On the other hand, winning the IBM case (if SCO were to win it) will take a lot of time and money. Since revenue from sales and licenses might not be enough for SCO to survive that period, they need something else. And winning cases mights just be their only option.
At the same time, if a few judges (anywhere in the world) might go with SCO, it might give them some form of platform of precedents to use in other cases (like he IBM one). And they might need something extra, because it isn't really lokking good at the moment (most of their arguments having been knocked down by the Linux community and people like the ones behind Groklaw).
In short, this might be a (desperate?) attempt to find some quick revenue and regain some lost momentum. But I don't think it will have any result.
I am trying not to be too negative here, but why should everything have to have a significance to the real world? The world doesn't benefit from me solving a crossword puzzle. It's just me, wanting to know the solution to the puzzle.
In the same way, people have been puzzled by the magical knight's tour problem for 150 years. And someone finally has solved the problem. It might not provide a cure for cancer, but at least it entertained a few people for some time.
Maybe something as insignificant as that should not be published, but on the other hand, I found it interesting to know that that problem got solved, so I don't complain that it has been published.
Also, I was under the impression that the objective of mathematical puzzles like this would be to find a simple, elegant proof. Does a brute-force calculation approach carry as much weight?
Perhaps not. But nobody sais that you can't go looking for an elegant proof just because the problem has been solved. There is also some merit in finding he easiest or most elegant solution, not just in finding the first one.
This is simply not true -- this whole notion of International Law believes that as a nation the US gave up its sovereignty. We did not. Like it or not, the only force that keeps nations sovereign is military force. There is no higher authority to which any nation reports.
As you said: I don't like it. Civilisation made people give up part of their freedom and start obey laws. The idea behind this was to prevent people from killing each other for fun or profit or whatever reason and from causing each other harm in any other way. That is part of the difference between our present civilisation and cavemen (although cavemen in the later ages will have had laws as well, I think, in some intuitive way). I am afraid I was naive to think that the same thing had happened on a larger, global scale, with nations instead of individuals.
I am not sure whether that post was filled with irony or not. I sincerely hope so, but for those of you who agree with that point of view: I don't.
If the fact that Congress authorised military action makes the war legal, then the Germans legally claimed land in the whole of Europe in 1940 (and a few years before). Hitler (the German leader) ordered the attacks (not exactly; it's a bit more complex) and he got the support of his government and most of the German people. But that does not legalise the German attacks back then.
Now, before people start yelling at me, let it be clear that I don't think Germany had the right to attack the rest of Europe (as I don't think the "coalition" had the right to attack Iraq) and I don't hold the German people responsible for WWII (I think they were deceived by their leaders).
The only way to legalise any military action not directly triggered by an attack of your opponents is via the United Nations. And that hasn't happened .
Perhaps it would be a bit dangerous (at present) to let a robot do an operation all by itself, but robots might provide a great help to human surgeons. There have allready been some successful tests with surgeons using robotic arms to perform a surgery. OK, that arm is still operated by a human, but it gives an idea of a possible man-machine interaction to perform complex tasks.
The same thing goes for cars. Although you wouldn't need a robot (in the sense of the conference) to drive a car. The car driving itself would be much easier. And when you look at how far developers are at letting airplanes fly themselves (fly-by-wire, autopilots, stabilizers), it might not be too long before a similar thing is done with cars (without making them unaffordable).
..., but the benefits of a variety of different platforms are lost on the newbie
On the other hand, the real newbie (the one that is intimidated by the huge amounts of different projects on SourceForge) now has a place where he can easily find the Debian-specific packages he wants. It would enhance the newbie-friendliness of Debian.
The first problem would be that the loading time of the software would be much larger, because even the fastest CD-ROM drives (which are the fastest non-rewritable-medium readers) are much slower than hard disks. And this slowing would happen every time some part of the software needs to be loaded in memory (also when this happens in the middle of the game). For a game console, this isn't a big problem, because the game is all that is going on on the console, so all resources can be used for the game (specifically all available memory). A PC usually runs several applications at once, all wanting a piece of the memory.
