It seems to me that Apple switching to Intel will have one of two effects:
Apple's marketshare & userbase remains pretty much unchanged. Result: Nothing much changes & Linux continues as before.
Apple's marketshare & userbase increases. Result: Joe Public finally realizes that there are OSes other than Windows that are worth using & Linux gets an increased number of interested users.
There are 23 chromosomes in the human genome. That chromosomes are a pair of the genes. I understand that each gene is one of four DNA molecules called A,G,C & T. There 16 combinations of those mlecules and I can map those out with a pencil and paper, I can produce all 23 sets with desktop computing power.
There are 23 chromosomal pairs. Each half of each pair contains the same (more or less) information - you could think of it as a genetic back-up system. (Except for the XY chromosomal pair in males). At the start, one chromosome is maternal, the other is paternal. But over time, they actually swap bits around until there's a mixture.
Each chromosome contains one immensely long strand of DNA, a double-helix. This double helix is NOT redundant, only one of the two strands contains genetic information: The other strand is only there to make it easier to copy the helix.
The human genome is approximately 3 billion bases long, and it takes three bases (known as a codon) to code one amino acid. 4 x 4 x 4 = 64 possible amino acids. (Altho they only actually code 20 or so). Then you have to filter out all the codons that don't actually code anything, and are discarded before the gene is transcribed into a protein.
If, in every case a taser was used the police officer using it got shot too, I think we'd see less use of "non-lethal" weapons.
What a great idea!
And maybe we should shoot the police with real bullets too, every time they open fire? Then they wouldn't be so quick to shoot suspects!
And why stop with police? Let's send the judges to prison every time they sentence a criminal to jail! That'll cut down on wrongful sentencing, I'm sure.
But to be fair, it would have to apply to criminals too. So every time a driver hit a pedestrian due to negligence, he'd have to be run over. A burglar would have his own possessions taken away. A murderer would have to be killed, and I'd rather not describe what would happen to a paedophile.
Serial killers would be tricky, but I'm sure modern resuscitation technology would help us out here.
"An eye for an eye, and the whole world goes blind."
What exactly has that got to do with closed-source measuring devices in legal situations??
The only thing going through my mind watching that video was "She's a total fake." I've done a fair amount of first aid training, and one of the first things we're taught is "The more noisy the casuality, the less there is wrong with them."
If she'd been in enough pain to justify that much complaining, she'd have been incapacitated. She wasn't in agony, she was just throwing a tantrum.
- Click on "Shutdown computer", computer asks "Are you sure you want to shut down?" = Computer is non-sentient.
- Click on "Shutdown computer", computer asks "Can we talk about this?" = Computer is alive enough for it to be wrong to switch it off.
On a more serious note, if we create living software, would it really be wrong to switch it off? After all, it could presumably save itself to the hard drive and reboot itself later. Turning off would be more like "sleep" than "death". ..
I built an LFS system a while back. It was great fun, and if nothing else, it taught me how to compile from source - something I'd always been a bit afraid of doing before. After all, if I messed up, how did I delete the files? The package manager wouldn't do it for me. . .
Some people are saying it teaches you a lot, and others are saying it's no better than any other distro.
I think installing LFS is like buying home gym equipment. Buying an excercise bike isn't going to make you fit, installing LFS isn't going to teach you a great deal.
All either does is provide you with an opportunity to get what you want. You CAN use excercise equipment to get fit; You CAN use LFS to learn a lot about Linux.
If you just follow the LFS instructions and leave it at that, you'll probably be wasting your time. If you take the time to read around what you're doing, so you understand exactly WHY you're doing what you're doing, you'll learn a great deal.
And if you go on to Beyond LFS, you'll come to truly appreciate package managers. When you've done the "To install A, I need B, which requires C, which relies on D. . . " thing a few times, you'll REALLY understand why package management is such a big topic. The amount of running around I had to do to get FVWM running. . .
I liked my LFS install, but once I had overcome the challenge of getting it working, it just became a chore to KEEP it working. So I switched to Gentoo, which is no effort at all to keep up-to-date.
