It depends on the isotope. Po-209, for example, has a half-life of 105 years.
Right, but they use the hot isotope for a reason. If you use a slower-decaying isotope, you reduce the probability that the initiator will produce a neutron at the critical instant when it is needed.
You want the polonium to be spewing out alpha particles constantly, to maximize the probability that the system will produce that one critical neutron exactly when it is needed.
Pu 239 has a half-life of approximately 24,000 years, so for all practical purposes it is stable and doesn't need to be rotated.
However, inside each weapon is a small device called the initiator. The initiator is made of beryllium and polonium-210, and is inserted in the center of the plutonium sphere.
When the bomb is detonated, the plutonium sphere implodes, crushing together and mixing the beryllium and polonium. The polonium gives off alpha radiation, and beryllium emits neutrons when hit by alpha radiation. One reference says that the number of neutrons given off by the initiator is around five or six. All it takes is one neutron to start the fission chain reaction.
The initiator only has a few microseconds to emit the necessary neutrons. It's considered to be one of the most critical and difficult aspects of nuclear weapon design. A great deal of information has been published about nuclear weapon design, but information about initator design is never published.
Polonium has a half-life of only 138 days. So, even though the plutonium itself decays very slowly, it is the initators that must be regularly replaced.
If you want to protect your family's financial interests in the event of your unexpected death, you should take out life insurance like everyone else, NOT look to the government to subsidize your family by granting them an unearned copyright monopoly at the public expense.
I would disagree with (4) for a different reason however. If copyrights expired upon an author's death, this would provide an incentive for rival publishers, and targets of copyright infringement lawsuits to murder successful authors.
But it's a well-known fact in the record industry that publishing rights are where the money is
... which would make sense, because unlike recording artists, songwriters don't have to pay for studio time, "promotional expenses", music videos, etc. They don't have a huge advance to pay back before they can start making money.
it is ridiculous to assume that the maudlin music that was the product of the early sheet music industry was as a result of the predominance of women pianists - the women played the music they could buy, and if all they could buy was sappy, emotional music, then that was what they played.
It is just as true today as it was then. You can make more money selling mediocre music that appeals to the lowest common denominator then you can make selling brilliant music that only appeals to or is only accessable to a small audience.
Scott Joplin wrote incredible, gorgeous music, but very few people could play his compositions. I spent the better part of two years learning a handful of his rags, and it required daily practice to play his songs perfectly. They are VERY difficult and very complex, both rhythmically and harmonically. A Joplin rag is not the sort of thing that you can fake. You can't just improvise around the melody, because his songs constantly change tempo, rhythm, and key. You can simplify them, but then they lose their beauty.
In the early 20th century, there were a handful of (white) musicians whose claim to fame was that they could play ragtime fast -- and I mean REALLY fast -- two or three times as fast as it was supposed to be performed. The result was a dumbing-down of ragtime. The complex rhythms, harmonies, and modulations were replaced by easy-to-remember key changes, and ragtime became jazz.
It should also be remembered that Scott Joplin died penniless not because his music didn't sell, but because he was defrauded by his music publisher John Stark, who made millions on Joplin's sheet music, and left Joplin to die penniless.
1) An artist writes, performs, and records a song.
2) The artists' record label hires an "Independent Promoter" to "convince" radio stations across the country to play the song. The "convincing" usually involves payments of several hundred to several thousand dollars per radio station per song.
3) Each newly enriched radio station "decides" to add the new song to their rotation.
3) The "Independent Promoter" bills the record label for thousands of dollars per radio station that has "decided" to play the song.
4) The Record label pays the independent promoter, and charges the expense to the artist as a "recoupable expense", meaning that the bribe comes out of the artists' royalty payments. This can easily come to $500,000 or more per song. There's a lot of radio stations to bribe, and the "independent promoters" have basically taken over the system.
5) Each time the radio station plays the song on the air, it pays a statutory royalty of 7.1 cents per composition or 1.35 cents per minute of playing time, whichever is greater.
Note the insanely low radio station statutory royalties. In other words, yes, the radio station is paying the artist -- in the same sense that a single raindrop is irrigating a field of corn.
6) The record label credits the artist with their usual percentage -- usually about 10%. Meaning that each time the record is played on the air, the artist receives approximately 7/10ths of one cent. This isn't money that goes toward the artist though. This is money that goes towards repaying the advance, including "promotional expenses -- the bribes!
