The difference is that the so-called "infringing" code in Linux is for a much more general-purpose function than SCO's implementation of EXT2 or Linux compatibility.
Well, that and SCO doesn't own "it" (RCU and NUMA). IBM does. SCO claims to own RCU and NUMA, but they've been claiming a lot of things that they either haven't substantiated or have submitted piles of steaming horseshit in place of actual evidence.
(sorry about ending a sentence with a preposition, I can't quite figure out how to reshuffle it to fix the problem).
I predict the tortious interference charge is going to be the RedHat charge that really puts the icing on SCO's cake. Any takers?
No, trying to steal money from others is bad by misrepresenting the assets of your company to potential shareholders so that they will value your company more highly, so that you can sell to them and call out "sucker!!!" as you flee the scene is bad.
Don't pretend they're making an honest profit here because there's no way to interpret that from the facts.
Oh, and putting food on the table is only good if you can do it while not taking food off of the table of others (i.e. if you produce something, or otherwise add value to the system). In my humble opinion, anyway.
When entering into a new contract relationship, insist on clear deliverables and terms of payment: allow frequent invoice submission frequency, short terms (no more than net30), learn what their accounts payable pipeline is (regular invoice approval/check cutting schedule) and then follow each of the first invoices until the check is in your hand and in your account.
Follow the invoices like a bloodhound. If asked (or even pre-emptively), make it clear that you will not be working (or billing) the hours that you're managing billing and then do it in front of them. The instant one of your invoices leaves the regular billing cycle to actually get close to net30, get ready to leave. When one breaks net30, stop working until the invoice is paid in full.
I've never had a bum payee, though a few have tried. The real secret to success is to have an initial invoice to them after a week of work and a second in the pipeline by the time the first is paid. In most cases, there won't be enough work that they can afford to stiff you yet, no matter how much they may like to. In addition, the attitude about the early invoices results in a "squeaky wheel" treatment.
Finally, the secret to success with this strategy is to work very hard and very well on the tasks that need doing. If you're a pain in the ass about your billing and you're not much of a self-starter, you're in trouble and you'll be looking for another client fairly quickly (without a reference). If you're a productivity monster and you let them know that you absolutely insist on being paid on time, you'll get paid and you'll get the reference when the job is done.
I would have gone completely postal on about day three. That's crazy talk: overt monitoring on every aspect of your job, time cards, etc.
When I was in high school, I worked for a lumberyard at a job that was almost as bad, but thank something I took the time to get an education...
Teachers are professionals: expected to be leaders, coaches, activity organizers, surrogate parents, disciplinarians, and a dozen other things I can't think of right now. You start treating them like children (like that call center job does) and you just lost the capability to ask for anything more than you expect from children.
Are they deliberately trying to reduce the motivation of teachers to the same level as call center workers? I can't believe the morale of workers in either profession is very good, but no need to get sadistic on the poor teachers!
How many people have been in class and had a teacher watched by an administration member only to watch a COMPLETELY different teacher come through? Exactly.
Yeah, change from a confident leader and lecturer, able to discipline heckling and give attention to many people to a person nervous about how his review on basically pandering to the school's "customers" (students) might affect his ability to get tenure or just plain keep his position.
RTFA, I know, it's not about college teachers (who have to worry about tenure), but the problems with public schools in the US are legion and though this probably won't hurt the style of many teachers, it will definitely affect all of them, some negatively. What teacher will have the courage to share something intimate with a classroom of students and the ubiquitous video camera? Will any student be willing to privately talk to a teacher with the cameras always rolling? Really?
If it's under the teacher's control (for exams or can be switched on when the teacher wants it to be on), then I can see some real benefit. The teacher is still the leader of the classroom and there's no threat to that. Remove the power to turn off the watchful eye and the teacher is no longer the leader in the classroom.
At least, in my opinion and albeit limited experience.
A few subtle misses, but otherwise on the mark. One thing the author did not understand was that it is impossible to retract permission once given and accepted.
The whole "succession" issue at the end of the article is a red herring because once others have taken you up on your offer to use and redistribute your work under the GPL, you can't retract that offer. If I die and my children start getting greedy about my estate, they aren't going to have much that they can do about code I've released under public licenses. If I have a new release that I haven't yet revealed at the moment of my untimely demise, they could sell that, but that's an entirely different issue.
As for the Linux trademark, when the time comes, I suspect that it will be granted to a foundation or non-profit that Linus believes will be an effective steward of the mark from that point onward. He strikes me as the type of person who will be annoyed that he has to mess with such mundanities, but will do the right thing instead of allowing his legacy to be tainted by the greed of his heirs.
Also to the issue of indemnity that the author mentions, I believe it to be another wasted paragraph. IANAL, but customers are not responsible for the sins of the vendor. This is why Microsoft recently eliminated caps on customer indemnity in their license. There's no risk of customers needing indemnity so MS isn't out anything to make it available to all comers.
Otherwise, I think there's some real insight. SCO doesn't have the argument or the evidence to actually weaken Linux's momentum but at lease one assertion about the characteristics of the GPL will be heard in court. I predict that the Red Hat proceedings are going to be such a slam dunk that the GPL is seen as having nice sharp teeth from here on out.
