The original article which the quote is taken from says 'planned to make amends for its use of GIF patents (now expired) against open source projects'.
The submitter presumably removed that comment, which gives the impression they are still valid. The article doesn't though.
(how'd the overrated flame get modded up. Of cousre the slashdot editors knew this. Nothing suggests otherwise. In fact, they even talk about making amends for that part of Unisys's past)
Did you RTFA?
Yes. The FA does duely note that the patents are expired. The slashdot summary does not. It reads as if the patents are valid. Hence the question.
No, zero point energy definitely exists. If it as the Wikipedia article correctly point out, if it didn't: That would be a violation of laws of physics.
However, the jump from there to that ZPE could be used as an energy source, is just as big as assuming gravity or any other conservative potential could be used for energy.
Zero-point energy is conserved, just like all other forms of energy. There is simply no work to be had from it.
I can even think of a practical experiment to show this: Some real-world effects caused by zero-point effects are van der Waals forces and the Casimir effect (which are very much the same thing). Liquid helium is held together in liquid phase by vdW-forces only.
So: take gaseous He at the vaporization temperature and cool it until liquid. Measure the energy that took. Now heat the liquid He until it's gas again. Measure the energy that takes. (Remember to take entropy into account)
You will get the same number. Zero-point energy is conserved. It's no more difficult than that. And this also means that building a zero-point energy machine which produces energy is no more difficult than building any other kind of perpetuum mobile.
(Which BTW, isn't possible. But that never stopped people either, did it?)
Well, my take on cold fusion is that it's somewhat improbable, but it's fun to dream.
Except that you have to wake up and face reality some times, too. Especially when talking about what you think the taxpayers money should be spent on.
Currently, many researchers claim to have semi-succesfully fused deuterium resulting in helium and heat energy
But far fewer have actually done so.
That site you linked to is a typical example of pseudoscience. Confusing and unintelligble, filled with bogus references on irrelevant matters, and nothing at all supporting the stranger claims.
Just to pick an example: This phase diagram. What is that? Well the text will have you believe it's the Palladium-deuterium system. It is not. Nor could it even possibly be that. Because you can't plot a binary system on a two-axis plot like that. Where's the relative Pd/D concentration plotted? Nowhere.
I'll even tell you why: That is NOT a phase diagram of a metal-hydride(deuteride) system. It isn't even a phase diagram of a binary (2-component) system.
It's a phase diagram of a single gas in it's gas and liquid states, as seen in any chemistry textbook discussing gas laws. (See for instance the exact same thing plotted for carbon dioxide in Atkins, "Physical Chemistry", chapter one, figure 1.23)
The dashed line indicates the area in which the substance is a liquid, the critical isotherm (that's what the lines are called) around 275 degrees in the graph is the critical point above which the substance cannot exist in liquid form.
This is an example of what a phase diagram in a binary system can look like.
That site is just incoherent blathering and some images stolen from chemistry textbooks and a bunch of irrelevant links thrown in for good measure.
Projects that have proven future potential such as Zero Point Energy should be pursued far more vigorously,
Proven how? Zero-point energy as an energy source is pure psuedoscientific bullshit. And that's a fact. They have yet to produce any reproducible experiment proving their bogus hypotheses, or any valid theory to give reason to believe any of this stuff.
and railroaded past those hopeless 'scientists' who still think such things aren't possible.
Being everyone who actually knows something about these matters.
Dismiss this as lunacy and mod-me down? - just remember this as an 'I told you so' when it turns out to be valid all along...
Sure, it's lunacy. I don't believe in education through moderation though.
Sorry, that's wrong. The electromagnetic fields in an atom or molecule are usually quite static. There are of course small random fluctuations as dictated by quantum physics, which give rise to different effects. (Casimir effect in solid-state, van der Waals effects in molecules)
But it's mostly static. That's why some molecules are dipoles.
However, naturally by sending a photon at the molecule, you're introducing a time-depending perturbation into the electromagnetic field.
I think the stuff is BS. I'd debunk it, but to do that I'd need to know what, exactly, they are claiming, in detail. They're home-page claims they've published, but I could find no links to any articles in any peer-reviewed journal I've heard of.
