Yes - this is true - you can use permissions and so forth to restrict access.
However - you could not do a loopback mount on a/home/luser directory for 20,000 lusers such that each has access to his own shit while noone else can even know said luser exists.
There is a lot of good ideas in the mainframes and this is the reason they are such a successful product.
Yes - this is certainly true - you can restrict access. However the act of doing said restriction is subject to errors.
A tape with the write enable ring / switch pulled off cannot be modified because the hardware it is mounted on checks for this. In a database with everything on-line a simple keystroke error defeats what you wish to accomplish.
Simply put - if I take my data off line then it does not matter how insecure the system is - you cannot access it.
The gist of what I tried to comment on is the value in a Partition Data Set concept. Here is a for instance. Apache has a lot of components. If Linux ran a PDS then we could simply put all of apache in one PDS, mount it exclusively for the server in question and as for the websites - set each of these also in their own PDS and there really IS no security issue any more. To switch back and forth between a couple versions of apache would be no more difficult than flipping a switch so to speak.
The install process is eliminated with the PDS.
Managment of vast volumes of data becomes really easy.
Linux and Unix users invented the tar ball and they live and die by the wonderful packaging capabilities a tar ball provides.
In a mainframe - the PDS does the tar ball packaging with live applications. We really need this in Linux!
Alternatives to COBOL have existed since the 60's. PL/I is an excellent alternative. It supports literally everything that is any good in COBOL and gets rid of most of the COBOL crapola. The biggest reasons people have not switched is probably because they don't know any better and go with the idea that if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
As to reltaional databases, well - they are NOT a good alternative for many tasks that run quite well in the mainframes. The fundamental design objective of a relational data base is to expose any and all data to applications. In fact, this is diametrically opposed to what we really need.
Most data ends up archived at some point and from that point on we need read only access. This is not what relational database systems try to accomplish.
Another thing the wanna be replacement computers do not have is the Partition Dataset. We probably can build such a beast into Linux using loopback mounts or a variation thereof. But it is going to take a lot of work for reasons I'll describe next.
A PDS is tied to a set of applications and to a group of users. When you do a loopback mount of a file the system exposes the contents of the file to every user and application in the system. Thus every file in the directory becomes subject to tampering, either inadvertent or deliberate.
Meanwhile the contents of the PDS can be relied upon in much the same was as the contents of a tarball can be relied apon.
What this all boils down to is that the mainframe provides capabilities that are not found in alternative systems.
The artical you reference is very intersting. Here is a direct quote from it:
"Safety analyses show there are still about 1,000 square meters (1,200 square yards) of holes in the roof and sides," said Eric Schmieman, chief engineer for environmental technology at Battelle Memorial Institute's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash. "A significant amount of water can go in, and dust can go out, and birds and squirrels come and go all the time."
If birds and squirrels are living in the sarcophagus then this is a really interesting development and a wonderful opportunity to study the effects of radiation on higher animals.
According to Elena, the radiation in the area is so high that were she to walk up to the plant she would come back glowing like a knight in shinning armour... Yet, the squirrels are ok?
The OBVIOUS thing to do is to treat what is within the area is an ore and mine it! Then the highly radioactive isotopes can be reprocessed into fuel and burned in other reactors. Trying to store this stuff is just nutz. Why store unwanted and dangerous isotopes when you can simply burn them and make electricity from them.
Yes, I pointed out this rather large discrepancy in the last story and was called "heartless"!
I do not know why it is that we cannot get good reliable data on this. One thing that seems quite clear to me is that radiation dangers have been vastly overrated. Certainly radiation can kill and this is one of the reasons it is used in Cancer therapy. The issue is that we don't hear of a cancer patients dying from radiation induced affects - unless from a accidental overdoes - and these seem to be in the news far more often than I would expect!
The fact there are healthy animals in the area, reproducing and living normal lives, and the fact that several hundred people have simply ignored the warnings and moved back does bode for a repopulation of the area long before the suggested 900 year curfew is over.
Yet, I do not wish to make light of this tradegy. The amount of heartache and human suffering as a result of this accident is horrific.
Still, this does not change the facts. The facts seem to be pointing to the idea that radiation dangers have been greatly exagerated and if so then perhaps a lot of the human suffering due to this accident should be attributed to the way it was mismanaged. Certainly it waa very clear at the time of the accident that the authorities were mismanaging things. Iodine tablets for instance were identified as being critical to thwart off the effects of radioactive Iodine isotopes and as I recall, the offers fell of deaf ears until far too late.
