Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you sell a router box with firmware code in it, isn't that "distributing"? Isn't that what Belkin is doing?
If not, if this is being run on their own systems, then how did the top-level poster get this information?
I suppose there's another option -- where they only rent the router boxes, and don't give a license to open or disassemble the binaries/firmware. In that case, it could be argued that they are selling a service, and distributing nothing. Is that what's happening?
Very interesting situation, this.
But what's this bit about "If they didn't distribute the compiler..."? That, I don't understand as well. You modify the binaries, you distribute the modified binaries, you need to distribute the code itself. In fact, as I understand it, even if you *don't* modify the binaries, if you distribute the binaries commercially, you also have to distribute or offer to distribute the code. So what's this about compilers?
I see your point. However, if I had to guess, the silent treatment is while management tries to figure out what to do.
I could imagine quite possibly that they've signed some NDAs that won't allow them to release all their source code. Then this GPL stuff means that they have to release all their source code -- or so it seems.
So now they've got to figure out what to do, and while they're figuring, it's legally safer to say nothing to anyone.
Probably their best way out is either get the NDAs released [unlikely], or find out the individual authors of their modules, and work out individual licensing agreements [difficult, but possible] that keep it outside the GPL. At that point, though, you won't have your information.
That said, I have to think about SCO, and think that one shouldn't take a "All your codebase are belong to us" approach. My feeling is that trying to knock others out to get what you want, is kindof evil. And that goes in both directions.
So I think persistance is key, here, but if they made a mistake, (1) don't gloat -- rather, be meek (2) still be persistent, and try to get FSF's help pursuing this (3) hopefully get the FSF to offer them help in finding for themselves a legally sound position.
P.S. Good hacking job [and yes, that's hacking not cracking, though I hope that they don't just decide 'hit him with the DMCA -- he's too small to fight it.' Ugh. This DMCA gives all the power to big criminals, it seems to me, and takes power away from little law abiders.
> I think you hit "Reply To this" to the wrong person....
Indeed you are right. My apologies--I mistook your comment for your sig and ignored it, and the quote for your comment.
Also, re: that other anonymous coward post, parallel this one, who said
> He had to sneek [sic] off the farm to use the > computer so cut him some slack
Thanks for the slack. However, in reality the Amish let their kids go as they will, so there's no sneeking, particularly. That results in some heroin addict Amish kids, but it also results in kids who realize "what my parents have is a sight better than what the other Lancaster / Dayton / Brazil folks have."
What people don't understand, though, is that once you get the moral living down right, a lot of the other stuff works itself out. For example, you know how all our Mars probes keep on getting lost, once they try to land? Well, that's because the Amish who are farming on Mars are using the probes to make plows. If you really want to see what it's like, you'll have to put on black and white clothes [or brown, for parties] and learn a Pennsylvania-Dutch accent, but there's one to two buggies a year that leave for Mars. It's a twelve -year round trip, but they're patient folks.
I take it you find Amishism to be an extreme version of Christianity. I, on the other hand, would find it too me a self-consistent version of Christianity.
In light of that, I'd like to correct your statement.
You think the RIAA was made to serve the public.
The RIAA thinks that the RIAA was made to serve the Recording Industry.
But maybe God thinks that the RIAA was made to bring you full circle and hopefully drive you back to something very like Amishism.
I, for one, respect the Amish, and wish that my life was a ton more like theirs. But I am not they, so I attempt [much less successfully, I suspect] in my own place, self-consistent Christianity.
The Amish really have a major section of their lives figured out, which I and most others do not.
That the anonymous mudslinging didn't have support, but the post it was slinging mud at did?
Okay.
Suggestion, though: go ahead and read the links. They're actually quite interesting. And no, they were not random snippets of economic theories ripped out of context.
The first group (harvard) is data and analysis. It is prepared for the UN, but it is actually a quite valuable compilation.
The other group *is* economic theory, but they've typically been right ahead of time. It's pretty good work they do.
That said, I *could* be wrong. I don't claim divine inspiration for this. I rather came up with a scenario that I consdier to be more likely than other scenarios, in a pleurality fashion. Only time will tell, though.
And no, I didn't point to Linux as the shining beacon of hope etc, etc, etc. I rather said "get it while you can, if you want it, because Linux' shining beacon of hope in justice may not come through." I expect there will be plenty who want it. Quite frankly, I didn't point to any shining beacon of hope in a world gone mad -- but if you want one, try www.worldchallenge.org . That's the best I can suggest for you -- start there.
Can I ask, though, where exactly you are invested that this hit such a sore spot for you? And I don't mean necessarily economically invested, as in M$ stock, SCO stock, or whatnot. I mean, where are you invested, possibly psychologically or personally, that it hit such a sore spot?
Hate to break it to you, but "Caldera" is one of the most violently destructive naturally-developed volcano types around. First the bubble of magma rises to the surface. Then it releases steam for a few days, until the pressure drops down to below that necessary to hold the roof up. Then it falls in and explodes an a giant... well... blast... that would dwarf the tiny thing at Mt. St. Helens.
There are probably more violent geologic activities than that -- for example, a wall of lava 500 m high that rushed from eastern Washington State to the pacific in the age of the dinosaurs [talking off the top of my head here... and I have a very unreliable memory].
