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User: Bruce+Perens

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  1. CDDL and GPL don't mix on Ubuntu Plans To Make ZFS File-System Support Standard On Linux · · Score: 3, Informative

    Regardless of what Ubuntu has convinced themselves of, in this context the ZFS filesystem driver would be an unlicensed derivative work. If they don't want it to be so, it needs to be in user-mode instead of loaded into the kernel address space and using unexported APIs of the kernel.

    A lot of people try to deceive themselves (and you) that they can do silly things, like putting an API between software under two licenses, and that such an API becomes a "computer condom" that protects you from the GPL. This rationale was never true and was overturned by the court in the appeal of Oracle v. Google.

  2. Re:ZFS is nice... on Ubuntu Plans To Make ZFS File-System Support Standard On Linux · · Score: 1

    Aggregate means two programs that are not combined and just live on the same filesystem. In the case of a filesystem driver, it's read into the kernel space and touches unexported APIs of the kernel and various kernel internals.

    It is thus a derivative work.

  3. Re:Dash Computers are Suboptimal on Porsche Chooses Apple Over Google Because Google Wants Too Much Data · · Score: 1

    I think the big problem is manufacturers using the radio GUI to replace all but the most essential knobs. All using their own implementation, of course. I have spent a lot of bucks on RAM mounts. I actually own this one, among others.

  4. Dash Computers are Suboptimal on Porsche Chooses Apple Over Google Because Google Wants Too Much Data · · Score: 1

    In 10 years, it will still be a fine car but the dash computer will be an antique. My car has bluetooth and a phone jack, and that will allow me to hook up the latest equipment to navigate and entertain me, for a long time, and replace it on my own schedule.

  5. Re:Doctor what's wrong with me? on The New Technique That Finds All Known Human Viruses In Your Blood · · Score: 1

    If I had to guess, I'd say heritable immunity.

  6. one = 65536 on The New Technique That Finds All Known Human Viruses In Your Blood · · Score: 1

    const int one = 65536;

    As an aside (that means off-topic, guys) this looks like part of a fixed-point arithmetic implementation. It may not be as silly as you think.

  7. Re:Doctor what's wrong with me? on The New Technique That Finds All Known Human Viruses In Your Blood · · Score: 1

    Those genes are not expressed, and we don't have copies of those viruses floating around our bloodstream.

    Probably, and for the most part. But we used to think the genome was mostly "junk DNA" before we understood that much of it was homeotic in function. It seems to me that virus copies would not be conserved over time unless they were serving some function.

  8. Re:Doctor what's wrong with me? on The New Technique That Finds All Known Human Viruses In Your Blood · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What about the human beings who have virus DNA incorporated into their genome? That's pretty much all of us.

  9. Re:From TFA: bit-exact or not? on Ten Dropbox Engineers Build BSD-licensed, Lossless 'Pied Piper' Compression Algorithm · · Score: 1

    Someday we really will hit physical limits. But every forecast that we were close to them that I've heard since 1980 has failed.

  10. Re:From TFA: bit-exact or not? on Ten Dropbox Engineers Build BSD-licensed, Lossless 'Pied Piper' Compression Algorithm · · Score: 1

    There used to be a web page called "Your Eyes Suck at Blue". You might find it on the Wayback machine.

    You can tell the luminance of each individual channel more precisely than you can perceive differences in mixed color. This is due to the difference between rod and cone cells. Your perception of the color gamut is, sorry, imprecise. I'm sure that you really can't discriminate 256 bits of blue in the presence of other, varying, colors.

  11. Re:From TFA: bit-exact or not? on Ten Dropbox Engineers Build BSD-licensed, Lossless 'Pied Piper' Compression Algorithm · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Rather than abuse every commenter who has not joined your specialty on Slashdot, please take the source and write about what you find.

    Given that CPU and memory get less expensive over time, it is no surprise that algorithms work practically today that would not have when various standards groups started meeting. Ultimately, someone like you can state what the trade-offs are in clear English, and indeed whether they work at all, which is more productive than trading naah-naahs.

  12. Re:No, not economics at all on Bitcoin Fork Divides Community · · Score: 1

    That should say "there is an interval that I own bitcoins".

  13. Re:No, not economics at all on Bitcoin Fork Divides Community · · Score: 1

    Well, mostly. I do international business and it's not that difficult without bitcoins. During a bitcoin transfer, there is an that I own bitcoins, and I am exposed to the risk that the bubble bursts at that moment. Not worth worrying about unless the amount is large.

  14. Re:No, not economics at all on Bitcoin Fork Divides Community · · Score: 1

    I don't have to apologize for national fiat currency, it's silly too, and I don't keep my assets in cash. My problem with Bitcoin is that it is even less credible than "the faith and credit of the United States government", which has been the justification of the Dollar since it was allowed to float. It seems to be nothing but "wish and it will come true".

  15. Re:Are they going to fine airlines for doing the s on FCC Fines Smart City $750K For Blocking Wi-Fi · · Score: 1

    No, the small-aircraft owners aren't at risk of messing up their avionics. They are, however, consciously messing up the cellular network for everyone else. You see, you are supposed to be in range of just a few cells when you use your phone, so that we get frequency reuse between cells. If you are at altitude, you are in line-of-sight communications with all of the cells out to the visible horizon on all sides. And the frequencies you are using are probably locked out from reuse over that entire vast area. It would not take very many phones at altitude to disrupt the entire system.

