"Mu" isn't a word, it is a prefix like "un" in english. (It may not be a formal prefix however. It may be more of a common root.) "Mushin" for instance would translate as, essentially, "no-mind-ness". Check out some zen folk parables for examples.
The oldest, most correct reason that "mu" is a good answer, and the reference that turned this into a hackerism, is here. This is the exchange that is exemplary for the usage.
If you actually know this, you are not just a geek, you are a well-rounded geek. 8-)
On futher thought, there are times when the truth simply cannot work in context. We all want to stay on the hih road and all, but sometimes the low becons. 8-) You should have been able to head-off this conversation before it ever got to this point, but sometimes you just can't.
If you absolutely must open the side-band of negative implications about someone, you can, but still you must NOT use the no informed opinion line. You do have an opinion. You don't want to sully the line, because if you do then when you *don't* have an opinion people will presume you are hiding a negative one.
Keep your good tools clean, if you catch my drift.
There are times when you absolutely must avoid saying anything "actionable" but the question will not go away. This is usually after things have gotten pretty deep, or when you have a minor dictator over you.
Consider, in the generic and the extreme:
"I don't feel comfortable about expressing my opinion of (whatever or whomever)."
"I have nothing positive/constructive to say."
"No Comment." (plus piercing stare.)
and "I save ranting about that for my (significant other.)"
And on at least two occasions I have just made a face and growled... 8-)
There are an infinite number of interesting variants on the maiden-aunt saying "My moma always taught me, if you don't have anthing nice to say about somone, don't say anythying at all."
Actually if you asked me what I thought about the new coworker and I thought he is not a good addition to the team, I woudln't say I had no opinion.
I would simply say why I have trouble working with that person and whether I thought that would be team wide or just a me-issue.
If you are trying to apply the truth here, the "no unnecessary cruelty" rule and the "say it to their face" rule should moderate how you express your opinion. If it is a common rant, then rant, but own it.
I don't feel like I can honestly express my opinions with Bob.
I don't think Bob shares credit as he should.
Bob may be smarter than I, but I can't communicate effectively with him because English is his second language.
I don't think Bob ever listens to me (his teammates, subordinates, etc.)
We have nothing in common so I feel uncomfortable.
I feel physically intimidated whenever Bob loses his temper.
Of course, these have to be the kinds of things you would be willing to say to someones face (except perhaps the threat/temper one when that is true.)
You should *NEVER* talk in P.C. double-speak. The side-channel is too noisy and too open to intrepretation. Nudge Nudge Wink Wink gets you screwed to the carpet every time.
I have, in fact, lied. However "I have no informed opinion" (the way I intend you say it) is never a lie. Nor is it "the passive agressive stance". It could be used that way, but if it were, it would be ineffective.
I have no informed opinion is the comment you pull out when you are being forced to _guess_ about something you know you are not prepared to answer.
Example, your boss pulls you into a meeting, describes a totally new product idea he's had, and then asks you what it would take to implement. You have had as much time to prepare your answer as he has taken in describing his vision. What do you do? What do you say? In this dynamic you will be held to whatever comes out of your mouth. If you say two weeks, in two weeks and one day your boss will be breathing down your neck. If you pull a Scotty and pad by 500% you will be seen as not worth your money, what with being unable to see the simplicity of his idea.
"I have no informed opinion." Usually a pause here. Then usually "I immediately see these [N] elements that need to be addressed by these [M] people and techniques." Or perhaps "It will take me [X] hours to put together an esitmate." or "This is outside my area of expertise, Timmy is a better match for esitmating that."
Remember, this is about "no lying" and "not gaming the system." It is YOUR JOB to listen to that inner voice that says "I don't know enough right now to give a real answer" and then *share* that fact.
If you can snap off the answer, if you *have* an informed opinion, then clearly that is what you express.
You have to understand that when people are trying to make decisions, compounding their wild-ass guesses multiplicitively by adding your own wild-ass guess is VERY BAD. That is, however, how meetings get so far off course and management gets boned by their employees.
It is nice, and happy-making, to be able to stand up at a meeting and pop off the answer. Thing is, it doesn't help anybody if that answer only "sounds good."
You must actively fight the short-sighted desire to please authority now when you know you are unprepaired.
DON'T, however, become the guy who *never* answers. We all know that guy, and he is useless and annoying. If you have a good answer give it. If you can *establish* with everybody that you are pulling a wild hair from your butt, then go ahead and rough out what *is* apparent to you.
The goal it to communicate effectively and to maximize truth.
The other goal is to "manage" people who take your words and go off half-cocked.
It is a balancing act. But if you are being honest about it, then you will minimize your pain. Not everything is soluable.
"I don't care who is at fault here, lets all blame it on me and then fix it." (used liberally when things are *not* your fault will buy you lots of credits for when something finally *is* your fault.)
"I was just wasting time, malingering, you know, 'leaning on my shovel'..." (A certian amount of this is expected in any job, it's just human nature. Never try to hide it. People stop trying to catch you out if you don't hide it. Done right, you can out-malinger everybody else at the company with impunity. Of course, then it gets to easy, even boring, and you end up out working everybody else becase excessive slacking sucks.)
"Your question presumes facts not in evidence." (always phrased exactly this way, this is the only answer to the "when did you stop beating your wife?" backhand accusation.)
"I blew the time/cost esitmate."
"I am not at liberty to say."
"May I direct you to sales/the VP of development/etc."
"Sorry, I must be an idiot, I didn't mean to infer (whatever)."
"We have decided the best course is (whatever)." (even when you disagree completely, if the collective has spoken, own your place as mouth-piece.)
and finally, on occasion: "Is this the part where I list all the reasons that this is supurbly a bad idea?"
There is virtually no professional condition that requires one to tell a lie. People lie to squirm from the uncomfortable. A well placed and disarming truth is almost invariably more effective. So is keeping your trap shut (as skill The Daryl seems to lack 8-).
Moreso, a proactive truth can prevent the lie-inducing circumstance. Walk into your boss' office and say "I just lost two days because I stupidly copied the backup over the new work instead of the other way around. Damn I feel like an idiot."
There is only one lie that some meaningless jobs require you to tell, namely: "I'd be happy to assist you sir."
Besides, if you get a reputation for never lying, when you finally need to lie it is that much easier.../evil laugh! 8-)
Seriously, the first one, "I have no informed opinion," is the most useful. This is the phrase to pull out when someone is trying to "manuver you" into making statements you know are incorrect. It has many variants but the core meaning that must be carried is that guessing now, and then being held to that guess, is not a circumstance you care to enter into. It can be followed by a "if you need me to make a total guess, then I can, but following that guess as cannon would probably be ruinous."