The main purpose of statutory royalties for radio broadcasts is to create the illusion that the system is fair -- that "artists get paid" when their songs are played on the radio. Actually, it is the artists who pay through the teeth to get their songs on the radio.
The sad thing really is that patent laws were created to protect the little man-with-good-idea against the BigCompany.
This is a persistant myth.
The patent laws were created for one purpose -- to promote progress by encouraging the disclosure of inventions. Patent laws are not, and never were intended to "protect the little guy."
On the other hand, one could make the argument that the specific changes made by the NSA are public domain, but the combination of those changes with the Linux kernel results in a work that is only distributable under the GPL.
Several years ago, a case out of (I believe California) called MAI vs. Peak Electronics wound up being granted review by the Supreme Court of the United States. MAI's claim against Peak was that Peak violated MAI's copyright because the act of turning MAI's computer on made a copy of data contained into ROM, and that making this copy without a license was a violation of MAI's copyright. Never mind that the copy was required for the operation of the computer -- the whole point was to squash an independent service provider and force repairs to go only to MAI-approved repair outfits. Customers had a license to make a copy, and authorized repair centers had that same right... but Peak, as an unauthorized repair center (read competition), did not.
That was an appallingly bad decision, and Congress added a new section to the copyright code to prevent this from happening again. It's a classic example of a law being written as a specific response to a specific court ruling:
17 USC 117. Limitations on exclusive rights: Computer programs
(c) Machine Maintenance or Repair. - Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner or lessee of a machine to make or authorize the making of a copy of a computer program if such copy is made solely by virtue of the activation of a machine that lawfully contains an authorized copy of the computer program, for purposes only of maintenance or repair of that machine, if -
(1) such new copy is used in no other manner and is destroyed immediately after the maintenance or repair is completed; and
(2) with respect to any computer program or part thereof that is not necessary for that machine to be activated, such program or part thereof is not accessed or used other than to make such new copy by virtue of the activation of the machine.
(d) Definitions. - For purposes of this section -
(1) the ''maintenance'' of a machine is the servicing of the machine in order to make it work in accordance with its original specifications and any changes to those specifications authorized for that machine; and
(2) the ''repair'' of a machine is the restoring of the machine to the state of working in accordance with its original specifications and any changes to those specifications authorized for that machine.
Suppose you buy a piece of software and after installing and using it for a while, you decide to read the shrinkwrap agreement. You discover to your horror, that by running the software you agree to give your first-born son to the software company. They sue to get your son. Would the judge hand him over?
That would depend on whether or not you live in a state that has passed the UCITA legislation.
However, the character copyright expires when the first copyrighted work containing that character expires.
In other words, "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" would still have decades left of Disney ownership, but anyone in the world would have been free to create new Mickey Mouse cartoons, because the character would be out of copyright. That's what Disney was so desperate to prevent.
BTW, Here is an interesting article that makes the argument that Mickey Mouse is already in the public domain, due to a defective copyright notice on the first Mickey Mouse film!
This bill, if passed, appears to provide a convenient excuse for the government to outlaw public school and library access to forums like slashdot that permit anonymous posting.
Who Is E-Mailing Our Kids Act
on
Congress@Work
·
· Score: 5
How ironic that the act is titled the Who Is E-Mailing Our Kids Act, when it has absolutely nothing to do with people emailing kids, and everything to do with the ability of kids to email other people.
This bill should be relabelled the "Child Identification to Pedophiles Act of 2001."
By forbidding the use of anonymous email, this law mandates the disclosure of the identity of children when they use the internet.
If the purpose of the law was really to protect children, it would be completely reversed. It would require that any minor who wishes to use the net be provided with the ability to safely and anonymously do so, without the risk of their identity being discovered by third parties on the internet.
The purpose of copyright is not to benefit authors. The purpose of copyright is to benefit the general public by encouraging authors to publish works, which, at the time the Constitution was written, meant open publication. The idea of a "closed source copyrighted work" is something that would have appalled the founding fathers. The entire purpose of creating a copyright clause was to eliminate proprietary licensing of writings, specifically the restrictive licensing of navigational maps.
