To simplify calculations, we'll say espresso contains 100mg/cup of the finest Colombian caffiene, and an average, slightly corpulent Slashdot male weighs in at about 80kg. The LD50 of our stimulant of choice is 200mg/kg, or two cups for every single one of those 80kg's of twitching, testosterone fuelled muscle and lard.
That means our hypothetical Slashdottian hero could drink 160 of those dinky little cups of coffee and have a fair expectation of living through the experience. Now an espresso cup is actually 30-40ml, (or 3.5-4.5oz, for those who understand arcane alchemical units), so that would mean knocking back about 6.4 litres of aromatic black bitterness.
Possible, I suppose, but unlikely to happen by any accident I can currently imagine.
You are joking right? The LD50 (level at which 50% of the pop. can be expected to die) from caffeine is only 1 or 2 grams.
I'm not sure where you're getting your numbers from, but the oral LD50 of caffeine is about 200mg/kg. An espresso contains about 80-100mg, so a person could theoretically drink 2x(body weight in kg) shots of espresso and still have a 50% chance of surviving.
However, every time there is an article about OOo, the only comments that get modded past +1 are pro-OOo. Anything that speaks ill of the product gets demoted to 0 or -1.
This accusation is made every time there's an OSS/commercial product comparison, but it only takes a quick look at the posts below to see it's completely misleading. Almost all of the posts modded 3 or above (including the parent post) are pro-MS or at least dismissive of the review.
Two big multimedia-oriented companies and a pain-in-the-ass-that-just-won't-die video tech company have what influence on Microsoft?
Take a closer look at what Flash is rapidly becoming. It's a platform-independant development environment which is easily capable of being used to develop productivity apps. It has the capacity (with Flash Remoting and Cold Fusion) of becoming the core of a decentralised Office replacement. No dependance on Windows, no need for MS.
Why didn't he speak up the very first time anyone called their distro "Linux"?
Because it was only recently that someone else tried to trademark "Linux" for themselves. Anyway, you are allowed to call your distro "Jekler Linux", just as you always have.
just don't call it "Aussie Linux" and you don't have to pay anything.
You can call your distro "Aussie Linux" without paying as well. What you can't do is use Linux in a trademark i.e. naming your company "Aussie Linux" without getting permission and paying the fee.
Seems to me this is a much more promising area than fusion research.
I agree that HDR looks like a promising option, but there are relatively few sites with both a thermal gradient steep enough, and enough permeability to be cost-effective. There's a nice collection of links here; http://www.dhm.ch/hdr.html. Not to say it shouldn't be developed, but fusion is more promising for some applications.
It is free. I can connect to freenet with an AP and that AP becomes a shared node on the network. The cost to me is the AP I'd need to connect to any network. This is one of the times when the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
Perhaps not in the US, but over here in Western Australia, we've been building a free-as-in-beer network since the early days of wireless networking. http://www.e3.com.au/
Not for long. Wait till walmart decides to enter your country, all those companies will go out of business within five years.
Unlikely. They'll be trying to gain a foothold in a market that's already filled by the likes of Aldi etc. Margins are already so low I don't think even Walmart would be able to undercut them, certainly not for long enough to get the sort of market share they're chasing.
History shows that being better has nothing to do with popularity or adoption. Nothing, nada, zip, zilch. Please get that thought out of your head.
No, I won't get that thought out of my head, and you might like to try being a little less patronising when you post that sort of advice. Better is why I make my selections, and that's enough to drive my use of open source.
There is enough there to lure users to switch but not if they can use the same apps in windows.
That just means that the moment, open source operating systems are not sufficiently better to give most users a compelling reason to change.
The best conditions for software users will be when we can independantly change hardware, operating system or software at will without having to update the whole stack. At the moment, there is immense platform inertia as a result of this tight coupling, and it's resulting severe restrictions to innovation.