When an (American|Chinese|Indian) company with workers who put in those 50-60 hours a week takes all of your business and your company closes down and you're out of a job entirely you'll be unhappy.
A common enough argument from Americans who are desperate to convince themselves they should be happy they're spending large chunks of their life working for free.
But it doesn't bear close scrutiny. For starters, it's an established fact that "hours spent at work" != "hours being productive"
But if we're talking about "houses of cards", which would a rational man expect to fall first:
A scheme where employees are forced to work dozens of hours of unpaid overtime every month because "we must remain competitive" and "companies are managed for the benefit of the shareholders, not the employees" Or
A scheme where employees are expected to do a fair day's work for a fair day's pay
I know which of the two *I* think is unsustainable. ..
We're talking about Europe though, land of the government enforced 35 hour work week.
It's already been pointed out that it's not 35 hours. But, I work 35 hours a week. And I get 37 days a year holiday (25 gauranteed and up to 12 flextime days).
My brother works in America. He's expected to work about 50-60 hours a week. The overtime is unpaid. And this is normal. And he gets ten days a year holiday.
I breathlessly await an explanation as to why we should be unhappy with the government about our working conditions:)
why Palpatine keeps Vader on the payroll at all, when he allows the Death Star to be destroyed, lets Luke escape in ESB
That wasn't his fault - after all, "the Force is strong with this one";o)
and is clearly treacherous ("join me, and we will rule the galaxy as father and son")
In one of the books (I forget which one) this was actually explained. Vader had brought Luke to the brink of the Dark Side by angering him, making him too powerful to beat (after all, he DID get a slice in to Vader's shoulder). So he broke Luke's anger by revealing himself to be Luke's father and offering him alliance.
Seems plausible to me: A Sith lying to gain advantage over an opponent. ..
If GL can go back on his "There will be no more SW movies", then maybe he'll also go back on his "There will be no release of the originals"
I was thinking a while ago: Having only recently released ep. IV-VI on DVD, how will he convince anybody to buy the collection of all six? (I'm sure nobody doubts such a collection is on the way)
Possible answer: Have the ORIGINAL versions of IV-VI plus the new I-III films, and you can GAURANTEE that SW fans everywhere will buy the six-pack: New fans for the new films, and old fans for the original old ones.
It would be a brilliant marketing scheme: Say "The originals will never be sold" so everybody buys the remastered versions, then release the originals so everybody will buy them as well.
if you keep blocking ads publishers will either stop publishing or start making money in a different way
That's why on all (yes, all) the web pages I regularly visit, I pay for a subscription where the option is available. Even when it doesn't actually benefit me in the slightest.
I pay for Slashdot, LinuxQuestions, Userfriendly, I've donated to Mozilla, to Slackware, to the FSF, and various others as well. With the exception of seeing a/. story a few minutes before non-subscibers, I've not gained anything from handing over the cash that I couldn't have had free.
So my conscience is perfectly clear about being on the 'adblock bandwagon', thank you very much.
If web site owners don't LIKE adblocking, perhaps they should have thought of that before they got so damned obnoxious about shoving their flashing banners and popup adverts in our faces in the first place.
If they're going to start contaminating my Live Bookmarks with bloody adverts, I hope it won't be long before Adblock can cover RSS feeds as well as web pages. . .
I'd argue that copyright doesn't provide enough protection for innovative techniques, since it only stops you from literally copying them
Actually, it doesn't - that's how copyright ORIGINALLY worked, but it's been a long time since it was that simple.
For instance, I couldn't take the latest Harry Potter book, change the main character to "Henry Trotter", and publish it myself - even though I had changed it, it's still a derivative work, and thus is covered by copyright.
For that matter, I couldn't take the latest Harry Potter book and make a film of the book. Even though it's a completely different medium, it's STILL a derivative, and thus covered by copyright. Nor could I translate it into French and sell it in France - once again, copyright covers this derivation.
So I disagree that copyright only covers exact copies. I think that's a misperception the pro-patent lobby has been trying very hard to push.
However. . .
Obviously a patent on "compressing data" would be absurd, but wouldn't it be fair to grant a patent on that specific table-analysing technique?
