But from what I can tell, SCO argues if one of THEIR files (or some of their files) touches Linux, then Linux is essentially theirs, especially because Linux apparently benefitted from the code they "own."
Hmmm, I predict that the day that SCO points to some Linux kernel code (hopefully they haven't tried to *contaminate* GNU/Hurd) that a new main branch - LINUX_KERNEL_WITHOUT_CRAPPY_SCO_GRABAGE - would be built. And in 0-day fashion, diffs and patches applied retroactivly to the begining of time. I figure, 10 minutes with a decent copy of $FAVORITE_SCM_TOOL and Linus could solve all the infrengement problems.
This is one problem with an easy technical solution. It's not like anything they could have contributed, if they did (which they didn't or they were stupid) couldn't be replaced in minutes by, say, five monkeys with two broken typewriters in half a day. That's why SCO hasn't released any code. I just hope that IBM's legal team gets some judge to force SCO to prove its claims in the public court of law. One moment their seeking $699 from evey child, widower and grandma - the next they're yesterday's bankrupt legal joke.
Sometimes the icky things thrown from the creeps under the bridge is really the manure you need to feed your plants.
I generally agree with how flawed the theft argument for software piracy (you can only deprive them of recompense for time and effort as they still have the object in question after you get it.) Most of my thoughts, however are already written up at my privacy rant and my rant on the value of products. I'd hoped to help dispell the myth of 'information wants to be free' with the latter, but you can't change the world more than one mind at a time.
TONS of people have lost money underestimating the intelligence of great masses, especially in the last few years...i'm thinking of America Online, but there are others,
Yes, but in that case, they made almost about as much by understanding the patience and demand some (13-35 year old, male) consumers have for online porno.
I think that if you can find a way to offer personalized, individual tech-support for just email alone to the Internet addicted crowd, you could garuntee IT freelance employment for 2-3 million people (assuming a 1:(1...3) tech:email-user ratio and normal USENET/SPAM/etc account activity.) Now the base pay rate...that might not be so good.
except i have one question: what if they simply rename the darned thing?
I'd help me if they'd rename it. Was I the only one who saw the title of this article and thought 'I knew the telecom industry[1] was on hard times, but I just got used to calling them TIA-586A and TIA-568B[2], what will I do now?'
Sheesh. You'd think that in a ligitious country like the USA there'd be some kind of TLA Trademark system to keep people suing over attaching things like 'Terrorist' and 'Total Information' to harmless things like 'Awareness' (God forbid they every attach 'Freedom' and 'From Unresonable Search and Seizure' we know how much good it did last time, and FFUSAS is such a long, ugly ETLA anyway.)
[2] TIA-568B (OW/O/GW/B/BW/G/BrW/Br) to TIA-568B is the standard pin-out ordering for RJ-45 termination used with Cat-5 and Cat-5e UTP copper cabling when used for 'generic' Ethernet. The numberings originally come from an older U.S. consortia, but have been adopted by TIA for industry-wide use.
Hmmm....let's see what ol' Larry Neiven has to say about this:
West takes you In, In takes you East, East takes you Out, Out takes you West.
The point of tacking a solar sail IS to go sideways - in the plane of the orbit if you want to go lower/higher, else off orbit axis to adjust the inclination.
You'd think more people on/. had at least spent 5 minutes comptemplating orbital mechanics at some point in their lives. Come on, Einstien used thought experiments based on elementary physics, why can't y'all?
Stephen Baxer in his short-story collection Vacuum Diagrams called this Quark-Gluon plasma "Quagma" (a play on Quark-magma.) This mystical substance was the source of human's sublight starship power and propulsion (the GUT ships) as well as a potent weapon against the enemy of all baryonic matter, the dark-matter photino birds.
Once again, someone in Hard Science Fiction presieges those working in Hard Science.
as long as it doesn't start running wild and judging humans, or there might be a significant oversupply of liquified lawyers.
Naawww...then they'd just start selling lawyer-in-a-can at the corner Walmart Legal Express.
