This is not a joke but it seems to fit the general thrust of this article. There are a number of questions the need answering
1) Why would Microsoft really want to buy Linux?
2) If OSS is meaningless what would Microsoft get from buying it
3) Could they acquite RH, NOVELL, Mandriva, Debian, Ubuntu etc etc?
4) Could they acquire the rights to the software contained in a typical distro?
5) Why would they want to buy something that is free?
My albeit simple take on this is Patents! The FUD eminating from Redmond and these articles all aim to discredit Linux and FOSS in general. If Microsoft is violating patents held by OSS companies then buying them would quietly make the issue go away.
This is simply not true with DB2 V8 or DB2 V9. It might have possibly been the case with some older versions of DB2 but not recent ones. With every release of DB2 it gets even easier to install on Linux. IF you don;t want to use the GUI installer then you can just install the RPM's. You can run "rpm -Uvh *.rpm" can you? I run DB2 on RHEL 4, CEntos 4.4, Fedora 5,6, SUSE 10.1 & SLES 9. I also run lots of websphere products and generally the current versions install and work fine on a variety of Linux Distros.
IMHO, the refusal of IBM to certify DB2 (And everything else they sell for Linux) on Unbreakable is perfectly understandable. Why would they spen literally millions doing the certification on an O/S which has almost 0 presence in the commercial market. This MAY change in the future. If Unbreakable does get some market share and IBM's customer demand it might do some certification.
TopGear is apparently the most pirated(sorry watched) BBC show after Dr Who worldwide. It is very un PC and that is what makes it so attractive. Goody, 55mins to go before this weeks edition. The lads are messing around in Tractors trying to grow their own Fuel.
Keep up the good work lads. I'll be at Dunsfold next week for the show.
Perhaps the BBC should copy UK Channel 4 and setup a pay downoad site for non serial shows like TopGear Off Topic:-
The place where the show is filmed is the place where the Harrier VTOL Aircraft was flight tested before delivery to the like of the RAF, USMC and Spanish Airforce.. I worked there in the late 1970's.
Please read my post again. I am suggesting using streams and small rivers for small local power generation and floating power gen stations for larger rivers and tital estuaries. Yes having a tide mill would require some engineering in building a dam. There are no way on the scale of the Hoover Dam. Think of a dam wall the size of the tidal fall plus 20%. Apart from places like the Bay of Fundy, The Severn Estuary these would be 20ft. To dam these places is hardly going to emit zillions of tons of CO2. IN many places, the rock for the dam could be obtained locally.
Small power stations implemented with the minimum impact of the environment are a way to generate lots of power if you have enough of them. If they are spread around enough then the impact of power lines down would also be minimized in times of harsh weather.
If we are encouraged to have wind turbines and/or photovoltaic generation systems on our homes, why not use water power. It is more constant than wind in supply. Water power is a low tech solution. You can make a water wheel out of renewable timber. The building can be wooden. The only stuff that has to be imported any distance is the genny, control gear and drive shafts.
Another forgotten method is Water Power. My friend owns some land that has a small stream (1m wide) runnnig through it. He installed a turbine at one end of his land. He built a waterwheel and installed it at the other end where there was more head (of water). He now generates more power than he needs and is selling it to the grid. His neighbours are now very interested in doing the same. This is small scale but the cost to the environment is pretty small.
Now, if you take a big river there are huge opportunities for power generation. In the past, there were many floating water mills in London. They floated up and down on the tide and got their power from the flow of water. There are many huge rivers(and not so huge really) around the world that could easily have floating power generation plants installed. If we get increased rainfall with climate change then there will be more water to flow down the rivers. It is a real shame that this resource is almost totally ignored. These will be far less of a 'Blot on the Landscape' that these erattic Wind Farms that seem to be springing up everywhere.
What a simple and neat solution. Rip out the millstones(only joking) and install a genny. Renewable energy at its best. How manny tidal estuaries are there in the World?
