I'm glad to see you have the intelligence to classify all 291 million Americans.
I'm glad you understand that prejudice is incompatible with intelligence. It makes your subsequent statement just too ironic for mere words to describe:
I'd rather be interpreted as arrogant than bitter like the rest of the world.
You're not making any sense. If the shuttle is aerodynamic, and it still has air resistance problems, imagine the additional problems if it weren't aerodynamic. And it's not at all clear to me that a high-thrust engine technology must necessarily be capable of moving air out of the way. Look at our own rockets as a counterexample.
You're postulating technology that they may or may not have, and trying to use that to "prove" that their designs are impractical. Well, why not just give them the benefit of the doubt?
Most commercial software licenses are very clear on the fact that redistribution of derivative products can only be done under their license terms.
Well, I haven't seen that many commercial software licenses, but I think most of them don't provide any source code, and they prohibit reverse engineering and redistribution altogether. Certainly not a very effective means for a "viral" license to propagate itself.:-)
So the real questions is why do some ships in SW have wings and some don't?
I guess it's a design decision. If you don't enter the atmosphere often, you may be better off optimizing the design for space travel. Maybe ships that can "make the jump to lightspeed" are better off round.
Have you ever seen a meteor enter the atmosphere? The air pressure builds up and you end up with white-hot flames surrounding your ship. That's why the space shuttle needs those heat resistant tiles. Plus, the ship would need to be physically strong to withstand those stresses if it weren't aerodynamic. I'm sure you could make your ship more easily and cheaply if you just streamline it a bit.
The ship could slow to a crawl before re-entering, but that would make landing take a long time. Better just to be aerodynamic.
Besides, who says fuel is free? Maybe, even with ultimate technology, there's still a desire to be efficient.
Lift is not the sole purpose of aerodynamics. A craft would still need to be aerodynamic to fly through the atmosphere. Granted, it might not need wings though.
But if you *did* see Microsoft's code, then all the software you write is automatically comtaminated and Microsoft will sue you to hell. And there's no way to get out.
Uh, I don't think so. Why do you say that?
If you copied (or heck, even just read) Microsoft's code, you can't get away just by removing the code. They assume that your brain is "comtaminated" with their code, sue you to hell, and you will never, ever, be able to get a programming job again.
That's ridiculous.
Sorry but the GPL is nowhere near "viral" as for example Microsoft's Shared Source.
I'm not familiar with that license. Perhaps it's even more viral but that doesn't mean the GPL is not viral.
I never understood why spacecraft need wings if they are operating outside an atmosphere. However, if they're designed for atmospheric flight they will need wings.
Have you seen the movies? All the ships can take off and land from the ground.
The GPL is no more "viral" than any other license that expects payment for use.
It most certainly is. Those licenses don't spread to other code. GPL'ed code allows you to use it if you cover the whole program under the GPL, thus spreading to other code. There's no way you could pull the same trick with, for instance, Microsoft's EULA.
Relax. This is a Good Thing.
GPL is no more encumbering than licenses that are effectively public domain.
It most certainly is. Public doman software can be used by anyone in any way. GPL'ed code cannot; ergo, it is more encumbered.
My intent in using the LGPL is pretty simple: If you want to use my library, go ahead. If you make CHANGES to my library, those have to be released back into the wild, so the library can be improved by everyone's improvements.
Well, surprise! The LGPL does not have that effect. People can make their own private changes, and they are only required to distribute the source along with the binary. That means if they never release the binary, they also never need to release the source.
The closest it comes is in clause 2c which states that, if you modify the library, then "You must cause the whole of the work to be licensed at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License." But just because third parties have a license to make copies doesn't mean that anyone is compelled to provide them with one.
Obviously if you don't use GPL'ed code, then you have no problem. Equally obviously, then, that can't be what people are talking about when they say it's viral.
The GPL has the property that, if you derive a project from code covered by it, your own code must also be covered by it. Most licenses don't have that property. So, if your 10,000 LOC project has 50 LOC covered by the GPL, you must license the whole thing under the GPL (in which case the GPL has effectively transmitted itself to other code) or remove those 50 LOC (thereby innoculating your project).
If you object to the term "viral" being applied to this situation, so be it, but I think it's an apt description, and it's exactly the effect that I think Stallman intended. Regardless, you need to take a deep breath and relax a bit.
Seriously... something tells me that the serious push for broadband wasn't so grandma could do her geneology research faster...
Funny you'd choose that example, because according to MacLeans magazine, "Genealogy has become second to pornography as the most popular use of the World Wide Web, with two million sites and counting."
It was ironic that though we had as many staff as they did, they had 20x the number of contractor and consultants and took them years to do what we could do in hours.
How is that ironic? Sounds pretty logical to me, given the conditions you described.
I don't get it. How does the C64 qualify as 64-bit?
C-64 was named after its 64KB address space. It was an 8-bit machine with 16-bit pointers (though the pointers had to be in memory because they wouldn't fit in the registers!).
