Battery monitors are trying to do an incredibly tricky job. For all practical battery chemistries, the fully-charged voltage is only a tiny fraction more than the to-all-intents-and-purposes-spent voltage.
There are battery charging monitors that integrate the current over time to get an idea of how many amp-hours are remaining, but even these don't account for the tendency of most battery chemistries to self-discharge.
A lightning strike is pretty extreme. There's enough potential difference there to ionise the insulation on the wires (especially if it's PVC; a chlorine atom attached to every other carbon atom looks "just polar enough"). Under which circumstances, it tends to stop insulating.
Even fibre optic cable -- or its outer protective sheath -- can potentially become conductive.
Running a live wire into a passenger jet's fuel tank seems like a bad idea on the face of it.
Only if you don't understand the basics of electronics or chemistry. One would hope that aircraft designers and constructors would have studied the science in these fields (mind you, if they're Americans, they probably think that God Did It, End Of Story; and if they're British, they probably think that All Beliefs, Even Demonstrably Untrue Ones, Are Equally Valid).
Still, sensors that monitor the fuel tank have to run on electricity, so aircraft makers previously had little choice.
You can use a low enough voltage that it won't spark; and you can use sufficiently-close contacts that even if it does spark, there will be insufficient energy to ignite the fuel.
The thing is, Movable Type was already distributed in Source Code form (it's interpreted, after all). So even if it wasn't permitted by the usage licence, people effectively could take Freedoms One and Three by force, the same way people already take Freedoms Zero and Two by force.
Or even better, use the same root password on all desktop boxes but on no account tell any user what that password is (and always type it too fast for them to see, or lift the keyboard above their eye level). That way, if they want to mess anything up, they'll need to summon you. And you can wield the cluebat.
It is simply mind-boggling how often a simple reboot fix seemingly unrelated problems.
Indeed. A computer is supposed to be a Deterministic State Machine, which means repeating the same operations should produce the same result every time.
We're an all-Linux shop here (except a couple of beancounters who have Windows on their desktops for legacy compatibility with someone else once maybe); so when things go wrong, it's serious and for a reason, and won't go away with a reboot. (This morning, it was a network cable whose latch had broken off the plug in the floorbox, allowing it to work loose. We use NIS and NFS for "anywhere login" and no users were showing up in KDM; looked like no network connection. The nearby SIP telephone, which serves as a network switch, was flashing, which confirmed it. Fortunately, this floorbox wasn't under the leg of a desk. Inside, I find the busted plug and wonder why it was left like that? [Most probably, it snapped off during one of many capricious reorganisations and was left that way because someone needed to get working right that second and as long as nobody pulls the cable, it'll stay in fine.] Took me two goes to crimp up a new one, because I didn't notice the orange and white/green wires re-ordering themselves as I pushed the plug on. I must be getting out of practice.) The lusers who are used to Windows sit resetting their machines several times and wonder why the problem is persisting. Why wouldn't it persist if you haven't changed anything?
There's a difference, a huge difference, between being treated like property and not being able to fiddle with the source to an application.
It's a difference in degree only. The majority of people are not programmers, and wouldn't know what to do with Source Code. That doesn't diminish its importance in real life one bit, although it's not important to them, right now. It may turn out to be important to someone, one day.
What's the most valuable part of your computer system? It's not the hardware or the software. It's your data. Your letters, your sums, your record collection, your photos, your movies. And as long as that data is being stored in proprietary formats, it's effectively being held to ransom. Your continued access to all that is entirely at the mercy of some faceless corporation somewhere. They have the power to force you to upgrade your software -- and, if necessary, your hardware -- just to maintain access to your data. They could even withdraw your licence to use the software altogether.
