Where do you put a large pressure vessel in a car so that if it's in an accident it has the lowest risk of rupturing? If you've ever seen even a small tank of high pressure gas rupture, you'll realize some of the danger. Now, make that gas highly flammable, and you'll be even more unhappy.
What about a fillament wrapped tank? These are commonly used in high pressure industrial situations where gases are stored at high pressures. The fillament wrapped tank is designed to crack and release the gas at rate which is low enough to prevent an explosion in the event that the tank is compromised. It would also be possible to include a bleed-off valve system, much like the system currently used to prevent home water heaters from exploding, that would prevent the pressure from reaching an unsafe level under normal conditions. The bleed-off gases could even be burned in a small gas turbine engine to turn a generator and charge the battery system.
The fossil fuel distribution networks in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere are configured to deliver a refined liquefied petroleum product (i.e. Gasoline, Diesel, Kerosene, etc...) to existing vehicles which are designed to store them in un-pressurized vented fuel tanks. Any alternative which causes a significant departure from this format will impose large structural costs in the form of upgrades and refitting to accommodate the new fuel. It is therefore desirable for any alternative to be able to use the existing distribution and storage networks without extensive upgrades and refitting. One must also consider the relative ease of the refueling operation. It is not unduly difficult for the average consumer to pump gasoline or diesel into the fuel tank of their vehicle. If the alternative requires special handling or a more involved procedure then it will not be as well received by the consumers. The distribution of metal coils is not much like the distribution of liquid fuels and therefore it does not make very efficient use of the existing networks. It is also probable that the replacement of these coils will not be as easy or convenient as pumping liquid fuel into your current vehicle. Perhaps this answers your question, "What is wrong with that"? There are other reasons why the metal coil system would not be as inexpensive (relatively), convenient, and therefore desirable as the current liquid fuel system, but you no doubt see where this is going so I will refrain from listing them all here.
Do not doubt the power and resources of the financial industry to solve a problem which is hurting their bottom line. If the laws changed to place the full financial weight of the burden of identity theft on the financial institutions then you can bet your bottom dollar that they will hire whomever or buy whatever products and services are necessary to make the problem go away. If you doubt that they have the resources to do this then just remember that they are the financial industry and they control the money. However, anyone who believes that the corporations will not pass the costs of this additional security onto the consumers of credit are equally short sighted. The question, from the consumer's point of view, becomes which costs me more, getting the credit in the first place or clearing up the mess if my account is compromised? There is no free lunch and we will all pay one way or the other, but I believe that Bruce is right and that we will pay less overall when the financial industry finally begins really caring about security rather than simply insuring against loss.
The United States Government used the STU-III Secure Telephone System for unclassified but sensitive diplomatic communications with their embassies overseas during the 1980s. Bruce Schneier mentions this system in his book, "Applied Cryptography". The system involved special hardware at both ends (ie each person needed an STU-III phone w/a special key dongle) and was never generally available to the public. The key distribution was supposedly managed by the NSA.
City/Colonies/Planets/whatever should be able to look after themselves
They tried to do this in Master of Orion 3, with planetary governors, fleet admirals, and the like with you as the supreme ruler being given a limited number of orders per turn, which you could use to directly intervene. You could set policies for your governors, commanders, flunkies, etc...but if you didn't like certain decisions you had to use up direct orders to intervene. The problem with this approach is that you get a game which mostly plays itself and therefore is not as challenging to the player. As many others have already said the point of the game is to entertain the player and if that goal has not been achieved then nothing else matters.
The fact that Americans save only 1% of their incomes is not entirely indicative of an unwillingness to save, but rather it is more often the result of a system that is designed to reward the spender and punish the saver. The tax laws and fiscal policies of this nation make saving relatively unattractive for even the most determined savers among us, who wants to save their money at 3% when you could get employee pricing and no interest financing on your big screen HDTV for the next year? The fed turned on the money spigot full force after 2001 and is only now beginning to roll it back with modest interest rate hikes. The problem is that every time the interest rates increase, which helps savers, all of the spenders scream that they cannot afford their finance charges, mortgage payments, and the fed eases off the rate hikes for political reasons. The US economy now is mostly geared towards enabling consumer spending (what do we actually produce anymore anyway?) to achieve growth and as long is that is the case saving will be a tough haul in this country (BTW. The currency manipulators of the world..ehhmm CHINA ehmmm...are not helping matters).
