On re-reading my post, I realize now that it sounds very sarcastic. That wasn't my point. I appreciate that you took the time to post at all, and I'm sorry that someone didn't agree with you and modded you down for being off-topic.
My comment about getting an account refers to the fact that you are posting as an AC, and that AC's don't get to be moderators. If you already have an account, can't mod. today, and are choosing to post as an AC, then mea culpa.
-- Len
P.S. I hope you get to read this before the topic falls off the front page.
It's a shame that some people are offended when others present facts that refute the falacy that they believe in. I am beginning to think that the annonymous nature of moderation on slashdot is becomming more cowardly than those who post as AC's.
If anyone were to try to post a story about this underground fire in China, it would surely never make it on to the board as 'News for Nerds,' but it would definately fall under 'Stuff that Matters' when engaging in discourse about the future of our civilization and current environmental policies.
What a shame that this silent censorship can be fostered within a system designed to prevent just such a thing.
I've grown-up in the middle of Pennsylvania's soft coal country, and have been surrounded my whole life by HUGE piles of coal ash and red dog. This stuff is quite possibly the worst environmental hazard that I've ever seen. The seepage from this crap turns green vibrant rivers and streams into smelly, baren, acidic, yellow-orange eyesores. Another problem is that the boney piles (waste coal and ash) tend to spontaneously combust and smolder for years.
Unfortunately, as with many problems that we face, ignorance is pervasive and the solution is not politically correct. In this area, coal means jobs, and jobs mean political prosperity. A coal fired power plant needs a constant supply, nuclear requires an occassional (~7 years) refueling.
Raise your hand if you know how much radiation leaked out of Three Mile Island. The answer is none! The US Nuclear industry has been heavily regulated with redundant safeguards since the early 50's so this accident was safely contained. It's a shame for California that the anti-nuke activists could prey on the ignorance of the general public to make "Three Mile Island" synonymous with "Automatic Death."
Yes, I know that Chyrnoble (however you spell it) was a real disaster, but that was due to poor design and lack of adequate safeguards. In short, when properly implemented, nuclear is a much cleaner and safer form of energy than coal or any other fossil fuel.
Yes, without this clause, Apple could claim ignorance about modifications, but it wouldn't extract them from litigation. Also, with the clause, they can provide the special purpose license that you alluded to, because they would be informed about the use of their software for purposes outside the scope of the design intent.
I believe that most legal contracts are a bit idealistic, in that the limits of about 50% of the clauses will never be tested and don't apply to 95% of the people engaged by them. These clauses are still there just in case.
Maybe the air control scenario was ill-chosen. I may not be anywhere near the right track in my interpretation of the existence of the clause.
I've been a long time Apple follower/sufferer, and one thing that I can tell you from their history, is that Apple usually has the end-user's overall experience in mind when it releases fixes. Many times, they have either retracted fixes or had rapid re-writes of fixes for various OS flaws, when other problems have been discovered. Many times, this commercial software company has patched problems as quickly as any open-source developer. The one thing that has consistently present in most of their fixes is that the patches have been released under their control. I can count on one hand the number of third party patches to their systems. This clause may have more to do with their brand management; Apple supplies the fix to people's problems with Apple's products.
You can't avoid the brand management issue with this license beacuse "Apple" is in the title. As this license is written, you could notify Apple of your modification, they *could* determine that your modifications are not in their best interest, and they could issue an alternative license for your works which would grant greater freedom to your work, in return for lesser liability for their source, for this particular instance.
This situation would be somewhat similar to the dual licensing of Ghostscript under the Alladin license for new versions and the GPL for depreciated versions.
I read this clause as an attempt by Apple to maintain some responsibility for their code. In light of the DMCA and other "our software isn't broken, it's your fault" legal stances of most commercial software companies, we should applaud those that stand behind their software.
I can hear the frustrated keyboard banging now. "But I should have a right to my changes" you say. Look at the liability that a corporate entity encounters with free licenses. Let's say for example that some small company took Darwin, and modified it in some way to become the base of an air traffic control system. Let's also say that such a system hosed up a major hub airport, and a multiple plane collision occurred.
Would Apple be liable because their software was used? If said modifications on their base were the root cause, and they had no idea that such changes were made, they shouldn't be held liable. Almost all of the lawyers that I know would tend to follow blame until they reach the deepest pockets.
By requiring return notification, they can limit their liability, and take responsibility when appropriate.
I don't see emacs or the gimp becoming life-or-death software, so something like the GPL does make sense. If I were Linus, though, I would be extemely worried as Linux creeps into more and more embedded applications.
My 2 cents,
-- Len
Tesla, a case study or "Why geeks get the shaft"
on
100 Years of Radio
·
· Score: 1
We should all take a lesson from Nikolai Tesla, because he was a prominent geek in his day. Yes another poster bemoaned people like me who would assert that Edison was a bastard, but it's true! Well I don't know about the bastard part, but he acted like one.
Nobody talks anymore about what this man did, because he wasn't a blatant opportunist. Marconi was credited with radio because he made it an event. Marconi was a showman first, inventor second. Edison, Bill G. and Steve J. are from the same mold, exploiting the inventions of others as their own.
In 100 years, will Bill Gates be credited with inventing what then will be referred to as a computer? How about Jobs, for "inventing" the iMac? More startling, will Al Gore be heralded as the father of the internet? Doubtful, but all of these 'events' have made more splashes in the mainstream media than Linux, xBSD, RMS, ESR, K&R or anyone else who shook the geek universe.
I just had a conversation earlier this week with a high school science teacher about the problem of dislodging preconceived notions from her students' heads. It's aweful that our culture and education system nurtures them still. We've moved beyond "the world is flat" and the "moon is made of bleu cheese", but poisoned thought is all around us.
In our discussion, we talked about how some of her student's had thought that when water boils, the bubbles are made of air that was trapped in the water. This of course is incorrect, but no more incorrect than her notion that the bubbles were atomic hydrogen gas and oxygen gas being released by the water breaking appart into components. The bubbles are water vapor, chemically the same as the water that they emerge from.
My point in this is that we are all poisoned by other's suggestions and our own misconceptions about the certainty and 'science' in our world. The poster asserting that volcanoes spew CFC's is just as incorrect as superposed's assertion that CFC's are the main cause of ozone depletion.
