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Comment: Re:5 weeks = long term? (Score 1) 142

The low dose risk estimates are basically based on that, extrapolated downwards linearly.

This is false. What you are describing is the linear no-threshold model which was proposed by rabid anti-nuke fanatics years ago and rejected by the industry and by regulators alike. The threshold below which radiation levels were considered to be safe has decreased by orders of magnitude as more information was gleaned about health effects of low level radiation. The assumption by the industry has almost always been that adverse health effects magically vanish unless there is scientific proof that they don't.

There has been a battle waged for many years trying to get the nuclear industry and government regulators to accept the linear no-threshold model as the best and safest way to extropolate from high dose health effects to low dose effects.

Comment: Re:Time for the Judges ruling? (Score 1) 475

The 9 copied lines were in addition to re-implementing the APIs.

The author of the 9 lines testified that he copied them into Android after he switched from working at Sun to working at Google. A moral victory for Google but technically it was infringment unless it was de minimus or fair-use.

I think Oracle included the 9 lines in their complaint to demonstrate to the jury that Google's clean-room had been contaminated. The fact that they only found 9 infringing lines out of millions was actually proof that the clean-room was pretty damned good.

IMO the 9 lines demonstrated to the jury that Oracle is run by a bunch of petty pricks.

Comment: Re:Bunch of BUNK! (Score 1) 577

by DrJimbo (#39865689) Attached to: Oracle and the End of Programming As We Know It

That was an arbitration in a different circuit so it does not provide a precendent for this case. That is the problem here which is actually quite ironic. Since everyone has assumed that APIs cannot be copyrighted, no one has raised the issue in court in the 9th circuit for decades so there is no clear precedent from the 9th or from the Supreme Court that applies to the current case.

This is the same BS from BS&F that we got in SCO vs. the world and her dog. They make up outrageous, fanciful, ridiculous claims and there is no precedent because no one was stupid enough to pour millions of dollars into a case base on such total BS before.

Comment: Re:Jury decisions can be appealed (Score 1) 577

by DrJimbo (#39865649) Attached to: Oracle and the End of Programming As We Know It

It is a bit more subtle than that. The higher courts do not rule on issues of fact. They only deal with matters of law. Juries are the opposite, they only deal with facts, not law. It would have been more correct for the grandparent post to have said that jury verdicts cannot be appealed directly. Oracle would have to say that the judge erred on a matter of law that led to the incorrect jury decision.

If that judge had just ruled that APIs cannot be copyrighted as a matter of law then a upper court could directly overturn that decision if they did not beleive it was true in all cases. The way it looks now, whoever loses will try to appeal. While it is possible for an upper court to remand a decision made by a jury, they try to avoid doing that unless there was a very clear and significant error made by the judge in the process that led to the jury verdict.

Comment: You HAVE to be able to get to the back (Score 1) 402

by DrJimbo (#39852809) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Building A Server Rack Into a New Home?

If you aren't then all your geek credentials will be revoked.

Some people have recommended a hinged rack that swings out. I would suggest a rack on wheels. IMO using a rack is not crucial. The only crucial thing is having easy access to all the connections and all the equipment.

Comment: Re:The studios send reel-to-reel films to the troo (Score 1) 650

Right--because it's much better to supply digital media and buy every military base expensive new digital projectors than it is to send them film that they can use on existing equipment with no additional expense.

When I worked with the military 15 years ago they had digital projectors out the wazoo. AFAIK, they did not have or use any 35 millimeter projectors. You may find this hard to believe but the US military is very advanced technically. They actually find it useful to use digital presentations to communicate with the troops.

Comment: It's only a corelation (Score 1) 465

by DrJimbo (#39788913) Attached to: Quantum Experiment Shows Effect Before Cause

In order to even detect this effect you need at least two things:

  1. The experiment needs to be repeated many times.
  2. Alice and Bob must communicate with each other.

Suggesting that Victor do something different depending on whether Alice and Bob detect correlated photons is nonsense because you can only detect the correlation in the statistics of many trials. It makes no sense to say a single event was correlated or uncorrelated. If you could that this would be a form FTL communication which it's not.

