I think you'll find that the Americas contain no less that 56 countries and territories who are inhabited by 'Americans'.
Nope.
I don't see any Canadians or Mexicans or Hondurans or Venezuelans or Brazilians (etc.) clamoring to be called Americans. The only country with the word "America" in it's name is the United States of America. It has been standard practice to call people from the USA "Americans" for a very long time. What you're pointing out is a recently made-up pedantic grievance that no one really cares about.
When trying to communicate, it's better to use words the way most other people use them.
Your experience was not representative of the full effect. I was at Novell at the time, and helped reverse-engineer some of the techniques Microsoft used to scare Windows users away from DR-DOS. I personally witnessed the deposition with the Microsoft engineer who wrote the code to show the messages (in Caldera's anti-trust case against Microsoft). This code appeared in more than just the beta, and DR-DOS did not work just fine. I saw evidence (from legal discovery) about how Microsoft stealthily undermined developers who wrote drivers for DR-DOS (driving at least one out of business). Microsoft's crusade against DR-DOS was intentional, and NOT slight or benign.
Maybe the generality of "a lot of the people..." threw you. But I think it's pretty clear that Linus doesn't want to be associated with white supremecists and Nazis. Who can blame him? I realize this plays a bit into the guilt-by-association tactics often used by the political correctness crowd. And the tactic should be resisted. But it should be done with calm and reasoned rhetoric. Nobody, including "those people" (whoever that is) has to accept a "super low status", but some people could certainly back off the rhetoric, and they would actually convince more people of their case. Well that and it's true that some people would be better off if they did accept their incredible wrongness. Can you honestly think of no one that would be better off if they changed their mind, or their tone?
One reason I have heard that the Earth might be rare as a cradle of life is due to the Moon. The Earth-Moon system looks to be fairly rare. Our Moon is quite large compared to the Earth. The tides, along with Earth being in the "goldilocks" zone for liquid water, may have played a critical role in the development of life. So it's possible that a combination of factors may actually contribute to Earth being a very rare environment. The rarity only has to be one in a trillion, trillion, for there to be little chance of life detectable elsewhere with current technology.
Hmmm. Could you re-post the link and point out where to find the information about the weight? I couldn't find anything abouit Kilopower weights in any links you posted. I did find this source: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/... which has an 8kW kilopower system (NEP prototype) with a mass of 1142kg, which indicates your numbers are in the right ballpark (ignoring output).
I assume you are trolling, but the plan is to send 4 to mars, to provide a base load of 40kW, and presumably some redundancy. See the video at: https://youtu.be/DcdfMcjUy_U
That's the whole point of the kilopower project, to make a small reactor with low weight and decent output, with minimal maintenance required. I can't find the projected weight for the eventual product, but they don't look huge in the pictures. Output ranges from 1kW to 10 kW. See https://www.nasa.gov/directora... for specs and more information. They expect to use 4 units for a mission to mars, for a base electric output of 40kW. Their video shows a rocket cutaway with 4 of these packed with other mission gear. I don't think weight is going to be a big issue.
Would it kill them to give the measured temperature value, or the error bars? This is a pattern I've noticed in these "hottest year ever" articles. They never actually tell you the data. Instead we get this: "According to NOAA, 2017 average land surface temperatures were 2.36 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the 20th century average." Well, thanks for the unnecessary homework. Why don't they mention the actual temperature?
But you've completely mischaracterized what happened. Uber didn't raise prices to take advantage of a terrible situation. Rather, a terrible situation triggered a surge in demand, to which Uber's algorithms correctly responded. A lot of people suddenly wanted rides, and Uber used it's algorithm to activate more drivers. That's not a market failure, That's the market "magically" solving the problem, efficiently and effectively. Regulation would have interfered with the response, as iikely did Uber's reaction and artificial price clamping.
People likely waited much longer for rides than they would have if Uber had just let things play out.
Apparently, people would rather wait a long time for a ride home from some horrific event, than let market forces solve the problem of the sudden surge in demand.
The problem is people viewing their needs in isolation, instead of in the greater context. If someone didn't like the price, they should forego the ride and let someone who wants it more than them to have it.
