f I understand history correctly (and I might not), Novell donated a large block of proprietary code to Linux. SCO claimed that the "stolen code" was hidden somewhere inside that
So, Novell inserted proprietary code (presumably that they didn't own, since if they owned it, they had the legal right to insert it), and SCOX sued IBM?
That would be nice, but we do not adhere to the Geneva Conventions on POWs as we have defined these folks as "Enemy Combatants".
In fact, we do adhere to the Geneva Conventions on POW's.
However, we are not signatory to the extra protocols to the Geneva Convention that define extra categories of "soldier". For instance, the parts we're signatory to require that a "soldier" wear a uniform or some other distinguishing mark visible from a distance. Otherwise, he doesn't count as a soldier, and is not covered by the Geneva Convention on POW's.
And yet, he is shooting at our soldiers, and therefore doesn't come under the parts of the Geneva Conventions that define "civilian".
Huh? Speed limits were created for fuel economy, not safety.
Speed limits were created fre revenue enhancement. Not for safety, and not for fuel economy. They're there to provide extra money to local budgets in the form of speeding tickets.
Note that in neither the fuel economy nor safety models would it make sense to lower Interstate speed limits in cities (same limited access, same road designs). And yet speed limits are lowered by 5-10 mph in most cities while driving on the Interstates.
This is always the case in any kind of democracy. In many systems, the majority has established various roadblocks that prevent 50%+1 from doing anything too rashly. But if 50%+1 really want to do it and remain committed, either they can or it isn't democracy.
Then I guess the USA isn't a Democracy. A Constitutional Amendment can be used to remove civil rights, but they take 2/3 of both houses of Congress and 3/4 of all States to implement.
Measures before the Senate can be blocked by a 41% minority, if that minority is willing.
I can't say that either of these things upsets me terribly, since I'm more a King Log than a King Stork type, and retaining the Status Quo (which is the only thing that can be accomplished by the minorities in either example) is generally a good thing, or at least not too bad a thing.
I contend that while slim majorities do plenty of stupid, fickle things, the average opinion of the majority over the long term is far more benevolent than it is typically given credit for.
The decision to make slavery legal in the USA was not done by a "slim" majority, but rather by an overwhelming one. It wasn't especially benevolent, either to the slaves or their masters, in the long run.
if you are in a true democracy and the voters want that, you get it
The notion that the civil rights of any minority are subject to revocation at the whim of 50%+1 of the vote is scary.
I don't expect good things from this move. Actually, I don't expect these loons to get elected, either.
And how DO you determine that they're following their rules? After all, it's not hard for them to cook the books on a poll, if they have some predetermined outcome in mind.
Putting them in equatorial geostationary orbits is *much* simpler. You'll lose a small amount of generating time each day (while the station is in Earth's shadow), but if you schedule as much of your maintenance as possible during this time, the effect is minimal.
No. An equatorial orbit only goes into Earth's shadow during two short periods a year, near the Equinoxes. Off the cuff, I think the sats will be able to enter Earth's shadow once daily for about three weeks every Equinox.
The rest of the time, the axial tilt of the Earth is enough to keep the sats in light 24 hours a day.
This has to do with the people in power in the 1930's and 1940's, namely the emperor.
The Emperor was only nominally in power in the 1930's and '40's. Just like the Queen of England today (and then), the Parliament really ran things, with the Prime Minister the de facto guy in charge.
Note that during much of the 1930's and 1940's, the PM of Japan was a general.
The politicians are unlikely to make the ban (on the tax) permanent
The politicians CANNOT make the ban (on the tax) permanent. Any law automatically supersedes any previously written laws on a given issue, given proper jurisdiction (States cannot override Federal laws, though the Feds CAN override State laws).
Theoretically, they could ban internet taxes forever tomorrow. And the day after tomorrow, impose a $1/bit tax on internet traffic. And, lo! There would be a $1/bit tax on the internet. Until a new law was written.