To guard against this, data formats need to be Open. And a data format isn't Open unless everyone is free to create Open Source implementations of programs that read and write data in that format, so that it's possible to exchange data perfectly -- correctly in every detail -- with other applications using it. OOXML is not an Open format, because there are huge gaps in the specification. Microsoft Office can create "OOXML" files that ask for features that nobody but Microsoft know how to implement. That means right from the start that it's not necessarily possible for any competing product to handle files produced by Microsoft Office correctly. Furethermore (and this is a separate issue in its own right), there may be other legal encumbrances which indirectly prevent someone from creating an Open Source OOXML implementation.
If you want to make full use of your data in a manner that suits you, then that might well necessitate "fiddling with the source to an application". Hence why it's important. Anything else would be denying you some of your rights, or "treating you like property".
That's a hell of a comparison, drawing similarities between the enslavement of people and denial of human rights to... software. Completely unreasonable too, since in the end any piece of software can be reimplemented but a person denied rights cannot simply be replaced with someone that has those rights.
The freedom to run the program for any purpose, the freedom to study how the program works and adapt it to your needs, the freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbour and the freedom to improve the program and release your improvements to the public so that the whole community benefits, are human rights. And these rights, which belong to everyone, trump the power (because that is what it is: power over others, not freedom and certainly not a right) of a minority of programmers to deny others those Four Freedoms.
Also, see above. There may be direct (poor documentation) or indirect (legal encumbrances) reasons why a piece of software cannot be reimplemented.
It is still impossible to write a BSD-licensed application using Qt.
And what's really so bad about that, when all's said and done?
The only reason to prefer the BSD licence over the GPL (apart from all the political stuff which could and probably should have been abstracted away into an appendix, letting the terms and conditions be served up plain and dry without emotive language) is that the latter specifically forbids you to distribute binary-only applications. But if what you want to do is write Caged software, then Trolltech will allow you to licence Qt for that purpose -- for a fee, naturally. If you're writing Caged software, surely it's because you think you have the right to exert control over your work, such as withhold the Source Code? Then how can you sanely object to Trolltech exerting control over their work, by charging you for the privilege of benefitting from it? Particularly as they've already also given you the option of having access to the same work for no money, as long as you abide by the rules of the GPL. Which are, no withholding Source Code.
Unless I'm missing something -- and if I am, then please put me straight -- you just sound as though you just want to eat your cake and have it.
The GPL rests on copyright law. It assumes a priori that you have the right to attach terms to something you have created. If you want to attach those terms to your code then you have to accept that other people have the freedom to attach their own terms to their own code.
The only reason why we need laws is that there are too many people who won't do the right thing unless somebody tells them to. I've seen enough of life to realise several times over that the hippy visions I used to have of people getting along, being nice to one another and sharing everything are just romantic ideals. Someone always sets out to game the system for their own benefit, it always comes at someone else's expense, and you end up with a pyramid where every layer is eating the layer below itself.
So if we can't have an ideal world because people would do bad things if there wasn't a law telling them not to, then surely the next best thing is having laws stopping people from doing undesirable things, as long as they do not impact upon anyone who is doing nothing wrong? From the point of view of the GNU project, anything that seeks to curtail the Four Freedoms is undesirable. Since in the "Brave GNU world" nobody would object to passing on the Four Freedoms, goes the reasoning, then if nothing but a law preserving the Four Freedoms will create this state of affairs, it will just have to suffice for now.
And in its own way, I suppose that's really just as much "gaming the system" as anything else.
I'm really surprised that someone hasn't tried to start a registry of pet names, and extort money from pet owners wanting to give those names to their pets. Animal names represent valuable Intellectual Property, don'tcha know. That cat you've got, Enrico Agache Something Amelia Earhart*, I hear you've been calling him Chico for short? That'll be..... what..... £100 a year to name a cat Chico. Or you can go to court to argue it out..... but it's cheaper to pay up right now.....
* Only Chico's mother Amy knows what the "something" should be, and she's not telling.
