My standard GPS navigation system is, whenever I test it, pretty accurate about my speed. So I would also trust it rather than a normal radar speed trap.
But Judge Kimball just said that the burden of proof that the UnixWare or OpenServer sales are also in fact SVR4 lies with Novell, and until now Novell didn't prove so. This US$ 2.5 mio are just those royalties on sales that are undisputedly SVR4 sales. It still leaves Novell with the possibility to appeal where they actually prove that those sales aren't what SCOG claims them to be.
But also Mathematics gets designed by mathematicians to "somehow work". And it takes some time until the "works somehow" settles down to a nice, elegant theorem or a small lemma you teach your students. Look at the different attempts to pinpoint the continuity of the Real Numbers (Dirichlet, Bolzano-Weierstrass, Cauchy...). All those approaches were not discovered, but obviously created to generalize the idea, that infinite fractures are Real Numbers. The discovery lies in the fact that all three approaches are equivalent. Similarly you could look at the approaches to define computability. How many different definitions for computability are there? 10? 30? But nevertheless all are equivalent and boil down to the same set of functions. Each of them is a creation, and the discovery is just the fact that the newly created version of computability is equivalent to the already known ones.
It still is wrong. The telcos should have told the investigators, that they have to show FISA statements to get wiretapping. That's exactly the situation FISA was made for. Not following FISA (for what reason ever) is illegal. End of story.
Because the idea itself is flawed. Normally you visit only a minuscle part of the links your browser shows you. LinkScanner follows all of those links even when you never planned to visit them.
That's why other juristictions have the principle that the cost gets shared between plaintiff and defendant by comparing the sums initially demanded and finally awarded. If you demand 100,000 initially and get awarded 5,000 in the end, then you have lost 95%, thus you have to pay 95% of the legal costs.
Well copper is a fairly bad example. There are alternatives to copper for many of its uses.
No. Not really. I grew up in a country with not enough copper and eagerly searching for alternatives. There aren't any for most of its uses.
For communications there is optical fiber,...
Communication infrastructure is a very small part of the overall usage of copper. And until we get the optical computer running, we need copper in every node. Just the actual wiring can be replaced with fiber. A large part of Europe already has replaced copper wiring with fiber for large distances, only the last mile is still copper. So there is not much copper to recover here.
... for electrical wiring aluminum...
Aluminium has a lower conductivity than copper, thus needs thicker cables to have the same resistance per length. Aluminium can't be used for braids, so power cords made from aluminium will not be very flexible and break often. Aluminium can not be used for high voltage lines, because it rips easily and will not withstand any larger wind.
So the only place where Aluminium might replace copper is the actual indoor wiring from the house service connection to the power socket, a minimal part of overall copper use for power transmission.
... for pipe various plastics, etc.
Plastics can not be used for warm water, because it gets brittle over time if exposed to warmth. On the other hand it expands and shrinks quite strong with different temperatures. If it gets brittle, it will break during expansion and shrinking, and starting to leak. Cold water and sewage are already made from plastic or steel tubes.
There will likely be enough for those uses where there isn't a good substitute.
No, believe me: Copper is already pretty expensive, and it got and still gets replaced wherever possible. And still we are probably running into a copper shortage.
Gallium has unique properties you don't find in other metals (for instance a very low melting point of 302 K and a very good reflector). Thus it is non replacable (not without loss of quality) within the LCD process. And Gallium does not exists in large quantities on earth (a concentration of 18 ppm).
So either LCDs as a technology for TV sets become obsolet, because they are to expensive to manufacture, or a company manages to change the law of Physics. There are things you can't buy with any money. Inexhaustable deposits of certain metals with certain physical properties for instance.
There is a) digital terrestrial TV and b) satellite TV. My last count on my sat receiver showed ~1100 channels. Cable may carry ~200 channels (analog cable 30), so Cable is no alternative for me.;)
So as the supply "dries up" (which I don't think will happen in a sense that agrees with this article), the price should start to skyrocket. The production of LCDs with gallium will cost more, creating an incentive to find a way to produce LCDs without it. If not, people will simply buy fewer LCDs and switch to other display technologies.