Ah, but the Red Hat case will get to court rather quickly, and Red Hat has also made it's case a test of the GPL (though less direct than the IBM assertions of SCO GPL'ing their own code).
The child falls off the deck and breaks his spine and is paralyzed from the waist down for life.
1) What deck are you referring to? In this discussion, we've got roller coasters, pools, and fences, but your post is the first to mention a deck.
The child is not at fault, and should not bear the cost of the negligence of others.
2) Life is not fair. No matter what society says, I am ultimately responsible for my own safety, as is every other person on this planet with agency (i.e. is concious with decision making capacity; infants don't qualify).
Parents will almost always assume responsibility for the safety of their young children because they love them and want their genes to continue on through more generations. There's nothing stopping them from doing that (I will do that when I have children of my own, probably about three years from now, I'm guessing) but let's not pretend that even younger children don't bear real responsibility for their sometimes stupid actions. To repeat: this parental generosity doesn't remove ultimate responsibility from the individual.
I'll bet my kids are going to end up in the emergency room more than once and I hope that they gain wisdom from their injuries, but I'm not going to sue the construction company building a house nearby if my kid sneaks into the partly finished house and 1) steps on a nail in a loose board 2) in suprise and pain at the nail penetrating his foot, falls from an unfinished upper floor to the plywood covered floor below, breaking his arm and then proceeds to 3) cut his hand on roughed in ductwork trying to get back out... (it was a very exciting day for my mom, who was convinced that I was never going to make it to adulthood). But there was no thought of suing the construction company. I was foolish and paid the price for my stupidity.
If a different child pays a higher price for his stupidity than I did, then I'm sorry for his troubles, but this is yet another way in which our modern legal system does not attempt to determine responsibility sanely, but instead seeks to assign blame to anyone but the injured party so that they can be "compensated" for their loss.
No wonder that the first two ways people expect to get rich in this country are 1) win a big lawsuit or 2) win the lottery. Lawyers are writing the laws which benefit the lawyers (find the deepest pockets in reach and plunder... not easy enough to plunder? "There ought to be a law." "It's for the sake of the children..." "If just one child is saved.") Complete and utter bullshit.
Sorry about that. Nothing personal, your post just happened to be the straw that broke the camel's back, as it were...
Actually, the LOGO 20 is roughly equivalent to a smaller.30 gas helicopter in weight and outdoor performance. There are many even smaller helicopters (Hornet, Piccolo, etc.) that are gram-shavers and awfully sketchy in a light breeze, but that's not what we're talking about here.
All flying machines are constructed to be light weight, but the new LOGO 24 will weigh almost four pounds all up and if you use lithium-polymer cells it will weigh a little over three pounds and should fly for 25-35 minutes. My Piccolo gets similar flight times on much smaller LiPo cells. Now I don't know about you, but with my Piccolo, I start to brain fry at about 15 minutes and need a break anyway, so two flights per battery pack seems pretty good to me.
Well, you might be proud of that gut, but many of us can just pull in our abs a little and actual space appears between the belt and the body. More than enough to do a little five-fingered discounting!
Sorry, but if you're going to sling s**t, you'd better be prepared to get a little back:)
(I was actually a rather accomplished shoplifter until getting caught at the age of 17 and thrown in county for a sobering evening did wonders for my priorities). Mom was so proud:(
Lithium polymer batteries are new and somewhat obscure and hard to make (in fact, real lithium polymer batteries are not expected to be available until 2005; currently there are only hybrids).
This is no longer true. Li-Po batteries are available now, are really lithium polymer (not hybrid) and are true 3.7V cells. I've got six LiPo cells in two packs of three powering an electric model helicopter that's sitting right in front of me. If you want to buy some, FMA Direct stocks LiPo cells and packs by Kokam (Korean, limited to 3C discharge) and E-Tech (American, up to 5C discharge, which is what I have).
As you mention, they are not appropriate for AA applications. LiPo cells resemble different sizes of ziplock bags filled with epoxy (they're fairly stiff, though the interior can be manipulated a little bit). At the moment, the only applications I see myself using LiPo cells in are those projects where I get to wire up the batteries.
There are other compromises to Li chemistry. The charging curve can not self balance connected cells. Which is to say that if you have two cells in series (or in parallel) and one is more discharged than the other, the charger will not be able to fill up the second all the way. This is distinct from NiMH and NiCd which will both continue filling any laggard cells once the charging cycle moves into the "trickle" mode and the low cells will eventually catch up. Individual variations in LiPo cells require that you charge them separately or deal with a fairly fast performance loss of the whole pack. My solution for my electric heli was to expose two wires for each cell and do the serial/parallel wiring on the other side of the battery connector. So the connector has six leads and the plug on the helicopter connector puts the three cells in series for it's power, but the plug for the charger connector attaches each cell to it's own completely separate charging circuit.
I've read about a charge balancer that will take the output of a single charger and split it for your cells, but I haven't actually seen one myself so I don't know if these are vapor or real. In any case, charging Li cells is more complex than NiCd AA's.
