Terrorist have won. Their goal is not to kill you - 3000 people that died in WTC is only 1/1000 of one percent of whole US population - their goal is to scare you. To prevent you to act like you did bifore.
USA does not act like it did before. You, like an individual, do not act like you did before. For example, you now accept cameras, IDs and everything.
If that is not their win, I don't know what then is. Just to add more, these particular terrorist believe that there is war between West and Muslims. Now they have reason to believe that war really begun full scale.
keeping in mind that DC of the same voltage would have been just as deadly
Actually, it would be more deadly. AC current tends to go through outer parts of the conductor (this is because of induction). That way, it is more likely that it will "miss" your heart or other organs, making less damage.
Unfortunately I don't know what is considered limit for DC voltage. In Europe, 50V AC is considered when you design inhouse electrical wiring.
On extremely high frequencies, you may be used as conductor without any harm, since all the current will go trough the upper thin part of your skin.
Parent was supposed to be funny, not "informative". Parent was paraphrasing "Hitchhiker's Guide", more precisely its explanation why was "Guide" better sold than other encyclopedias.
Brian Boitano and Conspiracy Theory
on
Who Wrote Linux?
·
· Score: 2, Funny
If you ever watched "South Park", then you would know: it was Brian Boitano.
But there is also one more truthful conpspiracy theory.
During early 90s, IBM and MS tried to make OS/2. One of main software engineers in IBM, who used to work in Lotus, figured out that dealing with MS would be a trouble (I won't name the guy). So he decided to find a quick and dirty workaround. In case of been screwed by MS, they would release "plan B operating system".
He decided to find some country under Russian influence (just to make harder for MS from USA to figure out what is going on), where he could find some coder for his dirty plan. Unfortunately, there was only one rich country under USSR influence - Finland. Other countries were too poor, so there were not enough computers. So then he tried to find most hackish guy among their youth. It was clearly Linus, because he was only Fin with Sinclair machine. There was other guy, Jouko Vierumaki, but his father was not a communist, so they decided to take Linus. Linus and this guy met during the secret recruitment, but in Linus's book, Linus states that it was during some sale of Sinqlair's parts. He's now Linus's "friend", the truth is that they don't like each other at all, but they use their "friendship" as a cover, since they do dirty work for the same employer. Jouko's cover name is "Avuton", btw.
(Meanwhile USSR fell appart, and Finland stopped to be dependent on them, just making things worse.)
So this guy from IBM gave him part of AIX code. Just to be sure that no one will figure out that, they have spent a lot of time to make microkernel AIX code to be monolithic. It caused Linux to be very unstable, but it was "good", it really seemed like been written over the summer in Finland (Finland has very short summers).
But before the code, they had to buy him a PC. Formally, Linus took a loan, but they have aranged a groop of people to send him money, once the Linux was released. The guy who organised this was Peter Anvin (recruited by IBM, of course). Original idea was to send IBM's money, but many people did not figure that it was only IBM's cover opp, so they really have sent some money. IBM paid only about half.
Later, they had to buy him a book about OS programming. But this was second (you will se what was the first one) mistake! They just went away and they have bought first book related to Minix and OS programming, but they did not read it actually, so they believed that it was about monolithic kernels. It was famous Tanenbaum book. Tanenbaum atacked Linus, becaue anyone who read his book would *never* write monolithic kernel. IBM gave him some money, so he shut up after a while. (You have probably mentioned that he now defends Linus in AdTI attack. That is because he was paid by IBM.)
(First versions of Linux, were compiled under AIX, of course, but they concluded that it would be too obvious so they choosed Minix as host for Linux.)
Secend mistake was to port code from AIX, and now they have problems with SCO.
