinavia it's free. What does a average American spend on living-costs during the studies ? In Scandinavia you get around 1/3rd as a stipendium from state, the rest as a interest-free loan.
I don't know. I never lived in the US, but the *impression* you get is that stuff like College fees plays a quite significant role in many family-budgets.
In any case I was in the first place comparing Germany to Norway, which are the two countries I have lived long enough in to know them well. Germany does have lower taxes, but also *lots* (as in atleast 20% of your gross) higher "insurances" (which are state-mandated and migth aswell be relabeled "tax" if that wasn't politically unacceptable), and also lots lower service-level from the state in the first place, so lots of things you gotta pay yourself, eating further into your saved "tax-money".
So, while the "tax" here is pretty low, in addition you have to pay:
- Health-insurance (typically like 13%)
- Unemployment-insurance
- Pension-insurance
- Care-insurance (which somehow is not the same as "health")
- Dental insurance
All of which are included under the label "tax" in Norway. So, while I used to pay something like 35% tax in Norway, and here it is only 18%, after you add up all those other "non-tax-but-still-money" costs, it ends up costing the same thing, if not more.If you define "tax" as "The difference between what my employer pays, and what I get", then the taxrate in Scandinavia is not that bad at all. In the end it makes little difference if you call it "tax" or "tax+X+Y+Z" except in the latter case you can claim to have "low taxes".
So, only if you choose a lawyer who charges more than this, or want him to spend more hours than is alloted, you'll need to pay the rest yourself.
The US is crazy: Even if you win, a court-case will in many cases more or less bankrupt you. The very threat of filing thus works to be very intimidating, regardless of actual merits of the case. This allows rich/resourceful companies/persons to use the courts for legalised extortion of less rich entities. "Do as we say or we'll sue you into the ground. We probably won't win, but we'll certainly bankrupt you."
First, there typically is a minimum fine you get if your income is under a certain limit. Thus, being a poor college-student or whatever won't get you off the hook.
Secondly, did it ever occur to you that the purpose of traffic-fines is not primarily to make money for the state ?
Infact, to try to limit the profit-making motive in the minds of police-constables most european countries strictly decouple the polices financial resources from their fines. That is, neither the policeman himself, nor his local police-station, nor the police in general will get to keep any of the fines they collect. You want them to worry about law, about safety, about being reasonable, you /don't/ want them worrying about "making enough money this week".
yeah Messer =knife, not =measure, even though it migth sound like it.
Wow. Big letters. You think you actually have a point or something ?
First, we're talking of keeping warm, nor preserving energy. preserving energy is not an issue for most of us staying or working outside. Extreme survival-situations are not exactly the norm, and most of us eat (more than) enough.
Secondly, shivering is the body sacrificing energy to gain heat. That is, it's essentially doing wasted muscle-movements, burning energy for no purpose, other than letting your muscles produce heat.
Third, If you believe it or not, there *is* a difference between sufficient core-temperature, sufficient in-sum heat production and extremity-temperature.
You don't need very much experimentation to reach the conclusion that it is not only perfectly possible, but infact *common* to be in a situation where your body produces more than enough heat in total, but you're still freezing on your fingers/toes. Anyone who's tried for example skiing or jogging in cold temperatures can attest to this. It is, infact, perfectly common to be warm and even sweaty to the point where you need to *remove* clothing from the torso, and nevertheless freeze on your toes/fingers.
It's harder to see how it'd work for transfering heat downwards in the presence of gravity. The top end, containing gas, will be heated, so stays gas, the bottom end, containing liquid, will be cooled, so stays liquid.
Depending on circumstances there migth be some mixing, but it's hard to imagine how it'd be very effective. My guess is that for heat-transfer downwards a pure, unboiling, liquid would likely do just as well, if not better.
Thing is, the alcohol doesn't actually make your body produce any extra heat, what it does is make the small blood-vessels directly under the skin widen. The extra circulation makes your skin warm (and probably your face red)
So far so good, problem is that higher skin-temperature translates to increased heat-loss. So while the person will indeed feel warmer, he will also loose more heat than before. Those small blood-vessels under the skin had contracted for a reason...
So, alcohol will make you colder, while making you feel warmer. A dangerous combination if you're outside in the cold. Making your judgement poorer, your balance to hell and easen your fears is also no bonus -- unless you just want to lie down and die in peace.