Although it has been said before in similar discussions, it would be perhaps be pertinent to the present discussion to remind people that the entertainment business in general and the music business in particular is guilty of manipulating interpretations of what the user actually owns when they purchase media. The essential question is whether I purchased the physical media and thus have the right to dispose of it in any manner that I see fit or did I instead purchase the rights to listen to the tracks on the media, subject to the restrictions of public performance or charging admission as per the contract of copyright, in perpetuity on my own private property (house, car, MP3 player, etc). The music industry, in past litigation, prefers to change the definition or reinterpret the distinction as and when it suits them, but it seems to me and others as well that they should not be able to have it both ways. Either the disc is physical property or the disc is immaterial and I have purchased instead the right to listen whenever I wish in perpetuity. If the former is true then I should be able to make as many copies as I want and distribute them in any way that I want for any amount that I wish to resell them for, just as I would with any other piece of real property. On the other hand, if the later is true then I should be able to make as many copies as I wish, in whatever format(s) I chose, so long as I do not violate the distribution or public performance provisions of the agreement under which the music was purchased (ie copyright). The purpose of copyright was to secure, for a limited time the sole right of reproduction to the original author or owner with the understanding that the public would ultimately benefit when the work entered the public domain, not to protect the profits of the rights holder. The increasingly skewed interpretations of our nations copyright laws have arguably tipped the balance so far in favor of the rights holder that the public now has little or no incentive to play by the rules because the benefits to which they were supposedly entitled under the social contract of copyright have become hopelessly captive to the whims of the rights holders. Is it any wonder then that people take matters into their own hands with circumvention devices to enable their rightful use of the copyrighted works that they paid for on platforms of their choosing when faced with such onerous terms?
The GPL does indeed require improvements to be given back to the community if you decide to distribute the program otherwise you cannot distribute the program to anyone. I have pasted the pertinent clauses from the GPL below...
These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.
This is what some people call the viral clause because it says that nobody can take source code from a GPLd program and use it in whole or in part with their proprietary source code without exposing the entire body of their source code in that program to the GPL. Your only other options are to remove the GPL code, not distribute the program, or distribute only those parts which DO NOT include the GPL code. In this regard the GPL is a statement of intent by the author or owner of the source code that says you will not use my source code if I cannot also use yours.
Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it.
This clause reinforces the one above by saying that if you distribute program or any work based on, in whole or in part as per the above clause, then you accept the complete terms of the GPL license including the viral clause and the compulsion to provide source code to anyone who asks free of charge plus any reasonable copying and/or distribution fees.
I am not sure about the BSD/MIT license, the Open Source Initiative recognizes many licenses and I have not read all of them, but consider that nobody likes having their source code used as if it was simply public domain. How would you like to have your source code used by anyone in anyway they want without having to give you anything in return? Please be more careful about calling someone a troll...Have you actually read the GPL or any other OSI approved licenses?
Certainly, I could pay a third party to take the OSS project's source code, and make that even greater product. Unfortunately, that third party is often not intimitaly familiar with the code - and would thus have to learn it first.
If you read most open source software licenses (you do read those agreements before clicking ok/install right?) then you would know that they include a clause which says something to the effect that all of your improvements must be given back to the community including the source code. Some licenses, notably GPL, take it even further by saying that any program which uses any source code from a GPL project in whole or in part becomes entirely subject to the terms of the GPL as well (the so called viral clause). It is these poision pill type clauses, designed to prevent closed source companies from ripping off the efforts of the OSS developers, which prevent much of the cross polination that might otherwise occur between closed and open source projects.
I would consult a legal professional before embarking on such a project in my spare time, especially if it was my intention to sell or otherwise profit from that freelance work. It seems to me that the onus is on you, the employee, to prove that the work was NOT done on company time which may be very difficult to do, especially if you receive salary for your work and are not paid by the hour. If the work is done for an OSS project and the work is not substantially related to the paid work then you are probably safe simply by virtue of your employer not knowing or not caring, but when money comes into play for that personal project of yours then be aware that the situation could get ugly.
If you are injecting water into the fuel air charge to achieve higher compression ratios then wouldn't the water vapor tend to foul the oil unless an oil/water separating device were introduced before the oil gets back to the pan?
Suppose that someone was going to be flying in the next few days. How will this effect the slightly elevated radiation dosage that one would normally receive while flying for several hours at 30,000 feet?
The Silver Surfer was a Marvel character who first appeared in the Fantastic Four #48, which was part of the "Coming of Galactus" three-part series conceived by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby as part of their work which really launched the silver age of comics, although most people mark the official beginning of the silver age with the appearence of the Barey Allen Flash. I have not heard of Legion of Superheroes, although DC did have their own super hero team, which they launched in response to the Marvel team, including many of their most popular characters as the "Justice League of America".
