Frankly - if you didn't write the whole thing yourself, what would make you think you had a right to sell it other than under the terms of the GPL which is what all the developers agreed to in the first place?
If you want to dual-license, be like the MySQL team (which was hardly a huge commercial enterprise when it started) and plan this from the start and write the whole thing by yourself.
If you use my code in your project, then you bet you're going to have to make it worth my while if you want me to allow you to sell it under terms that the software wasn't contributed under.
Small developers write shareware all the time planning on making a small commercial application. Why wouldn't an open-source developer consider doing the same? It isn't rocket science or anything?
Also - my feeling is that most small developers would plan ahead like this if they were planning on profiting from their code. In fact, most small developers who plan on profiting from their code don't open source their code at all. That is only natural - if you want to sell it why would you start by giving it away for free?
It wouldn't make much sense, for example, for libpng to be GPL'd, since one of its purpose was to be an alternative to other closed or proprietary formats such as GIF.
This is a common argument, and perhaps it has merit, but I think it has at least one weakness - embrace and extend.
Ok, so libpng is BSD. Your favorite software monopoly on image manipulation software comes out with libpng+ - which is proprietary. It reads png just fine, but saves png+ which has one or two extra bells and whistles. They license it widely, and big-proprietary-web-browser soon supports it. They even license it closed-source free-as-in-beer to developers with a license which prohibits reverse engineering or use in software which is sold for a price.
The new library is GPL-incompatible due to the license. It is also closed-source. However, it is free, and before you know it, your BSD-style libpng is losing market share rapidly. At some point libpng++ comes out and the license terms become more restrictive as the company seeks to make a profit from their market share. The open standard which was supposed to be promoted by the BSD license is long-dead.
Just look at realaudio and the like - nothing open source about it but it is found everywhere.
Maybe there is a flaw in my thinking, and I'd be happy for somebody to point it out. However, this sort of thing really makes me wonder if the GPL isn't in fact better-suited to open standards.
I couldn't agree more, although companies usually have retention policies not as a cost saving matter, but as a legal matter.
If the company auto-deletes all email more than 30 days old, then when a lawsuit comes along alleging that two years ago the company took some damaging action, nobody can subpoena all the emails from back then and see what really happened.
Of course, companies still get in trouble. They get sued over something and stop destroying some class of documents. Then they say something stupid in an email which is then retained under the no-shred order. Then somebody else sues them and finds the email. You would think that when you are actually being sued over something that you would be more careful about the emails you send that you already know have been subpoenaed...
Just one little technical detail (which I wouldn't even point out if it weren't/.) - the role of proteins in lipoproteins isn't so much for soluability as for signaling. The main reason that lipoproteins are soluable actually has to do more with the lipids they're made of - which are mostly phospholipids. A phospholipid is amphoteric - it is polar (hence water-soluable) on one side and non-polar on the other. A typical lipprotein looks like a sphere with nonpolar lipids in the center and a layer of phospholipids on the outside. Floating in the phospholipid layer are various proteins which can be used for signalling or attachment. The proteins are amphoteric and are anchored into the lipids by non-polar regions.
Phospholipids are the main components of cell membranes as well - in that case they are bilayers so that they are essentially planar rather than spherical.
I agree that a method can be scientific if it does not use placebo-controlled trials, and I do agree that the use of placebos can have ethical concerns (probably less so in a case like this since we aren't talking about situations where we're witholding a likely cure or avoiding treatment for a disease). I did hint that experiments on people are loaded with ethcial concerns, but I did not write a treatise on the subject.
However, to be considered "science" I do believe that a study must use the scientific method. That means that there must be a hypothesis and a controlled experiment. Such an experiment must be reproducible. Anything less is just a statistical analysis of some medical records.
An aside - statistics is not a "science" - it is a mathematical and analytical tool. Like most of math it tells you nothing that you strictly speaking didn't already know, although it might make a conclusion more apparent. Statistics certainly have a place in science, but at best it is a tool of science and not a science itself. (Don't get me wrong - I love math, have the highest respect for mathemiticians, etc. However, math is not a science - it is a different form of philosophy.)
The problem isn't science, but things that masquarade as science.