Back in 1990, I had lunch with a NASA scientist who was working on figuring out what the root cause of the newly (less than 10 years old) discovered ozone hole. Being told in school at the time that the cause was definitely CFC's and the evils of hairspray, freon (a damn fine refrigerant and parts cleaning solvent), and styrafoam, I regurgetated what I was taught, thinking that this would hold up my end of the conversation.
The scientist was distressed. He did confirm that CFC's could break down ozone, but that CFC's positively were NOT involved with the creation or enlargement of the hole! When a villian is created, it is damn near impossible to convince a mob that he is not evil.
CFC's only break down ozone under very specific conditions. A temperature below -90 C is required for the reaction. This low temperature can be found at the altitude that the ionosphere is, but CFC's are too heavy to ever reach that altitude. Even more problematic for the CFC scenario to work is the fact that that even if some amazing updraft could lift them up to the right altitude, they would breakdown before reaching the ozone that they are responsible for attacking.
After asaulting preconceived notions and bad theories though, I would be remiss if I didn't offer my own theory (flamesuit on) about our ozone hole. As a disclaimer, I have no data to back this up, so this is only being advanced as my own preconceived notion.
I think that solar flares, or at least solar winds, are responsible for our nifty hole. We are constantly bombarded by ionized radiation from the sun. This ozone layer protects us (biological entities) from this constant stream. Ionized matter has a polarity (Millikan oil drop), as does our earth (magnetic poles). The relationship between electric charge and magnetic fields is well understood. My notion is that the ozone layer exists in part because of the solar winds, and that the hole exists because of the magnetic polarity of the earth.
Many people have asked if the hole was always there, but we were unable to detect it until recently. Think about it, nobody knew it was there until somebody went and looked for it.
Oh my God you're a genius! This post concretely states what I've been seeing in my current company, my previous company, and my wife's company. I couldn't have put it any better, except to add the spin that this is indeed a universal problem of screwed-up management, not just in software development. Oh, and one addition, that many managers are given bonuses based on goals that are often in conflict with the goals of the people that they manage, causing disinterest in the concerns (or opinions) of those that are under them.
Empty promises, lack of knowledge, and inability to communicate are the rule of incompetent managers in every industry, on every continent of the globe. My only question is how can this problem be fixed? As in Dilbert, the people who would be tasked with fixing problems like these are powerless but cluefull, or cluless and powerful.
btw. the hot non-solid state laser wavelength numbers are 193nm and 157nm. Can not remember the laser types, sorry.
Well, one of those is CO2, but I'm not sure which wavelength it corresponds to. CO2 Lasers are quite hot, and are typically used in industrial cutting and welding LASER robots. When focused correctly, these beams heat most non-reflective solid materials to extreme temperatures. One material that this LASER wavelength does have problems with (depending on your perspective) is Aluminum, which melts under the beam, but is highly reflective in it's molten state. This reflectivity tends to spread the beam, and reflect it back to its source. In a device like a DVD or CD reader, this wouldn't be a problem (aside from destroying the media). In most industrial cases, the reflection causes extremely premature wear of the lenses, sometimes causing the lense to explode!
Yes, I know that industrial lasers are in the 1-5 kW range typically while your typical CD/DVD is in the 3-10 mW range, but the industrial lasers are built to typically handle that much power.
-- Len
P.S. My use of LASER in all caps is because it was the Acronym that I learned of first; Light Amplified by Simulated Emission of Radiation. Today, laser and radar have become words on their own, jetissoning the original acronyms.
Why is it that only after the fact, when it became apparent that Gore was going to lose, did these thousands of people turn up, hell-bent on telling the world that they screwed it up? If they're so certain, why didn't they address the problem at the appropriate time, when they were in the polling location casting their vote? Why is the system unfair now, after the fact, when all the mechanisms were in place at the appropriate time to address their confusion? You can't change the rules after the game has been played - remember the ex post facto clause in the Constitution?
I asked myself why there why there were so many idiots who claimed that they voted wrong, and then didn't figure this out until they got home. It hit me today when I was browsing through the AP stories that I missed (I got a long weekend for Veterans day).
They use this ballot system at my precinct, and a confused voter could have voted for McReynolds, *NOT* Buchanan.
In this type of machine, you insert your card above the ballotting book. The card has to be seated at the bottom, and then two pins are inserted through a tear-off stub section at the top of the card.
When I put my ballot in the machine, it wasn't seated the whole way down into the slot, and I had to force it so that the alignment pins at the top would get their tight fit. There is no retainer or any other device to make sure that you have the card inserted correctly. Because of this, at worst, a voter could have their ballot sitting too high in the slot, and would be actually casting votes for the person listed below their actual choice.
For this instance, a vote for Bush would go to Buchanon, Buchanon would go to Gore, Gore would go to McReynolds. The results don't show this happening, as McReynolds doesn't have that many.
What may explain the double punches, besides confusion ("Where am I? How did I get here?"), is the fact that once a ballot is punched, there is no way of taking back the selection. Because you can't see the paper being punched (its under a plexiglass guide/shield), some voters may think that it would record the last selection that they made, resetting their vote. It doesn't.
The point of this type of law is to discourage voter fraud. If you move in the blackout period, you can still vote in your old precinct. Like many crimes, the penalties are severe enough to make sane people not do wrong things. Unfortunately, where power lies also lies corruption, and vote tampering is an unfortunate reality in many localities.
There really is no difference between what happened in Chicago in the 1960's and what happened this year in Yugoslavia. Fixing elections by voting with "unused" voter registrations is just plain wrong. I don't mean to imply that you were planning to vote more than once, but this law is to discourage people from voting twice.
In the 1996 election, in California, a large number of absentee ballots were submitted from a nursing home that had many incapacitated elderly citizens. The director of this particular institution was curious about the "Election Party" on the calendar where all of the invalid patients were ushered down to the cafeteria to vote by absente ballot. Many of these poor people were unable to speak, walk, or eat by themselves. Upon further investigation, he found that all ballots there (about 80) were voted as the same straight party ticket, all signed in the patient's name, with the same handwriting of the organizing therapist. This episode had solved his mystery of how this one employee was always invited to high-roller fundraisers for this particular party (she could guarantee at least 80 votes every time).