Once upon a time, KDE was lambasted for using the not-Free-enough Qt libraries. There was a project to replace Qt and create a truly free KDE; but in the end, Trolltech released Qt under the GPL. And not the mealy-mouthed LGPL, like the GNOME libraries, which allows use in Caged software; but the full-on, not-sharing-is-stealing GPL. So the leeches still had to pay to use Qt in a Caged application; but if you played fair and wrote Free software, you could use Qt with the blessing of the copyright holders. (This didn't please the Windows fans. Windows users, raised on a diet of "illegally copying the Software is my way of Sticking It to the Man, and if you don't pay me $49 for this crapplication to do something petty that Unix has had since forever that I built with my pirate copy of Visual Studio, I'll turn off saving and bring up nag screens every five minutes", bitched loudly that there was no GPL Qt for Windows -- but the only thing stopping them porting it was the fact that the average Windows user would rather drown in shit than make the effort to swim.)
Now, the "freedom" to write Caged applications is a thorny issue. But I see it like this, and I'm sure RMS does too: in a nation where the ownership of slaves is forbidden, citizens tend to be freer on average than in a nation where the ownership of slaves is permitted. So KDE are actively promoting freedom, by taking a stand against OOXML. Novell and GNOME and Mono are getting rather too cosy in bed with Microsoft for comfort. It's very hard not to think about Microsoft pulling some kind of bait-and-switch operation which would put OSS users in trouble. If this happens, I think it's actually more likely that the Governments of the world would just pass Enabling Acts to annul whatever IP Microsoft are trying to abuse; but that's still a waste of taxpayers' money that doesn't have to happen, and by the time it gets to that stage the damage (in terms of unopenable public and private records) will be severe.
Not everyone is as responsible a citizen as you. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they aren't out to get you, and just because you don't understand the importance of having access to Source Code doesn't mean it isn't every bit as big a deal, in its own right, as slavery.
Solution to that, is to Open Source the engine and abstract everything out. So the game data files need contain no "native" code -- just bytecode for the interpreter^Wvirtual machine.
A new player entering the market with exactly that strategy could clean up. Remember, it's a matter of time before manufacturer lockout systems (preventing 3rd party game development) are ruled illegal in Europe. A game engine running on Linux, BSD, Windows, Mac, X360, PS3, PSP, Wii, DS and phones, and with the capability to take the same game code and run it on any of those platforms..... well, it'd be a massive undertaking, but if anyone has the guts to go for it, they'll pwn the games market.
Linux has inherited file permissions from Unix. Basically, every file has three options: read, write and execute, for three sets of people: the owner, the owning group and everyone else. Windows NT has inherited Access Control Lists from VMS. They are more sophisticated than Unix permissions, allowing fine-grained control such as "Dave from Accounts can read this file only on a Tuesday between 13:00 and 17:00".
Point is, the Windows model is overcomplicated. Which is why it sees less use than a pay toilet in a forest.
A lot of new users get bitchslapped because they deserve it. "OMG no my computer doesn't work!!!1!" is a stupid question -- it's no different from ringing the vet and saying "My animal is poorly!" A vet would want to know at least what kind of animal it was, what symptoms it was manifesting and how long it had been happening.
How? You get lazy, is how. For the first few days, you supply the dog with known images, and only reward it when it makes the right choice. Then you switch to using unknown images, and have both choices dispense food (so it doesn't matter which one the dog actually chooses; it will still get fed). By this time, you hope the dog is already used to pressing the button under the picture that looks like what it is you want it to recognise, so will press the right one anyway.
Same thing happened to a friend of mine. Dog opened fridge, scoffed a lamb casserôle that was waiting to be reheated for dinner that evening, and then closed the fridge. She'd have got away with it if she'd been able to put the dish back on the shelf.
The problem is that the viagra / watches / whatever aren't where the big money is being made. The big money is made on the sale of "spamming kits". There's always someone greedy and desperate enough to fall for a get-rich-quick scheme.
Spam is an example of "Age of Plenty" economics, and no attempt to apply "Age of Scarcity" economic theories will ever be successful in changing it.
Simple solution to that: You make it so that transfer of a debt to a different creditor requires the prior written consent of the debtor. Now the bank that lent you the money can't just sell your promise to repay it without your say-so.