  16. No, not economics at all on Bitcoin Fork Divides Community · · Score: 4, Insightful

    People who received a play-money system from a mysterious unknown person and actually convinced themselves that it has value are now facing a schism over the money market failing to grow without bounds. Unless, that is, the software is modified in a way that might, over time, disincent people from playing the game.

    I can't be the only one who is thinking that the only problem is that these folks believe bitcoins have value.

    Hell, I thought that the fiat currency of nations was a bad deal. This is an order of magnitude worse.

  17. Re:Are they going to fine airlines for doing the s on FCC Fines Smart City $750K For Blocking Wi-Fi · · Score: 1

    No, the real problem is that you have line-of-sight communications to every cell site until the visible horizon. This tends to use up frequencies over a very large area. In general the antennas have been engineered not to work at high angles, but this can't be complete and the ones on the horizon may see you at the same angle as their regular users.

  18. Re:Fine vs profit? on FCC Fines Smart City $750K For Blocking Wi-Fi · · Score: 1

    It's a criminal offense, not a civil one. The officers are directly liable.

  19. Re:Could be argued differently... on FCC Fines Smart City $750K For Blocking Wi-Fi · · Score: 3, Informative

    Jamming is wilful obstruction of communications. It's criminal rather than civil.

  20. The problem is usually video on SteamOS Has Dropped Support For Suspend · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Think of how we use video devices. Not just in Linux, in pretty much all current systems. In the name of "efficiency" we memory-map them, and we let the user process directly mess around with the internals of a hardware device.

    This is the way a set-top video game box works, not a secure and reliable operating system.

    Until the video is firewalled off from the user the way other components of the operating system are, it's not going to be safe, secure, or reliable. Obviously we'll need new hardware designs to make this work fast enough.

  21. Re:People isn't the issue, farming is on How California Is Winning the Drought · · Score: 2

    What you are complaining about here is a failure of management.

    But not the one I see signs about whenever I drive on I-5. The latest rash of billboards is "Why are we spending on high-speed rail when that money should be used to build additional water storage right now!".

    Farmers, build your own water storage if you want it, I'm finished subsidizing your every expense and I'm taking the train.

  22. Re:People isn't the issue, farming is on How California Is Winning the Drought · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The fact that rivers run to the sea isn't really a management problem. There is actually only one river in California without a dam at present, all of the others have controlled levels, hydroelectric generation, and take-outs of much of their water volume for various purposes.

    We've already destroyed much of the fisheries and are having trouble recovering them. We might have about 5% of the birds the state once had. The Central Valley, which was swampland only a century ago, has been made a desert. Giant lakes have disappeared.

    No surprise if this has changed the weather. A huge heat sink was removed from the environment and there is a perpetual windstorm as cool air is sucked into that valley.

    Proper management is not to suck down the remaining 5%, interrupting the flow of rivers to the sea permanently. Proper management is to attach the real economic cost to water delivered to agriculture, rather than to vastly subsidize it.

    Yes, this means that farming, and farming jobs, would change. Sorry, you asked more of the land than it could provide forever, your resources have run out, game over.

  23. It's a radio transmitter. on German Scientists Confirm NASA's Controversial EM Drive · · Score: 1

    It's a radio transmitter feeding a closed waveguide. One has to ask: why haven't we seen evidence of radio transmission providing thrust before, when it's been feeding an open waveguide?

  24. Re:ah, Tajmar eh? on German Scientists Confirm NASA's Controversial EM Drive · · Score: 2

    Extreme claims require extreme evidence. People who have made extreme claims before without much evidence at all are rightly categorized with the boy who cried wolf.

  25. Re:Morse Code on What's the Oldest Technology You've Used In a Production Environment? · · Score: 1

    Oh, wait, you didn't need to pass a test for that.

    I'm just trying to think how that would have been possible. I think back then there was a medical exception you could plead for. I didn't. I passed the 20 WPM test fair and square and got K6BP as a vanity call, long before there was any way to get that call without passing a 20 WPM test.

    Unfortunately, ARRL did fight to keep those code speeds in place, and to keep code requirements, for the last several decades that I know of and probably continuously since 1936. Of course there was all of the regulation around incentive licensing, where code speeds were given a primary role. Just a few years ago, they sent Rod Stafford to the final IARU meeting on the code issue with one mission: preventing an international vote for removal of S25.5 . They lost.

    I am not blaming this on ARRL staff and officers. Many of them have privately told me of their support, including some directors and their First VP, now SK. It's the membership that has been the problem.

    I am having a lot of trouble believing the government agency and NGO thing, as well. I talked with some corporate emergency managers as part of my opposition to the encryption proceeding (we won that too, by the way, and I dragged an unwilling ARRL, who had said they would not comment, into the fight). Big hospitals, etc.

    What I got from the corporate folks was that their management was resistant to using Radio Amateurs regardless of what the law was. Not that they were chomping at the bit waiting to be able to carry HIPAA-protected emergency information via encrypted Amateur radio. Indeed, if you read the encryption proceeding, public agencies and corporations hardly commented at all. That point was made very clearly in FCC's statement - the agencies that were theorized by Amateurs to want encryption didn't show any interest in the proceeding.

    So, I am having trouble believing that the federal agency and NGO thing is real because of that.