Note that that means even an extension doesn't mean quite what you might think. If they extend the ban for five years, and three years from now, they "revisit" the issue, the ban can be ignored in favour of a tax, in spite of the ban saying that the internet can't be taxed.
On the other hand, the ban DOES prevent lesser jurisdictions from taxing the internet. Which is pretty much the intent of the ban. But don't make the mistake of thinking that the internet can't be taxed if a permanent ban is passed. It just means it can't be taxed until Congress decides it's in Congress's interest to tax the internet.
The symptoms of lower dose radiation poisoning are headaches and then vomiting.
Note that "lower dose" in this context is 50-100 REM within a short period. Which is a LOT of radiation to be emitted from a SNAP reactor. I don't think anything in orbit has a reactor large enough to do that these days.
Chernobyl was a know bad design before it was built.
No. Chernobyl had issues, but the reason it melted down was that ALL of the safety features were disabled to run a test for the Soviet equivalent of the NRC.
The test in question was meant to determine how much power could be extracted from a nuclear plant in meltdown. Which information would allow them to plan better for dealing with meltdowns, should one happen.
Alas, to put Chernobyl into the near-meltdown condition required for the test, they had to disable all of the safety interlocks, then push the plant to the brink of a meltdown.
And when you push a nuclear plant to the brink of meltdown with ALL of the saftey interlocks disabled, bad things can happen.
The only drawback can be handled by law. There is a (perhaps legitimate) fear that some employers might try to dictate employee votes and check reciepts. Simply make it a felony to demand someone's vote reciept or to offer any sort of coercion or incentive to show a vote reciept . Being under orders/instruction to do so with coercion is a mitigating circumstance but should not excuse the crime. It should likewise be a felony to instruct another to do so. Publicise that law well through PSAs before the election.
So, your solution to a potential failure mode is to make it illegal? Using that logic, we could solve the e-voting sans paper trail problem by making it illegal to tamper with a voting machine.
Note that vote fraud is already illegal (and it happens anyway), so making it MORE illegal probably won't accomplish much - anymore than making murder illegal has made murder vanish from the world....
The meter was original defined such that the diameter or radius of the earth at GMT would be a simple power of ten of the meter.
No. The meter was originally defined as one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the Equator. Which isn't really too far off - less than one fifth of one percent.
Deforestation, for one. Turning large chunks of landscape into desert. Making it impossible for whatever lived there before men came along and set fire to everything in sight to live there after the fires went out.
The same sort of things were done in North America by the Amerinds. Though not on the same scale, I must admit. But they did use fire to alter the native forests to something more suitable for their lifestyle. In case you weren't aware, Old Growth Forest isn't really very friendly to hunter-gatherers. Burn it down, and the meadows followed by brush followed by young forests are much more useful to primitive men.
I wouldn't want to be a passenger on an airplane where the pilot believes the earth is flat, at least on a long trip. If they didn't know to follow the great circle route to the destination, they might not be able to get there given the plane's weight and fuel.
You obviously have the rather delusional belief that the pilot on an Airliner plans his route carefully before he takes off, rather than following the route programmed into the Autopilot for the particular route he's flying.
Sorry, your example sucketh. A private pilot, flying his Learjet, might have a problem this way, if he believed the Earth was flat. But you won't be flying with him.
Note that on a modern autopilot, you enter start position, end position, and diverse waypoints, and the autopilot magically comes up with a course to follow. You neither have to know or care how it comes up with the course to follow it.
A non-delusional leader could easily make policy and set an example that does not prevent the delusional people from believing in their fairytale, while letting the rational people get on with doing rational things and making modern life possible for everyone else.
But he probably won't, based on those on/. who consider themselves "non-delusional". As intolerant of differences as any member of the Spanish Inquisition, for the most part.
I think the Pres. has a lot of influence over congress, don't you?
