While I love open source, sometimes the fact that it is done for nothing is one of the things that ensures it is developed slowly.
Yes. Sometimes, but not in the caes of Xfree86. There, it appears the main reason was a rediculous level of conservatism from the project leaders, including some of which who no longer even were active developers.
There are plenty of stories out there of presumptive Xfree86 developers who turned their backs on the project after being treated with what they felt was an unfair and arrogant attitude. Many of these are now active in Xfree86.
The problem that it's 'done for nothing', (not true, there are paid developers not living on contributions out there) is actually pretty small, if you're working on a project with a sufficently large interest. For instance, the reason why Linux took off and the GNU Hurd didn't can almost be attributed entirely to leadership differences.
Here the money bit comes in again. When people aren't getting paid, the barrier to exit is lower. You have to be respectful and kind and open and listen. It costs nothing to praise loudly but critizise softly. And be very wary of license changes.
I don't think most/.ers do anything at all. Personally, I contribute code. If I come across a bug in a program I use, or a feature I want. I often fix it. Then I submit a patch for it.
Future contributions are usually determined by the reaction I get. Sometimes, you don't even get one. Some projects don't seem to want bugfixes or more developers. And these are the ones which are prone to forking.
Oh, that is just bull. "Big Science" isn't taking anything away from anyone. You think that money spent on big projects like ILC would really be going to science otherwise? Think again.
What determines if a project gets funding is if it's scientifically interesting or not. Of course, in the USA nowadays, you have to add more politics into the mix, but even a cynic must agree that the biggest factor is the science.
This whole "Big Science is taking our resources" thing is just sour grapes from researchers who are unhappy that the rest of the world didn't find their research as interesting, promising and important as they did themselves.
And I do research in an area which is hardly "Big Science". Au contraire, I'm a theorist and run calculations, most of them on high-end PC:s.
"America has never gone to war with a country that has McDonalds restaurants." - US Marine, Fallujah
That depends on what your Marine there means by 'war', now doesn't it? The only 'wars' the USA has been in since McDonalds was founded have been the ones against Iraq.
Using the more general definition of war as "armed conflict" though: Panama had McDonalds restaurants when the USA invaded in 1989. Serbia had McDonalds restaurants when the USA bombed them in 1995.
So, apparently, Ludow is free to go on pretending that This Land Is Your Land is their copyright. How does this help anyone?
It doesn't. In fact. I believe it's a Bad Thing.
This is pretty much what happened in the old BSDI vs. USL case: The old (pre-SysV) Unix versions were shown not to have been copyrighted.
USL quickly settled, so the ancient Unix versions were not found to be public domain by the court, although they were de facto PD, since there was no way USL could enforce a copyright on them.
Skip ahead a decade, and you now have SCO claiming that they own these files (not just SysV, but all of Unix, it seems). For instance the memory allocation "example" of infringement they hyped at the start of the case was an example piece of code which could have come from old Unix. (if it even originated there, which Bruce Perens analysis shows it probably didn't.). Note SCO hasn't submitted this example as evidence in court either..
Anyway.. yeah. So yes, it's a problem, because when you have something which is public domain without a ruling to that extent, there seems to be a quite real risk that the purported 'owner' is going to start lawsuits.
"Gangster's Paradise" is essentially just a rap-cover of Stevie Wonder's "Pastime Paradise", and AFAIK Wierd Al both had permission and payed royalties to Wonder. As did Coolio.
One would assume that at some point, those chips get washed before they get re-melted. Otherwise, carmelized sugar and other gunk left on the inside of the cans- even in tiny amounts, multiplied by many cans- would cause more problems than it's worth.
Actually, drink residues is the smaller problem. -Warm water will get rid of that. The lacquer on the outside of the can is a different story. And there are processes there to remove it.
So you're most likely right. Whatever substance they're using, the existing processes are probably more than adequate to deal with them.
Ah, a typical example of straining gnats and swallowing camels..