Besides which, it's not quite my field. I work with time-independent systems. But there are certainly a lot of others who know quite a lot on this stuff. I work with some of them, and they don't quite come across like these guys.
And I certainly hope they didn't base their theoretical work on Einstein and Planck's work and Bohr's atomic model.. In fact.. it's quite odd that they are even mentioned.. That's pre-quantum physics?!
It gives me the feeling they don't really know what they're doing: If you want to model photonic processes, you need to work with quantum physics, e.g. the time-dependent Schrödinger equation.
Obligatory Simpsons quote: "What the heck was that?" -Bart Simpson, Milhouse and Nelson leaving a movie theatre billed "The Naked Lunch".
Seriously though.. You kind of have to take the context into account- It's based on a William Burroughs book. He was pretty doped-up most of the time, and his books reflect it. (It's not entirely based on the book, but also on the life of Burroughs. He did shoot his wife, you know.)
Here's a start for interpretation: Writing = using drugs, different typewriters = different drugs.
Of course, it's still a matter of taste. Some people like more literal stuff, nothing wrong with that.
Um, well the point is: It doesn't happen every day does it? It's only once every few months. So it is an event, isn't it? At least if you're interested in Linux, which a substantial portion of the/. readership is.
There has been a significant number of reports on Windows SP2.. I can't see the difference.
What are we talking about here? I mean, there are bad movies, bad movies, and bad movies.
One is the kind which is so bad that it's lacking qualities unintentionally give it good entertainment value. The "So-bad-it's-good" genre.. Like the classic "Plan 9 from outer space". It's bad, but quite entertaining.
Then there's the category of movies which are bad, but on the other hand, never really try either. "Surf Nazis Must Die" would be an example.
Then you've got the movies which are really bad, yet have the pretention of being good. These are the worst kind, because they leave you with nothing but frustration wondering what the heck the producer was thinking spending money on this. (I don't really blame the actors.. They've got bills to pay too, y'know.. But the producer is the guy who had hundreds of screenplays to chose from, and he chose that one?!)
I mean, it couldn't possibly be that your posts were somehow lacking?
Say offensive, stupid, rude, redundant, poorly formulated, poorly formatted or just plain offtopic?
Get over yourself. If you don't like Groklaw or Slashdot or whatever, go start your own blog. Nothing is stopping you. If you really do have something of value to say, you'll get readers.
Agreed. In the past 3 days, we've seen 3 SCO stories.
First: "Novell Poised To Strike On Slander Of Title Claim" The most newsworthy of the bunch. Novell files for dismissal with prejudice. With some good arguments. But that doesn't matter. What matters is what the judge thinks. Wait for the ruling instead.
Second: "SCO Linux Licenses Could Increase In Price" That's not news. SCO has been repeating this "Better buy now, prices will rise reeeaaal sooon" mantra for a year now.
Third: This one. "SCO might start astroturfing" That's not news either. There can be no doubt SCO is out to slander Linux and Open Source and just about everybody who doesn't give them money*. But until an actual, obvious campaign starts. It's not news, it's a rumor.
*Ironic really, considering that open source does give them money. UnixWare is full of OSS.
whats more the question is why is Apple encrypting in the first place and why cant i disable it ?
Because Apple needs to stay friendly with the music industry, and that means the RIAA. They'd probably wouldn't mind skipping encryption altogether and saving a buck, but I doubt very many labels would support that scheme.
So, if Novell didn't sell SCO the copywrights, exactly what did Novell sell them? If SCO thought they were buying the copywrights and Novell says they didn't, but some sort of transaction did indeed take place, what did SCO end up with?
The Unix business. Selling Unix licenses and providing support for existing licensees.
Novell doesn't feel they need the Unix copyrights to be able to do that. SCO thinks otherwise.
How can this fellow's opinion turn on a dime like that? Is he really credible to a corporate audience? I don't think people are quite that stupid or so easily manipulated.
You're working on the assumption that he either likes or hates Linux, and thus that he either now or before was compromising himself.