Map makers didn't want to sell maps, because they could be easily copied. Therefore, mapmakers resorted to individually licensing maps to ship captains, as trade secrets, and the result was that no one could study, compare, and correct maps, and inaccurate maps proliferated, often resulting in loss of life.
This situation is very similar to the situation with commercial closed-source software, where the "state of the art" swirls around in a fog of secrecy. Only the authors of closed-source software are in a position to study, compare, and correct source code, and their publishers all spend inordinate amounts of effort in mutually preventing themselves, and the rest of the world, from doing so.
Certainly, rewarding authors is not incompatable with benefiting the public, but it is important to remember that copyright has a purpose, and a permissible means.
The purpose of copyright is stated in the constitution:
The Congress shall have power... To promote the progress of science and useful arts,"
The means of promoting progress is:
"by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;"
Note that the constitution does NOT say:
The Congress shall have power... to secure for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;"
because the promotion of progress, not the rewarding of authors, is the sole legitimate purpose of copyright.
Think of the GPL as an effort to repair our failed copyright system.
This covers the case where you "make a copy" of a piece of software by loading it into a computer, and make an "adaptation" of the software by executing it, thus changing the variables in the software.
Unless you agree, as part of a contractual license, to restrictions over your right to use a piece of software, you have the right, by default, to use the software, by virtue of your ownership of the copy. Right of first sale.
I made another posting elsewhere in this article that addresses some of your other points. Feel free to comment here or there if you think I have erred.
Slashdot Mirror
It depends on the isotope. Po-209, for example, has a half-life of 105 years.
Right, but they use the hot isotope for a reason. If you use a slower-decaying isotope, you reduce the probability that the initiator will produce a neutron at the critical instant when it is needed.
You want the polonium to be spewing out alpha particles constantly, to maximize the probability that the system will produce that one critical neutron exactly when it is needed.
Pu 239 has a half-life of approximately 24,000 years, so for all practical purposes it is stable and doesn't need to be rotated.
However, inside each weapon is a small device called the initiator. The initiator is made of beryllium and polonium-210, and is inserted in the center of the plutonium sphere.
When the bomb is detonated, the plutonium sphere implodes, crushing together and mixing the beryllium and polonium. The polonium gives off alpha radiation, and beryllium emits neutrons when hit by alpha radiation. One reference says that the number of neutrons given off by the initiator is around five or six. All it takes is one neutron to start the fission chain reaction.
The initiator only has a few microseconds to emit the necessary neutrons. It's considered to be one of the most critical and difficult aspects of nuclear weapon design. A great deal of information has been published about nuclear weapon design, but information about initator design is never published.
Polonium has a half-life of only 138 days. So, even though the plutonium itself decays very slowly, it is the initators that must be regularly replaced.
The source code was a zero-cost option. If you wanted it, you just asked for it.
On the other hand, 20 years ago when you paid to license IBM mainframe software, you received:
o The runnable object code
o The complete, buildable source code
o Printed manuals that completely documented the internal logic of the software.
They should just shorten the name and call it "KillUs"
Even better ... A search, with the porn filter off, on PUBLIC SEX brings up the FSF's GNU sketch ... hmm ...
Or, alternately, zero-click shopping. Here's how it works:
Each item on the screen has a "buy it now" icon next to it. By moving the mouse pointer over the icon, you automatically purchase the item.
The only drawback is that one must be very careful in moving the cursor around the screen.
If you want to protect your family's financial interests in the event of your unexpected death, you should take out life insurance like everyone else, NOT look to the government to subsidize your family by granting them an unearned copyright monopoly at the public expense.
I would disagree with (4) for a different reason however. If copyrights expired upon an author's death, this would provide an incentive for rival publishers, and targets of copyright infringement lawsuits to murder successful authors.
For those who are interested in the history behind the development of UNIVAC, I recommend the book:
"From ENIAC to UNIVAC, An Appraisal of the Eckert-Mauchly Computers", by Nancy Stern.
Published by Digital (DEC) Press, 1981.
if you can find it. It's been out of print for years.
The book discusses the history and design of ENIAC, EDVAC, BINAC, and UNIVAC. Great reading.
But it's a well-known fact in the record industry that publishing rights are where the money is
... which would make sense, because unlike recording artists, songwriters don't have to pay for studio time, "promotional expenses", music videos, etc. They don't have a huge advance to pay back before they can start making money.
it is ridiculous to assume that the maudlin music that was the product of the early sheet music industry was as a result of the predominance of women pianists - the women played the music they could buy, and if all they could buy was sappy, emotional music, then that was what they played.