The same type of thing is happening in San Jose. Comcast and AT&T are working hard to keep Google Fiber out of the Bay Area in California, by denying access to utility poles. I called the Northern California Joint Pole Association (NCJPA) myself to ask them some questions, and they were somewhat flummoxed on the phone. I guess it never occurred to them that helping monopolists protect their turf might tick off the local population.
Property has always been used as a nomer for physical items that are clearly in possession...
I think you missed the part of history (in the 1700's) when property rights started being assigned to intangible things like the text of books, in the form of copyright. I mean, you can pretend that society doesn't recognize this particular abstraction of property rights, but there's voluminous case law and legal tradition for this, so I'm not sure what the point is.
They considered getting a license, but ultimately decided against it. I believe Larry Page said they considered it because they wanted to use Sun's java implementation (not the same thing as just using the API via the Apache Harmony implementation). But even if they thought they needed a license for the Java API, they may have decided otherwise after legal analysis.
It bugs me when lawyers think they have a smoking gun because some employee writes something in an e-mail or a presentation. They employee might be raising speculative issues that even they don't know the answer to, or they might just be wrong on the legal status of something.
Nobody was denied rights. California recognized homosexual unions, and gave them all the same rights (visitation, inheritance, custody, etc.) as man/woman marriages, before prop 8 was approved by the voters. The whole debate boiled down to what one or another group of people wanted the union to be called.
The fish *have* evolved immunity to the toxic sludge...
But only if they actually did evolve. As the grandparent rightly points out, this case appears to be an excellent confirmation of selection, but that's not what's missing in the dialog to convince people of evolution. In this case, we don't have confirmation of a mutation, let alone a *random* mutation. A non-random mutation (a "designed" one) wouldn't count, obviously.
This is what, I believe, the grandparent was saying. You can't run around trying to convince people of evolution just by pointing out instances of selection. This is, unfortunately, what often happens - causing people to just become entrenched in their positions and the dialog to falter.
I remember reading an article (sorry, can't find the reference) about how a Russian experiment to determine how to make tundra into farmland was ruined by warm summers during the experiment. Basically stuff started growing on it's own without the measures they expected to perform. The article moaned about how global warming was ruining this important research. I was confused, as it seemed like global warming was making the research unnecessary.
Of course, Linus is not a lawyer, and his interpretation of GPL may not be correct. But the gist of the original story was that it was legal analysis made by an IP lawyer, and he essentially agreed with Linus.
I'll give you a specific example where Linus is dead wrong. errno.h. This header, from the kernel, is included in almost every Linux user-space program, whether open source or not. (glibc's errno.h includes the kernel's errno.h) If you can provide an example of a kernel header file you think would be a problem to include, please specify it.
This whole thing just makes me angry, because it ignores legal standards that have applied to Linux and been accepted by all parties, for years. If Naughton's legal analysis is correct, and use of the Linux header files causes the GPL to apply to the utilizing work, then glibc is in more danger than Bionic is. glibc is LGPL, not GPL, and has been using "full" Linux kernel headers for years. How could Bionic, using a stripped down subset of the same headers, be subject to the GPL, if glibc is not?
Oh for heaven's sake! Would it be too much to ask any of these legal pundits to post as much as a single line of code that they think is a) included in Google's sanitized header files, b) copyright-able, and c) causes the GPLv2 to apply to Bionic (and all linking applications)? If you want to assert that some code causes a legal problem, POST THE DANG CODE!
Instead, we have statements like this in the original blog entry by Raymond Nimmer: "Not having examined the facts, I don’t know the actual truth of the matter."
Indeed That pretty much describes all commentators in the entire mess.
Florian doesn't seem to consider the possibility that when Google acquired the files, they didn't have the "CONFIDENTIAL" notice on them. If the files were obtained as part of a larger demo or test suite released with an encompassing less-restrictive license, as appears to be the case with at least some of the files mentioned, then maybe someone other than Google (even possibly a Sun employee) scrubbed the notices accordingly. The tone of the article doesn't give Google much benefit of the doubt that these might be honest mistakes, and perfectly legal usages.
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I think you'll find that the Americas contain no less that 56 countries and territories who are inhabited by 'Americans'.
Nope.
