I would dare to say that there has been no copyright infringement and therefore this ISP has done a legal wrong. Their behavior well may make them liable for a number of possible actionable complaints by the copyright holder.
I doubt it. They seem to be enforcing the letter of the contract, so unless the contract itself is illegal in some way they're in the clear. It's not illegal to be brain-dead.
If someone redefines another term in this topic my head is going to explode.
Really? In that case I'll point out that "Liberal" doesn't mean the same in Europe as it does in the USA, then I'll stand back and wait for the explosion.
She (and previous home secretaries) insisted that 42 days detention without trial was essential too, but has just abandoned that after the recent defeat in the House of Lords. There's a big difference between what has already been passed into law and a bargaining position taken at the start of a legislative process. A bill is not will happen, it's what somebody in government wants to happen. Not the same thing at all.
Fine if you have room for it alongside all of the others. I understand that the European version of the PS3 won't play PS2 games, so I'd want both, and I don't think I could fit an xBox in anywhere -- not to mention the problem of number of cables to the TV set.
and it would have to be a damn good game for the gp to try to run it on Windows.
Even without any DRM other than a serial check?
Up to him, not me. I do play games on the PC, but not often as I find them too flaky compared to the consoles. It's not nice making great progress in a game and then having the system crash with a BSOD reporting a video driver fault (as happens routinely when I try to play Oblivion -- and yes, my drivers are up-to-date, and I've cranked the acceleration right back).
What do you do if you want to play a game that's only for a console you don't have? Either you don't play it, or you buy the console. It's got to be a damn good game to justify the cost of a console, and it would have to be a damn good game for the gp to try to run it on Windows. I'm with him: there's enough fun to be had on my Wii and PS2 that I don't see the need to upgrade to anything higher tech just for the sake of slightly more photorealistic graphics with same-ol' same-ol' gameplay.
The regulators (e.g. FAA/CASA/JAA) will accept compliance with DO-178B as a method for certifying avionics. If a manufacturer chooses not to comply with the standard, then they need to show how their method results in a probability of failure of less that 1e-12 for a flight critical box.
Hence, DO-178B serves as a de-facto standard for avionics software certification.
But DO178B/ED12B only contains the word "shall" 3 times (that orders for the document shall be accompanied by payment, one that the committee shall review it and one that says "shall" is avoided in the document); "must" is pretty much the same. In other words, you don't have to do everything DO178B/ED12B says in order to be compliant.
If you want examples of levels, the flight control system is class A, weapon systems are class B (on military aircraft) and Secondary Surveillance Radar (SSR) is Class D.
"Level", not "Class"
DO-178B is very waterfall centric and leaves little scope for any bottom-up development.
As are all standards and guidelines for safety related software, because nobody has come up with a better way of managing safety yet. This doesn't actually stop bottom-up development, provided the elements at the bottom also follow a waterfall (in other words, at the very bottom they are properly specified and are verified and validated against that specification)
It also places restrictions on dynamic linking or anything else that cannot be analysed at compile time - polymorphism is a big no-no, as is dynamic allocation of memory.
Could you tell me where that is in the document, please? I have it in front of me, but can't find what you're referring to (and I know IEC61508 better than DO178B/ED12B). Still, for the more stringent levels that's appropriate. Testing and static analysis tend to catch different bugs, and for something that can kill a few hundred people there's a strong case for making sure that as many bugs as possible are caught.
Speaking of compilers, they need to be certified too - no GCC there.
Again, I can't see that in there. Para 4.4.1b gives the option of use of qualified tools or "combinations of tools and parts of the software development environment"... "chosen to achieve the necessary level of confidence that an error introduced by one part would be detected by another". In other words, if the compiler isn't qualified, show how you'll be catching compiler bugs.
Yes, they have heard of C++.
