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Read it again. The Code of Hammurabi refers many times to contracts, which were indeed a major part of Babylonian business. Major transactions would be written up in contracts. If any dispute arose later, judges (up to and including the king) would decide who was right and who was wrong. The Code itself was a set of predetermined judgments for common violations such as polygamy, fraud, and deceit. It also has a set of criminal punishments for immediate justice, as well, and that's what's more widely known.

There are multiple processes available to kill this patent (reexamination, post-grant review, inter partes review). However, they are all fairly expensive.

Normally, a patent application is published 18 months after filing, well before the patent is granted. Why do I never read here about attacking silly patents when they are still an application?

About this patent: when I saw the slashdot summary, I hoped that it was a bit exaggerated and that the patent claims actually were much more narrow. But no, the essential part of claim 1 is actually:

A computer-implemented method for formatting a range of cells according to a spectrum of cell formats, .... for each respective value between the minimum value and the maximum value, causing a processor to apply, to the cells of each respective value, a respective cell format ....

In plain English: automatic color-mapping cells based on a range of numeric values corresponding to a range of colors. To me, this sounds rather obvious: I did once search for such a feature in Excel (or was it LibreOffice?) and was irritated that I had to make a verbose list of conditional formatting (if value > 0 and < 1, then green; if value >=1and <2, then cyan, etc.).

But apart from the question of obviousness, which is a bit subjective, I wonder whether the claims cannot be attacked directly for unambiguous prior art. The word 'cell' does not seem to be defined strictly as applying to spreadsheet cells, since the patent summary talks about "cells in spreadsheets, tables, and other computer documents", where the term "document" is not defined. If e.g. MatLab files or finite-element model files can be considered as a special kind of documents, that would immediately invalidate claim 1.

Unfortunately, if you invalidate claim 1, the following claims may still be valid. They treat cases where the numerical value of a cell is not color-coded, but e.g. as little bar or pie charts.

As an Atheist, do you not kill your neighbor and take his stuff because, A) fear of retribution by family members and/or the state, or B) it is wrong to take things from others.

If your answer is A, then you are in fact an amoral person that requires laws to govern behavior. If your answer is B), then you have borrowed a state of morality from the Christians that you appear to at least disagree with and in all likelihood despise given the tone of your most. Look to the animal kingdom, they will kill others and take their territory, mates, etc. There is no inherent morality in nature. If you are an atheist and a moral person, ask yourself why you are moral, and find a justification for that code of morality that doesn't depend on religious notions like faith, and you'll be disturbed by what you find. You will find that either you have borrowed a code of ethics from the followers of Abraham that is inherently divine, or you have developed a framework that provides for moral behavior but is essentially amoral, because there is no right and wrong, just a social contract enforced with arms.

I'm an atheist and a moral person, and when I ask myself why I'm moral (absent a faith-based origin), I'm not at all disturbed by what I find. The moral system I was raised on simply makes sense, and does indeed look like the last 6 Judeo-Christian Commandments. It doesn't need faith to back it up; it's got logic. Hell, the golden rule is practically the guiding algorithm behind civilized society. Were my parents, or their parents who taught them, simply borrowing a system of morality from Judeo-Christianism? I don't know. If so, that's fine. But I think the fundamental Western moral systems we live by function just fine when divorced from spiritual faith.

In essence, I would argue that the morals came first, and were then adopted by religion. Do you really think there was no version of the golden rule before Jesus? Do you really think the core set of the 10 Commandments never occurred to anyone before they were handed down? I simply don't think any religion can lay claim to our common moral system. The Code of Hammurabi, a legal system written in 1780 BC, has an awful lot in common with the 10 Commandments.

Now, I'm not a militant atheist. Part of the moral system I was raised on demands tolerance of others as long as they don't violate other elements of that system. (That, after all, is me treating others as I'd want to be treated.) However, I find myself aggravated by the (not uncommon) suggestion by those of faith that morality can not exist without faith. Bad people do bad things all the time. Many of those are people of faith. I don't need to remind you that more than a few wars have been waged in the name of religion.

However, I'm not going to go saying that those wars are a result of religion. Religion may have been the rationale, but they're a result of selfish, tribal human nature. And that's the same nature that our common moral system attempts to overcome.

Try doing more Blind contour drawing. That's where you cover the work and just draw directly from what you see without checking back.

Blind-contour drawings are always rather crude, but as you get more skilled you start to be able to do what any dancer or gymnast does. You know where your body is without looking at it.

In comparison using a Wacom is very easy.

This is called atmospheric perspective. As objects move further back, they appear more blue-grey. Imagine the peaks of a mountain range.

Letter

One is that the law of libel and slander is part of English Common Law; as such, it pre-dates the U.S. Constitution, never mind the First Amendment,

Why does a foreign code matter at all, just because it happens to be older? Hammurabi's Code predates both the Constitution and Common Law, so by your reasoning, I guess it's "still" in force.

there's no sense in which subsequent acts of Congress governing it have *abridged* the right to free speech by making it less free.

