Java was the most popular language for mobile apps before Android came along.
It still is. Android is an operating system not a programming language.
Oracle is arguing that they could have been a major player if Android hasn't used their API.
The case in court is not about which player is major or minor or how much profit Oracle would have made if Android did not exist. The case is about whether APIs can be copyrighted. If you are allowed to copyright APIs then you are also allowed to copyright a file format.
If they had a patent on it, it would be a different discussion but I don't see how it can be copyrighted.
Tough luck. The courts are not there to make sure one company's profits are protected at all cost. Even if it is true that Google drove them out of the mobile market, it still doesn't mean APIs can be copyrighted. The case in court is not about whether Google hurt Oracle's feelings or not.
This article highlights the main problem with theoretical physicists. They are arrogant, and lack basic understanding of proper use of language. For example, the flaw identified in the paper is not with "Emergent Gravity", but with a specific attempt at an emergent gravity theory. The flaw is with the "holographic screens" theory. Now some idiot will go around claiming that "emergent gravity" is flawed. This is just one example out of a million like this. You can find similar examples in almost every discussion about Quantum Theory -- self delusion through poor use of language, perhaps intentionally so.
If you find yourself moving, look ahead and then look behind. If it is a push, there will be more stuff behind us. if it is a pull, there will be more stuff in front of us. This is important because it is unlikely that any attractive forces are fundamental, which means all apparent attraction is simply a side-effect of repulsion. This discovery adds to the body of evidence supporting that idea. The next challenge is, we need to prove that gravity is not an attractive force but the side-effect of a more fundamental repulsive force.
I don't know how the reporter thinks this discovery could ever lead to cloning of such an organism. A typical eukaryote has 20,000 to 100,000 proteins in its proteome. Even viruses could have hundreds of proteins. To clone an organism, you will need to have a full copy of its DNA (or RNA in the case of RNA viruses). That means prestine samples of all proteins from the proteome. Even having that is not enough, since going from proteins to DNA is not straightforward -- since proteins are often modified after translation. Even then, you also need non-protein encoding DNA which is just as important for the survival of the organism.
I would say it is a pipe dream to start thinking of cloning, based on finding a fragment of a pre-historic protein. Rather than speculate about cloning, there are a lot of other very useful questions this discovery can answer, such as how that protein has evolved with respect similar proteins modern variants of the same species. We could perhaps then understand what micro-evolutionary pressures could have influenced (or not influenced) the evolution of a species such as an ostrich which has survived all these years.
We've been seeing things like and many orders of magnitude more complex that this using Crystallography for more than a hundred years. Google "electron density maps" and check out some of the pictures in 3D. Then head over to the Protein Data Bank to see atomic resolution molecular structures determined using crystallography for more than 80,000 protein, nucleic acids (DNA, RNA) and carbohydrates. Even the Ribosome structure has been determined all in 3D. What they have here is a force map which is even more indirect than the electron density and these molecules are "nano-dwarfed" by the sheer complexity and size of molecules whose structures are already available by crystallography.
So where was IBM when they tried to subpoena PJ back in January? Did they inform IBM then? How come they are only claiming now that the deposition should be admitted in the IBM case?
You think an interference **PATTERN** is produced by a SINGLE particle (I don't mean a single particle at a time?), you don't know what you are talking about.
Secondly, if you hare taken any time to look at CQM, you will understand what I'm talking about. It's a waste of time to try to demonstrate this on slashdot.
One other thing. Your premise is just simply wrong. I know of NO device that can emit photons each with exactly the same properties. If you are relying on the ensemble of photons shot at the slit system, and trying to attribute to each photon the characteristics of the whole ensemble, this is a fallacy of composition. Interference patterns are not produced from single photons but from ensembles and no device exists that can produce a clone of identical photons.
You should have a look at Classical Quantum Mechanics, or "Hydrino theory" some time.
If a tree falls in the woods and no one's there to hear it, does it make a sound? The correct answer is: Who gives a shit?
The tree does, as far as there are people trying to say the tree is 50% standing, and 50% fallen. Just like the cat being 50% alive and 50% dead.
Now the more reason why you should "give a shit" also is because, your ability to reason correctly depends on how you answer the question.
