This may finally be the motivation the BSD world needs to replace GNU software, like the C library and compilers, with truly free alternatives.
The problem with "truly free software" is that companies/people are free to make it non-free. While that would be great for companies like Tivo, it is bad for end users, since they do NOT get the freedom to further enhance the proprietary fork of the code.
I personally don't see why the "BSD world" thinks that producing software that other people can turn proprietary is a good thing. However, if they write the software they have obviously the right to use any kind of license they want for it.
No, the GPL (v3 or otherwise) doesn't circumvent anything. What gave you the idea that it did?
That's like trying to argue that an EPROM programmer is a circumvention device.
They've gotten a free ride for a long time, and not contributed anything back, and now they might not get to use some of the free stuff that comes out in the future.
It would be really nice to have an integrated email client, calendar, and web page editor!
I'm only half joking, if that much. I'm not completely convinced that making those separate has been a win.
And yes, I am aware of the traditional Unix philosophy, but even Firefox without the other functions does not fit that philosophy.
You expect wrong. Lunar escape velocity is 2.4 km/s. It's not possible to accelerate very much mass to that velocity with 15 kWh of energy. Flinging the regolith with consistent velocity will result in a nice pile of it accumulating somewhere. Just point the machine in the right direction.
330 pounds (weight) is much different than 150 kilograms (mass). There is no purely numeric conversion factor between the two, as anyone with even the slightest knowledge of physics knows. The imperial unit of mass is the slug, and is approximately 14.59 kilograms.
30 kilowatts is one heck of a LOT of power to be used by something that is only supposed to mass 40 kilograms. I was unable to find the official rules, because the link on the NASA site was broken, but the challenge page gives the power limit as 30 watts, not 30 kilowatts.
Can we switch to SI now, please, and try to keep the prefixes straight?
Why are you spending money to have an internet connection, when you could give the money to people starving on this planet? Do you know what that money could buy for some poor people?
They made a nifty machine in the D.F. Jones novel "Collosus and the Crab" (third book of the Collosus trilogy) with which they planned to extract 50% of the O2 from the Earth's atmosphere. If they can do that, they can probably build a CO2 extractor instead.
But at what cost?
Yes, but they don't have trees in spaaaaace. Which is where something like this can likely do quite a bit of good.
How do you propose that they extract CO2 from the vacuum of space? That would be a neat trick, but it wouldn't sove the problem of excess CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere.
Interesting. I don't think the FCC has any regulatory authority that would cover cookies. Not that they'd necessarily let a minor thing like that stop them...
In principle, there is no reason why a ccTLD key needs to be signed by IANA, ICANN, the US DoD, or anyone else, as long as the DNS implementation on client computers is configured to trust that ccTLD key.
The result is that instead of computers being configure to trust a single root zone key from IANA, it is likely that every ccTLD will have its own key, and that the standard configuration of DNS as shipped with an OS or distribution will contain the public keys or hashes for every one of them. This is arguably a good thing.
Note that few if any OS distributions come configured to support secure DNS and verify signed DNS records.
set up their own root DNS servers (easy, anyone can do that)
convince their citizens to configure their computers to use their root DNS servers instead of the ICANN root DNS servers
Many people have done the first, but no one has succeeded at the latter. But if a government were to do it, they might well succeed.
However, other countries may not even need to do that. If they use a ccTLD (e.g.,.cn for China,.lk for Sri Lanka, etc), they can control the DNS key for that ccTLD, and they do NOT have to get that key signed by ICANN, IANA, the US DoD, or anyone else. So ths is really just an issue for the gTLDs. Yet another reason why gTLDs were a fundamentally bad idea.
It's not my fault that you have no dental care, nor is it the fault of the researchers. I'd say that it's most likely the fault of insurance companies and the US Congress. My complaint with Congress is that they allow businesses to write off the cost of providing health insurance for their employees, but they do not allow individuals who are not covered by an employer's plan to write off the cost of buying the insurance themselves. It is unconscionable that Congress should give this "perk" to businesses and not to individuals.
Although I currently have health insurance that covers dental care, I have at times in the past had to pay for dental care out of my own pocket. And at those times, I was still glad that there were people doing research to improve the state of the art of dental care.
Perhaps you haven't noticed that many medical advances are initially only available for the rich, then work their way down. If the research isn't done, no one will ever get it.
But a positron annihilating an electron releases only 1/1836th the energy of an antiproton annihilating a proton. Antimatter isn't magic; you need more antimatter mass to get more energy release.
If the kinetic impact of high-speed protons is a high enough energy level, than a stream of positrons would do the trick nicely
What ever gave you that idea? A positron has the same charge as a proton, but much smaller and only 1/1836 the mass of the proton. It would be quite a challenge to get the same kinetic energy from positrons.
and considering that PET is already used in medicine, I doubt the increase in the amount of positrons needed would be (that big of a) cost factor
The positrons in PET come from decay of a radioisotope. Generating them in sufficient quantity to be a suitable alternative to a proton or antiproton beam would require a much different production method.
That's for production and storage. Production and immediate use (irradiating an object such as a patient) doesn't involve that much operational expense. The big expense is the capital equipment outlay, which has to be amortized over a very large number of treatments.