Things aren't black-and-white like that. Presumably he just doesn't care, either way. He used to point out pros of Linux and is now pointing on the cons of Linux. It's what is paid to do, and presumably he doesn't think that his personal opinion on the overall situtation is relevant, and so he is not compromising any personal integrity.
I'm a Linux user and OSS developer. And I can talk for quite a while about what's bad about Linux. I wouldn't do it for a living, but hey - that's because I do care about the issue, and have a sense of integrity.
But just because you care, doesn't mean everyone else does.
Proprietary does not mean Commercial Software. Wrong. "Proprietary software" = commercial software, open source or not, gnu or not, whatever.
Open-source means I can view the source! Wrong. Open source as most define it, by the OSI definition means far more than just viewing the source.
Proprietary means the product does not follow open standards.
Wrong again. You are confusing "proprietary standards" which mean standards which are owned by some corporate entity, with proprietary software, which is software owned by some corporate entity. Proprietary software may use a proprietary standard, but there is nothing stopping proprietary software from using open standards. HTML is an open standard, Microsoft Word format a proprietary one.
The "best" and "most up-to-date" implementation will always be on Windows
Yes. But face it:.NET apps are being written. People are using it. It's not like it's going to just go away if you ignore it. Being "up-to-date" isn't really a big deal either. People don't want to code for a moving target. Platforms reach a certain level of maturity which most people are satisfied with, (Java 1.1 to 1.2 was a big jump, and 1.4 to 1.5 "5" is another one, but between there the differences weren't so big) and that's all you need to keep up with.
Windows.Forms isn't "standardized" by ECMA, and it's very Windows-centric. Mono needs Windows.Forms in order to run GUI-based.NET applications
Not quite correct. You can make GUI-based.NET apps using other libraries than WinForms, such as GTK#, which in fact is what the Mono crew officially recommends.
Even though Java is proprietary, Sun has bent over backwards for years to get the community involved and keep the community involved.
I'd say they've done a lousy job, from the OSS community standpoint. There is no good free implementation of Java yet. Because Sun is possesive when it comes to Java. NOT because of forking or anything like that.
If Sun was scared of forking, they'd make the Java Compatibility Kit freely available. It costs thousands of dollars, terms that no OSS developer could possibly agree to. Sure Sun wants a community, but only on their terms. Sure they're far better than MS, but they're not 'bending over backwards' either.
Speaking as someone who was a quite proficient hunt-n-pecker for years before learning to touch-type: Learn!
I don't do much transcription either, but as you point out, touch-typing ability is virtually essential for doing it.
But there are other reasons. Speed as you mentioned, but it's also simply much more relaxing not to have to look at the keyboard while you're typing.
And it takes far less mental work, because a good part of your brain is devoted to whatever you're looking at the moment. By not looking at the keyboard, you're basically 'freeing up resources' in your head for more useful things.
If you're good at hunt-n-pecking, you actually already know where most of the keys are, at some mental level. It makes learning to touch type actually very quick once you get past the first part, because all you're doing is associating, in your mind, the fingers with the keys. Once that part is done, you never have to think about where the keys are again, and you can let your concious mind forget about it.
(I used to be able to recall the keyboard, now I can't, conciously. I have to pretend I'm typing to find a key. )
So that's the big benefit to me - freeing up resources in your mind by moving this information about the keyboard layout from the concious memory down into subconcious, imprinted finger motions.
Slashdot Mirror
Not very obvious is it?
The original article which the quote is taken from says 'planned to make amends for its use of GIF patents (now expired) against open source projects'.
The submitter presumably removed that comment, which gives the impression they are still valid. The article doesn't though.
(how'd the overrated flame get modded up. Of cousre the slashdot editors knew this. Nothing suggests otherwise. In fact, they even talk about making amends for that part of Unisys's past)
Did you RTFA?
Yes. The FA does duely note that the patents are expired. The slashdot summary does not. It reads as if the patents are valid. Hence the question.
The Unisys GIF patents expired quite some time ago.
You might find a young American lawyer that "works" 100 hours a week, but he sure as hell isn't getting 100 hours of work done a week.
This may be correct, to an extent. But it is more of a sad comment on american management style than a measureable economic factor.
