But you could move to the US, naturalize, and then help to vote the current government out. We are a democracy after all.
The analogy isn't exactly wrong either. Corporations work very much like democracies, except that instead of one person one vote, it is one share one vote.
Apparently, many of the big holders of SCO stock have already sold. Anyway, my bet is that the corporate executives have large loans from the company. If enough of the stock holders hate the corporate exectuives, those loans could be recalled. Even if someone is worth a lot on paper, the ussually arn't sitting on a huge pile of cash, the loan recall would (hopefully) break the exectives.
Regardless of weither or not it rewards the current SCO stock holders, it is by far fastest legal way to get rid of SCO.
Just thought of this. If the attempt to public domain the whole of SCO fails, and the do win their lawsuit or get some sort of footing to start enforcing their claims on the end users, then the stock price will skyrocket. The SCO stock could then be sold, and the profits used to pay the licensing fees.
I think that if I were and ISP, and SCO was continually being hammered by denial of service attacks, I would kick them off my servers. If I were a customer of said ISP, or shared the same chunks of cable, I would look for a different way to get service.
Not that I want to endorce vigialantism, but DOS attacks on SCO and its partners could be used to stop other corporations from doing business with them. Perhaps that is the DOS attackers' goal. However, I do not think that the DOS attacks are productive to the goal of getting rid of SCO's attacks on Linux.
IMO, a much better strategy would be for everyone using Linux to start buying SCO stock, and then, as a stock holder action, vote all of SCO's patents and copyrights into the public domain (and then disolve the company).
"life diamonds" are cool, and they would carry much more sentamental values than another stone. Hopefully it is a long way off, but my wife and I plan to have one of these made out of whomever dies first.
However, the synthetic diamonds that we are supposed to be discussing are actual diamonds. Of these, two production methods were recently discussed in wired (amoung other places). One of these is produced by vapor deposition with the idea of ultimately having diamond based substrates for semiconductors. The other uses a pressure and temperature method to produce high quality diamonds. Those are produced by Gemisis.
As a side note, the Gemisis/Russian Brilliant dimaonds seem to be avalible online for about 200$ a carot.
There is also a really easy test for cubic zirconia (although distructive). Punch something with the ring on. Cubic Zirconia has about the same index of refraction as diamond, but hardly has the same hardness or the same thermal conductivity (how jewlers figure verify if it is a real diamond when you take it in to be cleaned, for insurance purposes). Many jewelers will test to see if something is a real diamond whenever it is cleaned (about 10-15$).
I'm not so sure that anyone other than DeBeers mandates that synthetic diamonds be labeled as such. I also can see socially concious brides-to-be insisting on a synthetic because there is zero chance that it is a "blood diamond". Also, what woman do you know that given a choice between a 1/2 ct. and a 2 ct.(or larger) diamond would choose the smaller?
Remember, these aren't Cubic Zarconia, these are real diamonds, and those produced via vapor deposition are indistinguishable from the highest-priced diamonds found in nature. The yellow diamonds produced via the high pressure/temperature process are distingushable via fancy means, but again, natural yellow diamonds are among the most expensive. Either jewelers will have to accept the synthetic diamonds as legit, or devalue their most prized gems.
Actually, according to an article in a recent (this month?) Wired magazine, there is a corporation in Boston which is developing ultra-pure diamonds using a vapor disposition techinque. While the initial generations of diamonds produced in this way will be expensive, if they prove useful, mass production will ultimately drive the price of diamonds through the floor. Haha! take that DeBeers! (seriously, DeBeers's corporate executives cannot come to the US without being arrested, and they are single handly responsible for keeping the price of diamonds so high that wars can be financed via "blood diamonds" even though the mineral is not actually rare)
Unfortunately, I think that the correct solution to the heat issues associated with high-speed computing is to goto either slower or more efficient processors. I think that this is what Intel has been pushing with its Centrino line (my wife just got a centrino based notbook and its batteries easily go 3.5 hours, with the screen on), VIA with it's EDEN processors, and TRANSMETA has been doing with it's Coreuso (spelling?) processors. There is a whole community building passively cooled computers using these somewhat slower, but still good enough, chips. (we have a passively cooled EDEN based desktop/stereotop in our living room).