If they want the FCC to force the cellular carriers to open their networks, Skype should open their own network first. They should publish the technical specifications needed for compatability, so that third parties can write Skype-compatible client software, SIP-to-Skype gateway software, and build Skype-compatible phones.
Slashdot Mirror
I know that many of the BSD'ers don't like the GPL, but why should the GPLv3 be any more of a problem for them than GPLv2 was?
I personally don't see why the "BSD world" thinks that producing software that other people can turn proprietary is a good thing. However, if they write the software they have obviously the right to use any kind of license they want for it.
No, the GPL (v3 or otherwise) doesn't circumvent anything. What gave you the idea that it did? That's like trying to argue that an EPROM programmer is a circumvention device.
They've gotten a free ride for a long time, and not contributed anything back, and now they might not get to use some of the free stuff that comes out in the future.
It must really suck to be them.
Sadly, even Bill Gates cannot afford a good cell phone.
I'm only half joking, if that much. I'm not completely convinced that making those separate has been a win. And yes, I am aware of the traditional Unix philosophy, but even Firefox without the other functions does not fit that philosophy.
You expect wrong. Lunar escape velocity is 2.4 km/s. It's not possible to accelerate very much mass to that velocity with 15 kWh of energy. Flinging the regolith with consistent velocity will result in a nice pile of it accumulating somewhere. Just point the machine in the right direction.
Since it's a contest to design something intended to operate on the lunar surface, I don't think it's at all obvious how to interpret 330 lbs.
Carry the dirt? Why carry it? Just fling it. Or is that not allowed by the official rules (which seem to have gone AWOL)?
30 kilowatts is one heck of a LOT of power to be used by something that is only supposed to mass 40 kilograms. I was unable to find the official rules, because the link on the NASA site was broken, but the challenge page gives the power limit as 30 watts, not 30 kilowatts.
Can we switch to SI now, please, and try to keep the prefixes straight?
Why are you spending money to have an internet connection, when you could give the money to people starving on this planet? Do you know what that money could buy for some poor people?
They made a nifty machine in the D.F. Jones novel "Collosus and the Crab" (third book of the Collosus trilogy) with which they planned to extract 50% of the O2 from the Earth's atmosphere. If they can do that, they can probably build a CO2 extractor instead. But at what cost?
Interesting. I don't think the FCC has any regulatory authority that would cover cookies. Not that they'd necessarily let a minor thing like that stop them...
The FCC has little reason to investigate cookies.
In principle, there is no reason why a ccTLD key needs to be signed by IANA, ICANN, the US DoD, or anyone else, as long as the DNS implementation on client computers is configured to trust that ccTLD key.
The result is that instead of computers being configure to trust a single root zone key from IANA, it is likely that every ccTLD will have its own key, and that the standard configuration of DNS as shipped with an OS or distribution will contain the public keys or hashes for every one of them. This is arguably a good thing.
Note that few if any OS distributions come configured to support secure DNS and verify signed DNS records.
- set up their own root DNS servers (easy, anyone can do that)
- convince their citizens to configure their computers to use their root DNS servers instead of the ICANN root DNS servers
Many people have done the first, but no one has succeeded at the latter. But if a government were to do it, they might well succeed.However, other countries may not even need to do that. If they use a ccTLD (e.g., .cn for China, .lk for Sri Lanka, etc), they can control the DNS key for that ccTLD, and they do NOT have to get that key signed by ICANN, IANA, the US DoD, or anyone else. So ths is really just an issue for the gTLDs. Yet another reason why gTLDs were a fundamentally bad idea.
It's not my fault that you have no dental care, nor is it the fault of the researchers. I'd say that it's most likely the fault of insurance companies and the US Congress. My complaint with Congress is that they allow businesses to write off the cost of providing health insurance for their employees, but they do not allow individuals who are not covered by an employer's plan to write off the cost of buying the insurance themselves. It is unconscionable that Congress should give this "perk" to businesses and not to individuals.
Although I currently have health insurance that covers dental care, I have at times in the past had to pay for dental care out of my own pocket. And at those times, I was still glad that there were people doing research to improve the state of the art of dental care.
Perhaps you haven't noticed that many medical advances are initially only available for the rich, then work their way down. If the research isn't done, no one will ever get it.
But a positron annihilating an electron releases only 1/1836th the energy of an antiproton annihilating a proton. Antimatter isn't magic; you need more antimatter mass to get more energy release.
That's for production and storage. Production and immediate use (irradiating an object such as a patient) doesn't involve that much operational expense. The big expense is the capital equipment outlay, which has to be amortized over a very large number of treatments.
You might try actually reading the article before spouting off. No, wait, this is Slashdot. What was I thinking?
It doesn't matter that it costs $25 billion per gram, since the quantities required for treatment are in the nanograms.
A milligram of antimatter would "cure" everyone in the whole city, of whatever ails them.
If they want the FCC to force the cellular carriers to open their networks, Skype should open their own network first. They should publish the technical specifications needed for compatability, so that third parties can write Skype-compatible client software, SIP-to-Skype gateway software, and build Skype-compatible phones.