I did the 'upgrade' yesterday. Yes I was annoyed that the upgrade would not install on a 'clean' system. So I had to install a copy of XP. I didn't authenticate it. Then I started the upgrade from within XP and chose 'Overwrite existing system' About an hour later and several (3+ I think) reboots I have a Vista System running.
M$ Could have done this better by not only asking for the original CD Media for XP but also the Key for that version of the OS. Then you would not have to waste an hour with the XP Install before totally obliterating the newly installed XP.
Now I usually use Server running Windows Server 2003 which use "Windows Classic" by default. My XP System is also configured to use Classic. I tried the same with Vista. I always put an Explorer and DOS icons on the desktop. Vista let me put the DOS on no problem. But, would it let me do the same with explorer? Fat chance. (Start->Programs->Accessories->Windows Explorer, Right Click->Send to Desktop) The Right Click on "Windows Explorer" just closed the Start->Programs... It is as if M$ have deliberately disable this functionality.
Vista, Not fit for Service. Classic is Broken or is this a deliberate ploy by M$?
The system now runs Fedora Core 6. Vista is there as a boot option but really M$, your boot editor is pure Cr*P. Was the UI designed by a 6 year old. Please do something aqbout it pronto. Why oh Why is this needed?
Remember what M$ did with IE to get the upper hand against Netscape. They made their previously saleable heap of dung called Internet Explorer FREE. Sales of Netscape crashed. I see (to my simple non legal mind) the same sort of behaviour here. -Find a product that already exists and made by a small company. -Copy functionality of said product -Make it Free but closed source -Original Company goes bust -Start charging for previously free software -Profit! or for the last two -Lock in. All users of this neat funcyionality have to use Windows! -Profit even More.
The cynic in me say this is the grand plan of NASA:-
1) Struggle to fly the shuttle with ever reducing $$$$ from Congress 2) Decide on grand plan "Lets go to MARS!" 3) Pull out of Earth Orbital work 4) Let Commercial Companies fund the costs of a Shuttle Replacement 5) Wait until 4) is working. Continue to spend $$$ On Mars Mission 6) "Obtain" all commercially viable space vehicles under the guise of National Security
"Those pesky terrorists might crash this space plane into the White House" 7) Cancel MARS Mission - there is no life(read voters) there anyway 8) Result, NASA gets a Shuttle repacememnt for almost $0.00
Ironically, much of this sort of thing is discussed in an SF Book I'm reading at the moment Titan by Stephen Baxter (British Author). Written in the late 1990's. It also includes a second Shuttle disaster on reentry and the subsequent funding crisis in NASA, JPL etc. Sounds familiar eh? In this case, the grand plan is to goto Titan not Mars.
If the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation made a positive decision to invest in ENI, it could have been that the company is (apart from pumping oil & gas) spending lots of its own money looking at alternative energy sources. Many Oil companies spend significant amounts of money looking at Alternative sources of Energy and also, cleaning up the environment around their plants. Now Nigeria is a difficult place to do business at the best of times. You have heavily armed rebels out to kidnap and hold for ransom any westerner they can get their hands on. Then you have the endemic corruption in Government. If you add this lot together, it could be that cleaning up the possibly offending refinery is just plain silly in economic terms. However the company will have many such places where $$$, Euros(lira) or whatever may give a far better overall return on its investment and without the inhereent risks to its own staff. Don't get me wrong though. I think the oil companies have a lot of work to do to clean up their act. Its just that picking on this one place that is owned by a multinational may give the wrong idea about the overall policy of that company towards the environment. There are many, many more questions that have to be asked and answered before you can point the finger at the foundation and get angry(or whatever) Remember, there is always at least two sides to any story. (With a politician, the answer is at least 360.)
