The part of the GPL that is violated is:... You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein....
While you can argue that terminating a "subscription" is not a restriction on rights. This is just wrong. If you get the code, you are free to do anything with it you want under the GPL. Except in this case, if you actually re-distribute the code, you are penalized for availing yourself of your rights.
Which part of "granted therein" do you fail to understand ?
The guy says: "you're allowed to redistribute it under the GPL as much as you like, simply, if you do so, you won't get any updates or new versions from us." This is NOT a restrictions on rights granted in the GPL. This is a restriction on rights granted by Sveasoft.
Where does the GPL say that if you obtain the software once, you're entitled to obtain any new versions of it as long as you like ?
Now he may have behaved like an utter asshole in other respects, but this is another debate. The point is that there is no GPL violation here.
If the FSF stated that their subscription policy was *not* a violation, they are wrong.
The service agreement puts restrictions on the GPL. It's not allowed to do that
It certainly doesn't. You're still free to redistribute as much as you like. Just as they are free NOT to distribute any update or new code to you afterwards.
Nowhere does the GPL state that you must redistribute your code to everybody. It simply says that if you distribute it to someone, even at a price (provided the source is included), you must allow them to redistribute it under the GPL - which is the case with that model. The GPL does not say that you are entitled to any further improvement or additional support for life !
You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License."
Now, Sveasoft's service agreement says that if a subscriber exercises their right to distribute the source, as given by the GPL, their subscription will be terminated. Hence, the "further restrictions" which "ask you to surrender the rights" given by the GPL.
No, they don't. The restrictions in that case are not on the "rights granted therein". They are on other rights, granted by Sveasoft, so obtain support and updates.
Sveasoft certainly doesn't violate anything with this business model. However their subsequent actions (if you read the thread) were much more suspicious, not wrt the GPL, but wrt general contract law (changing the terms of a subscription agreement in the middle of the subscription period ???).
Now you or I(or better yet, 49 of our closest friends) may be willing to pay $49 to download it then distribute it, but what happens if the company decides it wants to make $100,000 off the modifications.
They can. However, the first company who will buy a subscription will then redistribute the thing under a similar scheme for $10000 as they are allowed to, even though it means forsaking their rights to any future update. If they only have 10 clients, they break even, and they probably will have many more; at any rate nobody would buy from the original company any more.
So the original company is fscked: if you set too high a price, you only get to sell once. You wrote $100,000, but the real red line is "any price at which the user thinks it might be worth the hassle getting it from a third party reseller instead of getting it directly from the original company". Which is much lower than $100,000.
All of this seems to be perfectly valid GPL-wise. And I'm not even sure it is really a bad thing. After all, the code is GPLed, it can be forked, therefore it can be used by the community - which was the whole point of the GPL. Maybe clever licensing like this could be the "magical wand" that would allow companies to make money with GPL software. This would benefit everybody.
The point is this : The GPL doesn't force you to redistribute the code, it only says that if you redistribute, then you must redistribute under the GPL - and with source. You are explicitly allowed to charge for this. In this case, the important part is that the GPL allows you to choose who you redistribute the code to.
So essentially they're saying: "We redistribute the program, with source, only to those who give us money. You're perfectly free to redistribute it with source, etc. under the GPL, as much as you like; simply, if you do so, then we won't send you updates or anything in the future. You're out."
The GPL was probably written thinking that, if everybody can redistribute, no one would have an incentive to charge excess amounts of money, because people could get it from other sources for cheaper or for free.
The problem comes when the software considered is supposed to be frequently updated. In this case, this specific licensing scheme means that anyone who redistributes the source will not be eligible to obtain any update. For "normal" GPL software, if a company/organisation/individual (say, Linus) did this, the community would respond with a fork.
In this case, it is still theoretically possible to fork (which is a defining criterion of correct open source licensing), but it is likely that most users will cough up the $$ to this company instead of trusting a community effort.
The question is: is this really a hole in the GPL that should be fixed, or is this a Good Thing that might prove to businesses everywhere that you can release GPL software (which benefits the community - hey, that was the point of the GPL, right ?) and make money on the software itself ?
Let's not forget that popular mindset in Europe right now appears to be that "Zionist Isreal crushing Palestinians is a very bad thing,"
The European mindset (especially in France, which has experience of invasion both as a victim and a culprit) is that when a country invades another one, and when the invaded country replies with terrorism, well guess what, the invader should find a way to get out instead of installing colons in the conquered lands.