Well, clearly the photon's speed can't change, but velocity is a vector, not a scalor. . . When the direction of the photon changes, so does it's velocity.
Obviously a photon's velocity can change if the direction changes, but that doesn't provide any energy to the sail, because energy depends on speed.
If you take a look, I said "the photon's velocity can't decrease". If you don't take that to mean "the photon's speed can't decrease" then I'd like to know what you think it means.
Sheesh, you learn that in the first week of physics.
I think you'll live longer if you relax a bit and don't assume dumbest possible interpretation of things you read on Slashdot.
When the photons are travelling towards the sail an observer at the light source will see a red shift (doppler effect at work here).
When the photons are travelling away from the sail an observer at the light source will see a blue shift.
No, that's not it. The reflected photon will be red-shifted relative to its pre-reflection wavelength, due to loss of energy. The pre-reflection photon itself is neither "red-shifted" nor "blue-shifted", because what are you comparing it to?
Actually the redshift is misleading and completely irrelevant anyway. A sail will work fine with zero redshift.
The point is that the interaction between the sail and the photons is characteristic of an elastic collision, exchanging momentum, with an associated increase in entropy.
If this is an elastic collision, and the sail gains energy, then the photon must lose some energy. Where do you propose this energy comes from? Clearly, the photon's velocity can't decrease. Hence the redshift.
If some guy wants to convince us that this is a "heat engine" and then derive the fact that it can't work because of general thermodynamic principles, the onus is on him to explain where the thing breaks down in a specific, non-abstract way.
Not true. I'm sure you would not say this had the argument been based on conservation of momemtum, or conservation of mass/energy. Abstract principles are sufficient whenever they are applied properly.
The problem is that the airframe and the wings are NOT designed to withstand the necessary stress of escape velocity.
They don't need to reach escape velocity. Not sure where you got that from.
They're not trying to escape Earth's gravity and go into orbit around the sun. They're trying to get to an altitude of just 100km above the Earth. Huge difference. They're talking about a max velocity less than mach 3. Escape velocity is more like about mach 35 at sea level.
Slashdot Mirror
You're postulating technology that they may or may not have, and trying to use that to "prove" that their designs are impractical. Well, why not just give them the benefit of the doubt?
For the Star Wars ships, you could imagine any number of reasons (eg. X-wings need their guns to be a certain distance from their engines).
The ship could slow to a crawl before re-entering, but that would make landing take a long time. Better just to be aerodynamic.
Besides, who says fuel is free? Maybe, even with ultimate technology, there's still a desire to be efficient.
Lift is not the sole purpose of aerodynamics. A craft would still need to be aerodynamic to fly through the atmosphere. Granted, it might not need wings though.
You must see the christmas special. It's truly dreadful. I have thus far been unable to watch it to the end.
Oh man, that's funny. Someone give the man some mod points.
Ever notice that the space shuttle has wings?
How could this be construed as saying that "LGPL is Viral for Java"?
Maybe there's more to it in that one link that's Slashdotted.
Relax. This is a Good Thing.
It most certainly is. Public doman software can be used by anyone in any way. GPL'ed code cannot; ergo, it is more encumbered.Relax. This is a Good Thing.
The closest it comes is in clause 2c which states that, if you modify the library, then "You must cause the whole of the work to be licensed at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License." But just because third parties have a license to make copies doesn't mean that anyone is compelled to provide them with one.
Obviously if you don't use GPL'ed code, then you have no problem. Equally obviously, then, that can't be what people are talking about when they say it's viral.
The GPL has the property that, if you derive a project from code covered by it, your own code must also be covered by it. Most licenses don't have that property. So, if your 10,000 LOC project has 50 LOC covered by the GPL, you must license the whole thing under the GPL (in which case the GPL has effectively transmitted itself to other code) or remove those 50 LOC (thereby innoculating your project).
If you object to the term "viral" being applied to this situation, so be it, but I think it's an apt description, and it's exactly the effect that I think Stallman intended. Regardless, you need to take a deep breath and relax a bit.
Ok, ok, I have no sense of humour. But would someone mind please explaining the joke to me? I still don't get it.
C-64 was named after its 64KB address space. It was an 8-bit machine with 16-bit pointers (though the pointers had to be in memory because they wouldn't fit in the registers!).
If you take a look, I said "the photon's velocity can't decrease". If you don't take that to mean "the photon's speed can't decrease" then I'd like to know what you think it means.
I think you'll live longer if you relax a bit and don't assume dumbest possible interpretation of things you read on Slashdot.They're not trying to escape Earth's gravity and go into orbit around the sun. They're trying to get to an altitude of just 100km above the Earth. Huge difference. They're talking about a max velocity less than mach 3. Escape velocity is more like about mach 35 at sea level.
Sitting around being a genius is a fundamentally selfish thing to do. Men can't afford to neglect their wife and kids enough to achieve greatness.