I think the real crux of the whole debate is that you've got one side saying "Copyrights aren't broad enough, give us patents", while the other side is arguing "Patents are too broad, stick with copyrights"
Neither is really a good solution, IMHO. As you say, you can get around copyrights if you really try. But while properly-awarded patents MIGHT be a better solution, it's been made oh-so-clear that the patent office has no clue what a good patent is.
The solution that many have proposed, unlimited patentability on software, but restricted to a much shorter timeline (Months rather than decades), would be a happy medium in many ways, as it would allow the inventor to make his money back on his invention with a short-lived monopoly, while not establishing an effectively permanent monoploy.
But too many people/organisations with very deep pockets want to have their cake and eat it - a total monopoly for a long time.
Patents in their current form would be a disaster for software, and so should not be implemented. Change patents to suit software, or don't allow software patents. Either is a reasonable solution. To allow software to be patented within the current patent laws is not, in any way, a reasonable solution.
You seem to be assuming patents are the only protection software inventions have. That's not true, because you can copyright software.
People say that only the mechanical element of the system should be patentable, whereas the software should be excluded.
Actually, the EP's current stance is that software controlling car brakes SHOULD be patentable, because it has a direct physical effect. This example is therefore not relevant.
If you came up with a way to compress any data to 1% of its original size say, would you be happy to just give it away and get nothing for your efforts?
No. But I could copyright it. Then other people might be able to invent their own method that accomplishes the same job (such as OGGs did for MP3s) but doesn't use my own invention. That's fair enough.
But if I was awarded a patent on "compressing data really small" then nobody else would be able to make a competing compression algorithm, even if they created their invention completely independantly. That's a government-sanctioned monopoly, and we all know how popular a corporation with a software monoploy is. . .
By witholding patents from software, you're not leaving it unprotected, just making it rely on copyright instead. Just like other forms of writing.
If Bram Stoker had been allowed to patent "Stories about vampires", then his estate would be owed a lot of money by the makers of Buffy. (Yes, I know patents don't last that long, but considering the lifespan of a book compared to software, I think it's a reasonable enough parallel)
Nobody wants the law changed for authors, why then should we push for it in software?
A printer driver isn't a novel and non-obvious invention.
A printer isn't actually controlled by the driver; the driver just 'translates' a, say, Photoshop picture into a printer-comprehensible 'this is what the page should look like' picture. And since patents should not be granted for "the treatment, the manipulation, the representation and the presentation of information through software", that seems to me to exclude drivers altogether.
Not according to the Financial Times:"Software would be patentable only where it controls a physical process or what Mr Rocard describes as a "controllable force of nature". . . by seeking to draw a line between patents for tangible and intangible inventions, Mr Rocard would make it impossible for companies to win patents in areas such as data, video and audio compression, speech coding and encryption.
The EP is pushing for the right changes, making it impossible to weasel patents through by using weasel words. We just have to hope they get them through.
In normal circumstances, parliament would be restricted to introducing changes it proposed during the first reading. However, because the readings have crossed two presidencies, this requirement has been waived.
Finally, something helpful in the EU beaurocracy:)
Commercial rivals have already voiced fears that the BBC's substantial investment in iMP and the Creative Archive could damage their chances of making money from the concept.
[rant]Well, maybe they should have been worrying about that for the last bloody decade then, instead of spending all their time & money trying to legislate the whole bloody concept out of existance!![/rant]
*ahem*
Yay, BBC! It's times like this I don't object to paying my license fee!
They'll also replace glass in many applications. Can you imagine a day when your windows are pure diamond?:)
A less-known application is in road safety. The painted lines on roads, and roadsigns too, are made more visible at night by having tiny glass beads on their surface, which reflect light back in the direction from where it came.
Because of glass's limited refractive index, they don't work well when wet, as the water layer bends the light as well. Diamond, however, has a high enough refractive index to be retro-reflective even when covered in a layer of water.
So while "streets paved with gold" are still a long way off, maybe some day soon "streets painted with diamond" will be the norm.