Their plan was really subtle, no matter of these two mistakes. Although there was no signs that MS will screw them, they continued to "add features" to Linux. Once they were really abandoned by MS, they just "decided to accept Linux". Actually, MS did not want to abandon their child called OS/2, but they have seen IBM being reluctant to it. IBM wanted to screw them, actually. So they have taken best parts of OS/2, repacked that to be really good (finaly, they have dropped nasty part IBM insisted on) and called new product Windows NT. They wanted to call it OS/2 NT, but IBM still holded the OS/2 trademark. During the OS/2 development, IBM insisted one former employee of DEC to be in the MS's team. It was his covered guy, who added some VMS code there. IBM believed that legal battle with DEC (Digital) will rise when they find their code in NT. Unfortunately for them, DEC and MS settled quickly. Someone told them about IBM's idea, so they acted together toward common enemy.
I am not the lawyer, but I have some formal training related to legal systems and constitutional systems.
Both you and grand-grand parent still believe, for some quite odd reason, that "presumption of innosence" (as it is called in Serbia) does not exist outside of UK/USA. Unfortunately, I don't know when it was introduced in our legal system, but it was there even during the communistic regime. Napoleon and Roman Empire do not exist any more.
Many, many important ideas in our (or any continental) legal system came from UK. We accepted good ideas from you. So in our codified law it is clearly written "everything that is not prohibited by written word is not prohibited".
So you just prove what I wanted to say: you must continue to improve your system, otherwise you'll be behind other countries. You should not rely on your old glory!
PS Actually, in this sad moment of our civilisaion, where human rights goes downwards all over the world, maintaining status quo would probably enable you significant advantage comparing to other countries.
When you do have a program associated with RPM, you can double-click the RPM, only to spend a few minutes realizing that each of the packages you downloaded need each other installed first. Sure, you can do an "rpm -ivh blah-*.rpm" from the command line (or whatever the switches are - I don't use RPM distros anymore), but is it so freaking hard to have the graphical RPM tools "see" the other RPMs sitting right there in the same folder, and handle them intelligently? DUMB
I cannot agree more. RPMs are misused. RPM man page is best example how you should not write man pages. It took me couple of years before I realized that there was an option for rpm to figure out what is the correct order (just say rpm -options*). I strongly believed that RPM could not figure it out itself.
Why I said "misuse of rpm". People who write scripts in them, do that poorly. I was not able to upgrade KDE before I deinstalled all *-devel packages. Some dude made circular dependencies. In one case, even --force did not work, and I'm still wondering how that happened (or what --force actually means and does).
What I hate even more is RH's feature that RPM packages go to / and downloaded sources go/usr/local (or wherever). If you want intentionaly to replace RPM version with compiled one... well, you have to know about cmd line option of configure script. Which is not the concept you may figure out yourself, believe me.
It is really stupid to have so powerfull mechanism like RPM is, and still to have so much stupid problems that make installation of new software on Linux machines next to impossible in many cases.
I have read both articles before this./ article. First one, (non-NYT one) is crap. I hate those reviews where they speak about KDE look and similar stuff. I was unable to read a normal review about SuSE 9.1, although it is one an half month old distro.
Here is the list of some real problems:
I used to run RH8. It's PITAs: write something on rewritable CD (problems, probably due to my CD drive), MP3 does not work until you replace XMMS, but no such quick solution for KDE's native player. RH9 PITAs: Konqie works worse than in RH9 (I even upgraded KDE to latest version from KDE's site). Gnome's tool for CDs does not work, just like it did not in RH8. Connexant modem does not work, driver went closed source. But even that closed driver does not help me, since I have AC97 sound card (and they fight, for some reason). Fedora Core 1: unable to install nvidia 3d drivers, because kernel is not compiled with gcc that's in distro. Complete kernel compilation fails, their config files do not work.
[So I moved to Suse, but i have changed the job meanwhile, so I use Linux now only for fun, and even that rarely, so I can't speak about my problems any more.]
