If it's pure gallium, I'd think it being solid at room temperature would be a real problem (since it freezes at 85F). The entire circuit of gallium would have to melt before it starts circulating. That would cause the CPU to start to get awfully hot before that happened.
It seems more likely that they're using something that's liquid in room temperature. That could still mean some kind of gallium amalgram. Solder for instance has a lower melting point than either of the metals that constitute it.
Well, I'm not sure how much difference there is between being forced to resign and being fired. Technically yes, but practically there's not much. You're right though, the headline still should have been "forced to resign". Also, one should remember that this teacher was not approved to give the lecture and decided to go without permission and give it in the cafeteria.
No, he wasn't approved to use the two venues. This is largely a matter of resource scheduling at most Universities. It's not an attempt from on-high at silencing people. He was invited by two student groups to give a lecture (so a lot of people wanted to hear him talk). Generally professors or instructors don't need "permission" to lecture. This would be grounds for inspecting someones future at most companies/universities.
Maybe at most ueber-controlled companies, but giving a lecture on something is strangely enough.. encouraged at universities. Something about academic freedom encouraging learning.
Obviously it didn't take them long to apply the security patches from 1.0.3. Would it really have been that difficult to just wait another day and release the version we now call 8.0.1 as the initial release of 8.0.0? If they would have waited until 1.0.4 was out, then we would all be screaming that they should have waited until 1.0.5 was out.
Who would anyone be doing that? There's currently no known security problems with 1.0.4, so why would anyone care about waiting until 1.0.5? You know that another security bug will be found in Firefox again. They can't just keep holding off releasing a product because of security exploits that haven't been discovered yet.
So what you're saying is just release a product that has known (and already fixed in another product) security problems? Furthermore security problems that can (and were) patched the next day? All this on the justification that "there might be more security problems later.. so why bother fixing the ones we have already have patches for?" Sir, do you work for Microsoft?
Please notice that they said anything short of breaking the law.
And that excuses them from any moral judgements? I'll remember that next time I cheat on my wife. "Honey! It's not against the LAW!!!". (Ok, I'm not really married, but you get the point).
The corporation's responsibility is working in the best interest of their shareholders - everything short of breaking the law in order to turn a profit for those who own stock. If that means suing a company just to stay relevant, so be it.
Are you actually embracing the moraless practice that corporations have these days? I understand the motivation to do this. I also understand the motivation of bank robbers to rob banks. "I as a bank robber have a responsibility to give my family the best living conditions and education possible. I swear I'm only looking out for my family!"
Yes I understand that's "how public corporations work", but that doesn't make it OK. Why is that in any way a defense? Enron has done much the same thing, and I don't hear too many people trying to defend them on a "corps do what corps do" basis.
The argument I always heard for why Photoshop is $700 was because of all the piracy.
Baloney. Photoshop is $700 because they've got the screws to the design industry and can get away with that price. Photoshop is used by almost everyone doing professional work with digital pictures. The people that use it know how to use it very well and don't want to switch to another tool of unknown quality (and have to re-learn how to do everything).
It isn't a commodity product needed by low paid secretaries like Word, it's a product of usually well paid professionals, and companies are willing to spend more on those people because it'll wind up saving them more if they get just a few more hours productivity out of them. Furthermore because it's not a commodity product, there's a much smaller market for it than Word/Office. Almost everyone needs an office product, but not many need a super-fancy photo editing program. I get along just fine with Gimp, and have no need at all for Photoshop. Of course I also am not a designer, I just do some occasional photo editing a few random purposes.
Fair play, so you are saying that if MS UK breaches US law then MS US would be held accountable.
Actually what I'm saying is if MS UK breaches US law with regard to trade to cuba, MS would be held responsible. These aren't seperate entities, but a larger corporation.
To be a bit clearer - you are saying MS UK are subject to both US and UK law.