In the medium term there will be a re-alignment of the currencies and the cost benefits to outsourcing will diminish.
This would be true if China was a free market democracy, but they are not, they are a free market communism. The Chinese people, with the exception of the elites, are the ones who are really getting screwed by the fixed currency policies, but there is nothing that they can do about it because China is not a free society and the government kills or imprisons anyone who complains or speaks out. I remember reading in a recent story that a sign on a factory wall in China read something to the effect of, "Work hard today or else you will have to work hard tomorrow to find a new job," which implies, none to subtly, that if you complain about the wages or don't want to work 16 hours per day then you get lost because they have 100 more peasants in the countryside who they can bus in to take your place for $2 per day. The Chinese workers are slaves in everything but name because they have no power to effect any changes in national policy and the policy of China right now is to manipulate their currency to keep their export markets growing while using the surpluses to outbid with large premiums when buying foreign oil assets. There is no economic justification for the takeover bids that the Chinese oil companies are making...no rational company would pay a 20% premium on assets in a takeover bid...UNLESS they were backed with government money to secure strategic assets for the military which is exactly what is happening in China. The Chinese are gearing up for a hostile takeover of Taiwan and possibly a war with the US if we attempt to intervene, as we are obligated to by our treaties with Taiwan. The point is that a readjustment cannot occur as long as the totalitarian government in China continues to enslave their people to distort the market for their own strategic, geopolitical, and military purposes.
The problem is that drug companies have monopoly power granted by patents which are recognized and enforced by international treaty agreements. The drug companies cannot raise prices in Canada and most European coutnries because the prices are fixed by law, so the drug companies very carefuly ration supplies instead so that there is just enough to satisfy local demand with no surplus and no shortage. The Canadians and others will make it illegal for Americans to buy their price controlled drugs rather than suffer the effects of shortages because Americans bought up all of their supplies. In fact, this is exactly what is happening in Canada with new restrictions on foreign buyers such as a prescription written by a Canadian doctor etc. The efficient market cannot solve this problem because foreign governments, such as Canada, have intervened in an attempt to control prices with market distorting legislation. What may end up happening, if nothing changes, is some form of black market where drugs are smuggled from Canada and sold for more than the Canadian price, but less than the American price making it increasingly difficult for the Canadians and others to maintain their price controls and regulations without suffering mild shortages.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has posted numerous articles concerning the subject of DRM and trusted computing which carefully and thoroughly explain to the user the promises and potential problems with these technologies. There is one article in particular which suggests "Owner Override" as a solution to the problem of policies being enforced against the owner of the computer as if the owner was an adversary. The article is linked below:
If you read the license agreement for windows NT, 2000, 2003, XP, etc you will see that there is a clause that says something to the effect of, "do not use this software product in any circumstances where real time or mission critical operation is required," which means that nuclear plant operators, air-traffic controlers, hospital patient monitoring devices, and the like are out of luck if they wanted to (why?) use Windows.
Maybe it should be law that if a company wants to bind you to a long non-disclosure, it should also be forced to agree to a golden-parachute clause as long as the non-disclosure?
Executives frequently do get these golden parachute and poison pill type provisions put into their employment contracts so that even if they get fired for dismal performance they still get a big payout on the way out. Average corporate drone level employees would never be offered these types of provisions or even the opportunity to negotiate. For them the employment contract is a take it or leave it proposition. However, these types of executive agreements, while ostensibly intended to encourage independent and unbiased decision making at the board level in corporations, are increasingly coming under fire from irate shareholders who see these agreements as rewarding bad performance and reducing hiring flexibility at the board level of major corporations.
I am a software engineer working for a company in Southern California and it was my understanding that in the State of California a professional cannot be prevented from practicing his chosen profession by a contract law agreement (i.e. non-compete is not enforceable in California), with the possible exemption of board level executives where this type of provision is enforceable. Perhaps, having served recently on a jury that deliberated this type of case, you could offer some further insights into the circumstances under which a non-compete agreement is enforceable in California. I would like very much to hear what you have to say about this matter.
This begs the question: if you develop and sell a software product, are you responsible for what your users choose to do with it?
The question boils down to the intent of the author. If the program, when considered as a whole, cannot be reasonably construed to have alternative non-damaging or benign uses then it serves to demonstrate the malicious intent of the author and therefore it becomes possible to assign some responsibility for the actions of users to the original author(s). Software engineers, like other engineers, must have some code of ethics that governs the standard and intent of the programs that we produce. If you write a virus, worm, spam ware, or other "evil" type of application then you are responsible for the damage you cause to other people. You cannot demonstrate vulnerabilities or exploit code to prove a point while damaging other people's property in the process. In this case it seems that the author in question, Carlos Enrique Perez Melara, is indeed responsible for malicious intent in the collateral damage that his software caused.