Why I am pointing this list: I need some deep article, where someone who has real experience can say - look, i see/don't see improvement. He does not need to say "your Matsushita DVD-CDRW combo works now ok", I would be quite satisfied if he can find any real problem and to spend some time to speak about it. Single click on folders could be set up easily in KDE ages now. It is not a problem. SuSE has ugly mouse pointer, but that is not the problem, too. Say something about ssh version, apache version, whatever, but say something that may matter to someone (it does not have to be me)! Then I could be able to see if this particular distro is right way to go.
And NYT article is simple crap, full of prejudicies and full of incorrect information.
You are overrating some parts of anglosaxon law system.
The basis of UK law is that everything is permitted unless specifically prohibited (reverse is true in many countries)
This was even truth in comunistic countries. I agree that this was (probably) inventeted in UK as a rule, but it is common thing in most of the even semicivilized (read: dictatorship countries) world.
UK invented many of things in legal systems that we take for granted, but you should be aware that nothing lasts forever! For instance, UK legal system does not allow you to go to second instance court in many cases - which is, from continental point of view, serious abuse of human rights (IIRC, if you are trialed by jurry, you can't complain to their decision; they allowed this recently, but only in some extremely rare cases).
Not to mention last report of Lord Hutton (if I had luck to spell its name correctly). In most of the world, ad-hoc parlamentarian comitee would investigate that, not prime minister's favorite judge. Ok, I am sounding like flaimbaiter, but these examples clearly show why we (including Britons, no matter of their past achievements) need more organisations like Privacy International.
I was supposed to install image of StarOS to the flashcard...
I was wandering wether it was hda1 or hda...
I decided to do it on hda...
For those who want to know if I was right, correct answer was hde (hda is harddisk, of course), so my laptop became very expensive unusable router (what's the point to have router with only one NIC). Not to mention that I did not backup my mails 4 months...
Anyone noticed that on first screenshot two windows intersect very strangely(calculator is parallel with the screen surface, and it intersect with the left window)? Line of intersection should be vertical, not 45 degrees like there.
Actually, I never undrestood why players strip their shirts.
Let us presume that this behavior is really meaningless (as I believe it is). So programmers could intentionaly code this practice in robots' AI. The coach of human team will think that robots are stupid since they are doing this. He will underestimate robot team, which will be the way robots get some minor tactical advantage.
Hopefuly, Goran Ericsson and Rudi Voeler are too old to be capable of leading human team in 2050, so that gives good chances for humans to win.
It is the same analogy that allows people to patent algorithms. IMO, they should not be patentable. Excactly from same reason - it is part of logic that makes bubble sort to work. Particular implementation, i.e. source code maybe even should be patentable, but as it is covered by copyright already there is no reason to do it.
But let us get back to the topic. Let them define all additional things they want (e.g. all procedures you mention). When they make them in hardware, let them patent that. But they cannot patent the idea that if I add some predefined sequence to the signal, signal suddenly has much better usage of spectrum. Because this addition is idea (based on mathematics), and hardware realization is implementation.
Maybe we are reaching another problem. Probably it is easy to make hardware similar enough to do the same thing, but unsimilar enough to infringe the patent. So patenting hardware does not help. Going one step before, i.e. patenting the idea, problem seems solved. No problem so far, except that patenting ideas, protocols, file formats leads us to situation where only large coroprations are in situations to invent. Because they only could fight or pay other corporations. I don't know if people who invented patenting systems two centuries ago had IBM, MS or Japanese megacompanies in their mind, but their idea that princliples should not be patentable is still meaningful.
Bern convention protects small inventors. Patent system, by default, since it requires some government office to certifies your work, protects those who have enough resources to enter the proces. If we add possibility of large corporations to influence the government unproportionaly to their to their share GDP (contrary to popular opinion large corporations do not contribute too much), it is clear that patent system favors big players. Since I expirienced a life under umbrella of one kind of Big Brother, believe me that I do not want zaibatsus to rule my life.