Big hole in simple solution: A lot of Very Big Business depends on that not being the case.
Slashdot Mirror
Um, no. Celtic Supporters generally believe in evolution. It's Rangers Fans who take Genesis literally.
What *is* that "myminicity.com" link? I can't make much out of this Source Code:
//<![CDATA[
//]]>
..... why would someone set document.location.href = document.location.href ? What is it doing?
<html>
<head>
<title>MyMiniCity</title>
</head>
<body>
<noscript>
This site needs JavaScript.
</noscript>
<script type="text/javascript">
var d = new Date();
d.setTime(d.getTime()+47994);
var exp = d.toGMTString();
if( document.referrer != null )
document.cookie = "X-MV-Referer="+encodeURIComponent(document.referrer);
document.cookie = "X-Ref-Ok=1;expires="+exp+";path=/"
document.location.href = document.location.href;
</script>
<p><em>Please wait a few moments...</em></p>
</body>
</html>
I mean
Battery monitors are trying to do an incredibly tricky job. For all practical battery chemistries, the fully-charged voltage is only a tiny fraction more than the to-all-intents-and-purposes-spent voltage.
There are battery charging monitors that integrate the current over time to get an idea of how many amp-hours are remaining, but even these don't account for the tendency of most battery chemistries to self-discharge.
A lightning strike is pretty extreme. There's enough potential difference there to ionise the insulation on the wires (especially if it's PVC; a chlorine atom attached to every other carbon atom looks "just polar enough"). Under which circumstances, it tends to stop insulating.
Even fibre optic cable -- or its outer protective sheath -- can potentially become conductive.
Unless those techniques are patented?
The thing is, Movable Type was already distributed in Source Code form (it's interpreted, after all). So even if it wasn't permitted by the usage licence, people effectively could take Freedoms One and Three by force, the same way people already take Freedoms Zero and Two by force.
- ctrl+Z
- killall vi
?Secretaries at AT&T actually used to use vi for typing business letters.
Or even better, use the same root password on all desktop boxes but on no account tell any user what that password is (and always type it too fast for them to see, or lift the keyboard above their eye level). That way, if they want to mess anything up, they'll need to summon you. And you can wield the cluebat.
We're an all-Linux shop here (except a couple of beancounters who have Windows on their desktops for legacy compatibility with someone else once maybe); so when things go wrong, it's serious and for a reason, and won't go away with a reboot. (This morning, it was a network cable whose latch had broken off the plug in the floorbox, allowing it to work loose. We use NIS and NFS for "anywhere login" and no users were showing up in KDM; looked like no network connection. The nearby SIP telephone, which serves as a network switch, was flashing, which confirmed it. Fortunately, this floorbox wasn't under the leg of a desk. Inside, I find the busted plug and wonder why it was left like that? [Most probably, it snapped off during one of many capricious reorganisations and was left that way because someone needed to get working right that second and as long as nobody pulls the cable, it'll stay in fine.] Took me two goes to crimp up a new one, because I didn't notice the orange and white/green wires re-ordering themselves as I pushed the plug on. I must be getting out of practice.) The lusers who are used to Windows sit resetting their machines several times and wonder why the problem is persisting. Why wouldn't it persist if you haven't changed anything?
What's the most valuable part of your computer system? It's not the hardware or the software. It's your data. Your letters, your sums, your record collection, your photos, your movies. And as long as that data is being stored in proprietary formats, it's effectively being held to ransom. Your continued access to all that is entirely at the mercy of some faceless corporation somewhere. They have the power to force you to upgrade your software -- and, if necessary, your hardware -- just to maintain access to your data. They could even withdraw your licence to use the software altogether.
