I mistakenly accused him of being a troll - like many people, he knew that the kernel was GPL v2, but not that it was a modified GPL with, among other things, exceptions for userland programs. We both apologized, and it's all good:-)
I still think slashdot should have diverted some of the effort they put into messing up the user interface into giving us a way to edit comments so as to avoid the avoidable flame wars.
More interesting, if you go to the original source, you get this quote from Linus:
I don't see what the whole brouhaha would be all about. Except if it's somebody politically motivated (or motivated by some need of attention).
If it's some desperate cry for attention by somebody, I just wish those people would release their own sex tapes or something, rather than drag the Linux kernel into their sordid world.
Maybe now that the xxx TLD has been approved, Florian Mueller can move his blog to fosspatents.xxx ?
For example, to start the day off, he goes into the bathroom and makes the daily Captains Log:-)
And when he speaks, he makes sure his "phraser" is on stun.
And at 80, he's doing stuff most people half his age wish they were doing. AND getting away with it.
The real question: Since most students have laptops, why bother with a "computer lab" with individual workstations when all you need is a power bar and an ethernet cable?
1 Monitors with soft-touch buttons are always on. Same with the battery charging circuit, whenever the power supply is plugged in - the battery has electronics that monitor the battery's state, even when it's not "charging.
2. You have to either remove the battery from the laptop during all the tests, or include an equivalent-rated UPS for the desktop, for a true "apples to apples" comparison.
Also, a system that insists on powering all the computers in a lab, whether everyone is there or not, if obviously not very efficient.
Did you run those standby power tests with the battery removed from the laptop, and with the power drain for the lcd monitor for the desktop included? After all, the laptop will be "topping up" the battery from time to time, and for the desktop you also have to include the screen, same as the laptop.
Also, the "constant conversion" is going on with the 1-tonne rectifier they're using, and that's not going to be all that efficient when most of the desktops are not running.
I believe the telecom industry has known this for years. Since telecom equipment in COs can be run on both DC based and AC based power, consumption levels can be monitored between the AC and DC based offices. AC/DC - Rock on.
Not exactly - it's because of the requirement that equipment operate during power failures. Hence the large banks of lead-acid batteries in older switching centers.
The major drawback to DC power is in the wiring. Direct current requires larger gauge wiring than AC power, which increases material costs considerably. In general, DC power is economical only if the wiring between the computers and the DC source is less than 35 feet in length. More than that, AC power becomes more economical.
FTFA:
the project team moved the one tonne AC converter through the University library and into the roof space, removing and rebuilding walls to transport it
Somehow, I suspect that the cable run to the individual machines is more than 35 feet.
the project team moved the one tonne AC converter through the University library and into the roof space, removing and rebuilding walls to transport it
It would have been cheaper to just use 50 energy-efficient laptops. You'd get even more power savings, and if you wanted to completely remove the heat from the transformers, just put them all in a cabinet that vents outdoors, and extend the DC power plugs.
And you wouldn't have to also invest in another ton of batteries.
The only thing inside a computer that actually runs on AC is the computer's powersupply. The powersupply regulates this to DC voltages! The powersupply is also quite bulky and noisy compared to the other components.
"Initial tests show that the system in Bath emits approximately half as much energy as heat than the previous AC powered system while running much faster."
Yes, I'm sure it'll generate less heat when most of that heat comes from converting AC to DC, but why the hell would it run faster when everything else in the computer is still the same?
Because they're comparing it to a previous (older) system, not the same system but powered with a local ac/dc power supply. An apples and oranges comparison.
TFA is so fact-free it could have been submitted by Florian Mueller.
1. The Saturn V was perfectly capable of delivering loads to low Earth orbit. That's how every mission started - NONE of them were direct to-the-moon shots. Skylab was one such. 3 such launches would have delivered the same pressurized volume as the ISS. Care to count how many shuttle missions were involved with building the ISS?
2. The ability to deliver larger structures would have meant both fewer compromises, and less assembly work. A "real" space station, not just an "outpost" that already has components that are near their end of life, and which is still only a temporary station (originally due to be de-orbited in 2016, now possibly extended to 2020).