Yes, I have run into this before. When it comes to this conflict of interest it seems that managment often does not realise that the IT folks actually DO have a legitimate reason to be contacted.
The issue of a sales rep having a cell phone will probably not come up - yet the damage to the company when a rep leaves with "his" contact list is much greater than a systems admin could _ever_ pull off... that is short of stealing the whole bloody database... but then what would the systems admin _do_ with the stolen data? The sales reps on the other hand know what they are going to use it for.
IT people are just misunderstood and sometimes the blundering of managment is rather severe.
That being said, personal laptops are a big security risk. So is internet access to the servers. Yet, if you do not allow the access then if a problem crops up in the middle of the night, the systems admin is sunk and cannot fix it.
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This being said I know a systems maintenance engineer who was fired from HP because he asked the operator he worked with for over 10 years for the system password so he could mount a disk drive he had just replaced. Sorry, HP does not get my support anymore.
In this instance the manger of the client company was an asshole. Virtually every systems manager at every client site running HP equipment in this city wrote to complain about this high handed and totally unwarrented knee jerk reaction.
Purchasing felt they knew more about what a programmer needs than the programmer. Have you EVER sat there doing hex by longhand with a pencil?
IMHO when you run into really idiotic issues then you have to quit (preferable) or fight fire with fire.
So configure all your servers in the company to ring your phone and then forward same to the company switchboard - after sending out CYA memos of course explained that you are doing this.
Next when the switchboard puts the messages on hold and you don't get them... and the server dies and 50 people are pissed off as hell - you shrug your shoulders and blame the switchboard.
Meanwhile, get that CV dusted off because really it is not worth fighting the idiot factor.
What you do is call the police and file a complaint and then start legal proceedings. They clearly are going to lose.
The issue is what your damages are. At best you _might_ be able to recover the investment in the time that would be required to compile all of this information.
Your position is no different than say Walt Disney who has tee shirt designs, characters and so forth taken illegally. The difference is that in the case of copyright infringment there are now some laws that place some pretty steep fines and indeed, place it under teh criminal code.
Generally speaking you have a great deal of recourse. This ranges from complaints over the copyright violation through the police who probably will not bother to enforce the laws that are already there - through to a civil suit.
What you are going to need to determine is your civil damages. As a designer this might be limited to them having to pay you a reasonable amount for the use of your design.
You have clearly posted on the bottom of the page you designed that they hold the copyright. Thus they can do whatever they want.
BTW - your design is much nicer. Theirs is junky and does not even render properly.
What you might do is send them a bill if you feel the designs are close enough. However, when you get it into court (small claims probably) you are going to have to prove your case. I think there are enough differences that you might not win. Yet - you might win in which case they have to pay you. More likely you will partly win - IE a reduced amount.
Your biggest issue is that sure you did a proposal but where was the contract and did they agree to not use ideas you came up with? I think not. And with the copyright transferal you are in even murkier water. Frankly, I don't think this one flies.
Next time, sign them to a non-disclosure. I'd suggest hiring a lawyer specializing in IP law so that you can get a letter of agreement or letter of intent organized before you start showing off your designs.
However one needs to look at where the floor is established. At 9 bux, people will sell every damn share they can lay their hands on.
SCOX's long term value is ZERO. In the short term they were given something like $80 million so this did create some cash value in the company. After the lawsuit - it might all be gone.
There are suits against SCOX and they likely will lose on them. This may drain the coffers rather quickly.
As for the IP value of the Unix system V copyrights? Well - they are basically valuless. They are legally radioactive and it is instructive that Stallman foresaw the problem the closed source IP created and started the OpenSource movement. This being said, we have better code which is open source, it is readily available and there is an army of maintainers. Hense the only value of the System V source code is that it can be the subject of lawsuits.
Thus, I don't really think SCOX trying to establish a floor is going to achieve anything. The problem the short sellers are facing is finding a source of shares.
IBM was ver cleaver with this as well. Back in the 60's adn 70's they used to give deep discounts to educational instutions. The machines were really cheap because IBM wanted the kids to know how to program IBM computers.
Since the grads knew IBM programming industry next favoured IBM machines. This could be why IBM survived the extinction of the bunch.