I won't mention the particular party, but will offer that they don't mind using cigarettes as currency.
He made some mistakes but truthfully, the majority of the people who are disgusted with his behavior are hardcore republicans so he doesn't really care because those people were already polarized against him.
I actually doubt that. I know that in my little microcosm, most of the people who are disgusted with his behavior are/were mostly Democrats. I confess that I used to be an almost yellow dog democrat until about the middle of the impeachment trial, when I simply couldn't take it anymore. I'm not alone, my entire family (all lifelong democrats) feel the same way, and are planning to change registration after this current election. My priest, also a lifelong democrat, was moved to change his registration to independent, because of his disgust for the man.
I think that there are several reasons for this. My family lives in a small mining town in western Pennsylvania (yes, in a swing state). The mines don't exist anymore, but their legacy voting habits do. My old precinct had about 93% registered democrats. Registering and voting the straight ticket is what everybody just does here. Even though the party is in complete control locally, almost nobody in this area agrees with the far left leaning of the party propper. We all hunt and own guns (many guns). We feel that family bonds are important (Quayle's Family Values). Most of us favor defense spending over social programs. We elected a Pro-Life democrat governor several years ago, who was not allowed to speak at the national convention in 1996 because of his stance on this particular issue.
By and large, we are appalled at the behavior that our party tolerates in Washington (Bill, Teddy, Barney, etc.), still, most of us remain blindly loyal to this party which was responsible for the mining jobs (and utter destruction of our local environment) of our parents and grandparents. This year, many of us have finally woken up and caused a problem for Al. Holywood is trying to come to his rescue here, but it seems to be backfiring.
In contrast, when I talk to my wife's grandparents, lifelong republicans, they don't understand why everyone is so upset about Bill Clinton. I think that they are more forgiving as they have no association with him. I remember once when Sen. Packwood was brought up in their company, and they reacted much the same as I do to Clinton, with disgust because a member of their party had done something to bring shame on the party as a whole.
Very good response. My previous post was primarily a rant, and I appreciate your illumination of the opportunity cost (O.K. it slipped my mind).
I guess that I'm a libertarian first and a conservative second. I feel disheartened when I read GAO or OMB studies that show that only about $.20 of every dollar spent by the government actually reaches where it was supposed to go. I know that this figure was generated through an investigation of Federal welfare programs (if you include the HUD, it gets worse). And yes, I would even offer that I think even less goes to the right place in defense, but at least there is an industry (work, jobs, and contribution to the GNP) associated with defense.
I'm frustrated with the large amounts of tax that I have to pay, and I'm not even in the top 25%. As a newly married, childless taxpayer, I saw my taxes as a percentage of my salary increase by 35% last year! In the same year, my raise was only 4%. I see no reason why the federal government couldn't streamline operations and do more with less.
I don't really believe that there is any surplus. As far as I'm concerned, it's an accounting slight of hand. Yes, they took in more money than they have budgeted to pay out, but that includes Social Security's Fraud Fund, which is supposed to be kept separate (it's not). The buzz from the hill is that both the Senate and House are planning to wipe out that surplus by the end of the year by going on a spree (Sen. McCain said this after the third debate),
As far as I'm concerned, there is no better way to keep a congressional opportunity from costing us anything, than keeping the excess money away from Washington in the first place.
--snip-- If you punish people for achieving or
succeeding in life (whether in material gain or other) then people will stop wanting to achieve or suceed. If you FORCE
people to do things - you take away any spirit of voluteering or giving of one's self.
Money redistribution by a heavy handed government shouldn't be the mechanism of social change. The lack of volunteerism and community civic duty being considered for this role does truly trouble me.
My wife and myself are engineers. We donate about 40 hours a week (each) to various youth programs, although we have no children of our own. Many of the kids that we work with are underprivelidged, some even neglected by their parents who are more concerned with the nightly TV line-up than the lives of their kids. By donating our time, and some direct financial support, we often can accomplish more good work than any program funded by tax based wealth redistribution.
No, we don't provide food or shelter to any of these kids, but we do encourage them to make better lives for themselves and plan for their lives after high school. It's disheartening how many of our youth don't even look beyond their high school lives, at either higher education or a life vocation untill it's too late.
I can't understand how this community full of geeks and nerds refuses to recognize basic economic principles. It burns me up when I hear Algore say "How will we pay for these tax cuts?" and people nod their heads in agreement
First of all, a tax cut can't be squandered, because it is just the government taking less money from your pocket. In this case, having the government taking only what it needs, causes it to spend it's money (our money) more wisely, quite the opposite of squandering.
Second, there is no need to pay for a tax cut, as it doesn't cost anything! It is not a material posession, nor capital, nor labor or any other economic unit of value. It is a "rent" decrease for overcharged "tennants", nothing more or less.
You never hear ISP's saying that they found some way to pay for your reduced cost unlimited dial-up accounts, yet the fees get lower all the time (O.K. the free ones use advertizing, an "innovation" to control costs). In business, competition drives costs down, and improves efficiancy. In government, tax cuts are a mechanism to do the same.
A student of History would focus your attention on a period of only eighty years ago, in a little country called Germany. A well meaning and benevolent government instated after the first World War used a simple equation:
Guns = War = Bad
And so they removed the right to bear arms from the German populace. Warm fuzzy feelings abounded because people don't need guns, only the army needs them.
A few years later, a suave new leader swept into power. Few opposed him, how could they, he controlled the army. A strict vegetarian, this new leader valued animal life above human. Little wonder the extermination camps he built to rid society of the undesireables. The Jews of the hollocaust, the homosexuals, the Roman Catholics that refused to conform to this leader's new pagan religion based on Wagner operas, all had no way to defend themselves when they were taken away. They did not have the freedom to speak or be heard. They did not have the right to privacy in their own homes.
When you remove the right of self-defense, all others follow. Let me remind you that all types of guns that we know today, the ones you argue against, existed back then as well. Only the materials of construction are different.
Most people who deride the Mac either have not used one, or refuse to try one. Which are you?
And on Nader, do you know what his campaign is about? Enough people care about his run to get moderated to the top of every election story. Oh wait, that might be added to that Stupid Patent Winner Patent. Nevermind.
