If someone knowingly distributes something they wrote under the GPL, then they have done just that. No waiting for an indefinite period and saying "April fools!" or "Gosh, we knew our code was in the stuff we were distributing under the GPL, but we didn't intend it" or shouting "Psyche!" at the world.
But if they UNKNOWINGLY distributed it, and as a result were now obligated to distribute the source even after they discovered the matter?
The GPL was (allegedly) intended to allow people to CHOSE what, if any, of their code they wanted to release - as a price for combining it with other people's GPLed code - and what to continue to hold closely (but not benefit from those other people's code without separate arrangements). They can CHOSE to waive IP claims against particular pieces of code that THEY THEMSELVES inserted or release-approved. They did NOT chose to waive the IP claims on OTHER pieces of their code that SOMEONE ELSE inserted without their knowlege or permission.
In such a situation they already have a problem: They can't sell the code to new customers without waiving their rights to the purloined IP, or replacing it with something else (competing against their own stuff with something perhaps less functional). But having to welch on their obligations arising from what they already shipped, and then being penalized for it, is an escalation that should not be required.
In the circumstance you discribe, there must have been some other version of the software, distributed under some other terms, before it was ever added to the GPL'd aglomeration.
I disagree with your premise. Even the very first version of the code they used as a base may contain the purloined code. But that's all part of their decisionmaking on what to do for their NEXT release (if any) of this particular product.
What they should do is strip their code out, and distribute the GPL'd mass minus their code under the GPL, and offer their original product under whatever licence they wish.
Which would be a legitimate choice for the NEXT release.
But it doesn't solve the basic issue: If they distributed object without source they must continue to make the matching version of the source generally available for a time.
They don't have to "stop all their GPL activities" but they shouldn't knowingly distribute something under the GPL (or, for that matter, under any licence) if they don't intend to honour its terms.
But hosting the source is NOT "distributing" it in the sense that was meant (selling a product for which they recieve a benefit from other people's GPLed work). It is meeting an obligation incurred when they DID distribute the product, before discovering the offending code insertion.
My point is: If they find themselves, through no fault of their own, in a position like SCO claims to be in, how do they defend their IP without violating the GPL?
In particular, if they chose to defend their IP claims, and the claims are legitimate, how can they act rightly and aviod being fried (like SCO is no doubt about to be)?
If the GPL actually does NOT give them a legitimate way to handle such a situation, companies with major IP investments to protect will be loath to release ANYTHING AT ALL under GPL for fear of compromising code that they did not intend to put at risk.
But because the wavelength is so large, it can't compete with the strength of the membrane field due to ionic gradients, which is on the order of 200,000 volts/inch.
Doesn't matter.
What matters is the membrane POTENTIAL (volts to fractions of a volt) and the VOLTAGE DROP due to CURRENT through the intracellular medium across the width of the cell.
That current can be enormous, because it is induced by MANY photons from the incoming wave. It is proportional to the signal strength, and has nothing to do with the wavelength of the signal compared to the thickness of the membrane. Dropping a voltage across the width of the cell large enough to modulate the activity of a voltage-sensitive cell-receptor molecule when the cell membrane focuses that differential on the receptor does not require meat-cooking intracellular currents.
The length of the wave compared to the length of the BODY can have an effect on that current - by enormously boosting it if the body's structure is near one of the resonating lengths. But the body doesn't have to be a resonant dipole to have strong currents induced in it by the electric fields of strong radio signals.
It's not the dilectric properties of the membrane that are at issue (other than that it does insulate) but the conductivity of the cell fluids within the membrane.
A non-trivial external electric field can be maintained by currents around the cell through the resistance of the extracellular medium. But the current through the cell will be much smaller, due to the insulation of the membrane and the relatively small leakage current through the cell-surface-penetrating receptors. So the voltage on the inside of the cell membrane is approximately equal throughout, while on the outside it varies significantly depending on the location of that patch of cell surface.
So the entire voltage difference appears across the very thin membrane at the place where it is greatest. This is a LARGE field strength (in terms of volts/inch), though the field strength around the cell (in the same terms) is quite small.
In my opinion, a company's distribution of source for GPLed products for which it released versions should NOT be held to void its IP claims to any of its proprietary code inserted by others - even if it continues to distribute versions containing the code. I see this as both a matter of law, derived from the GPL's own terms, and as a matter of good policy for GPL promotion.
The GPL explicitly claims that it does NOT purport to grant a license to proprietary code improperly inserted into a GPLed distribution by someone who does not have the necessary rights to place the code under GPL. But it does demand that any person (or company) who distributes object containing GPLed code must make the source available, and if even one copy goes out without the source attached the only permissible way to do that (so it can reach a repurchaser of the oject) is to make the source available generally for a minimum time, as by a web or FTP site.
So a company who distributes a modification of a GPLed project may be required to distribute the code for a time, under penalty of loss of the right to copy and/or distribute GPLed code forever. If the company THEN discovers someone ELSE has included their pride-and-joy in the base distribution, they're in a catch-22:
- If they stop distributing the source, they lose GPL rights. This could be a BIG cost.
- If they DON'T stop, AND this puts their proprietary code under GPL, they suffer the loss of their IP.
So the doctrine of estopple should not apply: Their IP is already exposed - taking down their distribution won't significantly mitigate that damage, since it will be available elsewhere on the net. But taking it down WILL generate other costs for them.
And since the GPL doesn't claim to grant rights to code improperly inserted, it can be argued that the improperly inserted proprietary code is not under it, until such time as the owners deliberately, with intent, insert it themselves - despite their continued distribution of the source improperly containing it, in order to meet their GPL obligations.
Now the GPL advocates might want to argue that, nevertheless, the victim of such theft must now either free the code or stop distributing and lose all GPL rights. But IMHO that's a bad idea.
Such a position would greatly hamper the adoption of the GPL codebase by companies with code they wish to keep proprietary - because unknowing propagation of code stolen from them within a large software release (such as a Linux distribution) would leave them on the above cleft stick: Give away your family jewels, or suddenly shut down all your GPL business-model activity.
Of course IBM's lawyers had to try making this assertion. But for the future of the GPL I hope that either the case is decided without a ruling on this issue or (better yet) IBM's claim that this frees the (allegedly) SCO code is explicitly rejected.
(Meanwhile, perhaps the maintainers of the GPL might want to add a bit of verbage to clarify this issue to a future version?)
This reflects a lack of understanding of the fields involved in regulating membrane ion channels. Even though it is only a potential difference of some tens of millivolts, it is acting across a width of perhaps 8 nm, so the field is actually very large. Compared with biological fields, external fields from radio antennas are negligible.
Your response misrepresents the physics of the electrical environment.
The cell membrane is oil-based, and an effective insulator. The surrounding fluid, and the fluid within the cell, are conductive. So the field strength across the membrane can be enormously stronger than the applied field producing it.
