Wouldn't any other patents be invalid under prior art? After all, they announced it to the whole world. How could anyone possibly say they discovered it first when you could open a newspaper and see their earlier discovery announcement there?
Exactly the point I was trying (and apparently failing;-) to make: it's barely reusable to the point of liability, and we get no real benefit from it. If it needs maintenance between each flight (check), or is incredibly expensive (check), it's not helping any. I wouldn't mind it being incredibly expensive if it could achieve space just twice without any external assistance - then we could land on a planet and get it back up in space. That's a worthy goal of reuse, and something I wouldn't expect the Apollo/Soyuz model to beable to do. OTOH, the Shuttle currently can't either, leaving it with essentially the same capabilities as the Apollo/Soyuz for a few orders of magnitude of the cost...
Yep, that describes Canada pretty well - all talk (- Assault/Threat per 100,000.Canada-4.0..US-5.7 ), no action (- Homicides per 100,000......Canada-1.8..US-5.5)...
Maybe they hate Americans for the same reason that most kids hate the schoolyard bully - people don't like being told what to do, even when they're doing something wrong (which I don't think is the case this time). Maybe if the US had a foreign policy of not sticking their noses into it, and giving countries the opportunity to fumble towards democracy, with assistance when asked (and non-military pressure when other countries engage in human rights violations), other countries' attitude towards them would change. An additional benefit might be that other fledgling democracies would apprecate their newfound enlightenment.
I think you have something mixed up here. I can ASK you to do something. I can TELL you that I don't agree with something and that you shouldn't do it. And I can TELL you to do something, at which time you can TELL me to blow it up my ass. With the third option, we'll both probably ignore each other.
I believe the US government ASKED other countries to join them in fighting Iraq. A lot of them said no, and the US (cildishly) vilified them for doing what they believed. They TOLD Iraq to not inhibit the UN inspection teams, among other things. When they weren't satified with Iraq's responses, a war started.
What I'm worried about is the US government saying that Canada's laws are causing Canada to indirectly support terrorism, and that we can either adjust our practices to stamp out this 700 people/year tragedy (um, yeah, okay) or they will invade Canada next.
After all, Canada is closer than North Korea, and we have oil, too...
The purpose of putting wings on a spacecraft is recovery and reuse. Otherwise, they're more trouble than they are worth.
I agreed with just about everything you said except this part.
I think we've seen better reliability with the Soyuz capsule than we have with the shuttles, and with a fairly simple recovery plan given the better safety margin.
I'm also beginning to be of the opinion that there are only two valid camps for reuse - either most of the parts can be used more than once (preferably without some significant portion of the cost of the vehicle being spent on inspections) or can achieve space twice in a row without external assistance (not so much as earth-space-earth-space as space-planet-space). If you can't reach one of those objectives, or have those goals, it's all talk.
Yeah, but once the horse is dead, it's time to stop flogging. Do you think there is one person with any amount of authority who hasn't heard the GNU/blah vs. blah debate before? The only person there who wouldn't know the answer is him. I can see asking once out of interest, but after that, give it up! Save the evangelism for important things, like whether he thinks effort should be made to create a common binding for Gnome and KDE (I'm not saying that is good, just relevant to the developer community). Stop preaching to the choir of free developers and free project maintainers, and talk to those who are uncertain or opposed to free software if you really want to make a difference.
But it DOES spread to whatever it touches. You said so yourself. I may have to choose (or someone on the team, whether or not everyone knows/approves), but once it's there, it's there (I'm aware there are some remedies to this). This is especially risky for a commercial shop, like where I work.
Don't get me worng, I'm not against the GPL. Although I haven't submitted any changes to a GPL product, or released a GPL product myself, I'm not against doing so in the future. Also, I'm aware that the term 'viral' was used negatively against the GPL, although it is used more positively about things like marketing. But there ARE a number of attributes about GPL code that are viral, and intentionally so. I don't think that's a bad thing, in fact the opposite. But that makes it no less applicable.