Yes, for the first time in history technology that is already widely available will get more and more expensive, and there will not be any better and cheaper replacement available.
Until now new technology had two ways to penetrate the market:
1. It was better than current technology, even though it was more expensive. People looking for better quality/productivity/value... were ready to pay a premium. In time it gets momentum, larger production, better productivity, and slowly it was trickling down and getting a larger market while prices became more and more affordable.
2. It was cheaper than current technology, but maybe not so valuable. People not willing or not able to pay for the current technology were looking for cheaper alternatives, thus giving them the money to evolve and successive they got on level with the now older and more expensive technology, slowly replacing it.
But with our current situation we have a third situation which has (with local exceptions) not occured before:
3. Current technology gets more and more expensive because of the scarcity of resources. People have to give up the technology completely, and an equivalent technology is not in place, either because it is not possible at all (copper is the best conductor, and can not be replaced by a similar conductor, independent of the amount of money you are willing to pay for it. And no, superconducturs are no replacement, because they require elements that are far more seldom than copper, thus replacing copper wires with them just gets us faster to the final point of no resources left), or because the alternatives have other quirks that make them less desirable: break more often, less productivity, less flexibility.
3. differs from 1. and 2., because 1. and 2. increase productivity, but 3. lowers productivity. Thus with 3. technologies which didn't reach the point of non-affordability before now might reach it, not because they become more expensive, but because we become less productive and thus cannot afford them anymore.
For some time repair will help. But finally we reach the point where all resources are in use. And everyone not having one yet will never get one, regardless of the price.
The problem is another one. The amount of LCD panels sold is increasing, and we have a natural limit on the amount of LCD panels than can be in use at a given time: This limit is set by the amount of gallium available.
If the gallium ressources are exhausted even though all old LCD panels get recycled to reuse the gallium, then there is no way to ever build new gallium based LCD panels, except one owner returns his old LCD panel to get a new one.
I've grown up in a country with not enough money to buy copper or lead. (For people interested: the former East Germany). I know how an economy slows down if you can't buy a new car battery without bringing your old in for recycling. I know how the utilities get a problem with delivering AC current to the homes if there is no copper for new cables, and aluminium is used as a replacement. Aluminium wires tend to break very often, they have a lower specific conductivity, and thus you get higher losses during delivery.
So this problem is real. If your technology is based on the presence of certain materials, and the amount of those materials is limited, then your technology is limited. Even a hundredfold increase in the price of the limited material doesn't add any new ressources, and if the technological alternatives have less than optimal properties to replace it, then the technology as such gets a hit. We are used to replace older technologies with newer ones because the newer ones actually give a (productivity) benefit over the old one. But this time we are talking ersatz technologies, which are worse than the old ones with respect to their usability, thus decreasing our productivity.
IRC with DCC Chat uses p2p-connections, e.g. those communications, once initiated, are not relayed anymore via the server. While I agree that IRC in general has very low bandwidth requirements (hey, I was using IRC on a 2400 baud connection myself;) ), there might be other chat protocols which waste more precious bit/sec. A nice game of netmaze, xpilot or imaze uses much more bandwidth;)
This would actually also screw a lot of chats and online games, other things people actually buy internet connectivity for, and for which there is no pseudo-legal argument why this should be disencouraged as with P2P being piracy.
But that's no different to any other product. Buy defective capacitors from a manufacturer for your product, and your product blows up because of them: It's your responsibility to recall the product and replace the capacitos.
Seriously now, what's with all the hate at even the idea of a creator?
Nothing is wrong with the idea. It is just not what we need. There is also nothing wrong with banana daiqiris, but we shouldn't serve them in a school either.
The idea of a creator provides an explanation. But science is not about explanations. Science is about predictions. It can be used to provide explanations for a given phenomenom. If you apply science to the preconditions of a phenomenom, then the theory predicts the phenomenom. That's a nice demonstration of the predicative power of science, but that's not what science is about.