But my impression was that that wall of lava could have been stimulated by cracks in the Earth's crust after an asteroid impact.
Point being, though, wouldn't it be... well, something amazing, if M$ had been targeting Linux from the first, and named had their little trojan horse named Caldera as their little signature of smugness as they...
Nah. Couldn't be.
PS. There's a caldera under Long Valley near Cal Tech, and I think there's another under Minnesota. And don't believe the PBS documentary about Krakatoa and climatic change -- when my Dad and I were watching that, he said "they lied, outright there" twice, and stopped the VCR, and pulled out some magazines [Sci Amer, Nat Geo], and showed where references made in the PBS documentary said exactly the opposite of the referenced material.
Last I knew, it was always possible to buy professional witnesses to say whatever you want them to say. And you think that MSCO won't be buying witnesses?
Quite seriously, a major reason for America's economic troubles, according to the Harvard Global Competitiveness Report, is a failure of the court systems, especially in contract law.
Although the whole report is for sale, you can click through to some pdfs, and read them. Especially interesting is the Executive summary, in which [p. 19] they say that they are increasing the weighting of technological innovation, [p. 20] note that the US has fallen to #2 and Finland has taken #1.
Yet for the case of the United States [p.37], they note that the bubble has burst, and they say that technology is *overrated*. They also note that the major problems with the US are the undermined court system, now ranked around #14.
What that means is that they US hasn't just fallen to #2. In reality, the US has already fallen a good deal farther. And when you consider that superpowers *do* have more power, and therefore fall under the category of "more competitive" all other things being equal, that means that the US is really hurting, and is probably going to hurt more. Fallen, fallen, is Babylon and all that.
Now, flip over to the Cato Institute, and you can find documents [or this] where they point out that the fall Argentina's peso was engineered, and that this represented a major additional break from the rule of law. But what also hurt was that their court systems were completely corrupted, and their society had separated into two societies: the taxed and the government folks.
Well, hate to break the news, but it's looking a lot like what Argentina had, America is getting ready to eat themselves. Not that it will be exactly alike. I fully expect a blackmarket boom in Argentina, followed by [1% chance] them becoming the top economic power in the world if they are good to each other, or [99% chance] them turning military and conquering most of South and Central America, and sending a pressure hammer of refugees into North America. The US, on the other hand, I expect to slide into corruption, and be overwhelmed by said pressure hammer.
But back to the topic at hand, I don't think we can necessarily expect expert witnesses, truth, and Justice to prevail, in light of the American way.
So if you're into Linux, download all the source code you can right now, and put it on CDs/DVDs, and keep it. You may find that it is quite valuable for internal use, and public use after you're sure that it's clean. Don't let Linux depend on America, because America has different ideas right now.
Perhaps what Red Hat should do...
on
SCO SCO SCO!
·
· Score: 1
... is require a slightly different Non-disclosure agreement, to be signed by both parties. Essentially, their person gets to look at the data for the sole purpose of identifying whether Red Hat needs to pay licensing fees.
*Both parties* agree not to disclose the results of the viewing without court order. Both parties also agree that a licensing contract can occur, but will not take effect until after SCO publicly releases their information [or releases it to the courts].
In that way, if royalties are justified, SCO can depend on getting them to help finance their lawsuit, as bad as that tastes to me.
But Red Hat doesn't bear liability to other Linux vendors who see the value of their Linux holdings drop based on a Red Hat licensing from SCO.
Alternatively, what's the net value of SCO according to stock price? Suppose that a website began that just took the names of Linux users who would contract to buy shares of SCO, say at $80 per installation, as long as the fund had enough to reasonably insure a majority shareholder buyout?
In that case, the fund then takes names until it has enough to buy out SCO, then buys it out, and then GPLs all the information at once.
Then it takes the shell of SCO and reworks the business model to something that works, and vacations in Hawaii on the Microsoft licensing fees.
It's not that the public are not owed the works or are owed the works --
-- to make it absolutely clear, you don't owe the public anything. You want to keep your work private, you can. Period.
However, it is not natural [more specifically, not natural law] to tell a person that he cannot do his utmost to better himself, including copying others.
Copying others, amongst animals, is known as "training", or sometimes "learning". Amongst people, it is known as "learning". It is a basic survival technique. Now, the government actually puts itself at risk by violating natural law, but for whatever reason, America's founding fathers decided to have a copyright law. But they do not owe it to you, the artist, to limit others' productivity.
You are claiming what is not yours.
The original book is yours. Binding other people's labor is not.
But according to experiments I've been doing with the code I downloaded and ran for them, the bit throughput rate does seem to dip when I throw something interesting in there.
For example, when my computer was working on the data in an area near the equator at the body of leo (look at the third yellow square for leo--that's approximately the location), I mixed in some Elvis with the data, and got back a 20-second pause in the bitrate.
I have to say: it's really been great to be able to analyze the dynamics of distributed processing, and I'm really grateful to the SETI-at-home project for letting me be a part of it.
[PS... on a different note, it's interesting that the greatest frequency of data is right along the milky-way's equator. On a not of caution, I think that says something more about the system they're using, than about their data.]
For crying out loud, don't you know where the word "nerd" comes from?
