Even if the GPL was invalid, that wouldn't suddenly give SCO ownership of it (and why would it be SCO, in particlar? Why not give me ownership of it ?;-)
In the case that the GPL was invalid, nobody other than the original copyright holder has any rights to distribute. Even in the dreamworld where SCO was claiming large parts of Linux was actually misattributed and the copyright was actually held by them, it was by no means all of it, and over those parts they have no rights over.
In short, I think it must be a hoax. Either that or they are desperately short of cash and hoping that a few people accidentally buy it on pre-order?
Wow, that would be really hilarious, if it wasn't so tragic:
1st Place: "Life Doesn't Come From Non-Life": Patricia Lewis (grade 8) did an experiment to see if life can evolve from non-life. Patricia placed all the non-living ingredients of life - carbon (a charcoal briquet), purified water, and assorted minerals (a multi-vitamin) - into a sealed glass jar. The jar was left undisturbed, being exposed only to sunlight, for three weeks. (Patricia also prayed to God not to do anything miraculous during the course of the experiment, so as not to disqualify the findings.) No life evolved. This shows that life cannot come from non-life through natural processes.
What an astounding piece of deductive reasoning! Give the girl a Nobel prize!
2nd Place: "Women Were Designed For Homemaking": Jonathan Goode (grade 7) applied findings from many fields of science to support his conclusion that God designed women for homemaking: physics shows that women have a lower center of gravity than men, making them more suited to carrying groceries and laundry baskets; biology shows that women were designed to carry un-born babies in their wombs and to feed born babies milk, making them the natural choice for child rearing; social sciences show that the wages for women workers are lower than for normal workers, meaning that they are unable to work as well and thus earn equal pay; and exegetics shows that God created Eve as a companion for Adam, not as a co-worker.
WTF? I wonder what Patricia thought of the second place getter?
The high school prizes are just scary. 1st Place: "Using Prayer To Microevolve Latent Antibiotic Resistance In Bacteria". Huh?
How is a binary unsafe but somehow source code is?
Because in Gentoo, a hash of the source tarball is integrated into the package system. The tarball might be downloaded from anywhere, but if the hashes don't match you have a different file than the package maintainer used, and it won't be installed.
To clarify: to be a polynomial time algorithm, it must terminate at some N which is a polynomial of the input size (say, the total number of bits used to specify the input numbers S). The program that solves it is represented by some number P <= N, which implies P <= p(input_size), for some polynomial function p. The problem I have is that the number representing the turing machine P, is exponentially large in the length of the turing machine. Or conversely, as the input size gets large, the turning machine to solve the problem can increase in length only logarithmically. This is reasonable I guess (it may even be that the length of the program is bounded), but it still needs proof. And I don't see what is special about SUBSET_SUM here.
Not in that algorithm; it loops over the program number P = 1..N. That is the whole point, if P=NP there is a program that solves it, but we don't know what that program is.
I will agree with you (myself?), in that I find the algorithm non-obvious. But can you imagine someone (in your world of acquaintances) who might find the algorithm obvious?
Certainly. Practically everything is 'obvious', once you have studied it sufficiently. Even that algorithm looks quite straightforward, now: the trick is that the algorithm loops over all possible programs, and runs each program for a while to see if it actually solves the problem. But I must admit the proof is not obvious (yet!), I don't see why, even if P=NP, the program number that solves it is itself a polynomial of the input size (which is a distinct issue as to the number of steps of the program you need to run to get an answer). Is this property special to SUBSET_SUM ?
Anyway, as far as programs go, this is about as non-constructive as you can get with it still being a program;-) Even if P=NP, this doesn't look like a good approach to get practical algorithms.
That isn't quite true: you only need a polynomial time algorithm for a single NP-complete problem, and you can transform that into a polynomial time for all NP-complete problems.
True, that if there was a non-constructive proof that P==NP, it might not be obvious what the polynomial time algorithm actually is. But since such a scenario would be probably the most astounding open problem in the history of mathematics, I don't think it would be an open problem for long;)
Not really. There is a lot of legislation that was introduced for the purpose of preventing or minimizing harm from car accidents. Very little of that legislation had the sweeping side effects of the PATRIOT act, Homeland security etc etc etc.
politico: Cable TV is good, the consume^Wcitizens sit there passively absorbing everything that we can feed to them - just gotta make sure we retain sufficient control over the big media
politico: Hey, this intarweb thing can be used for subversive anti-government messages! Lets make it more like cable TV!
It is very rare to find a programmer that is prepared to defend software patents; thus for a programmer, all software patent lawsuits are frivolous.
I think you are stretching it a bit to leave out software, though. I don't think I've ever seen anyone here say that the entire patent system should be scrapped.
The problem is, for every isolated instance of cooling that you dig up, someone else can dig up a (or, more likely, a whole bunch) of isolated instances of warming. This kind of argument doesn't get us anywhere.