I have lots of courage to vote my principles, unfortunately Mr. Nader's principles don't match as many of my own as I would like. I should have been clearer in saying that I admire his sticking to principles, much as I admire Browne and Bush for sticking to theirs. Before anyone has a hissy fit about that last sentence, notice that I admire all three for sticking to their principles. This is not to say that I agree with any of them wholeheartedly.
Oh the absense of consideration of Mr. Algore. That must sting some. No, he lost me long ago when he assumed the position, and lost his principles. I'm afraid that Mr. Leiberman has followed the same path.
On Privacy, the issue here, I agree with Nader. Of course, as someone else stated, if our current laws were upheld and practiced, then his stance would not need to be stated.
Politics is a large gray area. Unfortunately, our choices of electable people are rather average, due to the diversity of our country. Because of this, I cannot find one candidate that believes wholy what I believe. I doubt that any of you could either.
For me now, Bush is my current vote, although he only gained it recently.
Now I'm being grouped with all those Nader freaks.
Oh well, the principled side of me would vote for Nader, but the historically biased and forward looking side says that Bush is the safe bet.
I guess that kind of reflects on my schizophrenic preferences of OS's; MacOS first, UNIX flavors second, and, oh that's it. For me, BeOS was a phase like my support of Perot:^P Both were neat, but unworkable solutions at the time.
By the way, this might appear on the surface to be off-topic, but I contest that it is a viable (yes stretched) comparison. I value my OS's by what they bring to the table. MacOS is nice to work with, but doesn't have the depth of UNIX. Similarly, I don't look at the candidates themselves, as much as I look to what they would bring with their administration.
To me, Gore is a GPF waiting to happen, show over substance (ala Windows). Bush surrounds himself with more stable people that do their jobs well (UNIX). Nader, well he pulls few punches, but I would be fearful of a government run by his supporters. Nader's administration would be like the MacOS switch from 68k to PPC instructions. Some parts ran extremely fast, but the old code ran slower because of the overhead of interfacing the new with the old. This would be similar to Nader bringing a hyperactive core to Washington, interfacing with the existing beuarocracy.
This is a much more elegent way of putting it than I was about to write (and have written at the top level elsewhere). The parties do not have as much sway with the populace as the mass-media guidance. The pen and the anchorman are truely mightier than the sword.
Originally I was going to post an off-topic comment about various almost candidates (McCain, Bradley, etc.) but that would probably inflame somebody. I have realized that I don't dislike anyone who has run in this race, I just disagree about their fitness for the job. My opinion, like the opinion of everyone else in the contry, was formed by the sound-bite or staged candid shot. What do these men actually stand for?
My short voting career (since '92) has been filled with disappointment. Tsongas, my first choice back then, dropped out of the race before my state's primary. As I paid much more attention back then, Mr. Clinton gained and lost my support in subsequent days by making different mutually exclusive promises to conflicting groups. I couldn't divine where his compass pointed, and dismissed him as unworthy of my trust. Mr. Bush (Sr.) had lost the fire in his eyes. His body language told me (and the rest of the country) that he didn't want the job anymore, and was just going through the motions. I am almost embarrassed to say it now, but I voted for Perot, and was in a state of denial that he was a nut.
I went through the same this time around. I had a lot of respect for McCain before he ran. The mass-media that had built him up, had also delivered enough to tear him down. Quick, what rhymes with gook? Cook!
So now we are left with the two bastard butterknives in the silverware drawer (and a pair of salad tongs). It all comes down to who gets the best polish from the mass-media.
It amazes me how short sighted we are to think that the here and now is so much different from any of the previous episodes in history, or that we will rid the world of the evils of [insert your enemy here]. Politics is, and always has been a slimey profession. One that is bent on manipulating and controlling large groups of people by any means available.
So we now have the internet, a wonderful media that no longer silences the ignorant among us (Hot Grits!). That will not change or eliminate political maneuvering. We have had other effective political tools in the past that have changed the face of politics, but the games still go on.
How many of you reading this actually believe ANY public opinion poll? I hope none, as these are political manipulation tools. I hadn't always thought this way, but after working at a polling firm for a summer job, I uncovered some creepy undeniable truths:
1) People (the vast majority of people) are stupid. Worse yet, the ones who actually take the time to respond to pollsters are ignorant of almost everything that they are asked about (invalid data that turns into a valid poll).
2) Polls, and the questions that they ask can be used to skew results to unbelievable conclusions. This never makes it into the nice USAToday pie chart or bar graph.
In turn, polls become self fulfilling prophecies for whoever paid for them to be taken, by changing the public opinion.
The internet will not end this, if anything it will provide for a larger audience to manipulate.
to have this problem. You don't want to be in these places though.
A former employer of mine applied for a patent for one of my inventions, a month after I left them. I was never contacted about this, and am not mentioned anywhere on the patent, even though I did all of the work. I really don't care either way because I feel that they wasted more resources on the patent than it will ever return in income.
This is besides the point though because in this shop, raises, promotions, and general status were determined by how many patents you had compared to the person in the next cubicle. This quota system created a horrible back-stabbing environment to work in, where a co-worker would rip apart your projects to any non-technical manager, using silly and unfounded arguments, and then claim your work as their own superior idea. This is not the type of environment that fosters innovation.
Since I left this company, their R&D department was toppled and spread to the wind like the tower of babel. Someone within the management structure had determined that their obsession with numerous useless patents did not make good business sense.
Thanks for the correction. When I first looked at CIFS/9000, they made no such claim, and hid the connection very well. It was a bit unnerving trying to figure out wether it was any better or worse of a solution than going with samba. The distinction was further blurred by some of their advertizing material claiming an AT&T source for the code. I'm glad that that is not the case, because we will all benefit from any contributions that they make to samba.
I don't really have the time to ferret out bugs in commercial products (You mean that I bought this license for $$$,$$$ and you want me to waste my time writing up what happened so that you can throw it on a pile that may be considered for fixing?!?). We chose to implement samba on our (non-HP) main server because it wasn't covered in marketing-speak like CIFS/9000 was.
When I look at the release notes for the CIFS/9000 only attribute the UNIX trademark to The Open Group, and make no mention about the samba team, nor the GPL which samba lives under. There are a few references to samba in the text, but the comments make it appear that samba is a complimenting service at best. Could I be blamed for assuming that this is not an open sourced project?