That's right, a vaccine spreads through one system, and has to be forcibly introduced to another system, from a single source. It has no capability to spread without the aid and manufacture from that one source. That system where it is introduced has the capability to manufacture more of a similar (possibly identical, certainly functionally equivalent) vaccine, but still can't introduce it to another system.
Vaccines don't duplicate, but a virus can, from any source where it is present. Once released it can go everywhere, unlike a vaccine.
Define 'accidentally'. If a large team (organism) gets GPL'd code introduced through a single point, the whole organism is infected through no desire on the part of the organism as a whole. This can be, and has been, fought off, once the organism is aware of unintentional infection (usually through the help of 'Doctor' Moglen:).
I think you need to look at the definition used for viral here, and cut down the knee-jerk reactions. In spite of my opinions of the term, the marketing industry speaks of 'viral' marketing in a positive light. The benefit derives from it's being spread by all third parties, and the originator being able to start the reaction through introduction to a small population. Neither of these are done in vaccines - all points of distribution are controlled by the originator, and only select third parties can introduce them elsewhere.
The term viral referes to the fact that the GPL spreads to whatever it touches. They're not talking about the outcome - there are viruses that are benign to the point of being ignored, but they're still viruses (some are beneficial, like bacteriophages). Vaccine has nice touchy-feely connotations, but I haven't contracted a vaccine lately, have you?
There are two issues you miss here. Choice and heredity.
The recipient of implants (usually) makes the choice to have them. If they change their mind, well they only have themselves to blame.
Also, if you are genetically modified in such a way that it is passed onto the next generation, you impose that choice on your kids, another thing that implants don't do.
One could get better results by sending your $1000 to a local charity and putting out a press release.
I can just see it... "The American Heart Association would like to thank...uhh...Select-a-slut? for their $1000 donation. Er...Select-a-slut has spent many years indirectly supporting the AHA through increased awareness of Heart Disease through...umm...the widespread distribution of their high-quality images to middle-aged and elderly men, and the results thereof? Is this some kind of joke??"
Yeah, when you put it that way, it's a little more obvious why they use spam, isn't it.
The difference is, you've purchased a physical product, both the car and the filter - you can do whatever you want with them, including squish them into a little composite block.
With software, you have purchased/been given a license to use the software, under whatever restrictions (yes, there are some limits, however little that is enforced) the vendor wishes to impose. If you accept, then you are bound by it. If you don't, you don't have a valid license and can be sued under piracy laws. Keep in mind, even the GPL is a license (although it mentions copyright) with priveleges and restrictions imposed. If you don't abide by the license, legal woes may ensue.
Mark this day in your calendars, everybody. Someone's saying that Debian takes licences more seriously than the FSF? BTW, you did understand that the F in GFDL stood for Free, right? That's not a word that can be used lightly, you know.
When I used the term significant, I was referring to an obvious, possibly detrimental, and unexpected change. It may not have the sweeping changes you mentioned, but it's relatively simple, and could therefore be done on accident. That's always a risk.
Also, multiple legs might not be significant to you, or from the genetic perspective, but I think anyone with that kind of mutation wouldn't find it to be a minor issue. People freak out when someone has an extra finger, let alone the wrong number of limbs.
I think you'd better do a quick review of genetic research. The coding for most animals'number of pairs of legs is only controlled by a few genes. I think a genetic mod that gave people legs instead of arms, etc., would count as a significant change, and even if we could still interbreed, the results of mixed gene expression could be 'interesting.'
Oh yes, please sign me up for the 'perfect' world. Oh, first stop is the 're-education' centre, well okay. After all, all the other members seem to be happy...
Why don't you just suggest universal lobotomies as a solution to world peace.