This is something we learnt the hard and painful way in Algeria.
Mind you, this is exactly what the US kept telling us (and rightly so) during the Algerian war, when we were using methods that were arguably much worse than anything Israel ever did, but quite reminiscent of Abu Ghraib...
But that was back in those distant days when America was against colonialism.
and, less formally, "The US rails against 'religious extremists' (Muslims) while a good number of their people (fundamentalist Christians) seem to be equally as extreme."
What planet are you living in ? The mindset in Europe is that the US rails muslim extremism, then does every fscking thing they can to support and encourage it, and make the Al Qaeda lunatics look like the heroes of the Muslim resistance they claim they are !
We're not saying Bush = Ben Laden. We're saying that Bush and the band of (christian or jewish) fundamentalists that manipulate him have been the best thing that could ever happen to Ben Laden.
Please, get rid of that buffoon and make the world a safer place.
If this license is really what it seems to be, this looks like the perfect business opportunity:
"You can tweak WinCE all you like, correcting its bug, adding functionality, and all that, and you can even SELL the result - you just have to pay that $995 license first !"
Only many more nations had interests at stake then,
Interests ? In Kosovo ?
Hell, the interest of the Europeans was simple enough: they did not want to see a Bosnian-like bloodbath again !
Mind you, the situation has little to do with Iraq or Afghanistan, because Serbia was not invaded by anyone. Milosevic was driven out of power a few months later, by a popular revolution, after he tried to rig the elections.
Thomas Miconi
Re:Sports writer says: ... most powerful movie ...
on
Fahrenheit 9/11 Discussion
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
One element has taken pro-active and solid steps for our nations security
Like convincing a billion moslems that the BS Al Qaeda tells them is true: "Americans want to invade us ! Kill them all before they kill you !"
This man and the lunatics that manipulate him have turned an unprecedented worldwide wave of support for the US (just after 9/11 and even during the war in Afghanistan, hell, even the FRENCH were in it !) into a global backlash of anti-americanism.
Yeah, he got rid of Saddam. Great. Even in the most wildly optimistic scenario (Iraq is stabilised, foreign terrorism and local resistance are halted, a democratic government emerges, Iraqis do not vote for an Iran-like theocracy), it will take decades before Iraqis can lead an almost normal life.
In the meantime, Al Qaeda expanded its base (no pun intended) twentyfold without doing anything.
(I know, you were trolling. But some people do believe what you said)
The above poster has: [] Not read the article [] Not understood the article [] Not read the commentsposted by other fellow/.ers [] Tried to hijack someone else's joke without understanding it [x] All of the above
Graphism on the PC is not about finding ad hoc tricks to make antiquated hardware do simple stuff. It is about finding new methods for the generation of images and animations that often bring a real scientific content (in rendering, physics simulation, or even evolutionary computing !)
Hell, ever read the proceedings of any SIGGRAPH conference ?
But one must consider, given that the Supremes knew full well that the officer could simply have arrested Hibble had he any reason to believe that circumstances warranted it, why not simply remind the state of that power and suggest that in the future rather than creating a new class of crime, refusing to provide one's name, they rely on the established principles governing arrest with probable cause?
Because the Supreme Court is not supposed to tell states how they should write their laws. The Supreme Court is supposed to tell whether or not a given law is unconstitutional.
In this case, the judges simply stated that the law did not infringe on the constitution.
This ruling is a non-event. As you noticed, it doesn't change anything in the general understanding of the law. It explicitly requires a reasonable suspicion to be present if an arrest is to be made.
The question was: "is the Nevada law unconstitutional ?" The answer is : "No". The rest is just ususal/. bragging.
Government agencies can pass all the laws they want, but making it illegal to say something didn't happen isn't going to convince me or anyone else that it did, in fact, happen.
But it will make it harder for you to spread your bs and infect more minds around you, thus preventing or at least delaying the emergence of a new Nazi regime.
Nazism, racism and antisemitism are seen as mental disease that must be treated by prophylactic measures. Curbing hate speech is a kind of isolation procedure that stifles the spreading of the plague.
Then they aren't equal, because the last 9 * 2 would be 18.
The point of the "~" sign is precisely to tell you that there is NO "last 9".
Hell, you don't even have to go through all this:
1 / 3 = 0.333~
0.333~ * 3 = 0.999~
Therefore, 0.999~ = 1
End of the discussion. You don't even have to play with the proper definition of limits (for any e > 0, there is an n such that for any m > n, blah blah blah).
