If you don't comply with the GPL, than at most, you are violating copyright law.
Following the GPL is optional. It grants you certain rights if you follow it.
You might have those rights anyway, or you might decide it's better to pay the fines for copyright violation, but I don't see how you can be forced to follow the GPL.
That's what I was thinking. Technically, the copyright owner owns the rights to derivative works.
In the sense that you need their permission, yes.
But the original creator does not own all the rights - you will also need the permission of those that created the derivative.
You have to satisfy both of them to publish legally.
First, regarding the so-called sugar battery;
It's really a sodium-ion battery.
They claim a 20% increase in power storage over a lithium-ion, which probably means a 20% decrease in cost, best case.
Sodium-ion batteries have cycle problems - after about 50 charge/discharges, they typically have 50% of their original capacity. They don't even talk about this, so I'm betting they haven't solved the problem.
Second, about lithium-ion batteries;
Lithium isn't rare - you could extract it from sea water for about 3 times what it costs now. Even at that price it wouldn't mean much to lithium-ion batteries, because despite the name, lithium isn't the primary ingredient, nor is it the most costly.
Envia's breakthrough battery is a lot better at 3 times the energy density and half the cost, and it's a lot closer to market.
Anyone can sit down and write down liscense plate numbers.
And in theory you could hire an army of people to stand on every corner and record every license plate they see - and that would be an invasion of privacy.
The problem isn't the scanners. That's how they keep tabs on everybody's movements. The problem is that they think it's OK to keep tabs on everybody's movement.
as far as I understand it, there really isn't a good source of nitrogen on mars (atmosphere 95% CO2, 3% N2 on mars, vs 78% N2 and 20% O2 on earth).
The atmosphere of Mars may only be 3% nitrogen, and only
Easy to get, and unlikely to run out.
With a reactors worth of energy and maybe a tonne of compressor, it's reasonable to liquify and separate it into CO2, Nitrogen, Argon, and water.
My very rough estimates are about 10kWh to produce one kg of liquid nitrogen (about 1m^3 worth of 100kPa air).
A decent sized habitat has maybe 200m^3 of air.
A megawatt power plant, and you could fill that in less than a day.
The first moon landing was watched by an estimated 600 million people.
The Olympic games are watched by an estimated 3.2 billion.
Sure, a lot of people would watch the first manned Mars mission, but the case for "more people watching than watch the Olympics" is still weak.
Think how many SciFi shows have been canceled because they cost too much to produce. Now consider that "too much" is still less than 100 million a year, or about 1.6% of six billion.
No media spectacle in the history of the Earth has garnered 6 billion dollars.
Why should we believe that your mars landing would?
IMO the problem with software patents is that there is no way to know if your software infringes one.
Only #4 "Infringers should avoid liability if they independently arrive at the patented invention." even comes close to addressing the problem.
My suggestion is this;
Any computer built more than 1 year prior to the filing date of a patent, does not infringe that patent, regardless of how it is programmed.
Likewise any software that runs on a computer built more than 1 year prior to the filing date of a patent, does not infringe that patent.
Note that a strong argument can be made this is already true. I think we should lobby for a law that spells it out explicitly.
Makes me wonder why Cree hasn't released a light bulb yet.
They have http://www.cree.com/lighting/products/
Sylvania claims their 100 watt Incandescent A19 Bulb, softwhite, is 1750 Lumens, and frankly, they should know.
Air drag goes up as a fourth power of the speed.
No it doesn't.
Air drag goes up roughly as a second power of speed.
I don't have a problem with China developing a launch capability, but if it bothers you, then pick some other location - Boliviaâ(TM)s Potosi, the Rocky Mountains,
Mass driver tech can accelerate buckets at 5000m/sec^2. Buckets using this hypersonic tech, a 6 km mass driver in a very high place, say Tibet, and we could chuck stuff into orbit at 1/100th the current cost.
Am I missing something, or should we start construction?
the energy density of hydrocarbon fuels is so much higher than that of batteries.
An EV's fuel is electricity and electricity's energy density is so much better than hydrocarbons it's silly.
Batteries are analogous to the fuel tank, and yes, they suck by comparison.
10 kilograms of fuel tank can hold a lot more fuel-energy than 10 kilograms of batteries.
For a fair comparison though, you need to look at the whole system; engine+fuel tank+fuel.
ICE still wins, but not by nearly as much.
Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly. -- Henry Spencer
