Why are people saying that this isn't a GPL violation?
Because it isn't.
You must provide a copy of the source code when you redistribute software that is under the GPL license.
Read this exchange. The source for fink was included, along with the source for bzip, tar, etc. etc.
Not only that, but they were both charging for the software that they basically just downloaded and repackaged.
Show me the part of the GPL that forbids charging for software.
Furthermore, i'm pretty sure both parties violated parts A, B, and C of section 2.
Oh really? Which part? From reading the exchange between Christoph and Jeshua, There doesn't seem to be any issue of modifying code, but instead a matter of giving credit. There is no part of Section 2 that deals with that issue.
I reasoned that since the objective behind the FSF was providing free software, and Linux was being heavily commercialized while FreeBSD was not, FreeBSD was nearer to the objectives.
Actually, you're using the wrong meaning of "free" here. The FSF itself says: The FSF promotes the development and use of free (as in freedom) software. This is different from the meaning of "no cost" that you claim.
The first clue that the FSF is not opposed to software being non-free (as in no-cost) is on their page: Most of the FSF's funds come from its distribution service. This is why we urge you to order CD-ROMs and manuals (but especially CD-ROMs) from the FSF when you can.
The confusion is understandable, as the ability to get sourcecode anywhere without paying for anything other than bandwidth has made many people assume that the "free" in "free software" means that software should be without cost.
I'll take a stab. Suppose I say "It's raining outside." This sounds like a classicly falsifiable statement. But is it? If you look out the window and don't see rain, it may be that I was wrong. Or (I could perversely argue) it could be that you (incorrectly) assumed that [deleted various arguments]
All this goes to show is that your "classicly falsifiable statement" is a bad theory. This is why actual theories are either much more complicated, taking into account all sorts of possibilities (as you detailed), or are very explicit (as in the F=ma form).
Making a statement, in casual language, as you did, is not thorough enough. For example, one could say "Nothing can go faster than the speed of light.", but that isn't the actual theory. In fact, the theory is just a set of mathematical equations that show (among other things) that the mass of an object increases by a factor of (1/sqrt(c^2-velocity^2)), so that unless something can have an infinite mass (or a resting mass of 0), it can't go at the speed of light. And other fun things that all, together, show that nothing can travel at the speed of light.
A single test can't really topple a theory since you can't know for sure that the problem was in the theory and not in your test.
Sure, testing errors are always possible, but this is what repeatability is all about. A single test , run multiple times, can definitely topple a theory. If two separate people do the exact same test and come up with the same disagreement with the theory, then the chances of testing error are much smaller. The point is that if a theory can't explain a discrepancy, then the theory is either wrong or incomplete.
The technology exists for the computer to, say, anticipate your next move, complete it ahead of time, and wait for you to tell it if it "done good" or not
Hey, this is a great idea! I can just imagine it:
You want to show your boss some documentation you found on the web. You click on "open location", and your computer, ever so helpfully, types in your favorite porn site, bringing up a bevy of blonde beauties on your screen. Embarrassed, you then hit the "done bad" button, and your computer
types in a new site, bringing up pictures of studly, muscular men on your page.
You hit the "done bad" button again, and try to laugh it off to your boss. You finally convince your computer to go to the website that you want, and when you try to download the specs, your computer auto-completes your request, downloads the file, and closes. Except that you don't know where the computer decided to put your downloaded file!
You then go to "find file" (after hitting the "done bad" button again) to find the file that the helpful operating system put somewhere on your hard drive, and start to type in the name of the downloaded file. Five aborted attempts at name-completion later (including the guesses "readme.txt", "Readme.txt", and "README.TXT"), you finally locate where the file was placed (in the/flesh/movies/ directory, incidentally)
"Halleluja", you tell your boss, as you open up the downloaded specifications. Time to print them out! You convince the operating system to open up the print menu (after telling it "done bad" for bringing up the "open file" menu four times in a row), and it automatically prints one copy to give to your boss. Great!
Whoops, except that you wanted another one for yourself. Hitting the "done bad" button again, you (eventually) get one more copy printed, and your boss walks away, happy to have his copy of the specification, and happy to have a few new URLs to check once he closes his office door.