Keep a notepad in your hip pocket, and your pens in your nerd bag [pocket protector that goes in your white starch short-sleeve shirt].
You can also keep your slide-rule in your nerd-bag as well -- keeping it in your pants pocket isn't advisable, as you might break it.
P.S. If you *do* have a slide rule, you definitely do not want to break it. Those things, just like fountain pens, probably will gain a good deal of value as antiques.
When I left America (2000), there were a ton of different companies. I could use any calling card I wanted. By the time I came back, Verizon had gained a monopoly in a number of areas including New York [non-Verizon calling card numbers were BLOCKED], Virginia [buy a card a 7-11, and it didn't work at their own phones, since their phones were Verizon phones. They were selling Sprint cards.]
The customer service is not good... I'd have to say I don't see a great deal of advantage to privatization, unless you have a lot of money for stock, and inside connections.
As far as I can tell, the privatize/nationalize cycle for big business goes like this: if you have money available, encourage privatization. If you have assets but not money, encourage nationalization. But hey, whadda I know. I'm just a little guy, and don't have the big picture regarding privatization.
But something keeps telling me at the back of my head that the big guys are just big guys, and they don't have the big picture either.
I dunno. I kindof approve of the guy going public. You have to stand up to evil people, or you get 0wn3d.
I'd like to note that here in Lithuania, the farmers depend on flooding to fertilize the fields. Remember how the American Indians fertilized their fields with a fish for each corn plant? Well, this is fertilizing with fish poop, which is nothing mroe than -- you guessed it -- processed fish.
But on the other hand, violent flooding could be controlled.
Maybe, they could have scheduled floods of an affordable magnitude. Just, hopefully, it won't be 3 scheduled floods per year, for 30 years, followed by one unscheduled giant flood. Not to say that this is a bad idea, but projects this big, projects of a new order of magnitude, always worry me. Remember the Challenger.
More and more, from Michael Millikin to Trump, to Bill Clinton to George Bush to Enron to previous Microsoft antitrust suits to Waste Management, I seem to be seeing that the United States is not a country of law.
That means that whatever decision is made may have nothing to do with legality, but just to do with who benefits. If that's the case, then Linux loses.
On the other hand, if that is the case, then betting on America is a losing bet too. I seem to remember that the Cato Institute explained Argentina's crash, by saying that countries that are not based on the rule of law should use currencies of those that are based on the rule of law, or mass inflation and deflation becomes highly likely.
But America doesn't depend on Linux. Rather, I am just concerned that Linux will become a casualty of America's slide.
I am referring to the strong force, that is, the force which binds the nucleus together.
Essentially, you have a H+ nucleus with R,G, and B quarks. The binding force on those quarks is essentially zero, and two of those quarks have the same charge. Either through what seems to be random motions or according to the electric field, they will separate.
However, as you increase the distance between the quarks, the colorless principle is violated, and the energy of the strong field increases until it is enough to cause pair production (say, R/R'). The outer quark now annhilates with the newly made antiquark, and total energy is conserved, but the new quark is now back within the radius of the nucleus.
So right at the boundary of the nucleus, you have continuous quark/antiquark production and annhilation. Thus, my statement about continuous decomposition. And it isn't a definite boundary, it is an indefinite boundary, but a very real one that is approximately (by definition) equal to the radius of the nuclus.
That coward who said "only when it has infinite momentum" is referring to DxDp=hbar.
That electron cloud is not just a visualization.
The electron doesn't just take up a point. It exists in all those points at once. Thus, it can absorb a light ray that is bigger than a point. Indeed, you throw a whole bunch of electrons into an "electron gas" (that is, free electron cloud of a conductor), and the electron can recieve and transmit from a space the size of the whole conductor.
The energy of that light wave is typically absorbed as a packet by *all* the electrons in the conductor. But it also can be absorbed by each of the electrons in the conductor.
As a side note, very often, if the visualization works, it is because there is something inherently true about it. Plum-pudding models *don't* work for atoms. However, they *do* work for nuclei. That is because the structure of the nucleus involves a bunch of quarks continuously decomposing at the boundaries of the nucleus.
The electron cloud of a Hydrogen atom exists at all points, because of the virtual particle creation and destruction that goes on throughout the entire field of the electron cloud. Conservation occurs, but the electron is virtually and mathematically at all points in the cloud, and all points in the cloud recieve the photon at once. Therefore, it isn't just one point.
My brother had free email access, but attachments were not allowed. He wanted some of his programs emailed to him.
What I did was first write a *very* short program similar to UUENCODE that broke the program into ascii, and another that reassembled it. I did it all in assembler using DOS Debug, so the decoding program was quite short: something like 90 bytes.
I then output it, data wise (d 100-28C) to a stream, collected it, edited the stream to a series of data entry commands (e 80 42 4C 81...), and posted it on the email. Told him "Clip this, save as myfile.inp, also as decode.com, and then type C>debug decode.com myfile.inp". He did, and he had a reception program. That worked for about 3 files, but on the fourth it choked. Turned out that =20= was a special symbol that didn't transmit. I reprogrammed around it, sent that, and after that we had a nice little way to send and recieve programs via email.
No standards, except for the knowledge that he'd have a version of DOS Debug on his computer, too.
All of which totally misses your point, I know. But it was an interesting exercise.