First, I will agree that China is over-rated as the next great powerhouse economically and militarily. Personally, I think that they are clearly a "World Power" but not on the level that either the US or EU are. China would like to be there, but they have a lot of obstacles to overcome.
An accurate, if somewhat rough, appraisal of the current situation and the direction of current political, economic, and military momentum.
The most serious is that China is not, and will probably never be, a pluralist society. The Chinese have almost always seen China as the center of the world in a way that even the US has not done. So while they go back and forth between isolationism and expansionism, the isolationism always wins out because of the huge force that ethnocentricity plays in their culture. I am not saying that this is good or bad. It just places limits on what China can achieve in a pluralist world. To a large extent, this is what crippled the Japanese expansion as well.
The "middle kingdom" mentality that has existed for millennia in the collective Chinese social consciousness. This is certainly a potential handicap in their international dealings, but I would not characterize this difficulty as insurmountable.
Currently the world has two superpowers: The US and the EU. The US is a military superpower and is largely able to dictate its will militarily, and the EU is an economic superpower which is largely able to dominate international and internationist institutions as well as dictate terms on a purely economic basis. Assuming that an EU constitution is forthcoming at some point and that the EU countries agree to have a single foreign policy, they will be in a position to actively challenge the US on any foreign policy area simply by virtue of their economic clout. Note the growing diplomatic war between the US and EU (usually referred to as "Old Europe").
This is where we part ways. It would be inaccurate to characterize the EU as an economic superpower in the same league as the United States (never mind the military part where the United States has a clear advantage), which has both significantly higher GDP per capita and growth than the European Union. Consider the recent trends in the economic and political development of the European Union, the defeat, by referendum, of the EU Constitution, protectionist import tariffs, the high rates of unemployment and slow rates of growth in Germany, France, Italy, and other EU states, with the notable exception of the newer Easter European members where growth is somewhat higher, and the increasingly expensive, burdensome, generous, and ultimately unsustainable social welfare programs that are seen as a birthright by citizens of the EU member nations. If the European Union wants to seriously compete with the US economy and the Asian Tigers then they need to slash government spending, cut taxes, remove onerous government regulations which distort the markets, and encourage more entrepreneurship and risk-taking with investments and capital. There seems to be a lack of will among the EU nations, France especially, to follow through with the necessary reforms on the grounds that bare knuckle American style capitalism is just not the "European" way. If the EU is serious about competing in the global economy then they need to enact meaningful reforms or leaner, meaner, and more efficient firms in the US, India, and China will eat the lunch of over-regulated, uncompetitive, and risk averse European corporations. The EU is still number two economically to the United States, but they are nowhere near overtaking the US in economic power, indeed they are in danger of losing their number two spot to more competitive Asian nations if they are slow to move on needed reforms. People in Europe are afraid of the US system and globalization, but does the European model of high taxes, massive government social service programs, and protectionist economic policies really deliver the best standard of living for all Europeans
You were right to refuse them...any time the client is trying to nail down an exact cost figure on ambiguous requirements without dollars per billable hour and no clause regarding "extras" or "addendums" to the agreement that is your cue to turn around and walk away. Open-ended contracts, especially verbal ones, are to be avoided like the plague.
The problem is that companies are used to hiring experienced mainframe developers and administrators and have factored that experience into their long term cost savings strategies. Therefore, they are extremely reluctant to hire a new CS graduate with no mainframe experience and undertake the great expense and risk of training him. Sometimes an employer will hire anyone who is willing to undertake learning an uncommon language or platform because there is no other choice, but generally this is a last resort. Most companies that have large investments in mainframes will probably enter into a semi-retirement agreement with their grey haired developers/administrators where they are either part time or on a consulting per fee basis before they would essentially start over with new people.
The problem with lasers in the atmosphere is that they tend to diffuse when projected over long distances which significantly limit their intensity the further the beam travels from the source. It should be possible to calculate the output of the laser that would be required to hit a satellite from the operating ceiling of an F-16 fighter with enough force to damage or destroy the satellite. However, considering that previous air force experiments with lasers involved the 747 jumbo jet as the weapon platform, such a system would probably be too bulky to mount on the F-16 or even larger fighters such as the F-15 or F-14.