Another nasty thing to watch out for is self-destruction combined with the previous note about the charging issues. If you continue to discharge a LiPo cell below 3.0V, it will quickly internally short circuit itself and will end up a rather expensive hunk of moderately toxic plastic.
But if you charge them right and have other circuits in place to keep the whole pack from being overdischarged, they are the most incredible power sources I've ever seen. On decent NiMH batteries, my heli used to run for about 7 minutes. With the LiPo packs, I timed one flight at 27 minutes. Just amazing performance, though you do need to take a little more care with them.
All you have to do to get an inexpensive card is buy a few steps behind the state of the art. Look at last years "best" offerings and see if you can't realistically deal with 30-50% less performance than the bleeding edge for 10-30% of the price.
Now if you want the bleeding edge to be cheap, well, you're in the wrong market. Modern PC graphics performance is largely driven by gaming enthusiasts with substantial disposable income. As in people who are quite willing to spend $500 on a video card every year (or even more often) so that at the LAN parties, they can brag for five minutes straight about what's inside the box. If you want to have the same stuff as that guy, you're going to have to be prepared to spend the same amount of money he is.
Seriously, two or three notches back from the top of the line is a *lot* less expensive and not that much worse for a casual gamer, even for the latest crop of games. Even in this review, the 9800 was $420 and the 9600 was $200. If you look around, it's not too hard to find a decent older ATI or NVidia video card under $100.
try something more civilized like a road trip that includes daily stops at a Ramada Inn/Holiday Inn, lots of fast food/drive ins, visits to national historic sites
Dude, did you even read what this guy is asking for? He's doing a backpacking tour of North America. Backpacking. As in inexpensive. As in intentionally avoiding hotels or motels, especially the low-end chain hotel/motels that you mentioned. As in I have yet to meet a backpacker who's lip didn't curl at the mention of a meal at McDonald's or most other fast food/drive through eateries. As in probably won't be bringing a car.
I don't mean to piss in your Wheaties, but you appear to have a very different idea of what would constitute a good year-long tour of a continent from me (or the aussie asking the question). Heck, I'd probably go insane on the ideal weekend trip for you.
Burning Man, while certainly crazy, should definitely be included in this guys trip if at all possible.
If Microsoft claims that their product does X (by declaring adherence to some standard, by listing it as a feature, or just market-speak) and the InterTrust patent covers X, then all InterTrust had to do was read the Microsoft marketing materials to discover what they needed to know.
Alright, I'll give a little more: can you think of any simple materials currently consumed in space that might make for a rather valuable market today? Can you see the presence of those materials in usable quantity, in say, LEO, further reducing the cost of spaceflight (and having the side effect of improving the size of your market)?
You're right that the real market for space resources is in space. Space extracted titanium becomes extremely competitive with earth extracted titanium when the launch cost is added in but that only happens "in space". As you observe, space extracted resources will be a tough sell on earth.
The re-entry is fairly cheap (just don't refine all of the asteroid into iron and titanium and fuse some of the leftover titanium-dioxide into a lifting-body-shaped re-entry heat shields). But then you have to pay for insurance on each re-entry and it all goes to hell. Who wants to cover the risk that one of your re-entering payloads doesn't wander off course (or is hijacked off course) and craters a small town somewhere? The trick is to find whatever markets already exist in space until the crushing wave of expatriates take over and we get another chance to do things right...
The solar power satellites have their own problems, like the waste heat having a possibly equal contribution to global warming as greenhouse gases. Though that can be managed with additional good ideas, that's a product that could easily cause a climatological change once it scales to a significant part of the global power supply.
Actually, I am a little concerned about sharing my ideas in a public forum, but I'll give you the broad hint.
Aside from improving the two you already mentioned with new technology to make them more compellingly profitable, why not pick and choose exactly which asteroid components would be 1) most easily extractable and refinable once located and 2) most valuable when already in orbit per unit of mass.
Here's the hint: don't limit yourself to metals. My prediction is that metals will not be the first decent sized market for non-terrestrial located resources.
Your criticism also managed to dismiss small unit resource extraction and space-based fabrication remarkably quickly. Don't make the relatively common mistake of assuming that a smelting system in space will even slightly resemble a smelting system on earth (especially in mass). Important differences include lack of gravity, unimpeded access to the sun, a lack of ambient oxygen or nitrogen to assist or interfere in reactions... A space-based small unit asteroid processing system will look rather unfamiliar to any modern expert in ore extraction and material processing.
Start reading NASA reports about automated lunar factories (circa 1981), then use some of those ideas as starting points to what you might do with your own one hundred ton payload in a radically different environment and you may just catch the bug yourself...
Because the GPL specifically discusses patent licensing. In section 7, it states that if you can't get a royalty free license to the relevant patents then the GPL can't be applied.
Which is meant to imply that (in this case) if IBM is willing to license the relevant patents to GPL licencees without royalty then it can hold those patents (and charge others for the use of them for non-GPL'd applications) and GPL code based on those patents. Which IBM is doing.
For a business to compete for a chance to go to space, cheaply, quickly, or any other "ly", there would have to be MONEY up there.