Do you also believe that an electron does not have a velocity until it is measured? Then don't even bother watching CNN until all those electrons in your TV get measured.
In Science, we are trying to understand reality. Classical mechanics worked but it was not accurate. Without questioning the present theories, there'll be no progress.
The rules have never changed. A theory is a theory. It only becomes a problem when some think their theory IS reality.
Electrons don't carry information. Information is a property of the mind not reality. And that's the part you don't get.
I just dropped a coin on my floor. Tell me what I got, Heads or Tails. Or tell me that I got 50% heads and 50% tails, and the moment I finally tell you the TRUE results, what I got automatically changes.
You see, there is a difference between TRUTH and KNOWLEDGE(information). What you know about my coin is just that, information, not reality.
BTW my post was not about the EPR paradox. But you see the EPR paradox used as a validation of the "copenhagen interpretation" simply gives you the presuppositions you put into it, which is no validation.
The core of this issue is one of epistemiology. Bohr and his followers want to transfer a property of the mind (knowledge) to a property of nature (reality).
It's like saying, something happens in reality only the very moment you know it. Turn on CNN, and all what they are reporting on, just happened at that very moment you learnt of it, and if you did not hear it or know it, then it did not happen! Crack!
An electron has a specific velocity, whether any person knows it or not. The probability distribution of the electron's velocity (wavefunction) is not a property of nature as Heisenberg states, but a property of our minds (lack of complete information). When that value is finally measured, we have a single value rather than a wavefunction (complete information). It is our minds that have changed, not reality. Therefore it is crack to say the electron has many velocities (wavefunction) before measurement but as soon as it is measured, it collapses (wavefunction collapse) into a single value.
The strangest part of this is that this blatant confusion has not totally incapacitated the usefulness of quantum mechanics. Imagine what will happen if more physicists could get their ducks in line and properly understand why Quantum mechanics works. Einstein was on track. Others have followed him and been able to do great things, although clearly disagreeing with the "spooky action at a distance" "copenhagen" interpretation. Such as Schrödinger, Edward Thomson Jaynes, the father of "maximum entropy".
ET Jaynes wrote about the possibility of doing a thesis under Oppenheimer:
After some months of correspondence I first met J. R. Oppenheimer in September 1946, when I arrived at Berkeley as a beginning graduate student, to learn quantum theory from him -- the result of Bill Hansen having recommended us strongly to each other. When in the Summer of 1947 Oppy moved to Princeton to take over the Institute for Advanced Study, I was one of four students that he took along. The plan was that we would enroll as graduate students at Princeton University, finish our theses under Oppy although he was not officially a Princeton University faculty member; and turn them in to Princeton (which had agreed to this somewhat unusual arrangement in view of the somewhat unusual circumstances). My thesis was to be on Quantum Electrodynamics.... But, as this writer learned from attending a year of Oppy's lectures (1946-47) at Berkeley, and eagerly studying his printed and spoken words for several years thereafter, Oppy would never countenance any retreat from the Copenhagen position, of the kind advocated by Schrödinger and Einstein. He derived some great emotional satisfaction from just those elements of mysticism that Schrödinger and Einstein had deplored, and always wanted to make the world still more mystical, and less rational.... If this meant standing in contradiction with the Copenhagen interpretation, so be it; I would be delighted to see it gone anyway, for the same reason that Einstein and Schrödinger would. But I sensed that Oppy would never tolerate a grain of this; he would crush me like an eggshell if I dared to express a word of such subversive ideas. I could do a thesis with Oppy only if it was his thesis, not mine.
Quantum mechanics works, there is no question about it. The question is why does it work. IMHO, the majority of physicists today are backing up the wrong tree -- the copenhagen interpretation. Further progress is, thus being hindered.
ET Jaynes, probably the first guy to question the validity of QM said:
In any eld, the Establishment is not seeking the truth, because it is composed of those who, having found part of it yesterday, believe that they are in possession of all of it today. Progress requires the introduction, not just of new mathematics which is always tolerated by the Establishment; but new conceptual ideas which are necessarily different from those held by the Establishment; for, if the ideas of the Establishment were sufficient to lead to further progress, that progress would have been made.