No, I'm saying that MS UK is subject to the US laws that govern foriegn officies/subsidiaries. I wouldn't imagine, for instance that MS UK is subject to US Federal minimum wage laws, labor laws, etc. If that is the case then it would seem to me that opening overseas branches of your company (as opposed to just forming new companies on foreign soil and calling them the same name) has some massive legal disadvantages.
I'm not sure there's really a difference (as far as the law is concerned at least) between opening a branch of a company, and forming a "new" company that you own. I'd be highly surprised if this kind of maneuvering works to get around laws intended to apply to foriegn subsideries, offices, etc of US corporations.
It sounds like Ballmer is afraid of Google when he makes statements like this. The whole article can be summed up as "Steve Ballmer wishes Google would just go away!".
I often wonder what goes on in CEOs minds when that make stupid comments like this. Are there really people out there that believe what he says?
(somewhere in the wasteland of business) "Ballmer said Google doesn't have a stable business.. must be true." (pushes buzzer on desk) "Mabel? Call my broker and tell him to sell all the Google shares pronto!".
How can MS (US) be held accountable for what MS (Country X) does? MS (US) is the only division of Microsoft to whom US law applies.
Because they aren't seperate companies. Microsoft is incorporated in the US, so it's a US company. The fact that they have some people in India, Canada, Mexico, etc doesn't change that fact. As far as trade with Cuba goes it has to follow US law.
Interesting. I did wonder if there was such a clause, and obviously there is. It does make sense, even though I think the trade embargo the US places on Cuba is bad for both countries.
Well there's obviously other routes of buying Windows than just from Redmond. First of all Microsoft is an international company. It's possible that Cuba could buy copies of Windows from say Microsoft India, or more likely Microsoft Mexico.
Microsoft obviously also has distributors outside the United States, and it's perfectly legal for them to sell to Cuba.
or 2) revealing data on someone else that you have not been given permission to reveal.
And I think that's just what we're talking about here. Whenever you reveal personal information to a 3rd party, there's an implied contract that they won't post it publically. Let's say I give out my SS# to a creditor. That doesn't mean the credit card company has the right to give that information out to just anyone who asks for it. While some of the original sources of the data that the students used could have invaded privacy to get the data, by using data already in the public domain the students weren't invading privacy.
No, they likely weren't breaking the law, but privacy is more than just legally obtaining information. Let's say scumbag A plants cameras in my house and tapes me. Scumbag A sells the tapes to Voyeur B, claiming he obtained them legally. Is Voyeur B invading my privacy? Of course. Knowingly? No, but that's really beside the point. There's a difference between being in the "public domain", and some unscrupulous individual selling you information.
How about a real world example? Did Paris Hilton have her privacy invaded by what's his name who distributed the sex tape? Certainly. Were laws broken? It doesn't appear so since I never heard of anyone being arrested.
How can you possibly know that? No one has seen produced any real-world exploits for this, simulations, or anything. It's quite impossible at this point to know who is technically correct. I certainly don't seem to have your personal sense of inferiority.
Maybe you just don't have a very good sense of people. Your comment is pretty fucking stupid in that it encourages people that don't understand things to reason fallaciously.
It isn't about reason, it's about trust. Everyone uses trust factors to make decisions every day. It's impossible to know everything, so many decisions come down to simple trust.
For those that lack the technical knowledge to see which argument is better, it comes down to trust.
Which person do you trust? Do you trust Linus who's had more than 10 years of experience in dealing with low-level hardware, writing kernel code, and dealing with exploits? Or do you trust Colin, a 23 year old who's studied mathematics, that's demonstrated he seems to care more about self promotion and the limelite than anything else? From what I've been able to gather Colin sounds like your typical "wunderkind". He's obsessed with his own accomplishments. People like that have a hard time accepting they might be slightly wrong.
That sounds like it has some non-trivial costs associated with it. That would mean losing performance in many instances where two high-cpu processes want to be exectured on a single physical processor at the same time.
