Adrafinil and Modafinil are newer alpha1-adrenergics that promote stimulation without some of the negative effects of methamphetamines.
Modafinil has a potency about 3x that of Adrafinil, it's currently a Schedule-IV substance in the United States. Adrafinil is unscheduled at the present time. Methamphetamine is Schedule-II, I believe.
i thought black holes were not proven to exist, or am i living in the past?
It depends on what one means by "exist," I suppose.
The phenomenological data supports the existence of black holes, very clearly and without controversy. But what "exists" within the event horizon (the radius at which the gravitational force equals the speed of light) of the object we call a black hole is unobservable, and cannot be described by standard models.
Consider that the time dilation at the event horizon is "infinite" according to relativity, thus an infalling particle would require infinite time to cross this boundary. On the other hand, the lifespan of the "black hole" is, according to Hawking, finite. Thus, the event horizon would evaporate before the particle crossed it.
Alternately, the particle might "quantum jump" across the event horizon, this was suggested to me by Dr. Michael Shara at the Space Telescope Science Institute (Johns Hopkins) about 15 years ago. If he's right, black holes may indeed exist.
Or, the particle might be negated by a Hawking anti-particle before it crosses the event horizon.
Finally, the particle might only cross the event horizon when it evaporates, which is to say, if and when the black hole becomes a white hole.
The Crimson Permanent Assurance
on
SCO News Roundup
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Did anyone else have this flash before their mind's eye while reading the parent post?
For those who aren't Monty Python fans, he Crimson Permanent Assurance was a 20-minute skit that opened their film, the Meaning of Life, in which an office building hoists sail and sets off to wage piracy on the corporate landscape.
Instead of contingency-fee litigation (which encourages the kind of ambulance-chasing behavior the legal profession is (in)famous for), how about adopting the following changes in the system:
1. Loser pays: If you're a small fry, you can still afford to sue a big corporation if you have a strong case, because if/when you win, your lawyers will be paid, same as is the case now in contigency-fee litigation.
2. As a limitation on the above, the legal expenses recoverable by the winning party shall not exceed the legal expenses incurred by the losing party. This way, the big corporation cannot expect to outspend the small fry by a large margin in order to force a settlement or risk paying an excessive legal bill in the event of a loss.
3. Abolish contingency-fee as an unnecessary evil.
AMD IS LIKELY to get a boost from Hewlett Packard today, with reports saying the firm will start selling a Presario 8000Z as soon as Wednesday.
According to the report on cnet.mp3.com, HP will offer a variety of different options with the desktop, which will be available in retail this week.
The machine, the report says, is just one of a family of Athlon 64 desktops HP will sell, and costs $1,239 for a basic machine.
But HP won't start using the Athlon FX - a sort of Opteron - for a little while, it appears. If and when it does, it will be offered as a gaming machine.
The announcement is a boost for AMD, coupled with Sun's expected endorsement of its Opteron microprocessors today.
The right to own property is the foremost right of every person and should be defended above all these other "rights"...
Thank you Ayn Rand.
Now let's get real. Property is not inherent. Moreover, the subject of what can and cannot be property is a limited one; slavery is a form of property that was once legally recognized but is no longer in most parts of the world.
What is inherent is life and liberty. Working from these one can derive certain forms of legitimate property, i.e., a presumed legal right to exclusive possession of things one creates, lest he or she be deprived of the labor (life and liberty interest) invested in its creation.
Now tell me, sir, when and how did you make the asteroid you now claim to own?
IBM subpoenaed a bunch of SCO investors, so of course SCO subpoenas a bunch of Free Software / Open Source people. This is funny shit.
What makes it especially funny is that the people they are sending subpoenas to (Stallman, Torvalds, et al) are gonna be absolutely helpful to IBM's side of the case, and not remotely useful to SCO.
DMAE (dimethylaminoethanol) may be helpful. It's a precursor of choline, and it extends the duration of empathogenesis a bit. Unlike MDMA, it's legal, too.
