Posts by The Badger

LiMo Foundation touts real mobile Linux

Next!

So it's shared source only within the cartel, and you need the upcoming DRM, erm, security framework to deploy applications. Thank you for showing us your Linux "credentials".

Next!

Big Climate's strange 'science'

Big Denial

"Yet, with the notable exception of the extinction of the dinosaurs, it seems life has happily trundled along through it all. We're the living proof."

The chimpanzees would probably be telling each other exactly the same thing if humankind had already taken the opportunity to do away with itself. They'd probably have their own neo-creationist movements, too, but that's a different part of the anti-science peanut gallery.

"At the moment, I don't see that the evidence for anthropogenic climate change is strong enough to wreck our economies to try to change it. But if, over the next 10 or 20 years, the evidence really does come out in favour of these theories, then I have faith in our ability to solve the problem."

Ah yes, we must have "faith" in someone or something - this would presumably be the Bush administration's response to climate change if it were allowed to continue in power for another 10 or 20 years - and while we're procrastinating, let's not stand in the way of that time-honoured City tradition of vibrant trading with ourselves and everyone looking really busy (and making money!), regarding the whole climate vs. economy thing like the zero-sum game it isn't.

"Just like we have successfully dealt with smog in London, rivers flooding, or acid rain."

Yes, we're dealing really well with rivers flooding: consider the relatively minor (on a global scale) mess in various parts of England last summer and the infrastructure issues that brought up. Still, everyone gets their insurance claims in, the floorboards get dried out, and the new kitchens get put in. Problem solved!

And that's only the developed world, but I imagine that Sky News was too busy beaming you live pictures of nothing happening in some flooded housing estate in small town Britain for you to notice that whether or not human activity causes climate change (I'd take the scientific consensus over your conspiracy theories any day), there's plenty of scope for minimising its impact.

Ofgem, MoD attack pricey terror-friendly windmills

@Low flying terrorists are...

IanKRolfe: "Presumably that's because nuclear power stations don't have huge moving flappy blades that confuse radar. They also tend to be inside large secure compounds..."

So that incoming aircraft obviously have to stop at the gate and hover before the guy with the uniform nods and waves them through?

Meet the world's premier open source vendor - Sun

MySQL *is* Open Source

According to MySQL AB's site, MySQL is available under the GPL or a commercial licence, meaning that in the former case, MySQL *is* Free (or open source) Software. As pointed out, "aaaa" should read up on copyleft and Free Software licensing since everybody knows that the GPL qualifies as open source, even if you'll never get RMS to use the term. The GPL is not a "permissive" open source licence, sure, but it's an open source licence nevertheless. Moreover, as also pointed out, if you don't distribute your application (eg. you're running a software-as-service, Web 2.0 kind of operation), you don't need to distribute your own sources, anyway.

However, where it gets weird is on the "MySQL Open Source License" page where they say that even if you bundle their database, your application falls under the GPL. Now, I presume that this is because the official client libraries for MySQL (which you'd probably have to use) are also under the GPL, and so you become affected by the licensing of the libraries, but they're definitely employing smoke and mirrors here since client libraries under any licence wouldn't bind your application to the database system beyond some communications protocol, and I doubt that even the FSF would claim that the situation is another more than mere aggregation.

As for whether the Sun buy-out is a good thing, perhaps the licensing message will be simplified and straightened out as a result: a good thing for potential users. Meanwhile, despite the reputation for mediocrity that MySQL has as a database system, perhaps the upcoming Falcon database engine is worth something as part of Sun's technology toolbox.

Boffins slashed in big-science budget blunder bloodbath

Re: Not like CERN

"Diamond and the SRS up in Daresbury are not one-trick ponies for a small community of particle physicists"

No, but as you say in passing with reference to "spin-offs", if that community of particle physicists (not such a small one, and not purely particle physicists, either) hadn't been "smashing particles together and making new particles", you wouldn't have stuff like Diamond. It'd be more about "banging the rocks together" for all those chemists, biologists and engineers.

And of course, if you want to look for "ways to minimise humanities environmental impact", take a look at the politicians. (Unless you meant to write "humanity's", in which case we could still start with the politicians...)