The best solution is to just fix the crypto libraries as a short term solution, and for Intel to fix the chip in future iterations as a long term solution. Mucking about in the kernel and having other unknown effects seems like a bad approach when the problem can be fixed elsewhere.
It's funny how Dvorak waxes nostalgic about "the olden days" where there was no journalistic integrity. Can he really possibly be saying outloud that he wishes journalists were actually less ethical?
I think 'ol John has a future job Fox News, or perhaps a technology version of Crossfire! Here's some news John, lack of ethics in journalism is RAMPANT today. Every other week there's some scandle of reporting. The bad 'old days are today, and I'd love nothing more than a technological equiv of Jon Stewart to skewer you like he did those pig-fuckers on 'Crossfire!'.
Oh, I dunno... Maybe the remote possibility of RUNNING OUT OF OXYGEN AND DYING?
Well Nervous Nelly, the article states there's at least two other backup oxygen supplies that have quite a long duration. What if the mission to send replacement parts fails?
There's always a Soyuz capsule docked at the station so they can abandon the space station if necessary. What if the escape vehicle doesn't work?
Unlikely. If it doesn't work, then I'd imagine there'd be some rush to launch another Soyuz or Shuttle. There's something very basic that you seem to be missing though. At some point you just have to accept the fact that space exploration is dangerous. Why do you have this attitude that it should be as safe as walking to the drugstore? How many people die just doing something like climbing Mt. Everest? Life is dangerous. If you don't like that, there's always the option of never venturing outside.
1) DeBeers can launch a new marketing ploy and sell their diamonds as naturally forming diamonds compared with man-made diamonds.
This will only work if they can do two things (and they need to do BOTH of them). Convince people that a man-made diamond is somehow inferrior (possible, but I have my doubts). And more importantly, tell the difference between man-made and mined diamonds. So far DeBeers has been able to do this with expensive equipment. Don't hold your breath that this can continue though. If the diamond makers can make diamonds that are indistinguishable from mined diamonds in large quantities for cheaper than mined diamonds, the game is over.
Debeers will survive, as they will adjust their business model to accomodate this.
They'll probbably survive, they'll just be a MUCH smaller company that makes far less money.
Would you like to explain to me WHY THIS IS SUN'S PROBLEM?
I don't know if it's "sun's problem", but I would say it's a problem for sun. The problem is that no major linux distribution includes a JVM in its distribution. That makes the Java language far less usefull to developers. If you can't count on a JVM being on a machine, you then have to go through machinations to include a JVM in your software. Even that's difficult since Sun won't let you re-package the JVM.
How is that Suns problem? Well it makes Java less usefull, and I assume Sun wants Java to be as popular as possible. Sun is still competing against Microsoft, and if Suns language is on Linux boxes, that's a win for Sun. They have given everything away except for the actual rights to Java itself.
Actually one of the big sticking points is re-packaging Java. If they simply allowed that, it'd be included in at least redhat.
If a malevolent entity hit Linus with a bus and acquired his Linux trademarks
Huh? How does someone hitting Linus with a bus get them the Linux trademarks? Someone aquiring Sun is a real possibility. Mergers of large companies happen all the time. If you have to resort to ridiculous comparisons to make your point, you've already lost.
and they've made it perfectly possible for others to replicate their technology. Why is the OSS community blaming their failure to do so on Sun?
Now you're just making up arguments that no one has made. That's called a strawman argument and is a logical fallacy.
This "I have a right to YOUR source code" nonsense goes past what "free" really means.
I'm sorry, but I have a big problem with this attitude. Someone writes something and shares it with anyone who cares to use it. All they ask is that if you modify the software and distribute your new version that you share your source code changes. If you don't like it, don't take the deal. But complaining that a GPLed software author didn't give you everything you want is going a bit far.
Arguing which license is "more free" is like arguing which ice cream chocolate or vanilla tastes better.
Accountability might give the average joe a sense of security, true. My only point was to refute CircleTimesSquares idea of the difference between slashdotters and average joe. The difference is one of information about security and value of the information, not a difference of what each values. (accountability vs cleverness).