Nah,
We would still be using Paper Tape loaded through an ASR33 Teletype:-)
Seriously though,
Exposing bugs like this is (IMHO) a pure FUD stunt. Ok, tell the vendor about the bug and if they don't fix it in a reasonable time (variable depending upon severity etc) then by all means publicise the problem in order to get some pressure on them to fix it. But getting Officialdoom involved? You are a prime candiate to be sectioned. Civil Servants the world over can't organise their way out of a paper bag let alone something like this.
CITV is also used in the UK for "Childrens ITV" ITV has several channels not ITV-1 which was the original second channel in the UK. ITV-2, ITV-3 & ITV-4 are all available on Cable, Satellite and Freeview (Broadcast Digital TV)
Apple will certainly be in the sights of the ITV Lawyers if they want to call their product "iTV".
I have to take issue with your statement about the default partitioning layout. I have installed FC6 on at least 6 different physical systems including a Mac Mini(ppc), a Dell 8600 & 8100 laptop and an IBM T43P laptop and I NEVER use the default partition layout.
I have never had a failure at all. I use/boot //usr/var/opt/home & swap partitions.
I will say that all RedHat installers do not calculate the partition sizes correctly. So, if I want to be user that they are set to proper multiples of sectors etc I format the disk(s) using a live distro first. Then in FC6 (or other distro) I select the partion and the njust edit it to tell it the mount point and filesystem type.
As far as the software selection process goes it is IMHO a lot better than SLES 9 where you can get into a situation where because of dependancy failures the installation can't be progressed. You could always just install everything btw.
The Fedora project does not hide the fact that it is a leading egde distro. It is a test bed for a lot of software that finds its way into RHEL and lots of other distros over time. Many of the Fedora Users actually enjoy being lab rats.
Finally, this whole article is not news. It was covered on OSNEWS several weeks ago(mid december).
This so called expert is plainly an idiot. I have a DSL connection with an Ethernet Modem Router using a 192.168.1.x subnet. Connected to this is a Wireless Router using a 10.1.1.x subnet. This also has 4 ethernet ports. The laptop I am writing this from is connected to the Wireless Router. There is no way anyone can determine which connection method this laptop is using to connect to the WLAN device solely from a twice NAT'd IP Address.
I would certainly challenge that factoid first. Then seek to discredit other parts of his so called expert testimony.
Note to RIAA and any other organisations that might be monitoring/. , I do not Download any Music whatsoever (legal or possibly illegal). I prefer to rip physical CD's that I have paid real folding money for.
Some of the points are very well made. Just ask anyone who has been a driver at the tail end of an Army Convoy. They are either flat out of at a dead stop. The concertina effect magnifies as the number of vehicles increases. This is why smaller convoys are better.
I was once in a lecture where this was explained. It all went down to the following
Chaos Theory
Queuing Theory and most impostantly,
A single thing which cause on vehicle to slow down without due cause. The nthe vehicle behind has to slow and Bingo! it all starts. Once to get beyond a certain number of vehicles the elasticity in the queue gets to a critical size and you get the unexplained traffic jams.
Some places try to minimise these jams by artificially reducing speed limits to reduce the elasticity but IMHO, these have limited effect. IMHO, the ONLY way to stop these elastic jams is to connect the vehicles together. I once saw a demo of such a thing. Oh, sorry, it is called a train...:) Seriously, BMW demoed a device many years ago that would allow you to get much closer to the vehicle in front but in a safe manner. I think that it is only a metter of time before there is a viable system to connect vehicles together electronically in such a way that they can be physically very close to each other in a safe manner. The driver would join such a convoy and then switch on an autopilot system and sit back and relax.
There are several species of Penuin that NEVER get anyway near the Antartic Ice Cap. You can see Penguins in Chile, Argentina, Namibia, South Africa and the Falklands to name just a few places. Oh, I forgot those nice islands near the Equator called the Galapagos.
It is more likely that over fishing is the cause of the decline of the Rockhoppers in the Falklands. If there is no suitable food supply then the population will crash.