Money is not the issue. If you can't call out at least three ways to make substantial revenues ($x > $1 * 10e10) from space in less than five minutes of trying, then you aren't smart enough to be commenting on the issue. The problem is getting permission from the US government to go after it, which it currently isn't giving.
The current aerospace contractors are quite happy turning out overpriced parts for NASA under marginally competitive contracts (I've worked for a military contractor and got to see this process from the inside) and simply don't have it in their corporate cultures to try for anything that the government hasn't asked for. Those companies don't even understand the concept of investment any more ("It might cut into profits!" -- actual quote). Why bother, when you can get the government to take all of the risk and pay you cost-plus for doing a half-assed job at something less difficult?
I've got three separate interrelated business plans for exploitation of space located resources and the number one risk at the top of each risk list is: a hostile US policy towards commercial space exploration. I am not unique in developing these plans, nor am I unique in my analysis of the obstacles in front of me.
So the real work at making money from space will happen from other countries. Which will eventually threaten the US's dominant economic role in the world (well, if the US doesn't change it's collective mind in time...).
That's a load of crap. The US has legislated a monopoly on space flight for NASA. If a US company even thinks of completing an orbital launch, the fecal matter will hit the rotating air circulation device.
It's all done under an umbrella of safety and licensing, but it's a monopoly. There are dozens of companies which have built various motors, launch vehicles, capsules, etc. but all have folded up the shop after finding out how the US government wanted to play it.
There's *lots* of money eagerly wanting to get at space, but the US has decided that NASA should be the only American representative.
While you're right that the "10%" shtick is indeed completely false, there's no reason to believe that a human mind couldn't adapt to new inputs to both successfully interact with an artificial reality and also successfully balance input potentials to a fusion reactor balanced on the explosive razor's edge of instability... Victims of mild strokes routinely recover full capabilities within a few years, including the elderly (like my grandmother)...
Though you're certainly using more than 10%, there is some reserve capacity in the grey matter.
The human mind will very successfully adapt its neural pathways to whatever brings in the nutrition rewards. If those rewards are externally imposed by a system controlling a fusion reactor, I see no reason why sufficient experimentation shouldn't result in a perfectly workable interface and reward protocol.
If I have a company that manufactures low profit margin widgets, and I have a competitor who manufactures low profit margin widgets, and I devise a business process that streamlines my manufacturing to eke out more profits, I won't want my competitor to have that business process.
Well of course you don't want your competitor to have that ability. However, the real question is "should you be able to stop him?" The answer *should* go back to the net benefit to society and the economy.
Are you not likely to use your new process if your competitor can steal it? Probably, because until he does figure out what you're doing and copies it, you can make a larger profit. Also, if you don't reveal it and he figures it out on his own, you've lost the marginal gain of taking advantage of the process in the first place. Now you have to employ the process just to get back to even with the other guy. The fact that your business is so competitive means that you're driven to improve your business processes anyway, even without patent protection.
In either case, your industry adds more money to the economy if the new process gets used and there is no disincentive to not seek out new processes to gain momentary advantages over one's competitors. Again, patenting the process simply doesn't encourage anyone to do anything they weren't already doing.
Patent law is based on the supposition that the grant of a temporary monopoly will encourage more inventions than would occur without it and that those additional inventions are more valuable to an economy in the long run than the short term loss to the economy of granting the temporary monopoly. For business processes, the model fails because there is still a strong incentive to develop and use new business processes, even if your competitors can also use them. The "additional" business processes generated by granting patents is zero.
So make your widgets to make as much profit as you can and quit yer whining about the competition. That's what it should mean to do business.
As the previous poster said, the GPL cannot exist without strong IP laws. The default situation without IP laws is pretty close to the BSD license and not at all close to the GPL.
Remember, the GPL puts obligations on others that require a law to back them up. An IP law.
The transitions between the various forms are quite fascinating, but since my test run just finished, they'll have to be left as an exercise for the reader:)
However: do you know how to repair your car? How about the electrical wiring in your house? Your plumbing? Garbage disposal or washing machine? How about the central air, or the oil heater? If you do, then you're a better woman/man than I. If you don't then you are, by your own logic, dumb.
I do know how to do all of these things and have done all of them in the past. However the real question is: the next time my car needs fixing, will I do it myself or hire someone else to do it for me?
The answer is a basic purchase equation: what do I give up by either choice? If I have lots of spare time and not much to fill it, I will be giving up very little to spend some of that time wrenching the car. On the other hand, if I am busy earning a healthy income and would have to give up some of that earned income to fix the car (not even valuing the other things I might be doing with that time) then it will probably make economic sense to hire someone to fix the car.
Since I do have a full time job that I enjoy and which pays quite well... and a fairly busy life besides... I will call the mechanic for anything that would take more than a few minutes, no matter how much I may want to get my hands dirty.
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The difference is that the so-called "infringing" code in Linux is for a much more general-purpose function than SCO's implementation of EXT2 or Linux compatibility.
Well, that and SCO doesn't own "it" (RCU and NUMA). IBM does. SCO claims to own RCU and NUMA, but they've been claiming a lot of things that they either haven't substantiated or have submitted piles of steaming horseshit in place of actual evidence.