Both slashdotters and average joes value a sense of security. Each has a different assesment of how the system failed. The slashdotter recognizes that these people are idiots, and should never be trying to protect such valueable information. Average Joe is befuddled by all the techo-geekness and thinks you need to be a super-genious to break the security (like something out of Oceans 11).
Regarding the boom, bear in mind that we really haven't gotten anywhere near lightspeed, so we don't know.
A person has never gotten anywhere near lightspeed, but we accelerate subatomic particles VERY near lightspeed every single day in particle accelerators. Einsteins theories have been very well tested, and they all hold up so far. It is not only possible but quite likely that our understanding of what happens near lightspeed is inaccurate.
Based upon what evidence? None other than unbacked up speculation that "we just don't know". We do know what happens with a high degree of accuracy. Of course it's _always_ possible there's something going on we don't understand. But that's not a good enough reason to doubt the existing theories are accurate.
to put it another way, the average joe doesn't care how technologically sophisticated the security is on their SSNs. the average joe just cares if THERE IS SOME ACCOUNTABILITY. so the SSNs could be on a text file on webserver, they don't care. the question si: is someone's job on the line for the theft? the average joe understands this concept: someone will suffer if my identity is stolen. there fore, someone out there is motivated to protect me.
I guess I have to disagree with this. The average joe only cares about feeling that his data is safe. Accountability is bullshit. I guarantee you if the insecurity (and consequences of that insecurity) was easily understandable by the average joe, he'd be up in arms that the gaurdians of his information are incompetent fools.
The thing is that the technological nature of the insecurity is what masks it. If the average joe can't really understand why it's insecure, the feeling of insecurity never really registers very deeply.
I'll give an example. Let's say Average Joe's bank didn't lock the doors at night because they didn't think it was necessary. Well.. heads will fly if Average Joe finds out about this. It's blatantly obvious that not locking doors at night as a bank is bleedingly stupid. It's also obvious to Average Joe that his money not being robbed from the bank is important. The news that someone will get in trouble for "not being accountable" isn't really very comforting to Average Joe.
Let's say in the same bank scenario two bank customers realize the dumb practice of the bank and want to "teach them a lesson". They go into the bank, take the money and bury it in an empy lot somewhere. They then leave the bank a note saying where the money is. Have the bank customers commited a crime? Certainly. Have they also done some kind of service for other bank customers by showing how insecure their money is? Probbably. What's the balance between the two? Very difficult to say. It seems the same way in this case. The difference between Average Joe and Average Slashdotter in this case is only that Average Slashdotter understands that this is like leaving a door open.
I think there are people who do care about accountability. Mostly these people are the ones setting up procedures within large organizations. That's fine, accountability is a decent way to attempt to get actual security. But let's not forget that the real goal is the actual security, not having someone to blame at the end of the day.
Though Athlon may be someones name or some diss-used english word that doesn't diminish the point that companies create words that didn't exist before to associate with their product. Had I been arguing specifically about Athlon, that would have been relevant. Since Athlon is merely an example in a larger point your story is interesting, but not immaterial to the discussion.
The number of words in the English language, however, remains the same.
Actually no. Before 1993 had anyone ever heard of the word pentium? Athlon and Opteron certainly weren't english words before AMD created them.
The problem you describe in your first sentence is exactly the reason why large companies go to extreme lengths to create a new word solely associated with their product. Pharmeceutical companies have done this exact same thing for every new drug for probbably 100 years.
That doesn't mean the Tiger case has any merit (the whole thing was ridiculous to start with). Trademark law is based on consumer confusion. If a reasonable consumer can be confused by a trademark (Say I open a restaraunt serving chicken sandwiches with a clown mascott and call it McVellmont's) that would likely be ruled a violation of trademark because consumers might think my business is a spinoff of McDonalds.