And even if what I just said isn't completely true or will not be true in the future, it still wouldn't help, in my opinion. People will still control what software exists on their computer. Even when the game runs from a non-writable medium, the software can only be executed when loaded in the memory (which is a rewritable medium). What would prevent someone to run a cheat program that changes the interesting part of the game each time it is loaded in memory? It would be a bit harder than just changing it on a hard disk, but technically, it can be done.
Nuclear power doesn't generate huge quantities of waste. At least not compared to power plants burning oil or coal. The amounts of CO2 and sulfur emitted by those plants is something one could call huge (although the sulfur and other not-so-healthy gasses can be filtered out). And most of the waste produced by power plants is only lightly radioactive.
The waste produces by power plants is not as dangerous as you say (in my opinion). It can be easily contained and is only really harmful if thing like our drinking water get contaminated. The biggest problem is that the most dangerous elements last for several thousands of years before their radioactivity wears off.
Nuclear power isn't incredibily expensive. The plant is expensive, but once it is running, it is actually rather cheap. Uranium is expensive, but only little is neaded, compared to the trainloads of coal for a coal plant.
So, I know nuclear power is dangerous, but by now means that dangerous.
The X-box vs. PS2 battle will indeed be a tough one, but I don't think that the X-box will knock the Gamecube off the market. They are targetted at completely different audiences. The Gamecube targets the younger children, with games and characters such as Zelda, Super Mario,... Pretty friendly games, rather non-violent with more or less cartoon-like characters. OK, they have always had other games as well (Metal Gear springs to mind), but Super Mario and Zelda were and are their flagships.
While both the X-box ans the Playstation (1 or 2) can compete with the gamecube on the second type of games (for the young adults or the older children) and even might dominate the market in that category, they don't seem to have that impact on the youngest amongst the gamers and they don't seem really willing to put enough effort in it.
So, I think that there is more than enough room for at least 2 consoles, and I favor Nintendo for being one of them. They have the know-how regarding children, they work with some experienced companies on those games,... What will happen to the other consoles... Only time will tell.
I am not an ecelogical expert (by no means), but in my opinion, you will still need to be very careful about what plants you bring there and you will probably need to manage them very closely. When you don't bring animals with you (birds spring to mind), that means that none of the seeds the plants produce get eaten (except for what the people harvest). This means that plants can and eventually will start growing where no people live (yet). If they are the wrong type, they could exhaust the soil, preventing anything else from growing there for quite some time.
This hasn't happened on Earth, since here, the entire planet is covered with all sorts of fauna and flora (OK, it wasn't like that right from the start, but it took a very long time to get it this way. Time that humans simply don't have).
It isn't quite the same thing (plants can't move), but just think about what happened when someone brought a few rabits to Australia, some centuries ago.
Or do you think such a potentially unstable situation as the cold war would have lasted long without mutual assured destruction?
In my opinion, the cold war would never even have existed, if not for nuclear weapons. Without nuclear weapons, the same situation as before WWII would have continued to exist: 2 very large powers (USA vs. USSR), residing on opposite sides of the globe (almost) with no way to really hurt each other without massive troop deployment. There wouldn't have been a cold war with the race for weapon superiority, but at most a diplomatic struggel for influence in Europe.
If nukes didnt exist, we would continue to have a major war in Europe every few decades
I don't think nuclear weapons prevented a war in Europe, and (still in my opinion) they couldn't prevent one either. The real nuclear powers are (and were) the USA and the (former) USSR. On the other hand, those major wars were fought between European countries. The only reason why the USSR and the USA got involved in WWII is the fact that they themselves were attacked at one stage.
So why would the USA or the USSR intervene when some European countries started to fight amongst themselves?
OK, I know that there are some nuclear powers in Europe as well, but they didn't become a nuclear power until some time after the war. By that time, another war could have started. The reason why it didn't was an improvement in diplomatic relationships between the European countries. Because nuclear weapons might be able to prevent a war, but they can't prevent the tension between countries from building up (like during the cold war) and there haven't been any really threatening conflicts in Europe since WWII.
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I really pity the people on Sedna. Without a moon, how can they ever hope to get to Mars?