Actually the French made the most impressive tank ever (the Leclerc).
A swift, powerful, costly masterpiece of technology. The most reliable defence against what was then regarded as the main threat for France and Western Europe: a Soviet invasion.
Unfortunately the production began two years after the Berlin Wall fell.
Now the few Leclerc tanks that have actually been produced and sold gather dust in French territories or in the Arab emirates.
Typical French: "Toujours en retard d'une guerre" (always one war backwards).
... strike me as shining examples of why Universal Suffrage doesn't work
"I don't like the leader massively elected, then re-elected by a historic majority of voters. Ergo democracy doesn't work and our Premier is a nazi." The Red Army Fraction and the Red Brigades had more or less the same line of reasoning.
Only simple stuff like: "Who are the leaders of the 3 main parties?", "Who is the Constituional head of state?"
I'm sure the dominant classes of Britain would wholeheartedly agree with you. Who do you think would be more likely to fail at such a test, the rich or the poor ?
Though I could swear some music these days come from/dev/urandom
[Journalist] So, Thom, how could you explain the change in your musical orientation, from visionary rock music to, hm, interesting noise engineering ? Any new influences ?
[Thom Yorke] Well actually one day we were completely stoned in the studio and then one of the guys in the recording team gave us a book by this Donald Knot or Knut guy with a chapter about Random Penetrators or something...
Bush says "We're gonna fight terrorism"; invades Afghanistan to overthrow Talebans (OK, good), then all of a sudden invades Iraq, thus sending more recruits to Osama than any ad campaign, and equates all dissenters with friends of terrorism / tyranny / whatever. WTF ?
Bush says: "We must make peace in the Middle East"; says that terrorism is bad and the Hamas freaks should be stopped (OK, good), then all of a sudden pats Ariel Sharon's back and calls him a "man of peace". WTF ?
Bush says: "Every American must have broadband by 2007". Expect him to provide federal funding for optic-fibering the whole country (OK, good), then introduce laws that turn the Internet into a slightly more controlled version of the Sing Sing prison.
Well, at least this will happen if you Americans really hate the rest of the world enough to inflict this guy upon us for another four years...
...he basically admits that abiognesis is required involving some VERY unlikely chemical combinations, before evolution can get started
The Blind Watchmaker was written in the 70s.
You really want to read Stuart Kauffman's "The Origins of Order" (or more probably the layman-oriented version, "At Home in the Universe"). John Maynard Kaynes and Eors Szathmary's "The Major Transitions in Evolution" is also recommended for a less theoretical expose.
Basic point: chemistry is not passive. Self-reproducing chemical sets are easier to generate than one might think. Defining the probability of abiogenesis by multiplying the probabilities of each component in a modern RNA molecule or in a protein is meaningless.
I mean, maybe Copernicus... no... or Galileo... no... Darwin... maybe, but I'd really say that each of those would be mere stepping stones on the way towards the discovery of exobiology.
Newton told us that the universe was not a fancy show packed up with special effects by a divine director, but the result of a few simple laws expressable in simple mathematical terms.
Einstein told us that time (I mean, hell, time !) depends on how you move.
Don't get me started about the Quantum bunch - Bohr, Heisenberg, Schroedinger, De Broglie and Dirac.
Life on Mars ? Sure, that's scientifically important. But there are things much deeper than that.
And even as far as Biology is concerned, you forgot Pasteur.
Slashdot Mirror
Shouldn't the courts just go after the copyright violators
/. crowd squeals at these evil megacorporations who smite down the little guy.
In theory yes. According to El Reg, that's what the Italian judges said should be done.
But then the
The "me want all free" (as in free beer) mentality is the one thing that prevents the community from being heard by people in charge.
Thomas Miconi
The part of the GPL that is violated is: ... You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. ...
While you can argue that terminating a "subscription" is not a restriction on rights. This is just wrong. If you get the code, you are free to do anything with it you want under the GPL. Except in this case, if you actually re-distribute the code, you are penalized for availing yourself of your rights.
Which part of "granted therein" do you fail to understand ?
The guy says: "you're allowed to redistribute it under the GPL as much as you like, simply, if you do so, you won't get any updates or new versions from us." This is NOT a restrictions on rights granted in the GPL. This is a restriction on rights granted by Sveasoft.
Where does the GPL say that if you obtain the software once, you're entitled to obtain any new versions of it as long as you like ?