I write websites so I can present ideas to people. I don't want them to see my site the way they want to see it. I want them to see it the way it was meant to be seen.
So I guess you're against popup blockers, spam filters, and other "internet filters" then?
"I sent him two dozen emails selling viagra and porn because I wanted them to go to his inbox, not to his spam folder! How do I disable spam filtering toi make him see my email the way I want it seen??"
"I put that popup code in the HTML because I wanted him to see a popup advert! How do I make popups appear when he's got a popup blocker??"
Sorry, but as long as content is appearing on MY screen in MY web-browser following its download via MY bandwidth, I want to have the final say on what I see and how I see it, thank you very much.
Slashdot Mirror
Does it have a web page?
Apple's marketshare & userbase remains pretty much unchanged. Result: Nothing much changes & Linux continues as before.
Apple's marketshare & userbase increases. Result: Joe Public finally realizes that there are OSes other than Windows that are worth using & Linux gets an increased number of interested users.
Either way, Linux is fine.
I just want to see what Bill Gates' reaction would be.
http://www.ubersoft.net
There are 23 chromosomes in the human genome. That chromosomes are a pair of the genes. I understand that each gene is one of four DNA molecules called A,G,C & T. There 16 combinations of those mlecules and I can map those out with a pencil and paper, I can produce all 23 sets with desktop computing power.
There are 23 chromosomal pairs. Each half of each pair contains the same (more or less) information - you could think of it as a genetic back-up system. (Except for the XY chromosomal pair in males). At the start, one chromosome is maternal, the other is paternal. But over time, they actually swap bits around until there's a mixture.
Each chromosome contains one immensely long strand of DNA, a double-helix. This double helix is NOT redundant, only one of the two strands contains genetic information: The other strand is only there to make it easier to copy the helix.
The human genome is approximately 3 billion bases long, and it takes three bases (known as a codon) to code one amino acid. 4 x 4 x 4 = 64 possible amino acids. (Altho they only actually code 20 or so). Then you have to filter out all the codons that don't actually code anything, and are discarded before the gene is transcribed into a protein.
NOW do the math!
If, in every case a taser was used the police officer using it got shot too, I think we'd see less use of "non-lethal" weapons.
What a great idea!
And maybe we should shoot the police with real bullets too, every time they open fire? Then they wouldn't be so quick to shoot suspects!
And why stop with police? Let's send the judges to prison every time they sentence a criminal to jail! That'll cut down on wrongful sentencing, I'm sure.
But to be fair, it would have to apply to criminals too. So every time a driver hit a pedestrian due to negligence, he'd have to be run over. A burglar would have his own possessions taken away. A murderer would have to be killed, and I'd rather not describe what would happen to a paedophile.
Serial killers would be tricky, but I'm sure modern resuscitation technology would help us out here.
"An eye for an eye, and the whole world goes blind."
The only thing going through my mind watching that video was "She's a total fake." I've done a fair amount of first aid training, and one of the first things we're taught is "The more noisy the casuality, the less there is wrong with them."
If she'd been in enough pain to justify that much complaining, she'd have been incapacitated. She wasn't in agony, she was just throwing a tantrum.
No sympathy here.
- Click on "Shutdown computer", computer asks "Are you sure you want to shut down?" = Computer is non-sentient.
- Click on "Shutdown computer", computer asks "Can we talk about this?" = Computer is alive enough for it to be wrong to switch it off.
On a more serious note, if we create living software, would it really be wrong to switch it off? After all, it could presumably save itself to the hard drive and reboot itself later. Turning off would be more like "sleep" than "death". . .
I built an LFS system a while back. It was great fun, and if nothing else, it taught me how to compile from source - something I'd always been a bit afraid of doing before. After all, if I messed up, how did I delete the files? The package manager wouldn't do it for me. . .
Some people are saying it teaches you a lot, and others are saying it's no better than any other distro.
I think installing LFS is like buying home gym equipment. Buying an excercise bike isn't going to make you fit, installing LFS isn't going to teach you a great deal.
All either does is provide you with an opportunity to get what you want. You CAN use excercise equipment to get fit; You CAN use LFS to learn a lot about Linux.