Slashdot Mirror
Where do you put a large pressure vessel in a car so that if it's in an accident it has the lowest risk of rupturing? If you've ever seen even a small tank of high pressure gas rupture, you'll realize some of the danger. Now, make that gas highly flammable, and you'll be even more unhappy.
What about a fillament wrapped tank? These are commonly used in high pressure industrial situations where gases are stored at high pressures. The fillament wrapped tank is designed to crack and release the gas at rate which is low enough to prevent an explosion in the event that the tank is compromised. It would also be possible to include a bleed-off valve system, much like the system currently used to prevent home water heaters from exploding, that would prevent the pressure from reaching an unsafe level under normal conditions. The bleed-off gases could even be burned in a small gas turbine engine to turn a generator and charge the battery system.
The fossil fuel distribution networks in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere are configured to deliver a refined liquefied petroleum product (i.e. Gasoline, Diesel, Kerosene, etc...) to existing vehicles which are designed to store them in un-pressurized vented fuel tanks. Any alternative which causes a significant departure from this format will impose large structural costs in the form of upgrades and refitting to accommodate the new fuel. It is therefore desirable for any alternative to be able to use the existing distribution and storage networks without extensive upgrades and refitting. One must also consider the relative ease of the refueling operation. It is not unduly difficult for the average consumer to pump gasoline or diesel into the fuel tank of their vehicle. If the alternative requires special handling or a more involved procedure then it will not be as well received by the consumers. The distribution of metal coils is not much like the distribution of liquid fuels and therefore it does not make very efficient use of the existing networks. It is also probable that the replacement of these coils will not be as easy or convenient as pumping liquid fuel into your current vehicle. Perhaps this answers your question, "What is wrong with that"? There are other reasons why the metal coil system would not be as inexpensive (relatively), convenient, and therefore desirable as the current liquid fuel system, but you no doubt see where this is going so I will refrain from listing them all here.
Do not doubt the power and resources of the financial industry to solve a problem which is hurting their bottom line. If the laws changed to place the full financial weight of the burden of identity theft on the financial institutions then you can bet your bottom dollar that they will hire whomever or buy whatever products and services are necessary to make the problem go away. If you doubt that they have the resources to do this then just remember that they are the financial industry and they control the money. However, anyone who believes that the corporations will not pass the costs of this additional security onto the consumers of credit are equally short sighted. The question, from the consumer's point of view, becomes which costs me more, getting the credit in the first place or clearing up the mess if my account is compromised? There is no free lunch and we will all pay one way or the other, but I believe that Bruce is right and that we will pay less overall when the financial industry finally begins really caring about security rather than simply insuring against loss.
The United States Government used the STU-III Secure Telephone System for unclassified but sensitive diplomatic communications with their embassies overseas during the 1980s. Bruce Schneier mentions this system in his book, "Applied Cryptography". The system involved special hardware at both ends (ie each person needed an STU-III phone w/a special key dongle) and was never generally available to the public. The key distribution was supposedly managed by the NSA.
City/Colonies/Planets/whatever should be able to look after themselves
They tried to do this in Master of Orion 3, with planetary governors, fleet admirals, and the like with you as the supreme ruler being given a limited number of orders per turn, which you could use to directly intervene. You could set policies for your governors, commanders, flunkies, etc...but if you didn't like certain decisions you had to use up direct orders to intervene. The problem with this approach is that you get a game which mostly plays itself and therefore is not as challenging to the player. As many others have already said the point of the game is to entertain the player and if that goal has not been achieved then nothing else matters.
we save nothing (1%) and lose rights
The fact that Americans save only 1% of their incomes is not entirely indicative of an unwillingness to save, but rather it is more often the result of a system that is designed to reward the spender and punish the saver. The tax laws and fiscal policies of this nation make saving relatively unattractive for even the most determined savers among us, who wants to save their money at 3% when you could get employee pricing and no interest financing on your big screen HDTV for the next year? The fed turned on the money spigot full force after 2001 and is only now beginning to roll it back with modest interest rate hikes. The problem is that every time the interest rates increase, which helps savers, all of the spenders scream that they cannot afford their finance charges, mortgage payments, and the fed eases off the rate hikes for political reasons. The US economy now is mostly geared towards enabling consumer spending (what do we actually produce anymore anyway?) to achieve growth and as long is that is the case saving will be a tough haul in this country (BTW. The currency manipulators of the world..ehhmm CHINA ehmmm...are not helping matters).