Slashdot Mirror
On re-reading my post, I realize now that it sounds very sarcastic. That wasn't my point. I appreciate that you took the time to post at all, and I'm sorry that someone didn't agree with you and modded you down for being off-topic.
My comment about getting an account refers to the fact that you are posting as an AC, and that AC's don't get to be moderators. If you already have an account, can't mod. today, and are choosing to post as an AC, then mea culpa.
-- Len
P.S. I hope you get to read this before the topic falls off the front page.
It's a shame that some people are offended when others present facts that refute the falacy that they believe in. I am beginning to think that the annonymous nature of moderation on slashdot is becomming more cowardly than those who post as AC's.
If anyone were to try to post a story about this underground fire in China, it would surely never make it on to the board as 'News for Nerds,' but it would definately fall under 'Stuff that Matters' when engaging in discourse about the future of our civilization and current environmental policies.
What a shame that this silent censorship can be fostered within a system designed to prevent just such a thing.
-- Len
I've had that problem before. Get an account and you may get mod points some day.
-- Len
Absolutely! Good point.
I've grown-up in the middle of Pennsylvania's soft coal country, and have been surrounded my whole life by HUGE piles of coal ash and red dog. This stuff is quite possibly the worst environmental hazard that I've ever seen. The seepage from this crap turns green vibrant rivers and streams into smelly, baren, acidic, yellow-orange eyesores. Another problem is that the boney piles (waste coal and ash) tend to spontaneously combust and smolder for years.
Unfortunately, as with many problems that we face, ignorance is pervasive and the solution is not politically correct. In this area, coal means jobs, and jobs mean political prosperity. A coal fired power plant needs a constant supply, nuclear requires an occassional (~7 years) refueling.
Raise your hand if you know how much radiation leaked out of Three Mile Island. The answer is none! The US Nuclear industry has been heavily regulated with redundant safeguards since the early 50's so this accident was safely contained. It's a shame for California that the anti-nuke activists could prey on the ignorance of the general public to make "Three Mile Island" synonymous with "Automatic Death."
Yes, I know that Chyrnoble (however you spell it) was a real disaster, but that was due to poor design and lack of adequate safeguards. In short, when properly implemented, nuclear is a much cleaner and safer form of energy than coal or any other fossil fuel.
-- Len
Yes, without this clause, Apple could claim ignorance about modifications, but it wouldn't extract them from litigation. Also, with the clause, they can provide the special purpose license that you alluded to, because they would be informed about the use of their software for purposes outside the scope of the design intent.
I believe that most legal contracts are a bit idealistic, in that the limits of about 50% of the clauses will never be tested and don't apply to 95% of the people engaged by them. These clauses are still there just in case.
Maybe the air control scenario was ill-chosen. I may not be anywhere near the right track in my interpretation of the existence of the clause.
I've been a long time Apple follower/sufferer, and one thing that I can tell you from their history, is that Apple usually has the end-user's overall experience in mind when it releases fixes. Many times, they have either retracted fixes or had rapid re-writes of fixes for various OS flaws, when other problems have been discovered. Many times, this commercial software company has patched problems as quickly as any open-source developer. The one thing that has consistently present in most of their fixes is that the patches have been released under their control. I can count on one hand the number of third party patches to their systems. This clause may have more to do with their brand management; Apple supplies the fix to people's problems with Apple's products.
You can't avoid the brand management issue with this license beacuse "Apple" is in the title. As this license is written, you could notify Apple of your modification, they *could* determine that your modifications are not in their best interest, and they could issue an alternative license for your works which would grant greater freedom to your work, in return for lesser liability for their source, for this particular instance.
This situation would be somewhat similar to the dual licensing of Ghostscript under the Alladin license for new versions and the GPL for depreciated versions.
-- Len
Not intending to start a war here, but...
I read this clause as an attempt by Apple to maintain some responsibility for their code. In light of the DMCA and other "our software isn't broken, it's your fault" legal stances of most commercial software companies, we should applaud those that stand behind their software.
I can hear the frustrated keyboard banging now. "But I should have a right to my changes" you say. Look at the liability that a corporate entity encounters with free licenses. Let's say for example that some small company took Darwin, and modified it in some way to become the base of an air traffic control system. Let's also say that such a system hosed up a major hub airport, and a multiple plane collision occurred.
Would Apple be liable because their software was used? If said modifications on their base were the root cause, and they had no idea that such changes were made, they shouldn't be held liable. Almost all of the lawyers that I know would tend to follow blame until they reach the deepest pockets.
By requiring return notification, they can limit their liability, and take responsibility when appropriate.
I don't see emacs or the gimp becoming life-or-death software, so something like the GPL does make sense. If I were Linus, though, I would be extemely worried as Linux creeps into more and more embedded applications.
My 2 cents,
-- Len
We should all take a lesson from Nikolai Tesla, because he was a prominent geek in his day. Yes another poster bemoaned people like me who would assert that Edison was a bastard, but it's true! Well I don't know about the bastard part, but he acted like one.
Nobody talks anymore about what this man did, because he wasn't a blatant opportunist. Marconi was credited with radio because he made it an event. Marconi was a showman first, inventor second. Edison, Bill G. and Steve J. are from the same mold, exploiting the inventions of others as their own.
In 100 years, will Bill Gates be credited with inventing what then will be referred to as a computer? How about Jobs, for "inventing" the iMac? More startling, will Al Gore be heralded as the father of the internet? Doubtful, but all of these 'events' have made more splashes in the mainstream media than Linux, xBSD, RMS, ESR, K&R or anyone else who shook the geek universe.
So be opportunistic!
My 2 cents.
-- Len
I just had a conversation earlier this week with a high school science teacher about the problem of dislodging preconceived notions from her students' heads. It's aweful that our culture and education system nurtures them still. We've moved beyond "the world is flat" and the "moon is made of bleu cheese", but poisoned thought is all around us.
In our discussion, we talked about how some of her student's had thought that when water boils, the bubbles are made of air that was trapped in the water. This of course is incorrect, but no more incorrect than her notion that the bubbles were atomic hydrogen gas and oxygen gas being released by the water breaking appart into components. The bubbles are water vapor, chemically the same as the water that they emerge from.