An alternative theory could be that this is cyclical variation in population just like Lemmings.
At the moment, it is too early to say. Anyway, I'm off to the Falklands next month and hope to see some live TUX.
This agreement by for example Verizon to give Police etc 'your data' without a warrant is one reason why IMHO, US Laws SUCK. There are some countied in the world that have data protection legislation that makes police etc get a proper warrant thus showing justification before companies hand over their copies of your data. This stops Police 'Fishing Expeditions'. There are probably lawyers in the US who would delight in challenging any evidence obtained in this method and being unlawful siezure. They could probably sue the company giving the data without a warrant. A proper warrant just make everything verifiable and unchallengable. A Lawyer friend of mine said there are two rules of Evidence. Clean Evidence is unchallengable and should only be challenged if you have nothing else to do. Dirty Evidence is like dog doo. Shit Happens but should not be alloed to get in the way.
In his opinion, ANY evidence obtained like this is DIRTY and every effort should be made to get is excluded.
Since the 1980's and the adevent of decent CGI Graphics (from companies like Evans & Sutherland) and very sophisticated 6 axis motion systems, bodies like the CAA and FAA have regarded hours in the Simulator as Flying Hours.
Sometimes, I refer to proper flight sims as the ultimate games console.
However there is no way that things like Microsoft Flight Simulator can reproduce the experiences of a real moving full size cockpit when you have a sudden decompression.
IMHO, anything less would not get approved.
OT Disclaimer I first flew a Phantom F4 IN 1969. An F4 Simulator that is... I was 16 years old and an apprentice engineer. Six years later I got a Degree in Control Engineering.
It occurs to me that since the ORacle Announcement and the Microsoft-Novell deal, then if Microsoft goes after RedHat with patent suits then it will also have to sue Oracle at the same time as it is essentially the same code. Now Oracle have far far bigger pockets than RedHat and could probably resist the Microsfot onslaught until a just verdict was reached in court whereas on its own RH would probably go under due to litigation costs.
Or, is there some twist in the US Legal System that would allow M$ to sue RH and not Oracle even though it was just as liable to be in breach of the unnamed patents?
Couldn't this sort of beast be aimed at the Server Market? I have an application that would eat up this sort of config. Curently we use a Dual Xeon or a Quad Xeon and these get maxed out at times.
Think outside of the Desktop Beige Box.
After a while, the technology will filter down to desktops but the server end is where people will pay top dollar/yen/euro/rouble for a system that really performs.
Its Sunday Evening where the poster comes from so he/she has probably had a couple of bevvies inside him/her so a small typo can be forgiven. The spelling of some of our American cousing leaves much to be desired at times.
No I'm not. The reality is that the Court has not yet reacehed a decision. End of Story. Until it does then the thing is that SCO ALLEDGED that IBM.... etc After the decision then one of the following will be true.
SCO has proven thet IBM (etc) has used code illegally in Linux OR SCO failed in its attempt to prove that IBM....
Until the courts make their decision anf after any possible appeals have been lodged and decisions made and appeals results of the appeals made we can not be sure of the REALITY. Every sane person knows that SCO are barking mad to try this on but until the court makes its decision we can't know for sure.
Think for a moment, about some of the Patents approved in recent year by the USPTO. If M$ can patent a WORD that was in common use for centuries then perceived reality and actual reality are very different things.
Slashdot Mirror
Buy Linux
h y_Microsoft_Should_Acquire_Linux_200702262810/
http://www.cooltechzone.com/Departments/Columns/W
This is not a joke but it seems to fit the general thrust of this article.
There are a number of questions the need answering
1) Why would Microsoft really want to buy Linux?
2) If OSS is meaningless what would Microsoft get from buying it
3) Could they acquite RH, NOVELL, Mandriva, Debian, Ubuntu etc etc?
4) Could they acquire the rights to the software contained in a typical distro?