MD5 is perfectly safe for file downloads. The chance of someone generating a file with an identical hash which is in any way useful is practically zero.
On the other hand, the chance of your webserver being hacked and the hashes changed is HUGE by comparison. And that risk is just as big for SHA1.
Remember that the GPL is a licence to distribute and create derivative works, not a licence for use. If the GPL was found to be invalid, everyone could go on using the software produced by the original author, but would no longer be able to create derived versions or re-distribute it.
Not true. You need a license to run a computer program, as this entails copying the program to memory. It's true. And it sucks. But that's what the courts decided.
There are some hazy problems to do with already-existing redistributions: would all of the packaged Linux distributions become illegal since they contain software distributed without a licence?
Not really. To begin with you have to start with what the heck one means by the GPL being invalid. Do you mean that some part of the GPL is invalid, or the whole thing? You see, a courts don't rule "This license is invalid" they rule on whenether the relevant part of the license is invalid.
You can't really speculate on what the consequences should be unless you know what part was deemed invalid, and why.
Perhaps, but I think that it's safe to say that any author who licenced code under the GPL will not file suit against Red Hat and SuSE for copyright infringment, since they obviously intended the software to be distributed in this manner regardless of the specific wording of the licence.
Correct. Also, you must remember that the court will naturally take the intent of the original license into account.
(IANAL either, but I've taken some courses in IP law, and have lawyer friends I discuss with.)
Eric Lerner isn't a total quack, he is a trained physicist specializing in plasma physics. He may let his enthisiasm get away from him, but some of the questons he poses re plasma are quite thought provoking.
Bull.
He may have physics education, I cannot ascertain that.
He is not any kind of notable plasma researcher, from what I can tell. Not a single article in a journal of record. Nothing in "Journal of Plasma Physics", nothing in "Contributions to Plasma Physics", nothing in "Physics of Plasmas".
Yet many papers in "Aerospace America" and "IEEE transactions".
This is a typical tactic of the Bad Scientist to defeat the peer-review system: Submit papers to obscure journals as far from the actual subject area as you can get away with. That way, the reviewers will not be an expert on the subject matter of your paper, and they will be less likely to reject it.
You don't get interesting results but working from what we "know" (as witness hot-fusion's rather dismal track record). You get interesting results by closely examining phenomena which aren't explicable by "physics as we know it". That's how we went from Newtonian physics to relativity and quantum theory.
Well then you're going to have to explain to me why you don't think the laws of physics "as we know it" is a sufficient model for fusion. It certainly has provided us with relatively good models of the Sun, as well as predicted the Hydrogen bomb, and it also has shown to work with tokomak fusion.
Newtonian physics did not correctly predict the orbit of Mercury. There was no real reason to assume it should.
However, Newtonian physics did correctly predict,for instance, the motion of billard balls.
Now say someone walks along and says billard balls don't work at all in the way Newtonian physics says they do. Yet noone is able to make the billard balls act that way. Would that grounds for abandoning Newtonian physics as a model of billard balls? Abandon for what?
There is no alternative theory which allows cold fusion. If there was, people would be testing it.
In the same way that physics "as we know it" 150 years ago provided an accurate model for billiard balls, we have every reason to believe physics "as we know it" today provides an accurate model for fusion.
It is not the final model and it is probably not an accurate model for say, the inside of black holes and for sub-subatomic particles and the large-scale forces in the universe.
And it gets even more maddening every single year I see this tired nonsense with the wrong way to achieve Fusion trotted out like it's something new.
Of course! The Anonymous Coward of Slashdot knows better than thousands of physicists.
It really doesn't matter what process these so called highly intelligent people at MIT etc..use, the process is still the same, you're working against the Plasma rather than with.
And he's a plasma expert too! So out of the two possible scenarios: 1) An entire world of physicists simply have no clue. Only you and the two guys at this "Focus Fusion" group do, and you're are attempting to enlighten the world through Slashdot.
2) You're a nut job who doesn't know what he's talking about.
You, really mean we should assume the first is more likely?
