Sun gets $2B and both parties agree to share intellectual property
Compare this $2B with the $600M fine levied by the European Union. The difference between the two values is revealing, and can be intepreted in two ways. Either the EU judgement was yet another fudge, and Microsoft have once more got off lightly after being convicted of monopoly abuse.
Or, a large part of the intellectual property sharing is a Java payoff. In particular, Sun may have agreed to waive any complaints regarding the fact that C# is lifted from Java, in return for the large pile of cash.
Personally, I think both explainations are equally probable, and the reality is an admixture of the two.
They are slowly being sorted and distributed either back to their country or origin/capture after no longer being deemed a direct threat.
Unfortunately, that was not the case with Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen of Syrian descent. After being arrested (but not charged) while changing planes at JFK, US officials deported him to Syria, where he was imprisoned and tortured for over a year. It is not unreasonable to hold the US government complicit in this torture.
Not true either. John Walker Lindh never went to Guantanamo.
I was actually thinking of Jose Padilla, who was held without trial or charge in a military brig for over a year, after being arrested at Chicago O'Hare. What happened to his due process?
I don't know about other countries but here in the USA getting arrested doesn't make you a criminal.
In principle, sure. In practice, recent events have demonstrated that, even in the USA, people can be arrested and held without charge or trial -- even if they are citizens. Until the freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights are consistently respected, without being transgressed under the guise of 'security', then I don't think its fair to say that the US is more 'free' than, say, your average European country.
It seems to have a certain degree of authenticity; primarily because the author isn't making outragious claims, and gives pointers to what appear to be peer-reviewed publications.
However, his claim to have created a star in his basement is evocative, but rather misleading. I should know; part of my job is to make stars and then see what they do when I whack 'em. There is a lot more to a star than a blob of hot plasma.
...a website full to the brim of fringe science and laughably-bad pseudoscience.
Re:Spaceflight as a religious endeavour
on
The Wrong Stuff
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
The Sun has been getting gradually hotter through its lifetime and this heating will result in a range of effects that mean that in around a billion years our planet will be dry and uninhabitable.
No, the Sun has been getting cooler during its main-sequence evolution; however, it has been getting more luminous. It is the increase in luminosity which will cause the effects you describe.
Re:Spaceflight as a religious endeavour
on
The Wrong Stuff
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The only argument that manned spaceflight must be undertaken is that the Sun will eventually go nova and destroy the Earth...
Current thinking isn't that a nova will destroy the Earth, since novae are usually associated with compact objects like white dwarfs. Instead, the death of life on Earth will occur when the Sun goes through its red giant phase, expanding to such a degree that it envelops the Earth. This expansion, which is due to happen in about 5 billion years, won't be a rapid event; it will take a few million years. So the Sci-Fi books that have the Sun exploding are just plain wrong.
Re:I'll say it first
on
The Wrong Stuff
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Steve Weinberg is a dimwit.
I would have to disagree; and so would the 1979 Nobel commitee, who awarded him the prize for physics. For those who aren't familiar with him, his best-known work has been in unifying the electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces. More information can be gleaned from his biography.
Now your an obsessive moron! (find the missing ' please?)
There's also a missing "e": it should be "you're". Oh, and by the way, your website is riddled with grammatical errors. So I'm led to believe that your mistakes aren't even deliberate: you really are a retard.
Re:Blame windows it already looks like Gnome
on
Gnome.org Compromised?
·
· Score: -1, Flamebait
I doubt Microsoft even included it's other product lines in those security alerts their counting.
The possessive form of "it" is "its"; "it's" is a contraction of "it is". Dipshit.
All of the liberal arts majors who became certified <insert buzz word here> engineers during the Dot-Com boom, are now unemployed. They spend their days posting to Slashdot; and since they really don't know their arse from their elbow when it comes to science or technology, the sophistication of posts now parallels that of fart jokes.
If you need machines for computationally-intensive tasks, wouldn't you want ECC memory?
I don't think that ECC memory help with computationally-intensive tasks; basically, numerical modelling requires high computational throughput but not high availability. If one of the machines crashes, then I reboot it and restart the job (note: this has never actually occurred).
In my case, jobs only take 10 minutes, so I wouldn't lose much during a crash. However, for longer jobs, checkpointing can be used to avoid losing much data.
They've been great machines for the non-computationally-intensive tasks that these people use them for.