Basis State I state committee pos group mod one obj, temp found priepri mod object state temp oriented prie nunc obj language standard, temp declare nunc this state temp mod scientific obj standard fut sole.
Int Please req temp state aware be nunc clause state this temp equiv nunc mod intellectual obj property, and state state temp use nunc act sole mod state standard reflex act mod without state mod proper obj sole state temp payment nunc act of royalties act temp state prosecuted act fut by mad-dog lawyers for Microsoft such as the one who state temp state prosecute act prie hyp them group obj. English
You've got to remember the heisenberg uncertainty principle: Delta E * Delta T = hbar (limit case).
That said, it means that an electron is bigger than a nucleus. Don't believe me? Look at the structure of an atom. Big electron, tiny nucleus. Large-mass structures like you and me are only large in size because we are held apart by the electron shells.
Which leads to an interesting error, and makes me wonder if they really know their science as well as they say:
Even a person will [provide the mass to make a black hole] do, although you'd have to cram them into the space occupied by a single electron. (from the article)
If he had wanted to say this, he could have said as easily "atom" instead of "electron". So it looks like he was saying "cram them into a space 1/1000 the size of a hydrogen nucleus", since an electron is 1/1000 the mass of a proton. But in that case, he needs to say "cram them into the space of an nucleus of mass 1000u." Less impressive-sounding, but more impressive.
Not confused yet? I am. So I'm going to stop talking now.
Let me point out that Slashdot could definitely use the reliability of a Microsoft-based server. Then, we wouldn't have to worry about the inavailability of...... oh. wait a minute. nevermind...
[Looks up relationship between Slashdot, FSF]
FSF stands for free software foundation. Doesn't it? I guess they can get all the free software they want. [quietly sticks foot in mouth, hops away on remaining leg..]
Just a point -- directly after you link the cell phones to the RC cars, (noting that that's 1-way data transfer), what's next?
How about, using those nice color cell-phone screens to display an image from the car?
Send it in at about 5 frames per second, 150x150. At Jpeg, that would be about 100kbaud. However, with any decent codec, you should be able to get that down by a factor of 10 or so, since the majority of the data will be changing in specific, set ways.
So now you can have real-life races from the security of your cell phone. And high-tech racing cars, too. I'm willing to bet that people would pay for that -- and it doesn't stop there, does it?
The days of the arial racing and dogfights may be coming back!
Don't sign me up, though. I need to hold down a job. I'm gonna stick this one in the same classification as Nethack: save it for Heaven; I might have enough time then. Might.
Actually, there's a problem here. America is technically a common-law country, and also has laws prohibiting ex-post-facto decisions. However, the way our government has behaving, it may as well be a written-law country.
What I am saying is that it is currently unenforceable. However, you need a specific judgement to get your contract in specific thrown out, and to go after a specific judgement, you need to challenge the company and get fired. May as well not sign, then. Without the specific judgement, if the country later changes its laws to say that it *is* enforceable, then you've just been sold up the river.
Further, the boss may have been truthful, in that the bank requires these agreements, then it is the bank that wants the slave-owners. It is also the bank that is slowly taking control of the company. So if that is so, then they clearly have more than enough assets to harrass ex-employees out of any useful labor. See some of the other posts in this line, and you will see that some of these companies really do use their contracts to violate the law.
It might be interesting to go into a class action lawsuit against all companies that require these NCAs, and -- where applicable -- specifically reflect the class action lawsuit to the banks, if the NCAs were required by the banks as terms of loan agreements, since the loans are often forced on the small business (that is, it is a case of take the loan, or get seized in foreclosure). But when I say interesting, I don't say good. Theft in response to theft doesn't really solve anything. It just makes the problems bigger and deeper. The best response may be to just start publicizing lists of slave-driving executives, unjust executives, and weak executives who don't protect their people. In other words, have a list of "who is currently being evil or weak". Then submit that list to Forbes magazine every year, as well.
That way, investors can stay away from companies driven by such leaders. Would that make sense to investors? I really think it would make sense to the smartest of them, since a business is properly viewed not as an investment, but as a reaction chamber that has to maintain 4 ingredients in a proper mixture: investors, workers, customers, and working fluid[$]. Destroy too much of one or another, and you have a business that cannot last.
My brother lost his job over not signing a non-compete. He was in the middle of developing a new product line for the company, and they said "well, finish up the development first", and he did. It was a new technology for the company, too: sending data over the power lines.
Then he was let go.
He explained not signing by pointing out that (1) the agreement was not legal [there were clauses in it that would never be upheld in court, including not working in any competing field for 10 years, including any field that the company later got into], enslaving, and wrong.
The company explained it by saying that getting their bank loans renewed depended on them getting all employees to sign these agreements. True or not, I do know that the company was in some level of loan trouble -- so I do consider it possible.
What I'd imagine is just including USB and an ethernet port. If someone needs a CD, tie in through one of those. That way, you save the cost of the CD, save battery, and lighten the laptop to boot.
And stick Lilo / network boot on the bios, so that you can install it over the network quickly.
Let's see... also good would be a monochrome electronic ink display behind plastic, a hall-effect keyboard/mouse, and a decent sound system. With that, there isn't a whole lot I couldn't do. Nice long battery life, lightweight, strong.