So much intelligence being squandered on these absurd Fusion methods.
Yet you have yet to give any reason WHY you call them absurd. After all, they have produced the only known (e.g. reproduced) controlled fusion.
The only clear way to do this is via Focus Fusion, which means one is working with the natural instabilities of Plasma rather than attempting to straightjacket them with massive Magnetic Fields.
This is not clear at all. What the heck is Focus fusion? Aha, it's a crazy astronomer and his computer-scientist friend. But of course, since the people educated in plasma physics are having problems, then the solution is not to be a plasma physicist!
Nothing more really needs to be said about Focus Fusion from me
You mean you don't even purport to understand what the heck they're claiming, yet you take it at face value and support it?
If there are any financiers out there who have the backbone to do what is right in this world and do what is right for mankind, I urge you to fund this research to banish forever the specter of Fossil Fuel shortages and associated ecological damage and begin a new era in Human History.
Yes, I'm certain you'll go down in the history books as a great visionary and leader. Well, either that or be forgotten like so many other alchemists, which-doctors, snake-oil salesmen and crackpots of the past.
I mean, how can you conclusively show that something is not impossible without demonstrating that it is possible?
In logic, you can't. But I didn't intend the terms in a strict logical sense, where "impossible" is the logical complement to "possible".
For the sake of clarification: By "impossible" I meant the strict sense. That Which Does Not Occur.
By "possible" I meant a looser sense than "not impossible", e.g. "humanly possible", or perhaps even "likely".
That's how most people use these words. We say that it's "impossible" for something to happen when we mean, "not likely at all", and we say "possible" when we mean "likely".
"Possible" and "impossible" in the popular usage are not quite the terms they are in logic, and so one shouldn't really jump on a sentence in a popular context like that and assume it refers to a strict logical one.
If even 1% of that money were spent on cold fusion research, we would probably be having much more interesting results by now.
No we wouldn't. Nobody is going to throw money at trying to do in practice something which doesn't work in theory. There is no theoretical model considered valid in which cold fusion works.
Paper and pencils don't cost much. Show the world a reasonable calculation proving from physics as we know it, that this is possible, and you can bet they'll get money.
The great physicist Richard Feynman once said that he didn't see any theoretical reason why cold fusion would not work.
Do you have a source for that? Besides which, that isn't relevant. There is a huge difference between showing something is possible and showing that it is not impossible.
Feynman himself also made a lot of good statements about pseudoscience. Perhaps you should read them? Unlike you, I provide a reference.
Vacuum in space may be reasonably empty of matter, but is it empty of everything? Energy, for example?
Well, energy IS matter. (Einstein, remember?)
In modern physics, though: No. Vacuum is never empty, it's filled with virtual particles which appear and then disappear very, very, very, quickly.
Although an individual virtual particle has energy, the always appear in pairs, which annihilate eachother, so the Net or average energy of vacuum is indeed zero.
"Outside the universe" is a self-contradictory notion. Simply because the universe may be finite in size does NOT mean that it has an outside. This is completely possible, although not very intuitive.
Examples ? Last time I checked without the backing of IBM and the like redhat (like all of linux) would be relegated to "hobby os" status and stuck in the closet instead of in the datacenter.
gcc wouldn't have proper C++ support if it hadn't been for RedHat (Cygnus). They still have a number of full-time gcc developers. Gcc is quite an important tool.
And as far as I remember, Linux was indeed getting serious use before IBM started backing it.
I think you've got it a bit backfooted. This is not a new idea, it's been around in the study of Semiotics for a long time.
Orwell was well-aware of these ideas, and used them in '1984', correct. But it's not like this is a proof Orwell was right, it's further evidence the theory Orwell adopted when constructing Newspeak may be correct. But it wasn't his theory.
A good example is how in ancient greek, one could not, originally, differentiate something 'existing' as a concept with 'being', existing in the physical sense.
This lead the early greek philosopher Parmenides (7th cent. BC) to the conclusion that vacuum did not exist, because something could not 'be' without being something, and vacuum is nothing. Thus, vacuum was an impossibility.