(sorry about ending a sentence with a preposition, I can't quite figure out how to reshuffle it to fix the problem).
I predict the tortious interference charge is going to be the RedHat charge that really puts the icing on SCO's cake. Any takers?
Regards,
Ross
No, trying to steal money from others is bad by misrepresenting the assets of your company to potential shareholders so that they will value your company more highly, so that you can sell to them and call out "sucker!!!" as you flee the scene is bad.
Don't pretend they're making an honest profit here because there's no way to interpret that from the facts.
Oh, and putting food on the table is only good if you can do it while not taking food off of the table of others (i.e. if you produce something, or otherwise add value to the system). In my humble opinion, anyway.
Regards,
Ross
When entering into a new contract relationship, insist on clear deliverables and terms of payment: allow frequent invoice submission frequency, short terms (no more than net30), learn what their accounts payable pipeline is (regular invoice approval/check cutting schedule) and then follow each of the first invoices until the check is in your hand and in your account.
Follow the invoices like a bloodhound. If asked (or even pre-emptively), make it clear that you will not be working (or billing) the hours that you're managing billing and then do it in front of them. The instant one of your invoices leaves the regular billing cycle to actually get close to net30, get ready to leave. When one breaks net30, stop working until the invoice is paid in full.
I've never had a bum payee, though a few have tried. The real secret to success is to have an initial invoice to them after a week of work and a second in the pipeline by the time the first is paid. In most cases, there won't be enough work that they can afford to stiff you yet, no matter how much they may like to. In addition, the attitude about the early invoices results in a "squeaky wheel" treatment.
Finally, the secret to success with this strategy is to work very hard and very well on the tasks that need doing. If you're a pain in the ass about your billing and you're not much of a self-starter, you're in trouble and you'll be looking for another client fairly quickly (without a reference). If you're a productivity monster and you let them know that you absolutely insist on being paid on time, you'll get paid and you'll get the reference when the job is done.
Regards,
Ross
I would have gone completely postal on about day three. That's crazy talk: overt monitoring on every aspect of your job, time cards, etc.
When I was in high school, I worked for a lumberyard at a job that was almost as bad, but thank something I took the time to get an education...
Teachers are professionals: expected to be leaders, coaches, activity organizers, surrogate parents, disciplinarians, and a dozen other things I can't think of right now. You start treating them like children (like that call center job does) and you just lost the capability to ask for anything more than you expect from children.
Are they deliberately trying to reduce the motivation of teachers to the same level as call center workers? I can't believe the morale of workers in either profession is very good, but no need to get sadistic on the poor teachers!
Regards,
Ross
How many people have been in class and had a teacher watched by an administration member only to watch a COMPLETELY different teacher come through? Exactly.
Yeah, change from a confident leader and lecturer, able to discipline heckling and give attention to many people to a person nervous about how his review on basically pandering to the school's "customers" (students) might affect his ability to get tenure or just plain keep his position.
RTFA, I know, it's not about college teachers (who have to worry about tenure), but the problems with public schools in the US are legion and though this probably won't hurt the style of many teachers, it will definitely affect all of them, some negatively. What teacher will have the courage to share something intimate with a classroom of students and the ubiquitous video camera? Will any student be willing to privately talk to a teacher with the cameras always rolling? Really?
If it's under the teacher's control (for exams or can be switched on when the teacher wants it to be on), then I can see some real benefit. The teacher is still the leader of the classroom and there's no threat to that. Remove the power to turn off the watchful eye and the teacher is no longer the leader in the classroom.
At least, in my opinion and albeit limited experience.
Regards,
Ross
A few subtle misses, but otherwise on the mark. One thing the author did not understand was that it is impossible to retract permission once given and accepted.
The whole "succession" issue at the end of the article is a red herring because once others have taken you up on your offer to use and redistribute your work under the GPL, you can't retract that offer. If I die and my children start getting greedy about my estate, they aren't going to have much that they can do about code I've released under public licenses. If I have a new release that I haven't yet revealed at the moment of my untimely demise, they could sell that, but that's an entirely different issue.
As for the Linux trademark, when the time comes, I suspect that it will be granted to a foundation or non-profit that Linus believes will be an effective steward of the mark from that point onward. He strikes me as the type of person who will be annoyed that he has to mess with such mundanities, but will do the right thing instead of allowing his legacy to be tainted by the greed of his heirs.
Also to the issue of indemnity that the author mentions, I believe it to be another wasted paragraph. IANAL, but customers are not responsible for the sins of the vendor. This is why Microsoft recently eliminated caps on customer indemnity in their license. There's no risk of customers needing indemnity so MS isn't out anything to make it available to all comers.
Otherwise, I think there's some real insight. SCO doesn't have the argument or the evidence to actually weaken Linux's momentum but at lease one assertion about the characteristics of the GPL will be heard in court. I predict that the Red Hat proceedings are going to be such a slam dunk that the GPL is seen as having nice sharp teeth from here on out.
Regards,
Ross
Ah, but the Red Hat case will get to court rather quickly, and Red Hat has also made it's case a test of the GPL (though less direct than the IBM assertions of SCO GPL'ing their own code).
