But let's not forget that part of this tradition is to always involve the Deutsche Telekom AG as contracter, which always done to make sure that it really get screwed up.
(For the non-German readers: The Deutsche Telekom is the leading telecommunications provider in Germany, and developed from the government-run post and telecommunications authorities. Since privatization it uses its still nearly-monopoly to annoy everybody whop wants a phone landline with bad service.
The Telekom also does IT projects and was involved in several major screw-ups: Last year, the failure of a 10-year project to put all the different states' policy IT systems on a compatible standard, and this year the miss of the deadline for the new radio transmitter based truck toll system, now costing Germany hundreds of illions of Euros in lost toll income. (Of course, in all these, the Telekom was only one contractor, but still, to me, a paatern emerges.)
Luckily, up to my knowledge, they don't engage in Linux.)
Of course, I didn't travel all Europe before making this claim, and so, I mainly talk about my home country, Germany. And here, the bubble still holds.
Pity, you didn't mention where you're living.
BTW, so, you are not worried aboutr someone stealing your mail? (I know building standards are not the same throughout Europe, but although IANAL, I'd say if you're a tenant, at least in Germany your landlord would be required to fit a lock on the mailbox, as required by postal regulation and DIN national standard.)
Don't worry.
1. As some of the other posts point out, too, absolute zero cannot be reached, according to the Third Fundamental Law of Thermodynamics. And even if you do (well, in 'contradiction' to the sentence before, you can, if you restrict your ambition to only certain degrees of freedom, like, bringing all vibrations of the atoms' center-of-mass motion to a halt), there is still the quantum zero-point fluctuation.
2. These nanokelvin experiments usually only cool down a few thousand atoms. Or, to be precise, you start of with a some hundred millions at, say, some tens of microkelvins or so, and then do 'evaporative cooling', i.e. slowly reduce the magnetic fields confining the atoms in order to let escape the faster (hotter) ones. The remaining ones then 'thermalize', i.e. mix to a lower temperature.
3. You have to carefully insulate your remaining extra-cold atoms by vacuum and radiation shielding (latter usually meaning cooled copper sheets) because if a hot atom from the residual gas or a photon of (say, infrared) radition emitted by the warm vacuum chamber wall hits the condensate of cold atoms they will absorb the energy and heat it up again.
So, don't worry. Ultracold gases are very fragile: They are not abel to freeze something else, because it's only so few matter. But they'll heat up again by the slightest bit of warmth.
Did you know that the crime of identity theft ist virtually unknown in Europe (at least in Germany, where I live)?
And there are some obvious reasons for this:
- Nobody in Europe has mail boxes without a lock. European mailbox are usually flat, upright, rectangular boxes with a slit on the top of the front where the mailman drops the letters and they fall down a slide so you cannot get them out without using either very long pliers or, of course, the key to unlock the door at the back.
- No bank would give you a checking account or a credit without checking your ID card and making a photo copy of it and noting the number. (Remember that in most European countries (except e.g. the UK) every citizen is required to have a national ID card which you show whenever somebody has to be sure of your ID. (These cards have all kinds of witty security features to make them really hard to counterfeit.)
- All laws and courts agree that a reasonbable proof that somebody did make a business transaction is a signature on a piece of paper, or at least some computer record showing that the customer has entered a secret PIN. 'Secret' meaning, that nobody else should be able to know it. (PINs are printed out by the banks' computer systems and put in a sealed envelope without any employees being able to look at them.)
- Especially, if you told a court that a business transaction was valid because you checked the caller's identity on phone by asking for his SSN (or some lcoal equivalent of this), his date of birth or his mother's maiden name, the judge would probably only laugh at you.
While staying for half a year in California, I was quite astonished about the lax way of checking identities common in th US.
(For example, I got liability insurance for the used car I bought by just phoning the company. The guy asked for my Visa card number, then said 'Fine. Your car insurance is valid starting now, i.e. 4:13 pm.' That was great and convenient, but after all, I still prefer the European way, where they'll first ask 'So, how do we know, that this was your credit card number, and not taken from some receipt you picked out of a trash can?'. As the very least they would want proof of your address so that they can send you a court summons in case you tried a fraud.)
That is because the amount of the fine is based on the amount in controversy of the specific lawsuit. As the latter is a claim of a quite small company for damages due to unfair business practices, the amount of damages will be small, and so the fine is.
But if this company wins the lawsuit not only they'll get damages paid but probably also hundreds of other small linux companies who have suffered in exactly the same way from SCO's unfair business practices. After all, SCO did not warn consumers of one specific competitor, but of all Linux-selling competitors.
So, although there are no class-action lawsuits in German law, it might become important.
[IANAL]
Please don't forget that one country's patent office will (or at least should, according to European as well as US patent law) refuse a patent application for an invention for which a patent in another country has already been granted (or even only applied for), even if this patent is not valid in the former country. This is because a patent application (which is always published by the patent office upon application, before even considering whether it is worth a patent) is obviously a publication proving prior art.
And a publication proving prior art only needs to be published somewhere in the world. What the opponent of the application has to show, is that the idea was accessible to the public before the application and it's considered accessible even if it it's in an article hidden in the rear basement shelf of some minor university's library somewhere far abroad. And the last sentence only applied to European patent law, btw - in the US it suffices that the invention has been made before; it doesn't even has to be published (that's the famous 'lab book proof').
But the latter is of course different to proof, and this is why major tech compenies usually publish minor inventions that are not deemed worth a patent application in journals specifically published for this purpose.
Slashdot Mirror
But let's not forget that part of this tradition is to always involve the Deutsche Telekom AG as contracter, which always done to make sure that it really get screwed up.