Today, we casually speak of abstractions all the time. But it's good to remember that's not how it always was. Language and thought have developed in parallel.
Most Euro countries aren't 3000 x 1500 miles in size, made up of 48 separate states. Can you point out something other than London on a map of England? It's only the size of VA.
Even taking size into account, most americans have very poor skills. Russia is huge. Most Americans still can't point out where Moscow is, much less Saint Petersburg. (And I'd be very impressed if they could find Volgograd, Novosibirsk or Vladivostok)
Size isn't a good metric. Montana is big, but only has around what, a million people?
Being an American with good geography skills, living in Europe, I can tell you that IMHO, more Europeans can find Ohio (or at least give its general area) than Americans can find, say, Yorkshire or Bavaria. (and they both have far greater populations than Montana)
I don't think a change of materials is going to help much, as long as it's electronics.
Computers, like many electronics products, are usually treated with a flame-retardant to (duh) keep the electronics from burning up in case something malfunctions.
Most of these flame retardants are polybromated organic compounds. (usually diphenyl ethers) Not nice stuff (and I Am A Chemist), and definitely something you can develop a hypersensitivity/allergy to.
I recall that some studies done show that most of the surplus flame-retardant dissipitates after the first few hundred hours of use. So one suggestion would to let your new machines burn-in in a well-ventilated environment away from you.
Anyway.. the awareness about the issue is increasing, and these types of flame-retardants will probably be phased out sooner or later. (You'd have to ask an expert, I'm not sure what the alternatives are)
But there really isn't much to do apart from that, AFAIK they don't make any computers which aren't treated.
The USS Enterprise was originally given the CV-6 designation to demonstrate that she was a "Carrier Vessel". However, after extensive war operations she was refitted for nighttime/round-the-clock operations. To signify this, her designation was changed to CVN-6 (Carrier Vessel, Night).
I don't know where you get your facts from, but they're all wrong. The USS Enterprise had the designation NCC-1701. (CC being Constitution-Class)
After Kirk blew up the original Enterprise, the USS Levant (NCC-1843) was redesignated USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-A). And AFAIK, she did not only have round-the-clock operations, the ship was fitted for full five-year missions!
You don't "drop charges", you settle. The "charges" in "dropping charges" are criminal charges this is not a criminal case, it's a civil one. In a civil case you make a complaint. They could "drop their complaint", and when both sides do that per some agreement, it's called a settlement.
Besides that, it's not one case. It's several. SCO would do good to drop or settle all their cases, because they're no good. The DaimlerCrysler complaint has been dismissed. The IBM and Autozone cases look really bad, and the Novell case looks like it's headed for a dismissal soon too.
They could settle in the IBM case, sure, but I don't see why IBM should just drop their counterclaims without getting anything in return. Many of them are pretty good.
Same thing goes for Redhat. Redhat started their suit. Why should they drop it? The basis for their suit as well as part of IBM:s counter-suit is Lanham act violations, e.g. SCO caused their business damage through their FUDding.
Dropping those cases without anything in return would imply that SCO didn't cause them damage, and thus that they really didn't have a case.
If SCO is going to play this thing to the end, the others are going to play it to SCO's end.
I believe that whether they are currently valid or not depends on what country you are residing in. In the US they have expired.
Nope. They have expired everywhere now. They expired in the USA over a year ago. I know because I was writing some GIF-using software back then, and purposely delayed releasing it until the patent expired.
And so what? Does their patents expiring mean that we should suddenly trust them?
Slashdot Mirror
While I love open source, sometimes the fact that it is done for nothing is one of the things that ensures it is developed slowly.
/.ers do anything at all. Personally, I contribute code. If I come across a bug in a program I use, or a feature I want. I often fix it. Then I submit a patch for it.
Yes. Sometimes, but not in the caes of Xfree86. There, it appears the main reason was a rediculous level of conservatism from the project leaders, including some of which who no longer even were active developers.