Regards,
Ross
The child falls off the deck and breaks his spine and is paralyzed from the waist down for life.
1) What deck are you referring to? In this discussion, we've got roller coasters, pools, and fences, but your post is the first to mention a deck.
The child is not at fault, and should not bear the cost of the negligence of others.
2) Life is not fair. No matter what society says, I am ultimately responsible for my own safety, as is every other person on this planet with agency (i.e. is concious with decision making capacity; infants don't qualify).
Parents will almost always assume responsibility for the safety of their young children because they love them and want their genes to continue on through more generations. There's nothing stopping them from doing that (I will do that when I have children of my own, probably about three years from now, I'm guessing) but let's not pretend that even younger children don't bear real responsibility for their sometimes stupid actions. To repeat: this parental generosity doesn't remove ultimate responsibility from the individual.
I'll bet my kids are going to end up in the emergency room more than once and I hope that they gain wisdom from their injuries, but I'm not going to sue the construction company building a house nearby if my kid sneaks into the partly finished house and 1) steps on a nail in a loose board 2) in suprise and pain at the nail penetrating his foot, falls from an unfinished upper floor to the plywood covered floor below, breaking his arm and then proceeds to 3) cut his hand on roughed in ductwork trying to get back out... (it was a very exciting day for my mom, who was convinced that I was never going to make it to adulthood). But there was no thought of suing the construction company. I was foolish and paid the price for my stupidity.
If a different child pays a higher price for his stupidity than I did, then I'm sorry for his troubles, but this is yet another way in which our modern legal system does not attempt to determine responsibility sanely, but instead seeks to assign blame to anyone but the injured party so that they can be "compensated" for their loss.
No wonder that the first two ways people expect to get rich in this country are 1) win a big lawsuit or 2) win the lottery. Lawyers are writing the laws which benefit the lawyers (find the deepest pockets in reach and plunder... not easy enough to plunder? "There ought to be a law." "It's for the sake of the children..." "If just one child is saved.") Complete and utter bullshit.
Sorry about that. Nothing personal, your post just happened to be the straw that broke the camel's back, as it were...
Regards,
Ross
Actually, the LOGO 20 is roughly equivalent to a smaller .30 gas helicopter in weight and outdoor performance. There are many even smaller helicopters (Hornet, Piccolo, etc.) that are gram-shavers and awfully sketchy in a light breeze, but that's not what we're talking about here.
All flying machines are constructed to be light weight, but the new LOGO 24 will weigh almost four pounds all up and if you use lithium-polymer cells it will weigh a little over three pounds and should fly for 25-35 minutes. My Piccolo gets similar flight times on much smaller LiPo cells. Now I don't know about you, but with my Piccolo, I start to brain fry at about 15 minutes and need a break anyway, so two flights per battery pack seems pretty good to me.
Regards,
Ross
Well, you might be proud of that gut, but many of us can just pull in our abs a little and actual space appears between the belt and the body. More than enough to do a little five-fingered discounting!
:)
:(
Sorry, but if you're going to sling s**t, you'd better be prepared to get a little back
(I was actually a rather accomplished shoplifter until getting caught at the age of 17 and thrown in county for a sobering evening did wonders for my priorities). Mom was so proud
Regards,
Ross
Lithium polymer batteries are new and somewhat obscure and hard to make (in fact, real lithium polymer batteries are not expected to be available until 2005; currently there are only hybrids).
This is no longer true. Li-Po batteries are available now, are really lithium polymer (not hybrid) and are true 3.7V cells. I've got six LiPo cells in two packs of three powering an electric model helicopter that's sitting right in front of me. If you want to buy some, FMA Direct stocks LiPo cells and packs by Kokam (Korean, limited to 3C discharge) and E-Tech (American, up to 5C discharge, which is what I have).
As you mention, they are not appropriate for AA applications. LiPo cells resemble different sizes of ziplock bags filled with epoxy (they're fairly stiff, though the interior can be manipulated a little bit). At the moment, the only applications I see myself using LiPo cells in are those projects where I get to wire up the batteries.
There are other compromises to Li chemistry. The charging curve can not self balance connected cells. Which is to say that if you have two cells in series (or in parallel) and one is more discharged than the other, the charger will not be able to fill up the second all the way. This is distinct from NiMH and NiCd which will both continue filling any laggard cells once the charging cycle moves into the "trickle" mode and the low cells will eventually catch up. Individual variations in LiPo cells require that you charge them separately or deal with a fairly fast performance loss of the whole pack. My solution for my electric heli was to expose two wires for each cell and do the serial/parallel wiring on the other side of the battery connector. So the connector has six leads and the plug on the helicopter connector puts the three cells in series for it's power, but the plug for the charger connector attaches each cell to it's own completely separate charging circuit.
I've read about a charge balancer that will take the output of a single charger and split it for your cells, but I haven't actually seen one myself so I don't know if these are vapor or real. In any case, charging Li cells is more complex than NiCd AA's.
Another nasty thing to watch out for is self-destruction combined with the previous note about the charging issues. If you continue to discharge a LiPo cell below 3.0V, it will quickly internally short circuit itself and will end up a rather expensive hunk of moderately toxic plastic.