The problem with this is that it really is an anti competitive business practice and is thus not legal. Does anyone know if this theory is true (IANAL) or if anyone has suggested doing something about it if it is illegal?
Or - email the artists you are interested in and tell them you want to buy some of their music please and that you just want an ogg vorbis format that you can play on your ipod.
Personally I won't support the recording industry but my reasons are probably at variance of most people. I just do not like the music they are trying to stuff down our throats!
This had to be the stupid salesman! I posted my experiances and yes I did run into this! No Kidding. I can support what your mom has experianced.
But in my case we are able to cut to the chase and close a deal. Maybe my salesman was more down to earth because when he realised he had a sale he went for it. Yet - he also ended up selling me the "school edition" and I told him I was no interested in any of the "consumer editions" so when it comes down to it, clearly the company is full of morons.
Yes, it was rather funny when I bought my set of Britannica.
I made three mjor steps when I came into this city (1) I found a woman and married her (2) she found a house and we bought it and (3) I tracked down an encyclopeadia salesman and bought a set.
Well - #3 was the hardest. I managed to find them but had to call long distance as I recall. Eventually this lead to a referal here in the city and a younge chap showed up at the door. He advised that he had to go through his speal. I advised I wasn't interested in his speal - I wanted to look at the covers and the color.
A few minutes later his jaw drops in AMASMENT and he askes "Do you mean you are really going to buy them?" to which I answered: "Well, if you ever show me the damn covers - yes!"
And he says something like: "The company says I always have to go through this speal... This is the EASIEST sale I've ever made!!!"
They only cost about 1 1/2 months salary. I still look at that set with pride. And they are used alot as well. Of all the investments I've made, my encyclopeadias are one of the best.
The UN reports do address the quality of life and the impact this disaster had on 100,000's of people. Mostly the UN reports talk of the impact of the relocation and the fact there is insufficient money to help the population.
When I read the reports I looked for hard medical data on physical imparments. Other than the thyroid cancers, this seems to be not addressed. One might erronously conclude there really were only 40 or so people who died and that no one suffers from radation effects other than this small group.
I think it is really good to get the information out in the open. To me the UN report looks credible. But the personal accounts also look really credible and there seems to be a disconnect between them. It would be good to get more information.
As for the flora and fauna. Yes - the horses look quite happy actually. Is there evidence of mutation in the wild animals and plants in the area? How about physical effects? Still births? Premature death?
I'm sure the scientific community is doing research... hopefully they will publish it on slashdot or that someone from here will find it.
While not wanting to diminish the size of this catastrophie, it is nevertheless very important to actually look at the numbers and to put things into perspective.
Starting with paragraph 1.26 we find a discussion. In paragraph 1.28 we find that there were some 2000 cases of thyroid cancer attributed to the radiation (iodine). However, thyroid cancer can be treated and there is no real death rate associated with the thyroid cancers.
Next we find that the anticipated development of leukimias has not occured. In paragraph 1.36 we find this quote: unexpected appearance of early childhood thyroid cancer, the unexpected absence of leukaemia stemming from the accident.
In paragraph 1.38 we see that there is a iodine deficiency problem in the population and that addressing this problem in a timely fashion would no doubt have made a considerable difference.
Starting with paragraph 2.01 on page 30, we have a history of the event itself. In paragraph 2.03 I131 is discussed. This isotope has a half life of 8.05 days and were the population given an ample supply of non-radioactive iodine - through the use of simple iodized table salt - then the radioactive version would not have been picked up.
It is really unfortunate that iodine pills could not have been distributed faster!
On page 56 we find more telling information. 28 highly exposed individuals died within 4 months of the accident (see box 4.2). In addition to the end of 1998, 11 others died.
in paragraph 4.18 we have more discussion of the thyroid cancers, and the esitmation is made that the total number could be as high as 8,000.
In the end, while this certainly was a major disaster with an impact on innocent people that should not be underestimated, we are still left with the facts that the media overestimated the impact and the death rate by many orders of magnitude.
In fact some of the pictures clearly demonstrate this. If one looks at the flora and the fauna in the pictures we see groups of wild animals happily running along totally oblivious to the radiation.
These animals have a faster metabolic rate than humans and thus are not as radiation hardy as we are. Yet they are clearly thriving and the world they are living in, and rearing their offspring can only be described as very beautiful.