In projects like Wine, Xen, Hypervisor, Basilisk, etc, we can see aspects of computing heading towards abstracting those different layers, and I think open source will be necessary to achive that goal. The experience open source teams are getting with cross-platform tools, and the technologies they are developing to work in cross-platform environments are huge advantages over singl-platform teams. Proprietary players have too much invested in platform lockdown to play friendly with others, so they're not likely to drive this.
When your open source OS of choice can run any binary applications you chose on any hardware platform you chose, then there will be a compelling reason to change.
How is linux supposed to gain popularity if all the "killer apps" also run on windows?
By being better. That's one of the key points of open source, it makes for better, and because developers are free to "stand on the shoulders of giants", more innovative software. If it doesn't achieve that, people should stay with the alternatives.
Interesting that they are black... Why is that I wonder?
Most likely because the antibacterial silver particles they're impregnated with are black (small particles of silver are what makes the black in B&W photographs).
You only need to pay the fee if you are using the word "Linux" in your own trademark. If you were a non-profit wishing to distribute Magada Linux, you could either trademark "Magada Linux" and pay the fee or trademark "Magada" and not pay the fee. You can still market Magada Linux either way.
Subject: Re: Quick press enquiry re LinuxMark enforcement
From: Jon maddog Hall
Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2005 09:25:04 -0400
To: "David Braue"
Cc: maddog@li.org
David,
Your story is quite accurate, LAI is acting in Australia on behalf of LMI, and
this is not a "scam".
Since 1995, when an unfortunate incident in the United States showed us that
the world is not made of altruistic people and companies, Linux International
has been defending the Linux Trademark. At that time an entity had obtained a
US trademark on the word "Linux", and was trying to obtain twenty-five percent
of the REVENUES of companies that had the word "Linux" in their name, or in
their product names. Instead of all the member companies fighting this battle
individually, Linux International fought it and won. Unfortunately it cost us
a lot of money to do this, despite the pro bono efforts of Gerry Davis, of the
law firm of Davis and Schroeder.
Linux International has been defending the Linux Trademark for the world, which
due to the costs of registering and obtaining International Trade Marks is
VERY expensive. Linux International has spent over 300,000 USD to do this
over the years. LI is a non-profit and does not have very much revenue, so
some of this money has come from my own personal checkbook. While I can not
say how much money I have spent on defending the mark per se, I can tell you
that I have spent about 250,000 USD of my own money in keeping LI alive. I am
not looking for medals or a chest to pin them on. I am only stating this to
show people that this is not a "scam", nor is anyone making any money off this
other than the international legal and trademark community, and I am sure that
they are necessary and justifiable fees. Certainly Jeremy Malcolm has seemed
to be above board and conscientious in all of our dealings with him, as has
Jonathan Oxer and the rest of the fine people at LAI.
After a while the board of Linux International recognized the advantage of
forming a separate non-profit, the Linux Mark Institute (LMI). We need LMI to
be self-funding, and following trademark laws in the 200 countries of the world
is very expensive. In addition to the normal issues of a company obtaining a
trademark of their own product, using their own name, we have issues such as:
o "Who owns the right to use 'Linux'"
o "Who (therefore) has the right to the broad name 'Linux University'?"
o "Can there be more than one "Linux University? If so, what should its name
be?"
o "If I call my company 'Linux Experts', does this mean that I am the only
group of 'Linux Experts' worldwide?....shouldn't everyone come to me
because I called myself 'Linux Experts'?"
as well as the issues of people who wish to use the name in bad ways (as
a pornography attractor or on items confusing to the Linux market).
We have tried to make the licensing as unobtrusive as possible, tailored to
the amounts of money that people might be making off the use of the mark, and
with an eye to keeping the cost to non-profits and user groups as low as
possible. We also have to re-license the name periodically so we can
protect against "name squatting" (ala URLs) and defunct entities who no longer
need the name they registered.