Therefore, to anyone who has new ideas of a currently unconventional kind, I want to give this advice, in the strongest possible terms: Do not allow yourself to be discouraged or deflected from your course by negative criticisms particularly those that were invented for the sole purpose of discouraging you unless they exhibit some clear and specific error of reasoning or conflict with experiment. Unless they can do this, your critics are almost certainly wrong, but to reply by trying to show exactly where and why they are wrong would be wasted effort which would not convince your critics and would only keep you from the far more important, constructive things that you might have accomplished in the same time. Let others deal with them; if you allow your enemies to direct your work, then they have won after all.
Additionally, I'm a scientist and a Christian as well and the fact that this debate (evolution vs creationism) is even going on in the first place is only evidence of the level of naivity out there.
Evolution and creationism are not mutually exclusive concepts. Creationist who claim otherwise are indirectly claiming that they know exactly what steps God took to form Man from 'dust' which is overly presumptuous since the bible does not go into details. Evolutionist who claim otherwise are equally naive because evolution presupposes that you have a certain environment is available with the right conditions and selective pressure for evolution to take place. However, this environment can not be formed by evolution itself. For example no evolutionist has ever dared to answer how the atom was formed.
The way I see it, it is possible for God to have created the world both living and non-living in a way that will manifest to us as evolution, without.
BTW, I wonder why those evolutionist who believe the book of Genesis is literal don't claim that Jesus Christ was a vine, or bread or rock. Maybe literature should be compulsory education.
PNAS is free after 6 months because of PLoS. The PLoS journals were formed because PLoS contacted other journals and demanded that they open-access at least after 6months. Most refused. A few like PNAS accepted.
Isn't it interesting that I posted a story to Slashdot about Open Source Science when all this started, which was promptly rejected.
OK. Freedom does not mean "lack of restraint to do my own thing". Freedom comes with responsibilities. Freedom does not mean rights (which the article author does not seem to figure). One man's freedom ends where another's freedom begins.
The term "Free Software" describes the software not the person using it. Are you trying to say that so long as I'm not free to take away the freedom of my customers, I'm not free at all?
If the company does what you want them to do, the software stops being free. Which means the users' freedoms will be violated. It is about the software remember.
So this company is free to use GPL'd code. They are also free to choose not to use GPL'd code. But they are not free to take away the freedoms of those who will ultimately use the sofware. If their business involves taking away peoples freedoms, then "Free software" is not for them. Get it?
By your reasoning, a pedophile can complain that their freedom to do what they like to do with children should not be limitted.
Slashdot Mirror
Java was the most popular language for mobile apps before Android came along.
It still is. Android is an operating system not a programming language.
Oracle is arguing that they could have been a major player if Android hasn't used their API.
The case in court is not about which player is major or minor or how much profit Oracle would have made if Android did not exist. The case is about whether APIs can be copyrighted. If you are allowed to copyright APIs then you are also allowed to copyright a file format.
If they had a patent on it, it would be a different discussion but I don't see how it can be copyrighted.
Tough luck. The courts are not there to make sure one company's profits are protected at all cost. Even if it is true that Google drove them out of the mobile market, it still doesn't mean APIs can be copyrighted. The case in court is not about whether Google hurt Oracle's feelings or not.
This article highlights the main problem with theoretical physicists. They are arrogant, and lack basic understanding of proper use of language. For example, the flaw identified in the paper is not with "Emergent Gravity", but with a specific attempt at an emergent gravity theory. The flaw is with the "holographic screens" theory. Now some idiot will go around claiming that "emergent gravity" is flawed. This is just one example out of a million like this. You can find similar examples in almost every discussion about Quantum Theory -- self delusion through poor use of language, perhaps intentionally so.
Tell the guy who just got a cancer diagnosis that they should be happy because they only had a 1 in 4 chance of getting it.
If you find yourself moving, look ahead and then look behind. If it is a push, there will be more stuff behind us. if it is a pull, there will be more stuff in front of us. This is important because it is unlikely that any attractive forces are fundamental, which means all apparent attraction is simply a side-effect of repulsion. This discovery adds to the body of evidence supporting that idea. The next challenge is, we need to prove that gravity is not an attractive force but the side-effect of a more fundamental repulsive force.