I cannot agree with parent. It probably took a while for Einstein to figure out that E=mc^2, but once you figure that out, you cannot patent that. Why? Just because it is the same like to patent 2 + 2 = 4. If you define "2", "4" and "+" the way we are using it now, then 2+2=4 is logical consequence.
It is physical law that define what is W-OFDM. Simply, due to nature of EM waves, coming from Maxwell's equations, you will sooner or later prove that if you modulate some binary data with W-OFDM, you will get some bitrate which is better than bitrate used in 802.11b (I forgot 802.11b's modulation name).
Problem is that it is not obvious to patent office.
Let them make wireless card, and patent that particular implementation, I will have no objections. But they cannot patent laws of physics, no matter that it requres spending two years at University to understand them. (It actally does not requre to finish the university, since it is teached on 3rd year, at least here in Serbia.)
The issue of "which platform is more stable, secure and usable" has less to do with the subtle genius of the design of linux and more to do with the fact that, currently, linux users are a self-selecting group of people who try to solve their own problems[...]
Well, I cannot say about kernels and basic deamons/servers, but I can say for mail clients. Compare Outlook Express and KMail. On first sight, it seems that Kmail is one clone of OE. In practice, except that KM has many more features, Kmail has all security settings set to what I call "paranoid". Making KMail a virus zombie, even on root account is extremely hard, probably practicaly impossible.
It is stupid to extrapolate this to whole OS, but it is one clear example of good and bad design.
I am not an expert in design of operating systems, but i understand quite clearly how microkernels and monolithic kernels work. I had to change couple of times some Linux drivers. It is somewhat problematic, because you may crash your machine quite easily. You have to be very careful, thus very slow in real work. Making a driver very similar to standard user program, main grief is taken away. Actually, making "user space drivers" is recomended in some books about Linux drivers, but i never figured out how they work.
So I don't understand why is there so big lack of drivers for Hurd, since it should not be a problem to write them? Why they do not write at least some sound driver, just to show they system is working one? If you write AC97 driver, for instance, you have at least 25% PCs covered (or at least 100% of my PCs covered).
yeah, but similar move from 680x0 to PPC trashed a lot of small applications (utilities and similar). I really did not like the situation, although I was aware that PPC was better way to go.
A friend of mine got a job to work on genetic algorithms, in an academic institute. Being an engineer, he asked to be moved to another position 3 months after.
His explanation was very short: in GA you look for problems and you try to prove that they could be solved by this method.
Actually, all methods used in engineering were invented to solve some problem; not vice versa. Ok, maybe they not all of them, i canno say for sure since we learned about methods, not about their history. Most succesful methods moved from one area to another one, but basicaly it was problem before solution, not solution before problem.
The interesting point is that this is second story about GA in only couple of days; there must be some conspiracy theory to explain this.
Grandparent:
bad comments about the president during a time of "war,"
Parent:
3: Bad comments. No problem there. Many prominent figures, including John Kerry, are saying "bad things" about the president. Remember, there is a difference between something being "legal" and it being "acceptable". Kerry can't say but so much or he would alienate the public. Note also that you may have liability with libel/slander, but this is extremely difficult to prove in the US (you must prove that the comments were untrue, intended to be damaging, and that they actually did damage).
Ok. let's put it this way: no matter of living in Europe, I am still able to watch CNN from time to time.
Since 9/11 untill today, it is more than obvious that CNN is nothing more than worst war propaganda. Extremely similar to Milosevic's television in Serbia, during its regime. And people say that other US TV stations are even worse, whith good question how they succeed to be.
From WWII, this is usual state of afairs: CSU holds Bavarian parlament; but SPD holds local Munich assembly. There are small chances that this will change significantly soon, so there is small chance that some future members of same assembly will change this decision.
Slashdot Mirror
Terrorist have won. Their goal is not to kill you - 3000 people that died in WTC is only 1/1000 of one percent of whole US population - their goal is to scare you. To prevent you to act like you did bifore.
USA does not act like it did before. You, like an individual, do not act like you did before. For example, you now accept cameras, IDs and everything.