5) Why would they want to buy something that is free?
My albeit simple take on this is Patents!
The FUD eminating from Redmond and these articles all aim to discredit Linux and FOSS in general.
If Microsoft is violating patents held by OSS companies then buying them would quietly make the issue go away.
This is simply not true with DB2 V8 or DB2 V9.
It might have possibly been the case with some older versions of DB2 but not recent ones.
With every release of DB2 it gets even easier to install on Linux. IF you don;t want to use the GUI installer then you can just
install the RPM's. You can run "rpm -Uvh *.rpm" can you?
I run DB2 on RHEL 4, CEntos 4.4, Fedora 5,6, SUSE 10.1 & SLES 9.
I also run lots of websphere products and generally the current versions install and work fine on a variety of Linux Distros.
IMHO, the refusal of IBM to certify DB2 (And everything else they sell for Linux) on Unbreakable is perfectly understandable.
Why would they spen literally millions doing the certification on an O/S which has almost 0 presence in the commercial market.
This MAY change in the future. If Unbreakable does get some market share and IBM's customer demand it might do some certification.
TopGear is apparently the most pirated(sorry watched) BBC show after Dr Who worldwide. It is very un PC and that is what makes it so attractive.
Goody, 55mins to go before this weeks edition. The lads are messing around in Tractors trying to grow their own Fuel.
Keep up the good work lads. I'll be at Dunsfold next week for the show.
Perhaps the BBC should copy UK Channel 4 and setup a pay downoad site for non serial shows like TopGear
Off Topic:-
The place where the show is filmed is the place where the Harrier VTOL Aircraft was flight tested before delivery to the like of the RAF, USMC and Spanish Airforce..
I worked there in the late 1970's.
Please read my post again.
I am suggesting using streams and small rivers for small local power generation and floating power gen stations for larger rivers and tital estuaries.
Yes having a tide mill would require some engineering in building a dam. There are no way on the scale of the Hoover Dam. Think of a dam wall the size of the tidal fall plus 20%. Apart from places like the Bay of Fundy, The Severn Estuary these would be 20ft. To dam these places is hardly going to emit zillions of tons of CO2. IN many places, the rock for the dam could be obtained locally.
Small power stations implemented with the minimum impact of the environment are a way to generate lots of power if you have enough of them. If they are spread around enough then the impact of power lines down would also be minimized in times of harsh weather.
If we are encouraged to have wind turbines and/or photovoltaic generation systems on our homes, why not use water power. It is more constant than wind in supply.
Water power is a low tech solution. You can make a water wheel out of renewable timber. The building can be wooden. The only stuff that has to be imported any distance is the genny, control gear and drive shafts.
Another forgotten method is Water Power.
My friend owns some land that has a small stream (1m wide) runnnig through it. He installed a turbine at one end of his land. He built a waterwheel and installed it at the other end where there was more head (of water).
He now generates more power than he needs and is selling it to the grid.
His neighbours are now very interested in doing the same.
This is small scale but the cost to the environment is pretty small.
Now, if you take a big river there are huge opportunities for power generation.
In the past, there were many floating water mills in London. They floated up and down on the tide and got their power from the flow of water.
There are many huge rivers(and not so huge really) around the world that could easily have floating power generation plants installed.
If we get increased rainfall with climate change then there will be more water to flow down the rivers. It is a real shame that this resource is almost totally ignored.
These will be far less of a 'Blot on the Landscape' that these erattic Wind Farms that seem to be springing up everywhere.
finally,
Then there are Tide Mills. Look up http://www.elingtidemill.wanadoo.co.uk/
What a simple and neat solution.
Rip out the millstones(only joking) and install a genny. Renewable energy at its best. How manny tidal estuaries are there in the World?
I did the 'upgrade' yesterday.
Yes I was annoyed that the upgrade would not install on a 'clean' system.
So I had to install a copy of XP. I didn't authenticate it.