My point in this is that we are all poisoned by other's suggestions and our own misconceptions about the certainty and 'science' in our world. The poster asserting that volcanoes spew CFC's is just as incorrect as superposed's assertion that CFC's are the main cause of ozone depletion.
Back in 1990, I had lunch with a NASA scientist who was working on figuring out what the root cause of the newly (less than 10 years old) discovered ozone hole. Being told in school at the time that the cause was definitely CFC's and the evils of hairspray, freon (a damn fine refrigerant and parts cleaning solvent), and styrafoam, I regurgetated what I was taught, thinking that this would hold up my end of the conversation.
The scientist was distressed. He did confirm that CFC's could break down ozone, but that CFC's positively were NOT involved with the creation or enlargement of the hole! When a villian is created, it is damn near impossible to convince a mob that he is not evil.
CFC's only break down ozone under very specific conditions. A temperature below -90 C is required for the reaction. This low temperature can be found at the altitude that the ionosphere is, but CFC's are too heavy to ever reach that altitude. Even more problematic for the CFC scenario to work is the fact that that even if some amazing updraft could lift them up to the right altitude, they would breakdown before reaching the ozone that they are responsible for attacking.
After asaulting preconceived notions and bad theories though, I would be remiss if I didn't offer my own theory (flamesuit on) about our ozone hole. As a disclaimer, I have no data to back this up, so this is only being advanced as my own preconceived notion.
I think that solar flares, or at least solar winds, are responsible for our nifty hole. We are constantly bombarded by ionized radiation from the sun. This ozone layer protects us (biological entities) from this constant stream. Ionized matter has a polarity (Millikan oil drop), as does our earth (magnetic poles). The relationship between electric charge and magnetic fields is well understood. My notion is that the ozone layer exists in part because of the solar winds, and that the hole exists because of the magnetic polarity of the earth.
Many people have asked if the hole was always there, but we were unable to detect it until recently. Think about it, nobody knew it was there until somebody went and looked for it.
Who knows?
-- Len
Oh my God you're a genius! This post concretely states what I've been seeing in my current company, my previous company, and my wife's company. I couldn't have put it any better, except to add the spin that this is indeed a universal problem of screwed-up management, not just in software development. Oh, and one addition, that many managers are given bonuses based on goals that are often in conflict with the goals of the people that they manage, causing disinterest in the concerns (or opinions) of those that are under them.
Empty promises, lack of knowledge, and inability to communicate are the rule of incompetent managers in every industry, on every continent of the globe. My only question is how can this problem be fixed? As in Dilbert, the people who would be tasked with fixing problems like these are powerless but cluefull, or cluless and powerful.
-- Len
Well, one of those is CO2, but I'm not sure which wavelength it corresponds to. CO2 Lasers are quite hot, and are typically used in industrial cutting and welding LASER robots. When focused correctly, these beams heat most non-reflective solid materials to extreme temperatures. One material that this LASER wavelength does have problems with (depending on your perspective) is Aluminum, which melts under the beam, but is highly reflective in it's molten state. This reflectivity tends to spread the beam, and reflect it back to its source. In a device like a DVD or CD reader, this wouldn't be a problem (aside from destroying the media). In most industrial cases, the reflection causes extremely premature wear of the lenses, sometimes causing the lense to explode!
Yes, I know that industrial lasers are in the 1-5 kW range typically while your typical CD/DVD is in the 3-10 mW range, but the industrial lasers are built to typically handle that much power.
-- Len
P.S. My use of LASER in all caps is because it was the Acronym that I learned of first; Light Amplified by Simulated Emission of Radiation. Today, laser and radar have become words on their own, jetissoning the original acronyms.
I asked myself why there why there were so many idiots who claimed that they voted wrong, and then didn't figure this out until they got home. It hit me today when I was browsing through the AP stories that I missed (I got a long weekend for Veterans day).
This
Idiots every one.
-- Len
They use this ballot system at my precinct, and a confused voter could have voted for McReynolds, *NOT* Buchanan.
In this type of machine, you insert your card above the ballotting book. The card has to be seated at the bottom, and then two pins are inserted through a tear-off stub section at the top of the card.
When I put my ballot in the machine, it wasn't seated the whole way down into the slot, and I had to force it so that the alignment pins at the top would get their tight fit. There is no retainer or any other device to make sure that you have the card inserted correctly. Because of this, at worst, a voter could have their ballot sitting too high in the slot, and would be actually casting votes for the person listed below their actual choice.
For this instance, a vote for Bush would go to Buchanon, Buchanon would go to Gore, Gore would go to McReynolds. The results don't show this happening, as McReynolds doesn't have that many.
What may explain the double punches, besides confusion ("Where am I? How did I get here?"), is the fact that once a ballot is punched, there is no way of taking back the selection. Because you can't see the paper being punched (its under a plexiglass guide/shield), some voters may think that it would record the last selection that they made, resetting their vote. It doesn't.
-- Len
The point of this type of law is to discourage voter fraud. If you move in the blackout period, you can still vote in your old precinct. Like many crimes, the penalties are severe enough to make sane people not do wrong things. Unfortunately, where power lies also lies corruption, and vote tampering is an unfortunate reality in many localities.
There really is no difference between what happened in Chicago in the 1960's and what happened this year in Yugoslavia. Fixing elections by voting with "unused" voter registrations is just plain wrong. I don't mean to imply that you were planning to vote more than once, but this law is to discourage people from voting twice.
In the 1996 election, in California, a large number of absentee ballots were submitted from a nursing home that had many incapacitated elderly citizens. The director of this particular institution was curious about the "Election Party" on the calendar where all of the invalid patients were ushered down to the cafeteria to vote by absente ballot. Many of these poor people were unable to speak, walk, or eat by themselves. Upon further investigation, he found that all ballots there (about 80) were voted as the same straight party ticket, all signed in the patient's name, with the same handwriting of the organizing therapist. This episode had solved his mystery of how this one employee was always invited to high-roller fundraisers for this particular party (she could guarantee at least 80 votes every time).
I won't mention the particular party, but will offer that they don't mind using cigarettes as currency.