I'm not sure who you mean by "they". DO178B/ED12B was published in 1992, and although C++ existed then it wasn't standardised until 1998, but that's not really relevant. DO178B/ED12B doesn't recommend or deprecate any language, it only says what has to be achieved. That's why it's still usable 16 years later (although a new version is in development, and due for publication RSN).
I can hear the sighs loudly and clearly already
Yes. Safety critical software development is far more conservative than most commercial software development. But there are good reasons for that. In the safety industry we like to be really confident that something is going to be pretty dam close to right, and won't accept things that make programming easier or cheaper unless we're confident that they're at least as safe as what we're already using. It's a specialist field with specialist techniques and approaches.
For those that are interested in coding/test methodologies, RTCA and EUROCAE jointly created a system called "DO178B/ED12b" which defined as set of software assurance guidelines for aircraft.
Good thing this didn't happen on final (or at V1).
That particular problem presumably couldn't have happened on landing because it wouldn't be flying on inertial navigation and it would be configured for landing and so the software will allow the plane to get into situations it forbids in flight such as a stall (required for normal landing, which is effectively a controlled stall).
For those that are interested in coding/test methodologies, the FAA and EUROCAE jointly created a system called "DO178B/ED12b" which defined as set of software assurance guidelines for aircraft.
The important bit in that change is that they are guidelines, not standards; DO178b/ED12b is not mandatory (although compliance makes certification a whole lot easier).
This is precisely why having commercial aircraft under total computer control is a bad idea. Even though you can fly "stick" everything must first be put through the computer - which as we have just seen is not infallible.
Multiple views on a document is a big win for me, I've been cursing its absence in OO.o. I hope you can turn the marginal comments off -- I work a lot away from base, using a lightweight laptop, and those margins take up too much screen real-estate on a small screen.
Right now, I'm claiming that many scientists are taking the position that supernatural explanations are by fiat impossible, by the existing definitions that proceed from the initial concept of science itself, before any data is actually gathered to test it.
No, I'm saying that there can be no such data, because science defines the supernatureal as a subset of the metaphysical, and defines the metaphysical as that which cannot be falsified.
Now you're saying, "If that somehow turns out not to be the case, it's OK to change those definitions."
No, no change to the definitions at all. If a theory can be falsified, it's within the scientific view of "nature", under the definitions that have existed since the 1950s.
Followed strictly, the following also become non-scientific hypothesi:
That would be "hypotheses".
Aliens with tens or thousands of times the neural capacity of humans.
Aliens with human-like mental abilities, but which have lifespans of hundreds or thousands of times our own.
Aliens with human-like mental abilities, but which have had a technological civilization for many, many times longer than ours.
None of those are stated as hypotheses. "Aliens with tens or thousands of times the neural capacity of humans exist" is not a scientific hypothesis because it can't be falsified. "Aliens with tens or thousands of times the neural capacity of humans do not exist" is a scientific hypothesis because it can be falsified.
Just as a supernatural creator could supposedly use miracles to trick a scientist into believing whatever 'He" wants, a 'sufficiently capable' alien could doubtless pull the wool over any researcher's eyes, even if all its powers were, strictly speaking 'natural'. All hypothesi about a sufficiently advanced alien become contingent upon unverifiables, ergo, science should never use the explanation that something is the result of advanced aliens, even if the damned saucer just landed on the White House lawn.
That's where Occam's Razor comes in. At present, we have no reliable observations for which aliens with tens or thousands of times the neural capacity of humans can credibly be argued to be the simplest explanation. If a flying saucer (observably) lands on the White House Lawn we have a new observation and aliens with tens or thousands of times the neural capacity of humans may become arguably the simplest explanation of the observations. Sure, the saucer might be an illusion created by entirely different aliens, but the ones flying the saucer are the simpler explanation so that's the one science will go with until new evidence comes in that falsifies it (eg, the invisible mind-control aliens reveal themselves in some way).
Followed strictly enough, you could get really, incredibly nit picky. Rigid application of the rule would be absurd. i.e. no one can study Albert Einstein. (Einstein is smarter than the researcher, ergo, he can figure out any double-blind experiment the researcher can create. If Einstein decides not to cooperate, he can mislead the researcher into an erroneous conclusion.