The idea of a creator gets us stuck with an explanation and nothing else. Just reactively explaining something makes a nice exercise for twisting our thoughts. But it isn't science. It's just something like reading Nostradamus and then "discovering" how he prophecied something that just happened to you.
I once took four-line nursery rhymes to "predict" the sinking of the Titanic or similar events in history. Works pretty well. But that doesn't make nursery rhymes into science.
(For people knowing german: "Alle meine Entchen" can perfectly be read as a prophecy about the Titanic;) ).
Making testable predictions is all that is needed to be a theory.
I should elaborate on that: "Allowing everyone to make testable prediction by applying it to a given set of pre-conditions is what is needed to be a theory."
The justification for teaching evolution or any science is that it works, not that it is True. Evolution doesn't have to explain everything; it just has to follow scientific methods and explain more than another scientific theory.
It doesn't even have to explain anything. Making testable predictions is all that is needed to be a theory. Every myth explains something. That doesn't make a myth a theory. You could use a theory later to explain something, or you could start out with trying to explain a phenomenom to get to a proto-theory (called hypothesis). But the difference between a theory and an explanation is that a theory makes predictions, an explanation doesn't.
To make the explanation the goal of science is what allows Creationism or Intelligent Design to present themselves as "scientific".
But this system still won't help to sink patent trolls, moreso it would actually give an incentive to patent trolls:
File or buy Patent A, but then don't have any revenue on it, because this is taxed. Better wait for another one to get successful with an infringing product and then demand $$$ for infringment. Taxes on patents related to revenue are a boon to submarine patents.
(On the other hand taxes which aren't related to revenue are a problem for small companies with minimal revenue because they wouldn't be able to finance holding a patent).
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Not necessarily. Often you know what went wrong, but you don't know why the execution path actually gets there. That's where you need the developer.
My standard GPS navigation system is, whenever I test it, pretty accurate about my speed. So I would also trust it rather than a normal radar speed trap.
It still leaves Novell with the possibility to appeal where they actually prove that those sales aren't what SCOG claims them to be.
Those other sales, that is.
But Judge Kimball just said that the burden of proof that the UnixWare or OpenServer sales are also in fact SVR4 lies with Novell, and until now Novell didn't prove so. This US$ 2.5 mio are just those royalties on sales that are undisputedly SVR4 sales. It still leaves Novell with the possibility to appeal where they actually prove that those sales aren't what SCOG claims them to be.
But also Mathematics gets designed by mathematicians to "somehow work". And it takes some time until the "works somehow" settles down to a nice, elegant theorem or a small lemma you teach your students.
Look at the different attempts to pinpoint the continuity of the Real Numbers (Dirichlet, Bolzano-Weierstrass, Cauchy...). All those approaches were not discovered, but obviously created to generalize the idea, that infinite fractures are Real Numbers. The discovery lies in the fact that all three approaches are equivalent.
Similarly you could look at the approaches to define computability. How many different definitions for computability are there? 10? 30? But nevertheless all are equivalent and boil down to the same set of functions. Each of them is a creation, and the discovery is just the fact that the newly created version of computability is equivalent to the already known ones.
I had two ex Navy SEALs as sys admin colleagues. I guess they would have lasted at least 7 minutes in jail.
It still is wrong. The telcos should have told the investigators, that they have to show FISA statements to get wiretapping. That's exactly the situation FISA was made for. Not following FISA (for what reason ever) is illegal. End of story.
That's like saying: "The children weren't actually trying to burn the barn down." They still had the idea to check how fast the straw catches fire.
Because the idea itself is flawed. Normally you visit only a minuscle part of the links your browser shows you. LinkScanner follows all of those links even when you never planned to visit them.
That's why other juristictions have the principle that the cost gets shared between plaintiff and defendant by comparing the sums initially demanded and finally awarded. If you demand 100,000 initially and get awarded 5,000 in the end, then you have lost 95%, thus you have to pay 95% of the legal costs.
Well copper is a fairly bad example. There are alternatives to copper for many of its uses.