Suppose the cell is 1,000,000 times as wide as the membrane is thick. And suppose the cell has a few cell-surface-penetrating proteins that act as diodes, permitting electrons or negative ions to enter but not leave. The voltage of the solution inside the cell will all be at the most negative voltage present at the outside of any of the membrane-penetrating receptors. If the voltage on the opposite side of the cell is even slightly more positive, the electric field strength across the membrane at that point will be a million times as strong as the applied electric field strength.
Some studies (not from Sweeden) have also claimed to find a correlation between living near substations and some cancers (such as leukemia).
In addition to the issue of substations usually being in the poorer and more industrialized areas (which can be expected to have all SORTS of other pollution sources), substation transformers for a long time were filled with PCB (PolyChlorinated Byphenol), a very good fire retardant but an extremely nasty substance gene-damage wise.
It might be interesting to redo those studies and try to separate field and PCB effects.
(Then again, it might not. There was a BIG scandal recently. It turns out one of the main researchers claiming to have found a utility-company electric-field vs cancer linkage had been completely faking his data.)
please explain a mechansim for non ionizing radiation to cause cancer
Cancer seems to be entirely explained by a small number of changes to cell DNA (perhaps as few as 6 or less, depending on the cancer type). Here are several ways this could be achieved by non-ionizing radiation:
First: Electric fields - transient or otherwise - can cause polar molecules or molecules with movable charges to align with the field, and be stressed by it.
DNA is such a molecule. It is of enormous length. In the presence of an electirc field it aligns with it. (Lined-up DNA strands are diagnostic of death by electrocution or lightning strike.)
The force on a molecule is proportional to the spacing of the charges and the potential difference across the field. The wider the separation of the charges, the stronger the force on the molecular backbone between them for a given field. DNA molecules are ENORMOUS, so if the field is strong enough to line them up, it could easily be strong enough to snap them once they're lined up. Even if not, uncoiling them, un-hairpinning them, and peeling them apart from binding protiens are likely to modify gene expression, switching genes on and off in ways not part of the normal mechanisms (with considerable opportunity for secondary effects leading to permanent damage to the DNA strand).
Second: Conductive structures of lengths with certain relation to wavelengths (such as 1/2, 3/2, 5/2 etc.) resonate. This allows multiple photons to dump energy into currents in the conductive structure, combining their energy. The currents can break the molecule, heat it, or otherwise promote its reactions with the molecules around it. There are also extremely strong electric fields at the ends of such structures, which could affect bonding of nearby molecules. Free radicals (with their cascading fallout of molecular damage) can be produced by such fields.
Again DNA, being very long and somewhat conductive, seems a likely antenna for such events. Such currents in the DNA strand could affect the strand itself, its regulatory neighborhood, or create enough chemical havoc in its vicinity to provoke damage to the gene.
Third: Many cell-surface proteins, including those regulating cell activity, are affected by cell membrane potentials. Electric and electromagnetic fields affect those potentials, and may result in activation (or deactivation) of such signaling paths. That could inappropriately modulate cell activity, in ways that stress the cell and increase the chance for DNA damage.
I could go on.
a nobel prize awaits if you figure it out
Unlikely.
This stuff is all pretty well known. To get a Nobel I'd have to prove it rigorously in a lab environment, produce some significant technologocial or theoretical fallout, come to the Nobel committee's attention, and win the annual political battle within the committee. And be a leader in the work. (Which seems unlikely, since the above phenomenon are already well known.)
So I'm not holding my breath waiting for the call in response to this post. B-)
With cheaper energy for separating and purifying the components of used materials for reuse, the balance shifts more toward recycling.
Why? Won't extracting new resources get the same benefit?
They will receive some benefit. But a lesser one. Even an unlimited amount of free energy won't get you a mineral if the ore supply is actually all used up, or pay other costs such as having to move cities, strip-mine parks, or go fifty miles deep to reach the reserves that are still there.
Then there's the disposal costs - both of the mine tailings and other unwanted products of purification, and the material that you didn't recycle. Both those costs go away (replaced by the cost of the recycling technology) when you recycle old materials rather than digging up new.
Make the cost of recycling lower and more raw materials achieve crossover, where it's cheaper to recycle than mine (at least for some major fraction of the demand). Given that energy is the main cost of automated recycling and a disproportionately smaller fraction of the cost of primary resource production, I expect that progressively cheaper energy will mean progressively more materials reach crossover.
Re:New standard still necessary
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RGB to become RGBCMY
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· Score: 5, Informative
... you're going to need a format that preserves color information in the new 5 color system if you're going to exploit the real improvements in this color technology: closer reproductions of actual color.
Absolutely not true.
For people with normal color vision, in addition to the "rod" pigment (which is not a significant player in color perception and daylight central vision) there are three color receptor pigments located in the "cone" cells, which have broad reception peaks with well-known shapes. The response of those three sets of cells to an image can be accurately modeled by using three sets of sensors and filters that model the three pigments' frequency response.
The problem comes when, given this measurement, you try to stimulate a viewer's cone cells to produce the response equivalent to the light you measured. If you just pick three color phosphors at the peak of the three dyes' response curves, you find that the colors don't stimulate JUST the cones you intended. The green light, for instance, will strongly stimulate the green-responsive cones. But it will also weakly stimulate the red and blue cones. Similarly, red light will strongly stimulate red cones, weakly stimulate green cones, and very weakly stimulate blue cones. Ditto the other way around with blue light.
This has two effects:
First: Even within the range of combinations of stimulus the three light sources can produce, simply playing back the signal will cause the results to be somewhat more pastel than the orignal scene. This can be compensated for to some extent - by subtracting out appropriate amounts of each color's signal from the signals going to the others color emitters.
Second: You can't make the emitters emit a negative amount of light. The result is that there are scene colors, saturated and nearly-saturated colors between the phosphor colors you chose for reproduction, that can produce color sensations that these three screen colors can't reproduce. These scene colors will ALWAYS apper somewhat washed-out if you only reproduce the image with three screen colors.
So with three values you can accurately transmit any color a normal eye can see. But with three phosphors you can't make the eye see some of these colors.
The two-dimensional representation of the relative responses of the three dies looks something like a spearment leaf with the base sliced off. (See figure 12 of this web page. And thank you, canavan) The edge of the leaf represents the response to a pure spectral color, and regions within it to mixes of colors. If you try to reproduce the response with three phosphor colors, you are picking three points on the leaf edge and drawing a triangle between them. By adjusting the relative amounts of light from the three phosphors you can produce a stimulus corresponding to any point WITHIN the triangle. But you can't produce one corresponding to the arcs of the leaf that are outside the triangle.
But by picking more points along the leaf edge you can draw a polygon and hit any point within it. This covers more of the leaf and leaves fewer colors missing. (Indeed, just a couple extra points can give you most of the leaf.)
You still send the signal with the three values corresponding to the response you want from the eye. But now your monitor processes it into more than three colors to put on the screen, to get the eye to respond more closely to the response it would have had to the original scene.