I think the general conclusion about Einstein is that he was very smart, not that he was omniscient.
Why am I bringing up such an extreme interpretation? Is it a straw man? I don't think so. Methodological naturalism doesn't require strict adherence to a rule. If there's a problem with the method, you do what works, or publish what you have and admit there may be some problems with your methodology. Scientists have published papers where they stipulated they couldn't eliminate all conflicting models before.
And that's fine, because it's not an end of the research, just a move forward.
But, epistemological materialism does require absolute adherence. If you
But nobody was proposing that they regulate anything new. The proposal was that they make a set of standard licenses available, not that they enforce them.
Latest I can find for UN payments is 2005 figures; I wouldn't call the difference between $423M (USA) and $375M (Japan) all that huge a degree. And is the USA actually paying its dues now? In 2005 it owed almost a billion in unpaid dues.
That still doesn't seem to leave any room for volition, for choice.
Perhaps volition is an illusion?
Entirely possible, but that would mean that reason is an illusion too, because reason depends on making decisions of what is correct and what is incorrect.
Im not sure but what moving the problem is a significant advance, maybe one Penrose didn't intend. One problem strict philosophical materialism has in practice is it tends to reject all 'supernatural' phenomina, but it does so dishonestly. That is, most believers in it claim to simply be naturalists as a method, because it's pragmatically difficult, perhaps impossible, to apply science to something that can manipulate the very laws of nature.
As I understand it, the more common assumption is that there is nothing that can manipulate the laws of nature from outside, because if there were it would be subject to its own rules and so part of (an expanded understanding of) nature. That's a metaphysical assumption, of course, but one that allows them to retain their naturalism.
Quantum Mechanical explanations aren't technically supernatural, but they tend to certain properties that supernatural explanations also have (Multiple interpretations may have equal validity
Careful! That's why they're called "interpretations", not "theories". Multiple interpretations have equal validity (though not necessarily equal utility) wherever they occur. It just happens that quantum mechanics is a field particularly remote from experience so we have a particular need for interpretations -- metaphors, if you like -- to get an understanding of what's going on.
some odd things are explicitly allowed because they are happening 'outside' of our scale space-time, and the real root causes of phenomena can't possibly be determinate in a strict Newtonian sense.)
Unfortunately, I don't think that helps with consciousness. Newtonian mechanics meant that all my actions are completely predetermined by mechanics. Quantum mechanics means to some extent my actions are randomly determined. That still doesn't seem to leave any room for volition, for choice.
While the quantum realm is often conceptualized as underlying ours, phrases such as 'collapse of the state vector' imply a realm superior to mundane existence, and just abut all QM assumes this realm is timeless/eternal/non-enthropic. (Sounds kind of like heaven, doesn't it?)
Again, as far as I am aware, QM doesn't assume any such thing; it uses it as a metaphor.
So, opening up the discourse to accept possible explanations with such properties proves that science can deal with some things it once thought it couldn't address at all (the contrary argument being that QM itself isn't scientific.)
A third possibility being that Science is dealing with what it's always dealt with, QM is perfectly scientific, and you're confused between the scientific status of theories and interpretations.
Slashdot Mirror
I would dare to say that there has been no copyright infringement and therefore this ISP has done a legal wrong. Their behavior well may make them liable for a number of possible actionable complaints by the copyright holder.
I doubt it. They seem to be enforcing the letter of the contract, so unless the contract itself is illegal in some way they're in the clear. It's not illegal to be brain-dead.
If someone redefines another term in this topic my head is going to explode.
Really? In that case I'll point out that "Liberal" doesn't mean the same in Europe as it does in the USA, then I'll stand back and wait for the explosion.