I don't know how the reporter thinks this discovery could ever lead to cloning of such an organism. A typical eukaryote has 20,000 to 100,000 proteins in its proteome. Even viruses could have hundreds of proteins. To clone an organism, you will need to have a full copy of its DNA (or RNA in the case of RNA viruses). That means prestine samples of all proteins from the proteome. Even having that is not enough, since going from proteins to DNA is not straightforward -- since proteins are often modified after translation. Even then, you also need non-protein encoding DNA which is just as important for the survival of the organism.
I would say it is a pipe dream to start thinking of cloning, based on finding a fragment of a pre-historic protein. Rather than speculate about cloning, there are a lot of other very useful questions this discovery can answer, such as how that protein has evolved with respect similar proteins modern variants of the same species. We could perhaps then understand what micro-evolutionary pressures could have influenced (or not influenced) the evolution of a species such as an ostrich which has survived all these years.
We've been seeing things like and many orders of magnitude more complex that this using Crystallography for more than a hundred years. Google "electron density maps" and check out some of the pictures in 3D. Then head over to the Protein Data Bank to see atomic resolution molecular structures determined using crystallography for more than 80,000 protein, nucleic acids (DNA, RNA) and carbohydrates. Even the Ribosome structure has been determined all in 3D. What they have here is a force map which is even more indirect than the electron density and these molecules are "nano-dwarfed" by the sheer complexity and size of molecules whose structures are already available by crystallography.
So where was IBM when they tried to subpoena PJ back in January? Did they inform IBM then? How come they are only claiming now that the deposition should be admitted in the IBM case?
This is not unique to China, search images.google.se and images.google.com for "september 11" and see what you get.
Read this if you want the CQM explanation http://www.blacklightpower.com/theory/TOE%2002.10. 03/Chapters/Chapter%208_110805.pdf
See Page 364
Please read this article if you may:
. 03/Chapters/Chapter%2037_110805.pdf
http://www.blacklightpower.com/theory/TOE%2002.10
It deals specifically with the topic of this story and also mentions slit experiments.
You think an interference **PATTERN** is produced by a SINGLE particle (I don't mean a single particle at a time?), you don't know what you are talking about.
Secondly, if you hare taken any time to look at CQM, you will understand what I'm talking about. It's a waste of time to try to demonstrate this on slashdot.
One other thing. Your premise is just simply wrong. I know of NO device that can emit photons each with exactly the same properties. If you are relying on the ensemble of photons shot at the slit system, and trying to attribute to each photon the characteristics of the whole ensemble, this is a fallacy of composition. Interference patterns are not produced from single photons but from ensembles and no device exists that can produce a clone of identical photons.
You should have a look at Classical Quantum Mechanics, or "Hydrino theory" some time.
The hydrino theory CQM explains this without spooky action at a distance.
If a tree falls in the woods and no one's there to hear it, does it make a sound? The correct answer is: Who gives a shit?
The tree does, as far as there are people trying to say the tree is 50% standing, and 50% fallen. Just like the cat being 50% alive and 50% dead.
Now the more reason why you should "give a shit" also is because, your ability to reason correctly depends on how you answer the question.
Do you also believe that an electron does not have a velocity until it is measured? Then don't even bother watching CNN until all those electrons in your TV get measured.
And if an electron does not have a velocity before measurement, then what are you trying to measure?
In Science, we are trying to understand reality. Classical mechanics worked but it was not accurate. Without questioning the present theories, there'll be no progress.
The rules have never changed. A theory is a theory. It only becomes a problem when some think their theory IS reality.
Electrons don't carry information. Information is a property of the mind not reality. And that's the part you don't get.
I just dropped a coin on my floor. Tell me what I got, Heads or Tails. Or tell me that I got 50% heads and 50% tails, and the moment I finally tell you the TRUE results, what I got automatically changes.
You see, there is a difference between TRUTH and KNOWLEDGE(information). What you know about my coin is just that, information, not reality.
BTW my post was not about the EPR paradox. But you see the EPR paradox used as a validation of the "copenhagen interpretation" simply gives you the presuppositions you put into it, which is no validation.
It's like saying, something happens in reality only the very moment you know it. Turn on CNN, and all what they are reporting on, just happened at that very moment you learnt of it, and if you did not hear it or know it, then it did not happen! Crack!