Science is about repeatable controlled experiments that yield consistent results. Repeatable means that you need to understand what exactly is going on in your experimental setup so that somebody else can reproduce it. Controlled means you account for all variables and only vary one at a time.
The problem is that doing all this correctly with people costs a LOT of money. So, instead we settle for sloppy studies that aren't well-controlled, then everybody starts talking about how useless science is when five people do the "same" study and come up with different conclusions. Some of the common flaws:
The only really effective way to these kinds of tests on people is with placebo-controlled clinical trials. Take 2000 people, split them into a few groups which are as similar as possible in makeup, and make them all spend 15 minutes a day blindfolded in a tanning booth, and make them all take pills. Some groups don't actually get any UV, but the experience is simulated so that they don't realize this. Some groups do get the UV. Some groups get various vitamin D supplements (with or without vitamin A), and some groups get placebos. At least one group gets neither UV or a supplement. Then follow the group over 50 years and see what the results are. Such an experiment should be both conclusive and repeatable.
Of course, most scientists want their results next year and have limited budgets, so they're not going to start a 50-year study that they won't even be alive to see the end of. Instead, they just look at random dead people and try to guess how much time they spent in the sun and what pills they have taken.
Even modern drug clinical trials have all kinds of issues (clearly seen in recent high-profile drug recalls) - these trials are very carefully controlled trials subject to all kinds of review and which cost hundreds of millions of dollars to perform.
So, the problem isn't a failure in science. The problem is that sometimes we aren't patient enough or resourceful enough to use science, and instead resort to something else and call it "science". Science isn't very practical when dealing with people - they live a long time, you can't just put them in cages, you have to pay them, and you can't do much in the way of manipulating them. Most real biological science uses other animals as a result (Need some subjects with cancer? Just breed them to be prone to it.)...
I think we have a potential solution to all those orbital corrections on the ISS. We simply need to find one of those "fixed points in space" and anchor the station to one, thus keeping it forever still. Additionally, we'll be able to figure out which way the earth/sun/galaxy/universe/etc is moving once and for all once we see which way the station flies off after being anchored...
(Yes, I'm guessing (and hoping) that you were being sarcastic about that one. I just couldn't resist...)
Maybe launch some ion engines and over a couple of years keep pushing it a degree at a time? I imagine that in its partially-completed state that the ISS would have solar power to spare to power the ion drives, which would simplify engine design. You could also give them replacable fuel canisters and send them up in progress vessels. The ISS itself probably will maintain its own orientation (assuming the thrust is reasonably well-balanced), so we also don't need all kinds of fancy guidance hardware.
If they do want to move it, they might as well start now while it is still missing much of its final mass.
I think it all depends on who is getting defrauded. If a manager is taking the company for a ride you're in for royal treatment. If the company is taking a customer for a ride you may be better off just applying for a job elsewhere. If the injured party has deep pockets you might take it to them - but that could backfire.
Whistleblowing within companies works well when the actions you are reporting are clearly going to be objectionable to upper management. I heard a story of an employee who sent a letter to the CEO in a fortune 500 company alleging a significant violation of government regulations which was being overlooked by direct management. The next day that management was feeling VERY uncomfortabe as just about the entire chain of command decended on them. Letters like this look very bad in lawsuits if the company doesn't have clear documentation that they took action. When the battle is between the manager and the employee, the manager usually wins. On the other hand, when the battle is between the company and the manager, the company ALWAYS wins (although if the manager is high enough to be identified with the company (ie CEO) then losing amounts to a multi-million-dollar severance package).
Uh, look up king of prussia at google - you'll note the second largest mall in the US in the satellite photo. Right next to it is a military contractor (used to be GE, I think it is Ratheon now). This is NOT a small town by any stretch of the imagination...
The extra energy comes from the destruction of matter which is converted to energy.
For example, in a fusion reaction, the reactants (usually deuterium and/or tritium) have a greater mass than what's left behind (helium and neutrons). Since e=mc^2, you get a huge amount of energy for a small amount of lost mass.
That could be said of any energy-producing reaction. The exahust products of your car are lighter than the fuel it burns. Granted, the difference is probably on the order of picograms or less, and so you can't measure it.