Get 'em now! New low price! Every single one garunteed to have passed the local bar exam! Good in all 51 states, including Iraq! Now in accident-attorney[1] and internet-patent, too! Remember, Just add spine[2]!
Obtopic: I wonder just how fast that thing could go, and if it's available for rental?
Disclaimer: may contain some auto-insurance salesmen, which has been shown to cause cancer in rats by the State of California
Warning: Do not add spine to internet-patent lawyer-in-a-can. Just pour onto nearest existing internet process.
Are any of your (non-Geek) relatives short, blue and living in mushroom houses?
ObTopic: Apple hasn't had much luck litigating this size of a suit in the past - just one look at M$ Windows XP and you can see what kind of white hare has been chased down the holes in Redmond over the years.
Re:the thicket of radio patents ...
on
Steal This Idea
·
· Score: 1
I forgot that the U.S. government is now formally a subdivision of Microsoft/AOL/TW/Fox/MPAA/RIAA
Don't worry, we just need a good, ugly space war against China, India, Middle-Eastern-Power, or an alien species that was sick of all the "I Love Lucy" reruns. Most of the work would require (read: Congress could be conned into thinking it needed) things like large computational power and good computing/network protocols. I belive the computational requirements for even a half-functioning missile shield (ala Ronald Regan's Star Wars program) would just about do it.
(What, you think the U.S.A. would waste $100 billion USD on unemployment, healthcare, social-security, or aerospace-projects? Talk about naive.)
Well, just make sure its on this list (Petition to Call for the Support of Future Space Exploration.) The Planetary Society does more than just SETI, you know.
Re:What use is AI without an operating platform
on
AI Going Nowhere?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
What they need, then, is for an engineering student to do their masters dissertation on creating a generic physical framework for AI systems, or a computing student to do theirs on a generic simulation environment for virtual AI 'bots
One of my major projects while at the University of Oklahoma was an Open Source 'AI SDK' - a framework to build and research AI by providing the wheels which had already been invented. Unfortunately, every time I talked with an 'AI' researcher about this I got one of several responses:
1. We don't need it, my [insert project here] is the True(tm) way - and with the [insert latest breakthrough in computer performance, modeling tools etc] we will win the race!
2. How dare you think you know enough about [insert project here] to do anything with it? Only my well-paid graduate slave^H^H^H^Hstudents could even attempt it, an only with my special insights.
3. You don't need all this other stuff like support for [insert other projects]. The SDK will be too big and slow to do anything well
4. Neato! I'll have a [insert soon to graduate student] to look into it. (Never get a response.)
These were the kinder remarks I got. I won't go into the phone call I had with an engineering professor who simply ranted for 10 minutes at how CompSci people are all stuck-up theoreticians who can't make anything to save their lives. The truth about A.I. research is that it is a fragmented ivory tower with little fiefdoms rulled by professors with tenure. I've met some really cool people and learned some impressive stuff doing an A.I. SDK (You should see the wall of textbooks you can accumulate.) But, very rarely have I encountered someone who goes to the conferences to talk with their fellow researchers rather than just present the progress of the latest and greatest OneRightWay(tm).
I still got the sources in CVS for part of the framework, but with the (dis)encouragement I got, its painful to look at the sources without remebering all those disapointments...
But keep out of the way of the beam!! I have to wonder about the environmental damage of birds/insects flying through it and getting cooked.
Have you ever driven +30 miles on a major U.S. highway? There's a reason every gas station along the way has windshield squeegees and *cheap* car washes (bug guts again, ick.)
Invisible microwave *flows* of power will just be another random (non-Darwinian) selective force courtesy of the human species.
The product name "Microsoft SQL Server" is pretty clear
I got one word for those of you who whine and complain about poor program names:
Excel
Outside of some xspreadsheet programs and VizCalc, I really don't know of too many functionally named spreadsheet apps. Names like Lotus123, et al. seems to be standard. Its all about what people think they should call things - a theme if you will. Browsers are similar to speardsheet systems and unlike database systems in this matter. People seem to expect fancy names like 'Mosaic' or 'Galleon' rather than 'browser' or 'webpageViewer.' (Even if they use generics when describing them.)
