So, basically, you are somehow getting more energy out of the system than you put in. This is basically the definition of a perpetual motion machine.
Not necessarily, because both are affected by other bodies. You could position the tug slightly closer or farther from the sun than the rock, and the difference in gravitational force would cause them to tend to move apart. (The center of gravity of the tug+rock system would accelerate as appropriate for its distance from the sun, which would be slightly different than the distance of the rock alone.)
If they were in flat space outside the solar system, I would agree with you.
And assuming that it is not already spinning so fast that a controlled landing is impossible. That seems like a bigger problem.
I suspect that pinwheeling is not as big a deal as you think. Even if your thrust if off-center and starts the thing spinning, it is still going to exert a force accelerating the rock. Further thrust can be in timed spurts synchronized with the rotation. It is hard to imagine that these direct thrusts (even in small spurts) would have less effect than the gravity tractor.
One piece of this was that simple commands had different names and different options depending on the variety of UNIX. I am talking things like lp vs. lpr, options for ps, and so on. Also, some things were hidden in really weird places (X on Sun is/was under an "openwin" directory, I think). Writing cross-platform scripts is a pain when you first have to test for the OS and then redefine command names, options, and paths accordingly.
In theory, under the LSB you always know where commands and libraries are.
One thing I would find it hard to live without is the ability to (re)define commands.
No easy way to do scientific notation? I defined a simple command so \scinot{10.6}{-6} does what you would expect. No dedicated "degrees" symbol? I defined one.
It's my personal preference (not necessarily that of anyone else), but I would never switch to a front end that took away my ability to create tools to make my life easier.
For the record, the definition is
\newcommand{\scinot}[2]{\ensuremath{#1 \times 10^{#2}}}
Sounds like the NYT article is saying that reconnection events accelerate the particles, which presumably then cause the aurora. Is this what they are saying?
I am not sure that the observation that reconnection is not always involved leads to the conclusion that reconnection is not involved most of the time. (I don't know enough to have an opinion.) Many effects are robust in that they can be triggered in multiple ways. The aurora could be one such.
On the other hand, well, just look at all the shit we've been lied to about. Is it plausible that the cell phone industry went to market with products whose impacts weren't fully researched with consequences they themselves never dreamed of?
While you aren't wrong, you have to recognize that this sentence works just as well if you replace "cell phone" with "breakfast cereal" or "gym sock".
Before you talk about a cover up, you need to find a piece of evidence that shows there is actually a risk in the first place. The tobacco companies fought against mounds of data showing that cigarettes are dangerous, but in this case there is no mound of evidence that is being denied.
If medically and statistically valid studies show an elevated cancer risk of cell phone use, the cell phone companies will certainly lie about it. So what? They aren't the only source of information in the world.
You are right that there are two issues: One is revealing the SVRX code in opensolaris (confidentiality) and the other is whether third parties can continue to distribute the code (copyright).
Probably Sun's contract is like IBM's contract, which requires that things remain confidential as long as they aren't made public by someone else. The issue still arises of whether anything is still secret in any sense. The last Solaris - SVRX connection appears to be 30 years ago! If that is right, Novell would have a major task to prove that any particular piece of code came from the old SVR4.0 codebase and was still secret.
The main thing Novell wanted was a judgment saying that they owned the copyrights. They didn't want any cloud over their Linux offerings. That was decided long ago.
Other than that, Novell didn't want this to drag on. Should they have spent months of time and millions of dollars on lawyers dragging Sun into this? At most they would have been awarded a few million more dollars, which they probably will never get anyway.
Remember that Novell dropped a bunch of claims they could have won easily just to make the trial simpler and shorter. I am not a judge (duh), but I would say the ruling was engineered to make sure that SCO would be sure to lose more money if they appeal. Stopping SCO from appealing is worth more than a few million to Novell.
Novell unambiguously owns the copyright to SVRX Unix as a whole. They just as clearly do not own copyright to each line of code individually. Some undetermined amount of it is covered under copyrights that expired or were not registered properly or whatever. If Novell wanted to beat Sun up over opening solaris, they would have to start doing intense historical investigations of every single line of code to determine whether is covered under a valid copyright or whether it had entered the public domain or was not copyrightable expression in the first place.