No, zero point energy definitely exists. If it as the Wikipedia article correctly point out, if it didn't: That would be a violation of laws of physics.
However, the jump from there to that ZPE could be used as an energy source, is just as big as assuming gravity or any other conservative potential could be used for energy.
Zero-point energy is conserved, just like all other forms of energy. There is simply no work to be had from it.
I can even think of a practical experiment to show this: Some real-world effects caused by zero-point effects are van der Waals forces and the Casimir effect (which are very much the same thing). Liquid helium is held together in liquid phase by vdW-forces only.
So: take gaseous He at the vaporization temperature and cool it until liquid. Measure the energy that took.
Now heat the liquid He until it's gas again. Measure the energy that takes.
(Remember to take entropy into account)
You will get the same number. Zero-point energy is conserved. It's no more difficult than that. And this also means that building a zero-point energy machine which produces energy is no more difficult than building any other kind of perpetuum mobile.
(Which BTW, isn't possible. But that never stopped people either, did it?)
Well, my take on cold fusion is that it's somewhat improbable, but it's fun to dream.
Except that you have to wake up and face reality some times, too. Especially when talking about what you think the taxpayers money should be spent on.
Currently, many researchers claim to have semi-succesfully fused deuterium resulting in helium and heat energy
But far fewer have actually done so.
That site you linked to is a typical example of pseudoscience. Confusing and unintelligble, filled with bogus references on irrelevant matters, and nothing at all supporting the stranger claims.
Just to pick an example: This phase diagram. What is that? Well the text will have you believe it's the Palladium-deuterium system. It is not. Nor could it even possibly be that. Because you can't plot a binary system on a two-axis plot like that. Where's the relative Pd/D concentration plotted? Nowhere.
I'll even tell you why: That is NOT a phase diagram of a metal-hydride(deuteride) system. It isn't even a phase diagram of a binary (2-component) system.
It's a phase diagram of a single gas in it's gas and liquid states, as seen in any chemistry textbook discussing gas laws.
(See for instance the exact same thing plotted for carbon dioxide in Atkins, "Physical Chemistry", chapter one, figure 1.23)
The dashed line indicates the area in which the substance is a liquid, the critical isotherm (that's what the lines are called) around 275 degrees in the graph is the critical point above which the substance cannot exist in liquid form.
This is an example of what a phase diagram in a binary system can look like.
That site is just incoherent blathering and some images stolen from chemistry textbooks and a bunch of irrelevant links thrown in for good measure.
It is not science. It just looks like it.
Hey, maybe this has something to do with the DOE's current re-evaluation of cold fusion...
The DOE isn't seriously re-evaluating cold fusion. It's a dead duck. Just becase a pseudoscience site says otherwise doesn't make it so.
or the much-discussed sonofusion results...
Much discussed, because very few people believe them.
Projects that have proven future potential such as Zero Point Energy should be pursued far more vigorously,
Proven how? Zero-point energy as an energy source is pure psuedoscientific bullshit.
And that's a fact. They have yet to produce any reproducible experiment proving their bogus hypotheses, or any valid theory to give reason to believe any of this stuff.
and railroaded past those hopeless 'scientists' who still think such things aren't possible.
Being everyone who actually knows something about these matters.
Dismiss this as lunacy and mod-me down? - just remember this as an 'I told you so' when it turns out to be valid all along...
Sure, it's lunacy. I don't believe in education through moderation though.
Sorry, that's wrong. The electromagnetic fields in an atom or molecule are usually quite static. There are of course small random fluctuations as dictated by quantum physics, which give rise to different effects.
(Casimir effect in solid-state, van der Waals effects in molecules)
But it's mostly static. That's why some molecules are dipoles.
However, naturally by sending a photon at the molecule, you're introducing a time-depending perturbation into the electromagnetic field.
I think the stuff is BS. I'd debunk it, but to do that I'd need to know what, exactly, they are claiming, in detail. They're home-page claims they've published, but I could find no links to any articles in any peer-reviewed journal I've heard of.
Besides which, it's not quite my field. I work with time-independent systems. But there are certainly a lot of others who know quite a lot on this stuff. I work with some of them, and they don't quite come across like these guys.