Slashdot Mirror
If it's pure gallium, I'd think it being solid at room temperature would be a real problem (since it freezes at 85F). The entire circuit of gallium would have to melt before it starts circulating. That would cause the CPU to start to get awfully hot before that happened.
It seems more likely that they're using something that's liquid in room temperature. That could still mean some kind of gallium amalgram. Solder for instance has a lower melting point than either of the metals that constitute it.
Well, I'm not sure how much difference there is between being forced to resign and being fired. Technically yes, but practically there's not much. You're right though, the headline still should have been "forced to resign".
Also, one should remember that this teacher was not approved to give the lecture and decided to go without permission and give it in the cafeteria.
No, he wasn't approved to use the two venues. This is largely a matter of resource scheduling at most Universities. It's not an attempt from on-high at silencing people. He was invited by two student groups to give a lecture (so a lot of people wanted to hear him talk). Generally professors or instructors don't need "permission" to lecture.
This would be grounds for inspecting someones future at most companies/universities.
Maybe at most ueber-controlled companies, but giving a lecture on something is strangely enough.. encouraged at universities. Something about academic freedom encouraging learning.
Obviously it didn't take them long to apply the security patches from 1.0.3. Would it really have been that difficult to just wait another day and release the version we now call 8.0.1 as the initial release of 8.0.0?
If they would have waited until 1.0.4 was out, then we would all be screaming that they should have waited until 1.0.5 was out.
Who would anyone be doing that? There's currently no known security problems with 1.0.4, so why would anyone care about waiting until 1.0.5?
You know that another security bug will be found in Firefox again. They can't just keep holding off releasing a product because of security exploits that haven't been discovered yet.
So what you're saying is just release a product that has known (and already fixed in another product) security problems? Furthermore security problems that can (and were) patched the next day? All this on the justification that "there might be more security problems later.. so why bother fixing the ones we have already have patches for?" Sir, do you work for Microsoft?
Please notice that they said anything short of breaking the law.
And that excuses them from any moral judgements? I'll remember that next time I cheat on my wife. "Honey! It's not against the LAW!!!". (Ok, I'm not really married, but you get the point).
The corporation's responsibility is working in the best interest of their shareholders - everything short of breaking the law in order to turn a profit for those who own stock. If that means suing a company just to stay relevant, so be it.
Are you actually embracing the moraless practice that corporations have these days? I understand the motivation to do this. I also understand the motivation of bank robbers to rob banks. "I as a bank robber have a responsibility to give my family the best living conditions and education possible. I swear I'm only looking out for my family!"
Yes I understand that's "how public corporations work", but that doesn't make it OK. Why is that in any way a defense? Enron has done much the same thing, and I don't hear too many people trying to defend them on a "corps do what corps do" basis.
The argument I always heard for why Photoshop is $700 was because of all the piracy.
Baloney. Photoshop is $700 because they've got the screws to the design industry and can get away with that price. Photoshop is used by almost everyone doing professional work with digital pictures. The people that use it know how to use it very well and don't want to switch to another tool of unknown quality (and have to re-learn how to do everything).
It isn't a commodity product needed by low paid secretaries like Word, it's a product of usually well paid professionals, and companies are willing to spend more on those people because it'll wind up saving them more if they get just a few more hours productivity out of them. Furthermore because it's not a commodity product, there's a much smaller market for it than Word/Office. Almost everyone needs an office product, but not many need a super-fancy photo editing program. I get along just fine with Gimp, and have no need at all for Photoshop. Of course I also am not a designer, I just do some occasional photo editing a few random purposes.
Fair play, so you are saying that if MS UK breaches US law then MS US would be held accountable.
Actually what I'm saying is if MS UK breaches US law with regard to trade to cuba, MS would be held responsible. These aren't seperate entities, but a larger corporation.
To be a bit clearer - you are saying MS UK are subject to both US and UK law.
No, I'm saying that MS UK is subject to the US laws that govern foriegn officies/subsidiaries. I wouldn't imagine, for instance that MS UK is subject to US Federal minimum wage laws, labor laws, etc.