Neither Novell or Sun would win anything in this sort of warfare. They might argue terms, like more money or even not allowing Sun to update opensolaris, but an extended lawsuit would not be in anyone's interests.
Judge Kimball noted in this ruling that all of the evidence SCO submitted against IBM corresponds to code that SCO doesn't own. When/if the IBM case starts up again (not sure how this works with the bankruptcy) it is probably all over except for determining how much money SCO owes IBM.
It seemed that the judge made it quite clear that he was tilting the ruling in SCO's favor. He explained precisely why he was legally compelled to determine the dollar amount in a way that was favorable to Novell (agency, burden of proof, blah blah blah). But then he turned around and pulled out a dollar value that was generous to SCO. It was practically a roadmap to Novell showing how they could get millions more if they appealed (not that they are likely to receive a penny anyway). I read it that he was sending a message to SCO that if they appealed they would be most likely to lose significantly more money.
"First sale doctrine...allows the purchaser to transfer (i.e., sell or give away) a particular lawfully made copy of the copyrighted work without permission once it has been obtained."
"no real motive for Nina to try to frame him by fleeing to Russia without her kids."
Except that several stories said that the children were in fact taken to Russia. So Nina would have fled to Russia and later reunited with her children. That is at least vaguely plausible, although the combination of physical evidence and Hans's strange actions point overwhelmingly to his guilt.
Carefully collected data has a value that outlasts all but the most fundamental and far-reaching theory. Conceptual frameworks can evolve and adapt, but they remain anchored by observations.
This is not obvious because of the way science history is taught. We learn about the geniuses and a few of the classic blunders. We don't spend much time on the work that was merely not great. Consider the development of quantum mechanics and atomic structure. There were accurate atomic spectra, correct mathematical descriptions of the line spacing, and innumerable incorrect theories about the mechanism before there was a correct description. The spectral observations eventually led to a usable theory, even though they may have been used on the way to support ideas that turned out to be bunk.
No contradiction. The current policy is that you can fly without an ID with an additional search. The point is that the policy hasn't changed for anyone willing to claim they lost their ID (which presumably terrorists are willing to do) -- they can fly just as easily under the old policy as the new one. The policy has effectively changed only for those who object to being required to furnish ID to travel around inside the US.
I am not sure the answers even matter. In some cases, they want to see your emotional reaction to being asked innocuous factual questions. Hesitation and stress are indications that something is not above board.
Especially when you consider a fact which is mentioned in the article: Innocent people may spend longer in jail. Admitting the crime and saying you're sorry gets you paroled faster. Steadfastly proclaiming your innocence can keep you in jail.
Not according to me. I've seen the data on hypothermia presented. It is valuable information. The presenter made the point that using the data to save lives does more to honor those who were tortured to death to obtain it than hiding it would.
I don't think that it's accurate to say that most people do not have the ability to think coherently. I think that they can, but in most cases they just don't bother.
There are many reasons for this. Some people are not interested in applying their abilities outside of a narrow range of interests. I could name examples from the web of people recognized as brilliant and insightful who are petulant, stubborn, and dumb as rocks as soon as the discussion moves outside of the main topic.
In some cases, the web moves too fast. Maybe I would like to think for a day or two about my reply here -- that would certainly improve the quality of it. But if I don't get it up fast, no one will read it.
Perhaps another point is that we are working with a medium that allows the lazy and the loud to dominate. If you think the rampant fanboy-ism on/. is bad, read a popular political site for a few minutes.
While you have a point, it is a silly one. Wouldn't the difference like 1 part in 10^22? Human intuition is developed from watching objects fall with significant air resistance.
I don't think that is the way that "leaky abstractions" is generally used. Leaky abstractions occur when you need to understand the underlying technology to predict how something will act.
One example I know is in Python.