You have to realize that for much of the world rice is a major part of their diet. So it's easier to improve the quality of rice produced than it is to change their diet by getting them to move from eating rice to eating potatoes.
Flooding rice fields produces a lot of methane from the rotting plant material. Growing rice is a HUGE contributor to greenhouse gases (methane is 100% worse than CO2).
I love rice, but potatoes are better for the environment.
I am against the population reduction proposal, we should look ahead. It is time to send our colonies to outer space, history have proven, human are good at colonizing new world when resources run low back home.
That is unfeasible.
The population is going to grow by 2 BILLION in the next 40 years. We cannot send 2 billion people into space, even if we dedicated every resource we have to it. We would have to send 136,000 people into space every day, starting today.
No, I say we stick to plan A, and reduce population growth. Then we might look at space too, but for smaller groups of people.
The "digital objects" are actually arbitrary output of a compiler, and the compiler doesn't exercise any "creativity" - the same source code with the same parameters and target had better not vary between runs. The output is always a stream of characters. To the point that the output embodies the creativity of the source code, it can be protected, but only by copyright, not patent, since it IS just a stream of characters, and writings (streams of characters) are protected by copyright, not patent.
The source code, on the other hand, is where creativity takes place. Written works (writings - streams of characters) are protected by copyright, not patent.
Think of it - if I take an executable file that should work on one os and copy it to another, its' nature hasn't changed. But it's certainly not going to be considered as the same sort of "digital object" by the host system.
Then again, the term "digital object" is also totally bogus when applied to computing. "Objects" is just the term we use for an arbitrary collection of bytes. There's no real "object" behind the scenes. Just arbitrary data patterns.
Your point is definitely valid - that there are companies who are "enablers" - they just pay the money as part of the "cost of doing business."
I wouldn't be surprised if it sometimes happens that there's a quid pro quo along the lines of "if you buy this protection and let us use you as an example of someone who settled, we'll make a strategic investment in your business" or some other not-so-honest practice.
It's kind of funny that they think they can patent "natural ways of interacting" too..
I suspect the pr0n industry already holds the patents on "unnatural ways of interacting with devices."
Either that, or the developers and testers of "unnatural ways of interacting with devices" are less productive (strange work injuries, lots of RSI and carpal tunnel, burn-out from being too emotionally involved in their work, etc).
They're attempting to make money in the smartphone market. Remember, they gave Nokia over a $billion. They also have the development costs, so say another $billion. And now there's the advertising blitz, half a billion and counting, that just doesn't seem to be working.
You've got two and a half billion in sunk costs. How many handset licenses do you have to take in at $20 each to pay that off? 125 million.
Keep in mind that MicroNokia - oops, Nokia - has said they won't be releasing Windows smartphones until 2012, and that the other manufacturers are NOT happy about the MicroNokia deal, which they see as Microsoft helping Nokia compete against them in the Windows phone market.
WP7 might eventually earn back it's sunk costs, but it's looking pretty doubtful, especially since Microsoft leaked a WP8-based smartphone.
So that brings us to another question. Why is Ballmer still at Microsoft? The answer is simple - remember how he dumped a bucket-load of stock? Look at the timing. That was a warning to the board of directors - dump me, I dump the rest of your stock, and the price goes through the floor.
The pressure to call him on his bluff is just going to intensify, and someone's going to make a fortune shorting MSFT.
Slashdot Mirror
I mistakenly accused him of being a troll - like many people, he knew that the kernel was GPL v2, but not that it was a modified GPL with, among other things, exceptions for userland programs. We both apologized, and it's all good :-)
I still think slashdot should have diverted some of the effort they put into messing up the user interface into giving us a way to edit comments so as to avoid the avoidable flame wars.
More interesting, if you go to the original source, you get this quote from Linus:
I don't see what the whole brouhaha would be all about. Except if it's somebody politically motivated (or motivated by some need of attention).