Building AI that was truly human-like would be as useless as building a flying machine that was truly bird-like.
Hey, it only took almost another century after the airplane before a stable ornithopter was built.
But there is a valid point in recognising that most A.I. research has been really the search for S.I. (Simulated Intellegence,) using human behavior as the gold standard. To bad many of the better works have tried to be clever with what things are used to generate that behavior. From Rodney Brook's et al. (and most neuro-pathologists) you'd quickly be put in your place about how ridiculously simple and mechanical many of the *hard* behaviors in A.I. were solved by nature.
(viz. a bird's wing is an areofoil, the flapping is only useful for propelling, as the lift-inducing shape is the key; normal walking is unstable semi-harmonic motion driven by reflex feedback.)
Quote at bottom of this/. article's page as of 2003/04/10: Genius doesn't work on an assembly line basis. You can't simply say, "Today I will be brilliant." -- Kirk, "The Ultimate Computer", stardate 4731.3
Re:Correlation vs. Causality
on
BSA IDC FUD
·
· Score: 1
Another classic example of confusing correlation with causality.
This just in: 'there is a strong positive correlation with percentatge of computer use per capita and the rate software piracy in some countries' says unidentified sources who use unknown methods at a big company with a TLA name.
The conclusion 'We(tm)' must support: stop computer use and this will stop sotfware piracy. Help combat this plauge upon our economy now! If you use a computer now, 4 out of 5 unidentified sources recommend quitting today.
That basically says that you can't do anything that would harm other nations' rights to explore the moon. The question is whether stripping the natural resources counts as hindering/harming others.
Welcome to the real world. Anything written on paper is a recommendation to the man who is sitting up there with the pick ready to carve open the rocks. Possession is 9/10ths, remember North Korea? They had to cut through UN barriers to restart their nuclear plants. Read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is you think that China will have to defend its actions against other states.
In fact (for a little paranoia) putting a mining colony/facility on the Moon means China will be the only country that could survive a nuclear holocaust. Not only will the colony be out of range of current, in-place nukes but the facility will also be able to lob multi-megaton clean (read: leave safe for invasion) rocks at any point in the world without notice.
Of course, the conspiracy theorists like to remind us that the U.S. and Soviet military, in secret agreement, have kept us off the Moon for this very reason. Its hard to justify $50 billion in troops and bombers when all you gotta do is push a button on the ol' lunar ore launcher.
Shigeru Miyamoto: For me, the most interesting thing about video games is taking the controller and using it to move something around on the screen.
Hmmm, indeed. Is everybody sure this is the actual genius behind the classics like SMB?
Can't be, everybody knows the most interesting thing is watching the characters play out a dramatic and artistic movie everytime something happens (a la Blood Omen 2, Final Fantasy 8.) Doesn't he know how hard it is to create a program that takes input from the player and actually does it on the screen!?!?
Furthermore, there is no need for the player to control his/her character (Myst, Riven.) They are just there to fork over the dough for our cheeply made, low budget movie clips! How dare he malign our marketing model.
This patent is for the discussion of items for sale.
Like Usenet? (over 30 years old and still kicking.)
I mean, what about the alt.forsale.children? Is anybody thinking about the alt.forsale.children? Doesn't anyone ever think about the alt.forsale.children?
t would be great if we could roll radioactive waste into similar devices to power cars, remote buildings, or even laptops--if we could effectively shield the power source with a small light enclosure.
Hmmm....intersting idea, except the radio-iso-thermo-electric generators depended on heating thermocouples with nuclear decay. I don't think we'll get as good a temperature differential in our lovely atmosphere at sea level as there is in the near-vacuum of inter-steller/planetary space. And there is the whole radiation problem of decaying unstable matter.
But these people with their quantum nucleonic reactor might be able to do it. While based on X-ray induced gamma ray emission of halfium isomers , rather than (I think) thorium isotope-decay powered thermocouples, it still sounds cool (which we all know means its better.) Besides, with a throttle-able power supply with which you could save the juice your not using at any given moment, your probe - unlike poineer - could be still tickin' away.