Then I started the upgrade from within XP and chose 'Overwrite existing system'
About an hour later and several (3+ I think) reboots I have a Vista System running.
M$ Could have done this better by not only asking for the original CD Media for XP but also the Key for that version of the OS.
Then you would not have to waste an hour with the XP Install before totally obliterating the newly installed XP.
Now I usually use Server running Windows Server 2003 which use "Windows Classic" by default. My XP System is also configured to use Classic. I tried the same with Vista.
I always put an Explorer and DOS icons on the desktop.
Vista let me put the DOS on no problem. But, would it let me do the same with explorer? Fat chance.
(Start->Programs->Accessories->Windows Explorer, Right Click->Send to Desktop)
The Right Click on "Windows Explorer" just closed the Start->Programs...
It is as if M$ have deliberately disable this functionality.
Vista, Not fit for Service.
Classic is Broken or is this a deliberate ploy by M$?
The system now runs Fedora Core 6.
Vista is there as a boot option but really M$, your boot editor is pure Cr*P. Was the UI designed by a 6 year old. Please do something aqbout it pronto. Why oh Why is this needed?
Remember what M$ did with IE to get the upper hand against Netscape.
They made their previously saleable heap of dung called Internet Explorer FREE.
Sales of Netscape crashed.
I see (to my simple non legal mind) the same sort of behaviour here.
-Find a product that already exists and made by a small company.
-Copy functionality of said product
-Make it Free but closed source
-Original Company goes bust
-Start charging for previously free software
-Profit!
or for the last two
-Lock in. All users of this neat funcyionality have to use Windows!
-Profit even More.
The cynic in me say this is the grand plan of NASA:-
1) Struggle to fly the shuttle with ever reducing $$$$ from Congress
2) Decide on grand plan "Lets go to MARS!"
3) Pull out of Earth Orbital work
4) Let Commercial Companies fund the costs of a Shuttle Replacement
5) Wait until 4) is working. Continue to spend $$$ On Mars Mission
6) "Obtain" all commercially viable space vehicles under the guise of National Security
"Those pesky terrorists might crash this space plane into the White House"
7) Cancel MARS Mission - there is no life(read voters) there anyway
8) Result, NASA gets a Shuttle repacememnt for almost $0.00
Ironically, much of this sort of thing is discussed in an SF Book I'm reading at the moment
Titan by Stephen Baxter (British Author). Written in the late 1990's. It also includes a second Shuttle disaster on reentry
and the subsequent funding crisis in NASA, JPL etc.
Sounds familiar eh?
In this case, the grand plan is to goto Titan not Mars.
At 07:48 In the morning? Can I have some of what you are smoking!
:-)
Oh, well, back to bed.
Brazil was a film made by Terry Gilliam of Monty Python Fame. I'm not sure if there was/is a book.
Try going to http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/
Note that the working title for the film was 1984 and a Half. This puts where it is coming from perfectly.
If the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation made a positive decision to invest in ENI, it could have been that the company is (apart from pumping oil & gas) spending lots of its own money looking at alternative energy sources.
Many Oil companies spend significant amounts of money looking at Alternative sources of Energy and also, cleaning up the environment around their plants.
Now Nigeria is a difficult place to do business at the best of times. You have heavily armed rebels out to kidnap and hold for ransom any westerner they can get their hands on. Then you have the endemic corruption in Government.
If you add this lot together, it could be that cleaning up the possibly offending refinery is just plain silly in economic terms. However the company will have many such places where $$$, Euros(lira) or whatever may give a far better overall return on its investment and without the inhereent risks to its own staff.
Don't get me wrong though. I think the oil companies have a lot of work to do to clean up their act. Its just that picking on this one place that is owned by a multinational may give the wrong idea about the overall policy of that company towards the environment.