Like it or not, our intuition is based on classical mechanics. Human brains are very good at sticking new information into existing pigeon holes. Almost always, when someone is talking about "understanding" entanglement experiments such as this they mean creating a microscopic classic model in their heads that would explain these results. It's been proven mathematical that these classic models don't work.

One recurring problem is that many people (often, but not always people have not learned quantum mechanics) intuitively believe that there must be a classical model behind the results somehow. This is similar to the belief that there is always a logical explanation for a magician's trick. For the trick this intuition is great but for quantum mechanics it is lousy. You have to leave your classical intuition at the door when you enter the world of quantum mechanics. Unfortunately some people start with their erroneous classical intuition and then extrapolate to all sorts of nonsense. Since they are starting from a totally incorrect assumption, they are able to prove just about anything but it is all nonsense.

It's just a correlation. There is no FLT anything here. It is only FTL when you insist on the existence of an underlying classical model and we know that all such classical models are wrong.

Comment: Cyclos explains that they are using inductors (Score 2) 286

by DrJimbo (#39182005) Attached to: AMD's Piledriver To Hit 4GHz+ With Resonant Clock Mesh

link

Cyclos resonant clock mesh technology employs on-chip inductors to create an electric pendulum, or "tank circuit", formed by the large capacitance of the clock mesh in parallel with the Cyclos inductors. The Cyclos inductors and clock control circuits "recycle" the clock power instead of dissipating it on every clock cycle like in a clock tree implementation, which results in a reduction in total IC power consumption of up to 10%.

Inductors save power because unlike most other circuit elements, inductors are able to store energy in a magnetic field so it can be used later on. This is part of how switching power supplies get their efficiency.

Comment: Re:... that content makers demand. (Score 1) 412

by DrJimbo (#39143331) Attached to: Proposed Video Copy Protection Scheme For HTML5 Raises W3C Ire

We can't stop copyright infringement with DRM; it's not theoretically possible; it is theoretically impossible.

The entire point of DRM is that, eventually, the encoded bits become decoded, and therefore are available for sniffing, at some point. That is true whether or not the actual DRM scheme itself is broken, which has happened (so far as I know) 100% of the times it has been attempted. If nothing else, then you can simply record the signal produced by your display or your speakers.

Big content knows this. That is why they purchased the DMCA. They know DRM doesn't work so they bought a law that makes breaking DRM illegal.

Comment: Re:Private cloud (Score 2) 141

by DrJimbo (#39121371) Attached to: Why Corporate Cloud Storage Doesn't Add Up

[...] what makes a cloud and virtualization different is the provider, cloud is 3rd party: amazon, etc...

Marten Mickos (CEO of MySQL for 7 years) disagrees with you: Keynote at Cloud Expo Europe - Clouds Are All About APIs..

His new product provides in-house cloud services. If you listen you his talk you will understand why in-house clouds are very different from virtualization. You can buy co-hosted virtualized servers. They are different from cloud services. The same distinction exists when these services are provided in-house.

Comment: Re:Let's see.... (Score 1) 442

Other than you, who said anything about a conspiracy?

The person he was responding to had said:

$40 billion a year is chump change compared to the money the Global Warming industry will get if they manage to push their "tax all carbon/energy" treaties and regulations. They are looking at well over one TRILLION dollars annually.

The fictitious conspiracy was already labeled as the Global Warming industry. The idea is that there is a group of people (the conspiracy) who will make so much money from slowing down global warming that they made up this whole global warming scam and have bribed or duped thousands of scientists to risk their careers to fudge their research so it supports the idea of AGW.

I guess you are correct after all. It is not a conspiracy, it is a paranoid delusion. Thanks for the heads up.

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