Which begs the question: Isn't BSD License more "free" than the GPL ? I always had problems with "enforced freedom". If it is enforced, how can it be freedom ? If it is truly free, people should be able to do anything they want, including using it on a commercial closed-source product.
I always released stuff under the BSD license, except for a few contributions I did to already existing software.
And yeah, I like the GPL, and am glad for it (Linux, WRT software, gcc etc). But I would never call it a tool of software "freedom".
Actually, I had some issues where I was forced to use Javascript on a website for no better reason than staying compliant with XHTML 1.1. I wanted to do something that was perfectly possible to do with only HTML 4 (no JS), but was not possible with XHTML 1.1 without either breaking the standard compliance, or using JS.
I'm not sure, but I think I wanted a link to open on a new window. But it is entirely possible it was something else.
Wordperfect managed to kill itself without need of outside assistance. I was a very satisfied Wordperfect used, and "Wordperfect for Windows" told me it was time to look for alternatives.
Lotus, well, talk about "no innovations". They were the market leader, so they just stopped innovating. The same thing people are accusing Microsoft of.
I don't agree with your stance of "if we can't be fair to everyone, then we should not be fair to anyone".
In any case, this has nothing to do with HOW Iran is using it, or for what. It is as simple as "selling sensitive technology to a country with have imposed a trade embargo on". Doesn't matter if they are using it to oppress their citizens, or to save kittens.
Last I checked, there wasn't a trade embargo on China.
Why do people still live there again? Seriously though, I wonder what the morale of people who live there is like? Do they all hate it but have nowhere else to go, or are they just culturally complacent with their rights being trampled on?
You know, I ask myself the same kind of question whenever I read about the newest civil and/or privacy rights abuse by the USA government. Why do people still live in the USA ? I see three possible answers for this case (applied to either China or USA):
1) They don't know any better 2) They don't have the means to move out 3) For them, the good outweighs the bad, making it still worth it
Couldn't the same be said for any country in the world ?
For once (and I'm not American), I find this response from the USA government very reasonable. They are not barring Nokia to do business with companies on the USA. They are not prosecuting them. They are just saying: "if you want to do business with ME, you have to play by my rules".
Even if all the other points raised here are valid (things the USA do etc), the response itself is a different matter.
Ok, my wife is almost deaf on her right ear, while having perfect hearing on the left one... humm, that explains a lot.
Re:Brazilian Ethanol [Re:Don't blame me]
on
The Great Ethanol Scam
·
· Score: 4, Informative
I will have to comment on this one, since I enjoyed it.
You are right on your account there. Here in Brazil, when we first started wide scale ethanol use, the first ethanol engines would have trouble pretty soon. Lets say a regular gas engine would require maintenance every 5000Km, an ethanol engine would require maintenance every 2000Km. These are, of course, some wide numbers I took from my head, but they do give a good picture of how things WERE.
These days, all engines here are designed to run a mix of gas and ethanol. They are called Flex (flexible fuel) engines, and you can mix gas and ethanol whatever way you want. Or run on whichever is cheaper at that given station. And engines give no problems at all. Technology evolved a lot in the past 20 years.
I will, however, agree that corn is not a viable solution for producing ethanol, although I can totally understand the reasons USA wants to use it. Corn simply doesn't produce the same quality (energy etc) of ethanol as you get from sugar cane. Then again, I'm not really sure how much of an option sugar cane is for the USA. I do believe there are other options that might be as good as sugar cane, or at least better than corn. Sugar beat maybe ?
One thing that worries me (by looking at the Wikipedia page), is the low Greenhouse-gas savings for corn. While sugar cane based ethanol is listed as having 87-96% savings, corn is listed as 10-20%.
If Skynet was a defense system, it is only logical to suppose it was programmed to defend itself against attacks. Self-aware or not, a least part of its decisions (specially at the beginning) ought to be based on its original code.
