By far the most interesting statement on this comes from Iain Martin at the Daily Telegraph, who says that at the time RBS (a fairly small bank) took over the much-larger and more established NatWest bank:
> His team worked out quickly that the NatWest system was superior to the RBS computer system.... Then they crunched the numbers and > confirmed that sticking with plan A and migrating NatWest's customers onto RBS's inferior and cheaper to run system would save more money.
What's wrong with the form of words recommended by the FSF?
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
GPL2 and GPL3 seem to be completely incompatible. That means you can't take somebody elses GPL2 code released without the "or later" clause and release it under GPL3. This has two effects:
First the "or later" clauses in some parts of the linux kernel are effectively meaningless unless you are willig to rewrite the other parts from new.
Second, we will split into two incompatible GPL universes (or three if there is such thing as GPL1!) with legacy GPL2, newer GPL3 and some GPL2-or-later. And anybody can modify GPL2-or-later and release the result as GPL2-only.
On the contrary, the link shows the actual licence that Linux was released under. The text that is there IS the licecnce. And it clearly says it's GPL2.
Whilst I appreciate people's devotion to measurements based on the toe nail of some long-dead king, what they don't seem to realise is that the "root two" system really works well in practice.
It makes it really easy to take an A4 document (the normal paper size) and print it double-size on an A3 printer or photocopier. It's equally easy to print a document two-per page (or four or whatever) or to make an A5 pamphlet by printing it two pages per sheet and folding it in half.
And nothing needs to be rescaled or reformatted.
It's one of those "once you tried it you'll never go back" IT experiences, like full-screen text editors, network graphics systems, PVRs and video projectors.
Gold says that as the sail is a perfect mirror the light is reflected at the same temperature and so Carnot's law applies. But of course, if the light were reflected at the same temperature it wouldn't be losing any energy so a working solar sail would violate conservation of energy and the laws of thermodynamics would be the least of our problems.
Gold's problem is that he forgets both conservation of momentum and conservation of energy. What happens is that as the sail is kicked forward (gaining both energy and momentum) the photon is reflected with slightly less energy than it arrived with (ie is cooler) and conservation of momentum, conservation of energy and the laws of thermodynamics still apply.
My back of an envelope calculations tell the fractional energy loss is E/(M*c*c) where E is the photon energy and M the sail mass.
You will notice that Gold's article doesn't appear in a refereed journal: this is because most referees have heard of conservation of energy.
Two or three years ago I was receiving a small supercomputer from a Large Computer Company. Being a University we only paid a million dollars for it and it consisted of three BIG frames and a large disk array.
The site survey was done by a reseller who had agreed to arrive at 11 am. Sure enough, at 9 am Damian (the name should have warned me..) arrives with a clipboard with "arrive at 11 o'clock" written in big letters at the top. Not a good start.
I show Damian the unique feature of our loading bay - a big steep slope with no turning space. I point out they will need a tail-lift truck to cope with the fact the truck will still be on a slope when they are unloading.
Come the morning of the Day, I wander down to be greeted by the great smell of a burnt out clutch. I actually smelt the lorry before I saw it. They had backed the lorry up the slope with just one of the four boxes in and were even now man-handling it out. Bear in mind that it was down at the front of the truck and had to be pulled up the slope to the loading bay. And then tilted over to the horizontal. And there was no tail-lift.
So there are three large boxes at the bottom of the slope with no way of getting them up here and me praying it won't start raining (this is Britain). This being a Large Computer Company there is a vast army of Installation Engineers, Service Engineers, etc. standing around so they spent the rest of the day dismanting my supercomputer and taking the components up in the lift. They're doing all of this in the open with some polythene sheet ready in case it starts raining..
Several hours later a fork-lift arrived from a neighbouring city which took about ten minutes to carry the now near-empty cases up the slope where they put it all back together again.
What happened later is under NDA, except they forgot to get us to sign it..
Slashdot Mirror
By far the most interesting statement on this comes from Iain Martin at the Daily Telegraph, who says that at the time RBS (a fairly small bank) took over the much-larger and more established NatWest bank:
> His team worked out quickly that the NatWest system was superior to the RBS computer system.... Then they crunched the numbers and
> confirmed that sticking with plan A and migrating NatWest's customers onto RBS's inferior and cheaper to run system would save more money.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/iainmartin1/100248741/why-the-rbs-computer-keeps-saying-no/
The rest, as they say, is history...
