Lego the company has held out the olive branch in a way that other comapnies should emulate. Renaming LegOS is not a huge request to show some goodwill back from the open source community.
"Tabula rasa" is an expression often used by teachers (particularly latin teachers) to describe the state they see their students as being in before the've been taught - a "blank slate" that has yet to be filled with knowledge. I'm sure that Garriott et. al. (more latin!) are using it as a metaphor for "starting over".
I read both The Infinity Concerto and The Serpent Mage in college and enjoyed them both well enough. They were two of his earliest works. They were a little rough-hewn, but the original ideas that make a successful Greg Bear story were already there.
Greg revisited the story and "cleaned it up". The result is that both have been republished under the title Songs of Earth and Power. It's currently available as both a paperback and an e-book (it recently found a home on my Handpsring Visor!).
Why would the SDMI threathen a lawsuit, unless they were going to go ahead and use - in whole or in part - the algorithms that the team of researchers have already punched holes in! One would think they would go back to the drawing board in search of something secure (or change their acronym to IDMI...).
This point cannot be stressed enough. If you get a telescope with poor optics, or a wobbly tripod, the frustrating experience of continually getting poor or wobbly images can ruin a child's interest in astronomy (as it nearly did to me many years ago...but I stuck with it;-) ). The "good" telescopes typically start at around the $400 range, and quickly get more expensive from there.
Celestron (http://www.celestron.com), Orion (http://www.telescope.com) and Meade (http://www.meade.com) all make excellent 'scopes, and the former two have fairly well-written telescope guides on their web pages.
Also, don't underestimate the value of a good pair of binoculars; they're not just for viewing the Moon. You can see the moons of Jupiter, Saturn's rings (barely!), and some deep sky objects such as the Orion nebula, the Great Galaxy of Andromeda, many double star and clusters, etc. in a decent pair of binoculars on a clear dark night.
Last and simplest, check your local bookstore for a good children's book on Astronomy. I'm not sure if it's still available, but my first was Herbert S. Zim's Stars and Planets. Good Luck!
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Lego the company has held out the olive branch in a way that other comapnies should emulate. Renaming LegOS is not a huge request to show some goodwill back from the open source community.
"Tabula rasa" is an expression often used by teachers (particularly latin teachers) to describe the state they see their students as being in before the've been taught - a "blank slate" that has yet to be filled with knowledge. I'm sure that Garriott et. al. (more latin!) are using it as a metaphor for "starting over".
I read both The Infinity Concerto and The Serpent Mage in college and enjoyed them both well enough. They were two of his earliest works. They were a little rough-hewn, but the original ideas that make a successful Greg Bear story were already there. Greg revisited the story and "cleaned it up". The result is that both have been republished under the title Songs of Earth and Power. It's currently available as both a paperback and an e-book (it recently found a home on my Handpsring Visor!).
Why would the SDMI threathen a lawsuit, unless they were going to go ahead and use - in whole or in part - the algorithms that the team of researchers have already punched holes in! One would think they would go back to the drawing board in search of something secure (or change their acronym to IDMI...).
This point cannot be stressed enough. If you get a telescope with poor optics, or a wobbly tripod, the frustrating experience of continually getting poor or wobbly images can ruin a child's interest in astronomy (as it nearly did to me many years ago...but I stuck with it ;-) ). The "good" telescopes typically start at around the $400 range, and quickly get more expensive from there.
Celestron (http://www.celestron.com), Orion (http://www.telescope.com) and Meade (http://www.meade.com) all make excellent 'scopes, and the former two have fairly well-written telescope guides on their web pages.
Also, don't underestimate the value of a good pair of binoculars; they're not just for viewing the Moon. You can see the moons of Jupiter, Saturn's rings (barely!), and some deep sky objects such as the Orion nebula, the Great Galaxy of Andromeda, many double star and clusters, etc. in a decent pair of binoculars on a clear dark night.
Last and simplest, check your local bookstore for a good children's book on Astronomy. I'm not sure if it's still available, but my first was Herbert S. Zim's Stars and Planets. Good Luck!