In the Chinese case, it was actually foreigners who adopted [the compass] for navigation
No. You should have paid more attention to nobodylocalhost's posting. How do you think Zheng He's massive fleet managed to navigate almost half the world? Answer: with compasses.
Remember the Olympic opening ceremonies in Beijing? The "great ships" part of that performance ended with one man holding up a compass -- and following it. That was the whole point of that part of the ceremonies!
"But," says Herman, "while RAND sometimes means there could be a financial obligation, [Microsoft] will be offering a conventional non-royalty non-fee RAND license. We've always made that clear to anyone who has asked."
Michele Herman no longer works at Microsoft, and hasn't since 2004. Who knows if the "no fee, no royalty" policy is still in effect. Until I see a legal commitment, I will assume the worst. (Which is always good policy when dealing with Microsoft or the devil.) So you are still probably wrong.
When dealing with Microsoft, as with the devil, one has to read the fine print. Very carefully. "Royalty-free" merely means no ongoing payments for a patent license; it says nothing about an initial one-time fee. Such a fee, if large, would be fatal for free software. So you are still wrong.
The ECMA process requires that all patents held by member companies that are essential for implementing its standards are available under "reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) terms" for the purpose of implementing those Standards. (emphasis mine)
Nope. ECMA has not forced Microsoft to give up its patent claims. The only requirement with respect to patents is that they be available under "reasonable and nondiscriminitory" terms -- which basically means that Microsoft can charge whatever it wants for patent licences, as long as it's the same fee for everyone. So MS can still threaten to sue for patent violations. And any fee of significant size is of course fatal for free software. So you are wrong.
C# and the CLR are ECMA standards, and as part of the standardization process, MS gave up the ability to make any patent claims.
Microsoft dominates ECMA and practically owns it, as show in the unbelievably corrupt ISO OOXML case. So what proof do you have that ECMA has forced MS to give up its patent claims with respect to C# ?
They wouldn't have submitted their standard to ECMA if they didn't want it to be implemented.
I can think of plenty of motives for Microsoft to simultaneously standardize C# and threaten anybody who tries to implement it.
For example, many huge organizations prefer standards. Governments are especially fond of them and constitute too large a market for MS to ignore. Hence the bad-faith standardization of C#.
In theory, with the "Free Market", these banks WOULD fail because they were badly managed. Instead, we're propping them up and rewarding their failed management.
You have slightly missed khasim's point. He wants regulations to prevent banks (and other entities) from growing so large that their failure would crash the global economy.
The "free market" if unchecked actually encourages the growth of such monster organizations. This is obvious if you realize that companies are not and cannot be all the same size: therefore, the strong will eat the weak, and over time the surviving companies will grow larger and larger. Eventually you will have gigantic companies, and this is what we have seen.
Khasim is proposing to apply some checks and balances, to stop such organizations from growing too large. It's a good idea.
No, what the country needs is a bunch of honest bean counters. Enron's funny books should have been a memorable lesson, but we didn't learn -- and now we are $trillions deeper in the hole.
Not a lie. The original author just needed to be a little more precise: a working Linux installation is very unlikely to suddenly, inexplicably slow down. Whereas it's almost normal for Windows to do this.
but rather about spying on domestic threats to the Bush Administration and plugging leaks
I've always thought that the warrantless wiretapping was one means by which Bush kept Congress so thoroughly cowed, even when the Democrats were in charge of it. By means of all that snooping, Bush probably had the dirt on practically all the key members of the House and Senate, which gave him unholy amounts of leverage over them. (Remember what happened to Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who was brought down by a wiretap.)
The scary thing is, Bush and Cheney probably still have a lot of that leverage, and they may exercise their power in some truly ugly ways in the future. That power may also explain why the pair seem so mellow about the possibility of being prosecuted for their multiple crimes against the Constitution: they don't think Congress will dare.
The people that Bush and Cheney are currently blackmailing must retire, or be forced to retire by the voters. Americans will never get their government back until there is a total generational change in Congress.
in a company of that size you're bound to have at least a few idiots with more power than they should
The problem with your theory is that Microsoft has not denounced, disowned, or otherwise punished the people who corrupted the ISO committee. So we can all be pretty sure that the subversion of the OOXML committee had approval from the highest levels of the company and wasn't merely the work of a few "idiots" there. Corruption is normal at Microsoft.
The researcher didn't say (or the article didn't report) how mature the octopuses were. Humans tend to have more personality the older they get (until they are elderly); perhaps the same is true for octopuses.
So I wouldn't pass judgement on octopus personality until somebody compares younger octopuses to older ones.
Why does gravitational lensing yield four images of the distant quasar, resulting in a cross? Since the quasar presumably radiates energy in all directions, shouldn't its image be a continuous ring? Why are we seeing four distinct blobs instead?