If you just follow the LFS instructions and leave it at that, you'll probably be wasting your time. If you take the time to read around what you're doing, so you understand exactly WHY you're doing what you're doing, you'll learn a great deal.
And if you go on to Beyond LFS, you'll come to truly appreciate package managers. When you've done the "To install A, I need B, which requires C, which relies on D. . . " thing a few times, you'll REALLY understand why package management is such a big topic. The amount of running around I had to do to get FVWM running. . .
I liked my LFS install, but once I had overcome the challenge of getting it working, it just became a chore to KEEP it working. So I switched to Gentoo, which is no effort at all to keep up-to-date.
But I'm glad I did LFS first.
As if AOL didn't send out enough CDs already. Now they're moving towards FOSS, can "AOLoppix" be far behind?
A common enough argument from Americans who are desperate to convince themselves they should be happy they're spending large chunks of their life working for free.
But it doesn't bear close scrutiny. For starters, it's an established fact that "hours spent at work" != "hours being productive"
But if we're talking about "houses of cards", which would a rational man expect to fall first:
Or
I know which of the two *I* think is unsustainable. . .
It's already been pointed out that it's not 35 hours. But, I work 35 hours a week. And I get 37 days a year holiday (25 gauranteed and up to 12 flextime days).
My brother works in America. He's expected to work about 50-60 hours a week. The overtime is unpaid. And this is normal. And he gets ten days a year holiday.
I breathlessly await an explanation as to why we should be unhappy with the government about our working conditions :)
How about the BBC?
That wasn't his fault - after all, "the Force is strong with this one" ;o)
and is clearly treacherous ("join me, and we will rule the galaxy as father and son")
In one of the books (I forget which one) this was actually explained. Vader had brought Luke to the brink of the Dark Side by angering him, making him too powerful to beat (after all, he DID get a slice in to Vader's shoulder). So he broke Luke's anger by revealing himself to be Luke's father and offering him alliance.
Seems plausible to me: A Sith lying to gain advantage over an opponent. . .
I was thinking a while ago: Having only recently released ep. IV-VI on DVD, how will he convince anybody to buy the collection of all six? (I'm sure nobody doubts such a collection is on the way)
Possible answer: Have the ORIGINAL versions of IV-VI plus the new I-III films, and you can GAURANTEE that SW fans everywhere will buy the six-pack: New fans for the new films, and old fans for the original old ones.
It would be a brilliant marketing scheme: Say "The originals will never be sold" so everybody buys the remastered versions, then release the originals so everybody will buy them as well.
Or am I too cynical?
if you keep blocking ads publishers will either stop publishing or start making money in a different way
That's why on all (yes, all) the web pages I regularly visit, I pay for a subscription where the option is available. Even when it doesn't actually benefit me in the slightest.
I pay for Slashdot, LinuxQuestions, Userfriendly, I've donated to Mozilla, to Slackware, to the FSF, and various others as well. With the exception of seeing a /. story a few minutes before non-subscibers, I've not gained anything from handing over the cash that I couldn't have had free.
So my conscience is perfectly clear about being on the 'adblock bandwagon', thank you very much.
If web site owners don't LIKE adblocking, perhaps they should have thought of that before they got so damned obnoxious about shoving their flashing banners and popup adverts in our faces in the first place.
If they're going to start contaminating my Live Bookmarks with bloody adverts, I hope it won't be long before Adblock can cover RSS feeds as well as web pages. . .
Actually, it doesn't - that's how copyright ORIGINALLY worked, but it's been a long time since it was that simple.
For instance, I couldn't take the latest Harry Potter book, change the main character to "Henry Trotter", and publish it myself - even though I had changed it, it's still a derivative work, and thus is covered by copyright.
For that matter, I couldn't take the latest Harry Potter book and make a film of the book. Even though it's a completely different medium, it's STILL a derivative, and thus covered by copyright. Nor could I translate it into French and sell it in France - once again, copyright covers this derivation.
So I disagree that copyright only covers exact copies. I think that's a misperception the pro-patent lobby has been trying very hard to push.
However. . .