The trademark laws of the world were not created in the days of the World
Wide Web, or even the Internet, where unscrupulous people can take advantage
of a good name for a good idea and create havoc for people who want to start
legitimate industry in their territory under a mark that is registered in
some other coun
Like I said, an FPS is going to strain your machine more than any video or audio editing is going to.
Look, it sounds like you're a young bloke, so no offense, but if you think a few hours playing an FPS is even remotely similar CPU loading to rendering video streams, I'm afraid you don't know what you're talking about.
If you're genuinely interested, there's bound to be a jobbing video pro in your area who wouldn't mind you having a look around - they're generally not too precious about hardware. Just a tip though, try not to be so patronising. We're not all novices out here...
That's probably the most generic and incorrect statement I've ever heard.
Um, yeah sure.
Look, I'm sure you mean well, but I've been around video long enough to have played with one of the first Fairlight CVIs to come out. I have nine Windows boxes, two Linux servers and a G4 Mac around the office and edit suite. "Cheapo power supplies", custom cases etc aren't part of this world and neither are FPS games.
Still, since you say so, I'll believe there's some wonderful parallel universe where a magical combination of hardware and configuration settings will let Win 2K/XP work without crashing, and recover cleanly from heavy loads. Trouble is, that world is a long way from this one, where I and my clients spend a great deal of time, money and effort keeping these and other Windows machines up and running.
Slashdot Mirror
Um, forgive me if I'm wrong here
I forgive you...
To simplify calculations, we'll say espresso contains 100mg/cup of the finest Colombian caffiene, and an average, slightly corpulent Slashdot male weighs in at about 80kg. The LD50 of our stimulant of choice is 200mg/kg, or two cups for every single one of those 80kg's of twitching, testosterone fuelled muscle and lard.
That means our hypothetical Slashdottian hero could drink 160 of those dinky little cups of coffee and have a fair expectation of living through the experience. Now an espresso cup is actually 30-40ml, (or 3.5-4.5oz, for those who understand arcane alchemical units), so that would mean knocking back about 6.4 litres of aromatic black bitterness.
Possible, I suppose, but unlikely to happen by any accident I can currently imagine.
The coffee is what is keeping these incredibly unhealthy people in cubicles alive!
Well, let's face it, if wasn't for the shakes, they wouldn't be getting any exercise at all.
One could also simply double click the header in Office to edit it. I would think this is what 99% of people do.
/View/Header and Footer.
That only works if you have an existing header/footer. If you are creating a new document, you still need to click
You are joking right? The LD50 (level at which 50% of the pop. can be expected to die) from caffeine is only 1 or 2 grams.
I'm not sure where you're getting your numbers from, but the oral LD50 of caffeine is about 200mg/kg. An espresso contains about 80-100mg, so a person could theoretically drink 2x(body weight in kg) shots of espresso and still have a 50% chance of surviving.
However, every time there is an article about OOo, the only comments that get modded past +1 are pro-OOo. Anything that speaks ill of the product gets demoted to 0 or -1.
This accusation is made every time there's an OSS/commercial product comparison, but it only takes a quick look at the posts below to see it's completely misleading. Almost all of the posts modded 3 or above (including the parent post) are pro-MS or at least dismissive of the review.
Two big multimedia-oriented companies and a pain-in-the-ass-that-just-won't-die video tech company have what influence on Microsoft?
Take a closer look at what Flash is rapidly becoming. It's a platform-independant development environment which is easily capable of being used to develop productivity apps. It has the capacity (with Flash Remoting and Cold Fusion) of becoming the core of a decentralised Office replacement. No dependance on Windows, no need for MS.
Why didn't he speak up the very first time anyone called their distro "Linux"?
Because it was only recently that someone else tried to trademark "Linux" for themselves. Anyway, you are allowed to call your distro "Jekler Linux", just as you always have.
just don't call it "Aussie Linux" and you don't have to pay anything.
You can call your distro "Aussie Linux" without paying as well. What you can't do is use Linux in a trademark i.e. naming your company "Aussie Linux" without getting permission and paying the fee.