(Note that people with some forms of color blindness have cones with pigments that have abnormal frequency responses. Such people will not see a color TV image as right even with this upgrade, because the camera will not have correctly encoded what THEIR eyes would have seen. They need a camera with a different response, and yet another set of phosphors in the monitor, to get a good match.)
Although I think it's a good thing that the US is willing to work with an international effort, I am becoming more skeptical as time passes about the need to pursue new power sources.
By concentrating only on the current uses of energy, you're making the same mistake as the early IBM executives who thought only ten computers would ever be needed - because that's how many it would take to do as much arithmetic as all the accountants in the world.
Completely missing the fact that this was all the arithmetic that was done because it was SO EXPENSIVE to do arithmetic, making other useful applications impractical. Cutting the cost of computation enabled an amazing range of additional, useful (or fun) things. (It now takes more arithmetic than the annual computation of that world full of accountants just to refresh my screen. Now think about DOOM III. B-) )
The same is true for energy.
For stareters, there's a WHOLE LOT of old trash stored in landfills and other disposal sites. Some if it is way toxic. Some is radioactive, and some of that is burning its way out of its containers and contaminating the ground water. Meanwhile, though recycling is making some progress, we're mining more minerals to make new materials - because it's often much less expensive to do it that way.
With cheaper energy for separating and purifying the components of used materials for reuse, the balance shifts more toward recycling.
In the extreme limit, with abundant nearly-free energy, you can vaporize the entrire trash stream and run it through a mass spectrometer, separating it by element and isotope. Use the carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen, plus still more energy, to feed your hydroponic farm. Use the purified metals and other elements in lieu of mining and refining more, for manufacturing feedstocks. Sort out the useful radioactives for devices that need them (i.e. smoke detectors), feed the NON-useful ones into nuclear processes that convert them to something more useful or less dangerous. Or just contain them (which you can do better when they're pure rather than a witches-brew) until they change to something more useful on their own, then separate it out again.
Likewise... solar panels on homes [would be able to sell their excess electricity back to the power grid].
They can do that now in many areas.
In particular, in some states (i.e. Nevada) you can grid-tie a renewable-energy system (solar, wind, and/or hydro) of up to two kilowatts capacity and use "net metering" - paying for the amount of power you use beyond that which you produce. You default to monthly billing, but can easily arrange a change to annual billing.
You get to use the grid as the world's biggest storage battery for nearly free (just paying the keep-connected fee - about $36/year in NV). The power company benefits, despite buying your power at retail rather than wholesale, because:
- Solar tends to generate during peak periods (when power costs the electric company more).
- Wind tends to generate when the Heating/Cooling/AirConditioning (HVAC) loads are higher (again resulting in higher demand).
- If you generate more than you use during the period they don't have to pay you for the excess (though there are other deals where they'll pay you the wholesale rate, for bigger suppliers such as windfarms.)
Also: If your generation site is far from your consumption site (i.e. a windmill half a mile from your house) you can connect them both and net-bill the combo, using the grid for wiring from the distant generation (and getting wholesale from the excess).
Details differ depending on your state and your utility. But this is common across the country - due to pushes from government, environmental groups, and home power advocates, and because it's often a better deal for power companies than building more plants.
The big oil companies, those that really operate on a global basis, are "energy companies" per se but in reallity they are still mainly oil companies..
Then why is one of the largest manufacturers (and promotors) of industrial and consumer photovoltaic solar panels a division of British Petroleum?
The Cobalt Qube had a panel that was illuminated by green/(red?)/off LEDs at both ends. Their changing state tracked the IPL and the bar was solid green when the system was up and running.
I imagine that yes, due to the cheap labor of script kiddies that Windows does indeed have a lower cost of '0wnership' (sic).
I belive the point is that Microsoft boxes are so insecure that it's much cheaper to code and deploy a Windows exploit and end up 0wnerz-ing a bunch of machines than there is for other OSes.
innocent... Until convicted, like when arrested, booked and held, people are innocent of the crime of which they are accused.
Actually, they are to be TREATED as innocent until proven guilty.
It isn't that they ARE innocent. It is that the government is NOT AUTHORIZED to apply PENALTIES unless and until their guilt has been PROVEN.
There is the PERPETRATOR, the person who committed the crime.
There is the SUBJECT of an investigation, somebody the cops think MIGHT be the perpetrator.
There is the SUSPECT, someone the cops think is sufficiently LIKELY to be the perpetrator that it's a good idea to hang onto him until a case can be presented and tried.
There is the CONVICT, someone whose guilt has been proven and is now subject to punishment.
The process of convicting someone consists of converting him from a SUSPECT to a CONVICT, by proving within the appropriate legal standards (beyond reasonable doubt) that there really was a PERPETRATOR of a real crime, and he is it.
Any treatment of them other than obtaining their presence in the justice system, which could prove their guilt, is unacceptable, and threatens us all.
Dead on!
People being booked are SUSPECTS (or maybe even SUBJECTS or material witnesses). They are NOT proven guilty and thus are NOT subject to punishment. The jailing is JUST to insure they can be brought to trial. Nothing more than the minimum inconvenience necessary for the smooth functioning of the system is appropriate.
Yeah, but how much do these 'experts' know about how secure paper ballots really are? They should also interview a third group: those who are experts in the paper system.
I think a more telling question is: What "Paper Balots" did John Q Public think he was comparing to the e-voting systems?
And as usual we have a "game of telephone" going on here:
- We don't KNOW what the actual question on the survey was.
- The Computerworld article said "traditional paper ballot machines". (Maybe that was what was actually in the question. Let's assume it for the moment.)
- But when the Computerworld article's own author posted it to slashdot, he warped it to "Paper Ballots". And this thread is following his lead.
Now you and I know that paper ballots - the ones with the square boxes with hand-drawn Xes - are subject to some tampering, but it's hard to do it without leaving tracks, while a purely electronic systems is subject to all sorts of invisible breakdowns, from mechanical problems, software bugs, and malicious tampering.
But if you're talking "traditional paper ballot machines" you just completely dropped that system. Now you're talking about either punchcards, or optical mark sense systems.
What experience does John Q. have with either?
With punched cards, his sole reference point on reliability is the media storm over the presidential election in Florida. You know - the one where the democrats are STILL claiming the Republicans stole the election. Optical sense cards are subject to mis-scanning. Both can be hit by operational irregularities (such as not running one stack through while running another through twice.) Both are subject to cheating by replacement of physical ballots (as are all the other systems except e-voting without printed audit trail). Both are subject to exactly the same opportunities for accidental or malicious corruption of the vote counting hardware and software.
(And don't even get me STARTED on mechanical voting machines...)
So why SHOULD John Q. think that the e systems AREN'T better than the "traditional paper ballot MACHINES" - whose software has had more time for malicious bug injection and whose hardware and operational systems have been the subject of a recent major scandal?