If that is not their win, I don't know what then is. Just to add more, these particular terrorist believe that there is war between West and Muslims. Now they have reason to believe that war really begun full scale.
keeping in mind that DC of the same voltage would have been just as deadly
Actually, it would be more deadly. AC current tends to go through outer parts of the conductor (this is because of induction). That way, it is more likely that it will "miss" your heart or other organs, making less damage.
Unfortunately I don't know what is considered limit for DC voltage. In Europe, 50V AC is considered when you design inhouse electrical wiring.
On extremely high frequencies, you may be used as conductor without any harm, since all the current will go trough the upper thin part of your skin.
But this is all OT.
Parent was supposed to be funny, not "informative". Parent was paraphrasing "Hitchhiker's Guide", more precisely its explanation why was "Guide" better sold than other encyclopedias.
If you ever watched "South Park", then you would know: it was Brian Boitano.
But there is also one more truthful conpspiracy theory.
During early 90s, IBM and MS tried to make OS/2. One of main software engineers in IBM, who used to work in Lotus, figured out that dealing with MS would be a trouble (I won't name the guy). So he decided to find a quick and dirty workaround. In case of been screwed by MS, they would release "plan B operating system".
He decided to find some country under Russian influence (just to make harder for MS from USA to figure out what is going on), where he could find some coder for his dirty plan. Unfortunately, there was only one rich country under USSR influence - Finland. Other countries were too poor, so there were not enough computers. So then he tried to find most hackish guy among their youth. It was clearly Linus, because he was only Fin with Sinclair machine. There was other guy, Jouko Vierumaki, but his father was not a communist, so they decided to take Linus. Linus and this guy met during the secret recruitment, but in Linus's book, Linus states that it was during some sale of Sinqlair's parts. He's now Linus's "friend", the truth is that they don't like each other at all, but they use their "friendship" as a cover, since they do dirty work for the same employer. Jouko's cover name is "Avuton", btw.
(Meanwhile USSR fell appart, and Finland stopped to be dependent on them, just making things worse.)
So this guy from IBM gave him part of AIX code. Just to be sure that no one will figure out that, they have spent a lot of time to make microkernel AIX code to be monolithic. It caused Linux to be very unstable, but it was "good", it really seemed like been written over the summer in Finland (Finland has very short summers).
But before the code, they had to buy him a PC. Formally, Linus took a loan, but they have aranged a groop of people to send him money, once the Linux was released. The guy who organised this was Peter Anvin (recruited by IBM, of course). Original idea was to send IBM's money, but many people did not figure that it was only IBM's cover opp, so they really have sent some money. IBM paid only about half.
Later, they had to buy him a book about OS programming. But this was second (you will se what was the first one) mistake! They just went away and they have bought first book related to Minix and OS programming, but they did not read it actually, so they believed that it was about monolithic kernels. It was famous Tanenbaum book. Tanenbaum atacked Linus, becaue anyone who read his book would *never* write monolithic kernel. IBM gave him some money, so he shut up after a while. (You have probably mentioned that he now defends Linus in AdTI attack. That is because he was paid by IBM.)
(First versions of Linux, were compiled under AIX, of course, but they concluded that it would be too obvious so they choosed Minix as host for Linux.)
Secend mistake was to port code from AIX, and now they have problems with SCO.
Their plan was really subtle, no matter of these two mistakes. Although there was no signs that MS will screw them, they continued to "add features" to Linux. Once they were really abandoned by MS, they just "decided to accept Linux". Actually, MS did not want to abandon their child called OS/2, but they have seen IBM being reluctant to it. IBM wanted to screw them, actually. So they have taken best parts of OS/2, repacked that to be really good (finaly, they have dropped nasty part IBM insisted on) and called new product Windows NT. They wanted to call it OS/2 NT, but IBM still holded the OS/2 trademark. During the OS/2 development, IBM insisted one former employee of DEC to be in the MS's team. It was his covered guy, who added some VMS code there. IBM believed that legal battle with DEC (Digital) will rise when they find their code in NT. Unfortunately for them, DEC and MS settled quickly. Someone told them about IBM's idea, so they acted together toward common enemy.