Slightly off-topic, but related to what you said, this is part of a recent journal entry I made.
I don't think most people who bash Microsoft really know, cognitively, why they do it. But there is a social dynamic in effect that causes people to resent, and therefore attack, what they cannot quite understand.
Most people imagine that the United States is a democracy. Others will correct them and say, no, it is a republic. Both of these are really a statement of expectation, not actual fact.
The US is in truth a plutocracy. Firstly, the freedom of the press is only truly open to those who can afford to publish. The emergence of mass media in the 20th century further centralized the primary means of communication in a small number of corporate hands. That person or corporation with the most power, in economic terms, can "speak" with the greatest volume.
The Internet has lowered the barrier to communication, and is the leading edge of the revolution (see, it's not being televised, is it?) in terms of giving a greater and increasing voice to those with the greatest persuasiveness, rather than those with the most financial means to promote their message. What will hopefully emerge from this process is a totally new form of government, a meritocracy. In my opinion, music will be the greatest power. Some might suggest pornography will rule. Much of what goes for popular music today (given current media) is some combination of the two.
In the meantime, and returning to the subject of this journal entry, the company with the greatest financial clout in the world right now is Microsoft. Moreover, the company is controlled in large part by a single man, William Gates III. What he says Microsoft will publish, they will publish. When he wants to back a candidate for office, he can ensure that candidate will have the full power of the press behind him.
I am not trying to say that Gates is a bad man, only that he is a man who controls the largest share of the liquid assets which confer power. There are many other wealthy individuals and families, some of whom probably resent Gates. His power is counterbalanced by the old money still very capable of exercising their power.
If my thesis is right, and this is a plutocratic system, then Gates is nominally the king, with no hereditary right of succession as such, unless he can prolong his wealth into the next generation.
Thus the GNU project, and associated free software and open source projects, originally aimed at AT&T, has become a loaded gun pointed at the king himself.
Dual Licensing is *always* an option for the original software author.
There is no reason you cannot say, "this software is offered under the GPL, and also under our firm's proprietary license." You may then accept any contributions or enhancements from others you want, as long as *those* submissions are made subject to both licenses.
This might result in a code fork, if someone takes your code and makes improvements *exclusively* under GPL. But so what? You always have the right to accept or reject changes to your version of the code.
That's just plainly not true. You cannot take something entirely free and make it freer by restricting its use. The point of the GPL is that it restricts certain individual freedoms, while protecting common freedom. But make no mistake: public domain software is freer.
This is the endless debate between Free Software and Open Source advocates. GPL is freer in the sense that it protects the *code* from being captured by proprietary distributors. BSD and PD is freer in that it protects the *redistributor* to do what he likes with the code.
FWIW, GPL does not restrict your rights to *use* anything, it only applies to redistribution.
Problem #1: how is this unconstitutional? The United States is not the Soviet Union; in the US anything which is not prohibited is permitted (more or less). And the 9th Amendment would certainly come into play here also.
It isn't unconstitutional by any stretch of *my* imagination, but that's just because I'm not delusional enough to buy into SCO's theory.
"GNU will remove operating system software from the realm of competition. You will not be able to get an edge in this area, but neither will your competitors be able to get an edge over you. You and they will compete in other areas, while benefiting mutually in this one. If your business is selling an operating system, you will not like GNU, but that's tough on you. If your business is something else, GNU can save you from being pushed into the expensive business of selling operating systems."
The same principles apply to non-OS GPL software, although the original concept was just to create a replacement for Unix.
As for the attorneys, under the amended agreement with SCO, they get 20% of certain licensing fees and investments, I believe. Which means they probably pocketed $1.6M from Microsoft's most recent licensing payment, and perhaps $10M from the RBC/BayStar investment.
Quite a motivation to continue pursuing a losing case. Even if Boies & Co. were to be disbarred, this is the kind of money that can make them say, "So what."
It's important to understand that this really is a war, and SCO has a point, albeit not one that sane people should accept.