What your explanation lacks is the reason why the products of fusion are lighter than the reactants - which has to do with what the parent was talking about, and is further clarified by other comments.
D+T -> He+n0 is your basic fusion reaction. You'll note that both sides of the equation have identical counts of protons, neutrons, and electrons. These particles themselves are identical in mass on both sides of the equation. So, where does the extra mass come from? Well, that would be binding energy, which would require more physics to clearly explain than I have mastered.
To say that energy is released simply because mass is lost is a bit simplistic. It is true, but it does little to explain why both fusion and fission produce energy, which was the original question. This seems like a paradox, and simply saying that it all works out because mass is lost simply leads to the paradox of why combining some atoms causes a loss of mass, while splitting others leads to a similar loss of mass.
It's not quite that simple, as it should be possible for elements such as iron (and heavier) to fuse (and presumably release energy, if it's going to happen much).
Well, we already know that it doesn't happen much - just in supernovae for the most part. I haven't seen anything to suggest that the reaction is exothermic. Production of water vapor from water requires an input of energy, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't happen in nature.
Moving the drivers into the kernel is crazy. It might simplify the X server code, but it will be a bitch to maintain for several operating systems.
Uh, the purpose of an OS is to provide hardware abstraction.
Why do we have filesystem code in the OS? Why not just do that in X11 that way we don't need filesystems in both BSD and linux?
For that matter, why put the video drivers in X11? Why not just put them in individual applications. After all, it is waste to have an nvidia driver for windows and MacOS and X11. Why not just have one for photoshop and let it just manage its own screen?
The OS is the right layer for a device driver. There is no reason that driver has to run ring 0 - granted this is harder to accomplish with linux.
Admittedly, this would be a painful transition, but there is no reason that it has to happen in six months. It just wouldn't hurt to admit that putting device drivers in an application is a mistake. X11 is just an application.
Well, they could have just brought a mirroring device on-site, and made two mirrors of the drive. They then take the original and one mirror with them, and put the other mirror back into service. It isn't like Indymedia needs the original back.
My objection isn't so much to seizure for use as evidence, as long as they have a warrant. My objection would be to significant user inconvenience - as happens when the FBI confiscates computers and then returns them 3 years later...
I'm not sure it is really a matter of them not believing - it is more a matter of whether the fear of their father is sufficient reason to deny the father custody.
Right now we're crossing our fingers that counselling actually helps out. We're also pushing to word any future custody agreements to indicate that the kids will have some say in the situation, but that may require litigation, which of course is very expensive.
Note that this is up to now all based on the opinions of lawyers - judges haven't actually gotten involved. This is good since we've already spent a small fortune on meetings and motions and the like and a real trial would probably cost far more. The problem with an actual court hearing is that judges can fall anywhere on the map, and while in theory you can always appeal to get more consistency, most people don't have tens of thousands of dollars to spend on all that...
My wife and I have been spending a fortune trying to get control of her ex-husband's custody situation. He is verbally abusive of their children, as he had been with her. However, verbal abuse is one of those gray areas and she has had to just deal with it for many years (even after the divorce) simply because she couldn't afford to do anything about it. He also hasn't had to increase his support with his income simply because his intimidation tactics do work - why fight over a few hundred dollars more per month when it will only be taken out on your kids?
Fortunately the kids are getting older and have finally had enough and we're putting our feet down. We've managed to compell counselling, but it is still a gray area as to whether the kids will be able to avoid him having unsupervised custody.
Granted courts are not made up of psychics and at some point they need to take everybody's word for granted unless we all want to pay tens of thousands of dollars for serious investigations in every case. However, there is something wrong when the kids are afraid of their father, and yet the lawyer is concerned that there isn't much that can be done about it (and this isn't a cheap lawyer - this one is pretty well regarded).
Divorce is a sad state of affairs, and when it gets into serious litigation it is usually because at least one party is rather nasty. Unfortunately, it isn't always hard to tell which one it is, and that really opens the door to tragedy. Even so, I think a much better job could be done - if for no other reason than the sake of the kids...
Businesses are naturally self-serving and self-preserving, and politicians are too. But politicians are supposed to do what the people as a whole desire, whereas a business can ethically ignore these kinds of things (to their peril... maybe).
