Here is a funny experiment - try this at home if you have a dual boot. Under linux mount your windows partition and go to WINDOWS/SYSTEM32. Now run strings on ftp.exe and grep for "Copyright"

strings ftp.exe | grep Copyright -

Supprised? How ironic is it that the windows developers didn't even bother to strip the copyright notice from the code they were ripping off? Would you leave this comment line if you would be ripping off someone's code?

Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.

This is BSD code btw - and it is perfectly legal, as BSD license allows copying without any restrictions. This is why MS generally likes "open source" they can rip off, but abhores GPL. Because they can't use linux community as their free research and development lab they are out to crush it.

On a compleately unrelated note, how cool is the Space Elevator Project? They say it might be ready within next 15-20 years... Which means I will be still alive to see it! Yay!

The sheer stupidity, and cluelessnes of our lawmakers is unbareable at times. Sometimes I just want to cry when I look at how our freedoms are taken away one by one, trampled and thrown away by corrupted idiots in the goverment... But every once in a while someone out there comes up with something good. The bill to ammend DMCA proposed by Rep. Rick Boucher, proves that there are still few politicians out there who have a functional brain and common sense!

It's about time we stop all this copyright craziness. We really need to reafirm the importance of the fair use before it gets wiped from the copyright law for good by RIAA and similar organizations, and we get locked in by evil DRM's and such.

Copyright and patents have their uses but they can easily retard progress and innovation if they are applied to often, and to rigorously. I really hope this bill will pass, and that there will be more such legislation comming in the future.

Today was a grand day for humanity... I'm talking about the SpaceshipOne launch. No one around here seemed to care that much about this, but I was really moved when I was watching the footage on CNN. This is history unveiling in front of my eyes - this moment might as well be the turning point in the history of human race. God, I might not live long enough to see it, but martian colonists might one day look back at SpaceshipOne flight the same way we are looking at Columbus' trip to "india" today.

I'm exagerating - I know. But it's hard for me to contain my excitement. For years now I was saying that the governmentally sponsored space programs suck. They are totally dependent on the whims, and the political agenda of current officials, chronically underfunded in research areas that really matter. Putting to much money into research takes away from the economical and social programs - and if someone finally decides to spend some money on it, it is usually for pointless, unusable defense toys we will never need. The only way for space exploration to move forward is to shift it into the private sector.

Private sponsors have the money, the will, and are crazy enough to try anything. They are also not bound by political agendas, public opinion, or campaign brib^H^H^H^H contributions. Only the private investors and corporate conglomerations have enough freedom to take the risks involved with space exploration. And the possible financial losses involved, do not thretten to directly influence the economy of the whole nation. Finally, only the private sector can possibly bear these tremendous costs, for a minimal gain in the name of a vision and prospects for a better future. Finally only megacorporations have the money and resources to make big bucks on the costly and inefficient space travle.

I've been saying it for years now, and today I saw the first signs of this future. If there will be more projects like this, and this flight will start a new trend we might see some great developments in space exploration real soon. This is history in the making people... Next stop: the moon, then mars and beyond!

Two entries in one day after a long dry spell :) Well, this one is just about a nice little app I just found... I said I hate web interfaces, right? Well, I found myself a nice and compact blogger client app called blogBuddy. This is actually a test post using this app... Let's see if it works!

Wow! I got Gmail!

That was totally unexpected... I haven't even blogged in a while but I still got the invitation! This is really cool. I mean just the fact that gmail adresses are not publically avaliable makes @gmail address that much more awesome :)

On the other hand I'm alergic to any kind of webmail interfaces - I absolutely hate typing in web forms, and web interfaces annoy me to no end... I'm really a mail client person, and currently I am in love with my little Thunderbird. So I dont see myself using gmail that extensively, at least not untill they enable IMAP/POP access or at least publish the protocol for gmail webb apps so someone can build a fweakin t'bird plugin.

Still - this is cool. I'm definitely happy about my invitee :)