If that is the case then it would seem to me that opening overseas branches of your company (as opposed to just forming new companies on foreign soil and calling them the same name) has some massive legal disadvantages.
I'm not sure there's really a difference (as far as the law is concerned at least) between opening a branch of a company, and forming a "new" company that you own. I'd be highly surprised if this kind of maneuvering works to get around laws intended to apply to foriegn subsideries, offices, etc of US corporations.
It sounds like Ballmer is afraid of Google when he makes statements like this. The whole article can be summed up as "Steve Ballmer wishes Google would just go away!".
I often wonder what goes on in CEOs minds when that make stupid comments like this. Are there really people out there that believe what he says?
(somewhere in the wasteland of business)
"Ballmer said Google doesn't have a stable business.. must be true."
(pushes buzzer on desk)
"Mabel? Call my broker and tell him to sell all the Google shares pronto!".
How can MS (US) be held accountable for what MS (Country X) does? MS (US) is the only division of Microsoft to whom US law applies.
Because they aren't seperate companies. Microsoft is incorporated in the US, so it's a US company. The fact that they have some people in India, Canada, Mexico, etc doesn't change that fact. As far as trade with Cuba goes it has to follow US law.
Interesting. I did wonder if there was such a clause, and obviously there is. It does make sense, even though I think the trade embargo the US places on Cuba is bad for both countries.
Well there's obviously other routes of buying Windows than just from Redmond. First of all Microsoft is an international company. It's possible that Cuba could buy copies of Windows from say Microsoft India, or more likely Microsoft Mexico.
Microsoft obviously also has distributors outside the United States, and it's perfectly legal for them to sell to Cuba.
or 2) revealing data on someone else that you have not been given permission to reveal.
And I think that's just what we're talking about here. Whenever you reveal personal information to a 3rd party, there's an implied contract that they won't post it publically. Let's say I give out my SS# to a creditor. That doesn't mean the credit card company has the right to give that information out to just anyone who asks for it.
While some of the original sources of the data that the students used could have invaded privacy to get the data, by using data already in the public domain the students weren't invading privacy.
No, they likely weren't breaking the law, but privacy is more than just legally obtaining information. Let's say scumbag A plants cameras in my house and tapes me. Scumbag A sells the tapes to Voyeur B, claiming he obtained them legally. Is Voyeur B invading my privacy? Of course. Knowingly? No, but that's really beside the point. There's a difference between being in the "public domain", and some unscrupulous individual selling you information.
How about a real world example? Did Paris Hilton have her privacy invaded by what's his name who distributed the sex tape? Certainly. Were laws broken? It doesn't appear so since I never heard of anyone being arrested.
Well since Colin is technically correct
How can you possibly know that? No one has seen produced any real-world exploits for this, simulations, or anything. It's quite impossible at this point to know who is technically correct.
I certainly don't seem to have your personal sense of inferiority.
Maybe you just don't have a very good sense of people.
Your comment is pretty fucking stupid in that it encourages people that don't understand things to reason fallaciously.
It isn't about reason, it's about trust. Everyone uses trust factors to make decisions every day. It's impossible to know everything, so many decisions come down to simple trust.
For those that lack the technical knowledge to see which argument is better, it comes down to trust.
Which person do you trust? Do you trust Linus who's had more than 10 years of experience in dealing with low-level hardware, writing kernel code, and dealing with exploits? Or do you trust Colin, a 23 year old who's studied mathematics, that's demonstrated he seems to care more about self promotion and the limelite than anything else? From what I've been able to gather Colin sounds like your typical "wunderkind". He's obsessed with his own accomplishments. People like that have a hard time accepting they might be slightly wrong.
That sounds like it has some non-trivial costs associated with it. That would mean losing performance in many instances where two high-cpu processes want to be exectured on a single physical processor at the same time.