Ok, all people are naturally self-serving and self-preserving. Does that mean that people can ethically ignore what "the people as a whole" desire? Is it ethical for somebody to just do what is in their own best interest at the expense of everyone else. If somebody kills their next door neighbor knowing that they'll get off due to a loophole in the local murder law, does that mean that only society is to blame for not writing better laws?
Suppose the estimated legal settlement for killing somebody is $1 million, but a business figures it can make $10 million per death in reduced costs by making an unsafe product. Is that ethical as well, since the business is just acting in the interests of its stockholders?
Right and wrong is a complex subject, I'll admit. However, I think that most people will agree that simply doing whatever is in your own interest is not "right". Why would the fact that you are a business change that?
What that means is that MS won't require you to check the driver's license of anyone who downloads your software implementing SenderID, but it does mean that the people who download it from you don't have the right to furhter redistribute your code, and they don't have the right to work on it...That's precisely what the non-sublicenseable bit is about.
That also makes the license GLP-incompatible, most likely. It is a violation of the GLP to distribute GPL source code to anybody unless it is licensed under the GPL. That means that you either have to violate the GLP by distributing sender-id code not under the GPL, or you have to violate the Microsoft license by distributing it under the GPL which is sublicensable.
I think MS's lawyers know exactly what they're doing...
That is possible, but I think that it will take some time after the invention of a large quantum computer before anybody puts much faith in assymetric crypto.
Sure, nobody may have an algorigthm to crack your digital signatures now, but there is considerable risk that one could emerge without warning, and anything you've transmitted in the past could have been saved and then cracked.
Some secrets only need to remain secret for a few days/weeks/months - nobody will worry about those. Some secrets need to remain secret for years or decades, and these are the ones that are at risk. Digital signatures could also be a problem - suppose I roll out a e-sig process for the purchase and sale of houses. Suddenly the algorithm is cracked without warning, and now nobody can trust any housing sale records for the last ten years, except to the degree that they were kept in vaults and such - which defeats the whole purpose of digital sigs which in theory should have eliminated the need to have those vaults...
Together with quantum computers comes quantum criptography. Infact, the second one already exists in a very realibly form, although it is not commercially viable. It uses an initial data transfer to create a kind of public key. it is made on-the-fly and activelly by both sides, but it is still a kind public key.
QC is more of a key-exchange technology than a form of encryption. However it has a huge limitation - a physical link between whowever is attempting to communicate. Right now that means a fiber optic line, maybe one day it would allow a laser, but either way we're still talking line-of-sight.
QC does not provide anything remotely analogous to public-key crypto. It does not allow for digital signatures, for instance.
The article didn't say they're using SATA, and it sounded like it's some IDE variant instead, but if you're only using 100 Mbps Ethernet to connect to the box and not the optional GigE, it's not the bottleneck anyway.
Does SATA vs IDE actually make a difference with current drives? I know that SATA is capable of much higher speeds, but are standard drives generally capable of taking advantage of this?
Back when I shopped for hard drives for my system which had both IDE and SATA I had the choice of an ATA133 or an SATA133 for about $10 more. I just grabbed the IDE since I could find nothing anywhere that showed the SATA would be faster, and $10 is $10.
I see that now you can get SATA150, which is likely to be superior to IDE ATA133. I agree that if you just have 100MB ethernet it makes no difference at all in the end...
Uh, this is just the exterior of the buildings. It gives you the length, width, and height of the WTC.
You can get length and width by counting paces as you walk around the block. You can get height by recording the location of the tip of the shadow and the time and doing a little math. Anybody capable of actually using this information to blow up a building could have thought up this idea in their sleep.
Now, I could see the blueprints being useful since they might show you exactly where to put a small bomb to have a big effect. Even then, I'm not sure the public benefits more from having all that secret than out in the open.
Slashdot Mirror
Frankly - if you didn't write the whole thing yourself, what would make you think you had a right to sell it other than under the terms of the GPL which is what all the developers agreed to in the first place?
If you want to dual-license, be like the MySQL team (which was hardly a huge commercial enterprise when it started) and plan this from the start and write the whole thing by yourself.