In point of fact, once you present yourself as a "dificult target" you will be spared virtually all of the political games at work. Then, somehow, you become "the nutral party" as if by magic, and you suddenly become privy to all manner of things.
Finally, don't _spread_ gossip... rant publically if necessary, but always be known as the guy who will say to the face anything he would say to a backside. Listen to the gosip of others when necessary, but take it with a grain of salt. The answer to "did X say Y to you?" is (unless "Y" is a promise of felonious activity) "X and I rant to one another about all sorts of things."
And so on.
As long as you are never cruel or bitter (beyond need 8-) you really never need to lie.
We *remember* being lied to because we remember catching out the lie. That alone is proof that the lying is unsustainable.
Still a Little Off (more perfect analogy)
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SCOoby Snacks
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0. Lots of people made lots of differnt kinds of butter for years using everything from a shaker bottle to a rolling-drum churn. 1. SCO buys a company that had licensed the idea of the "four bladed" butter churn from another 3rd company. 2. IBM licensed the idea of the "four bladed" butter churn from that same 3rd company. 3. IBM added a motor and non-skid feet to their churn device. 4. An independent guy comes along and makes another set of butter churn equipment, it takes up less volume and it happens to have "four blades" because that is a very hot idea just then. The four blades look nothing like that 3rd company's blades, they are made of a completely different material by a completely different means, and they churn the butter more efficently, but there are undeniably four "blades". 5. IBM takes their motor and rubber feet and discover they work well on this other design too. 6. SCO cries foul. They assert: 6a. the 3rd company said that only they are allowed to let people make butter. 6b. anything ever put onto one of "their style" churn must have been given to them and can never be used for any other purpose and only they (SCO) can decide if IBM can even keep putting the motor and feet on the old butter churns. 6c. Anything that has four of anthing that could be called "blades" in a court of law and comes into contact with heavy cream can't possibly be based on anything other than "their" churn. 6d. Everybody who doesn't like dry toast owes them 1 dollar per slice eaten, even if the toast was "moistened" with jam or eaten dry, because toast is _typically_ moistened with butter and since they licensed the same four bladed churn as everybody else they own anything toasted. 7. SCO goes on a rampage shooting cows to stop the spread of "unauthorized cream." 8. The worlds largest goat-farmer (Microsoft) dips into his "spreadable goat cheese" profits to keep SCO in bullets "on the sly." 9. A nearby bagel bakery (SUN) not knowing whether boiling and baking are "like enough" to toasting to cause trouble, decides to cater the rampage. 10. Lots of savy food eaters decide to take side bets based solely on the ideas that there has to be money in toast since people eat it, and after all aren't they eating right now...?
The organs of state propigate the mistakes of government mindlessly and without restraint no matter how soon and vocally the minds of the governed and the wills of the informed realize the mistakes and seek repeal.
There is *also* nothing wrong with being biased for/against a position if that bias is justified. We have manufactured a world where "opinion" and "bias" are somehow bad words. That is sad, and unsustainable.
Also, facts produce bias *despite* prejudice. It is natural for a report to display "bias" if the available facts legitimately engender that position.
It is a problem only when the search for the facts is biased in a way that excludes facts that would refute the bias.
You have to understand bias as related to "ethos" and "discriminates". It is not the end product of the ethics, biases and discriminations but the seed reasoning that is found to be either valid or invalid.
Remember, there is nothing wrong with descrimination, and discrimination isn't even always negative. "I dislike icecream" and "chocolate is the ultimate flavor" are discriminations. It is only descrimination based on facts not in evidence, that is descrimination without valid discriminates (as in the classic "I dislike black people because all black people are lazy" etc.) that is problematic.
When the newspapers report on some idiot who got himself killed trying to mug someone's grandmother, they are naturally and rightfully biased. Ibid for reporting financial misconduct or larceny.
So "we looked at all this stuff and SCO are lying idiots" is not a "baseless" bias, it is simply "the facts as discovered."
yes, hence the {"bull"} and the disclaim that I was not advocating the possition, just repeating the arguments as they had been expressed to me.
In point of fact the (failed) CDA is why we are screwed today. The advent of the metered service can be directly linked to the carriers wanting to get "their share" of the money the so-called "adult verrification services" were collecting. Prior to that your service was limited only by your service and use it or use it not at all and you paid for the size of your pipe. It was a kind of "all that porn and all that money... Screw the pictures, I gotta get me some of that cash" and metering was born.
Sure, some evolutionary "fairness" system, in the terms of load balancing, would have come eventually, but we would never have seen all this metered access melarky.
The Cable TV mentality and "parent pandering" polititions killed the "free" and "unlimited" internet.
The actual argument (I am paraphrasing not advocating here... 8-) that was advanced to kill the "false advertising" claims was that the access was "unlimited with respect to where and what the user could access" not with respect to "how fast" because clearly the access could not be made available at an infinite rate. No matter what the equipment there is a limit with respect to speed and there is a natural assumtion that fairness of use could be set and enforced just like speed limits on a road (etc).
It is further argued (ibid) that full disclosure was provided since the claims were made in conjunction with statements related to being on the "real internet" as opposed to limited or local services (like Prodigy or Compuserve or the older AOL "mostly on my site" services).
Accordingly (ibid) the meaning was clear when the standard of understanding was set. Removing the word now is impractical and everybody "should understand" this context for unlimited because it was the only one that was ever used in this market.
Yes, I know, "bull" but business stole my internet and made it cheap TV... I foresee a return to much of the BBS culture in the comming years.
[ASIDE]
I mean consider it, how long until the Warz sites stop offering the "full image" of products and start offering an encrypted image fragment. That fragment would be 99.9% of the actual image but to get the last 0.1% you have to make the private BBS call over the more private and protected direct "voice" POTS. Without that last little chunk the image is just so much digital noise and to get the chunk the "content owners" would have to get off the internet and take tracable real-world actions in a much more well-defined legal scope.
Think of it as a "stolen product activation".
Or as a infrastructurally validatable automated authentication system.
Anyway, IMHO, as "the net" gets clogged with "Cable TV" the phone lines will make a comeback as a unifying agency.
