GNU/Linux already allows proprietary userspace programs. To avoid any doubt on this point, the licence file for the kernel explicitly states that a program does not become a derived work merely by using normal system calls. Neither GCC nor Glibc prevent proprietary programs from being compiled and executed.

Kernel drivers are supposed to be GPL, but manufacturers are already making money on the hardware, and even on fully-closed platforms would not usually make any extra money from the drivers. In most cases I can see no good reason why the driver needs to be protected with a propietary licence, but even if it did then there are ways of achieving that which have historically been tolerated and (in some cases at least) are arguably legal.

True, but I strongly suspect the comment I replied to was referring to Linux rather than LynxOS.

(Not that the vendors of LynxOS appear to have anything against military use. It is mostly non-OSD-compliant freeware that tends to have field-of-use restrictions, as opposed to software that is fully propietary or fully Open Source.)

Indeed, and for good reason. There are almost limitless ways in which a software author might want to discriminate against fields of use, and no prospect of achieving global consensus on what should or should not be allowed. One of the key benefits of Open Source is that you don't have to read the licence of every single package you install to find out whether it is safe to use. The most practicable way to achieve this is to prohibit restrictions on what you can use the software for.

No, and if there were then it would not be considered Open Source (clause 6 of the OSD, 'No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor').

Absolutely it is. It just happens to be safer than the current alternatives, and a lot safer than going back to the stone age and doing without power.

Anyone who really cares about safety (or indeed the environment) should be focussed on one thing only: eliminating coal as a source of energy. Until that happens, all of this scaremongering is just a distraction.

Better would be to use it in a fast neutron reactor, at which point the so-called waste becomes fuel.

(Current reactors only used about 1% of the available energy. We can certainly improve on the current storage arrangements, but burying it permanently would be very wasteful.)

Take a look at the last paragraph of that article:

Also that was in December 2012 at the peak of their losses, when they had reason to start worrying about how long the money would last. Up to the point where Nokia signed up with Microsoft in early 2011 they had been making a fairly healthy profit, so had no urgent need for the cash they were sitting on and certainly weren't desperate for more.

They might have been blinded by the billions of dollars Microsoft gave them, right when Nokia was in serious trouble and desperate for cash...

They weren't desperate for cash. They still have a fair amount in the bank now, despite some eye-watering losses in the last couple of years.

(Prior to the 'burning platform' memo they were concerned about a gradual long-term decline in smartphone market share. Quite why their CEO would choose to turn that into a steep short-term decline I don't know, but market share was the issue they were trying to address. The payments from Microsoft may look large as a subsidy per phone, but that is only because Nokia smartphone sales have shrunk to a small fraction of what they previously were. If WP had been a success then the platform support payments would not be nearly as significant.)

In the sense that few people want to buy their phones that's certainly true, but it isn't through lack of trying: Nokia has spent a huge amount on marketing to little effect.

Apple have never had more than about 20% market share, and don't forget that Microsoft was in the smartphone business five years before Apple and seven years before Google. They once had a fairly respectable market share themselves, and their control of the PC market to use as leverage, so I really don't think that Microsoft's failure in the smartphone market has anything to do with lack of opportunity.

Dubious if the platform is incompatible, locks you into Microsoft, and brings down Nokia as it implodes leaving most of the hardware market in the hands of two manufacturers (Samsung and Apple).

Besides, dominance by Android isn't necessarily bad for competition, because it provides compatibility without being fully controlled by one company (not even by Google - it's too easy to fork). It would be better for consumers if Nokia released some Android phones in order to provide real competition to Samsung. Unfortunately they seem more interested in promoting the interests of Microsoft than ensuring their own survival.

If you follow that line of reasoning then you are left with a choice between declaring large parts of the world uninhabitable due to background radiation (and banning air travel), or treating natural and artificial exposure differently even when both are elective.

Japan, as it happens, has a relatively low natural background level under normal circumstances. Doubling it sounds pretty bad but is actually no worse than the average for the USA. Cornwall in England is about five times higher: should we evacuate, or is it OK because it is natural?

There is a strip of land that was downwind of the reactors at the time of the accident with levels that few if any places on Earth would match from natural sources. Avoiding long-term exposure at those levels is sensible; panicking about a fractional increase over the background level is not.

Read what I actually said in my post, then consider the fact that whereas 5-10% wind or solar PV can be equated to taking a handful of coal/gas/nuclear plants offline for maintenance, 50-100% is an entirely different proposition.

Yes you can use gas for backup, if you don't mind using fossil fuels and having a very large amount of spare generating capacity.

No you can't solve the problem with hydroelectric power (except for a few highly-favourable locations like Norway) due to lack of suitable sites.

I really hope that we solve these problems someday, but fear it is wishful thinking to imagine that we can do so now.

The Internet wouldn't be economically viable if you applied that rule equally to everyone, because no company could risk the liability of providing any form of large-scale transit service.

You could set some arbitrary dividing line somewhere on the scale from 'householder' to 'multinational telecoms corporation', but why should they have greater protection under the law when they provide a service to me, than I have providing a service to my family?

(Not counting the obvious answer that they have more money to pay lobbyists ...)

You have the same basic issue of keeping supply and demand in balance, true, but that doesn't mean that the problems are comparably serious or equally tractable.

The two big problems with wind and solar PV are that (a) you have no control over when you can generate electricity and (b) the variations are correlated over large geographic areas. To work round that you either need a very large amount of storage capacity (infeasibly large in most locations using current technology), or backup from a dispatchable generating technology (probably gas - not as bad as coal, but still not sustainable).

Solve the storage problem then wind and PV become much more interesting. Otherwise they may still make sense as a small percentage of the mix but they cannot be considered scalable.

Solar thermal goes some way towards solving the diurnal problem, but not the seasonal problem. Hydro is great because you can use it for storage, but most of the viable sites are already in use. Geothermal power is good for baseload, but has geographical constraints and isn't as green as you might think. That leaves nuclear power, or if that is considered unacceptable for political reasons, fossil fuels (as we are currently seeing in Germany).

At least those who describe food as 'organic' are usually correct, which is more than can be said for misapplication of the term 'organic salt'.

Not only that, but what really makes the difference is the ability to measure the contribution from each source separately. If you had to make a comparison with the total natural background level then in this instance (measured from the far side of the Pacific) the excess would be tiny, whereas if you look specifically for Iodine-131 (for example) then natural levels are so low that anything you add stands out clearly.

It's great that we can measure with such accuracy, but the figures are unfortunately very easy to misrepresent. When told that something is ten times higher than the natural background level you want to be very clear as to precisely what has been counted as part of the background.