-- Len
I actually doubt that. I know that in my little microcosm, most of the people who are disgusted with his behavior are/were mostly Democrats. I confess that I used to be an almost yellow dog democrat until about the middle of the impeachment trial, when I simply couldn't take it anymore. I'm not alone, my entire family (all lifelong democrats) feel the same way, and are planning to change registration after this current election. My priest, also a lifelong democrat, was moved to change his registration to independent, because of his disgust for the man.
I think that there are several reasons for this. My family lives in a small mining town in western Pennsylvania (yes, in a swing state). The mines don't exist anymore, but their legacy voting habits do. My old precinct had about 93% registered democrats. Registering and voting the straight ticket is what everybody just does here. Even though the party is in complete control locally, almost nobody in this area agrees with the far left leaning of the party propper. We all hunt and own guns (many guns). We feel that family bonds are important (Quayle's Family Values). Most of us favor defense spending over social programs. We elected a Pro-Life democrat governor several years ago, who was not allowed to speak at the national convention in 1996 because of his stance on this particular issue.
By and large, we are appalled at the behavior that our party tolerates in Washington (Bill, Teddy, Barney, etc.), still, most of us remain blindly loyal to this party which was responsible for the mining jobs (and utter destruction of our local environment) of our parents and grandparents. This year, many of us have finally woken up and caused a problem for Al. Holywood is trying to come to his rescue here, but it seems to be backfiring.
In contrast, when I talk to my wife's grandparents, lifelong republicans, they don't understand why everyone is so upset about Bill Clinton. I think that they are more forgiving as they have no association with him. I remember once when Sen. Packwood was brought up in their company, and they reacted much the same as I do to Clinton, with disgust because a member of their party had done something to bring shame on the party as a whole.
Only my two cents.
-- Len
Very good response. My previous post was primarily a rant, and I appreciate your illumination of the opportunity cost (O.K. it slipped my mind).
I guess that I'm a libertarian first and a conservative second. I feel disheartened when I read GAO or OMB studies that show that only about $.20 of every dollar spent by the government actually reaches where it was supposed to go. I know that this figure was generated through an investigation of Federal welfare programs (if you include the HUD, it gets worse). And yes, I would even offer that I think even less goes to the right place in defense, but at least there is an industry (work, jobs, and contribution to the GNP) associated with defense.
I'm frustrated with the large amounts of tax that I have to pay, and I'm not even in the top 25%. As a newly married, childless taxpayer, I saw my taxes as a percentage of my salary increase by 35% last year! In the same year, my raise was only 4%. I see no reason why the federal government couldn't streamline operations and do more with less.
I don't really believe that there is any surplus. As far as I'm concerned, it's an accounting slight of hand. Yes, they took in more money than they have budgeted to pay out, but that includes Social Security's Fraud Fund, which is supposed to be kept separate (it's not). The buzz from the hill is that both the Senate and House are planning to wipe out that surplus by the end of the year by going on a spree (Sen. McCain said this after the third debate),
As far as I'm concerned, there is no better way to keep a congressional opportunity from costing us anything, than keeping the excess money away from Washington in the first place.
-- Len
If you punish people for achieving or succeeding in life (whether in material gain or other) then people will stop wanting to achieve or suceed. If you FORCE people to do things - you take away any spirit of voluteering or giving of one's self.
Money redistribution by a heavy handed government shouldn't be the mechanism of social change. The lack of volunteerism and community civic duty being considered for this role does truly trouble me.
My wife and myself are engineers. We donate about 40 hours a week (each) to various youth programs, although we have no children of our own. Many of the kids that we work with are underprivelidged, some even neglected by their parents who are more concerned with the nightly TV line-up than the lives of their kids. By donating our time, and some direct financial support, we often can accomplish more good work than any program funded by tax based wealth redistribution.
No, we don't provide food or shelter to any of these kids, but we do encourage them to make better lives for themselves and plan for their lives after high school. It's disheartening how many of our youth don't even look beyond their high school lives, at either higher education or a life vocation untill it's too late.
-- Len
I can't understand how this community full of geeks and nerds refuses to recognize basic economic principles. It burns me up when I hear Algore say "How will we pay for these tax cuts?" and people nod their heads in agreement
First of all, a tax cut can't be squandered, because it is just the government taking less money from your pocket. In this case, having the government taking only what it needs, causes it to spend it's money (our money) more wisely, quite the opposite of squandering.
Second, there is no need to pay for a tax cut, as it doesn't cost anything! It is not a material posession, nor capital, nor labor or any other economic unit of value. It is a "rent" decrease for overcharged "tennants", nothing more or less.
You never hear ISP's saying that they found some way to pay for your reduced cost unlimited dial-up accounts, yet the fees get lower all the time (O.K. the free ones use advertizing, an "innovation" to control costs). In business, competition drives costs down, and improves efficiancy. In government, tax cuts are a mechanism to do the same.
-- Len
A student of History would focus your attention on a period of only eighty years ago, in a little country called Germany. A well meaning and benevolent government instated after the first World War used a simple equation:
Guns = War = Bad
And so they removed the right to bear arms from the German populace. Warm fuzzy feelings abounded because people don't need guns, only the army needs them.
A few years later, a suave new leader swept into power. Few opposed him, how could they, he controlled the army. A strict vegetarian, this new leader valued animal life above human. Little wonder the extermination camps he built to rid society of the undesireables. The Jews of the hollocaust, the homosexuals, the Roman Catholics that refused to conform to this leader's new pagan religion based on Wagner operas, all had no way to defend themselves when they were taken away. They did not have the freedom to speak or be heard. They did not have the right to privacy in their own homes.
When you remove the right of self-defense, all others follow. Let me remind you that all types of guns that we know today, the ones you argue against, existed back then as well. Only the materials of construction are different.
-- Len
You must have cared enough to post a follow-up.
Most people who deride the Mac either have not used one, or refuse to try one. Which are you?
And on Nader, do you know what his campaign is about? Enough people care about his run to get moderated to the top of every election story. Oh wait, that might be added to that Stupid Patent Winner Patent. Nevermind.
-- Len
I have lots of courage to vote my principles, unfortunately Mr. Nader's principles don't match as many of my own as I would like. I should have been clearer in saying that I admire his sticking to principles, much as I admire Browne and Bush for sticking to theirs. Before anyone has a hissy fit about that last sentence, notice that I admire all three for sticking to their principles. This is not to say that I agree with any of them wholeheartedly.