If you use my code in your project, then you bet you're going to have to make it worth my while if you want me to allow you to sell it under terms that the software wasn't contributed under.
Small developers write shareware all the time planning on making a small commercial application. Why wouldn't an open-source developer consider doing the same? It isn't rocket science or anything?
Also - my feeling is that most small developers would plan ahead like this if they were planning on profiting from their code. In fact, most small developers who plan on profiting from their code don't open source their code at all. That is only natural - if you want to sell it why would you start by giving it away for free?
It wouldn't make much sense, for example, for libpng to be GPL'd, since one of its purpose was to be an alternative to other closed or proprietary formats such as GIF.
This is a common argument, and perhaps it has merit, but I think it has at least one weakness - embrace and extend.
Ok, so libpng is BSD. Your favorite software monopoly on image manipulation software comes out with libpng+ - which is proprietary. It reads png just fine, but saves png+ which has one or two extra bells and whistles. They license it widely, and big-proprietary-web-browser soon supports it. They even license it closed-source free-as-in-beer to developers with a license which prohibits reverse engineering or use in software which is sold for a price.
The new library is GPL-incompatible due to the license. It is also closed-source. However, it is free, and before you know it, your BSD-style libpng is losing market share rapidly. At some point libpng++ comes out and the license terms become more restrictive as the company seeks to make a profit from their market share. The open standard which was supposed to be promoted by the BSD license is long-dead.
Just look at realaudio and the like - nothing open source about it but it is found everywhere.
Maybe there is a flaw in my thinking, and I'd be happy for somebody to point it out. However, this sort of thing really makes me wonder if the GPL isn't in fact better-suited to open standards.
I couldn't agree more, although companies usually have retention policies not as a cost saving matter, but as a legal matter.
If the company auto-deletes all email more than 30 days old, then when a lawsuit comes along alleging that two years ago the company took some damaging action, nobody can subpoena all the emails from back then and see what really happened.
Of course, companies still get in trouble. They get sued over something and stop destroying some class of documents. Then they say something stupid in an email which is then retained under the no-shred order. Then somebody else sues them and finds the email. You would think that when you are actually being sued over something that you would be more careful about the emails you send that you already know have been subpoenaed...
Just one little technical detail (which I wouldn't even point out if it weren't /.) - the role of proteins in lipoproteins isn't so much for soluability as for signaling. The main reason that lipoproteins are soluable actually has to do more with the lipids they're made of - which are mostly phospholipids. A phospholipid is amphoteric - it is polar (hence water-soluable) on one side and non-polar on the other. A typical lipprotein looks like a sphere with nonpolar lipids in the center and a layer of phospholipids on the outside. Floating in the phospholipid layer are various proteins which can be used for signalling or attachment. The proteins are amphoteric and are anchored into the lipids by non-polar regions.
Phospholipids are the main components of cell membranes as well - in that case they are bilayers so that they are essentially planar rather than spherical.
I agree that a method can be scientific if it does not use placebo-controlled trials, and I do agree that the use of placebos can have ethical concerns (probably less so in a case like this since we aren't talking about situations where we're witholding a likely cure or avoiding treatment for a disease). I did hint that experiments on people are loaded with ethcial concerns, but I did not write a treatise on the subject.
However, to be considered "science" I do believe that a study must use the scientific method. That means that there must be a hypothesis and a controlled experiment. Such an experiment must be reproducible. Anything less is just a statistical analysis of some medical records.
An aside - statistics is not a "science" - it is a mathematical and analytical tool. Like most of math it tells you nothing that you strictly speaking didn't already know, although it might make a conclusion more apparent. Statistics certainly have a place in science, but at best it is a tool of science and not a science itself. (Don't get me wrong - I love math, have the highest respect for mathemiticians, etc. However, math is not a science - it is a different form of philosophy.)
The problem isn't science, but things that masquarade as science.
Science is about repeatable controlled experiments that yield consistent results. Repeatable means that you need to understand what exactly is going on in your experimental setup so that somebody else can reproduce it. Controlled means you account for all variables and only vary one at a time.