Yes the radiation is there and yes it should not be scoffed at. But the pictures clearly show that animal life is not impacted all that much. Those horses look pretty healthy and pretty happy to me!
What does the average slashdotter feel the copyright value is of the work that SCO bought from Novel?
What does the average slashdotter feel companies like AT&T spent to develope system V and how many programmers were involved? How many sleepless nights were spent burning the midnight oil?
Consider this please. The System V copyrights are worth NOTHING. NOTHING AT ALL.
No programmer can dare even LOOK at that code because they lay themselves wide open to a copyright infringment claim. No vendor other than SCO would even want to touch it today. As for SCO - they are going to crash and burn for many reasons, including the fact that they have pissed off so many of their customers that no one will touch them ever again.
This is perhaps one of the main reasons the OpenSoftware concept is so powerful... it creates a resource that people can actually use, a resource that can build and be refined and one where anyone in the world can benefit from it.
The closed source model on the other hand creates a product that is legally so radioactive that any sane programmer will stay miles away from it.
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Suppose a young programmer starts working for a company. For 10 years he/she does some particularly brilliant work and eventually the company goes into hard times and fires said programmer.
What of the code? The programmer cannot use it. The company normally cannot sell it and usually doesn't really consider the code to have any value at all.
So our hypothetical programmer will find that 10 years down the track, they are faced with starting over from scratch because they cannot dare even TOUCH the work they themselves wrote.
Next, if we look at typical non-disclosure agreements we see the same programmer is literally barred from discussing the algorithms he thought up. Yet - usually these alorithms are realitivly obvious to practitioners in the trade.
Those old non-disclosure agreements can come back to haunt you and can in fact make you unemployable.
Well, these points might be considered extreme. Yet, consider the lastest story up in www.groklaw.com where the derivation of the signal.h file is discussed. Had Linus even seen the file from AT&T unix he may well have been tainted for life.
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Well - the above example deals with work on proprietary code developed under a NDA. Flip the page. Suppose the code base is GPL.
Then our programming hero has access to everything he has done before. His skills are valuable because he knows the code base. There is no NDA because it makes no sense to try to impose an NDA on something that by its very nature MUST be open to all.
His employer benefitted as well. Without OpenSource software our programming hero would have to spend a high percentage of his time re-inventing the wheel and creating yet another incarnation of functions the company has to maintain.
So the bottom line here is that if anyone feels they are going to be working for the same benevolent employer for their whole career, then be my guest and sign the NDA and write closed source code for them.
On the other hand, if people feel this idea is a pipe dream, then please realise that if you develop under the GPL that you can never lose your work, your employer benefits and that old draconian NDA doesn't need to exist.
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I shall close this comment off as follows.
The first round of computer manufactures that died were called the BUNCH. Burroughs, Univac, NCR, CDC, Honeywell. The second round of computer manufactures that died were the mini-computer manufactures which include Perkin Elmer, Prime, Texas Instruments, HP3000 series, VAX, Data General. This is not a complete list by any stretch of the imagination.
In the pure software arena we see the same process occuring: look at the "smart" word processor, 123, the Brief editor, Word Perfect, Sybase, IDMS, TOTAL... this list is so long I could not begin to do it justice.
Virtually every line of code written for those old systems has now been pissed up against the wall and is totally valueless.
If the work those ancient programmers did were under the GPL, then that code would be alive and vibrant today.
Re:Conservation of angular momentum is the fatal f
on
Space Elevators Going Up
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· Score: 2, Interesting
no - I didn't read the book. But NASA has been a parasite before... this is how they put many probes into space... its called a "gravitational assist"
On the scale of 1:10 your idea rates 100. If you check the story at www.space.com on how the moon ticks you will find that it is receeding from earth. About a billion years ago the earths days were about 18 hours long (expanding earth theory anyone?) and the moon was much closer - having an orbital period of about 18 days or so.
So we are losing our MOON. This is worse than global warming.
We need to rope that heifer in. Line up the Bud Boys!
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Of course - if we can rope in the moon we can use all the energy of the earth-moon system to lift stuff into earth orbits.
Alas, the tree huggers will decend upon us and proclaim our technology is responsible for orbital cooling.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes - this is true - you can use permissions and so forth to restrict access.
/home/luser directory for 20,000 lusers such that each has access to his own shit while noone else can even know said luser exists.
However - you could not do a loopback mount on a
There is a lot of good ideas in the mainframes and this is the reason they are such a successful product.