"Planck" is also spelled wrong.
And I certainly hope they didn't base their theoretical work on Einstein and Planck's work and Bohr's atomic model.. In fact.. it's quite odd that they are even mentioned.. That's pre-quantum physics?!
It gives me the feeling they don't really know what they're doing: If you want to model photonic processes, you need to work with quantum physics, e.g. the time-dependent Schrödinger equation.
Obligatory Simpsons quote:
"What the heck was that?"
-Bart Simpson, Milhouse and Nelson leaving a movie theatre billed "The Naked Lunch".
Seriously though.. You kind of have to take the context into account- It's based on a William Burroughs book. He was pretty doped-up most of the time, and his books reflect it.
(It's not entirely based on the book, but also on the life of Burroughs. He did shoot his wife, you know.)
Here's a start for interpretation:
Writing = using drugs,
different typewriters = different drugs.
Of course, it's still a matter of taste. Some people like more literal stuff, nothing wrong with that.
Um, well the point is: It doesn't happen every day does it? It's only once every few months. So it is an event, isn't it? /. readership is.
At least if you're interested in Linux, which a substantial portion of the
There has been a significant number of reports on Windows SP2.. I can't see the difference.
What are we talking about here?
I mean, there are bad movies, bad movies, and bad movies.
One is the kind which is so bad that it's lacking qualities unintentionally give it good entertainment value. The "So-bad-it's-good" genre.. Like the classic "Plan 9 from outer space".
It's bad, but quite entertaining.
Then there's the category of movies which are bad, but on the other hand, never really try either. "Surf Nazis Must Die" would be an example.
Then you've got the movies which are really bad, yet have the pretention of being good. These are the worst kind, because they leave you with nothing but frustration wondering what the heck the producer was thinking spending money on this.
(I don't really blame the actors.. They've got bills to pay too, y'know.. But the producer is the guy who had hundreds of screenplays to chose from, and he chose that one?!)
"Gigli" comes to mind as a recent example.
First: This ain't a whitepaper - it's a sales pitch.
Second: How is this P2P when there's a big centralized "Authorization service" in the middle?
And guess who is supposedly running that service? Why the paper's authors..
Yeah.. it has to be that.
I mean, it couldn't possibly be that your posts were somehow lacking?
Say offensive, stupid, rude, redundant, poorly formulated, poorly formatted or just plain offtopic?
Get over yourself. If you don't like Groklaw or Slashdot or whatever, go start your own blog. Nothing is stopping you. If you really do have something of value to say, you'll get readers.
Agreed. In the past 3 days, we've seen 3 SCO stories.
First: "Novell Poised To Strike On Slander Of Title Claim"
The most newsworthy of the bunch. Novell files for dismissal with prejudice. With some good arguments. But that doesn't matter. What matters is what the judge thinks. Wait for the ruling instead.
Second: "SCO Linux Licenses Could Increase In Price"
That's not news. SCO has been repeating this "Better buy now, prices will rise reeeaaal sooon" mantra for a year now.
Third: This one. "SCO might start astroturfing"
That's not news either. There can be no doubt SCO is out to slander Linux and Open Source and just about everybody who doesn't give them money*. But until an actual, obvious campaign starts. It's not news, it's a rumor.
*Ironic really, considering that open source does give them money. UnixWare is full of OSS.
I've always found this extra paranoia surrounding the Statue of Liberty a bit funny..
At least in my experience, the SoL doesn't have as great symbolic value outside the US as it does to americans.
What Americans consider important american symbols aren't always the same ones the rest of the world thinks of when they think of America.
whats more the question is why is Apple encrypting in the first place and why cant i disable it ?
Because Apple needs to stay friendly with the music industry, and that means the RIAA. They'd probably wouldn't mind skipping encryption altogether and saving a buck, but I doubt very many labels would support that scheme.
So, if Novell didn't sell SCO the copywrights, exactly what did Novell sell them? If SCO thought they were buying the copywrights and Novell says they didn't, but some sort of transaction did indeed take place, what did SCO end up with?