The best solution is to just fix the crypto libraries as a short term solution, and for Intel to fix the chip in future iterations as a long term solution. Mucking about in the kernel and having other unknown effects seems like a bad approach when the problem can be fixed elsewhere.
It's funny how Dvorak waxes nostalgic about "the olden days" where there was no journalistic integrity. Can he really possibly be saying outloud that he wishes journalists were actually less ethical?
I think 'ol John has a future job Fox News, or perhaps a technology version of Crossfire! Here's some news John, lack of ethics in journalism is RAMPANT today. Every other week there's some scandle of reporting. The bad 'old days are today, and I'd love nothing more than a technological equiv of Jon Stewart to skewer you like he did those pig-fuckers on 'Crossfire!'.
Oh, I dunno... Maybe the remote possibility of RUNNING OUT OF OXYGEN AND DYING?
Well Nervous Nelly, the article states there's at least two other backup oxygen supplies that have quite a long duration.
What if the mission to send replacement parts fails?
There's always a Soyuz capsule docked at the station so they can abandon the space station if necessary.
What if the escape vehicle doesn't work?
Unlikely. If it doesn't work, then I'd imagine there'd be some rush to launch another Soyuz or Shuttle. There's something very basic that you seem to be missing though. At some point you just have to accept the fact that space exploration is dangerous. Why do you have this attitude that it should be as safe as walking to the drugstore? How many people die just doing something like climbing Mt. Everest? Life is dangerous. If you don't like that, there's always the option of never venturing outside.
1) DeBeers can launch a new marketing ploy and sell their diamonds as naturally forming diamonds compared with man-made diamonds.
This will only work if they can do two things (and they need to do BOTH of them). Convince people that a man-made diamond is somehow inferrior (possible, but I have my doubts). And more importantly, tell the difference between man-made and mined diamonds. So far DeBeers has been able to do this with expensive equipment. Don't hold your breath that this can continue though. If the diamond makers can make diamonds that are indistinguishable from mined diamonds in large quantities for cheaper than mined diamonds, the game is over.
Debeers will survive, as they will adjust their business model to accomodate this.
They'll probbably survive, they'll just be a MUCH smaller company that makes far less money.
Would you like to explain to me WHY THIS IS SUN'S PROBLEM?
I don't know if it's "sun's problem", but I would say it's a problem for sun. The problem is that no major linux distribution includes a JVM in its distribution. That makes the Java language far less usefull to developers. If you can't count on a JVM being on a machine, you then have to go through machinations to include a JVM in your software. Even that's difficult since Sun won't let you re-package the JVM.
How is that Suns problem? Well it makes Java less usefull, and I assume Sun wants Java to be as popular as possible. Sun is still competing against Microsoft, and if Suns language is on Linux boxes, that's a win for Sun.
They have given everything away except for the actual rights to Java itself.
Actually one of the big sticking points is re-packaging Java. If they simply allowed that, it'd be included in at least redhat.
If a malevolent entity hit Linus with a bus and acquired his Linux trademarks
Huh? How does someone hitting Linus with a bus get them the Linux trademarks? Someone aquiring Sun is a real possibility. Mergers of large companies happen all the time. If you have to resort to ridiculous comparisons to make your point, you've already lost.
and they've made it perfectly possible for others to replicate their technology. Why is the OSS community blaming their failure to do so on Sun?
Now you're just making up arguments that no one has made. That's called a strawman argument and is a logical fallacy.
This "I have a right to YOUR source code" nonsense goes past what "free" really means.
I'm sorry, but I have a big problem with this attitude. Someone writes something and shares it with anyone who cares to use it. All they ask is that if you modify the software and distribute your new version that you share your source code changes. If you don't like it, don't take the deal. But complaining that a GPLed software author didn't give you everything you want is going a bit far.
Arguing which license is "more free" is like arguing which ice cream chocolate or vanilla tastes better.