So it is pr
I am not the lawyer, but I have some formal training related to legal systems and constitutional systems.
Both you and grand-grand parent still believe, for some quite odd reason, that "presumption of innosence" (as it is called in Serbia) does not exist outside of UK/USA. Unfortunately, I don't know when it was introduced in our legal system, but it was there even during the communistic regime. Napoleon and Roman Empire do not exist any more.
Many, many important ideas in our (or any continental) legal system came from UK. We accepted good ideas from you. So in our codified law it is clearly written "everything that is not prohibited by written word is not prohibited".
So you just prove what I wanted to say: you must continue to improve your system, otherwise you'll be behind other countries. You should not rely on your old glory!
PS Actually, in this sad moment of our civilisaion, where human rights goes downwards all over the world, maintaining status quo would probably enable you significant advantage comparing to other countries.
When you do have a program associated with RPM, you can double-click the RPM, only to spend a few minutes realizing that each of the packages you downloaded need each other installed first. Sure, you can do an "rpm -ivh blah-*.rpm" from the command line (or whatever the switches are - I don't use RPM distros anymore), but is it so freaking hard to have the graphical RPM tools "see" the other RPMs sitting right there in the same folder, and handle them intelligently? DUMB
/usr/local (or wherever). If you want intentionaly to replace RPM version with compiled one... well, you have to know about cmd line option of configure script. Which is not the concept you may figure out yourself, believe me.
I cannot agree more. RPMs are misused. RPM man page is best example how you should not write man pages. It took me couple of years before I realized that there was an option for rpm to figure out what is the correct order (just say rpm -options*). I strongly believed that RPM could not figure it out itself.
Why I said "misuse of rpm". People who write scripts in them, do that poorly. I was not able to upgrade KDE before I deinstalled all *-devel packages. Some dude made circular dependencies. In one case, even --force did not work, and I'm still wondering how that happened (or what --force actually means and does).
What I hate even more is RH's feature that RPM packages go to / and downloaded sources go
It is really stupid to have so powerfull mechanism like RPM is, and still to have so much stupid problems that make installation of new software on Linux machines next to impossible in many cases.
My apology: it was not NYT, as I said in parent, it was Washington Post.
I have read both articles before this ./ article. First one, (non-NYT one) is crap. I hate those reviews where they speak about KDE look and similar stuff. I was unable to read a normal review about SuSE 9.1, although it is one an half month old distro.
Here is the list of some real problems:
I used to run RH8. It's PITAs: write something on rewritable CD (problems, probably due to my CD drive), MP3 does not work until you replace XMMS, but no such quick solution for KDE's native player. RH9 PITAs: Konqie works worse than in RH9 (I even upgraded KDE to latest version from KDE's site). Gnome's tool for CDs does not work, just like it did not in RH8. Connexant modem does not work, driver went closed source. But even that closed driver does not help me, since I have AC97 sound card (and they fight, for some reason). Fedora Core 1: unable to install nvidia 3d drivers, because kernel is not compiled with gcc that's in distro. Complete kernel compilation fails, their config files do not work. [So I moved to Suse, but i have changed the job meanwhile, so I use Linux now only for fun, and even that rarely, so I can't speak about my problems any more.]
Why I am pointing this list: I need some deep article, where someone who has real experience can say - look, i see/don't see improvement. He does not need to say "your Matsushita DVD-CDRW combo works now ok", I would be quite satisfied if he can find any real problem and to spend some time to speak about it. Single click on folders could be set up easily in KDE ages now. It is not a problem. SuSE has ugly mouse pointer, but that is not the problem, too. Say something about ssh version, apache version, whatever, but say something that may matter to someone (it does not have to be me)! Then I could be able to see if this particular distro is right way to go.