The energy of a free particle is not, and can take on pretty-much any value. Actually, physicists are trying to prove this conjecture even now. The frequency of radiation appears at our scale to be continous, but the engergy is given in terms of particles, e.g. multiples of the energy of an electron for instance. Kinda like the whole 'is space confinuous or discrete' debate.
You do bring up an intersting point. This gets down to the fundamental definition of energy (usually some form of contrived difference from a baseline.) Those fundamental definitions in, turn, helps the definition of everything else - like the units we use for commerce. (Hey, physics ain't just pretty lasers and expensive calculations.)
Better idea: use large laser to push objects. Slow them enough and presto! Instant reentry. Could be worked to sweep up lots of debris . Including - cough, cough - *enemy* satellites. You'd want to worry about really dense stuff, but then the shuttle's External Tank grosses in the multi-tonne range and it's allowed to deorbit and disintegrate from realy close to the ground.
Hmmm, I wonder if somewhere this could be the start of another defense department funded Ph.D...
Slashdot Mirror
Hmmm, I predict that the day that SCO points to some Linux kernel code (hopefully they haven't tried to *contaminate* GNU/Hurd) that a new main branch - LINUX_KERNEL_WITHOUT_CRAPPY_SCO_GRABAGE - would be built. And in 0-day fashion, diffs and patches applied retroactivly to the begining of time. I figure, 10 minutes with a decent copy of $FAVORITE_SCM_TOOL and Linus could solve all the infrengement problems.
This is one problem with an easy technical solution. It's not like anything they could have contributed, if they did (which they didn't or they were stupid) couldn't be replaced in minutes by, say, five monkeys with two broken typewriters in half a day. That's why SCO hasn't released any code. I just hope that IBM's legal team gets some judge to force SCO to prove its claims in the public court of law. One moment their seeking $699 from evey child, widower and grandma - the next they're yesterday's bankrupt legal joke.
Consipracy or not, go Big Blue.
Troll, but I will bite anyway.
Sometimes the icky things thrown from the creeps under the bridge is really the manure you need to feed your plants.
I generally agree with how flawed the theft argument for software piracy (you can only deprive them of recompense for time and effort as they still have the object in question after you get it.) Most of my thoughts, however are already written up at my privacy rant and my rant on the value of products. I'd hoped to help dispell the myth of 'information wants to be free' with the latter, but you can't change the world more than one mind at a time.
Yes, but in that case, they made almost about as much by understanding the patience and demand some (13-35 year old, male) consumers have for online porno.
I think that if you can find a way to offer personalized, individual tech-support for just email alone to the Internet addicted crowd, you could garuntee IT freelance employment for 2-3 million people (assuming a 1:(1...3) tech:email-user ratio and normal USENET/SPAM/etc account activity.) Now the base pay rate...that might not be so good.
I'd help me if they'd rename it. Was I the only one who saw the title of this article and thought 'I knew the telecom industry[1] was on hard times, but I just got used to calling them TIA-586A and TIA-568B[2], what will I do now?'
Sheesh. You'd think that in a ligitious country like the USA there'd be some kind of TLA Trademark system to keep people suing over attaching things like 'Terrorist' and 'Total Information' to harmless things like 'Awareness' (God forbid they every attach 'Freedom' and 'From Unresonable Search and Seizure' we know how much good it did last time, and FFUSAS is such a long, ugly ETLA anyway.)
[1] TIA - Telecommunication Industry Association, not to be confused with GmbH or the Travel Industry Association of America (which should be TIAA IMHO)
[2] TIA-568B (OW/O/GW/B/BW/G/BrW/Br) to TIA-568B is the standard pin-out ordering for RJ-45 termination used with Cat-5 and Cat-5e UTP copper cabling when used for 'generic' Ethernet. The numberings originally come from an older U.S. consortia, but have been adopted by TIA for industry-wide use.