Grateful that the operating system had allowed you to accomplish something, you hit the "done good" button a few times, and go out to get a cup of coffee. Mission Accomplished!
Think of muscle memory as the instruction prefetch cache on a CPU. Yes, if you "hit" the cache, you'll execute the instruction faster than if you didn't. But there's still a delay involved, and (important bit here) some caching strategies are more efficient than others.
Okay, I agree with you here. But let's just think about this. The difference is that you can create muscle-memory for specific keys (you've probably done so for typing regular text, for instance). You are able to do this because you know where every key is on the board. Where's the "ctrl" key? You already know exactly where it is. Where's the 'v' key? You don't even *think* about it, you know know how to hit it, and you've easily pasted something.
Now let's take the other method. Where's the "paste" command? You know, automatically, that it is in the "Edit" menu. You reach over to grab the mouse. Where is it? While limited by the size of the mousepad, it can be in any number of places. But you grab it. Now, where is the Edit menu? Is your window in the normal place in the screen? Is the cursor always in the same spot? Probably not, so now you have to drag the cursor from its (normally non-optimal) location over to the Edit menu that can be anywhere on your display, and and only THEN select "Paste".
The difference is that there are so many variables in using the mouse, that it is very difficult to develop a usable muscle memory. Don't believe me? Wait until you go to someone's computer where the mouse has a different acceleration value, or a different mouse-click speed, etc. etc. Then your muscle memory disappears. I'm not saying that a keyboard is infallable (I'd be lost on a Dvorak keyboard, for instance), but the changes needed for my muscle memory to be hindered are much greater.
Long Story Short: A keyboard is simpler, with less variables, which makes for a easier time learning to do tasks quickly.
The research that Tog cites proves the exact opposite of this claim. Where is the you research supporting it?
Um, I didn't see ANY research cited in Tog's article. I just saw him claim that the research shows it. Where's the reference? Actually, I'll just claim that the research proves that Tog is wrong, and provide the same amount of references that he does, right here:
The idea of putting pilots in an armed fortress of a cockpit is fine, and would probably have been done already (hijacking is not a new problem), except that there are other considerations other than just limiting access to the pilots.
For one, sometimes you *want* access to the pilot. The flight attendants are usually required to talk to the pilots to make sure that everything is going well, or maybe they need something. Pilots aren't just plane-flying automatons, either. They are in charge of the vessel, and sometimes need to leave the cockpit to deal with issues in the plane.
This brings up a point. I've read a report (and at this time, like most everything else, it's just a rumor) that the hijackers attacked the flight attendants and then coerced the pilots into leaving the cockpit where they could then be overpowered. Even if the cockpit was inpenetrable, I doubt that the pilots would stay ensconced inside if hijackers started threatening the passengers or flight attendants.
Sure, armed marshalls would probably prevent some of this (and I think that they're a good idea), but they're also expensive (are we going to put them on all of the THOUSANDS of flights everyday?), and will still not guarantee total safety. Really, nothing will.
My main point is that there are tradeoffs all the time, and it isn't as simple as making it tougher to get into the cockpit. Remember what the (rumors again) reports said, the hijackers on tuesday didn't force their way into the cockpits (which are locked on american planes anyways), but waited/coerced them to come out. Unless you made it impossible for the pilots to leave the cockpit (Something that I think would not go over well with the pilots themselves), you will always have this problem.
I know this is offtopic, but I agree. Politics aside, he is the president, and I was/am willing to go along with the leader of the country. Until I heard the speech. He said nothing memorable, nothing inspiring, and just looked like what we've gotten used to seeing: a lightweight who looks like he fell into the job.
I was hoping for a strong condemnation of the people who did this, an emotional expression of the nation's sorrow, and a stirring call-to-arms.
Instead I got generic statements of sadness, and a quote of Psalms 23.
Exactly!!