But don't think that there not suitable for computationally-intensive tasks. I've just had my two Athlon XP 2600+ eMachines mini towers ($550 a piece) running hydrodynamical simulations of pulsating stars for a month. As part of the run, I also had a SunFire V480 4-cpu machine (~ $35,000) crunching along side, and the two eMachines whipped its but!
You know why? Because its cheap. If you want something done right, it is going to cost you money.
Your "it's more expensive, therefore it must be better" theory is wonderfully naive. Now go and read about, say, the Linux vs Microsoft battle, and leave us all in peace...
Believe it or not, Intel's compiler generates very good code for the Opteron. Far better than GCC or generic IA32 compilers.
This is the experience I've had with the Intel Fortran compiler (ifort) on an Athlon XP. Codes compiled with ifort are around twice as fast as those compiled with GNU g77 (for Fortran 77), and around 1.5 times faster than those compiled with Lahey lf95 (for Fortran 95).
If anything I'd say you have a racists attitude against me telling me I immigrated when I was born here the same as you. Or does that put me into a different class of people because of who i'm decended from?
You've got the wrong end of the stick. The post I was replying to (was it you?) was exhibiting some level of distaste for immigrants. I was pointing out that, at some point or other, their ancestor was an immigrant. I always find it ironic when Americans get so wound up about immigration, forgetting that the US was built on immigration.
It appears today that many people continue in the fine GOP tradition of using the word "immigration" today as a proxy for "race". Don't like black people or hispanics or asian people? Then complain about "illegal immigrants".
Slashdot Mirror
Sun gets $2B and both parties agree to share intellectual property
Compare this $2B with the $600M fine levied by the European Union. The difference between the two values is revealing, and can be intepreted in two ways. Either the EU judgement was yet another fudge, and Microsoft have once more got off lightly after being convicted of monopoly abuse.
Or, a large part of the intellectual property sharing is a Java payoff. In particular, Sun may have agreed to waive any complaints regarding the fact that C# is lifted from Java, in return for the large pile of cash.
Personally, I think both explainations are equally probable, and the reality is an admixture of the two.
They are slowly being sorted and distributed either back to their country or origin/capture after no longer being deemed a direct threat.
Unfortunately, that was not the case with Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen of Syrian descent. After being arrested (but not charged) while changing planes at JFK, US officials deported him to Syria, where he was imprisoned and tortured for over a year. It is not unreasonable to hold the US government complicit in this torture.
Not true either. John Walker Lindh never went to Guantanamo.
I was actually thinking of Jose Padilla, who was held without trial or charge in a military brig for over a year, after being arrested at Chicago O'Hare. What happened to his due process?
I don't know about other countries but here in the USA getting arrested doesn't make you a criminal.
In principle, sure. In practice, recent events have demonstrated that, even in the USA, people can be arrested and held without charge or trial -- even if they are citizens. Until the freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights are consistently respected, without being transgressed under the guise of 'security', then I don't think its fair to say that the US is more 'free' than, say, your average European country.
I'm curious what you think about this site
It seems to have a certain degree of authenticity; primarily because the author isn't making outragious claims, and gives pointers to what appear to be peer-reviewed publications.
However, his claim to have created a star in his basement is evocative, but rather misleading. I should know; part of my job is to make stars and then see what they do when I whack 'em. There is a lot more to a star than a blob of hot plasma.
Taken from the Focus Fusion website:
...a website full to the brim of fringe science and laughably-bad pseudoscience.
The Sun has been getting gradually hotter through its lifetime and this heating will result in a range of effects that mean that in around a billion years our planet will be dry and uninhabitable.
No, the Sun has been getting cooler during its main-sequence evolution; however, it has been getting more luminous. It is the increase in luminosity which will cause the effects you describe.
The only argument that manned spaceflight must be undertaken is that the Sun will eventually go nova and destroy the Earth...
Current thinking isn't that a nova will destroy the Earth, since novae are usually associated with compact objects like white dwarfs. Instead, the death of life on Earth will occur when the Sun goes through its red giant phase, expanding to such a degree that it envelops the Earth. This expansion, which is due to happen in about 5 billion years, won't be a rapid event; it will take a few million years. So the Sci-Fi books that have the Sun exploding are just plain wrong.
Steve Weinberg is a dimwit.