The least lauded but biggest (IMHO) problem is one of provenance. A listing of facts, and another listing of the same facts, will be "identical" for the facts listed. Even if these facts are "independently gathered" if both efforts are done with the same dilligence it would be impossible to tell them apart. Consequently you encourage people to come to court and say "they must have stolen this from me... look, it's identical." So by definition there is no way to prove, or even pursuasively demonstrate that accurate data *ISN'T* coppied.
Further, many facts only have one source. Consider the much-harped-uppon phone book example. The phone company has the only authoratative list of name to number tuples. Any "gathering" must come from that source. Therefore acquiring any list of phone numbers by any means other than going around and asking the subscribers individually, must have this list as its root. (or ibid for the Dept of Licensing lists etc.)
"Quantitatively substantial" is never defined ore even hinted at. is this "ten percent", "more than three", "exactly enough to serve any useful purpose". It's all quite litigation-lawyer friendly.
Finally, there is nothing in the definitions to differentiate between "what we all know me mean when we say 'Database'" (big "D") and any of the technical definitons of a compilation of data. It only has to be numerous and discrete. A FAT32 file system with a directory full of memos is, in this definition, a fully covered "database". So lots of non common-usage-database items "suddenly" become this other thing. Again, quite litigation-lawyer friendly, but no so good for any other person. The porn purveyors will be happy, as a directory full of naked men jpgs is a database here.
IMHO this law doesn't add a blessed thing but the opportunity to make things muddy and dificult for American Business.
Consequently, you people in the EU and such should expect, and damn soon, lots of lobbying from Americans to get your respective regions equally infected as soon as people here realize what a mistake this law was.
We were discussing this very thing around the house the other day and we decided that Grape Nuts are called this because of two factors:
1) Grape Nuts greatly resemble "grape shot", so the "grape" is from "little clusters of things designed to break apart and maximize damage to persons and properties."
2) To some people everything that is crunchy and brown and edible must be a nut. These are the same people who believe in irrational concepts like "white supremacy" and "compassionate conservatisim" so it doesn't have to make sense.
3) The first name, "wheat rocks", not to be confused with the assertion that "wheat ROCKS!" (which didn't exist as a cultural paradigm when these little groat clusters first hit the market, and which tends to rile the Barly Growers of America) was discarded as "too accurate to be marketable"...
Presenting humor as "Fact" in any media where sub-text is not effectively communicated (e.g. in writing) *ISN'T* *FUNNY*.
For all that a well versed person may see that the post is "ironic" all the people who are *NOT* "well versed" in the issue are going to miss the "funny" and be misled.
That is why the textual "smily" (8-) was invented.
Call me a moron all you want, but how many of the people we need most to inform might be misled by that "humor" into beleiving things we no to be false?
Quite frankly this is the kind of "help" that sinks ships.
You *DO* and *SHOULD* "discount news without even trying to verify it" if the "news" starts out its life with no credibility. See, "news" without basic credibility is "gossip" and giving gossip a venue into the social discourse is a very bad idea.
Without this filter, we would each have to spend hours each day dealing with the un-discounted accounts of Bigfoot Performing Dark Rituals with Aliens on their UFO's to cause Devil Boy to Possess retired woman's Toaster in Desmoins.
So yes, unattributed "quotes" about unsubstanciated ideas that belch forth from untrustworthy sources can, and indeed must, be assumed to be crap, and therefor safe to ignore.
Item 3 is false. IBM and Linux, need I say more? Aparently I must... Nobody is more "trusted" than IBM in the computer business, they have a market cap of more than a billion dollars. They are selling Linux.
Item four (4) is false. "all open source companies" are by no means in bankrupt or in litigation. Lots of "companies" dot-bombed because they didn't have a business model. Plenty more are doing nicely. Many of both were involved in open-source. Red Hat is in litegation only because someone (SCO) is lying their asses off in public. That litigation can only be seen as an indictment of the Open Source Software Company if you are completely incapable of understanding business.
To a large extent the percentage of open source companies that failed is quite comprable to the percentage of restraunts that fail each year. That doesn't mean that there is no money to be made in making a restraunt. The only real problem with the dot-bomb was the huge amount of venture capital *SQUANDERED* *BLINDLY* by idiots. That, in turn, trashed the economy. But that wasn't open source's fault per se, it was the "bad business" of mistaking "name recognition and market penetration" for "business models that a four year old would find reasonable."
Item five (5) is false, or at least wildly misleading. While Microsoft might have "always" been hiring, if you look at the job market in the DC area in 2001 (the depths of the dot-bomb) there was an essentially region-wide hiring freze.
Defense contractors are probably the largest single group of producers of closed source software and they were in shrinkage like a hula-boy in an arctic fijord.
So "closed-source companies have not 'always been hiring'". Far from it.
Item six (6) is a misleading oversimplification. "Selling" open source is a road to ruin. Selling support for open source software can be quite lucrative. Money is being made and the business models are quite "vital" when they are not just dashed together by infomercial-watching morons the way they were in the late ninties. I'll skip the long proof, but it is reasonably demonstrable that software alone and for software's sake, is not a sustainable business model unless you have someone by the short-hairs.
As for item seven (7), Open Source *obviously* is not about making money selling software. Open source is about making software in the hopes of solving problems. The money to be made is in then having software that will let you do the things that let you make money. This is not double speak, but it is the vital spark that all the dot-bombs totally failed to understand.
For the most part, and with the exception of games programs, there really hasn't been a means in the market to make money by selling software. The "real money" is to be had "selling support contracts" or "providing the software that lets our steeply-priced hardware do something". No really! Microsoft has made a nut selling Windows, that is true enough, and the rev it and make the new stuff imcompatable with the old so that they approximate the same model as an ongoing support. This relies on people being willing to spend $250 every four years to replace something "new" instead of paying $50 a year to have it replaced peicemeal as it evolves. (Wizzard's first rule: "people are stupid"...)
The real Microsoft model relies on the leverage that if your office mate updates to Word YP (whY Pay 8-) you have to also if you want to read their documents. This model is unique to their current market penetration, and OS is nibbling at the edges of that. If Word for Windows is ever forced to "naturally" use an open format for saving documents then Microsoft's "repurchace income" will plumet.
Game software isn't about selling you code, it's about selling you entertainment.
Getting paid for open source isn't aobut putting a disk on someones shelf, it is about being paid to let your customer get some work done. The open
Lets see, color is just our cognitive perception of a particular region of the EM and If human eyes could register X-ray radiation...