Wow. I'm really impressed. You reminds me of teacher I once had, that used to answer questions with "it is correct because it is written on the book".
Mistaken a theory for a fact is a very common mistake of people without the correct scientific background.
I saw someone else commenting that "time is only a measurement", which is not only stupid (confusing a thing with it measure is just stupid, sorry), but... well, can get much worst than stupid. Just because the way we measure time is a function of the earth rotation, it doesn't mean that time doesn't exist by itself. To measure is to compare, so it always take a frame of reference. And time can exist by itself, unless you believe a tree doesn't fall on the forest is no one is looking.
If we consider time as another dimension, it is very easy to assume that, just as matter was infinitely small before the big bang (and you can interchange matter and energy here, because, as far as I understand, before the big bang they were the same thing), we can also assume that time was infinitely compressed. We can't measure the infinite. As the universe is supposed to be infinite (-ly big), we can also have infinitely small. Using that model, you can't have a frame of reference, so it can't be measured.
Of course it is much easier for us to imagine (but not measure) something that is infinitely big. Picturing something that is infinitely small is much more difficult, which is why the big bang theory confused the crap out of a lot of people. To me, it boils down to the old saying that, if a rope has one end, you can be sure it will have a second one. So if we consider "infinitely big" as possible, we must consider "infinitely small" too.
If it was possible to have an outside observer looking at all time, from minus infinite to infinite, you could have the big bang happening at an arbitrary point of that time line, with the universe shifting from infinitely small on all its dimensions (including time), to infinitely big.
Since the way we measure time is relative to our own experience, there is no telling if time itself is not expanding too, along with the rest of the universe (not necessarily at the same rate).
Outstanding acting ? Did we lower the standards all that much ?
Seriously. I watched a part of 2 episodes, and then decided I owned it watching a full episode. And that is all I could stomach. I can't talk about the plot, since if it really was complex, I wouldn't be able to get it just by watching 1 full episode. But the acting sucked.
No, not weird, but it shows that you can run a business in a niche, but profitable market by flying under the acquisition or crush radars of other giants. If they are not worried about you, they are not going to acquire or crush you.
I agree. And that is also a very well know and studied marketing (as in "strategical planning") strategy.
My own company work along those lines (niche, profitable market), and we've grown about 70% during the last year, even with the whole economic crisis.
Actually, it is the ethernal problem of politicians thinking they can fix stupidity with new laws.
I hereby propose that all computers should have an IQ test as part of their POST. If the person fails at the test, the computer will present an unrecoverable error (Eg: "Keyboard not found, press any key to continue"), and refuse to boot.
If they don't accept incoming connections from the Internet, there is no reason for them to use a 9/8 address. They should just go for a 10/8, 192.168/16 or whatever.
Can you give me any references on that ? I barely remember seeing Andorians on TOS, except for a few episodes where lots of races were around. Well, then again, if Klingons appeared on 5 episodes, and Andorians appeared in 9, you could say they had a MUCH greater part.
The Andorians did show up a lot on Enterprise, but that is as far from TOS as you can get.
Which actually makes a lot more sense than any of the other "explanation", including that Enterprise storyline. Actually, plastic surgery would be enough here. No need for genetic engineering.
Last I've heard, the main problem with 3d storage units was the mechanical precision of the reading device.
I'm mean, we have had high precision laser beams for years now. We have also had second and third order optical polymers for years. The problem was just getting the 2 sets of laser beams to be moved and positioned precisely enough is a short enough amount of time to make this viable.
Then again, my information on this subject is years old, so I might be completely wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
Which begs the question: Isn't BSD License more "free" than the GPL ? I always had problems with "enforced freedom". If it is enforced, how can it be freedom ? If it is truly free, people should be able to do anything they want, including using it on a commercial closed-source product.
I always released stuff under the BSD license, except for a few contributions I did to already existing software.