If it's some desperate cry for attention by somebody, I just wish those people would release their own sex tapes or something, rather than drag the Linux kernel into their sordid world.
Maybe now that the xxx TLD has been approved, Florian Mueller can move his blog to fosspatents.xxx ?
For example, to start the day off, he goes into the bathroom and makes the daily Captains Log :-)
And when he speaks, he makes sure his "phraser" is on stun.
And at 80, he's doing stuff most people half his age wish they were doing. AND getting away with it.
The real question: Since most students have laptops, why bother with a "computer lab" with individual workstations when all you need is a power bar and an ethernet cable?
1 Monitors with soft-touch buttons are always on. Same with the battery charging circuit, whenever the power supply is plugged in - the battery has electronics that monitor the battery's state, even when it's not "charging.
2. You have to either remove the battery from the laptop during all the tests, or include an equivalent-rated UPS for the desktop, for a true "apples to apples" comparison.
Also, a system that insists on powering all the computers in a lab, whether everyone is there or not, if obviously not very efficient.
Low voltage DC supplies don't work well over distance and laptop supplies are not very robust to start with.
My way, the distances would be less than running the same voltage from the rooftop, down walls, etc.
I would disagree about laptop power supplies ... the one I'm typing on gets at least 12 hours a day, often 24/7 ...
Then again, I didn't buy a dell.
Also, the "constant conversion" is going on with the 1-tonne rectifier they're using, and that's not going to be all that efficient when most of the desktops are not running.
Water vapor is 5 times worse :)
My mistake - I meant to post that methane is 100 times worse, not 100% worse.
Though personally, I think the article is all wet.
I believe the telecom industry has known this for years. Since telecom equipment in COs can be run on both DC based and AC based power, consumption levels can be monitored between the AC and DC based offices. AC/DC - Rock on.
Not exactly - it's because of the requirement that equipment operate during power failures. Hence the large banks of lead-acid batteries in older switching centers.
The major drawback to DC power is in the wiring. Direct current requires larger gauge wiring than AC power, which increases material costs considerably. In general, DC power is economical only if the wiring between the computers and the DC source is less than 35 feet in length. More than that, AC power becomes more economical.
FTFA:
Somehow, I suspect that the cable run to the individual machines is more than 35 feet.
Also:
It would have been cheaper to just use 50 energy-efficient laptops. You'd get even more power savings, and if you wanted to completely remove the heat from the transformers, just put them all in a cabinet that vents outdoors, and extend the DC power plugs.
And you wouldn't have to also invest in another ton of batteries.
The only thing inside a computer that actually runs on AC is the computer's powersupply. The powersupply regulates this to DC voltages! The powersupply is also quite bulky and noisy compared to the other components.
"Initial tests show that the system in Bath emits approximately half as much energy as heat than the previous AC powered system while running much faster."
Yes, I'm sure it'll generate less heat when most of that heat comes from converting AC to DC, but why the hell would it run faster when everything else in the computer is still the same?
Because they're comparing it to a previous (older) system, not the same system but powered with a local ac/dc power supply. An apples and oranges comparison.
TFA is so fact-free it could have been submitted by Florian Mueller.
1. The Saturn V was perfectly capable of delivering loads to low Earth orbit. That's how every mission started - NONE of them were direct to-the-moon shots. Skylab was one such. 3 such launches would have delivered the same pressurized volume as the ISS. Care to count how many shuttle missions were involved with building the ISS?
2. The ability to deliver larger structures would have meant both fewer compromises, and less assembly work. A "real" space station, not just an "outpost" that already has components that are near their end of life, and which is still only a temporary station (originally due to be de-orbited in 2016, now possibly extended to 2020).
You have to realize that for much of the world rice is a major part of their diet. So it's easier to improve the quality of rice produced than it is to change their diet by getting them to move from eating rice to eating potatoes.
Flooding rice fields produces a lot of methane from the rotting plant material. Growing rice is a HUGE contributor to greenhouse gases (methane is 100% worse than CO2).
I love rice, but potatoes are better for the environment.