IMHO John Q. may be right: All the objections except lack of an audit trail apply to the other paper ballot MACHINE systems, and they also have a better opportunity for misreading through mechanical failure or "user error" than the e systems. And since the audit trail is rarely checked, who's to say that the elections haven't been corrupted for decades.
IMHO the important thing about this flap is that it could lead to a less corruptable counting system than we've had since I became eligible to vote back in the '60s. The extra opportunity for unchecked vote corruption has lead to a move to eliminate the problem with the new machines by adding an audit trail, and to regular random surveilance of that audit trail. This, combined with the lower MECHANICAL error rate of the systems and the redundant counting mechanism will set a new, higher standard for the OLDER systems, and should lead to a much more accurate count.
Then, if we move on to eliminating the OTHER sources of election corruption (ineligible voters, multiple registrations, etc.), we might actually come up with fair and accurate elections within what remains of my lifetime. B-)
And one common-law mark downside DOESN'T apply
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The Saga of Katie.com
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Interestingly, one of the points making it difficult to enforce a common law trademark (and I presume this also applies to service marks) is that it is difficult for a potential infringer to determine, in the absense of registration, that the mark is already in use.
This is NOT an issue for second-level domain name (such as katie.com) as trademark. Domain names are all registered in a tirvial-to-check central database.
If a book is copyrightten, regardless of trademarking the title, the title is copywritten along with the content therein.
Not true.
Copyright applies to the content but NOT the title, which can be reused (unless trademarked).
If I understand this correctly, it can be reused even in the same genre.
Witness _Bladerunner_ -the science fiction movie made from the book _Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep_. The novel and had no relation whatsoever to the science fiction novel by Alan E. Nourse titled _Bladerunner_. (Electric Sheep and the B. movie didn't even have any relation to running blades, unlike the original Nourse novel which was used banned surgical procedures and the infrastructure necessary to get scalpels into illegal surgeon's hands as an illustration of potential flaws in eugenics law schemes.)
Whats most interesting... is whats NOT being talked about. What happened to Linux?
If SCO can show that IBM is using code SCO owns without the proper license, the next step is to show that IBM contributed that code to Linux without having the right to do so.
Other than that I don't see any impact for Linux.
But last time I looked SCO was only claiming that IBM contributed its OWN code to Linux, but that the IBM-written code was contaminated by being a "derivative work" of copyrighted Unix code, over which SCO gatekeeps the rights. A long chain for SCO to forge, which currently has at least two links cooking in the court system.
Novell claims they still own UNIX. Novell says that SCO only has a (revokable) license to license UNIX to others.
I thought SCO had bought from Novell an *exclusive* license to market the unix code for Novell, subject only to limitations from previous contracts (which would limit the rights that Novell had to give them).
As such Novell couldn't just arbitrarily turn it off, since SCO paid for it, and Novell couldn't issue new licenses without turning it off.
Novell has already exercised their right to revoke SCO's UNIX-licensing powers as regards IBM, back when SCO claimed to be revoking IBM's license. Novell effectively said, "We run he show here, SCO, and IBM is legitimately licensed in our book."
If so hurrah!
But I haven't seen anything other than your post to indicate that this is the case.
Perhaps I just missed it, since I haven't been following Novell v. SCO, nor as closely as I'd like SCO v. IBM.
How about just splitting a state's electors along popular vote lines? In Presidential-2000 election 50% of Minnesota's 10 electors would have gone to Bush. (There are already a few (2?) states who do this).
And any state can chose to do this. If you want it in your state, ask for it. Or (if you have initiative in your state), file an initiative and start getting signatures.
However, the winner-take-all nature of most states' choice of electors is part of the original compromise that led to the electoral college.
With either popular-vote selection of the president or a proportional system of selecting voters, one populous state with a corrupt election system swings the election. Winner-take-all means corruption of one state can't override a narrow margin in a large set of small states.
Wiinner-take-all also sets up a situation where the presidential candidates must appeal to both the big AND the little states in order to collect enough electoral votes to win. With proportional voting it's more efficient to go for a big margin in a few large urban areas and ignore the flyover country.
And THAT LAST was why it was created: As a protection for the little states against being swamped by a couple big ones, in order to give them the confidence to sign on with the union in the first place. From the 1780s to today there have ALWAYS been a small number of heavily populated states and a large number of sparse ones. The president is a single officeholder for ALL the states, not just the urban ones. Make it a popular vote and he becomes the president of a few urban coastal cities, creating a political situation more like that of France.
Absentee ballots aren't counted unless the election is close.
Absentee ballots are counted. Period.
In some jurisdictions they're counted before the polls close and their count goes out immediately after closing time, before the rest of the votes are counted. In others they might not show up on the count for days. But they DO get counted.
They may not be using DSPs as much as FPGAs/ASICs - a great deal of the signal processing for that sort of thing is easier done as parallel blocks of hardware than software.
It's an 802.11a chip. While.11b used DSSS (which is a time domain solution and goes well with dedicated logic),.11a and.11g use OFDM (which is based on FFTs thus is much easier to do in a DSP than with dedicated logic).
(And just now I have a real need to get hold of an OFDM testbench for prototyping some related things in a nearby band. A.11g or.11a,g card - or chipset development kit - with open firmware would be perfect.)
I will note that at least in California work that you do on your own time that is not related to your employers work belongs to you.
- Not in your employer's current or reasonably expected future product line. And - Not done on company time or with company resources.
I could get the boilerplate. (It's an attachment to every hi-tek employment contract in CA, complete with verbage about how it's the public interest of the state and other terms of the contract void where they confilict yadda yadda. I'd post it verbatim except I don't have a copy handy.)
And given the history of startup companies here, it also appears that in many cases you can use related work as long as you quit first.
It's hard to show that it was done while still at the previous company. B-) Also: People usually go off to do something else after they've tried to do it at the old company and been rebuffed by management - a strong indicator that it's NOT in the future product line. B-)
IMHO this provision of California law, and the resulting "cross the street, set up another startup" behavior, is the real engine of innovation in Silicon Valley, and the main reason attempts to get something similar going in other states tend to flop. (The other big component is the positive feedback of trained people congregating, making it possible to assemble a team.)
I understand some other states are cloning the provision, though, in an attempt to attract hi-tek. Perhaps, now that CA's engine is stalled, a critical mass will form in some other state with lower taxes and less restrictive (or flat-out wacko) laws.
Yawn. Wake me when Intel has released real, production ready (NOT 0.2) drivers for Linux for this, or any other modern wireless network chip.
Wake ME when they publish the source for the DSP firmware for the chip/core.
a) Visibility into the firmware is just about mandatory for writing your own driver. API documentation is better than nothing, but it's often not enough.
b) Drivers are relatively easy compared to doing work in the signal processing portion. While the FCC really doesn't want you to be changing stuff in there, keeping it secret stifles competition by making it difficult for any but large and well-funded players to build products around the chips.