I've made some attempts to replace the incandecent bulbs in my house with compact florecents, and I have come to the conclusion that the "equivalent incansent bulb ratings" on the packaging are pretty wrong. Another problem is that they do not fit into the majority of my light fixtures.
LEDs on the other hand seem to be pretty good. I've recently purchased several LED based flashlights, and have been very impressed with their light output. Although it is a little on the blue side of natural light. I'm waiting for "high" power LED based lamps to become avalible at reasonable prices, and then I'll try some of those out as well.
Has SCO finally gone too far?
Nope, but Alabama got the bomb (joke). In reality, they did give the dead the right to vote (figure out what lobby that was?), and there is their religious fundamentalist cheif justice.
The mechanism for the exploding cell-phone batteries is most likely the same mechanism for exploding car batteries. Namely, electricity can cause the oxygen and hydrogen in water to dissociate. When this happens, if they hydrogen and oxygen mixture cannot escape, the pressure and the stored energy in the gases builds up. Eventually, there is a spark, or a pop (and then maybe a spark) which causes the battery to explode and then the hydrogen/oxygen mixture burns.
The solution....Don't use lead-acid batteries (or others containing water) in cell phones.
In my experience, while the name recognition of a school doesn't always gaurantee great students or great results (employment), it does correspond very well to the average caliber of the students. This can be important if you are going to school partially for networking (as future business people commonly do).
However, at nearly any school you can get a fantastic education. You just have to try. For example, at the large state school where I am (as a graduate student) the average undergraduate seems to veiw their college experience as an unsupervized extention of high school. However, there are some undergraduates who actually try, and these commonly get great educations and have their names on published papers (sometimes as first author) before graduation. Conversely, where I went for my undergraduate work, an expensive undergraduate-only college, most undergraduates were paying so much they made darn sure that they participated in original research, made connections, and built up their useful skills. However, there were some students who were there just to party.
And even then, if you do get a lot of useful experience/skills from your college, there is no gaurantee that you will end up with a good job, you're just bettering the odds of getting a good job.
Just check around the web a little bit, there are websellers claiming to have Opterons "in stock." Looks like the chips go for about $850 currently. This is the last week of august (for reference).
Not that I have had that much time to play with my sister's Powerbook (OSX), but in the time I did spend playing with it (including the terminal) it didn't feel much like the *NIXs I'm used to. In my past I spent some time developing software for the Macintosh platform (somewhere around their 7.something OS) and using them in school. While I'm sure that they have gotten much better since then (everyone always says they have), I found the user interface thoroughly un-intuative. One of the big problems that I think that Apple users, Macintish users, and *NIX users have relating to eachother is that they think in radically different ways. I'm sure that most of the people who use Apples find the interface completely intuative and are very productive using them. Just like the people who use GNU/Linux are completely comfortable (and happy to) navigate with the terminal and spend some time tinkering with their systems. I'm not entirely sure while people use windows.
Anyway, I think the reason why techies end up using GNU/Linux and other *NIX based systems over Apple or Microsoft based solutions is that the tools and the interfaces are intuative for them. Perhaps when Graphic Artists start crossing over to System Adminsitration we'll start seeing Apple based server farms.
Another possible cause for the strength of *NIX and GNU/LINUX based file servers/clusters/etc. is that if something doesn't quite work right, it is fairly easy to tinker with it. Especially compaired to what happens when Windows Update runs (or the Macintosh equivalent), everything goes back to the defaut settings.
Or rather they will be when the G5 starts shipping.
Funny thing is that AMD is supposed to ship it's "hammer" class of processors before Apple is supposed to ship G5 computers. I would also expect that intel will pump out some fast/power efficient processors in responce to both Apple's use of IBM's 5th generation of PowerPC chips and AMD's Optron chips. Basically, the G5 will make the high-end Mac about the same speed as the high-end PC equivalents (not saying anything about which is actually a better computer for productivity).