I just moved, and while packing I realized that I have several LARGE cardboard boxes that are just filled with "computer stuff". AMD processors, Intels (including one of the first p200-MMXs, it cost >$600 at the time:/ ), a bunch of SIMMs, old fans, a stack of old sound cards, a bunch of old motherboards, video cards ranging from 256K to 8MB, old AT cases, Windows 3.1 install disks, old DOS install disks, old Redhat disks, etc. But who knows? "I might need this later!"
Of course, I'm a geek who comes from a farming family. I'm doubly cursed with the packrat syndrome.
It's also worth noting that they aren't playing by our rules and releasing their modifications under the GPL. Basically, they're "pirating" Linux.
Actually, no. The GPL only requires the release of modifications in the event that you "copy and distribute" the modifications. While the Chinese government may be modifying linux, I believe that they are only distributing the changes among their own government organization. Unless they are distributing Red Flag linux (as I believe it is named) publicly, the public has no right to ask for the modifications.
This isn't a rare phenomena for some people living along the California Coast (as the article mentions). Growing up in the Santa Barbara area, we had a very nice signal for Television stations from San Diego/Tijuana (about 200 miles away). Actually, the signal there was usually a LOT stronger than signals from Los Angeles (about 100 miles away). This is a Good Thing, as Santa Barbara only has 1 TV station. The reason for this being that Santa Barbara is a straight shot over the ocean from SD.
Other propagation stuff:
When I was doing a lot of HAM stuff (back during the last Solar Maximum), I could sometimes get some real distance at the HF frequencies, on small amounts of power. I was able to hit Argentina with 10W on 40 meters, and was able to hit all across the US with 1 watt sometimes (also at 40M), just on a plain old dipole antenna. Most hams are familiar with this, I guess, but to a kid in Jr. High it was pretty cool!:)
A friend of family was able to go from Santa Barbara to the midwest (Indianapolis maybe?) on something ridiculous like 10mW. It was (and may still be) some sort of record for distance/power.
Because Canada imports ALL its cars, we don't have a choice but to accept what's going on down in America.
This isn't really true. There is at least some car manufacturing going on in Canada. My Acura MDX, for example, is built in Canada, and I know that they sell it in Canada, so there is at least one vehicle which you don't have to import.
Not to mention that the same plant that builds the MDX builds the Honda Odyssey, so there's another car that you can buy that is built in Canada.
I'm sure that there are others too, I'm just not aware of them.
I guess the same thing can be achieved with 802.11, by throwing enough money into a system to get amps, antennas, etc. The problem is that most 802.11 cards are only 30mw, and the powerful ones are 100mw. The metricom modems were 1W, I think. And a lot cheaper, I guess. (especially now!)
Ah, all you have to do is factor that 704 bit number and there you go.
Or, alternatively, you could go factor the 704 bit number in the RSA challenge, take the $30,000, go buy Knuth a beer and just ask him what the answer is.:)
Actually, there are many better ways. (First of all, you only have to iterate from 2 to sqrt(n) in your algorithm:) ). The current best way is a Number Field Sieve, at least for large numbers. Search around to see what it is.
The second volume of Knuth's Art of Computer Programming series has a good discussion of different factoring algorithms, and their applicability at different times.
But, consoles don't run businesses. As such, the whole game playing computer scene is a financial drop in the bucket compared to the stuff which makes banks and factories tick.
You should ask Sony about this. They make about 1/3rd of their revenue from the Playstation console(s). That's a bit bigger than a drop.
For example, there is a GE form of sea grass that was made more robust for use in fish tanks. People change their tanks and flush the water. The sea grass flows out to sea.
This grass is now taking over huge areas of underwater shorescapes and pushing out all natural life in certian areas. They are trying to contain it, but don't have much of a chance.
You're talking about Caulerpa taxifolia.
I used to live down in San Diego county, where this grass (actually an algae) is becoming a problem. You're right that it is an aquarium grass. You're right that people are flushing into the water system and that it's taking over the wetlands, doing huge amounts of ecological damage.
However, it's not a GE grass. It first started invading the Mediterranian in 1984, way before GE was possible. It IS a mutant (or hybrid, depending on how you look at it) strain. The natural variety only lives in tropical climes, but this mutant strain just grows and grows everywhere, annihilating everything around it.