So lets see, you admit that human eyes cannot register X-ray radiation, so they cannot cognitively preceive X-rays, and you understand that color is our cognitive perception, but you conclude that X-rays *DO* have color anyway..?
OK, X-rays have color, but in the exact same sense that cows would fly if they were a lot lighter and, um, had wings... 8-)
Simply put, X-rays exist across a section of the EM spectrum, so they may vary in frequency. Saying that in turns gives them the trait of "color" is sloppy and unhelpful.
Your EMH backup module only works if stolen...
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2003 Vaporware Awards
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This is both particularly true and particularly ironic considering that in a later episode called (something like) "Living Witness" the the EMH's backup module was "found and reactivated several centuries after the horrific events surrounding the invasion of the letheally armed (super-fortress) Voyager." At the end of the episode the EMH sets off for earth to find out what finally became of Voyager.
So that's right, the backup module is aparently not compatible with the ships primary systems and will only work if separated from the ship by centuries and lightyears. Sort of like DRM (Dynastic Restriction Methodologies) and a "trusted computers"
So, it's been stolen/damaged/whatever but, in cannon, there was ongoing backups and such.
The again, it's JUST A TV SHOW DAMNIT! 8-) The point of art, even bad art, is to say things, educate, inform, broaden, and/entertain. It doesn't have to be internally consistent beyond practical need.
The problem is that apparently the ??AA types think their strategems and intentions need be no more consistent or valid than the fare they peddle.
"Blue" does not appear "pink" on mars. The *CHEMICAL* they used to make the "blue" chip is "blue" to human eyes in normal lighting conditions because it reflects "a lot of the light in the blue part of the spectrum". The *CHEMICAL* is also "very bright" in the "near infra-red" which is *outside* the range of normal human vision. (Hence "infra-red" and not just "red" 8-).
The scientists are interested in the near infra-red, and infra-red is way on the other end of the spectrum from blue.
So they used the filter/sensor that is responsible for "seeing" the color red and widened it to see "near infra-red". Since all that data comes back as "the red part of the picture" and the piece of plastic "looks pink" because there is a lot of signal in the "red part".
Keep in mind that you cant see "near infra-red" and neither can the NASA guys, and you monitor couldn't display it anyway so your dog would not be able to see it if you held him up in front of your monitor.
The very fact that the "blue chip" looks "pink" in the pictures IS DATA because if the martian atmosphere was filtering more infra-red the chip would look more bluish because there would be less signal on the red channel. Similarly if the martian atmosphere were blocking the blue spectrum more, then the chip would look more red and less pink. (and so forth...)
The ENTIRE POINT of the mars dial is that they can take the duplicate equipment here and put it in a room and vary the conditions until they duplicate the various signal levels. (Hence "calibrate" and its orthogonal concept.) Of course, since they know the exact traits of the chips and of the filters, they don't actually have to set up the room and do the test, they can just look at the numbers and do the math.
For the "very slow" among us; consider those nice "X-Ray Pictures" from the Hubble (and such). They are nice color pictures, but X-Rays don't have color. The scientific value comes from knowing what signal values represent what measurable scientific values. If the X-Ray pictures were photo-realistic in the visible spectrum they would just be black squares, which wouldn't help anybody know anything.
As for the "green question" green == green for whatever value of "green" the "green filter" is using. Since the near-green colors are all still in the visible spectrum, there is likely no value for them to have used any non-standard filters. Then again, they might have a whole filter set ready to show fractionals of the green spectrum as a full-color shot (just like the X-Ray pictures.)
This "Green" question was the whole point of that one photo-shopped earth-taken (mostly orange) picture of the smoke and fire. If you use your tools to "color correct" an image of a very narrow -colored image it can make details much more clear, but you get "blue flames" and such. Doing that after the fact sucks compared to actually changing the filters in the camera at the time of collection. When you do the photo-shop thing you are strengthing the weak signals. When you change your filters you are picking up more detail where you want or need to see it.
The fact that these data are then rendered visibly should surprise nobody.
It's just the jackasses that don't understand the difference between "visual representations of significant data" and "vacation snapshot" have decided to manufacture a tinfoil-hat issue for us to enjoy at our leasure.
The fact that the "group of (professionals|people)" defined by the RFC are persons interested in or responsible for controling a section of the global DNS system. That will give you 100% coverage.
Any person (examiner) who approves a patent this bad should be forced to stand unprotected in the (newly established) "stoning court" outside the USPTO should their patent failt the slash-dot "that's really stupid" test.
The only thing(s) the patent examiner may use as a shield are the materials he gathered together that he can demonstrate are in support the patent, or the bodies of the person or persons who submitted the patent in the first place. The attendence of those persons is mandatory.
The galery has one half of one hour to act as they see fit... stones varing in size from golf-ball to basketball will be amply provided by the FTC.
It is almost certain that nothing will be left of SCO other than a tiny smokeing hole. A somking hole, as such, can't really go after anybody.
Having picked the fight, SCO is now powerless to stop it. By the time the dust settles, SCO should have been proved to have no IP interest in anyting because of Novel's "non-exclusive right to use, with no transfer or ownership" sale of rights to SCO of System V code.
IBM's counter-suit will probably bankrupt SCO, and if it doesn't it will pre-prove as a matter of legal record, the baselessness of SCO's claims. That "Takes care of" the hard part of Red Hat's suit, leaving them to suck up any unspent tidbits.
Since there won't be enough money to go around, one of these other companies will end up with the bulk of any possible IP SCO would have.
the natural outcome may well be the complete open-sourcing of whatever there is to be had. Neither IBM nor Rred Hat, having devalued SCO's claims, are likely to miss the PR win of taking that near-zero-value spoils of war and tossing it to the OS comunity.
The "all of your base belong to whoever wants it" final stab in the eye at Daryl would be all of 1) poetic justice, 2) wonderfully vengeful, 3) good PR use of a proven-unenforceable, depreciated assett, 4) likely to simplify the lives of whoever ends up "successor in interest" in this stuff, as it would prevent any form of back-blast claims.
So IBM and/or Red Hat just say, "here, we pryed this out of their cold, dead hands. We didn't really want it, and it will do everybody the most good if we put it here on (source-forge, etc). Share and enjoy..."
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I have used "mu" for years. 8-)
To correct the hackers dictionary:
"Mu" isn't a word, it is a prefix like "un" in english. (It may not be a formal prefix however. It may be more of a common root.) "Mushin" for instance would translate as, essentially, "no-mind-ness". Check out some zen folk parables for examples.