The Unix business. Selling Unix licenses and providing support for existing licensees.
Novell doesn't feel they need the Unix copyrights to be able to do that. SCO thinks otherwise.
How can this fellow's opinion turn on a dime like that? Is he really credible to a corporate audience? I don't think people are quite that stupid or so easily manipulated.
You're working on the assumption that he either likes or hates Linux, and thus that he either now or before was compromising himself.
Things aren't black-and-white like that. Presumably he just doesn't care, either way. He used to point out pros of Linux and is now pointing on the cons of Linux. It's what is paid to do, and presumably he doesn't think that his personal opinion on the overall situtation is relevant, and so he is not compromising any personal integrity.
I'm a Linux user and OSS developer. And I can talk for quite a while about what's bad about Linux. I wouldn't do it for a living, but hey - that's because I do care about the issue, and have a sense of integrity.
But just because you care, doesn't mean everyone else does.
What terrible examples!
Neither KDE or X11 were developed within the GNU project.
OPENSOURCE does not mean GNU.
Right.
Proprietary does not mean non-GNU.
Right.
Proprietary does not mean Commercial Software.
Wrong. "Proprietary software" = commercial software, open source or not, gnu or not, whatever.
Open-source means I can view the source!
Wrong. Open source as most define it, by the OSI definition means far more than just viewing the source.
Proprietary means the product does not follow open standards.
Wrong again. You are confusing "proprietary standards" which mean standards which are owned by some corporate entity, with proprietary software, which is software owned by some corporate entity. Proprietary software may use a proprietary standard, but there is nothing stopping proprietary software from using open standards. HTML is an open standard, Microsoft Word format a proprietary one.
And people are also using Windows, eating McDonald's hamburgers, and driving Fords. That doesn't mean that I have to as well.
Good. Because noone said you did, either.
Sheesh.
The "best" and "most up-to-date" implementation will always be on Windows
.NET apps are being written. People are using it. It's not like it's going to just go away if you ignore it. Being "up-to-date" isn't really a big deal either. People don't want to code for a moving target. Platforms reach a certain level of maturity which most people are satisfied with, (Java 1.1 to 1.2 was a big jump, and 1.4 to 1.5 "5" is another one, but between there the differences weren't so big) and that's all you need to keep up with.
.NET applications
.NET apps using other libraries than WinForms, such as GTK#, which in fact is what the Mono crew officially recommends.
Yes. But face it:
Windows.Forms isn't "standardized" by ECMA, and it's very Windows-centric. Mono needs Windows.Forms in order to run GUI-based
Not quite correct. You can make GUI-based
Even though Java is proprietary, Sun has bent over backwards for years to get the community involved and keep the community involved.
I'd say they've done a lousy job, from the OSS community standpoint. There is no good free implementation of Java yet. Because Sun is possesive when it comes to Java. NOT because of forking or anything like that.
If Sun was scared of forking, they'd make the Java Compatibility Kit freely available. It costs thousands of dollars, terms that no OSS developer could possibly agree to. Sure Sun wants a community, but only on their terms. Sure they're far better than MS, but they're not 'bending over backwards' either.
Speaking as someone who was a quite proficient hunt-n-pecker for years before learning to touch-type: Learn!
I don't do much transcription either, but as you point out, touch-typing ability is virtually essential for doing it.
But there are other reasons. Speed as you mentioned, but it's also simply much more relaxing not to have to look at the keyboard while you're typing.
And it takes far less mental work, because a good part of your brain is devoted to whatever you're looking at the moment. By not looking at the keyboard, you're basically 'freeing up resources' in your head for more useful things.
If you're good at hunt-n-pecking, you actually already know where most of the keys are, at some mental level.
It makes learning to touch type actually very quick once you get past the first part, because all you're doing is associating, in your mind, the fingers with the keys. Once that part is done, you never have to think about where the keys are again, and you can let your concious mind forget about it.
(I used to be able to recall the keyboard, now I can't, conciously. I have to pretend I'm typing to find a key. )
So that's the big benefit to me - freeing up resources in your mind by moving this information about the keyboard layout from the concious memory down into subconcious, imprinted finger motions.