Of course, there are no predators where it is spreading. As one article points out, sea urchins would prefer eating their own excement and pieces of plastic before eating Taxifolia. It's nasty stuff, but not every biological disaster has New Technology to blame. Just ask the australians.:)
It isn't as if the surface-subsurface distinction is something new that the lawyers came up with. It's actually a common (ubiquitous?) clause in any real-estate contract to specify exactly what type of rights are being bought. For example, on the property where my house is, the contract specifies that I own oil and mineral rights only down to 500 feet. Below that, I suppose it's owned by someone else.
Look at Bill Gates for example. A horrible human being, but a pretty effective businessman.
I'm not sure how you can say this. While I may disagree with Bill Gates' philosophies towards business, I've never seen/heard/read anything that would indicate that he is a "horrible human being". The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is doing some pretty good work all around the world. Perhaps your ideology is distorting your view a little?
Yesterday, I received an unsolicited email from "rtmark@w00f.com" informing me about some
supposed "phone in sick" day where people should call in sick to go to some protest about some stupid cause of theirs. Something about people catapulting themselves over the canadian border for money. I'm not kidding.
(Incidentally, the "phone in sick" day is on 4/20, so I know what a lot of people might be doing instead of going to work:) )
Their spam says, helpfully, "This message is not commercial. Get off our list by writing
mailto:remove@rtmark.com...". Uh, thanks anyways, but what makes you think that I want to receive your damn email in the first place? My response: "This message is not commercial. Fuck Off!"
I know that communism ("May Day" features prominently in the message which I won't write about to avoid doing their work for them) is a tough sell around the world, along with pr0n, x10, and other annoying things, so I can understand why they feel that they have to go to any length to impose themselves on others, but come on. GO AWAY.
The only thing worse than capitalist spam is communist spam. It's like a fucking religion.
There are a few related ones like MDA (which has an amine instead of a methylamine), and MDE (which has ethylamine), and while both are psychoactive compounds, neither has the particular effects that make ecstasy so famous.
Slashdot Mirror
Why are people saying that this isn't a GPL violation?
Because it isn't.
You must provide a copy of the source code when you redistribute software that is under the GPL license.
Read this exchange. The source for fink was included, along with the source for bzip, tar, etc. etc.
Not only that, but they were both charging for the software that they basically just downloaded and repackaged.
Show me the part of the GPL that forbids charging for software.
Furthermore, i'm pretty sure both parties violated parts A, B, and C of section 2.
Oh really? Which part? From reading the exchange between Christoph and Jeshua, There doesn't seem to be any issue of modifying code, but instead a matter of giving credit. There is no part of Section 2 that deals with that issue.
I reasoned that since the objective behind the FSF was providing free software, and Linux was being heavily commercialized while FreeBSD was not, FreeBSD was nearer to the objectives.
Actually, you're using the wrong meaning of "free" here. The FSF itself says: The FSF promotes the development and use of free (as in freedom) software. This is different from the meaning of "no cost" that you claim.
The first clue that the FSF is not opposed to software being non-free (as in no-cost) is on their page: Most of the FSF's funds come from its distribution service. This is why we urge you to order CD-ROMs and manuals (but especially CD-ROMs) from the FSF when you can.
The confusion is understandable, as the ability to get sourcecode anywhere without paying for anything other than bandwidth has made many people assume that the "free" in "free software" means that software should be without cost.
I'll take a stab. Suppose I say "It's raining outside." This sounds like a classicly falsifiable statement. But is it? If you look out the window and don't see rain, it may be that I was wrong. Or (I could perversely argue) it could be that you (incorrectly) assumed that
[deleted various arguments]
All this goes to show is that your "classicly falsifiable statement" is a bad theory. This is why actual theories are either much more complicated, taking into account all sorts of possibilities (as you detailed), or are very explicit (as in the F=ma form).