Another problem for the "low end apples are really mid-range PCs" is that in many cases (especially for the budget minded), a low-end PC is more than enough. With few exceptions, home users need something that can burn CDs, browse the web, wordprocess, and ballance the checkbook. Nearly every computer sold running any operating system can do this. It is hard for someone struggling to scrap together the 500$ for a entry level PC, monitor, and printer to justify the extra 500$ for the extras that come with an entry level MAC or a mid-range PC.
There are some things that both MACs and x86 computers have in common. The most important of these is the hard drives.
As someone that has as much trouble (ethically) with "Obey the Steve" as the "Obey the Bill" mentallity of both Apple and Microsoft, I am thrilled to work in a place where everything is gone on GNU/Linux boxes. The average useful life of the computers here is over five years (even for our file servers) with fairly minimal upgrades. I'm pretty sure, that whatever our sys-admin is being paid is made up by how little we have to spend on technology. There is an computer in my office (running) that is over ten, some in the control room are over fifteen (but they run DRDOS).
My point isn't that the US Military devices won't screw up US military communications, but that the US military has come up with a mechanism to deal with this if someone else has similar devices.
Considering how dependant the US military is on high tech communications, I'm guessing we are only hearing about this because they have figured out how to get around something like this. Anyone care to speculate on what that is?
Actually SCO's reasons for why the GPL is invalid is actually what makes GPL legally strong. It grants rights (unlimited copying and changes) that are prohibited if the user does not accept the license. Therefore, if someone makes more than one copy, or modifies the source code the defacto accept the license (or they are breaking the law).
I know that the God comment is supposed to be a joke, however one might want to consider the implications of immortality linke to technology. For example, access to high level medical procedures is already strongly linked to money. Certainly the first few people who are going to have access to "immortality" technology are going to be the super-rich and super-powerful. They will be able to use their extended lifetimes to further accumulate wealth and power. What is to keep these people from effectively becoming like gods-on-earth? If something akin to a "brain-transplant" this may become a little too much linke SG1.
I'm wondering what the mechanism would be for government support. About the only thing that I can think of would be something equivalent to the way the government funds art. AKA small grants to private individuals.
Basically I would worry that if a burocracy was added to the development process, it would end up mucking the development process up.
However, I'm pretty sure that some OSS softwares are directly descended from various government projects that were developed under the GPL or made open source after completion. (can someone help me with examples, or tell me I'm wrong).
I can think of at least one case. Most product tampering cases did use the original packaging (the tylenol poisoner for example). If the packaging was equiped with RFIDs, and the store tracked them. The store would then know that the RFID came back into the store after being sold, and they would certainly know when it was sold a second time. Even if the store didn't allert the customer who bought the tampered product, the police would know the proces through which the product was poisoned (even if they didn't know the identity of the tamperer).
The reason why crudy commercial software is so offensive is that it is always repersented as a finished product. OSS users (especially beta and version 1.0 users) know that they are helping the project by finding bugs and providing support to the authors. I think that the OSS developer community is just more honest than the commercial software community (or at least its management).
While the GPL is untested, it makes sense to me that it should be very strong legally. Mostly because it allows the licensee to do things that they would not otherwise be able to do (namely modify and re-distribute the code).
Actually, the last step does sound like pure capitalism. The first part is theft, which doesn't involve selling anything.
Since we're picking knits, a kleptocracy is actually any government which is characterized by rampant corruption. Now for the other definitions (provided by dictionary.com.
)socialism == Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy.
communism == A system of government in which the state plans and controls the economy and a single, often authoritarian party holds power, claiming to make progress toward a higher social order in which all goods are equally shared by the people.
capitalism == An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development is proportionate to the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market.
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The analogy isn't exactly wrong either. Corporations work very much like democracies, except that instead of one person one vote, it is one share one vote.
Regardless of weither or not it rewards the current SCO stock holders, it is by far fastest legal way to get rid of SCO.
Just thought of this. If the attempt to public domain the whole of SCO fails, and the do win their lawsuit or get some sort of footing to start enforcing their claims on the end users, then the stock price will skyrocket. The SCO stock could then be sold, and the profits used to pay the licensing fees.