To guard against this, data formats need to be Open. And a data format isn't Open unless everyone is free to create Open Source implementations of programs that read and write data in that format, so that it's possible to exchange data perfectly -- correctly in every detail -- with other applications using it. OOXML is not an Open format, because there are huge gaps in the specification. Microsoft Office can create "OOXML" files that ask for features that nobody but Microsoft know how to implement. That means right from the start that it's not necessarily possible for any competing product to handle files produced by Microsoft Office correctly. Furethermore (and this is a separate issue in its own right), there may be other legal encumbrances which indirectly prevent someone from creating an Open Source OOXML implementation.
If you want to make full use of your data in a manner that suits you, then that might well necessitate "fiddling with the source to an application". Hence why it's important. Anything else would be denying you some of your rights, or "treating you like property". The freedom to run the program for any purpose, the freedom to study how the program works and adapt it to your needs, the freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbour and the freedom to improve the program and release your improvements to the public so that the whole community benefits, are human rights. And these rights, which belong to everyone, trump the power (because that is what it is: power over others, not freedom and certainly not a right) of a minority of programmers to deny others those Four Freedoms.
Also, see above. There may be direct (poor documentation) or indirect (legal encumbrances) reasons why a piece of software cannot be reimplemented.
The only reason to prefer the BSD licence over the GPL (apart from all the political stuff which could and probably should have been abstracted away into an appendix, letting the terms and conditions be served up plain and dry without emotive language) is that the latter specifically forbids you to distribute binary-only applications. But if what you want to do is write Caged software, then Trolltech will allow you to licence Qt for that purpose -- for a fee, naturally. If you're writing Caged software, surely it's because you think you have the right to exert control over your work, such as withhold the Source Code? Then how can you sanely object to Trolltech exerting control over their work, by charging you for the privilege of benefitting from it? Particularly as they've already also given you the option of having access to the same work for no money, as long as you abide by the rules of the GPL. Which are, no withholding Source Code.
Unless I'm missing something -- and if I am, then please put me straight -- you just sound as though you just want to eat your cake and have it. The only reason why we need laws is that there are too many people who won't do the right thing unless somebody tells them to. I've seen enough of life to realise several times over that the hippy visions I used to have of people getting along, being nice to one another and sharing everything are just romantic ideals. Someone always sets out to game the system for their own benefit, it always comes at someone else's expense, and you end up with a pyramid where every layer is eating the layer below itself.
So if we can't have an ideal world because people would do bad things if there wasn't a law telling them not to, then surely the next best thing is having laws stopping people from doing undesirable things, as long as they do not impact upon anyone who is doing nothing wrong? From the point of view of the GNU project, anything that seeks to curtail the Four Freedoms is undesirable. Since in the "Brave GNU world" nobody would object to passing on the Four Freedoms, goes the reasoning, then if nothing but a law preserving the Four Freedoms will create this state of affairs, it will just have to suffice for now.
And in its own way, I suppose that's really just as much "gaming the system" as anything else.
I'm really surprised that someone hasn't tried to start a registry of pet names, and extort money from pet owners wanting to give those names to their pets. Animal names represent valuable Intellectual Property, don'tcha know. That cat you've got, Enrico Agache Something Amelia Earhart*, I hear you've been calling him Chico for short? That'll be ..... what ..... £100 a year to name a cat Chico. Or you can go to court to argue it out ..... but it's cheaper to pay up right now .....
* Only Chico's mother Amy knows what the "something" should be, and she's not telling.
Once upon a time, KDE was lambasted for using the not-Free-enough Qt libraries. There was a project to replace Qt and create a truly free KDE; but in the end, Trolltech released Qt under the GPL. And not the mealy-mouthed LGPL, like the GNOME libraries, which allows use in Caged software; but the full-on, not-sharing-is-stealing GPL. So the leeches still had to pay to use Qt in a Caged application; but if you played fair and wrote Free software, you could use Qt with the blessing of the copyright holders. (This didn't please the Windows fans. Windows users, raised on a diet of "illegally copying the Software is my way of Sticking It to the Man, and if you don't pay me $49 for this crapplication to do something petty that Unix has had since forever that I built with my pirate copy of Visual Studio, I'll turn off saving and bring up nag screens every five minutes", bitched loudly that there was no GPL Qt for Windows -- but the only thing stopping them porting it was the fact that the average Windows user would rather drown in shit than make the effort to swim.)