Running Lawrence Berkeley is a lot different from surviving while Exxon is gunning after you. If he succeeds at finding a good alternative source of energy, the oil companies will take a heavy hit, and they know it. And they play rough. I wish Chu well, but I hope he has a good bodyguard and a large life insurance policy.
Because I would expect that the majority of the "wealth" in both the old Soviet Union, and current Cuba, is in fact controlled by a very small proportion of people.
You would be wrong. According to the the Bank of Finland, "When the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia had a Gini coefficient of 0.29." That is very similar to the current Scandinavian countries, and vastly better (in this one respect) than the U.S., which is at 0.45.
Remember, a Gini coefficient of zero means that everyone has the same income, and a coefficent of 1.0 means one person owns all the wealth in the country. So higher means more uneven. It's also not a linear measure; the Soviet Union's 0.29 is hugely better than the U.S.'s 0.45.
I think you are confusing the old Soviet Union with Russia today. Oligarches control vast chunks of Russia's economy, in spite of Putin's best efforts to renationalize. The same Bank of Finland document says that Russia's Gini coefficient was 0.40 in 2000. So it has gotten really bad, but the U.S. is even worse -- and remember that the U.S. Gini number was measured before the recent multi-$trillion donation to the financial system, paid for by the generous taxpayers. If you are American, it is way past time for you to start worrying.
100% of economic failures were caused by government. There is no significant Republican-Democratic difference. Both favor unsound Keynesian economics -- the theoretical framework which has caused numerous economic crashes, including the current bust.
Keynes wasn't even born yet when the 19th Century had its many economic crashes. The panic of 1873, for example, was in many ways worse than the Great Depression. So you're wrong about Keynesian economics being the cause of market meltdowns.
Grotesque economic disparities where one individual may be millions or even billions of times wealthier than another are genuine cause for concern, if not moral and ethical outrage.
Why?
Because wealth is power, and power corrupts. This should be obvious to any ten-year-old child.
It's worth pointing out that this is almost certainly the most generous distribution of wealth in tens of thousands of years.
Untrue. Take the old Soviet Union, or Cuba now for that matter, where the distribution of wealth was much flatter. I am not saying that these were better places to live; I am merely disputing your assertion that the U.S. income distribution is the "most generous" in history.
That's why China is embarking on a $580 billion stimulus program.
A great aspect of the stimulus is that they won't be wasting the money the way the U.S. has: the Chinese will be using their stimulus funds to build some desperately needed infrastructure such as roads, water pipes, railways, airports, and so on. So not only will they continue growing strongly, they will also emerge from the global financial crisis at a higher stage of development and will be stronger than ever.
If Titan is massive enough to have a dense atmosphere, Mars certainly is.
Not necessarily. Titan is much colder than Mars, so the molecules of the Titanian atmosphere are much less likely to acquire the kinetic energy to escape into space.
Slashdot Mirror
True. But 500 years is not a long time by Chinese standards.
No. You should have paid more attention to nobodylocalhost's posting. How do you think Zheng He's massive fleet managed to navigate almost half the world? Answer: with compasses.
Remember the Olympic opening ceremonies in Beijing? The "great ships" part of that performance ended with one man holding up a compass -- and following it. That was the whole point of that part of the ceremonies!
Considering that Microsoft actually has threatened to sue Linux, my attitude is prudent, not paranoid.
Michele Herman no longer works at Microsoft, and hasn't since 2004. Who knows if the "no fee, no royalty" policy is still in effect. Until I see a legal commitment, I will assume the worst. (Which is always good policy when dealing with Microsoft or the devil.) So you are still probably wrong.
When dealing with Microsoft, as with the devil, one has to read the fine print. Very carefully. "Royalty-free" merely means no ongoing payments for a patent license; it says nothing about an initial one-time fee. Such a fee, if large, would be fatal for free software. So you are still wrong.
Nope. ECMA has not forced Microsoft to give up its patent claims. The only requirement with respect to patents is that they be available under "reasonable and nondiscriminitory" terms -- which basically means that Microsoft can charge whatever it wants for patent licences, as long as it's the same fee for everyone. So MS can still threaten to sue for patent violations. And any fee of significant size is of course fatal for free software. So you are wrong.
Microsoft dominates ECMA and practically owns it, as show in the unbelievably corrupt ISO OOXML case. So what proof do you have that ECMA has forced MS to give up its patent claims with respect to C# ?
They wouldn't have submitted their standard to ECMA if they didn't want it to be implemented.
I can think of plenty of motives for Microsoft to simultaneously standardize C# and threaten anybody who tries to implement it.
For example, many huge organizations prefer standards. Governments are especially fond of them and constitute too large a market for MS to ignore. Hence the bad-faith standardization of C#.