(For the non-German readers: The Deutsche Telekom is the leading telecommunications provider in Germany, and developed from the government-run post and telecommunications authorities. Since privatization it uses its still nearly-monopoly to annoy everybody whop wants a phone landline with bad service.
The Telekom also does IT projects and was involved in several major screw-ups: Last year, the failure of a 10-year project to put all the different states' policy IT systems on a compatible standard, and this year the miss of the deadline for the new radio transmitter based truck toll system, now costing Germany hundreds of illions of Euros in lost toll income. (Of course, in all these, the Telekom was only one contractor, but still, to me, a paatern emerges.)
Luckily, up to my knowledge, they don't engage in Linux.)
Of course, I didn't travel all Europe before making this claim, and so, I mainly talk about my home country, Germany. And here, the bubble still holds. Pity, you didn't mention where you're living. BTW, so, you are not worried aboutr someone stealing your mail? (I know building standards are not the same throughout Europe, but although IANAL, I'd say if you're a tenant, at least in Germany your landlord would be required to fit a lock on the mailbox, as required by postal regulation and DIN national standard.)
s/hup/heat up/
So if you want to know about ultracold gasses, have a look at these links:
* Doppler cooling, or: how to use a laser not to hup stuff but to cool it: Nobel prize 1997
* the Bose-Einstein condensate: a weird state of matter that is formed by bosonic atoms at really ultralow temperature: Nobel prize 2001
* not that cool but still quite cool: suprafluid helium flowing against gravity: Nobel prize 1996
Don't worry. 1. As some of the other posts point out, too, absolute zero cannot be reached, according to the Third Fundamental Law of Thermodynamics. And even if you do (well, in 'contradiction' to the sentence before, you can, if you restrict your ambition to only certain degrees of freedom, like, bringing all vibrations of the atoms' center-of-mass motion to a halt), there is still the quantum zero-point fluctuation. 2. These nanokelvin experiments usually only cool down a few thousand atoms. Or, to be precise, you start of with a some hundred millions at, say, some tens of microkelvins or so, and then do 'evaporative cooling', i.e. slowly reduce the magnetic fields confining the atoms in order to let escape the faster (hotter) ones. The remaining ones then 'thermalize', i.e. mix to a lower temperature. 3. You have to carefully insulate your remaining extra-cold atoms by vacuum and radiation shielding (latter usually meaning cooled copper sheets) because if a hot atom from the residual gas or a photon of (say, infrared) radition emitted by the warm vacuum chamber wall hits the condensate of cold atoms they will absorb the energy and heat it up again. So, don't worry. Ultracold gases are very fragile: They are not abel to freeze something else, because it's only so few matter. But they'll heat up again by the slightest bit of warmth.
Did you know that the crime of identity theft ist virtually unknown in Europe (at least in Germany, where I live)?
And there are some obvious reasons for this:
- Nobody in Europe has mail boxes without a lock. European mailbox are usually flat, upright, rectangular boxes with a slit on the top of the front where the mailman drops the letters and they fall down a slide so you cannot get them out without using either very long pliers or, of course, the key to unlock the door at the back.
- No bank would give you a checking account or a credit without checking your ID card and making a photo copy of it and noting the number. (Remember that in most European countries (except e.g. the UK) every citizen is required to have a national ID card which you show whenever somebody has to be sure of your ID. (These cards have all kinds of witty security features to make them really hard to counterfeit.)
- All laws and courts agree that a reasonbable proof that somebody did make a business transaction is a signature on a piece of paper, or at least some computer record showing that the customer has entered a secret PIN. 'Secret' meaning, that nobody else should be able to know it. (PINs are printed out by the banks' computer systems and put in a sealed envelope without any employees being able to look at them.)
- Especially, if you told a court that a business transaction was valid because you checked the caller's identity on phone by asking for his SSN (or some lcoal equivalent of this), his date of birth or his mother's maiden name, the judge would probably only laugh at you.
While staying for half a year in California, I was quite astonished about the lax way of checking identities common in th US.
(For example, I got liability insurance for the used car I bought by just phoning the company. The guy asked for my Visa card number, then said 'Fine. Your car insurance is valid starting now, i.e. 4:13 pm.' That was great and convenient, but after all, I still prefer the European way, where they'll first ask 'So, how do we know, that this was your credit card number, and not taken from some receipt you picked out of a trash can?'. As the very least they would want proof of your address so that they can send you a court summons in case you tried a fraud.)
That is because the amount of the fine is based on the amount in controversy of the specific lawsuit. As the latter is a claim of a quite small company for damages due to unfair business practices, the amount of damages will be small, and so the fine is. But if this company wins the lawsuit not only they'll get damages paid but probably also hundreds of other small linux companies who have suffered in exactly the same way from SCO's unfair business practices. After all, SCO did not warn consumers of one specific competitor, but of all Linux-selling competitors. So, although there are no class-action lawsuits in German law, it might become important. [IANAL]
Please don't forget that one country's patent office will (or at least should, according to European as well as US patent law) refuse a patent application for an invention for which a patent in another country has already been granted (or even only applied for), even if this patent is not valid in the former country. This is because a patent application (which is always published by the patent office upon application, before even considering whether it is worth a patent) is obviously a publication proving prior art.
And a publication proving prior art only needs to be published somewhere in the world. What the opponent of the application has to show, is that the idea was accessible to the public before the application and it's considered accessible even if it it's in an article hidden in the rear basement shelf of some minor university's library somewhere far abroad. And the last sentence only applied to European patent law, btw - in the US it suffices that the invention has been made before; it doesn't even has to be published (that's the famous 'lab book proof').
But the latter is of course different to proof, and this is why major tech compenies usually publish minor inventions that are not deemed worth a patent application in journals specifically published for this purpose.