Slashdot Mirror
If someone knowingly distributes something they wrote under the GPL, then they have done just that. No waiting for an indefinite period and saying "April fools!" or "Gosh, we knew our code was in the stuff we were distributing under the GPL, but we didn't intend it" or shouting "Psyche!" at the world.
But if they UNKNOWINGLY distributed it, and as a result were now obligated to distribute the source even after they discovered the matter?
The GPL was (allegedly) intended to allow people to CHOSE what, if any, of their code they wanted to release - as a price for combining it with other people's GPLed code - and what to continue to hold closely (but not benefit from those other people's code without separate arrangements). They can CHOSE to waive IP claims against particular pieces of code that THEY THEMSELVES inserted or release-approved. They did NOT chose to waive the IP claims on OTHER pieces of their code that SOMEONE ELSE inserted without their knowlege or permission.
In such a situation they already have a problem: They can't sell the code to new customers without waiving their rights to the purloined IP, or replacing it with something else (competing against their own stuff with something perhaps less functional). But having to welch on their obligations arising from what they already shipped, and then being penalized for it, is an escalation that should not be required.
In the circumstance you discribe, there must have been some other version of the software, distributed under some other terms, before it was ever added to the GPL'd aglomeration.
I disagree with your premise. Even the very first version of the code they used as a base may contain the purloined code. But that's all part of their decisionmaking on what to do for their NEXT release (if any) of this particular product.
What they should do is strip their code out, and distribute the GPL'd mass minus their code under the GPL, and offer their original product under whatever licence they wish.
Which would be a legitimate choice for the NEXT release.
But it doesn't solve the basic issue: If they distributed object without source they must continue to make the matching version of the source generally available for a time.
They don't have to "stop all their GPL activities" but they shouldn't knowingly distribute something under the GPL (or, for that matter, under any licence) if they don't intend to honour its terms.
But hosting the source is NOT "distributing" it in the sense that was meant (selling a product for which they recieve a benefit from other people's GPLed work). It is meeting an obligation incurred when they DID distribute the product, before discovering the offending code insertion.
My point is: If they find themselves, through no fault of their own, in a position like SCO claims to be in, how do they defend their IP without violating the GPL?
In particular, if they chose to defend their IP claims, and the claims are legitimate, how can they act rightly and aviod being fried (like SCO is no doubt about to be)?
If the GPL actually does NOT give them a legitimate way to handle such a situation, companies with major IP investments to protect will be loath to release ANYTHING AT ALL under GPL for fear of compromising code that they did not intend to put at risk.
IMHO this is NOT the droid we want.
But because the wavelength is so large, it can't compete with the strength of the membrane field due to ionic gradients, which is on the order of 200,000 volts/inch.
Doesn't matter.
What matters is the membrane POTENTIAL (volts to fractions of a volt) and the VOLTAGE DROP due to CURRENT through the intracellular medium across the width of the cell.
That current can be enormous, because it is induced by MANY photons from the incoming wave. It is proportional to the signal strength, and has nothing to do with the wavelength of the signal compared to the thickness of the membrane. Dropping a voltage across the width of the cell large enough to modulate the activity of a voltage-sensitive cell-receptor molecule when the cell membrane focuses that differential on the receptor does not require meat-cooking intracellular currents.
The length of the wave compared to the length of the BODY can have an effect on that current - by enormously boosting it if the body's structure is near one of the resonating lengths. But the body doesn't have to be a resonant dipole to have strong currents induced in it by the electric fields of strong radio signals.
It's not the dilectric properties of the membrane that are at issue (other than that it does insulate) but the conductivity of the cell fluids within the membrane.
A non-trivial external electric field can be maintained by currents around the cell through the resistance of the extracellular medium. But the current through the cell will be much smaller, due to the insulation of the membrane and the relatively small leakage current through the cell-surface-penetrating receptors. So the voltage on the inside of the cell membrane is approximately equal throughout, while on the outside it varies significantly depending on the location of that patch of cell surface.
So the entire voltage difference appears across the very thin membrane at the place where it is greatest. This is a LARGE field strength (in terms of volts/inch), though the field strength around the cell (in the same terms) is quite small.
In my opinion, a company's distribution of source for GPLed products for which it released versions should NOT be held to void its IP claims to any of its proprietary code inserted by others - even if it continues to distribute versions containing the code. I see this as both a matter of law, derived from the GPL's own terms, and as a matter of good policy for GPL promotion.
The GPL explicitly claims that it does NOT purport to grant a license to proprietary code improperly inserted into a GPLed distribution by someone who does not have the necessary rights to place the code under GPL. But it does demand that any person (or company) who distributes object containing GPLed code must make the source available, and if even one copy goes out without the source attached the only permissible way to do that (so it can reach a repurchaser of the oject) is to make the source available generally for a minimum time, as by a web or FTP site.
So a company who distributes a modification of a GPLed project may be required to distribute the code for a time, under penalty of loss of the right to copy and/or distribute GPLed code forever. If the company THEN discovers someone ELSE has included their pride-and-joy in the base distribution, they're in a catch-22:
- If they stop distributing the source, they lose GPL rights. This could be a BIG cost.
- If they DON'T stop, AND this puts their proprietary code under GPL, they suffer the loss of their IP.
So the doctrine of estopple should not apply: Their IP is already exposed - taking down their distribution won't significantly mitigate that damage, since it will be available elsewhere on the net. But taking it down WILL generate other costs for them.
And since the GPL doesn't claim to grant rights to code improperly inserted, it can be argued that the improperly inserted proprietary code is not under it, until such time as the owners deliberately, with intent, insert it themselves - despite their continued distribution of the source improperly containing it, in order to meet their GPL obligations.
Now the GPL advocates might want to argue that, nevertheless, the victim of such theft must now either free the code or stop distributing and lose all GPL rights. But IMHO that's a bad idea.
Such a position would greatly hamper the adoption of the GPL codebase by companies with code they wish to keep proprietary - because unknowing propagation of code stolen from them within a large software release (such as a Linux distribution) would leave them on the above cleft stick: Give away your family jewels, or suddenly shut down all your GPL business-model activity.
Of course IBM's lawyers had to try making this assertion. But for the future of the GPL I hope that either the case is decided without a ruling on this issue or (better yet) IBM's claim that this frees the (allegedly) SCO code is explicitly rejected.
(Meanwhile, perhaps the maintainers of the GPL might want to add a bit of verbage to clarify this issue to a future version?)
This reflects a lack of understanding of the fields involved in regulating membrane ion channels. Even though it is only a potential difference of some tens of millivolts, it is acting across a width of perhaps 8 nm, so the field is actually very large. Compared with biological fields, external fields from radio antennas are negligible.
Your response misrepresents the physics of the electrical environment.
The cell membrane is oil-based, and an effective insulator. The surrounding fluid, and the fluid within the cell, are conductive. So the field strength across the membrane can be enormously stronger than the applied field producing it.