The point of tacking a solar sail IS to go sideways - in the plane of the orbit if you want to go lower/higher, else off orbit axis to adjust the inclination.
You'd think more people on
It's Mr. Fusion! Now if I could only get a hydrogen powered DeLorean and a 21.1 Gigawatts hydrogen-powered generator....
Once again, someone in Hard Science Fiction presieges those working in Hard Science.
Naawww...then they'd just start selling lawyer-in-a-can at the corner Walmart Legal Express.
Get 'em now! New low price! Every single one garunteed to have passed the local bar exam! Good in all 51 states, including Iraq! Now in accident-attorney[1] and internet-patent, too! Remember, Just add spine[2]!
Obtopic: I wonder just how fast that thing could go, and if it's available for rental?
Are any of your (non-Geek) relatives short, blue and living in mushroom houses?
ObTopic: Apple hasn't had much luck litigating this size of a suit in the past - just one look at M$ Windows XP and you can see what kind of white hare has been chased down the holes in Redmond over the years.
Don't worry, we just need a good, ugly space war against China, India, Middle-Eastern-Power, or an alien species that was sick of all the "I Love Lucy" reruns. Most of the work would require (read: Congress could be conned into thinking it needed) things like large computational power and good computing/network protocols. I belive the computational requirements for even a half-functioning missile shield (ala Ronald Regan's Star Wars program) would just about do it.
(What, you think the U.S.A. would waste $100 billion USD on unemployment, healthcare, social-security, or aerospace-projects? Talk about naive.)
Well, just make sure its on this list (Petition to Call for the Support of Future Space Exploration.) The Planetary Society does more than just SETI, you know.
One of my major projects while at the University of Oklahoma was an Open Source 'AI SDK' - a framework to build and research AI by providing the wheels which had already been invented. Unfortunately, every time I talked with an 'AI' researcher about this I got one of several responses:
1. We don't need it, my [insert project here] is the True(tm) way - and with the [insert latest breakthrough in computer performance, modeling tools etc] we will win the race!
2. How dare you think you know enough about [insert project here] to do anything with it? Only my well-paid graduate slave^H^H^H^Hstudents could even attempt it, an only with my special insights.
3. You don't need all this other stuff like support for [insert other projects]. The SDK will be too big and slow to do anything well
4. Neato! I'll have a [insert soon to graduate student] to look into it. (Never get a response.)
These were the kinder remarks I got. I won't go into the phone call I had with an engineering professor who simply ranted for 10 minutes at how CompSci people are all stuck-up theoreticians who can't make anything to save their lives. The truth about A.I. research is that it is a fragmented ivory tower with little fiefdoms rulled by professors with tenure. I've met some really cool people and learned some impressive stuff doing an A.I. SDK (You should see the wall of textbooks you can accumulate.) But, very rarely have I encountered someone who goes to the conferences to talk with their fellow researchers rather than just present the progress of the latest and greatest OneRightWay(tm).
I still got the sources in CVS for part of the framework, but with the (dis)encouragement I got, its painful to look at the sources without remebering all those disapointments...
Have you ever driven +30 miles on a major U.S. highway? There's a reason every gas station along the way has windshield squeegees and *cheap* car washes (bug guts again, ick.)
Invisible microwave *flows* of power will just be another random (non-Darwinian) selective force courtesy of the human species.
The product name "Microsoft SQL Server" is pretty clear
I got one word for those of you who whine and complain about poor program names:
Outside of some xspreadsheet programs and VizCalc, I really don't know of too many functionally named spreadsheet apps. Names like Lotus123, et al. seems to be standard. Its all about what people think they should call things - a theme if you will. Browsers are similar to speardsheet systems and unlike database systems in this matter. People seem to expect fancy names like 'Mosaic' or 'Galleon' rather than 'browser' or 'webpageViewer.' (Even if they use generics when describing them.)
But...all my books are online now...
(Reaches for ascii-pr0n^H^H^H^H^Hebook-filled PDA)
Hey, it only took almost another century after the airplane before a stable ornithopter was built.