The GPL is a truly revolutionary license, it is *designed*, as SCO says, to reduce the financial value of proprietary software. Yes, GPL software is freer than public domain, in the sense that the source code can never be taken proprietary (other than by the original author) and redistributed.
SCO's argument will likely be that this contravenes Congress's will, by creating a commons under rules other than those established by law.
SCO will say that GPLed code cannot be restricted by export controls, thus violates national security laws.
According to SCO, GPL purports to grant *too much freedom* and therefore, according to this argument, the lesser freedom of the public domain is and should be the appropriate terms by which previously GPLed code should be distributable.
By this reasoning, then, SCO will claim it has every right to use GPL code in its proprietary distributions, but on the other hand, can contend that its own code (or code which IBM created under a license which grants SCO ownership of their code) was never intended (by SCO) to be released under GPL nor public domain.
Now, to fully understand these arguments, you must put yourself in the mindset of a madman. Which, undoubtedly, Darl McBride is. Microsoft and others have surely encouraged his delusional state, and given him the resources he needs to pursue his dreams of world domination, with the understanding that even if SCO has no chance of succeeding in the final analysis, the legal case can and will create FUD to slow the adoption of Linux and buy time for proprietary firms.
If this is a war, SCO is a foot soldier. SCO will die, of course, but that's what foot soldiers are expected to do.
Amazon.com (whatever else may be said about them) are in business to make money, and they don't make a penny unless people buy the books (or other products) they are offering for sale.
Clearly, Amazon doesn't want to rip off authors and/or publishers, it would go against their own financial imperatives.
Those who think that a system like this can be abused are right in a sense, and wrong in a larger sense. It's really the classic question of free ridership versus an expanding marketplace.
So let's say that 1% of the people using Amazon's text search feature abuse the service and read their books online for free. Most people won't do this, by far a larger share will read some portion and this will increase their motivation to order the title. Thus, despite the few "lost sales" the overall sales increase, and profits to Amazon, the publisher, and the author are all enhanced.
The Author's Guild is concerned about that 1% though. If the search feature only increased overall sales of a title by 10%, this is a ridiculous concern.
The other AC is right. It's not a "Toxic PIPE" unless the conversion price resets when the stock price drops. Otherwise shorting the stock doesn't affect the ownership. The key to this strategy is that shorting it means that the investor ends up getting a lower conversion price and thereby gets a much bigger piece of the company.
This is just a normal PIPE (private investment in public equity).
I don't think we know that yet. The S1 hasn't been filed yet.
Quote: 3) One of the bells and whistles these may have is a variable conversion price, along with the fixed 16.93 conversion price we know of. (Aside: its typical for the fixed conversion price to be set off the trailing 5 day average - nothing unusual there.) If they do, it typically works so that as the price of SCO falls, the conversion price also falls, i.e BayStar's $50million investment converts into more than the initial (roughly) 3 million shares. e.g. if SCO's price falls from $20 to $10, BayStars conversion price falls from $16.93 to $8.46 so they can now convert into (roughly) 6 million shares. The point is to protect the value of their investment: 3 million shares at 16.93 ~= $50million. 6 million shares at 8.46 ~= $50 million. The implication for current shareholders is that as the stock price falls, the dilution increases. 3 million shares ~= 20% dilution. 6 million shares ~= 40% dilution. Often there is no limit to how low the conversion price can go and dilution can be total: BayStar may end up owning the entire company. *If* (and I emphasize if) the preferreds are structured this way, they are commonly called "Death Spirals".
Slashdot Mirror
Adrafinil and Modafinil are newer alpha1-adrenergics that promote stimulation without some of the negative effects of methamphetamines.
Modafinil has a potency about 3x that of Adrafinil, it's currently a Schedule-IV substance in the United States. Adrafinil is unscheduled at the present time. Methamphetamine is Schedule-II, I believe.
i thought black holes were not proven to exist, or am i living in the past?
It depends on what one means by "exist," I suppose.