The oldest, most correct reason that "mu" is a good answer, and the reference that turned this into a hackerism, is here. This is the exchange that is exemplary for the usage.
If you actually know this, you are not just a geek, you are a well-rounded geek. 8-)
On futher thought, there are times when the truth simply cannot work in context. We all want to stay on the hih road and all, but sometimes the low becons. 8-) You should have been able to head-off this conversation before it ever got to this point, but sometimes you just can't.
If you absolutely must open the side-band of negative implications about someone, you can, but still you must NOT use the no informed opinion line. You do have an opinion. You don't want to sully the line, because if you do then when you *don't* have an opinion people will presume you are hiding a negative one.
Keep your good tools clean, if you catch my drift.
There are times when you absolutely must avoid saying anything "actionable" but the question will not go away. This is usually after things have gotten pretty deep, or when you have a minor dictator over you.
Consider, in the generic and the extreme:
"I don't feel comfortable about expressing my opinion of (whatever or whomever)."
"I have nothing positive/constructive to say."
"No Comment." (plus piercing stare.)
and "I save ranting about that for my (significant other.)"
And on at least two occasions I have just made a face and growled... 8-)
There are an infinite number of interesting variants on the maiden-aunt saying "My moma always taught me, if you don't have anthing nice to say about somone, don't say anythying at all."
Actually if you asked me what I thought about the new coworker and I thought he is not a good addition to the team, I woudln't say I had no opinion.
I would simply say why I have trouble working with that person and whether I thought that would be team wide or just a me-issue.
If you are trying to apply the truth here, the "no unnecessary cruelty" rule and the "say it to their face" rule should moderate how you express your opinion. If it is a common rant, then rant, but own it.
I don't feel like I can honestly express my opinions with Bob.
I don't think Bob shares credit as he should.
Bob may be smarter than I, but I can't communicate effectively with him because English is his second language.
I don't think Bob ever listens to me (his teammates, subordinates, etc.)
We have nothing in common so I feel uncomfortable.
I feel physically intimidated whenever Bob loses his temper.
Of course, these have to be the kinds of things you would be willing to say to someones face (except perhaps the threat/temper one when that is true.)
You should *NEVER* talk in P.C. double-speak. The side-channel is too noisy and too open to intrepretation. Nudge Nudge Wink Wink gets you screwed to the carpet every time.
I have, in fact, lied. However "I have no informed opinion" (the way I intend you say it) is never a lie. Nor is it "the passive agressive stance". It could be used that way, but if it were, it would be ineffective.
I have no informed opinion is the comment you pull out when you are being forced to _guess_ about something you know you are not prepared to answer.
Example, your boss pulls you into a meeting, describes a totally new product idea he's had, and then asks you what it would take to implement. You have had as much time to prepare your answer as he has taken in describing his vision. What do you do? What do you say? In this dynamic you will be held to whatever comes out of your mouth. If you say two weeks, in two weeks and one day your boss will be breathing down your neck. If you pull a Scotty and pad by 500% you will be seen as not worth your money, what with being unable to see the simplicity of his idea.
"I have no informed opinion." Usually a pause here. Then usually "I immediately see these [N] elements that need to be addressed by these [M] people and techniques." Or perhaps "It will take me [X] hours to put together an esitmate." or "This is outside my area of expertise, Timmy is a better match for esitmating that."
Remember, this is about "no lying" and "not gaming the system." It is YOUR JOB to listen to that inner voice that says "I don't know enough right now to give a real answer" and then *share* that fact.
If you can snap off the answer, if you *have* an informed opinion, then clearly that is what you express.
You have to understand that when people are trying to make decisions, compounding their wild-ass guesses multiplicitively by adding your own wild-ass guess is VERY BAD. That is, however, how meetings get so far off course and management gets boned by their employees.
It is nice, and happy-making, to be able to stand up at a meeting and pop off the answer. Thing is, it doesn't help anybody if that answer only "sounds good."
You must actively fight the short-sighted desire to please authority now when you know you are unprepaired.
DON'T, however, become the guy who *never* answers. We all know that guy, and he is useless and annoying. If you have a good answer give it. If you can *establish* with everybody that you are pulling a wild hair from your butt, then go ahead and rough out what *is* apparent to you.
The goal it to communicate effectively and to maximize truth.
The other goal is to "manage" people who take your words and go off half-cocked.
It is a balancing act. But if you are being honest about it, then you will minimize your pain. Not everything is soluable.
Repeat after me:
/evil laugh! 8-)
"I have no _informed_ opinion."
"I don't care who is at fault here, lets all blame it on me and then fix it." (used liberally when things are *not* your fault will buy you lots of credits for when something finally *is* your fault.)
"I was just wasting time, malingering, you know, 'leaning on my shovel'..." (A certian amount of this is expected in any job, it's just human nature. Never try to hide it. People stop trying to catch you out if you don't hide it. Done right, you can out-malinger everybody else at the company with impunity. Of course, then it gets to easy, even boring, and you end up out working everybody else becase excessive slacking sucks.)
"Your question presumes facts not in evidence." (always phrased exactly this way, this is the only answer to the "when did you stop beating your wife?" backhand accusation.)
"I blew the time/cost esitmate."
"I am not at liberty to say."
"May I direct you to sales/the VP of development/etc."
"Sorry, I must be an idiot, I didn't mean to infer (whatever)."
"We have decided the best course is (whatever)." (even when you disagree completely, if the collective has spoken, own your place as mouth-piece.)
and finally, on occasion: "Is this the part where I list all the reasons that this is supurbly a bad idea?"
There is virtually no professional condition that requires one to tell a lie. People lie to squirm from the uncomfortable. A well placed and disarming truth is almost invariably more effective. So is keeping your trap shut (as skill The Daryl seems to lack 8-).
Moreso, a proactive truth can prevent the lie-inducing circumstance. Walk into your boss' office and say "I just lost two days because I stupidly copied the backup over the new work instead of the other way around. Damn I feel like an idiot."
There is only one lie that some meaningless jobs require you to tell, namely: "I'd be happy to assist you sir."
Besides, if you get a reputation for never lying, when you finally need to lie it is that much easier...
Seriously, the first one, "I have no informed opinion," is the most useful. This is the phrase to pull out when someone is trying to "manuver you" into making statements you know are incorrect. It has many variants but the core meaning that must be carried is that guessing now, and then being held to that guess, is not a circumstance you care to enter into. It can be followed by a "if you need me to make a total guess, then I can, but following that guess as cannon would probably be ruinous."