Accountability might give the average joe a sense of security, true. My only point was to refute CircleTimesSquares idea of the difference between slashdotters and average joe. The difference is one of information about security and value of the information, not a difference of what each values. (accountability vs cleverness).
Both slashdotters and average joes value a sense of security. Each has a different assesment of how the system failed. The slashdotter recognizes that these people are idiots, and should never be trying to protect such valueable information. Average Joe is befuddled by all the techo-geekness and thinks you need to be a super-genious to break the security (like something out of Oceans 11).
Regarding the boom, bear in mind that we really haven't gotten anywhere near lightspeed, so we don't know.
A person has never gotten anywhere near lightspeed, but we accelerate subatomic particles VERY near lightspeed every single day in particle accelerators. Einsteins theories have been very well tested, and they all hold up so far.
It is not only possible but quite likely that our understanding of what happens near lightspeed is inaccurate.
Based upon what evidence? None other than unbacked up speculation that "we just don't know". We do know what happens with a high degree of accuracy. Of course it's _always_ possible there's something going on we don't understand. But that's not a good enough reason to doubt the existing theories are accurate.
to put it another way, the average joe doesn't care how technologically sophisticated the security is on their SSNs. the average joe just cares if THERE IS SOME ACCOUNTABILITY. so the SSNs could be on a text file on webserver, they don't care. the question si: is someone's job on the line for the theft? the average joe understands this concept: someone will suffer if my identity is stolen. there fore, someone out there is motivated to protect me.
I guess I have to disagree with this. The average joe only cares about feeling that his data is safe. Accountability is bullshit. I guarantee you if the insecurity (and consequences of that insecurity) was easily understandable by the average joe, he'd be up in arms that the gaurdians of his information are incompetent fools.
The thing is that the technological nature of the insecurity is what masks it. If the average joe can't really understand why it's insecure, the feeling of insecurity never really registers very deeply.
I'll give an example. Let's say Average Joe's bank didn't lock the doors at night because they didn't think it was necessary. Well.. heads will fly if Average Joe finds out about this. It's blatantly obvious that not locking doors at night as a bank is bleedingly stupid. It's also obvious to Average Joe that his money not being robbed from the bank is important. The news that someone will get in trouble for "not being accountable" isn't really very comforting to Average Joe.
Let's say in the same bank scenario two bank customers realize the dumb practice of the bank and want to "teach them a lesson". They go into the bank, take the money and bury it in an empy lot somewhere. They then leave the bank a note saying where the money is. Have the bank customers commited a crime? Certainly. Have they also done some kind of service for other bank customers by showing how insecure their money is? Probbably. What's the balance between the two? Very difficult to say. It seems the same way in this case. The difference between Average Joe and Average Slashdotter in this case is only that Average Slashdotter understands that this is like leaving a door open.
I think there are people who do care about accountability. Mostly these people are the ones setting up procedures within large organizations. That's fine, accountability is a decent way to attempt to get actual security. But let's not forget that the real goal is the actual security, not having someone to blame at the end of the day.
Though Athlon may be someones name or some diss-used english word that doesn't diminish the point that companies create words that didn't exist before to associate with their product. Had I been arguing specifically about Athlon, that would have been relevant. Since Athlon is merely an example in a larger point your story is interesting, but not immaterial to the discussion.
The number of words in the English language, however, remains the same.
Actually no. Before 1993 had anyone ever heard of the word pentium? Athlon and Opteron certainly weren't english words before AMD created them.
The problem you describe in your first sentence is exactly the reason why large companies go to extreme lengths to create a new word solely associated with their product. Pharmeceutical companies have done this exact same thing for every new drug for probbably 100 years.
That doesn't mean the Tiger case has any merit (the whole thing was ridiculous to start with). Trademark law is based on consumer confusion. If a reasonable consumer can be confused by a trademark (Say I open a restaraunt serving chicken sandwiches with a clown mascott and call it McVellmont's) that would likely be ruled a violation of trademark because consumers might think my business is a spinoff of McDonalds.