The problem is that doing all this correctly with people costs a LOT of money. So, instead we settle for sloppy studies that aren't well-controlled, then everybody starts talking about how useless science is when five people do the "same" study and come up with different conclusions. Some of the common flaws:
The only really effective way to these kinds of tests on people is with placebo-controlled clinical trials. Take 2000 people, split them into a few groups which are as similar as possible in makeup, and make them all spend 15 minutes a day blindfolded in a tanning booth, and make them all take pills. Some groups don't actually get any UV, but the experience is simulated so that they don't realize this. Some groups do get the UV. Some groups get various vitamin D supplements (with or without vitamin A), and some groups get placebos. At least one group gets neither UV or a supplement. Then follow the group over 50 years and see what the results are. Such an experiment should be both conclusive and repeatable.
Of course, most scientists want their results next year and have limited budgets, so they're not going to start a 50-year study that they won't even be alive to see the end of. Instead, they just look at random dead people and try to guess how much time they spent in the sun and what pills they have taken.
Even modern drug clinical trials have all kinds of issues (clearly seen in recent high-profile drug recalls) - these trials are very carefully controlled trials subject to all kinds of review and which cost hundreds of millions of dollars to perform.
So, the problem isn't a failure in science. The problem is that sometimes we aren't patient enough or resourceful enough to use science, and instead resort to something else and call it "science". Science isn't very practical when dealing with people - they live a long time, you can't just put them in cages, you have to pay them, and you can't do much in the way of manipulating them. Most real biological science uses other animals as a result (Need some subjects with cancer? Just breed them to be prone to it.)...
Fixed point in space?
I think we have a potential solution to all those orbital corrections on the ISS. We simply need to find one of those "fixed points in space" and anchor the station to one, thus keeping it forever still. Additionally, we'll be able to figure out which way the earth/sun/galaxy/universe/etc is moving once and for all once we see which way the station flies off after being anchored...
(Yes, I'm guessing (and hoping) that you were being sarcastic about that one. I just couldn't resist...)
I wonder what the cost would be to move it?
Maybe launch some ion engines and over a couple of years keep pushing it a degree at a time? I imagine that in its partially-completed state that the ISS would have solar power to spare to power the ion drives, which would simplify engine design. You could also give them replacable fuel canisters and send them up in progress vessels. The ISS itself probably will maintain its own orientation (assuming the thrust is reasonably well-balanced), so we also don't need all kinds of fancy guidance hardware.
If they do want to move it, they might as well start now while it is still missing much of its final mass.
How about:
1. Enter number of shares to purchase.
2. Enter number of shares to purchase again.
If number is > some threshold, hand order to person next door who does step 2.
Double blind data entry is very effective at eliminating typos. Why do you think it is used for password prompts?
I think it all depends on who is getting defrauded. If a manager is taking the company for a ride you're in for royal treatment. If the company is taking a customer for a ride you may be better off just applying for a job elsewhere. If the injured party has deep pockets you might take it to them - but that could backfire.
Whistleblowing within companies works well when the actions you are reporting are clearly going to be objectionable to upper management. I heard a story of an employee who sent a letter to the CEO in a fortune 500 company alleging a significant violation of government regulations which was being overlooked by direct management. The next day that management was feeling VERY uncomfortabe as just about the entire chain of command decended on them. Letters like this look very bad in lawsuits if the company doesn't have clear documentation that they took action. When the battle is between the manager and the employee, the manager usually wins. On the other hand, when the battle is between the company and the manager, the company ALWAYS wins (although if the manager is high enough to be identified with the company (ie CEO) then losing amounts to a multi-million-dollar severance package).
Uh, look up king of prussia at google - you'll note the second largest mall in the US in the satellite photo. Right next to it is a military contractor (used to be GE, I think it is Ratheon now). This is NOT a small town by any stretch of the imagination...
It's clearer by just saying:
The extra energy comes from the destruction of matter which is converted to energy.
For example, in a fusion reaction, the reactants (usually deuterium and/or tritium) have a greater mass than what's left behind (helium and neutrons). Since e=mc^2, you get a huge amount of energy for a small amount of lost mass.
That could be said of any energy-producing reaction. The exahust products of your car are lighter than the fuel it burns. Granted, the difference is probably on the order of picograms or less, and so you can't measure it.