On the other hand, winning the IBM case (if SCO were to win it) will take a lot of time and money. Since revenue from sales and licenses might not be enough for SCO to survive that period, they need something else. And winning cases mights just be their only option.
At the same time, if a few judges (anywhere in the world) might go with SCO, it might give them some form of platform of precedents to use in other cases (like he IBM one). And they might need something extra, because it isn't really lokking good at the moment (most of their arguments having been knocked down by the Linux community and people like the ones behind Groklaw).
In short, this might be a (desperate?) attempt to find some quick revenue and regain some lost momentum. But I don't think it will have any result.
I am trying not to be too negative here, but why should everything have to have a significance to the real world? The world doesn't benefit from me solving a crossword puzzle. It's just me, wanting to know the solution to the puzzle.
In the same way, people have been puzzled by the magical knight's tour problem for 150 years. And someone finally has solved the problem. It might not provide a cure for cancer, but at least it entertained a few people for some time.
Maybe something as insignificant as that should not be published, but on the other hand, I found it interesting to know that that problem got solved, so I don't complain that it has been published.
Also, I was under the impression that the objective of mathematical puzzles like this would be to find a simple, elegant proof. Does a brute-force calculation approach carry as much weight?
Perhaps not. But nobody sais that you can't go looking for an elegant proof just because the problem has been solved. There is also some merit in finding he easiest or most elegant solution, not just in finding the first one.
This is simply not true -- this whole notion of International Law believes that as a nation the US gave up its sovereignty. We did not. Like it or not, the only force that keeps nations sovereign is military force. There is no higher authority to which any nation reports.
As you said: I don't like it. Civilisation made people give up part of their freedom and start obey laws. The idea behind this was to prevent people from killing each other for fun or profit or whatever reason and from causing each other harm in any other way. That is part of the difference between our present civilisation and cavemen (although cavemen in the later ages will have had laws as well, I think, in some intuitive way). I am afraid I was naive to think that the same thing had happened on a larger, global scale, with nations instead of individuals.
I am not sure whether that post was filled with irony or not. I sincerely hope so, but for those of you who agree with that point of view: I don't.
If the fact that Congress authorised military action makes the war legal, then the Germans legally claimed land in the whole of Europe in 1940 (and a few years before). Hitler (the German leader) ordered the attacks (not exactly; it's a bit more complex) and he got the support of his government and most of the German people. But that does not legalise the German attacks back then.
Now, before people start yelling at me, let it be clear that I don't think Germany had the right to attack the rest of Europe (as I don't think the "coalition" had the right to attack Iraq) and I don't hold the German people responsible for WWII (I think they were deceived by their leaders).
The only way to legalise any military action not directly triggered by an attack of your opponents is via the United Nations. And that hasn't happened .
Perhaps it would be a bit dangerous (at present) to let a robot do an operation all by itself, but robots might provide a great help to human surgeons. There have allready been some successful tests with surgeons using robotic arms to perform a surgery. OK, that arm is still operated by a human, but it gives an idea of a possible man-machine interaction to perform complex tasks.
The same thing goes for cars. Although you wouldn't need a robot (in the sense of the conference) to drive a car. The car driving itself would be much easier. And when you look at how far developers are at letting airplanes fly themselves (fly-by-wire, autopilots, stabilizers), it might not be too long before a similar thing is done with cars (without making them unaffordable).
On the other hand, the real newbie (the one that is intimidated by the huge amounts of different projects on SourceForge) now has a place where he can easily find the Debian-specific packages he wants. It would enhance the newbie-friendliness of Debian.
I am not sure whether that would help a lot.
The first problem would be that the loading time of the software would be much larger, because even the fastest CD-ROM drives (which are the fastest non-rewritable-medium readers) are much slower than hard disks. And this slowing would happen every time some part of the software needs to be loaded in memory (also when this happens in the middle of the game). For a game console, this isn't a big problem, because the game is all that is going on on the console, so all resources can be used for the game (specifically all available memory). A PC usually runs several applications at once, all wanting a piece of the memory.