Making a statement, in casual language, as you did, is not thorough enough. For example, one could say "Nothing can go faster than the speed of light.", but that isn't the actual theory. In fact, the theory is just a set of mathematical equations that show (among other things) that the mass of an object increases by a factor of (1/sqrt(c^2-velocity^2)), so that unless something can have an infinite mass (or a resting mass of 0), it can't go at the speed of light. And other fun things that all, together, show that nothing can travel at the speed of light.
A single test can't really topple a theory since you can't know for sure that the problem was in the theory and not in your test.
Sure, testing errors are always possible, but this is what repeatability is all about. A single test , run multiple times, can definitely topple a theory. If two separate people do the exact same test and come up with the same disagreement with the theory, then the chances of testing error are much smaller. The point is that if a theory can't explain a discrepancy, then the theory is either wrong or incomplete.
The technology exists for the computer to, say, anticipate your next move, complete it ahead of time, and wait for you to tell it if it "done good" or not
/flesh/movies/ directory, incidentally)
Hey, this is a great idea! I can just imagine it:
You want to show your boss some documentation you found on the web. You click on "open location", and your computer, ever so helpfully, types in your favorite porn site, bringing up a bevy of blonde beauties on your screen. Embarrassed, you then hit the "done bad" button, and your computer
types in a new site, bringing up pictures of studly, muscular men on your page.
You hit the "done bad" button again, and try to laugh it off to your boss. You finally convince your computer to go to the website that you want, and when you try to download the specs, your computer auto-completes your request, downloads the file, and closes. Except that you don't know where the computer decided to put your downloaded file!
You then go to "find file" (after hitting the "done bad" button again) to find the file that the helpful operating system put somewhere on your hard drive, and start to type in the name of the downloaded file. Five aborted attempts at name-completion later (including the guesses "readme.txt", "Readme.txt", and "README.TXT"), you finally locate where the file was placed (in the
"Halleluja", you tell your boss, as you open up the downloaded specifications. Time to print them out! You convince the operating system to open up the print menu (after telling it "done bad" for bringing up the "open file" menu four times in a row), and it automatically prints one copy to give to your boss. Great!
Whoops, except that you wanted another one for yourself. Hitting the "done bad" button again, you (eventually) get one more copy printed, and your boss walks away, happy to have his copy of the specification, and happy to have a few new URLs to check once he closes his office door.
Grateful that the operating system had allowed you to accomplish something, you hit the "done good" button a few times, and go out to get a cup of coffee. Mission Accomplished!
Think of muscle memory as the instruction prefetch cache on a CPU. Yes, if you "hit" the cache, you'll execute the instruction faster than if you didn't. But there's still a delay involved, and (important bit here) some caching strategies are more efficient than others.
Okay, I agree with you here. But let's just think about this. The difference is that you can create muscle-memory for specific keys (you've probably done so for typing regular text, for instance). You are able to do this because you know where every key is on the board. Where's the "ctrl" key? You already know exactly where it is. Where's the 'v' key? You don't even *think* about it, you know know how to hit it, and you've easily pasted something.
Now let's take the other method. Where's the "paste" command? You know, automatically, that it is in the "Edit" menu. You reach over to grab the mouse. Where is it? While limited by the size of the mousepad, it can be in any number of places. But you grab it. Now, where is the Edit menu? Is your window in the normal place in the screen? Is the cursor always in the same spot? Probably not, so now you have to drag the cursor from its (normally non-optimal) location over to the Edit menu that can be anywhere on your display, and and only THEN select "Paste".
The difference is that there are so many variables in using the mouse, that it is very difficult to develop a usable muscle memory. Don't believe me? Wait until you go to someone's computer where the mouse has a different acceleration value, or a different mouse-click speed, etc. etc. Then your muscle memory disappears. I'm not saying that a keyboard is infallable (I'd be lost on a Dvorak keyboard, for instance), but the changes needed for my muscle memory to be hindered are much greater.
Long Story Short: A keyboard is simpler, with less variables, which makes for a easier time learning to do tasks quickly.
The research that Tog cites proves the exact opposite of this claim. Where is the you research supporting it?