What your explanation lacks is the reason why the products of fusion are lighter than the reactants - which has to do with what the parent was talking about, and is further clarified by other comments.
D+T -> He+n0 is your basic fusion reaction. You'll note that both sides of the equation have identical counts of protons, neutrons, and electrons. These particles themselves are identical in mass on both sides of the equation. So, where does the extra mass come from? Well, that would be binding energy, which would require more physics to clearly explain than I have mastered.
To say that energy is released simply because mass is lost is a bit simplistic. It is true, but it does little to explain why both fusion and fission produce energy, which was the original question. This seems like a paradox, and simply saying that it all works out because mass is lost simply leads to the paradox of why combining some atoms causes a loss of mass, while splitting others leads to a similar loss of mass.
It's not quite that simple, as it should be possible for elements such as iron (and heavier) to fuse (and presumably release energy, if it's going to happen much).
Well, we already know that it doesn't happen much - just in supernovae for the most part. I haven't seen anything to suggest that the reaction is exothermic. Production of water vapor from water requires an input of energy, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't happen in nature.
Moving the drivers into the kernel is crazy. It might simplify the X server code, but it will be a bitch to maintain for several operating systems.
Uh, the purpose of an OS is to provide hardware abstraction.
Why do we have filesystem code in the OS? Why not just do that in X11 that way we don't need filesystems in both BSD and linux?
For that matter, why put the video drivers in X11? Why not just put them in individual applications. After all, it is waste to have an nvidia driver for windows and MacOS and X11. Why not just have one for photoshop and let it just manage its own screen?
The OS is the right layer for a device driver. There is no reason that driver has to run ring 0 - granted this is harder to accomplish with linux.
Admittedly, this would be a painful transition, but there is no reason that it has to happen in six months. It just wouldn't hurt to admit that putting device drivers in an application is a mistake. X11 is just an application.
Well, they could have just brought a mirroring device on-site, and made two mirrors of the drive. They then take the original and one mirror with them, and put the other mirror back into service. It isn't like Indymedia needs the original back.
My objection isn't so much to seizure for use as evidence, as long as they have a warrant. My objection would be to significant user inconvenience - as happens when the FBI confiscates computers and then returns them 3 years later...
I'm not sure it is really a matter of them not believing - it is more a matter of whether the fear of their father is sufficient reason to deny the father custody.
Right now we're crossing our fingers that counselling actually helps out. We're also pushing to word any future custody agreements to indicate that the kids will have some say in the situation, but that may require litigation, which of course is very expensive.
Note that this is up to now all based on the opinions of lawyers - judges haven't actually gotten involved. This is good since we've already spent a small fortune on meetings and motions and the like and a real trial would probably cost far more. The problem with an actual court hearing is that judges can fall anywhere on the map, and while in theory you can always appeal to get more consistency, most people don't have tens of thousands of dollars to spend on all that...
I can vouch for that.
My wife and I have been spending a fortune trying to get control of her ex-husband's custody situation. He is verbally abusive of their children, as he had been with her. However, verbal abuse is one of those gray areas and she has had to just deal with it for many years (even after the divorce) simply because she couldn't afford to do anything about it. He also hasn't had to increase his support with his income simply because his intimidation tactics do work - why fight over a few hundred dollars more per month when it will only be taken out on your kids?
Fortunately the kids are getting older and have finally had enough and we're putting our feet down. We've managed to compell counselling, but it is still a gray area as to whether the kids will be able to avoid him having unsupervised custody.
Granted courts are not made up of psychics and at some point they need to take everybody's word for granted unless we all want to pay tens of thousands of dollars for serious investigations in every case. However, there is something wrong when the kids are afraid of their father, and yet the lawyer is concerned that there isn't much that can be done about it (and this isn't a cheap lawyer - this one is pretty well regarded).
Divorce is a sad state of affairs, and when it gets into serious litigation it is usually because at least one party is rather nasty. Unfortunately, it isn't always hard to tell which one it is, and that really opens the door to tragedy. Even so, I think a much better job could be done - if for no other reason than the sake of the kids...
Businesses are naturally self-serving and self-preserving, and politicians are too. But politicians are supposed to do what the people as a whole desire, whereas a business can ethically ignore these kinds of things (to their peril... maybe).