Yes - this is certainly true - you can restrict access. However the act of doing said restriction is subject to errors.
A tape with the write enable ring / switch pulled off cannot be modified because the hardware it is mounted on checks for this. In a database with everything on-line a simple keystroke error defeats what you wish to accomplish.
Simply put - if I take my data off line then it does not matter how insecure the system is - you cannot access it.
The gist of what I tried to comment on is the value in a Partition Data Set concept. Here is a for instance. Apache has a lot of components. If Linux ran a PDS then we could simply put all of apache in one PDS, mount it exclusively for the server in question and as for the websites - set each of these also in their own PDS and there really IS no security issue any more. To switch back and forth between a couple versions of apache would be no more difficult than flipping a switch so to speak.
The install process is eliminated with the PDS.
Managment of vast volumes of data becomes really easy.
Linux and Unix users invented the tar ball and they live and die by the wonderful packaging capabilities a tar ball provides.
In a mainframe - the PDS does the tar ball packaging with live applications. We really need this in Linux!
I do not agreee with this at all!
Alternatives to COBOL have existed since the 60's. PL/I is an excellent alternative. It supports literally everything that is any good in COBOL and gets rid of most of the COBOL crapola. The biggest reasons people have not switched is probably because they don't know any better and go with the idea that if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
As to reltaional databases, well - they are NOT a good alternative for many tasks that run quite well in the mainframes. The fundamental design objective of a relational data base is to expose any and all data to applications. In fact, this is diametrically opposed to what we really need.
Most data ends up archived at some point and from that point on we need read only access. This is not what relational database systems try to accomplish.
Another thing the wanna be replacement computers do not have is the Partition Dataset. We probably can build such a beast into Linux using loopback mounts or a variation thereof. But it is going to take a lot of work for reasons I'll describe next.
A PDS is tied to a set of applications and to a group of users. When you do a loopback mount of a file the system exposes the contents of the file to every user and application in the system. Thus every file in the directory becomes subject to tampering, either inadvertent or deliberate.
Meanwhile the contents of the PDS can be relied upon in much the same was as the contents of a tarball can be relied apon.
What this all boils down to is that the mainframe provides capabilities that are not found in alternative systems.
The artical you reference is very intersting. Here is a direct quote from it:
"Safety analyses show there are still about 1,000 square meters (1,200 square yards) of holes in the roof and sides," said Eric Schmieman, chief engineer for environmental technology at Battelle Memorial Institute's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash. "A significant amount of water can go in, and dust can go out, and birds and squirrels come and go all the time."
If birds and squirrels are living in the sarcophagus then this is a really interesting development and a wonderful opportunity to study the effects of radiation on higher animals.
According to Elena, the radiation in the area is so high that were she to walk up to the plant she would come back glowing like a knight in shinning armour... Yet, the squirrels are ok?
The OBVIOUS thing to do is to treat what is within the area is an ore and mine it! Then the highly radioactive isotopes can be reprocessed into fuel and burned in other reactors. Trying to store this stuff is just nutz. Why store unwanted and dangerous isotopes when you can simply burn them and make electricity from them.
Yes, I pointed out this rather large discrepancy in the last story and was called "heartless"!
I do not know why it is that we cannot get good reliable data on this. One thing that seems quite clear to me is that radiation dangers have been vastly overrated. Certainly radiation can kill and this is one of the reasons it is used in Cancer therapy. The issue is that we don't hear of a cancer patients dying from radiation induced affects - unless from a accidental overdoes - and these seem to be in the news far more often than I would expect!
The fact there are healthy animals in the area, reproducing and living normal lives, and the fact that several hundred people have simply ignored the warnings and moved back does bode for a repopulation of the area long before the suggested 900 year curfew is over.
Yet, I do not wish to make light of this tradegy. The amount of heartache and human suffering as a result of this accident is horrific.
Still, this does not change the facts. The facts seem to be pointing to the idea that radiation dangers have been greatly exagerated and if so then perhaps a lot of the human suffering due to this accident should be attributed to the way it was mismanaged. Certainly it waa very clear at the time of the accident that the authorities were mismanaging things. Iodine tablets for instance were identified as being critical to thwart off the effects of radioactive Iodine isotopes and as I recall, the offers fell of deaf ears until far too late.
at only 220 yards she can get a radio linka and a couple dishes and make arrangements with one of her neighbours!