And NYT article is simple crap, full of prejudicies and full of incorrect information.
You are overrating some parts of anglosaxon law system.
.
The basis of UK law is that everything is permitted unless specifically prohibited (reverse is true in many countries)
This was even truth in comunistic countries. I agree that this was (probably) inventeted in UK as a rule, but it is common thing in most of the even semicivilized (read: dictatorship countries) world
UK invented many of things in legal systems that we take for granted, but you should be aware that nothing lasts forever! For instance, UK legal system does not allow you to go to second instance court in many cases - which is, from continental point of view, serious abuse of human rights (IIRC, if you are trialed by jurry, you can't complain to their decision; they allowed this recently, but only in some extremely rare cases).
Not to mention last report of Lord Hutton (if I had luck to spell its name correctly). In most of the world, ad-hoc parlamentarian comitee would investigate that, not prime minister's favorite judge. Ok, I am sounding like flaimbaiter, but these examples clearly show why we (including Britons, no matter of their past achievements) need more organisations like Privacy International.
I was supposed to install image of StarOS to the flashcard...
I was wandering wether it was hda1 or hda...
I decided to do it on hda...
For those who want to know if I was right, correct answer was hde (hda is harddisk, of course), so my laptop became very expensive unusable router (what's the point to have router with only one NIC). Not to mention that I did not backup my mails 4 months...
Title was "Self-parking car hits the shops"... Toyota probably did not like that title. BBC News
Anyone noticed that on first screenshot two windows intersect very strangely(calculator is parallel with the screen surface, and it intersect with the left window)? Line of intersection should be vertical, not 45 degrees like there.
As your log on /. says, this was your second post, which means that you are lying.
(Oh dear, I cannot believe that I wrote something that was OT this much...)
Actually, I never undrestood why players strip their shirts.
Let us presume that this behavior is really meaningless (as I believe it is). So programmers could intentionaly code this practice in robots' AI. The coach of human team will think that robots are stupid since they are doing this. He will underestimate robot team, which will be the way robots get some minor tactical advantage.
Hopefuly, Goran Ericsson and Rudi Voeler are too old to be capable of leading human team in 2050, so that gives good chances for humans to win.
If someone employed Darl intentionaly knowing about his past, that one (or those ones) is/are even more evil people that Darl.
Who employed Darl? (Who employs managers in US companies? Board of directors?) Could anyone figure out the names of people who employed him?
It is the same analogy that allows people to patent algorithms. IMO, they should not be patentable. Excactly from same reason - it is part of logic that makes bubble sort to work. Particular implementation, i.e. source code maybe even should be patentable, but as it is covered by copyright already there is no reason to do it.
But let us get back to the topic. Let them define all additional things they want (e.g. all procedures you mention). When they make them in hardware, let them patent that. But they cannot patent the idea that if I add some predefined sequence to the signal, signal suddenly has much better usage of spectrum. Because this addition is idea (based on mathematics), and hardware realization is implementation.
Maybe we are reaching another problem. Probably it is easy to make hardware similar enough to do the same thing, but unsimilar enough to infringe the patent. So patenting hardware does not help. Going one step before, i.e. patenting the idea, problem seems solved. No problem so far, except that patenting ideas, protocols, file formats leads us to situation where only large coroprations are in situations to invent. Because they only could fight or pay other corporations. I don't know if people who invented patenting systems two centuries ago had IBM, MS or Japanese megacompanies in their mind, but their idea that princliples should not be patentable is still meaningful.
Bern convention protects small inventors. Patent system, by default, since it requires some government office to certifies your work, protects those who have enough resources to enter the proces. If we add possibility of large corporations to influence the government unproportionaly to their to their share GDP (contrary to popular opinion large corporations do not contribute too much), it is clear that patent system favors big players. Since I expirienced a life under umbrella of one kind of Big Brother, believe me that I do not want zaibatsus to rule my life.