But if you charge them right and have other circuits in place to keep the whole pack from being overdischarged, they are the most incredible power sources I've ever seen. On decent NiMH batteries, my heli used to run for about 7 minutes. With the LiPo packs, I timed one flight at 27 minutes. Just amazing performance, though you do need to take a little more care with them.
Regards,
Ross
All you have to do to get an inexpensive card is buy a few steps behind the state of the art. Look at last years "best" offerings and see if you can't realistically deal with 30-50% less performance than the bleeding edge for 10-30% of the price.
Now if you want the bleeding edge to be cheap, well, you're in the wrong market. Modern PC graphics performance is largely driven by gaming enthusiasts with substantial disposable income. As in people who are quite willing to spend $500 on a video card every year (or even more often) so that at the LAN parties, they can brag for five minutes straight about what's inside the box. If you want to have the same stuff as that guy, you're going to have to be prepared to spend the same amount of money he is.
Seriously, two or three notches back from the top of the line is a *lot* less expensive and not that much worse for a casual gamer, even for the latest crop of games. Even in this review, the 9800 was $420 and the 9600 was $200. If you look around, it's not too hard to find a decent older ATI or NVidia video card under $100.
Regards,
Ross
try something more civilized like a road trip that includes daily stops at a Ramada Inn/Holiday Inn, lots of fast food/drive ins, visits to national historic sites
Dude, did you even read what this guy is asking for? He's doing a backpacking tour of North America. Backpacking. As in inexpensive. As in intentionally avoiding hotels or motels, especially the low-end chain hotel/motels that you mentioned. As in I have yet to meet a backpacker who's lip didn't curl at the mention of a meal at McDonald's or most other fast food/drive through eateries. As in probably won't be bringing a car.
I don't mean to piss in your Wheaties, but you appear to have a very different idea of what would constitute a good year-long tour of a continent from me (or the aussie asking the question). Heck, I'd probably go insane on the ideal weekend trip for you.
Burning Man, while certainly crazy, should definitely be included in this guys trip if at all possible.
Regards,
Ross
If Microsoft claims that their product does X (by declaring adherence to some standard, by listing it as a feature, or just market-speak) and the InterTrust patent covers X, then all InterTrust had to do was read the Microsoft marketing materials to discover what they needed to know.
Regards,
Ross
Alright, I'll give a little more: can you think of any simple materials currently consumed in space that might make for a rather valuable market today? Can you see the presence of those materials in usable quantity, in say, LEO, further reducing the cost of spaceflight (and having the side effect of improving the size of your market)?
You're right that the real market for space resources is in space. Space extracted titanium becomes extremely competitive with earth extracted titanium when the launch cost is added in but that only happens "in space". As you observe, space extracted resources will be a tough sell on earth.
The re-entry is fairly cheap (just don't refine all of the asteroid into iron and titanium and fuse some of the leftover titanium-dioxide into a lifting-body-shaped re-entry heat shields). But then you have to pay for insurance on each re-entry and it all goes to hell. Who wants to cover the risk that one of your re-entering payloads doesn't wander off course (or is hijacked off course) and craters a small town somewhere? The trick is to find whatever markets already exist in space until the crushing wave of expatriates take over and we get another chance to do things right...
The solar power satellites have their own problems, like the waste heat having a possibly equal contribution to global warming as greenhouse gases. Though that can be managed with additional good ideas, that's a product that could easily cause a climatological change once it scales to a significant part of the global power supply.
Regards,
Ross
Actually, I am a little concerned about sharing my ideas in a public forum, but I'll give you the broad hint.
Aside from improving the two you already mentioned with new technology to make them more compellingly profitable, why not pick and choose exactly which asteroid components would be 1) most easily extractable and refinable once located and 2) most valuable when already in orbit per unit of mass.
Here's the hint: don't limit yourself to metals. My prediction is that metals will not be the first decent sized market for non-terrestrial located resources.
Your criticism also managed to dismiss small unit resource extraction and space-based fabrication remarkably quickly. Don't make the relatively common mistake of assuming that a smelting system in space will even slightly resemble a smelting system on earth (especially in mass). Important differences include lack of gravity, unimpeded access to the sun, a lack of ambient oxygen or nitrogen to assist or interfere in reactions... A space-based small unit asteroid processing system will look rather unfamiliar to any modern expert in ore extraction and material processing.
Start reading NASA reports about automated lunar factories (circa 1981), then use some of those ideas as starting points to what you might do with your own one hundred ton payload in a radically different environment and you may just catch the bug yourself...
Regards,
Ross
Because the GPL specifically discusses patent licensing. In section 7, it states that if you can't get a royalty free license to the relevant patents then the GPL can't be applied.
Which is meant to imply that (in this case) if IBM is willing to license the relevant patents to GPL licencees without royalty then it can hold those patents (and charge others for the use of them for non-GPL'd applications) and GPL code based on those patents. Which IBM is doing.
Regards,
Ross
For a business to compete for a chance to go to space, cheaply, quickly, or any other "ly", there would have to be MONEY up there.