Although it has been said before in similar discussions, it would be perhaps be pertinent to the present discussion to remind people that the entertainment business in general and the music business in particular is guilty of manipulating interpretations of what the user actually owns when they purchase media. The essential question is whether I purchased the physical media and thus have the right to dispose of it in any manner that I see fit or did I instead purchase the rights to listen to the tracks on the media, subject to the restrictions of public performance or charging admission as per the contract of copyright, in perpetuity on my own private property (house, car, MP3 player, etc). The music industry, in past litigation, prefers to change the definition or reinterpret the distinction as and when it suits them, but it seems to me and others as well that they should not be able to have it both ways. Either the disc is physical property or the disc is immaterial and I have purchased instead the right to listen whenever I wish in perpetuity. If the former is true then I should be able to make as many copies as I want and distribute them in any way that I want for any amount that I wish to resell them for, just as I would with any other piece of real property. On the other hand, if the later is true then I should be able to make as many copies as I wish, in whatever format(s) I chose, so long as I do not violate the distribution or public performance provisions of the agreement under which the music was purchased (ie copyright). The purpose of copyright was to secure, for a limited time the sole right of reproduction to the original author or owner with the understanding that the public would ultimately benefit when the work entered the public domain, not to protect the profits of the rights holder. The increasingly skewed interpretations of our nations copyright laws have arguably tipped the balance so far in favor of the rights holder that the public now has little or no incentive to play by the rules because the benefits to which they were supposedly entitled under the social contract of copyright have become hopelessly captive to the whims of the rights holders. Is it any wonder then that people take matters into their own hands with circumvention devices to enable their rightful use of the copyrighted works that they paid for on platforms of their choosing when faced with such onerous terms?
Is Larry Wall associated with The Onion?
The GPL does indeed require improvements to be given back to the community if you decide to distribute the program otherwise you cannot distribute the program to anyone. I have pasted the pertinent clauses from the GPL below...
These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.
This is what some people call the viral clause because it says that nobody can take source code from a GPLd program and use it in whole or in part with their proprietary source code without exposing the entire body of their source code in that program to the GPL. Your only other options are to remove the GPL code, not distribute the program, or distribute only those parts which DO NOT include the GPL code. In this regard the GPL is a statement of intent by the author or owner of the source code that says you will not use my source code if I cannot also use yours.
Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it.
This clause reinforces the one above by saying that if you distribute program or any work based on, in whole or in part as per the above clause, then you accept the complete terms of the GPL license including the viral clause and the compulsion to provide source code to anyone who asks free of charge plus any reasonable copying and/or distribution fees.
I am not sure about the BSD/MIT license, the Open Source Initiative recognizes many licenses and I have not read all of them, but consider that nobody likes having their source code used as if it was simply public domain. How would you like to have your source code used by anyone in anyway they want without having to give you anything in return? Please be more careful about calling someone a troll...Have you actually read the GPL or any other OSI approved licenses?
Certainly, I could pay a third party to take the OSS project's source code, and make that even greater product. Unfortunately, that third party is often not intimitaly familiar with the code - and would thus have to learn it first.
If you read most open source software licenses (you do read those agreements before clicking ok/install right?) then you would know that they include a clause which says something to the effect that all of your improvements must be given back to the community including the source code. Some licenses, notably GPL, take it even further by saying that any program which uses any source code from a GPL project in whole or in part becomes entirely subject to the terms of the GPL as well (the so called viral clause). It is these poision pill type clauses, designed to prevent closed source companies from ripping off the efforts of the OSS developers, which prevent much of the cross polination that might otherwise occur between closed and open source projects.
I would consult a legal professional before embarking on such a project in my spare time, especially if it was my intention to sell or otherwise profit from that freelance work. It seems to me that the onus is on you, the employee, to prove that the work was NOT done on company time which may be very difficult to do, especially if you receive salary for your work and are not paid by the hour. If the work is done for an OSS project and the work is not substantially related to the paid work then you are probably safe simply by virtue of your employer not knowing or not caring, but when money comes into play for that personal project of yours then be aware that the situation could get ugly.
If you are injecting water into the fuel air charge to achieve higher compression ratios then wouldn't the water vapor tend to foul the oil unless an oil/water separating device were introduced before the oil gets back to the pan?
Suppose that someone was going to be flying in the next few days. How will this effect the slightly elevated radiation dosage that one would normally receive while flying for several hours at 30,000 feet?
The Silver Surfer was a Marvel character who first appeared in the Fantastic Four #48, which was part of the "Coming of Galactus" three-part series conceived by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby as part of their work which really launched the silver age of comics, although most people mark the official beginning of the silver age with the appearence of the Barey Allen Flash. I have not heard of Legion of Superheroes, although DC did have their own super hero team, which they launched in response to the Marvel team, including many of their most popular characters as the "Justice League of America".