Seems to me this is a much more promising area than fusion research.
I agree that HDR looks like a promising option, but there are relatively few sites with both a thermal gradient steep enough, and enough permeability to be cost-effective. There's a nice collection of links here; http://www.dhm.ch/hdr.html. Not to say it shouldn't be developed, but fusion is more promising for some applications.
But... it's not free!
It is free. I can connect to freenet with an AP and that AP becomes a shared node on the network. The cost to me is the AP I'd need to connect to any network. This is one of the times when the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
At no point will it be "free" as in beer.
Perhaps not in the US, but over here in Western Australia, we've been building a free-as-in-beer network since the early days of wireless networking. http://www.e3.com.au/
Not for long. Wait till walmart decides to enter your country, all those companies will go out of business within five years.
Unlikely. They'll be trying to gain a foothold in a market that's already filled by the likes of Aldi etc. Margins are already so low I don't think even Walmart would be able to undercut them, certainly not for long enough to get the sort of market share they're chasing.
Nope. He'll be banned for spelling "Monty" wrong.
Though the Vegas connection is probably a good excuse...
Aren't you from the UK? If you are, Asda is Walmart.
Nope, Australia. There's a whole bunch of players in the Walmart space over here.
If you don't believe me ask walmart.
I can't. They haven't made it over here - too many better alternatives...
History shows that being better has nothing to do with popularity or adoption. Nothing, nada, zip, zilch. Please get that thought out of your head.
No, I won't get that thought out of my head, and you might like to try being a little less patronising when you post that sort of advice. Better is why I make my selections, and that's enough to drive my use of open source.
There is enough there to lure users to switch but not if they can use the same apps in windows.
That just means that the moment, open source operating systems are not sufficiently better to give most users a compelling reason to change.
The best conditions for software users will be when we can independantly change hardware, operating system or software at will without having to update the whole stack. At the moment, there is immense platform inertia as a result of this tight coupling, and it's resulting severe restrictions to innovation.
In projects like Wine, Xen, Hypervisor, Basilisk, etc, we can see aspects of computing heading towards abstracting those different layers, and I think open source will be necessary to achive that goal. The experience open source teams are getting with cross-platform tools, and the technologies they are developing to work in cross-platform environments are huge advantages over singl-platform teams. Proprietary players have too much invested in platform lockdown to play friendly with others, so they're not likely to drive this.
When your open source OS of choice can run any binary applications you chose on any hardware platform you chose, then there will be a compelling reason to change.
How is linux supposed to gain popularity if all the "killer apps" also run on windows?
By being better. That's one of the key points of open source, it makes for better, and because developers are free to "stand on the shoulders of giants", more innovative software. If it doesn't achieve that, people should stay with the alternatives.
I like the way you think, but personally, I'd find a female British soldier.
I like the way you think, but sadly, all female British soldiers look like Camilla Parker Bowles...
Interesting that they are black... Why is that I wonder?
Most likely because the antibacterial silver particles they're impregnated with are black (small particles of silver are what makes the black in B&W photographs).
wouldn't this be evidence for intelligent design? I mean, if we can create an organism, why couldn't some higher being?
The suggestion that some theoretical higher being could create life was never in dispute. What is in dispute is whether the higher being exists.
Showing that humans can create life demonstrates that, while God may have created life, (s)he is not necessary for its creation.
I turn wine into water with a lot less equipment than that! Oh wait....
No *inux will be left here. At all.
You only need to pay the fee if you are using the word "Linux" in your own trademark. If you were a non-profit wishing to distribute Magada Linux, you could either trademark "Magada Linux" and pay the fee or trademark "Magada" and not pay the fee.
You can still market Magada Linux either way.
Does anybody have a link to something a little more informative?
A number of people have attempted to clarify this, including on Slashdot. I'll post the full text http://lists.linux.org.au/archives/linux-aus/2005- August/msg00084.html, since most people seem to dislike reading linked articles.