Um, I didn't see ANY research cited in Tog's article. I just saw him claim that the research shows it. Where's the reference? Actually, I'll just claim that the research proves that Tog is wrong, and provide the same amount of references that he does, right here:
The idea of putting pilots in an armed fortress of a cockpit is fine, and would probably have been done already (hijacking is not a new problem), except that there are other considerations other than just limiting access to the pilots.
For one, sometimes you *want* access to the pilot. The flight attendants are usually required to talk to the pilots to make sure that everything is going well, or maybe they need something. Pilots aren't just plane-flying automatons, either. They are in charge of the vessel, and sometimes need to leave the cockpit to deal with issues in the plane.
This brings up a point. I've read a report (and at this time, like most everything else, it's just a rumor) that the hijackers attacked the flight attendants and then coerced the pilots into leaving the cockpit where they could then be overpowered. Even if the cockpit was inpenetrable, I doubt that the pilots would stay ensconced inside if hijackers started threatening the passengers or flight attendants.
Sure, armed marshalls would probably prevent some of this (and I think that they're a good idea), but they're also expensive (are we going to put them on all of the THOUSANDS of flights everyday?), and will still not guarantee total safety. Really, nothing will.
My main point is that there are tradeoffs all the time, and it isn't as simple as making it tougher to get into the cockpit. Remember what the (rumors again) reports said, the hijackers on tuesday didn't force their way into the cockpits (which are locked on american planes anyways), but waited/coerced them to come out. Unless you made it impossible for the pilots to leave the cockpit (Something that I think would not go over well with the pilots themselves), you will always have this problem.
I know this is offtopic, but I agree. Politics aside, he is the president, and I was/am willing to go along with the leader of the country. Until I heard the speech. He said nothing memorable, nothing inspiring, and just looked like what we've gotten used to seeing: a lightweight who looks like he fell into the job.
I was hoping for a strong condemnation of the people who did this, an emotional expression of the nation's sorrow, and a stirring call-to-arms.
Instead I got generic statements of sadness, and a quote of Psalms 23.
Exactly!! :/ ), a bunch of SIMMs, old fans, a stack of old sound cards, a bunch of old motherboards, video cards ranging from 256K to 8MB, old AT cases, Windows 3.1 install disks, old DOS install disks, old Redhat disks, etc. But who knows? "I might need this later!"
I just moved, and while packing I realized that I have several LARGE cardboard boxes that are just filled with "computer stuff". AMD processors, Intels (including one of the first p200-MMXs, it cost >$600 at the time
Of course, I'm a geek who comes from a farming family. I'm doubly cursed with the packrat syndrome.
It's also worth noting that they aren't playing by our rules and releasing their modifications under the GPL. Basically, they're "pirating" Linux.
Actually, no. The GPL only requires the release of modifications in the event that you "copy and distribute" the modifications. While the Chinese government may be modifying linux, I believe that they are only distributing the changes among their own government organization. Unless they are distributing Red Flag linux (as I believe it is named) publicly, the public has no right to ask for the modifications.
This isn't a rare phenomena for some people living along the California Coast (as the article mentions). Growing up in the Santa Barbara area, we had a very nice signal for Television stations from San Diego/Tijuana (about 200 miles away). Actually, the signal there was usually a LOT stronger than signals from Los Angeles (about 100 miles away). This is a Good Thing, as Santa Barbara only has 1 TV station. The reason for this being that Santa Barbara is a straight shot over the ocean from SD.
:)
Other propagation stuff:
When I was doing a lot of HAM stuff (back during the last Solar Maximum), I could sometimes get some real distance at the HF frequencies, on small amounts of power. I was able to hit Argentina with 10W on 40 meters, and was able to hit all across the US with 1 watt sometimes (also at 40M), just on a plain old dipole antenna. Most hams are familiar with this, I guess, but to a kid in Jr. High it was pretty cool!
A friend of family was able to go from Santa Barbara to the midwest (Indianapolis maybe?) on something ridiculous like 10mW. It was (and may still be) some sort of record for distance/power.
Foley
N6RWE
Because Canada imports ALL its cars, we don't have a choice but to accept what's going on down in America.
This isn't really true. There is at least some car manufacturing going on in Canada. My Acura MDX, for example, is built in Canada, and I know that they sell it in Canada, so there is at least one vehicle which you don't have to import.