Yes, I have run into this before. When it comes to this conflict of interest it seems that managment often does not realise that the IT folks actually DO have a legitimate reason to be contacted.
The issue of a sales rep having a cell phone will probably not come up - yet the damage to the company when a rep leaves with "his" contact list is much greater than a systems admin could _ever_ pull off... that is short of stealing the whole bloody database... but then what would the systems admin _do_ with the stolen data? The sales reps on the other hand know what they are going to use it for.
IT people are just misunderstood and sometimes the blundering of managment is rather severe.
That being said, personal laptops are a big security risk. So is internet access to the servers. Yet, if you do not allow the access then if a problem crops up in the middle of the night, the systems admin is sunk and cannot fix it.
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This being said I know a systems maintenance engineer who was fired from HP because he asked the operator he worked with for over 10 years for the system password so he could mount a disk drive he had just replaced. Sorry, HP does not get my support anymore.
In this instance the manger of the client company was an asshole. Virtually every systems manager at every client site running HP equipment in this city wrote to complain about this high handed and totally unwarrented knee jerk reaction.
Purchasing felt they knew more about what a programmer needs than the programmer. Have you EVER sat there doing hex by longhand with a pencil?
IMHO when you run into really idiotic issues then you have to quit (preferable) or fight fire with fire.
So configure all your servers in the company to ring your phone and then forward same to the company switchboard - after sending out CYA memos of course explained that you are doing this.
Next when the switchboard puts the messages on hold and you don't get them... and the server dies and 50 people are pissed off as hell - you shrug your shoulders and blame the switchboard.
Meanwhile, get that CV dusted off because really it is not worth fighting the idiot factor.
You can get more power out.
There are many farmers - typically hog farmers - who use methane digesters to power their farms.
What you do is call the police and file a complaint and then start legal proceedings. They clearly are going to lose.
The issue is what your damages are. At best you _might_ be able to recover the investment in the time that would be required to compile all of this information.
Your position is no different than say Walt Disney who has tee shirt designs, characters and so forth taken illegally. The difference is that in the case of copyright infringment there are now some laws that place some pretty steep fines and indeed, place it under teh criminal code.
Generally speaking you have a great deal of recourse. This ranges from complaints over the copyright violation through the police who probably will not bother to enforce the laws that are already there - through to a civil suit.
What you are going to need to determine is your civil damages. As a designer this might be limited to them having to pay you a reasonable amount for the use of your design.
You can simply phone up the police in fact.
You have clearly posted on the bottom of the page you designed that they hold the copyright. Thus they can do whatever they want.
BTW - your design is much nicer. Theirs is junky and does not even render properly.
What you might do is send them a bill if you feel the designs are close enough. However, when you get it into court (small claims probably) you are going to have to prove your case. I think there are enough differences that you might not win. Yet - you might win in which case they have to pay you. More likely you will partly win - IE a reduced amount.
Your biggest issue is that sure you did a proposal but where was the contract and did they agree to not use ideas you came up with? I think not. And with the copyright transferal you are in even murkier water. Frankly, I don't think this one flies.
Next time, sign them to a non-disclosure. I'd suggest hiring a lawyer specializing in IP law so that you can get a letter of agreement or letter of intent organized before you start showing off your designs.
I concur - excellent points.
However one needs to look at where the floor is established. At 9 bux, people will sell every damn share they can lay their hands on.
SCOX's long term value is ZERO. In the short term they were given something like $80 million so this did create some cash value in the company. After the lawsuit - it might all be gone.
There are suits against SCOX and they likely will lose on them. This may drain the coffers rather quickly.
As for the IP value of the Unix system V copyrights? Well - they are basically valuless. They are legally radioactive and it is instructive that Stallman foresaw the problem the closed source IP created and started the OpenSource movement. This being said, we have better code which is open source, it is readily available and there is an army of maintainers. Hense the only value of the System V source code is that it can be the subject of lawsuits.
Thus, I don't really think SCOX trying to establish a floor is going to achieve anything. The problem the short sellers are facing is finding a source of shares.
IBM was ver cleaver with this as well. Back in the 60's adn 70's they used to give deep discounts to educational instutions. The machines were really cheap because IBM wanted the kids to know how to program IBM computers.
Since the grads knew IBM programming industry next favoured IBM machines. This could be why IBM survived the extinction of the bunch.