You obviously haven't studied the history of our government too much. The Presidents generally would have liked to have influence over Congress. Very few since Washington have actually had all that much. Why do you think that Congress has, in general, not done what Bush wanted, and didn't, in general, do what Clinton wanted?
And I'm not talking about the opposite Party Congresses that both had to deal with in the later parts of their Presidencies. I'm talking about the Congresses they both started with, where both Houses were controlled by the Presidential Party.
Suppose some applicant described his belief that the earth is actually flat during the interview. Would you really say, "Who am I to shove my beliefs down your throat? Your're hired!"
No, I'd say "so, why did you tell me that? It nothing to do with the job, and is therefore none of my business. Just like your sexual orientation, or your religious affiliation."
Of course, they might have told me that so that they'd have a basis for an EEOC lawsuit if I failed to hire them...since belief in a spherical Earth has little to do with pretty much any job description, and it'd probably be guaranteed to keep them from getting the job from a significant fraction of the hiring population.
Are you a fucking idiot? The whole point is that mass of an object doesn't vary with temperature. The liter of water at STP gets bigger or smaller with temp, but doesn't change mass.
Well, if you pick a given blob of water, and measure it at 4C, and it is one liter in volume, and one kilogram in mass, and you then heat it to 98C, it is certainly still one kilogram in mass. But it is no longer ONE LITER. It is now slightly larger than ONE LITER (which is defined as one cubic decimeter, by the way).
The two of you have been talking past each other for lo, these many posts.
Nonetheless, the truth is that if you take a kilo of water and change its temp, it's still a kilo. But it has a different volume.
Contrariwise, if you take a given volume of water (say, by putting it into an open container with a volume of one liter, and heat it up (thus allowing the excess to spill from the container, and retaining the VOLUME of water desired), the mass of THAT VOLUME will go down. Or up, depending on starting and ending temp, of course.
Oh, and your first counter-argument (Are you a fucking idiot?) was so profoundly cogent as to awe me with your debating skill. Perhaps you'd care to enlighten us as to which institution of higher learning taught you that technique, that the rest of us may avail ourselves of the same no doubt insight-filled studies as you have embarked on.
That's the fucking point. It starts as a liter, you freeze it, it still weighs the same, but it's a bit bigger.
So...it's a bit bigger. Which means that it's not a liter anymore. It may still be a kilogram, of course. but unless it has a volume equal to a cube whose side is 1/2997924580 the distance light travels in a vacuum in one second, then it's not a liter.
Alternatively, in your reality, the liter is a variable volume.
Are you suggesting that Australian aborigines are irresponsible in using fire as part of their land management?
In a word, yes. It's not like they had a clue what the long-term effects of their "land management" was going to be. And doing things without a clue as to long-term effects fits my definition of irresponsible.
Or do you just like saying the word Abo? Do you spit when you say it?
There are people who spit when they say "Abo"? Wherever do you live that that should happen? Here in N'Awlins, it would never occur to us to be rude that way.
We'd be rude in different ways, if we wanted to be rude....
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So, Novell inserted proprietary code (presumably that they didn't own, since if they owned it, they had the legal right to insert it), and SCOX sued IBM?
Interesting legal theory.
Because they'd inherit SCO's liability to IBM? And Red Hat? And Autozone?
In fact, we do adhere to the Geneva Conventions on POW's.
However, we are not signatory to the extra protocols to the Geneva Convention that define extra categories of "soldier". For instance, the parts we're signatory to require that a "soldier" wear a uniform or some other distinguishing mark visible from a distance. Otherwise, he doesn't count as a soldier, and is not covered by the Geneva Convention on POW's.
And yet, he is shooting at our soldiers, and therefore doesn't come under the parts of the Geneva Conventions that define "civilian".
Hence, "enemy combatant".
Speed limits were created fre revenue enhancement. Not for safety, and not for fuel economy. They're there to provide extra money to local budgets in the form of speeding tickets.