The phenomenological data supports the existence of black holes, very clearly and without controversy. But what "exists" within the event horizon (the radius at which the gravitational force equals the speed of light) of the object we call a black hole is unobservable, and cannot be described by standard models.
Consider that the time dilation at the event horizon is "infinite" according to relativity, thus an infalling particle would require infinite time to cross this boundary. On the other hand, the lifespan of the "black hole" is, according to Hawking, finite. Thus, the event horizon would evaporate before the particle crossed it.
Alternately, the particle might "quantum jump" across the event horizon, this was suggested to me by Dr. Michael Shara at the Space Telescope Science Institute (Johns Hopkins) about 15 years ago. If he's right, black holes may indeed exist.
Or, the particle might be negated by a Hawking anti-particle before it crosses the event horizon.
Finally, the particle might only cross the event horizon when it evaporates, which is to say, if and when the black hole becomes a white hole.
Did anyone else have this flash before their mind's eye while reading the parent post?
For those who aren't Monty Python fans, he Crimson Permanent Assurance was a 20-minute skit that opened their film, the Meaning of Life, in which an office building hoists sail and sets off to wage piracy on the corporate landscape.
Instead of contingency-fee litigation (which encourages the kind of ambulance-chasing behavior the legal profession is (in)famous for), how about adopting the following changes in the system:
1. Loser pays: If you're a small fry, you can still afford to sue a big corporation if you have a strong case, because if/when you win, your lawyers will be paid, same as is the case now in contigency-fee litigation.
2. As a limitation on the above, the legal expenses recoverable by the winning party shall not exceed the legal expenses incurred by the losing party. This way, the big corporation cannot expect to outspend the small fry by a large margin in order to force a settlement or risk paying an excessive legal bill in the event of a loss.
3. Abolish contingency-fee as an unnecessary evil.
According to the Inquirer:
AMD IS LIKELY to get a boost from Hewlett Packard today, with reports saying the firm will start selling a Presario 8000Z as soon as Wednesday.
According to the report on cnet.mp3.com, HP will offer a variety of different options with the desktop, which will be available in retail this week.
The machine, the report says, is just one of a family of Athlon 64 desktops HP will sell, and costs $1,239 for a basic machine.
But HP won't start using the Athlon FX - a sort of Opteron - for a little while, it appears. If and when it does, it will be offered as a gaming machine.
The announcement is a boost for AMD, coupled with Sun's expected endorsement of its Opteron microprocessors today.
I really liked this picture. (Bill Gates getting bitten by a penguin.)
My guess is Eben Moglen.
And oh my God will he rip SCO a new one!
Isn't having a slashdot journal enough?
The right to own property is the foremost right of every person and should be defended above all these other "rights"...
Thank you Ayn Rand.
Now let's get real. Property is not inherent. Moreover, the subject of what can and cannot be property is a limited one; slavery is a form of property that was once legally recognized but is no longer in most parts of the world.
What is inherent is life and liberty. Working from these one can derive certain forms of legitimate property, i.e., a presumed legal right to exclusive possession of things one creates, lest he or she be deprived of the labor (life and liberty interest) invested in its creation.
Now tell me, sir, when and how did you make the asteroid you now claim to own?
This is SCO's legal "strategy."
IBM subpoenaed a bunch of SCO investors, so of course SCO subpoenas a bunch of Free Software / Open Source people. This is funny shit.
What makes it especially funny is that the people they are sending subpoenas to (Stallman, Torvalds, et al) are gonna be absolutely helpful to IBM's side of the case, and not remotely useful to SCO.
Hoist by their own petard, they are.
Is this a step towards creating quantum-effect neural networks (i.e., thinking machines)?
DMAE (dimethylaminoethanol) may be helpful. It's a precursor of choline, and it extends the duration of empathogenesis a bit. Unlike MDMA, it's legal, too.
Sorry, but something that gives you a longer erection is hardly the successor to MDMA.
Slightly off-topic, but related to what you said, this is part of a recent journal entry I made.