There are many, many more questions that have to be asked and answered before you can point the finger at the foundation and get angry(or whatever)
Remember, there is always at least two sides to any story. (With a politician, the answer is at least 360.)
Nah, :-)
We would still be using Paper Tape loaded through an ASR33 Teletype
Seriously though,
Exposing bugs like this is (IMHO) a pure FUD stunt. Ok, tell the vendor about the bug and if they don't fix it in a reasonable time (variable depending upon severity etc) then by all means publicise the problem in order to get some pressure on them to fix it.
But getting Officialdoom involved? You are a prime candiate to be sectioned. Civil Servants the world over can't organise their way out of a paper bag let alone something like this.
CITV is also used in the UK for "Childrens ITV"
ITV has several channels not ITV-1 which was the original second channel in the UK. ITV-2, ITV-3 & ITV-4 are all available on Cable, Satellite and Freeview (Broadcast Digital TV)
Apple will certainly be in the sights of the ITV Lawyers if they want to call their product "iTV".
I have to take issue with your statement about the default partitioning layout.
/boot / /usr /var /opt /home & swap partitions.
I have installed FC6 on at least 6 different physical systems including a Mac Mini(ppc), a Dell 8600 & 8100 laptop and an IBM T43P laptop and I NEVER use the default partition layout.
I have never had a failure at all. I use
I will say that all RedHat installers do not calculate the partition sizes correctly. So, if I want to be user that they are set to proper multiples of sectors etc I format the disk(s) using a live distro first. Then in FC6 (or other distro) I select the partion and the njust edit it to tell it the mount point and filesystem type.
As far as the software selection process goes it is IMHO a lot better than SLES 9 where you can get into a situation where because of dependancy failures the installation can't be progressed.
You could always just install everything btw.
The Fedora project does not hide the fact that it is a leading egde distro. It is a test bed for a lot of software that finds its way into RHEL and lots of other distros over time. Many of the Fedora Users actually enjoy being lab rats.
Finally, this whole article is not news. It was covered on OSNEWS several weeks ago(mid december).
Did you submit a Bugzilla?
Please don't whine here unless you have take all available methods to get the problem rectified.
This so called expert is plainly an idiot.
/. , I do not Download any Music whatsoever (legal or possibly illegal). I prefer to rip physical CD's that I have paid real folding money for.
I have a DSL connection with an Ethernet Modem Router using a 192.168.1.x subnet.
Connected to this is a Wireless Router using a 10.1.1.x subnet. This also has 4 ethernet ports.
The laptop I am writing this from is connected to the Wireless Router. There is no way anyone can determine which connection method this laptop is using to connect to the WLAN device solely from a twice NAT'd IP Address.
I would certainly challenge that factoid first. Then seek to discredit other parts of his so called expert testimony.
Note to RIAA and any other organisations that might be monitoring
Some of the points are very well made.
Just ask anyone who has been a driver at the tail end of an Army Convoy. They are either flat out of at a dead stop. The concertina effect magnifies as the number of vehicles increases. This is why smaller convoys are better.
I was once in a lecture where this was explained. It all went down to the following
Chaos Theory
Queuing Theory
and most impostantly,
A single thing which cause on vehicle to slow down without due cause. The nthe vehicle behind has to slow and Bingo! it all starts.
Once to get beyond a certain number of vehicles the elasticity in the queue gets to a critical size and you get the unexplained traffic jams.
Some places try to minimise these jams by artificially reducing speed limits to reduce the elasticity but IMHO, these have limited effect.
IMHO, the ONLY way to stop these elastic jams is to connect the vehicles together. I once saw a demo of such a thing. Oh, sorry, it is called a train...:)
Seriously, BMW demoed a device many years ago that would allow you to get much closer to the vehicle in front but in a safe manner. I think that it is only a metter of time before there is a viable system to connect vehicles together electronically in such a way that they can be physically very close to each other in a safe manner. The driver would join such a convoy and then switch on an autopilot system and sit back and relax.