This isn't just Volvo, it was passed into law in 1997 by the Swedish parliament and now drives road design, etc.
I know, I didn't believe it either.
John
> Harness the power of Wikipedia when you're connected to the Internet -- built right into it's Dictionary
I see the new grammar checker is working well.
John
What's wrong with the form of words recommended by the FSF?
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
John
http://flashblock.mozdev.org/
John
GPL2 and GPL3 seem to be completely incompatible. That means you can't take somebody elses GPL2 code released without the "or later" clause and release it under GPL3. This has two effects:
First the "or later" clauses in some parts of the linux kernel are effectively meaningless unless you are willig to rewrite the other parts from new.
Second, we will split into two incompatible GPL universes (or three if there is such thing as GPL1!) with legacy GPL2, newer GPL3 and some GPL2-or-later. And anybody can modify GPL2-or-later and release the result as GPL2-only.
Share and enjoy!
John
On the contrary, the link shows the actual licence that Linux was released under. The text that is there IS the licecnce. And it clearly says it's GPL2.
John
Of course not but choosing the kilometre as 1/10000 of the distance from the equator to the north pole on a line going THROUGH Paris is.
It certainly makes it easy to remember the circumference of the earth..
John
Whilst I appreciate people's devotion to measurements based on the toe nail of some long-dead king, what they don't seem to realise is that the "root two" system really works well in practice.
It makes it really easy to take an A4 document (the normal paper size) and print it double-size on an A3 printer or photocopier. It's equally easy to print a document two-per page (or four or whatever) or to make an A5 pamphlet by printing it two pages per sheet and folding it in half.
And nothing needs to be rescaled or reformatted.
It's one of those "once you tried it you'll never go back" IT experiences, like full-screen text editors, network graphics systems, PVRs and video projectors.
John
On the contrary, it's actually European law that says a brand-owner can stop you from importing branded goods from outside the EU.
John
This is not the end, it is not the beginning of the end, but perhaps it is the end of the beginning.
Gold says that as the sail is a perfect mirror the light is reflected at the same temperature and so Carnot's law applies. But of course, if the light were reflected at the same temperature it wouldn't be losing any energy so a working solar sail would violate conservation of energy and the laws of thermodynamics would be the least of our problems.
Gold's problem is that he forgets both conservation of momentum and conservation of energy. What happens is that as the sail is kicked forward (gaining both energy and momentum) the photon is reflected with slightly less energy than it arrived with (ie is cooler) and conservation of momentum, conservation of energy and the laws of thermodynamics still apply.
My back of an envelope calculations tell the fractional energy loss is E/(M*c*c) where E is the photon energy and M the sail mass.
You will notice that Gold's article doesn't appear in a refereed journal: this is because most referees have heard of conservation of energy.
Dr John Rowe
School of Physics
Exeter
UK
Two or three years ago I was receiving a small supercomputer from a Large Computer Company. Being a University we only paid a million dollars for it and it consisted of three BIG frames and a large disk array.
The site survey was done by a reseller who had agreed to arrive at 11 am. Sure enough, at 9 am Damian (the name should have warned me..) arrives with a clipboard with "arrive at 11 o'clock" written in big letters at the top. Not a good start.
I show Damian the unique feature of our loading bay - a big steep slope with no turning space. I point out they will need a tail-lift truck to cope with the fact the truck will still be on a slope when they are unloading.
Come the morning of the Day, I wander down to be greeted by the great smell of a burnt out clutch. I actually smelt the lorry before I saw it. They had backed the lorry up the slope with just one of the four boxes in and were even now man-handling it out. Bear in mind that it was down at the front of the truck and had to be pulled up the slope to the loading bay. And then tilted over to the horizontal. And there was no tail-lift.
So there are three large boxes at the bottom of the slope with no way of getting them up here and me praying it won't start raining (this is Britain). This being a Large Computer Company there is a vast army of Installation Engineers, Service Engineers, etc. standing around so they spent the rest of the day dismanting my supercomputer and taking the components up in the lift. They're doing all of this in the open with some polythene sheet ready in case it starts raining..
Several hours later a fork-lift arrived from a neighbouring city which took about ten minutes to carry the now near-empty cases up the slope where they put it all back together again.
What happened later is under NDA, except they forgot to get us to sign it..
John
Last time I looked, .edu was for educational institutions anywhere in the world just like .com, and .org