In the medium term there will be a re-alignment of the currencies and the cost benefits to outsourcing will diminish.
This would be true if China was a free market democracy, but they are not, they are a free market communism. The Chinese people, with the exception of the elites, are the ones who are really getting screwed by the fixed currency policies, but there is nothing that they can do about it because China is not a free society and the government kills or imprisons anyone who complains or speaks out. I remember reading in a recent story that a sign on a factory wall in China read something to the effect of, "Work hard today or else you will have to work hard tomorrow to find a new job," which implies, none to subtly, that if you complain about the wages or don't want to work 16 hours per day then you get lost because they have 100 more peasants in the countryside who they can bus in to take your place for $2 per day. The Chinese workers are slaves in everything but name because they have no power to effect any changes in national policy and the policy of China right now is to manipulate their currency to keep their export markets growing while using the surpluses to outbid with large premiums when buying foreign oil assets. There is no economic justification for the takeover bids that the Chinese oil companies are making...no rational company would pay a 20% premium on assets in a takeover bid...UNLESS they were backed with government money to secure strategic assets for the military which is exactly what is happening in China. The Chinese are gearing up for a hostile takeover of Taiwan and possibly a war with the US if we attempt to intervene, as we are obligated to by our treaties with Taiwan. The point is that a readjustment cannot occur as long as the totalitarian government in China continues to enslave their people to distort the market for their own strategic, geopolitical, and military purposes.
The problem is that drug companies have monopoly power granted by patents which are recognized and enforced by international treaty agreements. The drug companies cannot raise prices in Canada and most European coutnries because the prices are fixed by law, so the drug companies very carefuly ration supplies instead so that there is just enough to satisfy local demand with no surplus and no shortage. The Canadians and others will make it illegal for Americans to buy their price controlled drugs rather than suffer the effects of shortages because Americans bought up all of their supplies. In fact, this is exactly what is happening in Canada with new restrictions on foreign buyers such as a prescription written by a Canadian doctor etc. The efficient market cannot solve this problem because foreign governments, such as Canada, have intervened in an attempt to control prices with market distorting legislation. What may end up happening, if nothing changes, is some form of black market where drugs are smuggled from Canada and sold for more than the Canadian price, but less than the American price making it increasingly difficult for the Canadians and others to maintain their price controls and regulations without suffering mild shortages.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has posted numerous articles concerning the subject of DRM and trusted computing which carefully and thoroughly explain to the user the promises and potential problems with these technologies. There is one article in particular which suggests "Owner Override" as a solution to the problem of policies being enforced against the owner of the computer as if the owner was an adversary. The article is linked below:
Trusted Computing: Promise and Risk
If you read the license agreement for windows NT, 2000, 2003, XP, etc you will see that there is a clause that says something to the effect of, "do not use this software product in any circumstances where real time or mission critical operation is required," which means that nuclear plant operators, air-traffic controlers, hospital patient monitoring devices, and the like are out of luck if they wanted to (why?) use Windows.
Maybe it should be law that if a company wants to bind you to a long non-disclosure, it should also be forced to agree to a golden-parachute clause as long as the non-disclosure?
Executives frequently do get these golden parachute and poison pill type provisions put into their employment contracts so that even if they get fired for dismal performance they still get a big payout on the way out. Average corporate drone level employees would never be offered these types of provisions or even the opportunity to negotiate. For them the employment contract is a take it or leave it proposition. However, these types of executive agreements, while ostensibly intended to encourage independent and unbiased decision making at the board level in corporations, are increasingly coming under fire from irate shareholders who see these agreements as rewarding bad performance and reducing hiring flexibility at the board level of major corporations.
I am a software engineer working for a company in Southern California and it was my understanding that in the State of California a professional cannot be prevented from practicing his chosen profession by a contract law agreement (i.e. non-compete is not enforceable in California), with the possible exemption of board level executives where this type of provision is enforceable. Perhaps, having served recently on a jury that deliberated this type of case, you could offer some further insights into the circumstances under which a non-compete agreement is enforceable in California. I would like very much to hear what you have to say about this matter.
This begs the question: if you develop and sell a software product, are you responsible for what your users choose to do with it?