Not that I want to endorce vigialantism, but DOS attacks on SCO and its partners could be used to stop other corporations from doing business with them. Perhaps that is the DOS attackers' goal. However, I do not think that the DOS attacks are productive to the goal of getting rid of SCO's attacks on Linux.
IMO, a much better strategy would be for everyone using Linux to start buying SCO stock, and then, as a stock holder action, vote all of SCO's patents and copyrights into the public domain (and then disolve the company).
However, the synthetic diamonds that we are supposed to be discussing are actual diamonds. Of these, two production methods were recently discussed in wired (amoung other places). One of these is produced by vapor deposition with the idea of ultimately having diamond based substrates for semiconductors. The other uses a pressure and temperature method to produce high quality diamonds. Those are produced by Gemisis.
As a side note, the Gemisis/Russian Brilliant dimaonds seem to be avalible online for about 200$ a carot.
There is also a really easy test for cubic zirconia (although distructive). Punch something with the ring on. Cubic Zirconia has about the same index of refraction as diamond, but hardly has the same hardness or the same thermal conductivity (how jewlers figure verify if it is a real diamond when you take it in to be cleaned, for insurance purposes). Many jewelers will test to see if something is a real diamond whenever it is cleaned (about 10-15$).
Remember, these aren't Cubic Zarconia, these are real diamonds, and those produced via vapor deposition are indistinguishable from the highest-priced diamonds found in nature. The yellow diamonds produced via the high pressure/temperature process are distingushable via fancy means, but again, natural yellow diamonds are among the most expensive. Either jewelers will have to accept the synthetic diamonds as legit, or devalue their most prized gems.
Actually, according to an article in a recent (this month?) Wired magazine, there is a corporation in Boston which is developing ultra-pure diamonds using a vapor disposition techinque. While the initial generations of diamonds produced in this way will be expensive, if they prove useful, mass production will ultimately drive the price of diamonds through the floor. Haha! take that DeBeers! (seriously, DeBeers's corporate executives cannot come to the US without being arrested, and they are single handly responsible for keeping the price of diamonds so high that wars can be financed via "blood diamonds" even though the mineral is not actually rare)
Unfortunately, I think that the correct solution to the heat issues associated with high-speed computing is to goto either slower or more efficient processors. I think that this is what Intel has been pushing with its Centrino line (my wife just got a centrino based notbook and its batteries easily go 3.5 hours, with the screen on), VIA with it's EDEN processors, and TRANSMETA has been doing with it's Coreuso (spelling?) processors. There is a whole community building passively cooled computers using these somewhat slower, but still good enough, chips. (we have a passively cooled EDEN based desktop/stereotop in our living room).
LEDs on the other hand seem to be pretty good. I've recently purchased several LED based flashlights, and have been very impressed with their light output. Although it is a little on the blue side of natural light. I'm waiting for "high" power LED based lamps to become avalible at reasonable prices, and then I'll try some of those out as well.
Has SCO finally gone too far? Nope, but Alabama got the bomb (joke). In reality, they did give the dead the right to vote (figure out what lobby that was?), and there is their religious fundamentalist cheif justice.
The solution....Don't use lead-acid batteries (or others containing water) in cell phones.
However, at nearly any school you can get a fantastic education. You just have to try. For example, at the large state school where I am (as a graduate student) the average undergraduate seems to veiw their college experience as an unsupervized extention of high school. However, there are some undergraduates who actually try, and these commonly get great educations and have their names on published papers (sometimes as first author) before graduation. Conversely, where I went for my undergraduate work, an expensive undergraduate-only college, most undergraduates were paying so much they made darn sure that they participated in original research, made connections, and built up their useful skills. However, there were some students who were there just to party.
And even then, if you do get a lot of useful experience/skills from your college, there is no gaurantee that you will end up with a good job, you're just bettering the odds of getting a good job.
Just check around the web a little bit, there are websellers claiming to have Opterons "in stock." Looks like the chips go for about $850 currently. This is the last week of august (for reference).
Anyway, I think the reason why techies end up using GNU/Linux and other *NIX based systems over Apple or Microsoft based solutions is that the tools and the interfaces are intuative for them. Perhaps when Graphic Artists start crossing over to System Adminsitration we'll start seeing Apple based server farms.