No. Not really. I grew up in a country with not enough copper and eagerly searching for alternatives. There aren't any for most of its uses.
For communications there is optical fiber, ...
Communication infrastructure is a very small part of the overall usage of copper. And until we get the optical computer running, we need copper in every node. Just the actual wiring can be replaced with fiber. A large part of Europe already has replaced copper wiring with fiber for large distances, only the last mile is still copper. So there is not much copper to recover here.
... for electrical wiring aluminum...
Aluminium has a lower conductivity than copper, thus needs thicker cables to have the same resistance per length. Aluminium can't be used for braids, so power cords made from aluminium will not be very flexible and break often. Aluminium can not be used for high voltage lines, because it rips easily and will not withstand any larger wind.
So the only place where Aluminium might replace copper is the actual indoor wiring from the house service connection to the power socket, a minimal part of overall copper use for power transmission.
... for pipe various plastics, etc.
Plastics can not be used for warm water, because it gets brittle over time if exposed to warmth. On the other hand it expands and shrinks quite strong with different temperatures. If it gets brittle, it will break during expansion and shrinking, and starting to leak. Cold water and sewage are already made from plastic or steel tubes.
There will likely be enough for those uses where there isn't a good substitute.
No, believe me: Copper is already pretty expensive, and it got and still gets replaced wherever possible. And still we are probably running into a copper shortage.
Gallium has unique properties you don't find in other metals (for instance a very low melting point of 302 K and a very good reflector). Thus it is non replacable (not without loss of quality) within the LCD process. And Gallium does not exists in large quantities on earth (a concentration of 18 ppm).
So either LCDs as a technology for TV sets become obsolet, because they are to expensive to manufacture, or a company manages to change the law of Physics. There are things you can't buy with any money. Inexhaustable deposits of certain metals with certain physical properties for instance.
There is a) digital terrestrial TV and b) satellite TV. My last count on my sat receiver showed ~1100 channels. Cable may carry ~200 channels (analog cable 30), so Cable is no alternative for me. ;)
So as the supply "dries up" (which I don't think will happen in a sense that agrees with this article), the price should start to skyrocket. The production of LCDs with gallium will cost more, creating an incentive to find a way to produce LCDs without it. If not, people will simply buy fewer LCDs and switch to other display technologies.
Yes, for the first time in history technology that is already widely available will get more and more expensive, and there will not be any better and cheaper replacement available.
Until now new technology had two ways to penetrate the market:
1. It was better than current technology, even though it was more expensive. People looking for better quality/productivity/value... were ready to pay a premium. In time it gets momentum, larger production, better productivity, and slowly it was trickling down and getting a larger market while prices became more and more affordable.
2. It was cheaper than current technology, but maybe not so valuable. People not willing or not able to pay for the current technology were looking for cheaper alternatives, thus giving them the money to evolve and successive they got on level with the now older and more expensive technology, slowly replacing it.
But with our current situation we have a third situation which has (with local exceptions) not occured before:
3. Current technology gets more and more expensive because of the scarcity of resources. People have to give up the technology completely, and an equivalent technology is not in place, either because it is not possible at all (copper is the best conductor, and can not be replaced by a similar conductor, independent of the amount of money you are willing to pay for it. And no, superconducturs are no replacement, because they require elements that are far more seldom than copper, thus replacing copper wires with them just gets us faster to the final point of no resources left), or because the alternatives have other quirks that make them less desirable: break more often, less productivity, less flexibility.
3. differs from 1. and 2., because 1. and 2. increase productivity, but 3. lowers productivity. Thus with 3. technologies which didn't reach the point of non-affordability before now might reach it, not because they become more expensive, but because we become less productive and thus cannot afford them anymore.
For some time repair will help. But finally we reach the point where all resources are in use. And everyone not having one yet will never get one, regardless of the price.
The problem is another one. The amount of LCD panels sold is increasing, and we have a natural limit on the amount of LCD panels than can be in use at a given time: This limit is set by the amount of gallium available.