And yeah, I like the GPL, and am glad for it (Linux, WRT software, gcc etc). But I would never call it a tool of software "freedom".
My microwave wears a tinfoil hat.
Actually, I had some issues where I was forced to use Javascript on a website for no better reason than staying compliant with XHTML 1.1. I wanted to do something that was perfectly possible to do with only HTML 4 (no JS), but was not possible with XHTML 1.1 without either breaking the standard compliance, or using JS.
I'm not sure, but I think I wanted a link to open on a new window. But it is entirely possible it was something else.
Definitively not. However, it is sure a phenomenon to be treasured in the annals of MARKETING (and business) history.
Lets give credit where credit is due.
I will have to agree with you on this one.
Wordperfect managed to kill itself without need of outside assistance. I was a very satisfied Wordperfect used, and "Wordperfect for Windows" told me it was time to look for alternatives.
Lotus, well, talk about "no innovations". They were the market leader, so they just stopped innovating. The same thing people are accusing Microsoft of.
Those are terrible examples, sorry.
Oh my fucking god!!! An alpha version of a software ... and it crashes .... and has bugs ....
What is the world coming to ?!?!?!?!
You should be thankful that it has enough features to be usable. Alpha traditionally means that the feature set is not even complete.
WHO TOLD YOU THAT ?!?!?!?!?
I don't agree with your stance of "if we can't be fair to everyone, then we should not be fair to anyone".
In any case, this has nothing to do with HOW Iran is using it, or for what. It is as simple as "selling sensitive technology to a country with have imposed a trade embargo on". Doesn't matter if they are using it to oppress their citizens, or to save kittens.
Last I checked, there wasn't a trade embargo on China.
You know, I ask myself the same kind of question whenever I read about the newest civil and/or privacy rights abuse by the USA government. Why do people still live in the USA ? I see three possible answers for this case (applied to either China or USA):
1) They don't know any better
2) They don't have the means to move out
3) For them, the good outweighs the bad, making it still worth it
Couldn't the same be said for any country in the world ?
For once (and I'm not American), I find this response from the USA government very reasonable. They are not barring Nokia to do business with companies on the USA. They are not prosecuting them. They are just saying: "if you want to do business with ME, you have to play by my rules".
Even if all the other points raised here are valid (things the USA do etc), the response itself is a different matter.
Ok, my wife is almost deaf on her right ear, while having perfect hearing on the left one ...
humm, that explains a lot.
I will have to comment on this one, since I enjoyed it.
You are right on your account there. Here in Brazil, when we first started wide scale ethanol use, the first ethanol engines would have trouble pretty soon. Lets say a regular gas engine would require maintenance every 5000Km, an ethanol engine would require maintenance every 2000Km. These are, of course, some wide numbers I took from my head, but they do give a good picture of how things WERE.
These days, all engines here are designed to run a mix of gas and ethanol. They are called Flex (flexible fuel) engines, and you can mix gas and ethanol whatever way you want. Or run on whichever is cheaper at that given station. And engines give no problems at all. Technology evolved a lot in the past 20 years.
I will, however, agree that corn is not a viable solution for producing ethanol, although I can totally understand the reasons USA wants to use it. Corn simply doesn't produce the same quality (energy etc) of ethanol as you get from sugar cane. Then again, I'm not really sure how much of an option sugar cane is for the USA. I do believe there are other options that might be as good as sugar cane, or at least better than corn. Sugar beat maybe ?
One thing that worries me (by looking at the Wikipedia page), is the low Greenhouse-gas savings for corn. While sugar cane based ethanol is listed as having 87-96% savings, corn is listed as 10-20%.
This sounds very like the Computer character on the old Paranoia RPG.
If Skynet was a defense system, it is only logical to suppose it was programmed to defend itself against attacks. Self-aware or not, a least part of its decisions (specially at the beginning) ought to be based on its original code.
Wow. I'm really impressed. You reminds me of teacher I once had, that used to answer questions with "it is correct because it is written on the book".