But there is a valid point in recognising that most A.I. research has been really the search for S.I. (Simulated Intellegence,) using human behavior as the gold standard. To bad many of the better works have tried to be clever with what things are used to generate that behavior. From Rodney Brook's et al. (and most neuro-pathologists) you'd quickly be put in your place about how ridiculously simple and mechanical many of the *hard* behaviors in A.I. were solved by nature.
(viz. a bird's wing is an areofoil, the flapping is only useful for propelling, as the lift-inducing shape is the key; normal walking is unstable semi-harmonic motion driven by reflex feedback.)
Quote at bottom of this
This just in: 'there is a strong positive correlation with percentatge of computer use per capita and the rate software piracy in some countries' says unidentified sources who use unknown methods at a big company with a TLA name.
The conclusion 'We(tm)' must support: stop computer use and this will stop sotfware piracy. Help combat this plauge upon our economy now! If you use a computer now, 4 out of 5 unidentified sources recommend quitting today.
What's that Mom? Need to use the phone? No, I'll be off-line in a few minutes...
Welcome to the real world. Anything written on paper is a recommendation to the man who is sitting up there with the pick ready to carve open the rocks. Possession is 9/10ths, remember North Korea? They had to cut through UN barriers to restart their nuclear plants. Read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is you think that China will have to defend its actions against other states.
In fact (for a little paranoia) putting a mining colony/facility on the Moon means China will be the only country that could survive a nuclear holocaust. Not only will the colony be out of range of current, in-place nukes but the facility will also be able to lob multi-megaton clean (read: leave safe for invasion) rocks at any point in the world without notice.
Of course, the conspiracy theorists like to remind us that the U.S. and Soviet military, in secret agreement, have kept us off the Moon for this very reason. Its hard to justify $50 billion in troops and bombers when all you gotta do is push a button on the ol' lunar ore launcher.
Shigeru Miyamoto: For me, the most interesting thing about video games is taking the controller and using it to move something around on the screen.
Hmmm, indeed. Is everybody sure this is the actual genius behind the classics like SMB?
Can't be, everybody knows the most interesting thing is watching the characters play out a dramatic and artistic movie everytime something happens (a la Blood Omen 2, Final Fantasy 8.) Doesn't he know how hard it is to create a program that takes input from the player and actually does it on the screen!?!?
Furthermore, there is no need for the player to control his/her character (Myst, Riven.) They are just there to fork over the dough for our cheeply made, low budget movie clips! How dare he malign our marketing model.
Gamers *playing* games. Hummprf. The nerve...
Like Usenet? (over 30 years old and still kicking.)
I mean, what about the alt.forsale.children? Is anybody thinking about the alt.forsale.children? Doesn't anyone ever think about the alt.forsale.children?
Hmmm....intersting idea, except the radio-iso-thermo-electric generators depended on heating thermocouples with nuclear decay. I don't think we'll get as good a temperature differential in our lovely atmosphere at sea level as there is in the near-vacuum of inter-steller/planetary space. And there is the whole radiation problem of decaying unstable matter.
But these people with their
quantum nucleonic reactor might be able to do it. While based on X-ray induced gamma ray emission of halfium isomers , rather than (I think) thorium isotope-decay powered thermocouples, it still sounds cool (which we all know means its better.) Besides, with a throttle-able power supply with which you could save the juice your not using at any given moment, your probe - unlike poineer - could be still tickin' away.
I think they call those 'laptops.'
Actually, physicists are trying to prove this conjecture even now. The frequency of radiation appears at our scale to be continous, but the engergy is given in terms of particles, e.g. multiples of the energy of an electron for instance.
Kinda like the whole 'is space confinuous or discrete' debate.
You do bring up an intersting point. This gets down to the fundamental definition of energy (usually some form of contrived difference from a baseline.) Those fundamental definitions in, turn, helps the definition of everything else - like the units we use for commerce. (Hey, physics ain't just pretty lasers and expensive calculations.)
Hmmm, I wonder if somewhere this could be the start of another defense department funded Ph.D...