Unless I'm mistaken about how babies are made, abstinence IS the most effective way to not get a woman pregnant.
Nonsense. Viable alternatives to abstinence include oral sex, anal sex, same-sex sex (one reason why same-sex marriage should be legal everywhere).
And no, that story about the woman who got pregnant from her vibrator because the batteries leaked is an urban legend.
I am against the population reduction proposal, we should look ahead. It is time to send our colonies to outer space, history have proven, human are good at colonizing new world when resources run low back home.
That is unfeasible. The population is going to grow by 2 BILLION in the next 40 years. We cannot send 2 billion people into space, even if we dedicated every resource we have to it. We would have to send 136,000 people into space every day, starting today.
No, I say we stick to plan A, and reduce population growth. Then we might look at space too, but for smaller groups of people.
Just put them in the "B" Ark.
Thief gets caught, goes to jail. There - fixed that for you.
Wow, I mean, wow. Trying to fit this into "news", "matters", "nerds", ......, nope, sorry, can't do it.
Just wait a while. Florian Mueller will spin it into a story about how Open Source == evil.
The "digital objects" are actually arbitrary output of a compiler, and the compiler doesn't exercise any "creativity" - the same source code with the same parameters and target had better not vary between runs. The output is always a stream of characters. To the point that the output embodies the creativity of the source code, it can be protected, but only by copyright, not patent, since it IS just a stream of characters, and writings (streams of characters) are protected by copyright, not patent.
The source code, on the other hand, is where creativity takes place. Written works (writings - streams of characters) are protected by copyright, not patent.
Think of it - if I take an executable file that should work on one os and copy it to another, its' nature hasn't changed. But it's certainly not going to be considered as the same sort of "digital object" by the host system.
Then again, the term "digital object" is also totally bogus when applied to computing. "Objects" is just the term we use for an arbitrary collection of bytes. There's no real "object" behind the scenes. Just arbitrary data patterns.
Oh, neat. I'd never seen that exception before.
Neither had Florian Mueller :-)
Then again, he's always ignoring inconvenient facts while shooting off his mouth.
I wouldn't be surprised if it sometimes happens that there's a quid pro quo along the lines of "if you buy this protection and let us use you as an example of someone who settled, we'll make a strategic investment in your business" or some other not-so-honest practice.
I know it's bad form to reply to myself, but link to more info about the case. It was DataTrak who beat them.
It was Datasci that was the troll, and one of the companies they sued beat them in court, after several others had already paid the danegeld.
It's kind of funny that they think they can patent "natural ways of interacting" too..
I suspect the pr0n industry already holds the patents on "unnatural ways of interacting with devices."
Either that, or the developers and testers of "unnatural ways of interacting with devices" are less productive (strange work injuries, lots of RSI and carpal tunnel, burn-out from being too emotionally involved in their work, etc).
Except for the interaction part.
You could click on links before the entire page was rendered. Is that "interaction" enough?
You could also stop the page download and avoid having the background image load at all.
They're attempting to make money in the smartphone market. Remember, they gave Nokia over a $billion. They also have the development costs, so say another $billion. And now there's the advertising blitz, half a billion and counting, that just doesn't seem to be working.
You've got two and a half billion in sunk costs. How many handset licenses do you have to take in at $20 each to pay that off? 125 million.
Keep in mind that MicroNokia - oops, Nokia - has said they won't be releasing Windows smartphones until 2012, and that the other manufacturers are NOT happy about the MicroNokia deal, which they see as Microsoft helping Nokia compete against them in the Windows phone market.
WP7 might eventually earn back it's sunk costs, but it's looking pretty doubtful, especially since Microsoft leaked a WP8-based smartphone.
So that brings us to another question. Why is Ballmer still at Microsoft? The answer is simple - remember how he dumped a bucket-load of stock? Look at the timing. That was a warning to the board of directors - dump me, I dump the rest of your stock, and the price goes through the floor.
The pressure to call him on his bluff is just going to intensify, and someone's going to make a fortune shorting MSFT.