Now he may have behaved like an utter asshole in other respects, but this is another debate. The point is that there is no GPL violation here.
If the FSF stated that their subscription policy was *not* a violation, they are wrong.
Hm. Right.
Thomas Miconi
The service agreement puts restrictions on the GPL. It's not allowed to do that
It certainly doesn't. You're still free to redistribute as much as you like. Just as they are free NOT to distribute any update or new code to you afterwards.
Nowhere does the GPL state that you must redistribute your code to everybody. It simply says that if you distribute it to someone, even at a price (provided the source is included), you must allow them to redistribute it under the GPL - which is the case with that model. The GPL does not say that you are entitled to any further improvement or additional support for life !
You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License."
Now, Sveasoft's service agreement says that if a subscriber exercises their right to distribute the source, as given by the GPL, their subscription will be terminated. Hence, the "further restrictions" which "ask you to surrender the rights" given by the GPL.
No, they don't. The restrictions in that case are not on the "rights granted therein". They are on other rights, granted by Sveasoft, so obtain support and updates.
Sveasoft certainly doesn't violate anything with this business model. However their subsequent actions (if you read the thread) were much more suspicious, not wrt the GPL, but wrt general contract law (changing the terms of a subscription agreement in the middle of the subscription period ???).
Thomas Miconi
Now you or I(or better yet, 49 of our closest friends) may be willing to pay $49 to download it then distribute it, but what happens if the company decides it wants to make $100,000 off the modifications.
They can. However, the first company who will buy a subscription will then redistribute the thing under a similar scheme for $10000 as they are allowed to, even though it means forsaking their rights to any future update. If they only have 10 clients, they break even, and they probably will have many more; at any rate nobody would buy from the original company any more.
So the original company is fscked: if you set too high a price, you only get to sell once. You wrote $100,000, but the real red line is "any price at which the user thinks it might be worth the hassle getting it from a third party reseller instead of getting it directly from the original company". Which is much lower than $100,000.
All of this seems to be perfectly valid GPL-wise. And I'm not even sure it is really a bad thing. After all, the code is GPLed, it can be forked, therefore it can be used by the community - which was the whole point of the GPL. Maybe clever licensing like this could be the "magical wand" that would allow companies to make money with GPL software. This would benefit everybody.
Thomas Miconi
This is a perfectly valid application of the GPL.
The point is this : The GPL doesn't force you to redistribute the code, it only says that if you redistribute, then you must redistribute under the GPL - and with source. You are explicitly allowed to charge for this. In this case, the important part is that the GPL allows you to choose who you redistribute the code to.
So essentially they're saying: "We redistribute the program, with source, only to those who give us money. You're perfectly free to redistribute it with source, etc. under the GPL, as much as you like; simply, if you do so, then we won't send you updates or anything in the future. You're out."
The GPL was probably written thinking that, if everybody can redistribute, no one would have an incentive to charge excess amounts of money, because people could get it from other sources for cheaper or for free.
The problem comes when the software considered is supposed to be frequently updated. In this case, this specific licensing scheme means that anyone who redistributes the source will not be eligible to obtain any update. For "normal" GPL software, if a company/organisation/individual (say, Linus) did this, the community would respond with a fork.
In this case, it is still theoretically possible to fork (which is a defining criterion of correct open source licensing), but it is likely that most users will cough up the $$ to this company instead of trusting a community effort.
The question is: is this really a hole in the GPL that should be fixed, or is this a Good Thing that might prove to businesses everywhere that you can release GPL software (which benefits the community - hey, that was the point of the GPL, right ?) and make money on the software itself ?
Thomas Miconi
Let's not forget that popular mindset in Europe right now appears to be that "Zionist Isreal crushing Palestinians is a very bad thing,"
The European mindset (especially in France, which has experience of invasion both as a victim and a culprit) is that when a country invades another one, and when the invaded country replies with terrorism, well guess what, the invader should find a way to get out instead of installing colons in the conquered lands.
This is something we learnt the hard and painful way in Algeria.
Mind you, this is exactly what the US kept telling us (and rightly so) during the Algerian war, when we were using methods that were arguably much worse than anything Israel ever did, but quite reminiscent of Abu Ghraib...
But that was back in those distant days when America was against colonialism.
and, less formally, "The US rails against 'religious extremists' (Muslims) while a good number of their people (fundamentalist Christians) seem to be equally as extreme."