And even if what I just said isn't completely true or will not be true in the future, it still wouldn't help, in my opinion. People will still control what software exists on their computer. Even when the game runs from a non-writable medium, the software can only be executed when loaded in the memory (which is a rewritable medium). What would prevent someone to run a cheat program that changes the interesting part of the game each time it is loaded in memory? It would be a bit harder than just changing it on a hard disk, but technically, it can be done.
... as can be seen by the fact that you didn't score a first post at all.
Just a few comments on this one.
Nuclear power doesn't generate huge quantities of waste. At least not compared to power plants burning oil or coal. The amounts of CO2 and sulfur emitted by those plants is something one could call huge (although the sulfur and other not-so-healthy gasses can be filtered out). And most of the waste produced by power plants is only lightly radioactive.
The waste produces by power plants is not as dangerous as you say (in my opinion). It can be easily contained and is only really harmful if thing like our drinking water get contaminated. The biggest problem is that the most dangerous elements last for several thousands of years before their radioactivity wears off.
Nuclear power isn't incredibily expensive. The plant is expensive, but once it is running, it is actually rather cheap. Uranium is expensive, but only little is neaded, compared to the trainloads of coal for a coal plant.
So, I know nuclear power is dangerous, but by now means that dangerous.
The X-box vs. PS2 battle will indeed be a tough one, but I don't think that the X-box will knock the Gamecube off the market. They are targetted at completely different audiences. The Gamecube targets the younger children, with games and characters such as Zelda, Super Mario, ... Pretty friendly games, rather non-violent with more or less cartoon-like characters. OK, they have always had other games as well (Metal Gear springs to mind), but Super Mario and Zelda were and are their flagships.
While both the X-box ans the Playstation (1 or 2) can compete with the gamecube on the second type of games (for the young adults or the older children) and even might dominate the market in that category, they don't seem to have that impact on the youngest amongst the gamers and they don't seem really willing to put enough effort in it.
So, I think that there is more than enough room for at least 2 consoles, and I favor Nintendo for being one of them. They have the know-how regarding children, they work with some experienced companies on those games, ... What will happen to the other consoles... Only time will tell.
I am not an ecelogical expert (by no means), but in my opinion, you will still need to be very careful about what plants you bring there and you will probably need to manage them very closely. When you don't bring animals with you (birds spring to mind), that means that none of the seeds the plants produce get eaten (except for what the people harvest). This means that plants can and eventually will start growing where no people live (yet). If they are the wrong type, they could exhaust the soil, preventing anything else from growing there for quite some time.
This hasn't happened on Earth, since here, the entire planet is covered with all sorts of fauna and flora (OK, it wasn't like that right from the start, but it took a very long time to get it this way. Time that humans simply don't have).
It isn't quite the same thing (plants can't move), but just think about what happened when someone brought a few rabits to Australia, some centuries ago.
Or do you think such a potentially unstable situation as the cold war would have lasted long without mutual assured destruction?
In my opinion, the cold war would never even have existed, if not for nuclear weapons. Without nuclear weapons, the same situation as before WWII would have continued to exist: 2 very large powers (USA vs. USSR), residing on opposite sides of the globe (almost) with no way to really hurt each other without massive troop deployment. There wouldn't have been a cold war with the race for weapon superiority, but at most a diplomatic struggel for influence in Europe.
If nukes didnt exist, we would continue to have a major war in Europe every few decades
I don't think nuclear weapons prevented a war in Europe, and (still in my opinion) they couldn't prevent one either. The real nuclear powers are (and were) the USA and the (former) USSR. On the other hand, those major wars were fought between European countries. The only reason why the USSR and the USA got involved in WWII is the fact that they themselves were attacked at one stage.
So why would the USA or the USSR intervene when some European countries started to fight amongst themselves?
OK, I know that there are some nuclear powers in Europe as well, but they didn't become a nuclear power until some time after the war. By that time, another war could have started. The reason why it didn't was an improvement in diplomatic relationships between the European countries. Because nuclear weapons might be able to prevent a war, but they can't prevent the tension between countries from building up (like during the cold war) and there haven't been any really threatening conflicts in Europe since WWII.