Not to mention that the same plant that builds the MDX builds the Honda Odyssey, so there's another car that you can buy that is built in Canada.
I'm sure that there are others too, I'm just not aware of them.
Ah, okay. I see!
I guess the same thing can be achieved with 802.11, by throwing enough money into a system to get amps, antennas, etc. The problem is that most 802.11 cards are only 30mw, and the powerful ones are 100mw. The metricom modems were 1W, I think. And a lot cheaper, I guess. (especially now!)
Why would someone want to use metricom modems for home networking when 802.11b networking is so much faster, and not that much more expensive either?
Ah, all you have to do is factor that 704 bit number and there you go.
:)
Or, alternatively, you could go factor the 704 bit number in the RSA challenge, take the $30,000, go buy Knuth a beer and just ask him what the answer is.
Actually, there are many better ways. (First of all, you only have to iterate from 2 to sqrt(n) in your algorithm :) ). The current best way is a Number Field Sieve, at least for large numbers. Search around to see what it is.
The second volume of Knuth's Art of Computer Programming series has a good discussion of different factoring algorithms, and their applicability at different times.
Who's Dianora?
just because an ad shows up under the other windows doesn't mean that it doesn't "pop-up" and annoy the hell out of you.
But, consoles don't run businesses. As such, the whole game playing computer scene is a financial drop in the bucket compared to the stuff which makes banks and factories tick.
You should ask Sony about this. They make about 1/3rd of their revenue from the Playstation console(s). That's a bit bigger than a drop.
This grass is now taking over huge areas of underwater shorescapes and pushing out all natural life in certian areas. They are trying to contain it, but don't have much of a chance.
You're talking about Caulerpa taxifolia.
I used to live down in San Diego county, where this grass (actually an algae) is becoming a problem. You're right that it is an aquarium grass. You're right that people are flushing into the water system and that it's taking over the wetlands, doing huge amounts of ecological damage.
However, it's not a GE grass. It first started invading the Mediterranian in 1984, way before GE was possible. It IS a mutant (or hybrid, depending on how you look at it) strain. The natural variety only lives in tropical climes, but this mutant strain just grows and grows everywhere, annihilating everything around it.
Of course, there are no predators where it is spreading. As one article points out, sea urchins would prefer eating their own excement and pieces of plastic before eating Taxifolia. It's nasty stuff, but not every biological disaster has New Technology to blame. Just ask the australians.
It isn't as if the surface-subsurface distinction is something new that the lawyers came up with. It's actually a common (ubiquitous?) clause in any real-estate contract to specify exactly what type of rights are being bought. For example, on the property where my house is, the contract specifies that I own oil and mineral rights only down to 500 feet. Below that, I suppose it's owned by someone else.
I'm not sure how you can say this. While I may disagree with Bill Gates' philosophies towards business, I've never seen/heard/read anything that would indicate that he is a "horrible human being". The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is doing some pretty good work all around the world. Perhaps your ideology is distorting your view a little?
Sure they do. Just tell them: "The project's going to be late unless we take out one feature." and watch them prioritize away.
(Incidentally, the "phone in sick" day is on 4/20, so I know what a lot of people might be doing instead of going to work :) )
Their spam says, helpfully, "This message is not commercial. Get off our list by writing mailto:remove@rtmark.com...". Uh, thanks anyways, but what makes you think that I want to receive your damn email in the first place? My response: "This message is not commercial. Fuck Off!"
I know that communism ("May Day" features prominently in the message which I won't write about to avoid doing their work for them) is a tough sell around the world, along with pr0n, x10, and other annoying things, so I can understand why they feel that they have to go to any length to impose themselves on others, but come on. GO AWAY.
The only thing worse than capitalist spam is communist spam. It's like a fucking religion.
There are a few related ones like MDA (which has an amine instead of a methylamine), and MDE (which has ethylamine), and while both are psychoactive compounds, neither has the particular effects that make ecstasy so famous.
that's because the estimations are made on the basis of exit polls, not by extrapolating the
early results.