One last thing: include the powerpack inside the computer. My favorite is to have the case be the transformer (top plate is one winding, bottom plate is another, sides are the carry-through to make a ring), and let the magnetic iron double as structural strength for the whole thing.
It would definitely require some redesign, though.
Slashdot Mirror
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you sell a router box with firmware code in it, isn't that "distributing"? Isn't that what Belkin is doing?
If not, if this is being run on their own systems, then how did the top-level poster get this information?
I suppose there's another option -- where they only rent the router boxes, and don't give a license to open or disassemble the binaries/firmware. In that case, it could be argued that they are selling a service, and distributing nothing. Is that what's happening?
Very interesting situation, this.
But what's this bit about "If they didn't distribute the compiler..."? That, I don't understand as well. You modify the binaries, you distribute the modified binaries, you need to distribute the code itself. In fact, as I understand it, even if you *don't* modify the binaries, if you distribute the binaries commercially, you also have to distribute or offer to distribute the code. So what's this about compilers?
I see your point. However, if I had to guess, the silent treatment is while management tries to figure out what to do.
I could imagine quite possibly that they've signed some NDAs that won't allow them to release all their source code. Then this GPL stuff means that they have to release all their source code -- or so it seems.
So now they've got to figure out what to do, and while they're figuring, it's legally safer to say nothing to anyone.
Probably their best way out is either get the NDAs released [unlikely], or find out the individual authors of their modules, and work out individual licensing agreements [difficult, but possible] that keep it outside the GPL. At that point, though, you won't have your information.
That said, I have to think about SCO, and think that one shouldn't take a "All your codebase are belong to us" approach. My feeling is that trying to knock others out to get what you want, is kindof evil. And that goes in both directions.
So I think persistance is key, here, but if they made a mistake, (1) don't gloat -- rather, be meek (2) still be persistent, and try to get FSF's help pursuing this (3) hopefully get the FSF to offer them help in finding for themselves a legally sound position.
P.S. Good hacking job [and yes, that's hacking not cracking, though I hope that they don't just decide 'hit him with the DMCA -- he's too small to fight it.' Ugh. This DMCA gives all the power to big criminals, it seems to me, and takes power away from little law abiders.
> I think you hit "Reply To this" to the wrong person....
Indeed you are right. My apologies--I mistook your comment for your sig and ignored it, and the quote for your comment.
Also, re: that other anonymous coward post, parallel this one, who said
> He had to sneek [sic] off the farm to use the
> computer so cut him some slack
Thanks for the slack. However, in reality the Amish let their kids go as they will, so there's no sneeking, particularly. That results in some heroin addict Amish kids, but it also results in kids who realize "what my parents have is a sight better than what the other Lancaster / Dayton / Brazil folks have."
What people don't understand, though, is that once you get the moral living down right, a lot of the other stuff works itself out. For example, you know how all our Mars probes keep on getting lost, once they try to land? Well, that's because the Amish who are farming on Mars are using the probes to make plows. If you really want to see what it's like, you'll have to put on black and white clothes [or brown, for parties] and learn a Pennsylvania-Dutch accent, but there's one to two buggies a year that leave for Mars. It's a twelve -year round trip, but they're patient folks.
In light of that, I'd like to correct your statement.
You think the RIAA was made to serve the public.
The RIAA thinks that the RIAA was made to serve the Recording Industry.
But maybe God thinks that the RIAA was made to bring you full circle and hopefully drive you back to something very like Amishism.
I, for one, respect the Amish, and wish that my life was a ton more like theirs. But I am not they, so I attempt [much less successfully, I suspect] in my own place, self-consistent Christianity.
The Amish really have a major section of their lives figured out, which I and most others do not.
That the anonymous mudslinging didn't have support, but the post it was slinging mud at did?
Okay.
Suggestion, though: go ahead and read the links. They're actually quite interesting. And no, they were not random snippets of economic theories ripped out of context.
The first group (harvard) is data and analysis. It is prepared for the UN, but it is actually a quite valuable compilation.
The other group *is* economic theory, but they've typically been right ahead of time. It's pretty good work they do.
That said, I *could* be wrong. I don't claim divine inspiration for this. I rather came up with a scenario that I consdier to be more likely than other scenarios, in a pleurality fashion. Only time will tell, though.
And no, I didn't point to Linux as the shining beacon of hope etc, etc, etc. I rather said "get it while you can, if you want it, because Linux' shining beacon of hope in justice may not come through." I expect there will be plenty who want it. Quite frankly, I didn't point to any shining beacon of hope in a world gone mad -- but if you want one, try www.worldchallenge.org . That's the best I can suggest for you -- start there.
Can I ask, though, where exactly you are invested that this hit such a sore spot for you? And I don't mean necessarily economically invested, as in M$ stock, SCO stock, or whatnot. I mean, where are you invested, possibly psychologically or personally, that it hit such a sore spot?
There are probably more violent geologic activities than that -- for example, a wall of lava 500 m high that rushed from eastern Washington State to the pacific in the age of the dinosaurs [talking off the top of my head here... and I have a very unreliable memory].
But my impression was that that wall of lava could have been stimulated by cracks in the Earth's crust after an asteroid impact.