If the gallium ressources are exhausted even though all old LCD panels get recycled to reuse the gallium, then there is no way to ever build new gallium based LCD panels, except one owner returns his old LCD panel to get a new one.
I've grown up in a country with not enough money to buy copper or lead. (For people interested: the former East Germany). I know how an economy slows down if you can't buy a new car battery without bringing your old in for recycling. I know how the utilities get a problem with delivering AC current to the homes if there is no copper for new cables, and aluminium is used as a replacement. Aluminium wires tend to break very often, they have a lower specific conductivity, and thus you get higher losses during delivery.
So this problem is real. If your technology is based on the presence of certain materials, and the amount of those materials is limited, then your technology is limited. Even a hundredfold increase in the price of the limited material doesn't add any new ressources, and if the technological alternatives have less than optimal properties to replace it, then the technology as such gets a hit. We are used to replace older technologies with newer ones because the newer ones actually give a (productivity) benefit over the old one. But this time we are talking ersatz technologies, which are worse than the old ones with respect to their usability, thus decreasing our productivity.
IRC with DCC Chat uses p2p-connections, e.g. those communications, once initiated, are not relayed anymore via the server. While I agree that IRC in general has very low bandwidth requirements (hey, I was using IRC on a 2400 baud connection myself ;) ), there might be other chat protocols which waste more precious bit/sec. ;)
A nice game of netmaze, xpilot or imaze uses much more bandwidth
This would actually also screw a lot of chats and online games, other things people actually buy internet connectivity for, and for which there is no pseudo-legal argument why this should be disencouraged as with P2P being piracy.
What, you are saying, that Linux was intelligently designed?
That's an afterthought. First you are responsible for making your product save, even though you didn't manufacture the capacitors.
But that's no different to any other product. Buy defective capacitors from a manufacturer for your product, and your product blows up because of them: It's your responsibility to recall the product and replace the capacitos.
Seriously now, what's with all the hate at even the idea of a creator?
Nothing is wrong with the idea. It is just not what we need. There is also nothing wrong with banana daiqiris, but we shouldn't serve them in a school either.
The idea of a creator provides an explanation. But science is not about explanations. Science is about predictions. It can be used to provide explanations for a given phenomenom. If you apply science to the preconditions of a phenomenom, then the theory predicts the phenomenom. That's a nice demonstration of the predicative power of science, but that's not what science is about.
The idea of a creator gets us stuck with an explanation and nothing else. Just reactively explaining something makes a nice exercise for twisting our thoughts. But it isn't science. It's just something like reading Nostradamus and then "discovering" how he prophecied something that just happened to you.
I once took four-line nursery rhymes to "predict" the sinking of the Titanic or similar events in history. Works pretty well. But that doesn't make nursery rhymes into science.
(For people knowing german: "Alle meine Entchen" can perfectly be read as a prophecy about the Titanic ;) ).
Making testable predictions is all that is needed to be a theory.
I should elaborate on that: "Allowing everyone to make testable prediction by applying it to a given set of pre-conditions is what is needed to be a theory."
The justification for teaching evolution or any science is that it works, not that it is True. Evolution doesn't have to explain everything; it just has to follow scientific methods and explain more than another scientific theory.
It doesn't even have to explain anything. Making testable predictions is all that is needed to be a theory. Every myth explains something. That doesn't make a myth a theory. You could use a theory later to explain something, or you could start out with trying to explain a phenomenom to get to a proto-theory (called hypothesis). But the difference between a theory and an explanation is that a theory makes predictions, an explanation doesn't.
To make the explanation the goal of science is what allows Creationism or Intelligent Design to present themselves as "scientific".
But this system still won't help to sink patent trolls, moreso it would actually give an incentive to patent trolls:
File or buy Patent A, but then don't have any revenue on it, because this is taxed. Better wait for another one to get successful with an infringing product and then demand $$$ for infringment. Taxes on patents related to revenue are a boon to submarine patents.
(On the other hand taxes which aren't related to revenue are a problem for small companies with minimal revenue because they wouldn't be able to finance holding a patent).