There are several species of Penuin that NEVER get anyway near the Antartic Ice Cap.
You can see Penguins in Chile, Argentina, Namibia, South Africa and the Falklands to name just a few places. Oh, I forgot those nice islands near the Equator called the Galapagos.
It is more likely that over fishing is the cause of the decline of the Rockhoppers in the Falklands. If there is no suitable food supply then the population will crash.
An alternative theory could be that this is cyclical variation in population just like Lemmings.
At the moment, it is too early to say.
Anyway, I'm off to the Falklands next month and hope to see some live TUX.
This agreement by for example Verizon to give Police etc 'your data' without a warrant is one reason why IMHO, US Laws SUCK.
There are some countied in the world that have data protection legislation that makes police etc get a proper warrant thus showing justification before companies hand over their copies of your data.
This stops Police 'Fishing Expeditions'.
There are probably lawyers in the US who would delight in challenging any evidence obtained in this method and being unlawful siezure. They could probably sue the company giving the data without a warrant.
A proper warrant just make everything verifiable and unchallengable.
A Lawyer friend of mine said there are two rules of Evidence.
Clean Evidence is unchallengable and should only be challenged if you have nothing else to do.
Dirty Evidence is like dog doo. Shit Happens but should not be alloed to get in the way.
In his opinion, ANY evidence obtained like this is DIRTY and every effort should be made to get is excluded.
There again, IANAL.
Since the 1980's and the adevent of decent CGI Graphics (from companies like Evans & Sutherland) and very sophisticated 6 axis motion systems, bodies like the CAA and FAA have regarded hours in the Simulator as Flying Hours.
Sometimes, I refer to proper flight sims as the ultimate games console.
However there is no way that things like Microsoft Flight Simulator can reproduce the experiences of a real moving full size cockpit when you have a sudden decompression.
IMHO, anything less would not get approved.
OT Disclaimer
I first flew a Phantom F4 IN 1969. An F4 Simulator that is... I was 16 years old and an apprentice engineer.
Six years later I got a Degree in Control Engineering.
It occurs to me that since the ORacle Announcement and the Microsoft-Novell deal, then if Microsoft goes after RedHat with patent suits then it will also have to sue Oracle at the same time as it is essentially the same code.
Now Oracle have far far bigger pockets than RedHat and could probably resist the Microsfot onslaught until a just verdict was reached in court whereas on its own RH would probably go under due to litigation costs.
Or, is there some twist in the US Legal System that would allow M$ to sue RH and not Oracle even though it was just as liable to be in breach of the unnamed patents?
Couldn't this sort of beast be aimed at the Server Market? I have an application that would eat up this sort of config.
Curently we use a Dual Xeon or a Quad Xeon and these get maxed out at times.
Think outside of the Desktop Beige Box.
After a while, the technology will filter down to desktops but the server end is where people will pay top dollar/yen/euro/rouble for a system that really performs.
Only Partially Right
It should be
"The first thing we do is kill all the lawyers who are politicians"
Its Sunday Evening where the poster comes from so he/she has probably had a couple of bevvies inside him/her so a small typo can be forgiven.
The spelling of some of our American cousing leaves much to be desired at times.
No I'm not. The reality is that the Court has not yet reacehed a decision. End of Story.
....
Until it does then the thing is that SCO ALLEDGED that IBM.... etc
After the decision then one of the following will be true.
SCO has proven thet IBM (etc) has used code illegally in Linux
OR
SCO failed in its attempt to prove that IBM
Until the courts make their decision anf after any possible appeals have been lodged and decisions made and appeals results of the appeals made we can not be sure of the REALITY.
Every sane person knows that SCO are barking mad to try this on but until the court makes its decision we can't know for sure.
Think for a moment, about some of the Patents approved in recent year by the USPTO. If M$ can patent a WORD that was in common use for centuries then perceived reality and actual reality are very different things.