Suppose the cell is 1,000,000 times as wide as the membrane is thick. And suppose the cell has a few cell-surface-penetrating proteins that act as diodes, permitting electrons or negative ions to enter but not leave. The voltage of the solution inside the cell will all be at the most negative voltage present at the outside of any of the membrane-penetrating receptors. If the voltage on the opposite side of the cell is even slightly more positive, the electric field strength across the membrane at that point will be a million times as strong as the applied electric field strength.
Some studies (not from Sweeden) have also claimed to find a correlation between living near substations and some cancers (such as leukemia).
In addition to the issue of substations usually being in the poorer and more industrialized areas (which can be expected to have all SORTS of other pollution sources), substation transformers for a long time were filled with PCB (PolyChlorinated Byphenol), a very good fire retardant but an extremely nasty substance gene-damage wise.
It might be interesting to redo those studies and try to separate field and PCB effects.
(Then again, it might not. There was a BIG scandal recently. It turns out one of the main researchers claiming to have found a utility-company electric-field vs cancer linkage had been completely faking his data.)
please explain a mechansim for non ionizing radiation to cause cancer
Cancer seems to be entirely explained by a small number of changes to cell DNA (perhaps as few as 6 or less, depending on the cancer type). Here are several ways this could be achieved by non-ionizing radiation:
First: Electric fields - transient or otherwise - can cause polar molecules or molecules with movable charges to align with the field, and be stressed by it.
DNA is such a molecule. It is of enormous length. In the presence of an electirc field it aligns with it. (Lined-up DNA strands are diagnostic of death by electrocution or lightning strike.)
The force on a molecule is proportional to the spacing of the charges and the potential difference across the field. The wider the separation of the charges, the stronger the force on the molecular backbone between them for a given field. DNA molecules are ENORMOUS, so if the field is strong enough to line them up, it could easily be strong enough to snap them once they're lined up. Even if not, uncoiling them, un-hairpinning them, and peeling them apart from binding protiens are likely to modify gene expression, switching genes on and off in ways not part of the normal mechanisms (with considerable opportunity for secondary effects leading to permanent damage to the DNA strand).
Second: Conductive structures of lengths with certain relation to wavelengths (such as 1/2, 3/2, 5/2 etc.) resonate. This allows multiple photons to dump energy into currents in the conductive structure, combining their energy. The currents can break the molecule, heat it, or otherwise promote its reactions with the molecules around it. There are also extremely strong electric fields at the ends of such structures, which could affect bonding of nearby molecules. Free radicals (with their cascading fallout of molecular damage) can be produced by such fields.
Again DNA, being very long and somewhat conductive, seems a likely antenna for such events. Such currents in the DNA strand could affect the strand itself, its regulatory neighborhood, or create enough chemical havoc in its vicinity to provoke damage to the gene.
Third: Many cell-surface proteins, including those regulating cell activity, are affected by cell membrane potentials. Electric and electromagnetic fields affect those potentials, and may result in activation (or deactivation) of such signaling paths. That could inappropriately modulate cell activity, in ways that stress the cell and increase the chance for DNA damage.
I could go on.
a nobel prize awaits if you figure it out
Unlikely.
This stuff is all pretty well known. To get a Nobel I'd have to prove it rigorously in a lab environment, produce some significant technologocial or theoretical fallout, come to the Nobel committee's attention, and win the annual political battle within the committee. And be a leader in the work. (Which seems unlikely, since the above phenomenon are already well known.)
So I'm not holding my breath waiting for the call in response to this post. B-)
With cheaper energy for separating and purifying the components of used materials for reuse, the balance shifts more toward recycling.
Why? Won't extracting new resources get the same benefit?
They will receive some benefit. But a lesser one. Even an unlimited amount of free energy won't get you a mineral if the ore supply is actually all used up, or pay other costs such as having to move cities, strip-mine parks, or go fifty miles deep to reach the reserves that are still there.
Then there's the disposal costs - both of the mine tailings and other unwanted products of purification, and the material that you didn't recycle. Both those costs go away (replaced by the cost of the recycling technology) when you recycle old materials rather than digging up new.
Make the cost of recycling lower and more raw materials achieve crossover, where it's cheaper to recycle than mine (at least for some major fraction of the demand). Given that energy is the main cost of automated recycling and a disproportionately smaller fraction of the cost of primary resource production, I expect that progressively cheaper energy will mean progressively more materials reach crossover.
... you're going to need a format that preserves color information in the new 5 color system if you're going to exploit the real improvements in this color technology: closer reproductions of actual color.
Absolutely not true.
For people with normal color vision, in addition to the "rod" pigment (which is not a significant player in color perception and daylight central vision) there are three color receptor pigments located in the "cone" cells, which have broad reception peaks with well-known shapes. The response of those three sets of cells to an image can be accurately modeled by using three sets of sensors and filters that model the three pigments' frequency response.
The problem comes when, given this measurement, you try to stimulate a viewer's cone cells to produce the response equivalent to the light you measured. If you just pick three color phosphors at the peak of the three dyes' response curves, you find that the colors don't stimulate JUST the cones you intended. The green light, for instance, will strongly stimulate the green-responsive cones. But it will also weakly stimulate the red and blue cones. Similarly, red light will strongly stimulate red cones, weakly stimulate green cones, and very weakly stimulate blue cones. Ditto the other way around with blue light.
This has two effects:
First: Even within the range of combinations of stimulus the three light sources can produce, simply playing back the signal will cause the results to be somewhat more pastel than the orignal scene. This can be compensated for to some extent - by subtracting out appropriate amounts of each color's signal from the signals going to the others color emitters.
Second: You can't make the emitters emit a negative amount of light. The result is that there are scene colors, saturated and nearly-saturated colors between the phosphor colors you chose for reproduction, that can produce color sensations that these three screen colors can't reproduce. These scene colors will ALWAYS apper somewhat washed-out if you only reproduce the image with three screen colors.
So with three values you can accurately transmit any color a normal eye can see. But with three phosphors you can't make the eye see some of these colors.
The two-dimensional representation of the relative responses of the three dies looks something like a spearment leaf with the base sliced off. (See figure 12 of this web page. And thank you, canavan) The edge of the leaf represents the response to a pure spectral color, and regions within it to mixes of colors. If you try to reproduce the response with three phosphor colors, you are picking three points on the leaf edge and drawing a triangle between them. By adjusting the relative amounts of light from the three phosphors you can produce a stimulus corresponding to any point WITHIN the triangle. But you can't produce one corresponding to the arcs of the leaf that are outside the triangle.
But by picking more points along the leaf edge you can draw a polygon and hit any point within it. This covers more of the leaf and leaves fewer colors missing. (Indeed, just a couple extra points can give you most of the leaf.)
You still send the signal with the three values corresponding to the response you want from the eye. But now your monitor processes it into more than three colors to put on the screen, to get the eye to respond more closely to the response it would have had to the original scene.