Another possible cause for the strength of *NIX and GNU/LINUX based file servers/clusters/etc. is that if something doesn't quite work right, it is fairly easy to tinker with it. Especially compaired to what happens when Windows Update runs (or the Macintosh equivalent), everything goes back to the defaut settings.
Funny thing is that AMD is supposed to ship it's "hammer" class of processors before Apple is supposed to ship G5 computers. I would also expect that intel will pump out some fast/power efficient processors in responce to both Apple's use of IBM's 5th generation of PowerPC chips and AMD's Optron chips. Basically, the G5 will make the high-end Mac about the same speed as the high-end PC equivalents (not saying anything about which is actually a better computer for productivity).
Another problem for the "low end apples are really mid-range PCs" is that in many cases (especially for the budget minded), a low-end PC is more than enough. With few exceptions, home users need something that can burn CDs, browse the web, wordprocess, and ballance the checkbook. Nearly every computer sold running any operating system can do this. It is hard for someone struggling to scrap together the 500$ for a entry level PC, monitor, and printer to justify the extra 500$ for the extras that come with an entry level MAC or a mid-range PC.
As someone that has as much trouble (ethically) with "Obey the Steve" as the "Obey the Bill" mentallity of both Apple and Microsoft, I am thrilled to work in a place where everything is gone on GNU/Linux boxes. The average useful life of the computers here is over five years (even for our file servers) with fairly minimal upgrades. I'm pretty sure, that whatever our sys-admin is being paid is made up by how little we have to spend on technology. There is an computer in my office (running) that is over ten, some in the control room are over fifteen (but they run DRDOS).
My point isn't that the US Military devices won't screw up US military communications, but that the US military has come up with a mechanism to deal with this if someone else has similar devices.
Considering how dependant the US military is on high tech communications, I'm guessing we are only hearing about this because they have figured out how to get around something like this. Anyone care to speculate on what that is?
Actually SCO's reasons for why the GPL is invalid is actually what makes GPL legally strong. It grants rights (unlimited copying and changes) that are prohibited if the user does not accept the license. Therefore, if someone makes more than one copy, or modifies the source code the defacto accept the license (or they are breaking the law).
I know that the God comment is supposed to be a joke, however one might want to consider the implications of immortality linke to technology. For example, access to high level medical procedures is already strongly linked to money. Certainly the first few people who are going to have access to "immortality" technology are going to be the super-rich and super-powerful. They will be able to use their extended lifetimes to further accumulate wealth and power. What is to keep these people from effectively becoming like gods-on-earth? If something akin to a "brain-transplant" this may become a little too much linke SG1.
Basically I would worry that if a burocracy was added to the development process, it would end up mucking the development process up.
However, I'm pretty sure that some OSS softwares are directly descended from various government projects that were developed under the GPL or made open source after completion. (can someone help me with examples, or tell me I'm wrong).
I can think of at least one case. Most product tampering cases did use the original packaging (the tylenol poisoner for example). If the packaging was equiped with RFIDs, and the store tracked them. The store would then know that the RFID came back into the store after being sold, and they would certainly know when it was sold a second time. Even if the store didn't allert the customer who bought the tampered product, the police would know the proces through which the product was poisoned (even if they didn't know the identity of the tamperer).
The reason why crudy commercial software is so offensive is that it is always repersented as a finished product. OSS users (especially beta and version 1.0 users) know that they are helping the project by finding bugs and providing support to the authors. I think that the OSS developer community is just more honest than the commercial software community (or at least its management).
While the GPL is untested, it makes sense to me that it should be very strong legally. Mostly because it allows the licensee to do things that they would not otherwise be able to do (namely modify and re-distribute the code).
Since we're picking knits, a kleptocracy is actually any government which is characterized by rampant corruption. Now for the other definitions (provided by dictionary.com.
)socialism == Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy.
communism == A system of government in which the state plans and controls the economy and a single, often authoritarian party holds power, claiming to make progress toward a higher social order in which all goods are equally shared by the people.
capitalism == An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development is proportionate to the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market.