In point of fact, once you present yourself as a "dificult target" you will be spared virtually all of the political games at work. Then, somehow, you become "the nutral party" as if by magic, and you suddenly become privy to all manner of things.
Finally, don't _spread_ gossip... rant publically if necessary, but always be known as the guy who will say to the face anything he would say to a backside. Listen to the gosip of others when necessary, but take it with a grain of salt. The answer to "did X say Y to you?" is (unless "Y" is a promise of felonious activity) "X and I rant to one another about all sorts of things."
And so on.
As long as you are never cruel or bitter (beyond need 8-) you really never need to lie.
We *remember* being lied to because we remember catching out the lie. That alone is proof that the lying is unsustainable.
0. Lots of people made lots of differnt kinds of butter for years using everything from a shaker bottle to a rolling-drum churn.
1. SCO buys a company that had licensed the idea of the "four bladed" butter churn from another 3rd company.
2. IBM licensed the idea of the "four bladed" butter churn from that same 3rd company.
3. IBM added a motor and non-skid feet to their churn device.
4. An independent guy comes along and makes another set of butter churn equipment, it takes up less volume and it happens to have "four blades" because that is a very hot idea just then. The four blades look nothing like that 3rd company's blades, they are made of a completely different material by a completely different means, and they churn the butter more efficently, but there are undeniably four "blades".
5. IBM takes their motor and rubber feet and discover they work well on this other design too.
6. SCO cries foul. They assert:
6a. the 3rd company said that only they are allowed to let people make butter.
6b. anything ever put onto one of "their style" churn must have been given to them and can never be used for any other purpose and only they (SCO) can decide if IBM can even keep putting the motor and feet on the old butter churns.
6c. Anything that has four of anthing that could be called "blades" in a court of law and comes into contact with heavy cream can't possibly be based on anything other than "their" churn.
6d. Everybody who doesn't like dry toast owes them 1 dollar per slice eaten, even if the toast was "moistened" with jam or eaten dry, because toast is _typically_ moistened with butter and since they licensed the same four bladed churn as everybody else they own anything toasted.
7. SCO goes on a rampage shooting cows to stop the spread of "unauthorized cream."
8. The worlds largest goat-farmer (Microsoft) dips into his "spreadable goat cheese" profits to keep SCO in bullets "on the sly."
9. A nearby bagel bakery (SUN) not knowing whether boiling and baking are "like enough" to toasting to cause trouble, decides to cater the rampage.
10. Lots of savy food eaters decide to take side bets based solely on the ideas that there has to be money in toast since people eat it, and after all aren't they eating right now...?
The organs of state propigate the mistakes of government mindlessly and without restraint no matter how soon and vocally the minds of the governed and the wills of the informed realize the mistakes and seek repeal.
"I don't know what language engineers will be programming with in twenty years, but I know they'll call it 'Fortran'" -- Attribution Lost
There is *also* nothing wrong with being biased for/against a position if that bias is justified. We have manufactured a world where "opinion" and "bias" are somehow bad words. That is sad, and unsustainable.
Also, facts produce bias *despite* prejudice. It is natural for a report to display "bias" if the available facts legitimately engender that position.
It is a problem only when the search for the facts is biased in a way that excludes facts that would refute the bias.
You have to understand bias as related to "ethos" and "discriminates". It is not the end product of the ethics, biases and discriminations but the seed reasoning that is found to be either valid or invalid.
Remember, there is nothing wrong with descrimination, and discrimination isn't even always negative. "I dislike icecream" and "chocolate is the ultimate flavor" are discriminations. It is only descrimination based on facts not in evidence, that is descrimination without valid discriminates (as in the classic "I dislike black people because all black people are lazy" etc.) that is problematic.
When the newspapers report on some idiot who got himself killed trying to mug someone's grandmother, they are naturally and rightfully biased. Ibid for reporting financial misconduct or larceny.
So "we looked at all this stuff and SCO are lying idiots" is not a "baseless" bias, it is simply "the facts as discovered."
yes, hence the {"bull"} and the disclaim that I was not advocating the possition, just repeating the arguments as they had been expressed to me.
In point of fact the (failed) CDA is why we are screwed today. The advent of the metered service can be directly linked to the carriers wanting to get "their share" of the money the so-called "adult verrification services" were collecting. Prior to that your service was limited only by your service and use it or use it not at all and you paid for the size of your pipe. It was a kind of "all that porn and all that money... Screw the pictures, I gotta get me some of that cash" and metering was born.
Sure, some evolutionary "fairness" system, in the terms of load balancing, would have come eventually, but we would never have seen all this metered access melarky.
The Cable TV mentality and "parent pandering" polititions killed the "free" and "unlimited" internet.
The actual argument (I am paraphrasing not advocating here... 8-) that was advanced to kill the "false advertising" claims was that the access was "unlimited with respect to where and what the user could access" not with respect to "how fast" because clearly the access could not be made available at an infinite rate. No matter what the equipment there is a limit with respect to speed and there is a natural assumtion that fairness of use could be set and enforced just like speed limits on a road (etc).
It is further argued (ibid) that full disclosure was provided since the claims were made in conjunction with statements related to being on the "real internet" as opposed to limited or local services (like Prodigy or Compuserve or the older AOL "mostly on my site" services).
Accordingly (ibid) the meaning was clear when the standard of understanding was set. Removing the word now is impractical and everybody "should understand" this context for unlimited because it was the only one that was ever used in this market.
Yes, I know, "bull" but business stole my internet and made it cheap TV... I foresee a return to much of the BBS culture in the comming years.
[ASIDE]
I mean consider it, how long until the Warz sites stop offering the "full image" of products and start offering an encrypted image fragment. That fragment would be 99.9% of the actual image but to get the last 0.1% you have to make the private BBS call over the more private and protected direct "voice" POTS. Without that last little chunk the image is just so much digital noise and to get the chunk the "content owners" would have to get off the internet and take tracable real-world actions in a much more well-defined legal scope.
Think of it as a "stolen product activation".
Or as a infrastructurally validatable automated authentication system.
Anyway, IMHO, as "the net" gets clogged with "Cable TV" the phone lines will make a comeback as a unifying agency.
[End ASIDE]
Sadly, I premise is only that the people who *named*, or at least market-tested the name, grape nuts were prone to this kind of reasoning.