There are plenty of stories out there of presumptive Xfree86 developers who turned their backs on the project after being treated with what they felt was an unfair and arrogant attitude. Many of these are now active in Xfree86.
The problem that it's 'done for nothing', (not true, there are paid developers not living on contributions out there) is actually pretty small, if you're working on a project with a sufficently large interest. For instance, the reason why Linux took off and the GNU Hurd didn't can almost be attributed entirely to leadership differences.
Here the money bit comes in again. When people aren't getting paid, the barrier to exit is lower. You have to be respectful and kind and open and listen. It costs nothing to praise loudly but critizise softly. And be very wary of license changes.
I don't think most
Future contributions are usually determined by the reaction I get. Sometimes, you don't even get one. Some projects don't seem to want bugfixes or more developers. And these are the ones which are prone to forking.
Oh, that is just bull. "Big Science" isn't taking anything away from anyone. You think that money spent on big projects like ILC would really be going to science otherwise? Think again.
What determines if a project gets funding is if it's scientifically interesting or not. Of course, in the USA nowadays, you have to add more politics into the mix, but even a cynic must agree that the biggest factor is the science.
This whole "Big Science is taking our resources" thing is just sour grapes from researchers who are unhappy that the rest of the world didn't find their research as interesting, promising and important as they did themselves.
And I do research in an area which is hardly "Big Science". Au contraire, I'm a theorist and run calculations, most of them on high-end PC:s.
"America has never gone to war with a country that has McDonalds restaurants." - US Marine, Fallujah
That depends on what your Marine there means by 'war', now doesn't it? The only 'wars' the USA has been in since McDonalds was founded have been the ones against Iraq.
Using the more general definition of war as "armed conflict" though:
Panama had McDonalds restaurants when the USA invaded in 1989.
Serbia had McDonalds restaurants when the USA bombed them in 1995.
So, apparently, Ludow is free to go on pretending that This Land Is Your Land is their copyright. How does this help anyone?
It doesn't. In fact. I believe it's a Bad Thing.
This is pretty much what happened in the old BSDI vs. USL case: The old (pre-SysV) Unix versions were shown not to have been copyrighted.
USL quickly settled, so the ancient Unix versions were not found to be public domain by the court, although they were de facto PD, since there was no way USL could enforce a copyright on them.
Skip ahead a decade, and you now have SCO claiming that they own these files (not just SysV, but all of Unix, it seems). For instance the memory allocation "example" of infringement they hyped at the start of the case was an example piece of code which could have come from old Unix. (if it even originated there, which Bruce Perens analysis shows it probably didn't.). Note SCO hasn't submitted this example as evidence in court either..
Anyway.. yeah. So yes, it's a problem, because when you have something which is public domain without a ruling to that extent, there seems to be a quite real risk that the purported 'owner' is going to start lawsuits.
"Gangster's Paradise" is essentially just a rap-cover of Stevie Wonder's "Pastime Paradise", and AFAIK Wierd Al both had permission and payed royalties to Wonder. As did Coolio.
Sheesh.
One would assume that at some point, those chips get washed before they get re-melted. Otherwise, carmelized sugar and other gunk left on the inside of the cans- even in tiny amounts, multiplied by many cans- would cause more problems than it's worth.
Actually, drink residues is the smaller problem. -Warm water will get rid of that. The lacquer on the outside of the can is a different story. And there are processes there to remove it.
So you're most likely right. Whatever substance they're using, the existing processes are probably more than adequate to deal with them.
Ah, a typical example of straining gnats and swallowing camels..
MD5 is perfectly safe for file downloads. The chance of someone generating a file with an identical hash which is in any way useful is practically zero.
On the other hand, the chance of your webserver being hacked and the hashes changed is HUGE by comparison. And that risk is just as big for SHA1.
Get some perspective!
Remember that the GPL is a licence to distribute and create derivative works, not a licence for use. If the GPL was found to be invalid, everyone could go on using the software produced by the original author, but would no longer be able to create derived versions or re-distribute it.