I don't see any Canadians or Mexicans or Hondurans or Venezuelans or Brazilians (etc.) clamoring to be called Americans. The only country with the word "America" in it's name is the United States of America. It has been standard practice to call people from the USA "Americans" for a very long time. What you're pointing out is a recently made-up pedantic grievance that no one really cares about.
When trying to communicate, it's better to use words the way most other people use them.
Your experience was not representative of the full effect. I was at Novell at the time, and helped reverse-engineer some of the techniques Microsoft used to scare Windows users away from DR-DOS. I personally witnessed the deposition with the Microsoft engineer who wrote the code to show the messages (in Caldera's anti-trust case against Microsoft). This code appeared in more than just the beta, and DR-DOS did not work just fine. I saw evidence (from legal discovery) about how Microsoft stealthily undermined developers who wrote drivers for DR-DOS (driving at least one out of business). Microsoft's crusade against DR-DOS was intentional, and NOT slight or benign.
But he's a fucking asshole. There are ways to deal with people who are doing substandard work that doesn't involve vast streams of personal insults.
Did you put these two sentences next to each other to invoke irony or hypocrisy (or both)? I can't tell.
Maybe the generality of "a lot of the people..." threw you. But I think it's pretty clear that Linus doesn't want to be associated with white supremecists and Nazis. Who can blame him? I realize this plays a bit into the guilt-by-association tactics often used by the political correctness crowd. And the tactic should be resisted. But it should be done with calm and reasoned rhetoric. Nobody, including "those people" (whoever that is) has to accept a "super low status", but some people could certainly back off the rhetoric, and they would actually convince more people of their case. Well that and it's true that some people would be better off if they did accept their incredible wrongness. Can you honestly think of no one that would be better off if they changed their mind, or their tone?
One reason I have heard that the Earth might be rare as a cradle of life is due to the Moon. The Earth-Moon system looks to be fairly rare. Our Moon is quite large compared to the Earth. The tides, along with Earth being in the "goldilocks" zone for liquid water, may have played a critical role in the development of life. So it's possible that a combination of factors may actually contribute to Earth being a very rare environment. The rarity only has to be one in a trillion, trillion, for there to be little chance of life detectable elsewhere with current technology.
Hmmm. Could you re-post the link and point out where to find the information about the weight? I couldn't find anything abouit Kilopower weights in any links you posted. I did find this source: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/... which has an 8kW kilopower system (NEP prototype) with a mass of 1142kg, which indicates your numbers are in the right ballpark (ignoring output).
Do you have a source for that? I looked and couldn't find one. Thanks.
I assume you are trolling, but the plan is to send 4 to mars, to provide a base load of 40kW, and presumably some redundancy. See the video at: https://youtu.be/DcdfMcjUy_U
That's the whole point of the kilopower project, to make a small reactor with low weight and decent output, with minimal maintenance required. I can't find the projected weight for the eventual product, but they don't look huge in the pictures. Output ranges from 1kW to 10 kW. See https://www.nasa.gov/directora... for specs and more information. They expect to use 4 units for a mission to mars, for a base electric output of 40kW. Their video shows a rocket cutaway with 4 of these packed with other mission gear. I don't think weight is going to be a big issue.
Would it kill them to give the measured temperature value, or the error bars? This is a pattern I've noticed in these "hottest year ever" articles. They never actually tell you the data. Instead we get this: "According to NOAA, 2017 average land surface temperatures were 2.36 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the 20th century average." Well, thanks for the unnecessary homework. Why don't they mention the actual temperature?
That said, Linux does not belong in safety systems, and I hope it never ends up in ... spacecraft.
Too late. Linux is already the Falcon 9 spacecraft.
But you've completely mischaracterized what happened. Uber didn't raise prices to take advantage of a terrible situation. Rather, a terrible situation triggered a surge in demand, to which Uber's algorithms correctly responded. A lot of people suddenly wanted rides, and Uber used it's algorithm to activate more drivers. That's not a market failure, That's the market "magically" solving the problem, efficiently and effectively. Regulation would have interfered with the response, as iikely did Uber's reaction and artificial price clamping. People likely waited much longer for rides than they would have if Uber had just let things play out.