(Note that people with some forms of color blindness have cones with pigments that have abnormal frequency responses. Such people will not see a color TV image as right even with this upgrade, because the camera will not have correctly encoded what THEIR eyes would have seen. They need a camera with a different response, and yet another set of phosphors in the monitor, to get a good match.)
Although I think it's a good thing that the US is willing to work with an international effort, I am becoming more skeptical as time passes about the need to pursue new power sources.
By concentrating only on the current uses of energy, you're making the same mistake as the early IBM executives who thought only ten computers would ever be needed - because that's how many it would take to do as much arithmetic as all the accountants in the world.
Completely missing the fact that this was all the arithmetic that was done because it was SO EXPENSIVE to do arithmetic, making other useful applications impractical. Cutting the cost of computation enabled an amazing range of additional, useful (or fun) things. (It now takes more arithmetic than the annual computation of that world full of accountants just to refresh my screen. Now think about DOOM III. B-) )
The same is true for energy.
For stareters, there's a WHOLE LOT of old trash stored in landfills and other disposal sites. Some if it is way toxic. Some is radioactive, and some of that is burning its way out of its containers and contaminating the ground water. Meanwhile, though recycling is making some progress, we're mining more minerals to make new materials - because it's often much less expensive to do it that way.
With cheaper energy for separating and purifying the components of used materials for reuse, the balance shifts more toward recycling.
In the extreme limit, with abundant nearly-free energy, you can vaporize the entrire trash stream and run it through a mass spectrometer, separating it by element and isotope. Use the carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen, plus still more energy, to feed your hydroponic farm. Use the purified metals and other elements in lieu of mining and refining more, for manufacturing feedstocks. Sort out the useful radioactives for devices that need them (i.e. smoke detectors), feed the NON-useful ones into nuclear processes that convert them to something more useful or less dangerous. Or just contain them (which you can do better when they're pure rather than a witches-brew) until they change to something more useful on their own, then separate it out again.
Abundant cheap energy is enormously enabling.
Likewise ... solar panels on homes [would be able to sell their excess electricity back to the power grid].
They can do that now in many areas.
In particular, in some states (i.e. Nevada) you can grid-tie a renewable-energy system (solar, wind, and/or hydro) of up to two kilowatts capacity and use "net metering" - paying for the amount of power you use beyond that which you produce. You default to monthly billing, but can easily arrange a change to annual billing.
You get to use the grid as the world's biggest storage battery for nearly free (just paying the keep-connected fee - about $36/year in NV). The power company benefits, despite buying your power at retail rather than wholesale, because:
- Solar tends to generate during peak periods (when power costs the electric company more).
- Wind tends to generate when the Heating/Cooling/AirConditioning (HVAC) loads are higher (again resulting in higher demand).
- If you generate more than you use during the period they don't have to pay you for the excess (though there are other deals where they'll pay you the wholesale rate, for bigger suppliers such as windfarms.)
Also: If your generation site is far from your consumption site (i.e. a windmill half a mile from your house) you can connect them both and net-bill the combo, using the grid for wiring from the distant generation (and getting wholesale from the excess).
Details differ depending on your state and your utility. But this is common across the country - due to pushes from government, environmental groups, and home power advocates, and because it's often a better deal for power companies than building more plants.
The big oil companies, those that really operate on a global basis, are "energy companies" per se but in reallity they are still mainly oil companies..
Then why is one of the largest manufacturers (and promotors) of industrial and consumer photovoltaic solar panels a division of British Petroleum?
BP Solar, to be specific.
The Cobalt Qube had a panel that was illuminated by green/(red?)/off LEDs at both ends. Their changing state tracked the IPL and the bar was solid green when the system was up and running.
I imagine that yes, due to the cheap labor of script kiddies that Windows does indeed have a lower cost of '0wnership' (sic).
I belive the point is that Microsoft boxes are so insecure that it's much cheaper to code and deploy a Windows exploit and end up 0wnerz-ing a bunch of machines than there is for other OSes.
innocent ... Until convicted, like when arrested, booked and held, people are innocent of the crime of which they are accused.
Actually, they are to be TREATED as innocent until proven guilty.
It isn't that they ARE innocent. It is that the government is NOT AUTHORIZED to apply PENALTIES unless and until their guilt has been PROVEN.
There is the PERPETRATOR, the person who committed the crime.
There is the SUBJECT of an investigation, somebody the cops think MIGHT be the perpetrator.
There is the SUSPECT, someone the cops think is sufficiently LIKELY to be the perpetrator that it's a good idea to hang onto him until a case can be presented and tried.
There is the CONVICT, someone whose guilt has been proven and is now subject to punishment.
The process of convicting someone consists of converting him from a SUSPECT to a CONVICT, by proving within the appropriate legal standards (beyond reasonable doubt) that there really was a PERPETRATOR of a real crime, and he is it.
Any treatment of them other than obtaining their presence in the justice system, which could prove their guilt, is unacceptable, and threatens us all.
Dead on!
People being booked are SUSPECTS (or maybe even SUBJECTS or material witnesses). They are NOT proven guilty and thus are NOT subject to punishment. The jailing is JUST to insure they can be brought to trial. Nothing more than the minimum inconvenience necessary for the smooth functioning of the system is appropriate.
Yeah, but how much do these 'experts' know about how secure paper ballots really are? They should also interview a third group: those who are experts in the paper system.
I think a more telling question is: What "Paper Balots" did John Q Public think he was comparing to the e-voting systems?
And as usual we have a "game of telephone" going on here:
- We don't KNOW what the actual question on the survey was.
- The Computerworld article said "traditional paper ballot machines". (Maybe that was what was actually in the question. Let's assume it for the moment.)
- But when the Computerworld article's own author posted it to slashdot, he warped it to "Paper Ballots". And this thread is following his lead.
Now you and I know that paper ballots - the ones with the square boxes with hand-drawn Xes - are subject to some tampering, but it's hard to do it without leaving tracks, while a purely electronic systems is subject to all sorts of invisible breakdowns, from mechanical problems, software bugs, and malicious tampering.
But if you're talking "traditional paper ballot machines" you just completely dropped that system. Now you're talking about either punchcards, or optical mark sense systems.
What experience does John Q. have with either?
With punched cards, his sole reference point on reliability is the media storm over the presidential election in Florida. You know - the one where the democrats are STILL claiming the Republicans stole the election. Optical sense cards are subject to mis-scanning. Both can be hit by operational irregularities (such as not running one stack through while running another through twice.) Both are subject to cheating by replacement of physical ballots (as are all the other systems except e-voting without printed audit trail). Both are subject to exactly the same opportunities for accidental or malicious corruption of the vote counting hardware and software.
(And don't even get me STARTED on mechanical voting machines...)
So why SHOULD John Q. think that the e systems AREN'T better than the "traditional paper ballot MACHINES" - whose software has had more time for malicious bug injection and whose hardware and operational systems have been the subject of a recent major scandal?