Obviously a patent on "compressing data" would be absurd, but wouldn't it be fair to grant a patent on that specific table-analysing technique?
I think the real crux of the whole debate is that you've got one side saying "Copyrights aren't broad enough, give us patents", while the other side is arguing "Patents are too broad, stick with copyrights"
Neither is really a good solution, IMHO. As you say, you can get around copyrights if you really try. But while properly-awarded patents MIGHT be a better solution, it's been made oh-so-clear that the patent office has no clue what a good patent is.
The solution that many have proposed, unlimited patentability on software, but restricted to a much shorter timeline (Months rather than decades), would be a happy medium in many ways, as it would allow the inventor to make his money back on his invention with a short-lived monopoly, while not establishing an effectively permanent monoploy.
But too many people/organisations with very deep pockets want to have their cake and eat it - a total monopoly for a long time.
Patents in their current form would be a disaster for software, and so should not be implemented. Change patents to suit software, or don't allow software patents. Either is a reasonable solution. To allow software to be patented within the current patent laws is not, in any way, a reasonable solution.
People say that only the mechanical element of the system should be patentable, whereas the software should be excluded.
Actually, the EP's current stance is that software controlling car brakes SHOULD be patentable, because it has a direct physical effect. This example is therefore not relevant.
If you came up with a way to compress any data to 1% of its original size say, would you be happy to just give it away and get nothing for your efforts?
No. But I could copyright it. Then other people might be able to invent their own method that accomplishes the same job (such as OGGs did for MP3s) but doesn't use my own invention. That's fair enough.
But if I was awarded a patent on "compressing data really small" then nobody else would be able to make a competing compression algorithm, even if they created their invention completely independantly. That's a government-sanctioned monopoly, and we all know how popular a corporation with a software monoploy is. . .
By witholding patents from software, you're not leaving it unprotected, just making it rely on copyright instead. Just like other forms of writing.
If Bram Stoker had been allowed to patent "Stories about vampires", then his estate would be owed a lot of money by the makers of Buffy. (Yes, I know patents don't last that long, but considering the lifespan of a book compared to software, I think it's a reasonable enough parallel)
Nobody wants the law changed for authors, why then should we push for it in software?
A printer driver isn't a novel and non-obvious invention.
A printer isn't actually controlled by the driver; the driver just 'translates' a, say, Photoshop picture into a printer-comprehensible 'this is what the page should look like' picture. And since patents should not be granted for "the treatment, the manipulation, the representation and the presentation of information through software", that seems to me to exclude drivers altogether.
The EP is pushing for the right changes, making it impossible to weasel patents through by using weasel words. We just have to hope they get them through.
According to the Register:
In normal circumstances, parliament would be restricted to introducing changes it proposed during the first reading. However, because the readings have crossed two presidencies, this requirement has been waived.
Finally, something helpful in the EU beaurocracy :)
[rant]Well, maybe they should have been worrying about that for the last bloody decade then, instead of spending all their time & money trying to legislate the whole bloody concept out of existance!![/rant]
*ahem*
Yay, BBC! It's times like this I don't object to paying my license fee!
A less-known application is in road safety. The painted lines on roads, and roadsigns too, are made more visible at night by having tiny glass beads on their surface, which reflect light back in the direction from where it came.
Because of glass's limited refractive index, they don't work well when wet, as the water layer bends the light as well. Diamond, however, has a high enough refractive index to be retro-reflective even when covered in a layer of water.
So while "streets paved with gold" are still a long way off, maybe some day soon "streets painted with diamond" will be the norm.
So I guess you're against popup blockers, spam filters, and other "internet filters" then?
"I sent him two dozen emails selling viagra and porn because I wanted them to go to his inbox, not to his spam folder! How do I disable spam filtering toi make him see my email the way I want it seen??"
"I put that popup code in the HTML because I wanted him to see a popup advert! How do I make popups appear when he's got a popup blocker??"
Sorry, but as long as content is appearing on MY screen in MY web-browser following its download via MY bandwidth, I want to have the final say on what I see and how I see it, thank you very much.
Depends how well they run under Wine, I guess. . .