>>> a=[[5]]
>>> b=a
>>> a[0][0]=3
>>> b
[[3]]
Should changing one variable also change another? It makes sense if you think of a Python list as linked list of pointers. (It acts that way -- I know nothing about the internals of Python.) The behavior is very mysterious at face value.
"Perhaps you can teach all the students how to use Excel to analyze experimental data,"
I seem to recall from the MSOOXML debacle that some of the numerical routines in Excel are based on incorrect definitions. I don't think I would suggest it for analysis of experimental data without some testing of the routines to be used.
Slashdot Mirror
Not necessarily, because both are affected by other bodies. You could position the tug slightly closer or farther from the sun than the rock, and the difference in gravitational force would cause them to tend to move apart. (The center of gravity of the tug+rock system would accelerate as appropriate for its distance from the sun, which would be slightly different than the distance of the rock alone.)
If they were in flat space outside the solar system, I would agree with you.
And assuming that it is not already spinning so fast that a controlled landing is impossible. That seems like a bigger problem. I suspect that pinwheeling is not as big a deal as you think. Even if your thrust if off-center and starts the thing spinning, it is still going to exert a force accelerating the rock. Further thrust can be in timed spurts synchronized with the rotation. It is hard to imagine that these direct thrusts (even in small spurts) would have less effect than the gravity tractor.
One piece of this was that simple commands had different names and different options depending on the variety of UNIX. I am talking things like lp vs. lpr, options for ps, and so on. Also, some things were hidden in really weird places (X on Sun is/was under an "openwin" directory, I think). Writing cross-platform scripts is a pain when you first have to test for the OS and then redefine command names, options, and paths accordingly. In theory, under the LSB you always know where commands and libraries are.
At least they look different from all the cookie-cutter powerpoint presentations.
No easy way to do scientific notation? I defined a simple command so \scinot{10.6}{-6} does what you would expect. No dedicated "degrees" symbol? I defined one.
It's my personal preference (not necessarily that of anyone else), but I would never switch to a front end that took away my ability to create tools to make my life easier.
For the record, the definition is
\newcommand{\scinot}[2]{\ensuremath{#1 \times 10^{#2}}}
I am not sure that the observation that reconnection is not always involved leads to the conclusion that reconnection is not involved most of the time. (I don't know enough to have an opinion.) Many effects are robust in that they can be triggered in multiple ways. The aurora could be one such.
While you aren't wrong, you have to recognize that this sentence works just as well if you replace "cell phone" with "breakfast cereal" or "gym sock".
Before you talk about a cover up, you need to find a piece of evidence that shows there is actually a risk in the first place. The tobacco companies fought against mounds of data showing that cigarettes are dangerous, but in this case there is no mound of evidence that is being denied.
If medically and statistically valid studies show an elevated cancer risk of cell phone use, the cell phone companies will certainly lie about it. So what? They aren't the only source of information in the world.
You are right that there are two issues: One is revealing the SVRX code in opensolaris (confidentiality) and the other is whether third parties can continue to distribute the code (copyright). Probably Sun's contract is like IBM's contract, which requires that things remain confidential as long as they aren't made public by someone else. The issue still arises of whether anything is still secret in any sense. The last Solaris - SVRX connection appears to be 30 years ago! If that is right, Novell would have a major task to prove that any particular piece of code came from the old SVR4.0 codebase and was still secret.
Other than that, Novell didn't want this to drag on. Should they have spent months of time and millions of dollars on lawyers dragging Sun into this? At most they would have been awarded a few million more dollars, which they probably will never get anyway.
Remember that Novell dropped a bunch of claims they could have won easily just to make the trial simpler and shorter. I am not a judge (duh), but I would say the ruling was engineered to make sure that SCO would be sure to lose more money if they appeal. Stopping SCO from appealing is worth more than a few million to Novell.
Novell unambiguously owns the copyright to SVRX Unix as a whole. They just as clearly do not own copyright to each line of code individually. Some undetermined amount of it is covered under copyrights that expired or were not registered properly or whatever. If Novell wanted to beat Sun up over opening solaris, they would have to start doing intense historical investigations of every single line of code to determine whether is covered under a valid copyright or whether it had entered the public domain or was not copyrightable expression in the first place.