What planet are you living in ? The mindset in Europe is that the US rails muslim extremism, then does every fscking thing they can to support and encourage it, and make the Al Qaeda lunatics look like the heroes of the Muslim resistance they claim they are !
We're not saying Bush = Ben Laden. We're saying that Bush and the band of (christian or jewish) fundamentalists that manipulate him have been the best thing that could ever happen to Ben Laden.
Please, get rid of that buffoon and make the world a safer place.
Thomas Miconi
If this license is really what it seems to be, this looks like the perfect business opportunity:
"You can tweak WinCE all you like, correcting its bug, adding functionality, and all that, and you can even SELL the result - you just have to pay that $995 license first !"
If that's it, great move.
Thomas Miconi
Only many more nations had interests at stake then,
Interests ? In Kosovo ?
Hell, the interest of the Europeans was simple enough: they did not want to see a Bosnian-like bloodbath again !
Mind you, the situation has little to do with Iraq or Afghanistan, because Serbia was not invaded by anyone. Milosevic was driven out of power a few months later, by a popular revolution, after he tried to rig the elections.
Thomas Miconi
One element has taken pro-active and solid steps for our nations security
Like convincing a billion moslems that the BS Al Qaeda tells them is true: "Americans want to invade us ! Kill them all before they kill you !"
This man and the lunatics that manipulate him have turned an unprecedented worldwide wave of support for the US (just after 9/11 and even during the war in Afghanistan, hell, even the FRENCH were in it !) into a global backlash of anti-americanism.
Yeah, he got rid of Saddam. Great. Even in the most wildly optimistic scenario (Iraq is stabilised, foreign terrorism and local resistance are halted, a democratic government emerges, Iraqis do not vote for an Iran-like theocracy), it will take decades before Iraqis can lead an almost normal life.
In the meantime, Al Qaeda expanded its base (no pun intended) twentyfold without doing anything.
(I know, you were trolling. But some people do believe what you said)
Thomas Miconi
The above poster has: /.ers
[] Not read the article
[] Not understood the article
[] Not read the commentsposted by other fellow
[] Tried to hijack someone else's joke without understanding it
[x] All of the above
Thomas Miconi
Graphism on the PC is not about finding ad hoc tricks to make antiquated hardware do simple stuff. It is about finding new methods for the generation of images and animations that often bring a real scientific content (in rendering, physics simulation, or even evolutionary computing !)
Hell, ever read the proceedings of any SIGGRAPH conference ?
Thomas Miconi
But one must consider, given that the Supremes knew full well that the officer could simply have arrested Hibble had he any reason to believe that circumstances warranted it, why not simply remind the state of that power and suggest that in the future rather than creating a new class of crime, refusing to provide one's name, they rely on the established principles governing arrest with probable cause?
/. bragging.
Because the Supreme Court is not supposed to tell states how they should write their laws. The Supreme Court is supposed to tell whether or not a given law is unconstitutional.
In this case, the judges simply stated that the law did not infringe on the constitution.
This ruling is a non-event. As you noticed, it doesn't change anything in the general understanding of the law. It explicitly requires a reasonable suspicion to be present if an arrest is to be made.
The question was: "is the Nevada law unconstitutional ?" The answer is : "No". The rest is just ususal
Thomas Miconi
Government agencies can pass all the laws they want, but making it illegal to say something didn't happen isn't going to convince me or anyone else that it did, in fact, happen.
But it will make it harder for you to spread your bs and infect more minds around you, thus preventing or at least delaying the emergence of a new Nazi regime.
Nazism, racism and antisemitism are seen as mental disease that must be treated by prophylactic measures. Curbing hate speech is a kind of isolation procedure that stifles the spreading of the plague.
Thomas Miconi
Then they aren't equal, because the last 9 * 2 would be 18.
The point of the "~" sign is precisely to tell you that there is NO "last 9".
Hell, you don't even have to go through all this:
1 / 3 = 0.333~
0.333~ * 3 = 0.999~
Therefore, 0.999~ = 1
End of the discussion. You don't even have to play with the proper definition of limits (for any e > 0, there is an n such that for any m > n, blah blah blah).
Thomas Miconi
Actually the French made the most impressive tank ever (the Leclerc).
A swift, powerful, costly masterpiece of technology. The most reliable defence against what was then regarded as the main threat for France and Western Europe: a Soviet invasion.
Unfortunately the production began two years after the Berlin Wall fell.
Now the few Leclerc tanks that have actually been produced and sold gather dust in French territories or in the Arab emirates.