She (and previous home secretaries) insisted that 42 days detention without trial was essential too, but has just abandoned that after the recent defeat in the House of Lords. There's a big difference between what has already been passed into law and a bargaining position taken at the start of a legislative process. A bill is not will happen, it's what somebody in government wants to happen. Not the same thing at all.
Yep, some of which is what I want it to do.
Compared to $130 to $320 (or whatever it is now) for Vista.
I wait a couple years and buy a used console.
Fine if you have room for it alongside all of the others. I understand that the European version of the PS3 won't play PS2 games, so I'd want both, and I don't think I could fit an xBox in anywhere -- not to mention the problem of number of cables to the TV set.
and it would have to be a damn good game for the gp to try to run it on Windows.
Even without any DRM other than a serial check?
Up to him, not me. I do play games on the PC, but not often as I find them too flaky compared to the consoles. It's not nice making great progress in a game and then having the system crash with a BSOD reporting a video driver fault (as happens routinely when I try to play Oblivion -- and yes, my drivers are up-to-date, and I've cranked the acceleration right back).
What do you do if you want to play a game that's only for a console you don't have? Either you don't play it, or you buy the console. It's got to be a damn good game to justify the cost of a console, and it would have to be a damn good game for the gp to try to run it on Windows. I'm with him: there's enough fun to be had on my Wii and PS2 that I don't see the need to upgrade to anything higher tech just for the sake of slightly more photorealistic graphics with same-ol' same-ol' gameplay.
Or, alternatively, /. should be writing news stories on the opinion of each and every US voter.
How much did an operating system (that you could install on commodity hardware) cost before MS came along?
$70
The regulators (e.g. FAA/CASA/JAA) will accept compliance with DO-178B as a method for certifying avionics. If a manufacturer chooses not to comply with the standard, then they need to show how their method results in a probability of failure of less that 1e-12 for a flight critical box.
Hence, DO-178B serves as a de-facto standard for avionics software certification.
But DO178B/ED12B only contains the word "shall" 3 times (that orders for the document shall be accompanied by payment, one that the committee shall review it and one that says "shall" is avoided in the document); "must" is pretty much the same. In other words, you don't have to do everything DO178B/ED12B says in order to be compliant.
If you want examples of levels, the flight control system is class A, weapon systems are class B (on military aircraft) and Secondary Surveillance Radar (SSR) is Class D.
"Level", not "Class"
DO-178B is very waterfall centric and leaves little scope for any bottom-up development.
As are all standards and guidelines for safety related software, because nobody has come up with a better way of managing safety yet. This doesn't actually stop bottom-up development, provided the elements at the bottom also follow a waterfall (in other words, at the very bottom they are properly specified and are verified and validated against that specification)
It also places restrictions on dynamic linking or anything else that cannot be analysed at compile time - polymorphism is a big no-no, as is dynamic allocation of memory.
Could you tell me where that is in the document, please? I have it in front of me, but can't find what you're referring to (and I know IEC61508 better than DO178B/ED12B). Still, for the more stringent levels that's appropriate. Testing and static analysis tend to catch different bugs, and for something that can kill a few hundred people there's a strong case for making sure that as many bugs as possible are caught.
Speaking of compilers, they need to be certified too - no GCC there.
Again, I can't see that in there. Para 4.4.1b gives the option of use of qualified tools or "combinations of tools and parts of the software development environment" ... "chosen to achieve the necessary level of confidence that an error introduced by one part would be detected by another". In other words, if the compiler isn't qualified, show how you'll be catching compiler bugs.
Yes, they have heard of C++.
I'm not sure who you mean by "they". DO178B/ED12B was published in 1992, and although C++ existed then it wasn't standardised until 1998, but that's not really relevant. DO178B/ED12B doesn't recommend or deprecate any language, it only says what has to be achieved. That's why it's still usable 16 years later (although a new version is in development, and due for publication RSN).
