Actually, you just get the most easily reduced/oxidized species coming out.
To take this past the point of absurdity, you would eventually run out of the easily reduced substances:-) . And yes, it's silly to expect all of those ingredients to stay elemental.
Oh goodness, catholite and anolyte from the cathode and the anode! What a scientific miracle!
This is an experiment I did in elementary school.
It's called electrolysis. You separate salt water into
Hydrogen a highly-reactive gas, thus antibiotic.
Oxygen, an oxidizer (duh), oxidation is about the most commonly used method of disinfection.
Sodium, a highly reactive chemical and thus disinfectant.
Chlorine, a superoxidizer (see above).
Use enough voltage, and maybe you bump oxygen to ozone, a superoxidizer (see above).
None of this takes any kind of chemist to see.
Note also that these chemicals are extremely hazardous in their uncombined forms. Remember Apollo 1 and its pure oxygen atmosphere at full sea-level pressure? Skin catches fire almost explosively in that sort of atmosphere - it's truly horrible what pure oxygen can do. Combine hydrogen and oxygen in the right proportions and they will explode. Sodium is poison and explosive when combined with water. Chlorine is poision.
Some of the more recent explorations into silver as a disinfectant with good tolerance in the body might be more profitable to follow, but also have snake-oil potential because too few people recognize that as another century-old technology that has a mass-market application in swimming pools today.
The proprietary business model has even more difficulty competing against proprietary formats and protocols. There used to be more word processing programs than just MS Word and maybe WordPerfect. The bodies of Microsoft competitors are strewn along the information highway. They made perfectly good products that their users wanted, but those users were driven to MS products simply to be able to exchange files with other users of the dominant vendor.
I doubt that the proprietary software houses would consent to open standards and documentation. It's not in their business models and egos to cooperate.
Has everybody forgotten that there is such a thing as a customer, and that all of the money of the proprietary software houses comes from that customer? People seem to take a vendor-centric view of software by default. Why should we even care about the vendor's ego and business model? Our software budget does not exist to fund that vendor, it exists to procure the software we want, using our own criteria, not that of the vendor.
I would think that a fair market with open standards would drive the price of a computer down as far as possible, so this initiative would help with digital divide issues - a little bit. But you are correct that access is a separate issue.
One thing that I do a lot is write down things that much of the community already knows - in a way that I hope is accessable to others who have not yet thought those issues through. Certainly the Open Source Definition and Debian Social Contract reflect what were common sentiments in the community at the time they were written,, and they lean heavily on RMS' work. The same goes for the Sincere Choice platform.
I'm not conscious of having used your ideas, but I certainly do read a lot of comment on Slashdot and elsewhere when forming a synthesis.
I'd encourage you to continue to post your ideas and stir up discussion on these issues - I can't be the only evangelist.
If it is possible for the Free Software community to implement PDF forms without any legal problems, and if the format is fully documented, I would not object to PDF. There is some question regarding whether the documentation is sufficient. There is also the PDF encryption issue.
You might mean defensive termination of the patent license. Company A embeds their patent in standard B, and gets sued by company C for infringement of patent D. Company A suspends the license of company C in defense.
Well, the W3C patent policy proposals have included a limitation of the scope of the patent grant to the task of implementing the standard. It's not a blanket grant. So, odds are that people who implement your principle might want to license it for use outside of the standard.
This is not to say that I approve of software patents. The optimum solution would be to make them go away entirely. Getting them out of standards is something we can achieve on a shorter term.
Actually, I think MS does document some of their file formats. If OpenOffice could track the MS Office file formats reliably and royalty-free, I'd have no problem with MS Office use in government.
Now, there may be patents and other gotchas in the existing MS documents, as with CIFS.
I think all you really need is some rules on disclosure of file formats and intercommunication protocols. The disclosures must be licensed for royalty-free use, in a non-discriminatory fashion. So, if your file format is proprietary and you want to sell it to government, publish the file format. No committee necessary.
Also, consider whether or not government should be locking the people who have to deal with government into a particular software product, and what unfair preference this gives to the vendor of that product. I submit that open standards are always best for the job because they avoid that unfair bias - anyone can interoperate, anyone can compete.
You must be aware that trying to lead this community is like herding cats. Do you really think that there would have been that much coordinated activity among so many people with differing goals and viewpoints, and in a Machevelian way? No, sorry. I actually could not get Red Hat to sign on to Sincere Choice, Tiemann had alread decided on his direction.
And you credit me with more political sophistication than I have, so far.
According to the law using CORBA and such a like is not creating a derived work.
Go read the law. It does not say yes or no about this linking issue, it says almost nothing about software. Then go read the only relevant case, Nintendo v. Goloob Games. Note that the judge said the case is not definitive.
Yes, but in the times he wrote (said) it, giving things free was unheard of.
Yes, the term "indian giver" was still popular when I was a child. People obviously did not understand a gift exchange.
You know, what you refer to as socialism is almost a side-effect. It's just that the money gets in the way of our collaboration. So, I prefer to refer to it as a commons within an overall capitalistic system.
The question is whether or not a simply warranty disclaimer requires agreement. I'm not sure that Sprecht v. Netscape (on the nature of agreement) is relevant to that. Now, if you want the user to indemnify you, I would think that really does require agreement.