Not true. You need a license to run a computer program, as this entails copying the program to memory. It's true. And it sucks. But that's what the courts decided.
There are some hazy problems to do with already-existing redistributions: would all of the packaged Linux distributions become illegal since they contain software distributed without a licence?
Not really. To begin with you have to start with what the heck one means by the GPL being invalid. Do you mean that some part of the GPL is invalid, or the whole thing? You see, a courts don't rule "This license is invalid" they rule on whenether the relevant part of the license is invalid.
You can't really speculate on what the consequences should be unless you know what part was deemed invalid, and why.
Perhaps, but I think that it's safe to say that any author who licenced code under the GPL will not file suit against Red Hat and SuSE for copyright infringment, since they obviously intended the software to be distributed in this manner regardless of the specific wording of the licence.
Correct. Also, you must remember that the court will naturally take the intent of the original license into account.
(IANAL either, but I've taken some courses in IP law, and have lawyer friends I discuss with.)
Eric Lerner isn't a total quack, he is a trained physicist specializing in plasma physics. He may let his enthisiasm get away from him, but some of the questons he poses re plasma are quite thought provoking.
Bull.
He may have physics education, I cannot ascertain that.
He is not any kind of notable plasma researcher, from what I can tell. Not a single article in a journal of record. Nothing in "Journal of Plasma Physics", nothing in "Contributions to Plasma Physics", nothing in "Physics of Plasmas".
Yet many papers in "Aerospace America" and "IEEE transactions".
This is a typical tactic of the Bad Scientist to defeat the peer-review system: Submit papers to obscure journals as far from the actual subject area as you can get away with. That way, the reviewers will not be an expert on the subject matter of your paper, and they will be less likely to reject it.
It certainly quacks like a duck to me.
To some there is every reason to believe that humans are more than just a complex arrangement of atoms.
Could you give me a physical reason?
You don't get interesting results but working from what we "know" (as witness hot-fusion's rather dismal track record). You get interesting results by closely examining phenomena which aren't explicable by "physics as we know it". That's how we went from Newtonian physics to relativity and quantum theory.
Well then you're going to have to explain to me why you don't think the laws of physics "as we know it" is a sufficient model for fusion. It certainly has provided us with relatively good models of the Sun, as well as predicted the Hydrogen bomb, and it also has shown to work with tokomak fusion.
Newtonian physics did not correctly predict the orbit of Mercury. There was no real reason to assume it should.
However, Newtonian physics did correctly predict,for instance, the motion of billard balls.
Now say someone walks along and says billard balls don't work at all in the way Newtonian physics says they do. Yet noone is able to make the billard balls act that way. Would that grounds for abandoning Newtonian physics as a model of billard balls? Abandon for what?
There is no alternative theory which allows cold fusion. If there was, people would be testing it.
In the same way that physics "as we know it" 150 years ago provided an accurate model for billiard balls, we have every reason to believe physics "as we know it" today provides an accurate model for fusion.
It is not the final model and it is probably not an accurate model for say, the inside of black holes and for sub-subatomic particles and the large-scale forces in the universe.
And it gets even more maddening every single year I see this tired nonsense with the wrong way to achieve Fusion trotted out like it's something new.
Of course! The Anonymous Coward of Slashdot knows better than thousands of physicists.
It really doesn't matter what process these so called highly intelligent people at MIT etc..use, the process is still the same, you're working against the Plasma rather than with.
And he's a plasma expert too! So out of the two possible scenarios:
1) An entire world of physicists simply have no clue. Only you and the two guys at this "Focus Fusion" group do, and you're are attempting to enlighten the world through Slashdot.
2) You're a nut job who doesn't know what he's talking about.
You, really mean we should assume the first is more likely?
So much intelligence being squandered on these absurd Fusion methods.
Yet you have yet to give any reason WHY you call them absurd. After all, they have produced the only known (e.g. reproduced) controlled fusion.