Neither Novell or Sun would win anything in this sort of warfare. They might argue terms, like more money or even not allowing Sun to update opensolaris, but an extended lawsuit would not be in anyone's interests.
Judge Kimball noted in this ruling that all of the evidence SCO submitted against IBM corresponds to code that SCO doesn't own. When/if the IBM case starts up again (not sure how this works with the bankruptcy) it is probably all over except for determining how much money SCO owes IBM.
It seemed that the judge made it quite clear that he was tilting the ruling in SCO's favor. He explained precisely why he was legally compelled to determine the dollar amount in a way that was favorable to Novell (agency, burden of proof, blah blah blah). But then he turned around and pulled out a dollar value that was generous to SCO. It was practically a roadmap to Novell showing how they could get millions more if they appealed (not that they are likely to receive a penny anyway). I read it that he was sending a message to SCO that if they appealed they would be most likely to lose significantly more money.
From guess where.
IOW, what in the world are you talking about?
Except that several stories said that the children were in fact taken to Russia. So Nina would have fled to Russia and later reunited with her children. That is at least vaguely plausible, although the combination of physical evidence and Hans's strange actions point overwhelmingly to his guilt.
This is not obvious because of the way science history is taught. We learn about the geniuses and a few of the classic blunders. We don't spend much time on the work that was merely not great. Consider the development of quantum mechanics and atomic structure. There were accurate atomic spectra, correct mathematical descriptions of the line spacing, and innumerable incorrect theories about the mechanism before there was a correct description. The spectral observations eventually led to a usable theory, even though they may have been used on the way to support ideas that turned out to be bunk.
No contradiction. The current policy is that you can fly without an ID with an additional search. The point is that the policy hasn't changed for anyone willing to claim they lost their ID (which presumably terrorists are willing to do) -- they can fly just as easily under the old policy as the new one. The policy has effectively changed only for those who object to being required to furnish ID to travel around inside the US.
I am not sure the answers even matter. In some cases, they want to see your emotional reaction to being asked innocuous factual questions. Hesitation and stress are indications that something is not above board.
Or if he was running for reelection and wanted a little extra publicity about how he put away a 100% definitely guilty murderer.
Especially when you consider a fact which is mentioned in the article: Innocent people may spend longer in jail. Admitting the crime and saying you're sorry gets you paroled faster. Steadfastly proclaiming your innocence can keep you in jail.
It is simple to say, "He did a lot of weird stuff, he must have done it." That's what most people would do. It boils down to Being different is wrong.
It is hard to consider realistically the boundary between unusual and inexplicable and the boundary between reasonable doubt and conceivable doubt.
Not according to me. I've seen the data on hypothermia presented. It is valuable information. The presenter made the point that using the data to save lives does more to honor those who were tortured to death to obtain it than hiding it would.
There are many reasons for this. Some people are not interested in applying their abilities outside of a narrow range of interests. I could name examples from the web of people recognized as brilliant and insightful who are petulant, stubborn, and dumb as rocks as soon as the discussion moves outside of the main topic.
In some cases, the web moves too fast. Maybe I would like to think for a day or two about my reply here -- that would certainly improve the quality of it. But if I don't get it up fast, no one will read it.
Perhaps another point is that we are working with a medium that allows the lazy and the loud to dominate. If you think the rampant fanboy-ism on /. is bad, read a popular political site for a few minutes.
While you have a point, it is a silly one. Wouldn't the difference like 1 part in 10^22? Human intuition is developed from watching objects fall with significant air resistance.
One example I know is in Python.
>>> a=[[5]]
>>> b=a
>>> a[0][0]=3
>>> b
[[3]]
Should changing one variable also change another? It makes sense if you think of a Python list as linked list of pointers. (It acts that way -- I know nothing about the internals of Python.) The behavior is very mysterious at face value.
I seem to recall from the MSOOXML debacle that some of the numerical routines in Excel are based on incorrect definitions. I don't think I would suggest it for analysis of experimental data without some testing of the routines to be used.