Point being, though, wouldn't it be ... well, something amazing, if M$ had been targeting Linux from the first, and named had their little trojan horse named Caldera as their little signature of smugness as they ...
Nah. Couldn't be.
PS. There's a caldera under Long Valley near Cal Tech, and I think there's another under Minnesota. And don't believe the PBS documentary about Krakatoa and climatic change -- when my Dad and I were watching that, he said "they lied, outright there" twice, and stopped the VCR, and pulled out some magazines [Sci Amer, Nat Geo], and showed where references made in the PBS documentary said exactly the opposite of the referenced material.
Quite seriously, a major reason for America's economic troubles, according to the Harvard Global Competitiveness Report, is a failure of the court systems, especially in contract law.
Although the whole report is for sale, you can click through to some pdfs, and read them. Especially interesting is the Executive summary, in which [p. 19] they say that they are increasing the weighting of technological innovation, [p. 20] note that the US has fallen to #2 and Finland has taken #1.
Yet for the case of the United States [p.37], they note that the bubble has burst, and they say that technology is *overrated*. They also note that the major problems with the US are the undermined court system, now ranked around #14.
What that means is that they US hasn't just fallen to #2. In reality, the US has already fallen a good deal farther. And when you consider that superpowers *do* have more power, and therefore fall under the category of "more competitive" all other things being equal, that means that the US is really hurting, and is probably going to hurt more. Fallen, fallen, is Babylon and all that.
Now, flip over to the Cato Institute, and you can find documents [or this] where they point out that the fall Argentina's peso was engineered, and that this represented a major additional break from the rule of law. But what also hurt was that their court systems were completely corrupted, and their society had separated into two societies: the taxed and the government folks.
Well, hate to break the news, but it's looking a lot like what Argentina had, America is getting ready to eat themselves. Not that it will be exactly alike. I fully expect a blackmarket boom in Argentina, followed by [1% chance] them becoming the top economic power in the world if they are good to each other, or [99% chance] them turning military and conquering most of South and Central America, and sending a pressure hammer of refugees into North America. The US, on the other hand, I expect to slide into corruption, and be overwhelmed by said pressure hammer.
But back to the topic at hand, I don't think we can necessarily expect expert witnesses, truth, and Justice to prevail, in light of the American way.
So if you're into Linux, download all the source code you can right now, and put it on CDs/DVDs, and keep it. You may find that it is quite valuable for internal use, and public use after you're sure that it's clean. Don't let Linux depend on America, because America has different ideas right now.
... is require a slightly different Non-disclosure agreement, to be signed by both parties. Essentially, their person gets to look at the data for the sole purpose of identifying whether Red Hat needs to pay licensing fees.
*Both parties* agree not to disclose the results of the viewing without court order. Both parties also agree that a licensing contract can occur, but will not take effect until after SCO publicly releases their information [or releases it to the courts].
In that way, if royalties are justified, SCO can depend on getting them to help finance their lawsuit, as bad as that tastes to me.
But Red Hat doesn't bear liability to other Linux vendors who see the value of their Linux holdings drop based on a Red Hat licensing from SCO.
Alternatively, what's the net value of SCO according to stock price? Suppose that a website began that just took the names of Linux users who would contract to buy shares of SCO, say at $80 per installation, as long as the fund had enough to reasonably insure a majority shareholder buyout?
In that case, the fund then takes names until it has enough to buy out SCO, then buys it out, and then GPLs all the information at once.
Then it takes the shell of SCO and reworks the business model to something that works, and vacations in Hawaii on the Microsoft licensing fees.
It's not that the public are not owed the works or are owed the works --
-- to make it absolutely clear, you don't owe the public anything. You want to keep your work private, you can. Period.
However, it is not natural [more specifically, not natural law] to tell a person that he cannot do his utmost to better himself, including copying others.
Copying others, amongst animals, is known as "training", or sometimes "learning". Amongst people, it is known as "learning". It is a basic survival technique. Now, the government actually puts itself at risk by violating natural law, but for whatever reason, America's founding fathers decided to have a copyright law. But they do not owe it to you, the artist, to limit others' productivity.
You are claiming what is not yours.
The original book is yours. Binding other people's labor is not.
For example, when my computer was working on the data in an area near the equator at the body of leo (look at the third yellow square for leo--that's approximately the location), I mixed in some Elvis with the data, and got back a 20-second pause in the bitrate.
I have to say: it's really been great to be able to analyze the dynamics of distributed processing, and I'm really grateful to the SETI-at-home project for letting me be a part of it.
[PS... on a different note, it's interesting that the greatest frequency of data is right along the milky-way's equator. On a not of caution, I think that says something more about the system they're using, than about their data.]
For crying out loud, don't you know where the word "nerd" comes from?
Keep a notepad in your hip pocket, and your pens in your nerd bag [pocket protector that goes in your white starch short-sleeve shirt].
You can also keep your slide-rule in your nerd-bag as well -- keeping it in your pants pocket isn't advisable, as you might break it.
P.S. If you *do* have a slide rule, you definitely do not want to break it. Those things, just like fountain pens, probably will gain a good deal of value as antiques.