The least lauded but biggest (IMHO) problem is one of provenance. A listing of facts, and another listing of the same facts, will be "identical" for the facts listed. Even if these facts are "independently gathered" if both efforts are done with the same dilligence it would be impossible to tell them apart. Consequently you encourage people to come to court and say "they must have stolen this from me... look, it's identical." So by definition there is no way to prove, or even pursuasively demonstrate that accurate data *ISN'T* coppied.
Further, many facts only have one source. Consider the much-harped-uppon phone book example. The phone company has the only authoratative list of name to number tuples. Any "gathering" must come from that source. Therefore acquiring any list of phone numbers by any means other than going around and asking the subscribers individually, must have this list as its root. (or ibid for the Dept of Licensing lists etc.)
"Quantitatively substantial" is never defined ore even hinted at. is this "ten percent", "more than three", "exactly enough to serve any useful purpose". It's all quite litigation-lawyer friendly.
Finally, there is nothing in the definitions to differentiate between "what we all know me mean when we say 'Database'" (big "D") and any of the technical definitons of a compilation of data. It only has to be numerous and discrete. A FAT32 file system with a directory full of memos is, in this definition, a fully covered "database". So lots of non common-usage-database items "suddenly" become this other thing. Again, quite litigation-lawyer friendly, but no so good for any other person. The porn purveyors will be happy, as a directory full of naked men jpgs is a database here.
IMHO this law doesn't add a blessed thing but the opportunity to make things muddy and dificult for American Business.
Consequently, you people in the EU and such should expect, and damn soon, lots of lobbying from Americans to get your respective regions equally infected as soon as people here realize what a mistake this law was.
We were discussing this very thing around the house the other day and we decided that Grape Nuts are called this because of two factors:
1) Grape Nuts greatly resemble "grape shot", so the "grape" is from "little clusters of things designed to break apart and maximize damage to persons and properties."
2) To some people everything that is crunchy and brown and edible must be a nut. These are the same people who believe in irrational concepts like "white supremacy" and "compassionate conservatisim" so it doesn't have to make sense.
3) The first name, "wheat rocks", not to be confused with the assertion that "wheat ROCKS!" (which didn't exist as a cultural paradigm when these little groat clusters first hit the market, and which tends to rile the Barly Growers of America) was discarded as "too accurate to be marketable"...
That generally requires skill on the part of the author... no evidence of that there...
Presenting humor as "Fact" in any media where sub-text is not effectively communicated (e.g. in writing) *ISN'T* *FUNNY*.
For all that a well versed person may see that the post is "ironic" all the people who are *NOT* "well versed" in the issue are going to miss the "funny" and be misled.
That is why the textual "smily" (8-) was invented.
Call me a moron all you want, but how many of the people we need most to inform might be misled by that "humor" into beleiving things we no to be false?
Quite frankly this is the kind of "help" that sinks ships.
It needed rebut, and it has gotten it.
You *DO* and *SHOULD* "discount news without even trying to verify it" if the "news" starts out its life with no credibility. See, "news" without basic credibility is "gossip" and giving gossip a venue into the social discourse is a very bad idea.
Without this filter, we would each have to spend hours each day dealing with the un-discounted accounts of Bigfoot Performing Dark Rituals with Aliens on their UFO's to cause Devil Boy to Possess retired woman's Toaster in Desmoins.
So yes, unattributed "quotes" about unsubstanciated ideas that belch forth from untrustworthy sources can, and indeed must, be assumed to be crap, and therefor safe to ignore.
Points of fact:
Items 1 & 2, I agree.
Item 3 is false. IBM and Linux, need I say more? Aparently I must... Nobody is more "trusted" than IBM in the computer business, they have a market cap of more than a billion dollars. They are selling Linux.
Item four (4) is false. "all open source companies" are by no means in bankrupt or in litigation. Lots of "companies" dot-bombed because they didn't have a business model. Plenty more are doing nicely. Many of both were involved in open-source. Red Hat is in litegation only because someone (SCO) is lying their asses off in public. That litigation can only be seen as an indictment of the Open Source Software Company if you are completely incapable of understanding business.
To a large extent the percentage of open source companies that failed is quite comprable to the percentage of restraunts that fail each year. That doesn't mean that there is no money to be made in making a restraunt. The only real problem with the dot-bomb was the huge amount of venture capital *SQUANDERED* *BLINDLY* by idiots. That, in turn, trashed the economy. But that wasn't open source's fault per se, it was the "bad business" of mistaking "name recognition and market penetration" for "business models that a four year old would find reasonable."
Item five (5) is false, or at least wildly misleading. While Microsoft might have "always" been hiring, if you look at the job market in the DC area in 2001 (the depths of the dot-bomb) there was an essentially region-wide hiring freze.
Defense contractors are probably the largest single group of producers of closed source software and they were in shrinkage like a hula-boy in an arctic fijord.
So "closed-source companies have not 'always been hiring'". Far from it.
Item six (6) is a misleading oversimplification. "Selling" open source is a road to ruin. Selling support for open source software can be quite lucrative. Money is being made and the business models are quite "vital" when they are not just dashed together by infomercial-watching morons the way they were in the late ninties. I'll skip the long proof, but it is reasonably demonstrable that software alone and for software's sake, is not a sustainable business model unless you have someone by the short-hairs.
As for item seven (7), Open Source *obviously* is not about making money selling software. Open source is about making software in the hopes of solving problems. The money to be made is in then having software that will let you do the things that let you make money. This is not double speak, but it is the vital spark that all the dot-bombs totally failed to understand.
For the most part, and with the exception of games programs, there really hasn't been a means in the market to make money by selling software. The "real money" is to be had "selling support contracts" or "providing the software that lets our steeply-priced hardware do something". No really! Microsoft has made a nut selling Windows, that is true enough, and the rev it and make the new stuff imcompatable with the old so that they approximate the same model as an ongoing support. This relies on people being willing to spend $250 every four years to replace something "new" instead of paying $50 a year to have it replaced peicemeal as it evolves. (Wizzard's first rule: "people are stupid"...)
The real Microsoft model relies on the leverage that if your office mate updates to Word YP (whY Pay 8-) you have to also if you want to read their documents. This model is unique to their current market penetration, and OS is nibbling at the edges of that. If Word for Windows is ever forced to "naturally" use an open format for saving documents then Microsoft's "repurchace income" will plumet.
Game software isn't about selling you code, it's about selling you entertainment.