I can hear the sighs loudly and clearly already
Yes. Safety critical software development is far more conservative than most commercial software development. But there are good reasons for that. In the safety industry we like to be really confident that something is going to be pretty dam close to right, and won't accept things that make programming easier or cheaper unless we're confident that they're at least as safe as what we're already using. It's a specialist field with specialist techniques and approaches.
For those that are interested in coding/test methodologies, RTCA and EUROCAE jointly created a system called "DO178B/ED12b" which defined as set of software assurance guidelines for aircraft.
Fixed my own fix for me.
Good thing this didn't happen on final (or at V1).
That particular problem presumably couldn't have happened on landing because it wouldn't be flying on inertial navigation and it would be configured for landing and so the software will allow the plane to get into situations it forbids in flight such as a stall (required for normal landing, which is effectively a controlled stall).
Which raises a good point - why is Q the only character that takes up two letters to type, since you 'can't' use it without U?
You can. See above.
For those that are interested in coding/test methodologies, the FAA and EUROCAE jointly created a system called "DO178B/ED12b" which defined as set of software assurance guidelines for aircraft.
The important bit in that change is that they are guidelines, not standards; DO178b/ED12b is not mandatory (although compliance makes certification a whole lot easier).
This is precisely why having commercial aircraft under total computer control is a bad idea. Even though you can fly "stick" everything must first be put through the computer - which as we have just seen is not infallible.
Whereas, of course, humans are infallible. Er...
Also, OpenOffice will create smaller and nicer Word-files than Word.
Not always the case under 2.x, don't know about 3.0. The trick is to keep the formatting simple if you're going to export to Word.
Multiple views on a document is a big win for me, I've been cursing its absence in OO.o. I hope you can turn the marginal comments off -- I work a lot away from base, using a lightweight laptop, and those margins take up too much screen real-estate on a small screen.
Right now, I'm claiming that many scientists are taking the position that supernatural explanations are by fiat impossible, by the existing definitions that proceed from the initial concept of science itself, before any data is actually gathered to test it.
No, I'm saying that there can be no such data, because science defines the supernatureal as a subset of the metaphysical, and defines the metaphysical as that which cannot be falsified.
Now you're saying, "If that somehow turns out not to be the case, it's OK to change those definitions."
No, no change to the definitions at all. If a theory can be falsified, it's within the scientific view of "nature", under the definitions that have existed since the 1950s.
Followed strictly, the following also become non-scientific hypothesi:
That would be "hypotheses".
Aliens with tens or thousands of times the neural capacity of humans.
Aliens with human-like mental abilities, but which have lifespans of hundreds or thousands of times our own.
Aliens with human-like mental abilities, but which have had a technological civilization for many, many times longer than ours.
None of those are stated as hypotheses.
"Aliens with tens or thousands of times the neural capacity of humans exist" is not a scientific hypothesis because it can't be falsified. "Aliens with tens or thousands of times the neural capacity of humans do not exist" is a scientific hypothesis because it can be falsified.
Just as a supernatural creator could supposedly use miracles to trick a scientist into believing whatever 'He" wants, a 'sufficiently capable' alien could doubtless pull the wool over any researcher's eyes, even if all its powers were, strictly speaking 'natural'. All hypothesi about a sufficiently advanced alien become contingent upon unverifiables, ergo, science should never use the explanation that something is the result of advanced aliens, even if the damned saucer just landed on the White House lawn.
That's where Occam's Razor comes in. At present, we have no reliable observations for which aliens with tens or thousands of times the neural capacity of humans can credibly be argued to be the simplest explanation. If a flying saucer (observably) lands on the White House Lawn we have a new observation and aliens with tens or thousands of times the neural capacity of humans may become arguably the simplest explanation of the observations. Sure, the saucer might be an illusion created by entirely different aliens, but the ones flying the saucer are the simpler explanation so that's the one science will go with until new evidence comes in that falsifies it (eg, the invisible mind-control aliens reveal themselves in some way).