You have slightly missed khasim's point. He wants regulations to prevent banks (and other entities) from growing so large that their failure would crash the global economy.
The "free market" if unchecked actually encourages the growth of such monster organizations. This is obvious if you realize that companies are not and cannot be all the same size: therefore, the strong will eat the weak, and over time the surviving companies will grow larger and larger. Eventually you will have gigantic companies, and this is what we have seen.
Khasim is proposing to apply some checks and balances, to stop such organizations from growing too large. It's a good idea.
If you're American, congratulations on being a citizen of the second space-faring country. Guess which country was first?
Russian economic growth -- and Putin's growing reputation -- happened long before $150/barrel oil. The high price lasted only a few months anyhow.
No, what the country needs is a bunch of honest bean counters. Enron's funny books should have been a memorable lesson, but we didn't learn -- and now we are $trillions deeper in the hole.
For now. In time, even a "high end" business computer will cost less than $100. That is when Microsoft will really start sweating.
Not a lie. The original author just needed to be a little more precise: a working Linux installation is very unlikely to suddenly, inexplicably slow down. Whereas it's almost normal for Windows to do this.
I've always thought that the warrantless wiretapping was one means by which Bush kept Congress so thoroughly cowed, even when the Democrats were in charge of it. By means of all that snooping, Bush probably had the dirt on practically all the key members of the House and Senate, which gave him unholy amounts of leverage over them. (Remember what happened to Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who was brought down by a wiretap.)
The scary thing is, Bush and Cheney probably still have a lot of that leverage, and they may exercise their power in some truly ugly ways in the future. That power may also explain why the pair seem so mellow about the possibility of being prosecuted for their multiple crimes against the Constitution: they don't think Congress will dare.
The people that Bush and Cheney are currently blackmailing must retire, or be forced to retire by the voters. Americans will never get their government back until there is a total generational change in Congress.
The problem with your theory is that Microsoft has not denounced, disowned, or otherwise punished the people who corrupted the ISO committee. So we can all be pretty sure that the subversion of the OOXML committee had approval from the highest levels of the company and wasn't merely the work of a few "idiots" there. Corruption is normal at Microsoft.
So I wouldn't pass judgement on octopus personality until somebody compares younger octopuses to older ones.
Why does gravitational lensing yield four images of the distant quasar, resulting in a cross? Since the quasar presumably radiates energy in all directions, shouldn't its image be a continuous ring? Why are we seeing four distinct blobs instead?
Running Lawrence Berkeley is a lot different from surviving while Exxon is gunning after you. If he succeeds at finding a good alternative source of energy, the oil companies will take a heavy hit, and they know it. And they play rough. I wish Chu well, but I hope he has a good bodyguard and a large life insurance policy.
You would be wrong. According to the the Bank of Finland, "When the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia had a Gini coefficient of 0.29." That is very similar to the current Scandinavian countries, and vastly better (in this one respect) than the U.S., which is at 0.45.
Remember, a Gini coefficient of zero means that everyone has the same income, and a coefficent of 1.0 means one person owns all the wealth in the country. So higher means more uneven. It's also not a linear measure; the Soviet Union's 0.29 is hugely better than the U.S.'s 0.45.
I think you are confusing the old Soviet Union with Russia today. Oligarches control vast chunks of Russia's economy, in spite of Putin's best efforts to renationalize. The same Bank of Finland document says that Russia's Gini coefficient was 0.40 in 2000. So it has gotten really bad, but the U.S. is even worse -- and remember that the U.S. Gini number was measured before the recent multi-$trillion donation to the financial system, paid for by the generous taxpayers. If you are American, it is way past time for you to start worrying.
Keynes wasn't even born yet when the 19th Century had its many economic crashes. The panic of 1873, for example, was in many ways worse than the Great Depression. So you're wrong about Keynesian economics being the cause of market meltdowns.
Because wealth is power, and power corrupts. This should be obvious to any ten-year-old child.
Untrue. Take the old Soviet Union, or Cuba now for that matter, where the distribution of wealth was much flatter. I am not saying that these were better places to live; I am merely disputing your assertion that the U.S. income distribution is the "most generous" in history.
A great aspect of the stimulus is that they won't be wasting the money the way the U.S. has: the Chinese will be using their stimulus funds to build some desperately needed infrastructure such as roads, water pipes, railways, airports, and so on. So not only will they continue growing strongly, they will also emerge from the global financial crisis at a higher stage of development and will be stronger than ever.
Not necessarily. Titan is much colder than Mars, so the molecules of the Titanian atmosphere are much less likely to acquire the kinetic energy to escape into space.
If the "noise" obeys Kepler's laws, it's probably an image of something real.