Of course there's no sense- nobody said something foolish like that. Obviously, North American free speech rights were *created* by Congress in proposing the Bill of Rights. They extended it well beyond traditional English law. Where did you get "abridged"?

The second is that defamation is not a crime; you *do* have the right to libel or slander someone. But they have the right to sue you when you do.

Are you claiming that libel is not a criminal offense? That's just wrong. It's on a state-by-state basis.

It's even older.

The idea that "Our senses are unreliable, it is possible we are decieved about the nature of the world" goes back to Plato's Republic. The Allegory of the Cave was published 2000 years before Descartes was born.

(If I had to explain virtual reality to a man in 400 BC, I couldn't form any better analogy than a puppet show)

In my opinion, the orgy/dance scene was reminiscient of the opening dance scene from "Blade", only longer and less effective. I wish they had cut this sequence down, as I felt it was unnecessary....

Overall though, a decent sequel with some nice CG treats.

If you've taken a philosophy class, you'd have recognized the Matrix as a new incarnation of Plato's allegory of the cave from The Republic, later expressed as "The Evil Deceiver" by Descartes and later still as the "brain in a vat" scenario by Hilary Putnam.

In the sequel, the filmmakers move on to questions of free will vs. determinism vs. fate. These issues were also nicely articulated in one of the segments of the animated Art Linklater film "The Waking Life", for anyone who's interested.

So it was cool to have a new philosophical issue raised. To "What is the nature of reality... and is it all a sham?" has been added "What is the nature of choice... and is it all a sham?"

Plus, the freeway chase scene was incredible ;)

W

"1. If any one ensnare another, putting a ban upon him, but he can not prove it, then he that ensnared him shall be put to death.

2. If any one bring an accusation against a man, and the accused go to the river and leap into the river, if he sink in the river his accuser shall take possession of his house. But if the river prove that the accused is not guilty, and he escape unhurt, then he who had brought the accusation shall be put to death, while he who leaped into the river shall take possession of the house that had belonged to his accuser.

3. If any one bring an accusation of any crime before the elders, and does not prove what he has charged, he shall, if it be a capital offense charged, be put to death.

4. If he satisfy the elders to impose a fine of grain or money, he shall receive the fine that the action produces.

5. If a judge try a case, reach a decision, and present his judgment in writing; if later error shall appear in his decision, and it be through his own fault, then he shall pay twelve times the fine set by him in the case, and he shall be publicly removed from the judge's bench, and never again shall he sit there to render judgement.

6. If any one steal the property of a temple or of the court, he shall be put to death, and also the one who receives the stolen thing from him shall be put to death.

7. If any one buy from the son or the slave of another man, without witnesses or a contract, silver or gold, a male or female slave, an ox or a sheep, an ass or anything, or if he take it in charge, he is considered a thief and shall be put to death.

8. If any one steal cattle or sheep, or an ass, or a pig or a goat, if it belong to a god or to the court, the thief shall pay thirtyfold therefor; if they belonged to a freed man of the king he shall pay tenfold; if the thief has nothing with which to pay he shall be put to death.

9. If any one lose an article, and find it in the possession of another: if the person in whose possession the thing is found say "A merchant sold it to me, I paid for it before witnesses," and if the owner of the thing say, "I will bring witnesses who know my property," then shall the purchaser bring the merchant who sold it to him, and the witnesses before whom he bought it, and the owner shall bring witnesses who can identify his property. The judge shall examine their testimony -- both of the witnesses before whom the price was paid, and of the witnesses who identify the lost article on oath. The merchant is then proved to be a thief and shall be put to death. The owner of the lost article receives his property, and he who bought it receives the money he paid from the estate of the merchant.

10. If the purchaser does not bring the merchant and the witnesses before whom he bought the article, but its owner bring witnesses who identify it, then the buyer is the thief and shall be put to death, and the owner receives the lost article.

11. If the owner do not bring witnesses to identify the lost article, he is an evil-doer, he has traduced, and shall be put to death.

12. If the witnesses be not at hand, then shall the judge set a limit, at the expiration of six months. If his witnesses have not appeared within the six months, he is an evil-doer, and shall bear the fine of the pending case.

" and so on....

As unsettling as I find this, I also find it appropriate.

History has always demarked a division between civilians and military, both in the traditions of service, and deeper, in the psyche. Plato demarked the guardian's education as beginning with fiction [337a]. And it was a key to this education that it twisted the basic nature of those who would be guardians, demarking them mentally from the populace. This is a key concept in the training of warriors that has survived in literature and drama through the ages (in our time, you need only see the unifying concepts behind group-identity put forward in studies of the German troops of WWII, or Card's work, let alone the psych studies that _do_ point out a greater tendancy to follow orders and act cohesively with a rigorous group-constructed identity).

Is it any wonder that a society adept at mass production would find ways to mass produce those things that still must be men and not machines?