The problem with this is that it really is an anti competitive business practice and is thus not legal. Does anyone know if this theory is true (IANAL) or if anyone has suggested doing something about it if it is illegal?
Just go to www.iuma.com
Or - email the artists you are interested in and tell them you want to buy some of their music please and that you just want an ogg vorbis format that you can play on your ipod.
Personally I won't support the recording industry but my reasons are probably at variance of most people. I just do not like the music they are trying to stuff down our throats!
This had to be the stupid salesman! I posted my experiances and yes I did run into this! No Kidding. I can support what your mom has experianced.
But in my case we are able to cut to the chase and close a deal. Maybe my salesman was more down to earth because when he realised he had a sale he went for it. Yet - he also ended up selling me the "school edition" and I told him I was no interested in any of the "consumer editions" so when it comes down to it, clearly the company is full of morons.
Yes, it was rather funny when I bought my set of Britannica.
I made three mjor steps when I came into this city (1) I found a woman and married her (2) she found a house and we bought it and (3) I tracked down an encyclopeadia salesman and bought a set.
Well - #3 was the hardest. I managed to find them but had to call long distance as I recall. Eventually this lead to a referal here in the city and a younge chap showed up at the door. He advised that he had to go through his speal. I advised I wasn't interested in his speal - I wanted to look at the covers and the color.
A few minutes later his jaw drops in AMASMENT and he askes "Do you mean you are really going to buy them?" to which I answered: "Well, if you ever show me the damn covers - yes!"
And he says something like: "The company says I always have to go through this speal... This is the EASIEST sale I've ever made!!!"
They only cost about 1 1/2 months salary. I still look at that set with pride. And they are used alot as well. Of all the investments I've made, my encyclopeadias are one of the best.
A friend would like to buy a set of Enclyclopeadia Britannic. Does anyone know if they are available?
The UN reports do address the quality of life and the impact this disaster had on 100,000's of people. Mostly the UN reports talk of the impact of the relocation and the fact there is insufficient money to help the population.
When I read the reports I looked for hard medical data on physical imparments. Other than the thyroid cancers, this seems to be not addressed. One might erronously conclude there really were only 40 or so people who died and that no one suffers from radation effects other than this small group.
I think it is really good to get the information out in the open. To me the UN report looks credible. But the personal accounts also look really credible and there seems to be a disconnect between them. It would be good to get more information.
As for the flora and fauna. Yes - the horses look quite happy actually. Is there evidence of mutation in the wild animals and plants in the area? How about physical effects? Still births? Premature death?
I'm sure the scientific community is doing research... hopefully they will publish it on slashdot or that someone from here will find it.
Oh it would be so nice if some ppl would check their facts before they go spouting off.
While not wanting to diminish the size of this catastrophie, it is nevertheless very important to actually look at the numbers and to put things into perspective.
Please refer to the papers from the United Nations studies on this. They can be found here: UN website on the Chernobyl Disaster
Starting with paragraph 1.26 we find a discussion. In paragraph 1.28 we find that there were some 2000 cases of thyroid cancer attributed to the radiation (iodine). However, thyroid cancer can be treated and there is no real death rate associated with the thyroid cancers.
Next we find that the anticipated development of leukimias has not occured. In paragraph 1.36 we find this quote: unexpected appearance of early childhood thyroid cancer, the unexpected absence of leukaemia stemming from the accident.
In paragraph 1.38 we see that there is a iodine deficiency problem in the population and that addressing this problem in a timely fashion would no doubt have made a considerable difference.
Starting with paragraph 2.01 on page 30, we have a history of the event itself. In paragraph 2.03 I131 is discussed. This isotope has a half life of 8.05 days and were the population given an ample supply of non-radioactive iodine - through the use of simple iodized table salt - then the radioactive version would not have been picked up.
It is really unfortunate that iodine pills could not have been distributed faster!
On page 56 we find more telling information. 28 highly exposed individuals died within 4 months of the accident (see box 4.2). In addition to the end of 1998, 11 others died.
in paragraph 4.18 we have more discussion of the thyroid cancers, and the esitmation is made that the total number could be as high as 8,000.
In the end, while this certainly was a major disaster with an impact on innocent people that should not be underestimated, we are still left with the facts that the media overestimated the impact and the death rate by many orders of magnitude.
In fact some of the pictures clearly demonstrate this. If one looks at the flora and the fauna in the pictures we see groups of wild animals happily running along totally oblivious to the radiation.