IMHO John Q. may be right: All the objections except lack of an audit trail apply to the other paper ballot MACHINE systems, and they also have a better opportunity for misreading through mechanical failure or "user error" than the e systems. And since the audit trail is rarely checked, who's to say that the elections haven't been corrupted for decades.
IMHO the important thing about this flap is that it could lead to a less corruptable counting system than we've had since I became eligible to vote back in the '60s. The extra opportunity for unchecked vote corruption has lead to a move to eliminate the problem with the new machines by adding an audit trail, and to regular random surveilance of that audit trail. This, combined with the lower MECHANICAL error rate of the systems and the redundant counting mechanism will set a new, higher standard for the OLDER systems, and should lead to a much more accurate count.
Then, if we move on to eliminating the OTHER sources of election corruption (ineligible voters, multiple registrations, etc.), we might actually come up with fair and accurate elections within what remains of my lifetime. B-)
Interestingly, one of the points making it difficult to enforce a common law trademark (and I presume this also applies to service marks) is that it is difficult for a potential infringer to determine, in the absense of registration, that the mark is already in use.
This is NOT an issue for second-level domain name (such as katie.com) as trademark. Domain names are all registered in a tirvial-to-check central database.
If a book is copyrightten, regardless of trademarking the title, the title is copywritten along with the content therein.
Not true.
Copyright applies to the content but NOT the title, which can be reused (unless trademarked).
If I understand this correctly, it can be reused even in the same genre.
Witness _Bladerunner_ -the science fiction movie made from the book _Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep_. The novel and had no relation whatsoever to the science fiction novel by Alan E. Nourse titled _Bladerunner_. (Electric Sheep and the B. movie didn't even have any relation to running blades, unlike the original Nourse novel which was used banned surgical procedures and the infrastructure necessary to get scalpels into illegal surgeon's hands as an illustration of potential flaws in eugenics law schemes.)
Whats most interesting ... is whats NOT being talked about. What happened to Linux?
If SCO can show that IBM is using code SCO owns without the proper license, the next step is to show that IBM contributed that code to Linux without having the right to do so.
Other than that I don't see any impact for Linux.
But last time I looked SCO was only claiming that IBM contributed its OWN code to Linux, but that the IBM-written code was contaminated by being a "derivative work" of copyrighted Unix code, over which SCO gatekeeps the rights. A long chain for SCO to forge, which currently has at least two links cooking in the court system.
Novell claims they still own UNIX. Novell says that SCO only has a (revokable) license to license UNIX to others.
I thought SCO had bought from Novell an *exclusive* license to market the unix code for Novell, subject only to limitations from previous contracts (which would limit the rights that Novell had to give them).
As such Novell couldn't just arbitrarily turn it off, since SCO paid for it, and Novell couldn't issue new licenses without turning it off.
Novell has already exercised their right to revoke SCO's UNIX-licensing powers as regards IBM, back when SCO claimed to be revoking IBM's license. Novell effectively said, "We run he show here, SCO, and IBM is legitimately licensed in our book."
If so hurrah!
But I haven't seen anything other than your post to indicate that this is the case.
Perhaps I just missed it, since I haven't been following Novell v. SCO, nor as closely as I'd like SCO v. IBM.
Can you point me to it?
How about just splitting a state's electors along popular vote lines? In Presidential-2000 election 50% of Minnesota's 10 electors would have gone to Bush. (There are already a few (2?) states who do this).
And any state can chose to do this. If you want it in your state, ask for it. Or (if you have initiative in your state), file an initiative and start getting signatures.
However, the winner-take-all nature of most states' choice of electors is part of the original compromise that led to the electoral college.
With either popular-vote selection of the president or a proportional system of selecting voters, one populous state with a corrupt election system swings the election. Winner-take-all means corruption of one state can't override a narrow margin in a large set of small states.
Wiinner-take-all also sets up a situation where the presidential candidates must appeal to both the big AND the little states in order to collect enough electoral votes to win. With proportional voting it's more efficient to go for a big margin in a few large urban areas and ignore the flyover country.
And THAT LAST was why it was created: As a protection for the little states against being swamped by a couple big ones, in order to give them the confidence to sign on with the union in the first place. From the 1780s to today there have ALWAYS been a small number of heavily populated states and a large number of sparse ones. The president is a single officeholder for ALL the states, not just the urban ones. Make it a popular vote and he becomes the president of a few urban coastal cities, creating a political situation more like that of France.
Absentee ballots aren't counted unless the election is close.
Absentee ballots are counted. Period.
In some jurisdictions they're counted before the polls close and their count goes out immediately after closing time, before the rest of the votes are counted. In others they might not show up on the count for days. But they DO get counted.
They may not be using DSPs as much as FPGAs/ASICs - a great deal of the signal processing for that sort of thing is easier done as parallel blocks of hardware than software.
.11b used DSSS (which is a time domain solution and goes well with dedicated logic), .11a and .11g use OFDM (which is based on FFTs thus is much easier to do in a DSP than with dedicated logic).
.11g or .11a,g card - or chipset development kit - with open firmware would be perfect.)
It's an 802.11a chip. While
(And just now I have a real need to get hold of an OFDM testbench for prototyping some related things in a nearby band. A
I will note that at least in California work that you do on your own time that is not related to your employers work belongs to you.
- Not in your employer's current or reasonably expected future product line. And
- Not done on company time or with company resources.
I could get the boilerplate. (It's an attachment to every hi-tek employment contract in CA, complete with verbage about how it's the public interest of the state and other terms of the contract void where they confilict yadda yadda. I'd post it verbatim except I don't have a copy handy.)
And given the history of startup companies here, it also appears that in many cases you can use related work as long as you quit first.
It's hard to show that it was done while still at the previous company. B-) Also: People usually go off to do something else after they've tried to do it at the old company and been rebuffed by management - a strong indicator that it's NOT in the future product line. B-)
IMHO this provision of California law, and the resulting "cross the street, set up another startup" behavior, is the real engine of innovation in Silicon Valley, and the main reason attempts to get something similar going in other states tend to flop. (The other big component is the positive feedback of trained people congregating, making it possible to assemble a team.)
I understand some other states are cloning the provision, though, in an attempt to attract hi-tek. Perhaps, now that CA's engine is stalled, a critical mass will form in some other state with lower taxes and less restrictive (or flat-out wacko) laws.
Yawn. Wake me when Intel has released real, production ready (NOT 0.2) drivers for Linux for this, or any other modern wireless network chip.
Wake ME when they publish the source for the DSP firmware for the chip/core.
a) Visibility into the firmware is just about mandatory for writing your own driver. API documentation is better than nothing, but it's often not enough.
b) Drivers are relatively easy compared to doing work in the signal processing portion. While the FCC really doesn't want you to be changing stuff in there, keeping it secret stifles competition by making it difficult for any but large and well-funded players to build products around the chips.