I don't think most people who bash Microsoft really know, cognitively, why they do it. But there is a social dynamic in effect that causes people to resent, and therefore attack, what they cannot quite understand.
Most people imagine that the United States is a democracy. Others will correct them and say, no, it is a republic. Both of these are really a statement of expectation, not actual fact.
The US is in truth a plutocracy. Firstly, the freedom of the press is only truly open to those who can afford to publish. The emergence of mass media in the 20th century further centralized the primary means of communication in a small number of corporate hands. That person or corporation with the most power, in economic terms, can "speak" with the greatest volume.
The Internet has lowered the barrier to communication, and is the leading edge of the revolution (see, it's not being televised, is it?) in terms of giving a greater and increasing voice to those with the greatest persuasiveness, rather than those with the most financial means to promote their message. What will hopefully emerge from this process is a totally new form of government, a meritocracy. In my opinion, music will be the greatest power. Some might suggest pornography will rule. Much of what goes for popular music today (given current media) is some combination of the two.
In the meantime, and returning to the subject of this journal entry, the company with the greatest financial clout in the world right now is Microsoft. Moreover, the company is controlled in large part by a single man, William Gates III. What he says Microsoft will publish, they will publish. When he wants to back a candidate for office, he can ensure that candidate will have the full power of the press behind him.
I am not trying to say that Gates is a bad man, only that he is a man who controls the largest share of the liquid assets which confer power. There are many other wealthy individuals and families, some of whom probably resent Gates. His power is counterbalanced by the old money still very capable of exercising their power.
If my thesis is right, and this is a plutocratic system, then Gates is nominally the king, with no hereditary right of succession as such, unless he can prolong his wealth into the next generation.
Thus the GNU project, and associated free software and open source projects, originally aimed at AT&T, has become a loaded gun pointed at the king himself.
Dual Licensing is *always* an option for the original software author.
There is no reason you cannot say, "this software is offered under the GPL, and also under our firm's proprietary license." You may then accept any contributions or enhancements from others you want, as long as *those* submissions are made subject to both licenses.
This might result in a code fork, if someone takes your code and makes improvements *exclusively* under GPL. But so what? You always have the right to accept or reject changes to your version of the code.
That's just plainly not true. You cannot take something entirely free and make it freer by restricting its use. The point of the GPL is that it restricts certain individual freedoms, while protecting common freedom. But make no mistake: public domain software is freer.
This is the endless debate between Free Software and Open Source advocates. GPL is freer in the sense that it protects the *code* from being captured by proprietary distributors. BSD and PD is freer in that it protects the *redistributor* to do what he likes with the code.
FWIW, GPL does not restrict your rights to *use* anything, it only applies to redistribution.
Problem #1: how is this unconstitutional? The United States is not the Soviet Union; in the US anything which is not prohibited is permitted (more or less). And the 9th Amendment would certainly come into play here also.
It isn't unconstitutional by any stretch of *my* imagination, but that's just because I'm not delusional enough to buy into SCO's theory.
Quote from the GNU Manifesto:
"GNU will remove operating system software from the realm of competition. You will not be able to get an edge in this area, but neither will your competitors be able to get an edge over you. You and they will compete in other areas, while benefiting mutually in this one. If your business is selling an operating system, you will not like GNU, but that's tough on you. If your business is something else, GNU can save you from being pushed into the expensive business of selling operating systems."
The same principles apply to non-OS GPL software, although the original concept was just to create a replacement for Unix.
McBride is *truly* delusional, IMHO.
As for the attorneys, under the amended agreement with SCO, they get 20% of certain licensing fees and investments, I believe. Which means they probably pocketed $1.6M from Microsoft's most recent licensing payment, and perhaps $10M from the RBC/BayStar investment.
Quite a motivation to continue pursuing a losing case. Even if Boies & Co. were to be disbarred, this is the kind of money that can make them say, "So what."
I posted this to LWN earlier....
It's important to understand that this really is a war, and SCO has a point, albeit not one that sane people should accept.