Is this a criticism of the men and women who serve? By no means. The psychological conditioning they receive is no less responsible for their survival and success than their physical training.

Is it grounds for a critique of an immature, and childlike race (mankind) who still finds war regrettably necessary? Perhaps. At least, however, it's highly unlikely that the children of those so trained will value war as highly as we do today.

Read the DotGNUstep proposal: a bridge between GNUstep and DotGNU.

If evolution turns out to be false, then suddenly there is a God, and there is meaning to our actions. Which also means responsibility.

I'm not sure where you get this stuff from, but this is a logical nightmare. So it's only evolution or creation? Is it if any part of evolutionary theory is false, or the whole premise? Because, well, there's lot of biologist who do it all the time, so one of those isn't going to happen. And the parts that get refined are part of a process called science (which I beginning to think you have only a general concept of).

The logical conclusion of evolution is that there is no meaning, no right and wrong. While doing something may not be desired by many, it is certainly not 'wrong'.

Umm, how is that logical? Perhaps on a purely biological level right and wrong can be iffy, but if you look at psychology and moral philosophy, they still seem to be around. The stark, harsh right and wrong of the Bible are pretty strange when interpreted literally and lead to...well...look at countries that have ruling theocracies and see how things turn out. Laws and morality have come quite a ways since Hammurabi.

I also find it hard to believe that a concept encompassing billions of years of willful (my word) decisions leading ultimately to the rise of consciousness, from basic energy to complex living matter, can be devoid of deeper meaning. Who told you that it wasn't? Hovind, perhaps?

. The area of science for a creationist here is describing what they would expect to see if the flood had occurred, and see if the evidence fits those predictions.

Funny you should mention that. If you would like to know more about it, perhaps you could read a book. Or if not, how about a web page. There is rather strong evidence that a rather apocalyptic flood did occur. However, unless the authors who wrote about it had access to satellite imagery and international communications infrastructure, I find the claim of a world-wide phenomenon rather sketchy. It certainly would have seemed that way to them, since their perception of the planet was so limited, and they would have written in such a way that expressed these perceptions, but now we're questioning the FACTS of the Bible, and that's not allowed.

After all, that's what the Bible says.

And until you can look beyond that great work, and use the data collected by other true believers, believers in a process of finding little bits of Truth in the world around them and building a bigger picture from it, you will make no progress.

BTW, I already read some creationist apologists on the Ballard research. Most end with "Well, that's not what the Bible says, so he's wrong." Sorry, but if you only have one resource, you aren't doing very good research.

Anyway, these conversations are always fun, if tiring. Even if you are trolling.

A third of a century later, Danny seems to think it holds up pretty well.

Yeah, you know; every now and then and we have a book that remains popular...Shakespeare, Dante's Divine Comedy, Milton's Paradise Lost, Homer's The Odyssey (not not Duff Beer), go even earlier, to the first known story, the Epic of Gilgamesh.

In the grand scheme of things, a third of century isn't that big of a deal.

Be VERY VERY careful about this... I tried something similar back when in was in college, and it didn't work out very well. I tried putting up a little site to allow students to discuss professors, with the intention of making it easier for them to figure out which professor was the best fit for each student.

By the time there were two comments on the site - both about the same professor, I was told to take it down - and that the school adminstration was very upset, and that at least two different professors (not even the one with the comments) were prepared to take legal action against me and were fortunately talked out of it by the Network Services head, who I was working for at the time (but of course, not for much longer).

You're definately setting yourself up for trouble - make sure you're willing to put up with it and fight the adminstration and staff.
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Now I have an idea of what Slashdot must have been like in the early days. Best series of intelligent and coherent posts Ive read in a long time.

I would love to see the essence of StoryMan's post expanded and posted in a more visible location.

The post looks like it belongs in the Code of Hammurabi or at least mentioned in that Sunscreen song! ;-) Thanks again, folks!

> "Gayness" IS WRONG, and I can say that I know
> no gay people who are truly happy people.

I can believe that there you aren't lying, troll, as I don't suppose you know any gay people at all.

Anyway, look around, not everyone shares your prejudice. Plato, for example, says you are wrong. What is truth? Who knows which of you is right?

Let time sort it out. Provided that the human race has not wiped itself out of existence by then, a century from now, thoughtful, educated people will still be reading Plato. Will anybody alive then know or care about your opinions? Even now, I don't.

Sincerely WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net

Try and find Lysistrata, the Sex Play.
Voila.
Canterbury Tales
here
Offtopic? Not a bit of it. These illustrate the fact that the web is a powerful force for good, and that loners who spend a lot of time surfing are at least as like to come out the other end as erudite, interesting members of society as sociopaths.

Or we can go a little further back to one of the foundations behind many laws. The Code of Hammurabi, its full text in English, or its foundations, Babylonian law.

109. If conspirators meet in the house of a tavern-keeper, and these conspirators are not captured and delivered to the court, the tavern-keeper shall be put to death.
Granted, Yahoo might consider that a little harsh.