Subject: Re: Quick press enquiry re LinuxMark enforcement
From: Jon maddog Hall
Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2005 09:25:04 -0400
To: "David Braue"
Cc: maddog@li.org
David,
Your story is quite accurate, LAI is acting in Australia on behalf of LMI, and this is not a "scam".
Since 1995, when an unfortunate incident in the United States showed us that the world is not made of altruistic people and companies, Linux International has been defending the Linux Trademark. At that time an entity had obtained a US trademark on the word "Linux", and was trying to obtain twenty-five percent of the REVENUES of companies that had the word "Linux" in their name, or in their product names. Instead of all the member companies fighting this battle individually, Linux International fought it and won. Unfortunately it cost us a lot of money to do this, despite the pro bono efforts of Gerry Davis, of the law firm of Davis and Schroeder.
Linux International has been defending the Linux Trademark for the world, which due to the costs of registering and obtaining International Trade Marks is VERY expensive. Linux International has spent over 300,000 USD to do this over the years. LI is a non-profit and does not have very much revenue, so some of this money has come from my own personal checkbook. While I can not say how much money I have spent on defending the mark per se, I can tell you that I have spent about 250,000 USD of my own money in keeping LI alive. I am not looking for medals or a chest to pin them on. I am only stating this to show people that this is not a "scam", nor is anyone making any money off this other than the international legal and trademark community, and I am sure that they are necessary and justifiable fees. Certainly Jeremy Malcolm has seemed to be above board and conscientious in all of our dealings with him, as has Jonathan Oxer and the rest of the fine people at LAI.
After a while the board of Linux International recognized the advantage of forming a separate non-profit, the Linux Mark Institute (LMI). We need LMI to be self-funding, and following trademark laws in the 200 countries of the world is very expensive. In addition to the normal issues of a company obtaining a trademark of their own product, using their own name, we have issues such as:
o "Who owns the right to use 'Linux'"
o "Who (therefore) has the right to the broad name 'Linux University'?"
o "Can there be more than one "Linux University? If so, what should its name be?"
o "If I call my company 'Linux Experts', does this mean that I am the only group of 'Linux Experts' worldwide?....shouldn't everyone come to me because I called myself 'Linux Experts'?"
as well as the issues of people who wish to use the name in bad ways (as a pornography attractor or on items confusing to the Linux market).
We have tried to make the licensing as unobtrusive as possible, tailored to the amounts of money that people might be making off the use of the mark, and with an eye to keeping the cost to non-profits and user groups as low as possible. We also have to re-license the name periodically so we can protect against "name squatting" (ala URLs) and defunct entities who no longer need the name they registered.
The trademark laws of the world were not created in the days of the World Wide Web, or even the Internet, where unscrupulous people can take advantage of a good name for a good idea and create havoc for people who want to start legitimate industry in their territory under a mark that is registered in some other coun
Like I said, an FPS is going to strain your machine more than any video or audio editing is going to.
Look, it sounds like you're a young bloke, so no offense, but if you think a few hours playing an FPS is even remotely similar CPU loading to rendering video streams, I'm afraid you don't know what you're talking about.
If you're genuinely interested, there's bound to be a jobbing video pro in your area who wouldn't mind you having a look around - they're generally not too precious about hardware. Just a tip though, try not to be so patronising. We're not all novices out here...
That's probably the most generic and incorrect statement I've ever heard.
Um, yeah sure.
Look, I'm sure you mean well, but I've been around video long enough to have played with one of the first Fairlight CVIs to come out. I have nine Windows boxes, two Linux servers and a G4 Mac around the office and edit suite. "Cheapo power supplies", custom cases etc aren't part of this world and neither are FPS games.
Still, since you say so, I'll believe there's some wonderful parallel universe where a magical combination of hardware and configuration settings will let Win 2K/XP work without crashing, and recover cleanly from heavy loads. Trouble is, that world is a long way from this one, where I and my clients spend a great deal of time, money and effort keeping these and other Windows machines up and running.