The GPL is a truly revolutionary license, it is *designed*, as SCO says, to reduce the financial value of proprietary software. Yes, GPL software is freer than public domain, in the sense that the source code can never be taken proprietary (other than by the original author) and redistributed.
SCO's argument will likely be that this contravenes Congress's will, by creating a commons under rules other than those established by law.
SCO will say that GPLed code cannot be restricted by export controls, thus violates national security laws.
According to SCO, GPL purports to grant *too much freedom* and therefore, according to this argument, the lesser freedom of the public domain is and should be the appropriate terms by which previously GPLed code should be distributable.
By this reasoning, then, SCO will claim it has every right to use GPL code in its proprietary distributions, but on the other hand, can contend that its own code (or code which IBM created under a license which grants SCO ownership of their code) was never intended (by SCO) to be released under GPL nor public domain.
Now, to fully understand these arguments, you must put yourself in the mindset of a madman. Which, undoubtedly, Darl McBride is. Microsoft and others have surely encouraged his delusional state, and given him the resources he needs to pursue his dreams of world domination, with the understanding that even if SCO has no chance of succeeding in the final analysis, the legal case can and will create FUD to slow the adoption of Linux and buy time for proprietary firms.
If this is a war, SCO is a foot soldier. SCO will die, of course, but that's what foot soldiers are expected to do.
Amazon.com (whatever else may be said about them) are in business to make money, and they don't make a penny unless people buy the books (or other products) they are offering for sale.
Clearly, Amazon doesn't want to rip off authors and/or publishers, it would go against their own financial imperatives.
Those who think that a system like this can be abused are right in a sense, and wrong in a larger sense. It's really the classic question of free ridership versus an expanding marketplace.
So let's say that 1% of the people using Amazon's text search feature abuse the service and read their books online for free. Most people won't do this, by far a larger share will read some portion and this will increase their motivation to order the title. Thus, despite the few "lost sales" the overall sales increase, and profits to Amazon, the publisher, and the author are all enhanced.
The Author's Guild is concerned about that 1% though. If the search feature only increased overall sales of a title by 10%, this is a ridiculous concern.
They would port Office, etc. to Linux.
We have one of the more annoying Liquor Control Boards in the country, liquor can only be purchased at State Stores, etc.
I sympathize with the people of Mississippi, but perhaps this will bring pressure against the state control of liquor distribution.
The other AC is right. It's not a "Toxic PIPE" unless the conversion price resets when the stock price drops. Otherwise shorting the stock doesn't affect the ownership. The key to this strategy is that shorting it means that the investor ends up getting a lower conversion price and thereby gets a much bigger piece of the company.
This is just a normal PIPE (private investment in public equity).
I don't think we know that yet. The S1 hasn't been filed yet.
See the comment by be2weenthelines on the Groklaw discussion.
Quote:
3) One of the bells and whistles these may have is a variable conversion price, along with the fixed 16.93 conversion price we know of. (Aside: its typical for the fixed conversion price to be set off the trailing 5 day average - nothing unusual there.) If they do, it typically works so that as the price of SCO falls, the conversion price also falls, i.e BayStar's $50million investment converts into more than the initial (roughly) 3 million shares. e.g. if SCO's price falls from $20 to $10, BayStars conversion price falls from $16.93 to $8.46 so they can now convert into (roughly) 6 million shares. The point is to protect the value of their investment: 3 million shares at 16.93 ~= $50million. 6 million shares at 8.46 ~= $50 million. The implication for current shareholders is that as the stock price falls, the dilution increases. 3 million shares ~= 20% dilution. 6 million shares ~= 40% dilution. Often there is no limit to how low the conversion price can go and dilution can be total: BayStar may end up owning the entire company. *If* (and I emphasize if) the preferreds are structured this way, they are commonly called "Death Spirals".
Here.
See page 3: Top ten investors in BayStar:
Microsoft Corporation is listed as having about a half billion dollars invested.