Note that in neither the fuel economy nor safety models would it make sense to lower Interstate speed limits in cities (same limited access, same road designs). And yet speed limits are lowered by 5-10 mph in most cities while driving on the Interstates.
Then I guess the USA isn't a Democracy. A Constitutional Amendment can be used to remove civil rights, but they take 2/3 of both houses of Congress and 3/4 of all States to implement.
Measures before the Senate can be blocked by a 41% minority, if that minority is willing.
I can't say that either of these things upsets me terribly, since I'm more a King Log than a King Stork type, and retaining the Status Quo (which is the only thing that can be accomplished by the minorities in either example) is generally a good thing, or at least not too bad a thing.
The decision to make slavery legal in the USA was not done by a "slim" majority, but rather by an overwhelming one. It wasn't especially benevolent, either to the slaves or their masters, in the long run.
The notion that the civil rights of any minority are subject to revocation at the whim of 50%+1 of the vote is scary.
I don't expect good things from this move. Actually, I don't expect these loons to get elected, either.
And how DO you determine that they're following their rules? After all, it's not hard for them to cook the books on a poll, if they have some predetermined outcome in mind.
No. An equatorial orbit only goes into Earth's shadow during two short periods a year, near the Equinoxes. Off the cuff, I think the sats will be able to enter Earth's shadow once daily for about three weeks every Equinox.
The rest of the time, the axial tilt of the Earth is enough to keep the sats in light 24 hours a day.
The Emperor was only nominally in power in the 1930's and '40's. Just like the Queen of England today (and then), the Parliament really ran things, with the Prime Minister the de facto guy in charge.
Note that during much of the 1930's and 1940's, the PM of Japan was a general.
Taking a leak in an alley is punishable by a year in the slammer where you live??? Wow, down here, that's just a misdemeanor.
Likewise, wow. I used to do the SCA thing many years ago. Swords could get you in trouble with the police, but not FELONY-level trouble....
The politicians CANNOT make the ban (on the tax) permanent. Any law automatically supersedes any previously written laws on a given issue, given proper jurisdiction (States cannot override Federal laws, though the Feds CAN override State laws).
Theoretically, they could ban internet taxes forever tomorrow. And the day after tomorrow, impose a $1/bit tax on internet traffic. And, lo! There would be a $1/bit tax on the internet. Until a new law was written.
Note that that means even an extension doesn't mean quite what you might think. If they extend the ban for five years, and three years from now, they "revisit" the issue, the ban can be ignored in favour of a tax, in spite of the ban saying that the internet can't be taxed.
On the other hand, the ban DOES prevent lesser jurisdictions from taxing the internet. Which is pretty much the intent of the ban. But don't make the mistake of thinking that the internet can't be taxed if a permanent ban is passed. It just means it can't be taxed until Congress decides it's in Congress's interest to tax the internet.
Note that "lower dose" in this context is 50-100 REM within a short period. Which is a LOT of radiation to be emitted from a SNAP reactor. I don't think anything in orbit has a reactor large enough to do that these days.
No. Chernobyl had issues, but the reason it melted down was that ALL of the safety features were disabled to run a test for the Soviet equivalent of the NRC.
The test in question was meant to determine how much power could be extracted from a nuclear plant in meltdown. Which information would allow them to plan better for dealing with meltdowns, should one happen.
Alas, to put Chernobyl into the near-meltdown condition required for the test, they had to disable all of the safety interlocks, then push the plant to the brink of a meltdown.
And when you push a nuclear plant to the brink of meltdown with ALL of the saftey interlocks disabled, bad things can happen.
So, your solution to a potential failure mode is to make it illegal? Using that logic, we could solve the e-voting sans paper trail problem by making it illegal to tamper with a voting machine.
Note that vote fraud is already illegal (and it happens anyway), so making it MORE illegal probably won't accomplish much - anymore than making murder illegal has made murder vanish from the world....
No. The meter was originally defined as one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the Equator. Which isn't really too far off - less than one fifth of one percent.