Expect/. readers to make their opinions known when a scientist says maybe we should stop experimentation in a specific avenue of research until we can say for certain it won't destroy the world (or universe!). This is NOT like nuclear weapons - the scientists involved may not have had a complete picture of all the sideaffects, but they could say with certainty that the effect was localized (the sun and earth do it naturally), and they could control the scale of the experiment (there is a limit to the amount of fuel for the reaction).
These things can't be said with certainty for Particle Physics, Biotechnology, Nanotechnology (especially self-replicating). There are interactions going on that we don't understand, and experimenting outside of tightly controlled environments really could destroy out world. It doesn't matter if the good guys screw up or the bad guys do it on purpose - the world is over. The whole mini black hole sounds fantastic, and unlikely, but people put their money down all the time for lotteries with similar odds - and, eventually, someone wins. Truly frightening to me is the bio-tech issue. GM organisms have so many unknowns - mad cow disease is essentialy caused by an unusual molecule. What if an animal was engineered that made those easily, and could breed true with a natural species? If that sounds too far-fetched, how about a crop that grows especially well in very poor soil, spurring on the deforestation of our world's rainforests (where only God knows how many miraculous compounds are waiting to be found)? A hardy crop plant certainly sounds like a good idea...
Of course, we can't hide from these things forever, but maybe we should scale back, or stop entirely, the experimentation until we can say with certainty what the risks are. Maybe we shouldn't release GM crops into the wild if they can interact with native plants in that area. Maybe we shouldn't try to make self-replicating nanobots until we have a better understanding of the capabilities of nanobots in the first place.
Maybe we shouldn't worry too much about self-restriction (it's NOT self-censorship!) if it's in the name of safety. After all, you don't want me experimenting with aviation over your house, do you? Hey, I think they even have LAWS about that...
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Wouldn't any other patents be invalid under prior art? After all, they announced it to the whole world. How could anyone possibly say they discovered it first when you could open a newspaper and see their earlier discovery announcement there?
Exactly the point I was trying (and apparently failing ;-) to make: it's barely reusable to the point of liability, and we get no real benefit from it. If it needs maintenance between each flight (check), or is incredibly expensive (check), it's not helping any. I wouldn't mind it being incredibly expensive if it could achieve space just twice without any external assistance - then we could land on a planet and get it back up in space. That's a worthy goal of reuse, and something I wouldn't expect the Apollo/Soyuz model to beable to do. OTOH, the Shuttle currently can't either, leaving it with essentially the same capabilities as the Apollo/Soyuz for a few orders of magnitude of the cost...
Yep, that describes Canada pretty well - all talk (- Assault/Threat per 100,000.Canada-4.0..US-5.7
), no action (- Homicides per 100,000......Canada-1.8..US-5.5)...
Maybe they hate Americans for the same reason that most kids hate the schoolyard bully - people don't like being told what to do, even when they're doing something wrong (which I don't think is the case this time). Maybe if the US had a foreign policy of not sticking their noses into it, and giving countries the opportunity to fumble towards democracy, with assistance when asked (and non-military pressure when other countries engage in human rights violations), other countries' attitude towards them would change. An additional benefit might be that other fledgling democracies would apprecate their newfound enlightenment.
I think you have something mixed up here. I can ASK you to do something. I can TELL you that I don't agree with something and that you shouldn't do it. And I can TELL you to do something, at which time you can TELL me to blow it up my ass. With the third option, we'll both probably ignore each other.
I believe the US government ASKED other countries to join them in fighting Iraq. A lot of them said no, and the US (cildishly) vilified them for doing what they believed. They TOLD Iraq to not inhibit the UN inspection teams, among other things. When they weren't satified with Iraq's responses, a war started.
What I'm worried about is the US government saying that Canada's laws are causing Canada to indirectly support terrorism, and that we can either adjust our practices to stamp out this 700 people/year tragedy (um, yeah, okay) or they will invade Canada next.
After all, Canada is closer than North Korea, and we have oil, too...
The purpose of putting wings on a spacecraft is recovery and reuse. Otherwise, they're more trouble than they are worth.