Getting paid for open source isn't aobut putting a disk on someones shelf, it is about being paid to let your customer get some work done. The open
Next you will see them "justifying" (and then raising) their usuerous prices because they are "losing money on all those law suits." /sigh
Lets see, color is just our cognitive perception of a particular region of the EM and If human eyes could register X-ray radiation...
So lets see, you admit that human eyes cannot register X-ray radiation, so they cannot cognitively preceive X-rays, and you understand that color is our cognitive perception, but you conclude that X-rays *DO* have color anyway..?
OK, X-rays have color, but in the exact same sense that cows would fly if they were a lot lighter and, um, had wings... 8-)
Simply put, X-rays exist across a section of the EM spectrum, so they may vary in frequency. Saying that in turns gives them the trait of "color" is sloppy and unhelpful.
This is both particularly true and particularly ironic considering that in a later episode called (something like) "Living Witness" the the EMH's backup module was "found and reactivated several centuries after the horrific events surrounding the invasion of the letheally armed (super-fortress) Voyager." At the end of the episode the EMH sets off for earth to find out what finally became of Voyager.
So that's right, the backup module is aparently not compatible with the ships primary systems and will only work if separated from the ship by centuries and lightyears. Sort of like DRM (Dynastic Restriction Methodologies) and a "trusted computers"
So, it's been stolen/damaged/whatever but, in cannon, there was ongoing backups and such.
The again, it's JUST A TV SHOW DAMNIT! 8-) The point of art, even bad art, is to say things, educate, inform, broaden, and/entertain. It doesn't have to be internally consistent beyond practical need.
The problem is that apparently the ??AA types think their strategems and intentions need be no more consistent or valid than the fare they peddle.
"Blue" does not appear "pink" on mars. The *CHEMICAL* they used to make the "blue" chip is "blue" to human eyes in normal lighting conditions because it reflects "a lot of the light in the blue part of the spectrum". The *CHEMICAL* is also "very bright" in the "near infra-red" which is *outside* the range of normal human vision. (Hence "infra-red" and not just "red" 8-).
The scientists are interested in the near infra-red, and infra-red is way on the other end of the spectrum from blue.
So they used the filter/sensor that is responsible for "seeing" the color red and widened it to see "near infra-red". Since all that data comes back as "the red part of the picture" and the piece of plastic "looks pink" because there is a lot of signal in the "red part".
Keep in mind that you cant see "near infra-red" and neither can the NASA guys, and you monitor couldn't display it anyway so your dog would not be able to see it if you held him up in front of your monitor.
The very fact that the "blue chip" looks "pink" in the pictures IS DATA because if the martian atmosphere was filtering more infra-red the chip would look more bluish because there would be less signal on the red channel. Similarly if the martian atmosphere were blocking the blue spectrum more, then the chip would look more red and less pink. (and so forth...)
The ENTIRE POINT of the mars dial is that they can take the duplicate equipment here and put it in a room and vary the conditions until they duplicate the various signal levels. (Hence "calibrate" and its orthogonal concept.) Of course, since they know the exact traits of the chips and of the filters, they don't actually have to set up the room and do the test, they can just look at the numbers and do the math.
For the "very slow" among us; consider those nice "X-Ray Pictures" from the Hubble (and such). They are nice color pictures, but X-Rays don't have color. The scientific value comes from knowing what signal values represent what measurable scientific values. If the X-Ray pictures were photo-realistic in the visible spectrum they would just be black squares, which wouldn't help anybody know anything.
As for the "green question" green == green for whatever value of "green" the "green filter" is using. Since the near-green colors are all still in the visible spectrum, there is likely no value for them to have used any non-standard filters. Then again, they might have a whole filter set ready to show fractionals of the green spectrum as a full-color shot (just like the X-Ray pictures.)
This "Green" question was the whole point of that one photo-shopped earth-taken (mostly orange) picture of the smoke and fire. If you use your tools to "color correct" an image of a very narrow -colored image it can make details much more clear, but you get "blue flames" and such. Doing that after the fact sucks compared to actually changing the filters in the camera at the time of collection. When you do the photo-shop thing you are strengthing the weak signals. When you change your filters you are picking up more detail where you want or need to see it.
The fact that these data are then rendered visibly should surprise nobody.
It's just the jackasses that don't understand the difference between "visual representations of significant data" and "vacation snapshot" have decided to manufacture a tinfoil-hat issue for us to enjoy at our leasure.
The fact that the "group of (professionals|people)" defined by the RFC are persons interested in or responsible for controling a section of the global DNS system. That will give you 100% coverage.
Any person (examiner) who approves a patent this bad should be forced to stand unprotected in the (newly established) "stoning court" outside the USPTO should their patent failt the slash-dot "that's really stupid" test.
The only thing(s) the patent examiner may use as a shield are the materials he gathered together that he can demonstrate are in support the patent, or the bodies of the person or persons who submitted the patent in the first place. The attendence of those persons is mandatory.
The galery has one half of one hour to act as they see fit... stones varing in size from golf-ball to basketball will be amply provided by the FTC.
It is almost certain that nothing will be left of SCO other than a tiny smokeing hole. A somking hole, as such, can't really go after anybody.
Having picked the fight, SCO is now powerless to stop it. By the time the dust settles, SCO should have been proved to have no IP interest in anyting because of Novel's "non-exclusive right to use, with no transfer or ownership" sale of rights to SCO of System V code.
IBM's counter-suit will probably bankrupt SCO, and if it doesn't it will pre-prove as a matter of legal record, the baselessness of SCO's claims. That "Takes care of" the hard part of Red Hat's suit, leaving them to suck up any unspent tidbits.
Since there won't be enough money to go around, one of these other companies will end up with the bulk of any possible IP SCO would have.
the natural outcome may well be the complete open-sourcing of whatever there is to be had. Neither IBM nor Rred Hat, having devalued SCO's claims, are likely to miss the PR win of taking that near-zero-value spoils of war and tossing it to the OS comunity.
The "all of your base belong to whoever wants it" final stab in the eye at Daryl would be all of 1) poetic justice, 2) wonderfully vengeful, 3) good PR use of a proven-unenforceable, depreciated assett, 4) likely to simplify the lives of whoever ends up "successor in interest" in this stuff, as it would prevent any form of back-blast claims.
So IBM and/or Red Hat just say, "here, we pryed this out of their cold, dead hands. We didn't really want it, and it will do everybody the most good if we put it here on (source-forge, etc). Share and enjoy..."