Typical French: "Toujours en retard d'une guerre" (always one war backwards).
Thomas Miconi
I've never understood why the Open Source community is so quick to praise Sun
...
Gee, I wonder
Hell, except maybe IBM, no single company has done more for the open source movement than Sun !
Thomas Miconi
... strike me as shining examples of why Universal Suffrage doesn't work
"I don't like the leader massively elected, then re-elected by a historic majority of voters. Ergo democracy doesn't work and our Premier is a nazi." The Red Army Fraction and the Red Brigades had more or less the same line of reasoning.
Only simple stuff like: "Who are the leaders of the 3 main parties?", "Who is the Constituional head of state?"
I'm sure the dominant classes of Britain would wholeheartedly agree with you. Who do you think would be more likely to fail at such a test, the rich or the poor ?
Thomas Miconi
Though I could swear some music these days come from /dev/urandom
[Journalist] So, Thom, how could you explain the change in your musical orientation, from visionary rock music to, hm, interesting noise engineering ? Any new influences ?
[Thom Yorke] Well actually one day we were completely stoned in the studio and then one of the guys in the recording team gave us a book by this Donald Knot or Knut guy with a chapter about Random Penetrators or something...
Thomas Miconi
this is exactly how Compaq made a name for themselves by reverse engineering the IBM PC, thus creating the Wintel based PC industry.
/.ers are too young to have ever played with a PC1512... (aaah, nostalgia :-)
Uuuh...
Ever heard about Amstrad ? They created the MS-Intel industry by producing the first cheap IBM PC clone - and using MSDos on it.
Of course, most
Thomas Miconi
If part of your plan involves a "reality TV show"...
"If you want Ivan to stay in the capsule, call 04321. If you want Boris to stay, call 01234..."
Hmmm, sorry Boris, nothing personal - clic, fizzz, voila, Mars' first organic satellite !
Thomas Miconi
Well at least this would be one government study that would be guaranteed to reap an international research prize :-)
I mean, we really needed an IgNobel prize for human ethology, didn't we ?
Thomas Miconi
You miss the point.
What the courts say is "given current laws, you can / can't do that".
If a government does not like the current state of the law, well, of course they change it ! That's part of their job !
Given this, the rest of your comment amounts essentially to "I'm not allowed to get everything I want for free ergo we live under a dictatorship."
Thomas Miconi
It's a bit more complicated than that.
Bush says "We're gonna fight terrorism"; invades Afghanistan to overthrow Talebans (OK, good), then all of a sudden invades Iraq, thus sending more recruits to Osama than any ad campaign, and equates all dissenters with friends of terrorism / tyranny / whatever. WTF ?
Bush says: "We must make peace in the Middle East"; says that terrorism is bad and the Hamas freaks should be stopped (OK, good), then all of a sudden pats Ariel Sharon's back and calls him a "man of peace". WTF ?
Bush says: "Every American must have broadband by 2007". Expect him to provide federal funding for optic-fibering the whole country (OK, good), then introduce laws that turn the Internet into a slightly more controlled version of the Sing Sing prison.
Well, at least this will happen if you Americans really hate the rest of the world enough to inflict this guy upon us for another four years...
Thomas Miconi
...he basically admits that abiognesis is required involving some VERY unlikely chemical combinations, before evolution can get started
The Blind Watchmaker was written in the 70s.
You really want to read Stuart Kauffman's "The Origins of Order" (or more probably the layman-oriented version, "At Home in the Universe"). John Maynard Kaynes and Eors Szathmary's "The Major Transitions in Evolution" is also recommended for a less theoretical expose.
Basic point: chemistry is not passive. Self-reproducing chemical sets are easier to generate than one might think. Defining the probability of abiogenesis by multiplying the probabilities of each component in a modern RNA molecule or in a protein is meaningless.
Thomas Miconi
I mean, maybe Copernicus... no... or Galileo... no... Darwin... maybe, but I'd really say that each of those would be mere stepping stones on the way towards the discovery of exobiology.
Newton told us that the universe was not a fancy show packed up with special effects by a divine director, but the result of a few simple laws expressable in simple mathematical terms.
Einstein told us that time (I mean, hell, time !) depends on how you move.
Don't get me started about the Quantum bunch - Bohr, Heisenberg, Schroedinger, De Broglie and Dirac.
Life on Mars ? Sure, that's scientifically important. But there are things much deeper than that.
And even as far as Biology is concerned, you forgot Pasteur.
Thomas Miconi