I agreed with just about everything you said except this part.
I think we've seen better reliability with the Soyuz capsule than we have with the shuttles, and with a fairly simple recovery plan given the better safety margin.
I'm also beginning to be of the opinion that there are only two valid camps for reuse - either most of the parts can be used more than once (preferably without some significant portion of the cost of the vehicle being spent on inspections) or can achieve space twice in a row without external assistance (not so much as earth-space-earth-space as space-planet-space). If you can't reach one of those objectives, or have those goals, it's all talk.
The Challenger got scattered across the Atlantic. Does that count as splashdown?
Yeah, but once the horse is dead, it's time to stop flogging. Do you think there is one person with any amount of authority who hasn't heard the GNU/blah vs. blah debate before? The only person there who wouldn't know the answer is him. I can see asking once out of interest, but after that, give it up! Save the evangelism for important things, like whether he thinks effort should be made to create a common binding for Gnome and KDE (I'm not saying that is good, just relevant to the developer community). Stop preaching to the choir of free developers and free project maintainers, and talk to those who are uncertain or opposed to free software if you really want to make a difference.
But it DOES spread to whatever it touches. You said so yourself. I may have to choose (or someone on the team, whether or not everyone knows/approves), but once it's there, it's there (I'm aware there are some remedies to this). This is especially risky for a commercial shop, like where I work.
Don't get me worng, I'm not against the GPL. Although I haven't submitted any changes to a GPL product, or released a GPL product myself, I'm not against doing so in the future. Also, I'm aware that the term 'viral' was used negatively against the GPL, although it is used more positively about things like marketing. But there ARE a number of attributes about GPL code that are viral, and intentionally so. I don't think that's a bad thing, in fact the opposite. But that makes it no less applicable.
That's right, a vaccine spreads through one system, and has to be forcibly introduced to another system, from a single source. It has no capability to spread without the aid and manufacture from that one source. That system where it is introduced has the capability to manufacture more of a similar (possibly identical, certainly functionally equivalent) vaccine, but still can't introduce it to another system.
:).
Vaccines don't duplicate, but a virus can, from any source where it is present. Once released it can go everywhere, unlike a vaccine.
Define 'accidentally'. If a large team (organism) gets GPL'd code introduced through a single point, the whole organism is infected through no desire on the part of the organism as a whole. This can be, and has been, fought off, once the organism is aware of unintentional infection (usually through the help of 'Doctor' Moglen
I think you need to look at the definition used for viral here, and cut down the knee-jerk reactions. In spite of my opinions of the term, the marketing industry speaks of 'viral' marketing in a positive light. The benefit derives from it's being spread by all third parties, and the originator being able to start the reaction through introduction to a small population. Neither of these are done in vaccines - all points of distribution are controlled by the originator, and only select third parties can introduce them elsewhere.
Perhaps we can learn a lesson about this and start applying it to other organisations (RIAA, MPAA, etc.)?
No, that's not how things are done here.
The term viral referes to the fact that the GPL spreads to whatever it touches. They're not talking about the outcome - there are viruses that are benign to the point of being ignored, but they're still viruses (some are beneficial, like bacteriophages). Vaccine has nice touchy-feely connotations, but I haven't contracted a vaccine lately, have you?
There are two issues you miss here. Choice and heredity.
The recipient of implants (usually) makes the choice to have them. If they change their mind, well they only have themselves to blame.
Also, if you are genetically modified in such a way that it is passed onto the next generation, you impose that choice on your kids, another thing that implants don't do.
One could get better results by sending your $1000 to a local charity and putting out a press release.
I can just see it...
"The American Heart Association would like to thank...uhh...Select-a-slut? for their $1000 donation. Er...Select-a-slut has spent many years indirectly supporting the AHA through increased awareness of Heart Disease through...umm...the widespread distribution of their high-quality images to middle-aged and elderly men, and the results thereof? Is this some kind of joke??"