Oh the absense of consideration of Mr. Algore. That must sting some. No, he lost me long ago when he assumed the position, and lost his principles. I'm afraid that Mr. Leiberman has followed the same path.
On Privacy, the issue here, I agree with Nader. Of course, as someone else stated, if our current laws were upheld and practiced, then his stance would not need to be stated.
Politics is a large gray area. Unfortunately, our choices of electable people are rather average, due to the diversity of our country. Because of this, I cannot find one candidate that believes wholy what I believe. I doubt that any of you could either.
For me now, Bush is my current vote, although he only gained it recently.
-- Len
Now I'm being grouped with all those Nader freaks.
:^P Both were neat, but unworkable solutions at the time.
Oh well, the principled side of me would vote for Nader, but the historically biased and forward looking side says that Bush is the safe bet.
I guess that kind of reflects on my schizophrenic preferences of OS's; MacOS first, UNIX flavors second, and, oh that's it. For me, BeOS was a phase like my support of Perot
By the way, this might appear on the surface to be off-topic, but I contest that it is a viable (yes stretched) comparison. I value my OS's by what they bring to the table. MacOS is nice to work with, but doesn't have the depth of UNIX. Similarly, I don't look at the candidates themselves, as much as I look to what they would bring with their administration.
To me, Gore is a GPF waiting to happen, show over substance (ala Windows). Bush surrounds himself with more stable people that do their jobs well (UNIX). Nader, well he pulls few punches, but I would be fearful of a government run by his supporters. Nader's administration would be like the MacOS switch from 68k to PPC instructions. Some parts ran extremely fast, but the old code ran slower because of the overhead of interfacing the new with the old. This would be similar to Nader bringing a hyperactive core to Washington, interfacing with the existing beuarocracy.
Just my thoughts.
-- Len
This is a much more elegent way of putting it than I was about to write (and have written at the top level elsewhere). The parties do not have as much sway with the populace as the mass-media guidance. The pen and the anchorman are truely mightier than the sword.
Originally I was going to post an off-topic comment about various almost candidates (McCain, Bradley, etc.) but that would probably inflame somebody. I have realized that I don't dislike anyone who has run in this race, I just disagree about their fitness for the job. My opinion, like the opinion of everyone else in the contry, was formed by the sound-bite or staged candid shot. What do these men actually stand for?
My short voting career (since '92) has been filled with disappointment. Tsongas, my first choice back then, dropped out of the race before my state's primary. As I paid much more attention back then, Mr. Clinton gained and lost my support in subsequent days by making different mutually exclusive promises to conflicting groups. I couldn't divine where his compass pointed, and dismissed him as unworthy of my trust. Mr. Bush (Sr.) had lost the fire in his eyes. His body language told me (and the rest of the country) that he didn't want the job anymore, and was just going through the motions. I am almost embarrassed to say it now, but I voted for Perot, and was in a state of denial that he was a nut.
I went through the same this time around. I had a lot of respect for McCain before he ran. The mass-media that had built him up, had also delivered enough to tear him down. Quick, what rhymes with gook? Cook!
So now we are left with the two bastard butterknives in the silverware drawer (and a pair of salad tongs). It all comes down to who gets the best polish from the mass-media.
-- Len
The end of politics? I think not.
It amazes me how short sighted we are to think that the here and now is so much different from any of the previous episodes in history, or that we will rid the world of the evils of [insert your enemy here]. Politics is, and always has been a slimey profession. One that is bent on manipulating and controlling large groups of people by any means available.
So we now have the internet, a wonderful media that no longer silences the ignorant among us (Hot Grits!). That will not change or eliminate political maneuvering. We have had other effective political tools in the past that have changed the face of politics, but the games still go on.
How many of you reading this actually believe ANY public opinion poll? I hope none, as these are political manipulation tools. I hadn't always thought this way, but after working at a polling firm for a summer job, I uncovered some creepy undeniable truths:
1) People (the vast majority of people) are stupid. Worse yet, the ones who actually take the time to respond to pollsters are ignorant of almost everything that they are asked about (invalid data that turns into a valid poll).
2) Polls, and the questions that they ask can be used to skew results to unbelievable conclusions. This never makes it into the nice USAToday pie chart or bar graph.
In turn, polls become self fulfilling prophecies for whoever paid for them to be taken, by changing the public opinion.
The internet will not end this, if anything it will provide for a larger audience to manipulate.
-- Len
to have this problem. You don't want to be in these places though.
A former employer of mine applied for a patent for one of my inventions, a month after I left them. I was never contacted about this, and am not mentioned anywhere on the patent, even though I did all of the work. I really don't care either way because I feel that they wasted more resources on the patent than it will ever return in income.
This is besides the point though because in this shop, raises, promotions, and general status were determined by how many patents you had compared to the person in the next cubicle. This quota system created a horrible back-stabbing environment to work in, where a co-worker would rip apart your projects to any non-technical manager, using silly and unfounded arguments, and then claim your work as their own superior idea. This is not the type of environment that fosters innovation.
Since I left this company, their R&D department was toppled and spread to the wind like the tower of babel. Someone within the management structure had determined that their obsession with numerous useless patents did not make good business sense.
-- Len
Thanks for the correction. When I first looked at CIFS/9000, they made no such claim, and hid the connection very well. It was a bit unnerving trying to figure out wether it was any better or worse of a solution than going with samba. The distinction was further blurred by some of their advertizing material claiming an AT&T source for the code. I'm glad that that is not the case, because we will all benefit from any contributions that they make to samba.
I don't really have the time to ferret out bugs in commercial products (You mean that I bought this license for $$$,$$$ and you want me to waste my time writing up what happened so that you can throw it on a pile that may be considered for fixing?!?). We chose to implement samba on our (non-HP) main server because it wasn't covered in marketing-speak like CIFS/9000 was.
When I look at the release notes for the CIFS/9000 only attribute the UNIX trademark to The Open Group, and make no mention about the samba team, nor the GPL which samba lives under. There are a few references to samba in the text, but the comments make it appear that samba is a complimenting service at best. Could I be blamed for assuming that this is not an open sourced project?
-- Len