Deforestation, for one. Turning large chunks of landscape into desert. Making it impossible for whatever lived there before men came along and set fire to everything in sight to live there after the fires went out.
The same sort of things were done in North America by the Amerinds. Though not on the same scale, I must admit. But they did use fire to alter the native forests to something more suitable for their lifestyle. In case you weren't aware, Old Growth Forest isn't really very friendly to hunter-gatherers. Burn it down, and the meadows followed by brush followed by young forests are much more useful to primitive men.
You obviously have the rather delusional belief that the pilot on an Airliner plans his route carefully before he takes off, rather than following the route programmed into the Autopilot for the particular route he's flying.
Sorry, your example sucketh. A private pilot, flying his Learjet, might have a problem this way, if he believed the Earth was flat. But you won't be flying with him.
Note that on a modern autopilot, you enter start position, end position, and diverse waypoints, and the autopilot magically comes up with a course to follow. You neither have to know or care how it comes up with the course to follow it.
But he probably won't, based on those on /. who consider themselves "non-delusional". As intolerant of differences as any member of the Spanish Inquisition, for the most part.
You obviously haven't studied the history of our government too much. The Presidents generally would have liked to have influence over Congress. Very few since Washington have actually had all that much. Why do you think that Congress has, in general, not done what Bush wanted, and didn't, in general, do what Clinton wanted?
And I'm not talking about the opposite Party Congresses that both had to deal with in the later parts of their Presidencies. I'm talking about the Congresses they both started with, where both Houses were controlled by the Presidential Party.
No, I'd say "so, why did you tell me that? It nothing to do with the job, and is therefore none of my business. Just like your sexual orientation, or your religious affiliation."
Of course, they might have told me that so that they'd have a basis for an EEOC lawsuit if I failed to hire them...since belief in a spherical Earth has little to do with pretty much any job description, and it'd probably be guaranteed to keep them from getting the job from a significant fraction of the hiring population.
Well, if you pick a given blob of water, and measure it at 4C, and it is one liter in volume, and one kilogram in mass, and you then heat it to 98C, it is certainly still one kilogram in mass. But it is no longer ONE LITER. It is now slightly larger than ONE LITER (which is defined as one cubic decimeter, by the way).
The two of you have been talking past each other for lo, these many posts.
Nonetheless, the truth is that if you take a kilo of water and change its temp, it's still a kilo. But it has a different volume.
Contrariwise, if you take a given volume of water (say, by putting it into an open container with a volume of one liter, and heat it up (thus allowing the excess to spill from the container, and retaining the VOLUME of water desired), the mass of THAT VOLUME will go down. Or up, depending on starting and ending temp, of course.
Oh, and your first counter-argument (Are you a fucking idiot?) was so profoundly cogent as to awe me with your debating skill. Perhaps you'd care to enlighten us as to which institution of higher learning taught you that technique, that the rest of us may avail ourselves of the same no doubt insight-filled studies as you have embarked on.
No. 299792458000 is the distance in millimeters that light travels in one second. One cubic millimeter is one microliter, not one liter.
The value I provided, 2997924580, is the distance in decimeters that light travels in a second. One cubic decimeter is one liter.
So...it's a bit bigger. Which means that it's not a liter anymore. It may still be a kilogram, of course. but unless it has a volume equal to a cube whose side is 1/2997924580 the distance light travels in a vacuum in one second, then it's not a liter.
Alternatively, in your reality, the liter is a variable volume.
In a word, yes. It's not like they had a clue what the long-term effects of their "land management" was going to be. And doing things without a clue as to long-term effects fits my definition of irresponsible.
There are people who spit when they say "Abo"? Wherever do you live that that should happen? Here in N'Awlins, it would never occur to us to be rude that way.
We'd be rude in different ways, if we wanted to be rude....
That would include the immigration mentioned in the original post.
Tojo. Togo was the Russo-Japanese War, not WW2.