How can you (1) not believe in non-determinism, and (2) not believe the "many worlds" (perhaps better phrased as "sum over histories") interpretation? The two are virtually synomynous.
(1) implies you don't believe in wavefunction collapse, which implies that the universe evolves purely according to the schroedinger equation (well, unless you want to add something beyond the Schroedinger equation, but is still deterministic??). But this is the very definition of the many-worlds interpretation.
Heh, if you think that, why don't you try turning off the ignition of your car when you are cruising down the highway sometime? But, don't try it if there is someone behind you: unless you can get the gears into neutral pretty quick, you will find yourself in trouble.
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Hmm, there should be a moderation for +sqrt(-1): weird
In the case that the GPL was invalid, nobody other than the original copyright holder has any rights to distribute. Even in the dreamworld where SCO was claiming large parts of Linux was actually misattributed and the copyright was actually held by them, it was by no means all of it, and over those parts they have no rights over.
In short, I think it must be a hoax. Either that or they are desperately short of cash and hoping that a few people accidentally buy it on pre-order?
At least I read the article!
Unless of course it is all just another layer in the web of satire...
Hmm, at least Wikipedia claims its a hoax. If so, it is rather elaborate.
Unfortunately, objectiveministries.org is not satire. Did you mean landoverbaptist.org or whitehouse.org instead?
What an astounding piece of deductive reasoning! Give the girl a Nobel prize!
WTF? I wonder what Patricia thought of the second place getter?
The high school prizes are just scary. 1st Place: "Using Prayer To Microevolve Latent Antibiotic Resistance In Bacteria". Huh?
The next stage of the research is to work out how to make the glass stable at room temperature and pressure.
LOL!
Of course. Do you trust Microsoft? Do you trust the maker of your hardware? Every link in the chain requires trust.
Because in Gentoo, a hash of the source tarball is integrated into the package system. The tarball might be downloaded from anywhere, but if the hashes don't match you have a different file than the package maintainer used, and it won't be installed.
To clarify: to be a polynomial time algorithm, it must terminate at some N which is a polynomial of the input size (say, the total number of bits used to specify the input numbers S). The program that solves it is represented by some number P <= N, which implies P <= p(input_size), for some polynomial function p. The problem I have is that the number representing the turing machine P, is exponentially large in the length of the turing machine. Or conversely, as the input size gets large, the turning machine to solve the problem can increase in length only logarithmically. This is reasonable I guess (it may even be that the length of the program is bounded), but it still needs proof. And I don't see what is special about SUBSET_SUM here.
Not in that algorithm; it loops over the program number P = 1..N. That is the whole point, if P=NP there is a program that solves it, but we don't know what that program is.
Certainly. Practically everything is 'obvious', once you have studied it sufficiently. Even that algorithm looks quite straightforward, now: the trick is that the algorithm loops over all possible programs, and runs each program for a while to see if it actually solves the problem. But I must admit the proof is not obvious (yet!), I don't see why, even if P=NP, the program number that solves it is itself a polynomial of the input size (which is a distinct issue as to the number of steps of the program you need to run to get an answer). Is this property special to SUBSET_SUM ?
Anyway, as far as programs go, this is about as non-constructive as you can get with it still being a program ;-) Even if P=NP, this doesn't look like a good approach to get practical algorithms.
That such a polynomial time algorithm already exists, doesn't make my statement wrong. The algorithm is indeed non-obvious.
True, that if there was a non-constructive proof that P==NP, it might not be obvious what the polynomial time algorithm actually is. But since such a scenario would be probably the most astounding open problem in the history of mathematics, I don't think it would be an open problem for long ;)
Not really. There is a lot of legislation that was introduced for the purpose of preventing or minimizing harm from car accidents. Very little of that legislation had the sweeping side effects of the PATRIOT act, Homeland security etc etc etc.
So? How many people died in car accidents that day?
politico: Hey, this intarweb thing can be used for subversive anti-government messages! Lets make it more like cable TV!
I think you are stretching it a bit to leave out software, though. I don't think I've ever seen anyone here say that the entire patent system should be scrapped.
Actually, I think according to the current legislation, it would be up to prove that it was not encrypted data.
The problem is, for every isolated instance of cooling that you dig up, someone else can dig up a (or, more likely, a whole bunch) of isolated instances of warming. This kind of argument doesn't get us anywhere.
(1) implies you don't believe in wavefunction collapse, which implies that the universe evolves purely according to the schroedinger equation (well, unless you want to add something beyond the Schroedinger equation, but is still deterministic??). But this is the very definition of the many-worlds interpretation.
There is also a difference between, say, running out of gas when the engine will splutter and choke for a few seconds, versus it simply stopping.
Heh, if you think that, why don't you try turning off the ignition of your car when you are cruising down the highway sometime? But, don't try it if there is someone behind you: unless you can get the gears into neutral pretty quick, you will find yourself in trouble.
I am a real scientist. Of course I have opinions. But I don't present them as established data.