Yeah, when you put it that way, it's a little more obvious why they use spam, isn't it.
The difference is, you've purchased a physical product, both the car and the filter - you can do whatever you want with them, including squish them into a little composite block.
With software, you have purchased/been given a license to use the software, under whatever restrictions (yes, there are some limits, however little that is enforced) the vendor wishes to impose. If you accept, then you are bound by it. If you don't, you don't have a valid license and can be sued under piracy laws. Keep in mind, even the GPL is a license (although it mentions copyright) with priveleges and restrictions imposed. If you don't abide by the license, legal woes may ensue.
which is really a non-issue to anyone with some common sense
/. going for as long as I've been here....
Not unlike GnNU/Linux vs. Linux, IMHO, but that one has kept
Mark this day in your calendars, everybody. Someone's saying that Debian takes licences more seriously than the FSF? BTW, you did understand that the F in GFDL stood for Free, right? That's not a word that can be used lightly, you know.
When I used the term significant, I was referring to an obvious, possibly detrimental, and unexpected change. It may not have the sweeping changes you mentioned, but it's relatively simple, and could therefore be done on accident. That's always a risk.
Also, multiple legs might not be significant to you, or from the genetic perspective, but I think anyone with that kind of mutation wouldn't find it to be a minor issue. People freak out when someone has an extra finger, let alone the wrong number of limbs.
With misleading headlines like that, it's really easy to tell who RTFA...keep up the good work, chrisd!
I think you'd better do a quick review of genetic research. The coding for most animals' number
of pairs of legs is only controlled by a few genes. I think a genetic mod that gave people legs instead of arms, etc., would count as a significant change, and even if we could still interbreed, the results of mixed gene expression could be 'interesting.'
Oh yes, please sign me up for the 'perfect' world. Oh, first stop is the 're-education' centre, well okay. After all, all the other members seem to be happy...
Why don't you just suggest universal lobotomies as a solution to world peace.
It looks like Andrew has an issue with MS/DMCA...what was his /. ID again?
Note that this is only for single-walled nanotubes...here's an article about it...
Expect /. readers to make their opinions known when a scientist says maybe we should stop experimentation in a specific avenue of research until we can say for certain it won't destroy the world (or universe!). This is NOT like nuclear weapons - the scientists involved may not have had a complete picture of all the sideaffects, but they could say with certainty that the effect was localized (the sun and earth do it naturally), and they could control the scale of the experiment (there is a limit to the amount of fuel for the reaction).
These things can't be said with certainty for Particle Physics, Biotechnology, Nanotechnology (especially self-replicating). There are interactions going on that we don't understand, and experimenting outside of tightly controlled environments really could destroy out world. It doesn't matter if the good guys screw up or the bad guys do it on purpose - the world is over. The whole mini black hole sounds fantastic, and unlikely, but people put their money down all the time for lotteries with similar odds - and, eventually, someone wins. Truly frightening to me is the bio-tech issue. GM organisms have so many unknowns - mad cow disease is essentialy caused by an unusual molecule. What if an animal was engineered that made those easily, and could breed true with a natural species? If that sounds too far-fetched, how about a crop that grows especially well in very poor soil, spurring on the deforestation of our world's rainforests (where only God knows how many miraculous compounds are waiting to be found)? A hardy crop plant certainly sounds like a good idea...
Of course, we can't hide from these things forever, but maybe we should scale back, or stop entirely, the experimentation until we can say with certainty what the risks are. Maybe we shouldn't release GM crops into the wild if they can interact with native plants in that area. Maybe we shouldn't try to make self-replicating nanobots until we have a better understanding of the capabilities of nanobots in the first place.
Maybe we shouldn't worry too much about self-restriction (it's NOT self-censorship!) if it's in the name of safety. After all, you don't want me experimenting with aviation over your house, do you? Hey, I think they even have LAWS about that...
Two light seconds?!?! I've travelled ~14 light-minutes, dozens of times...who knows, maybe you have, too...