Much better would be a termos with something a) warm and b) sweet that gives energy and heat.
Noone has suggested that you should always buy the absolute cheapest parts available.
What people have suggested is that with open, competitive x86-hardware you have a large choise of suppliers, in different price and quality-categories, the practical offshot of which is that you get more for your money.
That is, for the same money, you get better hardware if you buy it in a competitive market (such as for example x86-computers) rather than a market controlled by a single entity. This is hardly surprising.
You also make the classical mistake of comparing apple wintel as if "Wintel" was a single company, comparable to apple.
Thing is, it isn't. And it never was. There are a multitude of suppliers for every single component in a x86-machine. You're free to pick and choose to your liking. There are also multiple suppliers of software for these machines. Windows is by far the most popular OS (and *does* suffer from monopoly-pricing like Macs do), but that's not particularily relevant for all of us who choose not to use Windows.
Sure, you could run Linux on a Mac. It'd cost double for comparable performance and quality. But atleast you'd get a pretty box for it.
To accomplish that, a lot of other things, unrelated to this case, also has to come true. Such as the kernel-hackers being unable to replace, rewrite or do without code that is SCO-tainted.
That was my point. Even in Bizarro-world where SCO wins a full victory over IBM. Even there they don't get to influence Linux or BSD at all, unless multiple additional very unlikely things *also* occur.
There's a long chain of events required, and every step of it is highly unlikely:
- SCO manages to prove that IBM contributed code to Linux, and that doing so violated a agreement they had with SCO.
- SCO manages to convince the court that they own the 3-decades-old unix-code to begin with, and not only limited rigths to it as Novell claims.
- The Linux kernel-hackers does not manage to rewrite, replace or live without the contributions of IBM.
- SCO manages to proove that it owns BSD code that was released years before they acquired any rigths to any historic unix.
- SCO convinces the court that the fact that they themselves distributed, and contributed to Linux under the GPL does not mean they actually meant to give away their code under the GPL.
- SCO manages to convince the court that all of its mutually exclusive statements are true at the same time. That is, public on-the-record statements from Darl made *after* the current cases started should be disregarded. Statements like: "users have a choise - they can go back to using 2.2, we don't have a issue with that" conflict rather badly with current claims to own ABI's that have been in Linux since 0.01
- SCO manages to convince the court that public facts, publically known and used for decades are subject to copyrigths. (Normally copyrigth covers only the *expression* of an idea, not the idea itself) #define ENOACCESS 3 cannot normally come in under copyrigth-law.
- They manage to proove all of the above also in other countries, not only the US. (If not, Linux-development will thrive in the rest of the world, and at most the US will suffer a setback.)
IF, and only IF, they manage ALL of these, there migth be a problem. That is, assuming there aren't any obvious ones I missed.Ofcourse you don't need a law-degree to estimate the probability of this as pretty darn close to zero. Infact, my guess is that they will not manage to establish a single one of these points.
*grin* Did you ever read any from Peter Hamilton ? For example The Reality Dysfunction, The Nano Flower or A Quantum murder ?
I've been thinking what you where thinking when reading Hamilton on a few occasions. For example The Reality Dysfunction ..
SPOILER ALERT ...
He does. But he spends about 3 pages doing so. And does so by the simple expediment of proclaiming: "Hero met a God, the God set everything back in order." Like really. Even the bad guys go to heaven. The past is undone where wished for, solar-systems are moved around with abandon and whatnot.
Best of all is that the "God" didn't really play a part at all in the series otherwise, it *really* feels like "Hell, I don't know where I'm going with this, but I gotta end it somehow, so ..."
His other books aren't that extreme, but they all share this stopping-by-running-into-a-wall feeling. A pity too, because the books themselves are higly entertaining, if yo can live with the sucky/non-existant endings.
You have to try harder than that to succed with your trolling.
Having a broken harddrive replaced is *never * aproblem when you can call someone and say: "Remember those 70 harddrives we bougth in february ? Well, 2 of them have developed problems.."
Goes for banks too by the way, It's *amazing* how it is not only quite possible, but infact no problem at all to transfer 100K to a given account in a different country within one hour when you ask for speedy handling, while it's seemingly impossible to transfer $100 from one account to another account *in*the*same*bank* in less time than 2-3 days, even if you point out to them that it's urgent.