When I left America (2000), there were a ton of different companies. I could use any calling card I wanted. By the time I came back, Verizon had gained a monopoly in a number of areas including New York [non-Verizon calling card numbers were BLOCKED], Virginia [buy a card a 7-11, and it didn't work at their own phones, since their phones were Verizon phones. They were selling Sprint cards.]
The customer service is not good... I'd have to say I don't see a great deal of advantage to privatization, unless you have a lot of money for stock, and inside connections.
As far as I can tell, the privatize/nationalize cycle for big business goes like this: if you have money available, encourage privatization. If you have assets but not money, encourage nationalization. But hey, whadda I know. I'm just a little guy, and don't have the big picture regarding privatization.
But something keeps telling me at the back of my head that the big guys are just big guys, and they don't have the big picture either.
I dunno. I kindof approve of the guy going public. You have to stand up to evil people, or you get 0wn3d.
I'd like to note that here in Lithuania, the farmers depend on flooding to fertilize the fields. Remember how the American Indians fertilized their fields with a fish for each corn plant? Well, this is fertilizing with fish poop, which is nothing mroe than -- you guessed it -- processed fish.
But on the other hand, violent flooding could be controlled.
Maybe, they could have scheduled floods of an affordable magnitude. Just, hopefully, it won't be 3 scheduled floods per year, for 30 years, followed by one unscheduled giant flood. Not to say that this is a bad idea, but projects this big, projects of a new order of magnitude, always worry me. Remember the Challenger.
... is that the law will be ignored.
More and more, from Michael Millikin to Trump, to Bill Clinton to George Bush to Enron to previous Microsoft antitrust suits to Waste Management, I seem to be seeing that the United States is not a country of law.
That means that whatever decision is made may have nothing to do with legality, but just to do with who benefits. If that's the case, then Linux loses.
On the other hand, if that is the case, then betting on America is a losing bet too. I seem to remember that the Cato Institute explained Argentina's crash, by saying that countries that are not based on the rule of law should use currencies of those that are based on the rule of law, or mass inflation and deflation becomes highly likely.
But America doesn't depend on Linux. Rather, I am just concerned that Linux will become a casualty of America's slide.
I am referring to the strong force, that is, the force which binds the nucleus together.
Essentially, you have a H+ nucleus with R,G, and B quarks. The binding force on those quarks is essentially zero, and two of those quarks have the same charge. Either through what seems to be random motions or according to the electric field, they will separate.
However, as you increase the distance between the quarks, the colorless principle is violated, and the energy of the strong field increases until it is enough to cause pair production (say, R/R'). The outer quark now annhilates with the newly made antiquark, and total energy is conserved, but the new quark is now back within the radius of the nucleus.
So right at the boundary of the nucleus, you have continuous quark/antiquark production and annhilation. Thus, my statement about continuous decomposition. And it isn't a definite boundary, it is an indefinite boundary, but a very real one that is approximately (by definition) equal to the radius of the nuclus.
That coward who said "only when it has infinite momentum" is referring to DxDp=hbar.
That electron cloud is not just a visualization.
The electron doesn't just take up a point. It exists in all those points at once. Thus, it can absorb a light ray that is bigger than a point. Indeed, you throw a whole bunch of electrons into an "electron gas" (that is, free electron cloud of a conductor), and the electron can recieve and transmit from a space the size of the whole conductor.
The energy of that light wave is typically absorbed as a packet by *all* the electrons in the conductor. But it also can be absorbed by each of the electrons in the conductor.
As a side note, very often, if the visualization works, it is because there is something inherently true about it. Plum-pudding models *don't* work for atoms. However, they *do* work for nuclei. That is because the structure of the nucleus involves a bunch of quarks continuously decomposing at the boundaries of the nucleus.
The electron cloud of a Hydrogen atom exists at all points, because of the virtual particle creation and destruction that goes on throughout the entire field of the electron cloud. Conservation occurs, but the electron is virtually and mathematically at all points in the cloud, and all points in the cloud recieve the photon at once. Therefore, it isn't just one point.
The electron is really that large.
My brother had free email access, but attachments were not allowed. He wanted some of his programs emailed to him.
What I did was first write a *very* short program similar to UUENCODE that broke the program into ascii, and another that reassembled it. I did it all in assembler using DOS Debug, so the decoding program was quite short: something like 90 bytes.
I then output it, data wise (d 100-28C) to a stream, collected it, edited the stream to a series of data entry commands (e 80 42 4C 81...),
and posted it on the email. Told him "Clip this, save as myfile.inp, also as decode.com, and then type C>debug decode.com myfile.inp". He did, and he had a reception program. That worked for about 3 files, but on the fourth it choked. Turned out that =20= was a special symbol that didn't transmit. I reprogrammed around it, sent that, and after that we had a nice little way to send and recieve programs via email.
No standards, except for the knowledge that he'd have a version of DOS Debug on his computer, too.
All of which totally misses your point, I know. But it was an interesting exercise.
Basis State I state committee pos group mod one obj, temp found priepri mod object state temp oriented prie nunc obj language standard, temp declare nunc this state temp mod scientific obj standard fut sole.
... ... ... ...
Int Please req temp state aware be nunc clause state this temp equiv nunc mod intellectual obj property, and state state temp use nunc act sole mod state standard reflex act mod without state mod proper obj sole state temp payment nunc act of royalties act temp state prosecuted act fut by mad-dog lawyers for Microsoft such as the one who state temp state prosecute act prie hyp them group obj. English
2.
