This draft standard smooths out Unix Time around the moment of a leap second:

    http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/time/utc-sls/

-paul

See "UTC with Smoothed Leap Seconds (UTC-SLS)"

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/time/utc-sls/

-paul

High-speed rail between cities works in Europe because when you arrive by HS rail you can get from the main station to whereever by light-train, tram, or bus and only have to walk five minutes. High speed rail won't work if you have to hire a car once you get there, or pay for an expensive cab, in order to complete the last leg of your journey, where you wouldn't have had to do so if you had jost drove your car the whole way.

Most of the US does not have high-density high-frequency public transport: meaning you usually have to walk for really long distances and wait a really long time.

http://www.mg.co.za/article/2005-05-27-laugh-it-off-wins-case-against-sab

"T-shirt maker Laugh It Off has won its fight against South African Breweries (SAB) over its right to mock the Carling Black Label brand."

This was quite a widely publicized law suite at the time and set a legal precident.

In the US however you don't have legal precidents. *sigh*

-paul

Sun developed Java for embedded systems, and then further for business systems,
investing enormous amounts of capital to create better technology. This was done
over the period of over a decade. For this they deserve IP protection.

The fact that Google is so closely copying their method means that *whatever*
patents Sun had on the Java VM, could easily be said to be infringed upon.

The details of course will play a part, but on the face of it myself I side
with Oracle. If Google wanted to do Java on the android, they should have
licensed the VM like everyone else, not stolen it.

What Google has done is exactly what the patent system was invented to
protect agaist.

-paul

they point out that they get paid only $10,000 a year, whereas the coal
they mine produces $100,000,000 a year in electricity revenues.

-paul

Image 13 boxes each containing 13 revolvers.

One revolver has one bullet in it.

Now imagine being offered $100,000 to pick a box, and then pick a revolver and then shoot yourself with it.

That 1000:1 odds.

-paul

Check out:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar_thermal_power_stations

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_stations

Now considering that one nuclear power station usually generates 1 to 5 GIGAwatts, and these generate in the order of TENS OF MEGAwatts, it is inconceivable to me how anyone can compare Solar to Nuclear.

The Linux kernel is not a company. Free software projects are a new kind of entity.

The debate is still open about whether it is correct to level "They should..." instructions at this kind of entity.

Possibly "I should..." statements are more appropriate.

-paul

From the article:

"I can't prove this was due to a cosmic ray, or even a hardware error. It could have been some OS bug in my kernel that accidentally did a wild write into my memory in a way that only flipped a single bit. But that'd be a pretty weird bug."

Dude you have a lot of faith.

-paul

You don't know that they aren't.

Look, just like there are incompetant programmers that write bad
code there are incompetant lawyers that badly prosecute or defend
a case, and there are judges who don't get things right either.

You don't know what happened in these individual cases until
you have studied the court records in detail. Furtunately
judgments are usually available online so you can read these
in full. Why don't you select an example of your choosing
and study it?

Anti-patent news media will select the most sensationalist
aspect of the case and portray it unfairly in order to attract
YOU to read it. It doesn't mean the case is indicative of
a bad system.

Slashdot seems to have gone down the road of sensationalising
this subject. The same way that non-tech news forums
sensationalize stem cell research.

The most amazing part is that the most UNtrue posts get the
highest moderation value.

This has now become a forum of people who have collectively
agreed to NOT understand the patent system and support each
other in a voice of a non-cause. It's a totally invalid and
non-sensical rebellion empowered by concensus.

> I'm sure that a team comprised of [...]

well this has already happened, and is continuing to happen.

Have you ever found out anything for yourself in your life
instead of just quoting selected second hand statements of
other people?

-paul

> No. They are NOT. In fact the law specifically PROHIBITS them.

No it does not. It specifically prohibits PURE software patents.
Once again you show you have never read the actual paragraphs in
law, but are prepared to rant about it none-the-less.

> so how on earth [...]

Once again you make it clear that you have never read a patent
in your life - at least not a "software" patent. Once again
you take your little knowledge (of mechanical patents) and
generalize it into things you know nothing about.

It is pretty curious to me why you needed to pay a lawyer
to file a patent when it would have been accepted by the
South African patent system anyway.

The end of all patents is something that, like most of your
giberish, is a purely theoretical subject of no benefit to
discuss.

It all sort of gives a clear picture of the sort of general
personality disorder you seem to have.... living in a dream
world etc., and drawing analogies between the patent system
and apartheid. etc. which is basically bat-shit insane by
anyone's measure.

-paul