Apparently, people would rather wait a long time for a ride home from some horrific event, than let market forces solve the problem of the sudden surge in demand. The problem is people viewing their needs in isolation, instead of in the greater context. If someone didn't like the price, they should forego the ride and let someone who wants it more than them to have it.
The same type of thing is happening in San Jose. Comcast and AT&T are working hard to keep Google Fiber out of the Bay Area in California, by denying access to utility poles. I called the Northern California Joint Pole Association (NCJPA) myself to ask them some questions, and they were somewhat flummoxed on the phone. I guess it never occurred to them that helping monopolists protect their turf might tick off the local population.
Good point. That distinction is important, and is part of the abstraction that make arguing about copyright and violations somewhat difficult.
Property has always been used as a nomer for physical items that are clearly in possession...
I think you missed the part of history (in the 1700's) when property rights started being assigned to intangible things like the text of books, in the form of copyright. I mean, you can pretend that society doesn't recognize this particular abstraction of property rights, but there's voluminous case law and legal tradition for this, so I'm not sure what the point is.
They considered getting a license, but ultimately decided against it. I believe Larry Page said they considered it because they wanted to use Sun's java implementation (not the same thing as just using the API via the Apache Harmony implementation). But even if they thought they needed a license for the Java API, they may have decided otherwise after legal analysis.
It bugs me when lawyers think they have a smoking gun because some employee writes something in an e-mail or a presentation. They employee might be raising speculative issues that even they don't know the answer to, or they might just be wrong on the legal status of something.
Nobody was denied rights. California recognized homosexual unions, and gave them all the same rights (visitation, inheritance, custody, etc.) as man/woman marriages, before prop 8 was approved by the voters. The whole debate boiled down to what one or another group of people wanted the union to be called.
The fish *have* evolved immunity to the toxic sludge...
But only if they actually did evolve. As the grandparent rightly points out, this case appears to be an excellent confirmation of selection, but that's not what's missing in the dialog to convince people of evolution. In this case, we don't have confirmation of a mutation, let alone a *random* mutation. A non-random mutation (a "designed" one) wouldn't count, obviously.
This is what, I believe, the grandparent was saying. You can't run around trying to convince people of evolution just by pointing out instances of selection. This is, unfortunately, what often happens - causing people to just become entrenched in their positions and the dialog to falter.
I remember reading an article (sorry, can't find the reference) about how a Russian experiment to determine how to make tundra into farmland was ruined by warm summers during the experiment. Basically stuff started growing on it's own without the measures they expected to perform. The article moaned about how global warming was ruining this important research. I was confused, as it seemed like global warming was making the research unnecessary.
Oh for crying out loud. Linus is smart, but git started as just an opensource rehash of bitkeeper. Should we credit Larry McVoy with genius?
Of course, Linus is not a lawyer, and his interpretation of GPL may not be correct. But the gist of the original story was that it was legal analysis made by an IP lawyer, and he essentially agreed with Linus.
I'll give you a specific example where Linus is dead wrong. errno.h. This header, from the kernel, is included in almost every Linux user-space program, whether open source or not. (glibc's errno.h includes the kernel's errno.h) If you can provide an example of a kernel header file you think would be a problem to include, please specify it.
This whole thing just makes me angry, because it ignores legal standards that have applied to Linux and been accepted by all parties, for years. If Naughton's legal analysis is correct, and use of the Linux header files causes the GPL to apply to the utilizing work, then glibc is in more danger than Bionic is. glibc is LGPL, not GPL, and has been using "full" Linux kernel headers for years. How could Bionic, using a stripped down subset of the same headers, be subject to the GPL, if glibc is not?
Instead, we have statements like this in the original blog entry by Raymond Nimmer: "Not having examined the facts, I don’t know the actual truth of the matter." Indeed That pretty much describes all commentators in the entire mess.
Florian doesn't seem to consider the possibility that when Google acquired the files, they didn't have the "CONFIDENTIAL" notice on them. If the files were obtained as part of a larger demo or test suite released with an encompassing less-restrictive license, as appears to be the case with at least some of the files mentioned, then maybe someone other than Google (even possibly a Sun employee) scrubbed the notices accordingly. The tone of the article doesn't give Google much benefit of the doubt that these might be honest mistakes, and perfectly legal usages.