I cannot agree with parent. It probably took a while for Einstein to figure out that E=mc^2, but once you figure that out, you cannot patent that. Why? Just because it is the same like to patent 2 + 2 = 4. If you define "2", "4" and "+" the way we are using it now, then 2+2=4 is logical consequence.
It is physical law that define what is W-OFDM. Simply, due to nature of EM waves, coming from Maxwell's equations, you will sooner or later prove that if you modulate some binary data with W-OFDM, you will get some bitrate which is better than bitrate used in 802.11b (I forgot 802.11b's modulation name).
Problem is that it is not obvious to patent office.
Let them make wireless card, and patent that particular implementation, I will have no objections. But they cannot patent laws of physics, no matter that it requres spending two years at University to understand them. (It actally does not requre to finish the university, since it is teached on 3rd year, at least here in Serbia.)
Just as Lenin said: trust is good, control is better.
The issue of "which platform is more stable, secure and usable" has less to do with the subtle genius of the design of linux and more to do with the fact that, currently, linux users are a self-selecting group of people who try to solve their own problems[...]
Well, I cannot say about kernels and basic deamons/servers, but I can say for mail clients. Compare Outlook Express and KMail. On first sight, it seems that Kmail is one clone of OE. In practice, except that KM has many more features, Kmail has all security settings set to what I call "paranoid". Making KMail a virus zombie, even on root account is extremely hard, probably practicaly impossible.
It is stupid to extrapolate this to whole OS, but it is one clear example of good and bad design.
I am not an expert in design of operating systems, but i understand quite clearly how microkernels and monolithic kernels work. I had to change couple of times some Linux drivers. It is somewhat problematic, because you may crash your machine quite easily. You have to be very careful, thus very slow in real work. Making a driver very similar to standard user program, main grief is taken away. Actually, making "user space drivers" is recomended in some books about Linux drivers, but i never figured out how they work.
So I don't understand why is there so big lack of drivers for Hurd, since it should not be a problem to write them? Why they do not write at least some sound driver, just to show they system is working one? If you write AC97 driver, for instance, you have at least 25% PCs covered (or at least 100% of my PCs covered).
yeah, but similar move from 680x0 to PPC trashed a lot of small applications (utilities and similar). I really did not like the situation, although I was aware that PPC was better way to go.
But only problem, just as parent said, is that
b) Some alternative minima are missed
A friend of mine got a job to work on genetic algorithms, in an academic institute. Being an engineer, he asked to be moved to another position 3 months after.
His explanation was very short: in GA you look for problems and you try to prove that they could be solved by this method.
Actually, all methods used in engineering were invented to solve some problem; not vice versa. Ok, maybe they not all of them, i canno say for sure since we learned about methods, not about their history. Most succesful methods moved from one area to another one, but basicaly it was problem before solution, not solution before problem.
The interesting point is that this is second story about GA in only couple of days; there must be some conspiracy theory to explain this.
Grandparent:
bad comments about the president during a time of "war,"
Parent:
3: Bad comments. No problem there. Many prominent figures, including John Kerry, are saying "bad things" about the president. Remember, there is a difference between something being "legal" and it being "acceptable". Kerry can't say but so much or he would alienate the public. Note also that you may have liability with libel/slander, but this is extremely difficult to prove in the US (you must prove that the comments were untrue, intended to be damaging, and that they actually did damage).
Ok. let's put it this way: no matter of living in Europe, I am still able to watch CNN from time to time.
Since 9/11 untill today, it is more than obvious that CNN is nothing more than worst war propaganda. Extremely similar to Milosevic's television in Serbia, during its regime. And people say that other US TV stations are even worse, whith good question how they succeed to be.
From WWII, this is usual state of afairs: CSU holds Bavarian parlament; but SPD holds local Munich assembly. There are small chances that this will change significantly soon, so there is small chance that some future members of same assembly will change this decision.