3. Profit!
That said, it means that an electron is bigger than a nucleus. Don't believe me? Look at the structure of an atom. Big electron, tiny nucleus. Large-mass structures like you and me are only large in size because we are held apart by the electron shells.
Which leads to an interesting error, and makes me wonder if they really know their science as well as they say:
Even a person will [provide the mass to make a black hole] do, although you'd have to cram them into the space occupied by a single electron. (from the article)
If he had wanted to say this, he could have said as easily "atom" instead of "electron". So it looks like he was saying "cram them into a space 1/1000 the size of a hydrogen nucleus", since an electron is 1/1000 the mass of a proton. But in that case, he needs to say "cram them into the space of an nucleus of mass 1000u." Less impressive-sounding, but more impressive.
Not confused yet? I am. So I'm going to stop talking now.
Let me point out that Slashdot could definitely use the reliability of a Microsoft-based server. Then, we wouldn't have to worry about the inavailability of... ... oh. wait a minute. nevermind...
[Looks up relationship between Slashdot, FSF]
FSF stands for free software foundation. Doesn't it? I guess they can get all the free software they want. [quietly sticks foot in mouth, hops away on remaining leg..]
Mark Twain once said he'd never read another book in German, because once he did attempt it, and got to the last page, but it was missing.
But all the verbs were on the last page.
So anyhow, thank goodness for the last line. It's a lifesaver.
Just a point -- directly after you link the cell phones to the RC cars, (noting that that's 1-way data transfer), what's next?
How about, using those nice color cell-phone screens to display an image from the car?
Send it in at about 5 frames per second, 150x150. At Jpeg, that would be about 100kbaud. However, with any decent codec, you should be able to get that down by a factor of 10 or so, since the majority of the data will be changing in specific, set ways.
So now you can have real-life races from the security of your cell phone. And high-tech racing cars, too. I'm willing to bet that people would pay for that -- and it doesn't stop there, does it?
The days of the arial racing and dogfights may be coming back!
Don't sign me up, though. I need to hold down a job. I'm gonna stick this one in the same classification as Nethack: save it for Heaven; I might have enough time then. Might.
Actually, there's a problem here. America is technically a common-law country, and also has laws prohibiting ex-post-facto decisions. However, the way our government has behaving, it may as well be a written-law country.
What I am saying is that it is currently unenforceable. However, you need a specific judgement to get your contract in specific thrown out, and to go after a specific judgement, you need to challenge the company and get fired. May as well not sign, then. Without the specific judgement, if the country later changes its laws to say that it *is* enforceable, then you've just been sold up the river.
Further, the boss may have been truthful, in that the bank requires these agreements, then it is the bank that wants the slave-owners. It is also the bank that is slowly taking control of the company. So if that is so, then they clearly have more than enough assets to harrass ex-employees out of any useful labor. See some of the other posts in this line, and you will see that some of these companies really do use their contracts to violate the law.
It might be interesting to go into a class action lawsuit against all companies that require these NCAs, and -- where applicable -- specifically reflect the class action lawsuit to the banks, if the NCAs were required by the banks as terms of loan agreements, since the loans are often forced on the small business (that is, it is a case of take the loan, or get seized in foreclosure). But when I say interesting, I don't say good. Theft in response to theft doesn't really solve anything. It just makes the problems bigger and deeper. The best response may be to just start publicizing lists of slave-driving executives, unjust executives, and weak executives who don't protect their people. In other words, have a list of "who is currently being evil or weak". Then submit that list to Forbes magazine every year, as well.
That way, investors can stay away from companies driven by such leaders. Would that make sense to investors? I really think it would make sense to the smartest of them, since a business is properly viewed not as an investment, but as a reaction chamber that has to maintain 4 ingredients in a proper mixture: investors, workers, customers, and working fluid[$]. Destroy too much of one or another, and you have a business that cannot last.
My brother lost his job over not signing a non-compete. He was in the middle of developing a new product line for the company, and they said "well, finish up the development first", and he did. It was a new technology for the company, too: sending data over the power lines.
Then he was let go.
He explained not signing by pointing out that (1) the agreement was not legal [there were clauses in it that would never be upheld in court, including not working in any competing field for 10 years, including any field that the company later got into], enslaving, and wrong.
The company explained it by saying that getting their bank loans renewed depended on them getting all employees to sign these agreements. True or not, I do know that the company was in some level of loan trouble -- so I do consider it possible.
Anyone else know for sure?
What I'd imagine is just including USB and an ethernet port. If someone needs a CD, tie in through one of those. That way, you save the cost of the CD, save battery, and lighten the laptop to boot.
And stick Lilo / network boot on the bios, so that you can install it over the network quickly.
Let's see... also good would be a monochrome electronic ink display behind plastic, a hall-effect keyboard/mouse, and a decent sound system. With that, there isn't a whole lot I couldn't do. Nice long battery life, lightweight, strong.
One last thing: include the powerpack inside the computer. My favorite is to have the case be the transformer (top plate is one winding, bottom plate is another, sides are the carry-through to make a ring), and let the magnetic iron double as structural strength for the whole thing.
It would definitely require some redesign, though.