The only clear way to do this is via Focus Fusion, which means one is working with the natural instabilities of Plasma rather than attempting to straightjacket them with massive Magnetic Fields.
This is not clear at all. What the heck is Focus fusion? Aha, it's a crazy astronomer and his computer-scientist friend. But of course, since the people educated in plasma physics are having problems, then the solution is not to be a plasma physicist!
Nothing more really needs to be said about Focus Fusion from me
You mean you don't even purport to understand what the heck they're claiming, yet you take it at face value and support it?
If there are any financiers out there who have the backbone to do what is right in this world and do what is right for mankind, I urge you to fund this research to banish forever the specter of Fossil Fuel shortages and associated ecological damage and begin a new era in Human History.
Yes, I'm certain you'll go down in the history books as a great visionary and leader. Well, either that or be forgotten like so many other alchemists, which-doctors, snake-oil salesmen and crackpots of the past.
I mean, how can you conclusively show that something is not impossible without demonstrating that it is possible?
In logic, you can't. But I didn't intend the terms in a strict logical sense, where "impossible" is the logical complement to "possible".
For the sake of clarification: By "impossible" I meant the strict sense. That Which Does Not Occur.
By "possible" I meant a looser sense than "not impossible", e.g. "humanly possible", or perhaps even "likely".
That's how most people use these words. We say that it's "impossible" for something to happen when we mean, "not likely at all", and we say "possible" when we mean "likely".
"Possible" and "impossible" in the popular usage are not quite the terms they are in logic, and so one shouldn't really jump on a sentence in a popular context like that and assume it refers to a strict logical one.
If even 1% of that money were spent on cold fusion research, we would probably be having much more interesting results by now.
No we wouldn't. Nobody is going to throw money at trying to do in practice something which doesn't work in theory. There is no theoretical model considered valid in which cold fusion works.
Paper and pencils don't cost much. Show the world a reasonable calculation proving from physics as we know it, that this is possible, and you can bet they'll get money.
The great physicist Richard Feynman once said that he didn't see any theoretical reason why cold fusion would not work.
Do you have a source for that? Besides which, that isn't relevant. There is a huge difference between showing something is possible and showing that it is not impossible.
Feynman himself also made a lot of good statements about pseudoscience. Perhaps you should read them? Unlike you, I provide a reference.
So then the phenomenon of life is merely a complex arrangement of atoms and nothing more?
We have no reason to believe otherwise.
Vacuum in space may be reasonably empty of matter, but is it empty of everything? Energy, for example?
Well, energy IS matter. (Einstein, remember?)
In modern physics, though: No. Vacuum is never empty, it's filled with virtual particles which appear and then disappear very, very, very, quickly.
Although an individual virtual particle has energy, the always appear in pairs, which annihilate eachother, so the Net or average energy of vacuum is indeed zero.
"Outside the universe" is a self-contradictory notion. Simply because the universe may be finite in size does NOT mean that it has an outside. This is completely possible, although not very intuitive.
Examples ? Last time I checked without the backing of IBM and the like redhat (like all of linux) would be relegated to "hobby os" status and stuck in the closet instead of in the datacenter.
gcc wouldn't have proper C++ support if it hadn't been for RedHat (Cygnus). They still have a number of full-time gcc developers. Gcc is quite an important tool.
And as far as I remember, Linux was indeed getting serious use before IBM started backing it.
I think you've got it a bit backfooted. This is not a new idea, it's been around in the study of Semiotics for a long time.
Orwell was well-aware of these ideas, and used them in '1984', correct. But it's not like this is a proof Orwell was right, it's further evidence the theory Orwell adopted when constructing Newspeak may be correct. But it wasn't his theory.
A good example is how in ancient greek, one could not, originally, differentiate something 'existing' as a concept with 'being', existing in the physical sense.
This lead the early greek philosopher Parmenides (7th cent. BC) to the conclusion that vacuum did not exist, because something could not 'be' without being something, and vacuum is nothing. Thus, vacuum was an impossibility.