These animals have a faster metabolic rate than humans and thus are not as radiation hardy as we are. Yet they are clearly thriving and the world they are living in, and rearing their offspring can only be described as very beautiful.
Yes the radiation is there and yes it should not be scoffed at. But the pictures clearly show that animal life is not impacted all that much. Those horses look pretty healthy and pretty happy to me!
What does the average slashdotter feel the copyright value is of the work that SCO bought from Novel?
What does the average slashdotter feel companies like AT&T spent to develope system V and how many programmers were involved? How many sleepless nights were spent burning the midnight oil?
Consider this please. The System V copyrights are worth NOTHING. NOTHING AT ALL.
No programmer can dare even LOOK at that code because they lay themselves wide open to a copyright infringment claim. No vendor other than SCO would even want to touch it today. As for SCO - they are going to crash and burn for many reasons, including the fact that they have pissed off so many of their customers that no one will touch them ever again.
This is perhaps one of the main reasons the OpenSoftware concept is so powerful... it creates a resource that people can actually use, a resource that can build and be refined and one where anyone in the world can benefit from it.
The closed source model on the other hand creates a product that is legally so radioactive that any sane programmer will stay miles away from it.
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Suppose a young programmer starts working for a company. For 10 years he/she does some particularly brilliant work and eventually the company goes into hard times and fires said programmer.
What of the code? The programmer cannot use it. The company normally cannot sell it and usually doesn't really consider the code to have any value at all.
So our hypothetical programmer will find that 10 years down the track, they are faced with starting over from scratch because they cannot dare even TOUCH the work they themselves wrote.
Next, if we look at typical non-disclosure agreements we see the same programmer is literally barred from discussing the algorithms he thought up. Yet - usually these alorithms are realitivly obvious to practitioners in the trade.
Those old non-disclosure agreements can come back to haunt you and can in fact make you unemployable.
Well, these points might be considered extreme. Yet, consider the lastest story up in www.groklaw.com where the derivation of the signal.h file is discussed. Had Linus even seen the file from AT&T unix he may well have been tainted for life.
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Well - the above example deals with work on proprietary code developed under a NDA. Flip the page. Suppose the code base is GPL.
Then our programming hero has access to everything he has done before. His skills are valuable because he knows the code base. There is no NDA because it makes no sense to try to impose an NDA on something that by its very nature MUST be open to all.
His employer benefitted as well. Without OpenSource software our programming hero would have to spend a high percentage of his time re-inventing the wheel and creating yet another incarnation of functions the company has to maintain.
So the bottom line here is that if anyone feels they are going to be working for the same benevolent employer for their whole career, then be my guest and sign the NDA and write closed source code for them.
On the other hand, if people feel this idea is a pipe dream, then please realise that if you develop under the GPL that you can never lose your work, your employer benefits and that old draconian NDA doesn't need to exist.
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I shall close this comment off as follows.
The first round of computer manufactures that died were called the BUNCH. Burroughs, Univac, NCR, CDC, Honeywell. The second round of computer manufactures that died were the mini-computer manufactures which include Perkin Elmer, Prime, Texas Instruments, HP3000 series, VAX, Data General. This is not a complete list by any stretch of the imagination.
In the pure software arena we see the same process occuring: look at the "smart" word processor, 123, the Brief editor, Word Perfect, Sybase, IDMS, TOTAL... this list is so long I could not begin to do it justice.
Virtually every line of code written for those old systems has now been pissed up against the wall and is totally valueless.
If the work those ancient programmers did were under the GPL, then that code would be alive and vibrant today.
no - I didn't read the book. But NASA has been a parasite before... this is how they put many probes into space... its called a "gravitational assist"
On the scale of 1:10 your idea rates 100. If you check the story at www.space.com on how the moon ticks you will find that it is receeding from earth. About a billion years ago the earths days were about 18 hours long (expanding earth theory anyone?) and the moon was much closer - having an orbital period of about 18 days or so.
So we are losing our MOON. This is worse than global warming.
We need to rope that heifer in. Line up the Bud Boys!
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Of course - if we can rope in the moon we can use all the energy of the earth-moon system to lift stuff into earth orbits.
Alas, the tree huggers will decend upon us and proclaim our technology is responsible for orbital cooling.
Damn Damn Damn.
pass a Big Rock Please!