The question boils down to the intent of the author. If the program, when considered as a whole, cannot be reasonably construed to have alternative non-damaging or benign uses then it serves to demonstrate the malicious intent of the author and therefore it becomes possible to assign some responsibility for the actions of users to the original author(s). Software engineers, like other engineers, must have some code of ethics that governs the standard and intent of the programs that we produce. If you write a virus, worm, spam ware, or other "evil" type of application then you are responsible for the damage you cause to other people. You cannot demonstrate vulnerabilities or exploit code to prove a point while damaging other people's property in the process. In this case it seems that the author in question, Carlos Enrique Perez Melara, is indeed responsible for malicious intent in the collateral damage that his software caused.
First, I will agree that China is over-rated as the next great powerhouse economically and militarily. Personally, I think that they are clearly a "World Power" but not on the level that either the US or EU are. China would like to be there, but they have a lot of obstacles to overcome.
An accurate, if somewhat rough, appraisal of the current situation and the direction of current political, economic, and military momentum.
The most serious is that China is not, and will probably never be, a pluralist society. The Chinese have almost always seen China as the center of the world in a way that even the US has not done. So while they go back and forth between isolationism and expansionism, the isolationism always wins out because of the huge force that ethnocentricity plays in their culture. I am not saying that this is good or bad. It just places limits on what China can achieve in a pluralist world. To a large extent, this is what crippled the Japanese expansion as well.
The "middle kingdom" mentality that has existed for millennia in the collective Chinese social consciousness. This is certainly a potential handicap in their international dealings, but I would not characterize this difficulty as insurmountable.
Currently the world has two superpowers: The US and the EU. The US is a military superpower and is largely able to dictate its will militarily, and the EU is an economic superpower which is largely able to dominate international and internationist institutions as well as dictate terms on a purely economic basis. Assuming that an EU constitution is forthcoming at some point and that the EU countries agree to have a single foreign policy, they will be in a position to actively challenge the US on any foreign policy area simply by virtue of their economic clout. Note the growing diplomatic war between the US and EU (usually referred to as "Old Europe").
This is where we part ways. It would be inaccurate to characterize the EU as an economic superpower in the same league as the United States (never mind the military part where the United States has a clear advantage), which has both significantly higher GDP per capita and growth than the European Union. Consider the recent trends in the economic and political development of the European Union, the defeat, by referendum, of the EU Constitution, protectionist import tariffs, the high rates of unemployment and slow rates of growth in Germany, France, Italy, and other EU states, with the notable exception of the newer Easter European members where growth is somewhat higher, and the increasingly expensive, burdensome, generous, and ultimately unsustainable social welfare programs that are seen as a birthright by citizens of the EU member nations. If the European Union wants to seriously compete with the US economy and the Asian Tigers then they need to slash government spending, cut taxes, remove onerous government regulations which distort the markets, and encourage more entrepreneurship and risk-taking with investments and capital. There seems to be a lack of will among the EU nations, France especially, to follow through with the necessary reforms on the grounds that bare knuckle American style capitalism is just not the "European" way. If the EU is serious about competing in the global economy then they need to enact meaningful reforms or leaner, meaner, and more efficient firms in the US, India, and China will eat the lunch of over-regulated, uncompetitive, and risk averse European corporations. The EU is still number two economically to the United States, but they are nowhere near overtaking the US in economic power, indeed they are in danger of losing their number two spot to more competitive Asian nations if they are slow to move on needed reforms. People in Europe are afraid of the US system and globalization, but does the European model of high taxes, massive government social service programs, and protectionist economic policies really deliver the best standard of living for all Europeans
You were right to refuse them...any time the client is trying to nail down an exact cost figure on ambiguous requirements without dollars per billable hour and no clause regarding "extras" or "addendums" to the agreement that is your cue to turn around and walk away. Open-ended contracts, especially verbal ones, are to be avoided like the plague.
The problem is that companies are used to hiring experienced mainframe developers and administrators and have factored that experience into their long term cost savings strategies. Therefore, they are extremely reluctant to hire a new CS graduate with no mainframe experience and undertake the great expense and risk of training him. Sometimes an employer will hire anyone who is willing to undertake learning an uncommon language or platform because there is no other choice, but generally this is a last resort. Most companies that have large investments in mainframes will probably enter into a semi-retirement agreement with their grey haired developers/administrators where they are either part time or on a consulting per fee basis before they would essentially start over with new people.
The problem with lasers in the atmosphere is that they tend to diffuse when projected over long distances which significantly limit their intensity the further the beam travels from the source. It should be possible to calculate the output of the laser that would be required to hit a satellite from the operating ceiling of an F-16 fighter with enough force to damage or destroy the satellite. However, considering that previous air force experiments with lasers involved the 747 jumbo jet as the weapon platform, such a system would probably be too bulky to mount on the F-16 or even larger fighters such as the F-15 or F-14.