Now, the "freedom" to write Caged applications is a thorny issue. But I see it like this, and I'm sure RMS does too: in a nation where the ownership of slaves is forbidden, citizens tend to be freer on average than in a nation where the ownership of slaves is permitted. So KDE are actively promoting freedom, by taking a stand against OOXML. Novell and GNOME and Mono are getting rather too cosy in bed with Microsoft for comfort. It's very hard not to think about Microsoft pulling some kind of bait-and-switch operation which would put OSS users in trouble. If this happens, I think it's actually more likely that the Governments of the world would just pass Enabling Acts to annul whatever IP Microsoft are trying to abuse; but that's still a waste of taxpayers' money that doesn't have to happen, and by the time it gets to that stage the damage (in terms of unopenable public and private records) will be severe.
Not everyone is as responsible a citizen as you. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they aren't out to get you, and just because you don't understand the importance of having access to Source Code doesn't mean it isn't every bit as big a deal, in its own right, as slavery.
They refer to it as "Open Sauce" because of the common misconception that it's forever trying to play "ketchup" with Microsoft.
Solution to that, is to Open Source the engine and abstract everything out. So the game data files need contain no "native" code -- just bytecode for the interpreter^Wvirtual machine.
..... well, it'd be a massive undertaking, but if anyone has the guts to go for it, they'll pwn the games market.
A new player entering the market with exactly that strategy could clean up. Remember, it's a matter of time before manufacturer lockout systems (preventing 3rd party game development) are ruled illegal in Europe. A game engine running on Linux, BSD, Windows, Mac, X360, PS3, PSP, Wii, DS and phones, and with the capability to take the same game code and run it on any of those platforms
I'd guess, a sort of "OpenBerry" project.
Linux has inherited file permissions from Unix. Basically, every file has three options: read, write and execute, for three sets of people: the owner, the owning group and everyone else. Windows NT has inherited Access Control Lists from VMS. They are more sophisticated than Unix permissions, allowing fine-grained control such as "Dave from Accounts can read this file only on a Tuesday between 13:00 and 17:00".
Point is, the Windows model is overcomplicated. Which is why it sees less use than a pay toilet in a forest.
A lot of new users get bitchslapped because they deserve it. "OMG no my computer doesn't work!!!1!" is a stupid question -- it's no different from ringing the vet and saying "My animal is poorly!" A vet would want to know at least what kind of animal it was, what symptoms it was manifesting and how long it had been happening.
How? You get lazy, is how. For the first few days, you supply the dog with known images, and only reward it when it makes the right choice. Then you switch to using unknown images, and have both choices dispense food (so it doesn't matter which one the dog actually chooses; it will still get fed). By this time, you hope the dog is already used to pressing the button under the picture that looks like what it is you want it to recognise, so will press the right one anyway.
Same thing happened to a friend of mine. Dog opened fridge, scoffed a lamb casserôle that was waiting to be reheated for dinner that evening, and then closed the fridge. She'd have got away with it if she'd been able to put the dish back on the shelf.
That's because pigeons are not cute and cuddly.
You never hear the Animal Rights people going on about slugs or centipedes, do you?
' = minutes
" = seconds
Just my understanding, which may well be out-of-date. s/is/used to be/ .
The problem is that the viagra / watches / whatever aren't where the big money is being made. The big money is made on the sale of "spamming kits". There's always someone greedy and desperate enough to fall for a get-rich-quick scheme.
Spam is an example of "Age of Plenty" economics, and no attempt to apply "Age of Scarcity" economic theories will ever be successful in changing it.
Simple solution to that: You make it so that transfer of a debt to a different creditor requires the prior written consent of the debtor. Now the bank that lent you the money can't just sell your promise to repay it without your say-so.
Big hole in simple solution: A lot of Very Big Business depends on that not being the case.