Today, we casually speak of abstractions all the time. But it's good to remember that's not how it always was. Language and thought have developed in parallel.
Most Euro countries aren't 3000 x 1500 miles in size, made up of 48 separate states. Can you point out something other than London on a map of England? It's only the size of VA.
Even taking size into account, most americans have very poor skills. Russia is huge. Most Americans still can't point out where Moscow is, much less Saint Petersburg.
(And I'd be very impressed if they could find Volgograd, Novosibirsk or Vladivostok)
Size isn't a good metric. Montana is big, but only has around what, a million people?
Being an American with good geography skills, living in Europe, I can tell you that IMHO, more Europeans can find Ohio (or at least give its general area) than Americans can find, say, Yorkshire or Bavaria. (and they both have far greater populations than Montana)
This isn't hapless employees. This is government oppression, and the bans on free speech necessary to pull them off.
So what? Microsoft isn't a political movement, it's a business.
Microsofts intent is nothing other than to sell as much software as possible. Do you think they give a damn about free speech?
The employee's weren't doing this as a political statement, they just didn't know better, and it cost their company money.
I can't see how that would not be a mistake from MS point of view.
I don't think a change of materials is going to help much, as long as it's electronics.
Computers, like many electronics products, are usually treated with a flame-retardant to (duh) keep the electronics from burning up in case something malfunctions.
Most of these flame retardants are polybromated organic compounds. (usually diphenyl ethers) Not nice stuff (and I Am A Chemist), and definitely something you can develop a hypersensitivity/allergy to.
I recall that some studies done show that most of the surplus flame-retardant dissipitates after the first few hundred hours of use. So one suggestion would to let your new machines burn-in in a well-ventilated environment away from you.
Anyway.. the awareness about the issue is increasing, and these types of flame-retardants will probably be phased out sooner or later. (You'd have to ask an expert, I'm not sure what the alternatives are)
But there really isn't much to do apart from that, AFAIK they don't make any computers which aren't treated.
The USS Enterprise was originally given the CV-6 designation to demonstrate that she was a "Carrier Vessel". However, after extensive war operations she was refitted for nighttime/round-the-clock operations. To signify this, her designation was changed to CVN-6 (Carrier Vessel, Night).
I don't know where you get your facts from, but they're all wrong. The USS Enterprise had the designation NCC-1701. (CC being Constitution-Class)
After Kirk blew up the original Enterprise, the USS Levant (NCC-1843) was redesignated USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-A). And AFAIK, she did not only have round-the-clock operations, the ship was fitted for full five-year missions!
Lucky bastard. This guy only got 1/10th of that.
(25000 rupees = 540 bucks)
You don't "drop charges", you settle. The "charges" in "dropping charges" are criminal charges this is not a criminal case, it's a civil one. In a civil case you make a complaint.
They could "drop their complaint", and when both sides do that per some agreement, it's called a settlement.
Besides that, it's not one case. It's several. SCO would do good to drop or settle all their cases, because they're no good. The DaimlerCrysler complaint has been dismissed. The IBM and Autozone cases look really bad, and the Novell case looks like it's headed for a dismissal soon too.
They could settle in the IBM case, sure, but I don't see why IBM should just drop their counterclaims without getting anything in return. Many of them are pretty good.
Same thing goes for Redhat. Redhat started their suit. Why should they drop it? The basis for their suit as well as part of IBM:s counter-suit is Lanham act violations, e.g. SCO caused their business damage through their FUDding.
Dropping those cases without anything in return would imply that SCO didn't cause them damage, and thus that they really didn't have a case.
If SCO is going to play this thing to the end, the others are going to play it to SCO's end.
I believe that whether they are currently valid or not depends on what country you are residing in. In the US they have expired.
Nope. They have expired everywhere now. They expired in the USA over a year ago. I know because I was writing some GIF-using software back then, and purposely delayed releasing it until the patent expired.
And so what? Does their patents expiring mean that we should suddenly trust them?
Who is 'we'?