An electron has a specific velocity, whether any person knows it or not. The probability distribution of the electron's velocity (wavefunction) is not a property of nature as Heisenberg states, but a property of our minds (lack of complete information). When that value is finally measured, we have a single value rather than a wavefunction (complete information). It is our minds that have changed, not reality. Therefore it is crack to say the electron has many velocities (wavefunction) before measurement but as soon as it is measured, it collapses (wavefunction collapse) into a single value.
The strangest part of this is that this blatant confusion has not totally incapacitated the usefulness of quantum mechanics. Imagine what will happen if more physicists could get their ducks in line and properly understand why Quantum mechanics works. Einstein was on track. Others have followed him and been able to do great things, although clearly disagreeing with the "spooky action at a distance" "copenhagen" interpretation. Such as Schrödinger, Edward Thomson Jaynes, the father of "maximum entropy".
ET Jaynes wrote about the possibility of doing a thesis under Oppenheimer:
http://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/etj.html
Oppy is Oppenheimer.
Quantum mechanics works, there is no question about it. The question is why does it work. IMHO, the majority of physicists today are backing up the wrong tree -- the copenhagen interpretation. Further progress is, thus being hindered.
Corrected list
Linux entries are read off directly from my GNOME menu
==============
Web Browser
Windows: IE
Linux: Firefox Web Browser
Graphics Editing
Windows: Photoshop, Illustrator
Linux: GNU Image Manipulation Program, Inkscape Vector Illustrator
Movie Playback
Windows: Windows Media Player
Linux: Totem Movie Player
DVD Playback:
Windows: WinDVD, Windows Media Player
Linux: DVD Player, Totem Movie Player
Simple Text Editing
Windows: Notepad, Wordpad, TextPad
Linux: Text Editor
Instant Messaging
Windows: AOL Instant Messenger
Linux: Instant Messenger
Music Playback:
Windows: Windows Media Player, Itunes, WinAmp
Linux: Music Player
CD Ripping:
Windows: Itunes, Windows Media Player
Linux: Soundjuicer CD Ripper
CD Burning
Windows: Roxio Easy CD Creator, Nero
Linux: CD/DVD Creator
I hope Randell Mills is following this advice.
Is this the same version which they ported to GTK and used on their very cool 770 internet tablet?
I wish I had mod points to give the parent.
Additionally, I'm a scientist and a Christian as well and the fact that this debate (evolution vs creationism) is even going on in the first place is only evidence of the level of naivity out there.
Evolution and creationism are not mutually exclusive concepts. Creationist who claim otherwise are indirectly claiming that they know exactly what steps God took to form Man from 'dust' which is overly presumptuous since the bible does not go into details. Evolutionist who claim otherwise are equally naive because evolution presupposes that you have a certain environment is available with the right conditions and selective pressure for evolution to take place. However, this environment can not be formed by evolution itself. For example no evolutionist has ever dared to answer how the atom was formed.
The way I see it, it is possible for God to have created the world both living and non-living in a way that will manifest to us as evolution, without.
BTW, I wonder why those evolutionist who believe the book of Genesis is literal don't claim that Jesus Christ was a vine, or bread or rock. Maybe literature should be compulsory education.
PNAS is free after 6 months because of PLoS. The PLoS journals were formed because PLoS contacted other journals and demanded that they open-access at least after 6months. Most refused. A few like PNAS accepted.
Isn't it interesting that I posted a story to Slashdot about Open Source Science when all this started, which was promptly rejected.
OK. Freedom does not mean "lack of restraint to do my own thing". Freedom comes with responsibilities. Freedom does not mean rights (which the article author does not seem to figure). One man's freedom ends where another's freedom begins.
The term "Free Software" describes the software not the person using it. Are you trying to say that so long as I'm not free to take away the freedom of my customers, I'm not free at all?
If the company does what you want them to do, the software stops being free. Which means the users' freedoms will be violated. It is about the software remember.
So this company is free to use GPL'd code. They are also free to choose not to use GPL'd code. But they are not free to take away the freedoms of those who will ultimately use the sofware. If their business involves taking away peoples freedoms, then "Free software" is not for them. Get it?
By your reasoning, a pedophile can complain that their freedom to do what they like to do with children should not be limitted.