Mistaken a theory for a fact is a very common mistake of people without the correct scientific background.
I saw someone else commenting that "time is only a measurement", which is not only stupid (confusing a thing with it measure is just stupid, sorry), but ... well, can get much worst than stupid. Just because the way we measure time is a function of the earth rotation, it doesn't mean that time doesn't exist by itself. To measure is to compare, so it always take a frame of reference. And time can exist by itself, unless you believe a tree doesn't fall on the forest is no one is looking.
If we consider time as another dimension, it is very easy to assume that, just as matter was infinitely small before the big bang (and you can interchange matter and energy here, because, as far as I understand, before the big bang they were the same thing), we can also assume that time was infinitely compressed. We can't measure the infinite. As the universe is supposed to be infinite (-ly big), we can also have infinitely small. Using that model, you can't have a frame of reference, so it can't be measured.
Of course it is much easier for us to imagine (but not measure) something that is infinitely big. Picturing something that is infinitely small is much more difficult, which is why the big bang theory confused the crap out of a lot of people. To me, it boils down to the old saying that, if a rope has one end, you can be sure it will have a second one. So if we consider "infinitely big" as possible, we must consider "infinitely small" too.
If it was possible to have an outside observer looking at all time, from minus infinite to infinite, you could have the big bang happening at an arbitrary point of that time line, with the universe shifting from infinitely small on all its dimensions (including time), to infinitely big.
Since the way we measure time is relative to our own experience, there is no telling if time itself is not expanding too, along with the rest of the universe (not necessarily at the same rate).
Humm, I better stop now before my brain melts.
Outstanding acting ? Did we lower the standards all that much ?
Seriously. I watched a part of 2 episodes, and then decided I owned it watching a full episode. And that is all I could stomach. I can't talk about the plot, since if it really was complex, I wouldn't be able to get it just by watching 1 full episode. But the acting sucked.
I agree. And that is also a very well know and studied marketing (as in "strategical planning") strategy.
My own company work along those lines (niche, profitable market), and we've grown about 70% during the last year, even with the whole economic crisis.
Actually, it is the ethernal problem of politicians thinking they can fix stupidity with new laws.
I hereby propose that all computers should have an IQ test as part of their POST. If the person fails at the test, the computer will present an unrecoverable error (Eg: "Keyboard not found, press any key to continue"), and refuse to boot.
The best answer I've read so far regarding the "why" for this was simply: because we can.
There is a reason people pay so much for other people to make computers (sw and hw). It is so they don't need to worry about it.
I'm all for the Open Whatever project. Simply "because we can". It is like climbing a mountain.
And hey, who knows what we will see on the other side once we reach the summit.
If they don't accept incoming connections from the Internet, there is no reason for them to use a 9/8 address. They should just go for a 10/8, 192.168/16 or whatever.
... or Uwe Boll can evolve.
Can you give me any references on that ? I barely remember seeing Andorians on TOS, except for a few episodes where lots of races were around. Well, then again, if Klingons appeared on 5 episodes, and Andorians appeared in 9, you could say they had a MUCH greater part.
The Andorians did show up a lot on Enterprise, but that is as far from TOS as you can get.
Which actually makes a lot more sense than any of the other "explanation", including that Enterprise storyline.
Actually, plastic surgery would be enough here. No need for genetic engineering.
IBM used to use 9.0.0.0/8 address for their internal network. Computers that didn't have access to the internet or anything.
This was back in 1995, so I can't guarantee it is still true, but it is likely.
Last I've heard, the main problem with 3d storage units was the mechanical precision of the reading device.
I'm mean, we have had high precision laser beams for years now. We have also had second and third order optical polymers for years. The problem was just getting the 2 sets of laser beams to be moved and positioned precisely enough is a short enough amount of time to make this viable.
Then again, my information on this subject is years old, so I might be completely wrong.