Money is not the issue. If you can't call out at least three ways to make substantial revenues ($x > $1 * 10e10) from space in less than five minutes of trying, then you aren't smart enough to be commenting on the issue. The problem is getting permission from the US government to go after it, which it currently isn't giving.
The current aerospace contractors are quite happy turning out overpriced parts for NASA under marginally competitive contracts (I've worked for a military contractor and got to see this process from the inside) and simply don't have it in their corporate cultures to try for anything that the government hasn't asked for. Those companies don't even understand the concept of investment any more ("It might cut into profits!" -- actual quote). Why bother, when you can get the government to take all of the risk and pay you cost-plus for doing a half-assed job at something less difficult?
I've got three separate interrelated business plans for exploitation of space located resources and the number one risk at the top of each risk list is: a hostile US policy towards commercial space exploration. I am not unique in developing these plans, nor am I unique in my analysis of the obstacles in front of me.
So the real work at making money from space will happen from other countries. Which will eventually threaten the US's dominant economic role in the world (well, if the US doesn't change it's collective mind in time...).
Regards,
Ross
That's a load of crap. The US has legislated a monopoly on space flight for NASA. If a US company even thinks of completing an orbital launch, the fecal matter will hit the rotating air circulation device.
It's all done under an umbrella of safety and licensing, but it's a monopoly. There are dozens of companies which have built various motors, launch vehicles, capsules, etc. but all have folded up the shop after finding out how the US government wanted to play it.
There's *lots* of money eagerly wanting to get at space, but the US has decided that NASA should be the only American representative.
Too bad.
Regards,
Ross
While you're right that the "10%" shtick is indeed completely false, there's no reason to believe that a human mind couldn't adapt to new inputs to both successfully interact with an artificial reality and also successfully balance input potentials to a fusion reactor balanced on the explosive razor's edge of instability... Victims of mild strokes routinely recover full capabilities within a few years, including the elderly (like my grandmother)...
Though you're certainly using more than 10%, there is some reserve capacity in the grey matter.
The human mind will very successfully adapt its neural pathways to whatever brings in the nutrition rewards. If those rewards are externally imposed by a system controlling a fusion reactor, I see no reason why sufficient experimentation shouldn't result in a perfectly workable interface and reward protocol.
Regards,
Ross
If I have a company that manufactures low profit margin widgets, and I have a competitor who manufactures low profit margin widgets, and I devise a business process that streamlines my manufacturing to eke out more profits, I won't want my competitor to have that business process.
Well of course you don't want your competitor to have that ability. However, the real question is "should you be able to stop him?" The answer *should* go back to the net benefit to society and the economy.
Are you not likely to use your new process if your competitor can steal it? Probably, because until he does figure out what you're doing and copies it, you can make a larger profit. Also, if you don't reveal it and he figures it out on his own, you've lost the marginal gain of taking advantage of the process in the first place. Now you have to employ the process just to get back to even with the other guy. The fact that your business is so competitive means that you're driven to improve your business processes anyway, even without patent protection.
In either case, your industry adds more money to the economy if the new process gets used and there is no disincentive to not seek out new processes to gain momentary advantages over one's competitors. Again, patenting the process simply doesn't encourage anyone to do anything they weren't already doing.
Patent law is based on the supposition that the grant of a temporary monopoly will encourage more inventions than would occur without it and that those additional inventions are more valuable to an economy in the long run than the short term loss to the economy of granting the temporary monopoly. For business processes, the model fails because there is still a strong incentive to develop and use new business processes, even if your competitors can also use them. The "additional" business processes generated by granting patents is zero.
So make your widgets to make as much profit as you can and quit yer whining about the competition. That's what it should mean to do business.
Regards,
Ross
As the previous poster said, the GPL cannot exist without strong IP laws. The default situation without IP laws is pretty close to the BSD license and not at all close to the GPL.
Remember, the GPL puts obligations on others that require a law to back them up. An IP law.
Regards,
Ross
Preach it brother!
Regards,
Ross
Actually, the ontology of organization is usually presented as:
:)
Organization, Pattern, Data, Information, Knowledge, Wisdom.
The transitions between the various forms are quite fascinating, but since my test run just finished, they'll have to be left as an exercise for the reader
Regards,
Ross
However: do you know how to repair your car? How about the electrical wiring in your house? Your plumbing? Garbage disposal or washing machine? How about the central air, or the oil heater? If you do, then you're a better woman/man than I. If you don't then you are, by your own logic, dumb.
I do know how to do all of these things and have done all of them in the past. However the real question is: the next time my car needs fixing, will I do it myself or hire someone else to do it for me?
The answer is a basic purchase equation: what do I give up by either choice? If I have lots of spare time and not much to fill it, I will be giving up very little to spend some of that time wrenching the car. On the other hand, if I am busy earning a healthy income and would have to give up some of that earned income to fix the car (not even valuing the other things I might be doing with that time) then it will probably make economic sense to hire someone to fix the car.
Since I do have a full time job that I enjoy and which pays quite well... and a fairly busy life besides... I will call the mechanic for anything that would take more than a few minutes, no matter how much I may want to get my hands dirty.
Regards,
Ross