I would have to disagree; and so would the 1979 Nobel commitee, who awarded him the prize for physics. For those who aren't familiar with him, his best-known work has been in unifying the electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces. More information can be gleaned from his biography.
Now your an obsessive moron! (find the missing ' please?)
There's also a missing "e": it should be "you're". Oh, and by the way, your website is riddled with grammatical errors. So I'm led to believe that your mistakes aren't even deliberate: you really are a retard.
I doubt Microsoft even included it's other product lines in those security alerts their counting.
The possessive form of "it" is "its"; "it's" is a contraction of "it is". Dipshit.
So you're not Eruotrash.
That would be 'Eurotrash'. Dipshit.
Lets see if the Eurotrash can spot the problem with this reply!
Easy; you're an undereducated dipshit who doesn't know when to lie down.
Oh, and for the record: I live in the USA. Dipshit.
Here's another hint. Typo's are accidents.
The plural of "typo" is "typos", not "typo's". An apostrophe indicates possession, not plurality. Dipshit.
How is this news? This has nothing to do with either Microsoft or Windows... I don't understand how this is newsworthy at all.
Oh, purleeze, it's obviously a game: six degrees of separation from Kevin Bac^H^H^H^H^H^H^H SCO. This one's pretty easy.
My deepest appologies for making a type-o while replying to you.
Erm, that would be 'typo', short for typographical error. You dipshit.
Slashdot, you used to be great. What happened?
All of the liberal arts majors who became certified <insert buzz word here> engineers during the Dot-Com boom, are now unemployed. They spend their days posting to Slashdot; and since they really don't know their arse from their elbow when it comes to science or technology, the sophistication of posts now parallels that of fart jokes.
He can fucking say whatever the fucking hell he fucking wants. It's the POINT that should count, not the style.
An admirable sentiment, but of no relevance to life on planet Earth. Call me when you start shaving, and we can discuss why.
If you need machines for computationally-intensive tasks, wouldn't you want ECC memory?
I don't think that ECC memory help with computationally-intensive tasks; basically, numerical modelling requires high computational throughput but not high availability. If one of the machines crashes, then I reboot it and restart the job (note: this has never actually occurred).
In my case, jobs only take 10 minutes, so I wouldn't lose much during a crash. However, for longer jobs, checkpointing can be used to avoid losing much data.
No thanks, America is worth fighting for.
When they offshored for the coal miners, I did not speak out, because I was not a coal miner.
When they offshored the steel workers, I did not speak out, because I was not a steel worker.
When they offshored the textile workers, I did not speak out, because I was not a textile worker.
Now they offshore me, the IT specialist. But there is nobody left to speak out for me.
its a sad day when the american dream is to movie to India.
I don't know, I quite like some of the Bollywood films...
They've been great machines for the non-computationally-intensive tasks that these people use them for.
But don't think that there not suitable for computationally-intensive tasks. I've just had my two Athlon XP 2600+ eMachines mini towers ($550 a piece) running hydrodynamical simulations of pulsating stars for a month. As part of the run, I also had a SunFire V480 4-cpu machine (~ $35,000) crunching along side, and the two eMachines whipped its but!
You know why? Because its cheap. If you want something done right, it is going to cost you money.
Your "it's more expensive, therefore it must be better" theory is wonderfully naive. Now go and read about, say, the Linux vs Microsoft battle, and leave us all in peace...
relax, it's just a joke. just like your space program.
Proof positive that you don't have to be a cunt to post to slashdot, but it helps.
Believe it or not, Intel's compiler generates very good code for the Opteron. Far better than GCC or generic IA32 compilers.
This is the experience I've had with the Intel Fortran compiler (ifort) on an Athlon XP. Codes compiled with ifort are around twice as fast as those compiled with GNU g77 (for Fortran 77), and around 1.5 times faster than those compiled with Lahey lf95 (for Fortran 95).
If anything I'd say you have a racists attitude against me telling me I immigrated when I was born here the same as you. Or does that put me into a different class of people because of who i'm decended from?
You've got the wrong end of the stick. The post I was replying to (was it you?) was exhibiting some level of distaste for immigrants. I was pointing out that, at some point or other, their ancestor was an immigrant. I always find it ironic when Americans get so wound up about immigration, forgetting that the US was built on immigration.
It appears today that many people continue in the fine GOP tradition of using the word "immigration" today as a proxy for "race". Don't like black people or hispanics or asian people? Then complain about "illegal immigrants".