Ok, all people are naturally self-serving and self-preserving. Does that mean that people can ethically ignore what "the people as a whole" desire? Is it ethical for somebody to just do what is in their own best interest at the expense of everyone else. If somebody kills their next door neighbor knowing that they'll get off due to a loophole in the local murder law, does that mean that only society is to blame for not writing better laws?
Suppose the estimated legal settlement for killing somebody is $1 million, but a business figures it can make $10 million per death in reduced costs by making an unsafe product. Is that ethical as well, since the business is just acting in the interests of its stockholders?
Right and wrong is a complex subject, I'll admit. However, I think that most people will agree that simply doing whatever is in your own interest is not "right". Why would the fact that you are a business change that?
Somehow I doubt that reading slashdot will have much of an impact on your usenet bandwidth limit.
Maybe if you're downloading binaries it is an issue, but no human being can read enough text to exceed just about any reasonable quota...
What that means is that MS won't require you to check the driver's license of anyone who downloads your software implementing SenderID, but it does mean that the people who download it from you don't have the right to furhter redistribute your code, and they don't have the right to work on it...That's precisely what the non-sublicenseable bit is about.
That also makes the license GLP-incompatible, most likely. It is a violation of the GLP to distribute GPL source code to anybody unless it is licensed under the GPL. That means that you either have to violate the GLP by distributing sender-id code not under the GPL, or you have to violate the Microsoft license by distributing it under the GPL which is sublicensable.
I think MS's lawyers know exactly what they're doing...
That is possible, but I think that it will take some time after the invention of a large quantum computer before anybody puts much faith in assymetric crypto.
Sure, nobody may have an algorigthm to crack your digital signatures now, but there is considerable risk that one could emerge without warning, and anything you've transmitted in the past could have been saved and then cracked.
Some secrets only need to remain secret for a few days/weeks/months - nobody will worry about those. Some secrets need to remain secret for years or decades, and these are the ones that are at risk. Digital signatures could also be a problem - suppose I roll out a e-sig process for the purchase and sale of houses. Suddenly the algorithm is cracked without warning, and now nobody can trust any housing sale records for the last ten years, except to the degree that they were kept in vaults and such - which defeats the whole purpose of digital sigs which in theory should have eliminated the need to have those vaults...
Together with quantum computers comes quantum criptography. Infact, the second one already exists in a very realibly form, although it is not commercially viable. It uses an initial data transfer to create a kind of public key. it is made on-the-fly and activelly by both sides, but it is still a kind public key.
QC is more of a key-exchange technology than a form of encryption. However it has a huge limitation - a physical link between whowever is attempting to communicate. Right now that means a fiber optic line, maybe one day it would allow a laser, but either way we're still talking line-of-sight.
QC does not provide anything remotely analogous to public-key crypto. It does not allow for digital signatures, for instance.
The article didn't say they're using SATA, and it sounded like it's some IDE variant instead, but if you're only using 100 Mbps Ethernet to connect to the box and not the optional GigE, it's not the bottleneck anyway.
Does SATA vs IDE actually make a difference with current drives? I know that SATA is capable of much higher speeds, but are standard drives generally capable of taking advantage of this?
Back when I shopped for hard drives for my system which had both IDE and SATA I had the choice of an ATA133 or an SATA133 for about $10 more. I just grabbed the IDE since I could find nothing anywhere that showed the SATA would be faster, and $10 is $10.
I see that now you can get SATA150, which is likely to be superior to IDE ATA133. I agree that if you just have 100MB ethernet it makes no difference at all in the end...
Uh, this is just the exterior of the buildings. It gives you the length, width, and height of the WTC.
You can get length and width by counting paces as you walk around the block. You can get height by recording the location of the tip of the shadow and the time and doing a little math. Anybody capable of actually using this information to blow up a building could have thought up this idea in their sleep.
Now, I could see the blueprints being useful since they might show you exactly where to put a small bomb to have a big effect. Even then, I'm not sure the public benefits more from having all that secret than out in the open.
It was prefectly on-topic in the context of the discussion in which it was posted. Perhaps one of the parents who brought up the topic was off-topic.
Besides - the relevance is clear to anybody following the thread...