Followed strictly enough, you could get really, incredibly nit picky. Rigid application of the rule would be absurd. i.e. no one can study Albert Einstein. (Einstein is smarter than the researcher, ergo, he can figure out any double-blind experiment the researcher can create. If Einstein decides not to cooperate, he can mislead the researcher into an erroneous conclusion.
I think the general conclusion about Einstein is that he was very smart, not that he was omniscient.
Why am I bringing up such an extreme interpretation? Is it a straw man? I don't think so. Methodological naturalism doesn't require strict adherence to a rule. If there's a problem with the method, you do what works, or publish what you have and admit there may be some problems with your methodology. Scientists have published papers where they stipulated they couldn't eliminate all conflicting models before.
And that's fine, because it's not an end of the research, just a move forward.
But, epistemological materialism does require absolute adherence. If you
So, if our time, 200 hrs, is worth $350 billion
Where do I apply for this $1.75 billion an hour job, reading privacy agreements?
But nobody was proposing that they regulate anything new. The proposal was that they make a set of standard licenses available, not that they enforce them.
Latest I can find for UN payments is 2005 figures; I wouldn't call the difference between $423M (USA) and $375M (Japan) all that huge a degree. And is the USA actually paying its dues now? In 2005 it owed almost a billion in unpaid dues.
Maybe if this is popular enough, we'll see it in the next version of Windows? Can't wait!
I don't like the idea of where that might go. "It looks as if you are trying to uninstall Vista. Please prove the Riemann Zeta Hypothesis"...
Perhaps volition is an illusion?
Entirely possible, but that would mean that reason is an illusion too, because reason depends on making decisions of what is correct and what is incorrect.
Im not sure but what moving the problem is a significant advance, maybe one Penrose didn't intend. One problem strict philosophical materialism has in practice is it tends to reject all 'supernatural' phenomina, but it does so dishonestly. That is, most believers in it claim to simply be naturalists as a method, because it's pragmatically difficult, perhaps impossible, to apply science to something that can manipulate the very laws of nature.
As I understand it, the more common assumption is that there is nothing that can manipulate the laws of nature from outside, because if there were it would be subject to its own rules and so part of (an expanded understanding of) nature. That's a metaphysical assumption, of course, but one that allows them to retain their naturalism.
Quantum Mechanical explanations aren't technically supernatural, but they tend to certain properties that supernatural explanations also have (Multiple interpretations may have equal validity
Careful! That's why they're called "interpretations", not "theories". Multiple interpretations have equal validity (though not necessarily equal utility) wherever they occur. It just happens that quantum mechanics is a field particularly remote from experience so we have a particular need for interpretations -- metaphors, if you like -- to get an understanding of what's going on.
some odd things are explicitly allowed because they are happening 'outside' of our scale space-time, and the real root causes of phenomena can't possibly be determinate in a strict Newtonian sense.)
Unfortunately, I don't think that helps with consciousness. Newtonian mechanics meant that all my actions are completely predetermined by mechanics. Quantum mechanics means to some extent my actions are randomly determined. That still doesn't seem to leave any room for volition, for choice.
While the quantum realm is often conceptualized as underlying ours, phrases such as 'collapse of the state vector' imply a realm superior to mundane existence, and just abut all QM assumes this realm is timeless/eternal/non-enthropic. (Sounds kind of like heaven, doesn't it?)
Again, as far as I am aware, QM doesn't assume any such thing; it uses it as a metaphor.
So, opening up the discourse to accept possible explanations with such properties proves that science can deal with some things it once thought it couldn't address at all (the contrary argument being that QM itself isn't scientific.)
A third possibility being that Science is dealing with what it's always dealt with, QM is perfectly scientific, and you're confused between the scientific status of theories and interpretations.
So tempted to do my bathrooom in Penrose tiles!
Be careful, Roger Penrose will probably sue you for it.
Yes, the man did the unthinkable: he patented and asserted copyright on a mathematical construct.
I know; I was hoping to buy licensed tiles, but I can't find a source. Drat. Has anybody got a patent on the square, then?