Well, the big question is whether or not someone can arbitrarily add new API boundaries to your GPL code - as in your #2. Perhaps there should be some rules about the purpose of the API? I haven't thought it out, and I see this needs thinking through.
it's also why most commercial companies won't touch GPL code with a 10' pole
Both HP and IBM touch the GPL with some simple policies and a review board as their only precautions. They tell their customers about it, too. It happens that I am in the business of selling corporate Open Source policy and practices, so I can say sincerely that the 10-foot thing is ending.
People who want to save their business logic put it in non-GPL applications and don't put GPL code in those applications. It's not such a big deal. Also, if you do end up infringing, your proprietary code isn't "tainted", you have to cure the infringement. Writing out the GPL code and saying "I'm sorry" is an option to cure the infringement. Do you really think any court is going to compel someone to GPL their application?
The licence cannot define what creates a derivative work.
It could make more of an attempt at this if it purported to be a contract, but it does not. However, copyright law is fuzzy enough about what constitutes a derivative work in software - the law says almost nothing about it - that a statement included in the license of what the parties consider to be derivative works might have some force.
You left out the part about linking. If we are to clear up that part, I'd much prefer to make it clear that some forms of dynamic linking and server-izing (as with CORBA) do create derivative works. I think the key concept of a derivative work in software has nothing to do with linking, and everything to do with the span of the thread of control in a computer program. This can indeed happen across physical system boundaries. The boundary for the copyright should probably be at an API that is explicitly designated as an interface to separate works, such as the kernel system call interface. Not just any API.
The lure of Free Software development mostly has to do with useful software that can be developed incrementaly. It doesn't necessarily make much sense for games. The fact that both KDE and GNOME produced great desktops in 4 years is pretty impressive, given what folks have spent on CDE and so-on.
Slashdot Mirror
To take this past the point of absurdity, you would eventually run out of the easily reduced substances :-) . And yes, it's silly to expect all of those ingredients to stay elemental.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce
This is an experiment I did in elementary school.
It's called electrolysis. You separate salt water into
Use enough voltage, and maybe you bump oxygen to ozone, a superoxidizer (see above).
None of this takes any kind of chemist to see.
Note also that these chemicals are extremely hazardous in their uncombined forms. Remember Apollo 1 and its pure oxygen atmosphere at full sea-level pressure? Skin catches fire almost explosively in that sort of atmosphere - it's truly horrible what pure oxygen can do. Combine hydrogen and oxygen in the right proportions and they will explode. Sodium is poison and explosive when combined with water. Chlorine is poision.
Some of the more recent explorations into silver as a disinfectant with good tolerance in the body might be more profitable to follow, but also have snake-oil potential because too few people recognize that as another century-old technology that has a mass-market application in swimming pools today.
Were I you guys, I'd kill the story.
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
Has everybody forgotten that there is such a thing as a customer, and that all of the money of the proprietary software houses comes from that customer? People seem to take a vendor-centric view of software by default. Why should we even care about the vendor's ego and business model? Our software budget does not exist to fund that vendor, it exists to procure the software we want, using our own criteria, not that of the vendor.
Bruce
Bruce
One thing that I do a lot is write down things that much of the community already knows - in a way that I hope is accessable to others who have not yet thought those issues through. Certainly the Open Source Definition and Debian Social Contract reflect what were common sentiments in the community at the time they were written,, and they lean heavily on RMS' work. The same goes for the Sincere Choice platform.
I'm not conscious of having used your ideas, but I certainly do read a lot of comment on Slashdot and elsewhere when forming a synthesis.
I'd encourage you to continue to post your ideas and stir up discussion on these issues - I can't be the only evangelist.
Thanks
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce
It's worth discussing.
Bruce
This is not to say that I approve of software patents. The optimum solution would be to make them go away entirely. Getting them out of standards is something we can achieve on a shorter term.
Bruce
Now, there may be patents and other gotchas in the existing MS documents, as with CIFS.
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
And you credit me with more political sophistication than I have, so far.
Bruce
Go read the law. It does not say yes or no about this linking issue, it says almost nothing about software. Then go read the only relevant case, Nintendo v. Goloob Games. Note that the judge said the case is not definitive.
Bruce
Yes, the term "indian giver" was still popular when I was a child. People obviously did not understand a gift exchange.
You know, what you refer to as socialism is almost a side-effect. It's just that the money gets in the way of our collaboration. So, I prefer to refer to it as a commons within an overall capitalistic system.
Thanks
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce
Both HP and IBM touch the GPL with some simple policies and a review board as their only precautions. They tell their customers about it, too. It happens that I am in the business of selling corporate Open Source policy and practices, so I can say sincerely that the 10-foot thing is ending.
People who want to save their business logic put it in non-GPL applications and don't put GPL code in those applications. It's not such a big deal. Also, if you do end up infringing, your proprietary code isn't "tainted", you have to cure the infringement. Writing out the GPL code and saying "I'm sorry" is an option to cure the infringement. Do you really think any court is going to compel someone to GPL their application?
Bruce
It could make more of an attempt at this if it purported to be a contract, but it does not. However, copyright law is fuzzy enough about what constitutes a derivative work in software - the law says almost nothing about it - that a statement included in the license of what the parties consider to be derivative works might have some force.
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce
The lure of Free Software development mostly has to do with useful software that can be developed incrementaly. It doesn't necessarily make much sense for games. The fact that both KDE and GNOME produced great desktops in 4 years is pretty impressive, given what folks have spent on CDE and so-on.
Bruce