It is just as true today as it was then. You can make more money selling mediocre music that appeals to the lowest common denominator then you can make selling brilliant music that only appeals to or is only accessable to a small audience.
Scott Joplin wrote incredible, gorgeous music, but very few people could play his compositions. I spent the better part of two years learning a handful of his rags, and it required daily practice to play his songs perfectly. They are VERY difficult and very complex, both rhythmically and harmonically. A Joplin rag is not the sort of thing that you can fake. You can't just improvise around the melody, because his songs constantly change tempo, rhythm, and key. You can simplify them, but then they lose their beauty.
In the early 20th century, there were a handful of (white) musicians whose claim to fame was that they could play ragtime fast -- and I mean REALLY fast -- two or three times as fast as it was supposed to be performed. The result was a dumbing-down of ragtime. The complex rhythms, harmonies, and modulations were replaced by easy-to-remember key changes, and ragtime became jazz.
It should also be remembered that Scott Joplin died penniless not because his music didn't sell, but because he was defrauded by his music publisher John Stark, who made millions on Joplin's sheet music, and left Joplin to die penniless.
The formula is:
1) An artist writes, performs, and records a song.
2) The artists' record label hires an "Independent Promoter" to "convince" radio stations across the country to play the song. The "convincing" usually involves payments of several hundred to several thousand dollars per radio station per song.
3) Each newly enriched radio station "decides" to add the new song to their rotation.
3) The "Independent Promoter" bills the record label for thousands of dollars per radio station that has "decided" to play the song.
4) The Record label pays the independent promoter, and charges the expense to the artist as a "recoupable expense", meaning that the bribe comes out of the artists' royalty payments. This can easily come to $500,000 or more per song. There's a lot of radio stations to bribe, and the "independent promoters" have basically taken over the system.
5) Each time the radio station plays the song on the air, it pays a statutory royalty of 7.1 cents per composition or 1.35 cents per minute of playing time, whichever is greater.
Note the insanely low radio station statutory royalties. In other words, yes, the radio station is paying the artist -- in the same sense that a single raindrop is irrigating a field of corn.
6) The record label credits the artist with their usual percentage -- usually about 10%. Meaning that each time the record is played on the air, the artist receives approximately 7/10ths of one cent. This isn't money that goes toward the artist though. This is money that goes towards repaying the advance, including "promotional expenses -- the bribes!
The main purpose of statutory royalties for radio broadcasts is to create the illusion that the system is fair -- that "artists get paid" when their songs are played on the radio. Actually, it is the artists who pay through the teeth to get their songs on the radio.
The sad thing really is that patent laws were created to protect the little man-with-good-idea against the BigCompany.
This is a persistant myth.
The patent laws were created for one purpose -- to promote progress by encouraging the disclosure of inventions. Patent laws are not, and never were intended to "protect the little guy."
On the other hand, one could make the argument that the specific changes made by the NSA are public domain, but the combination of those changes with the Linux kernel results in a work that is only distributable under the GPL.
Several years ago, a case out of (I believe California) called MAI vs. Peak Electronics wound up being granted review by the Supreme Court of the United States. MAI's claim against Peak was that Peak violated MAI's copyright because the act of turning MAI's computer on made a copy of data contained into ROM, and that making this copy without a license was a violation of MAI's copyright. Never mind that the copy was required for the operation of the computer -- the whole point was to squash an independent service provider and force repairs to go only to MAI-approved repair outfits. Customers had a license to make a copy, and authorized repair centers had that same right ... but Peak, as an unauthorized repair center (read competition), did not.
That was an appallingly bad decision, and Congress added a new section to the copyright code to prevent this from happening again. It's a classic example of a law being written as a specific response to a specific court ruling:
17 USC 117. Limitations on exclusive rights: Computer programs
(c) Machine Maintenance or Repair. - Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner or lessee of a machine to make or authorize the making of a copy of a computer program if such copy is made solely by virtue of the activation of a machine that lawfully contains an authorized copy of the computer program, for purposes only of maintenance or repair of that machine, if -
(1) such new copy is used in no other manner and is destroyed immediately after the maintenance or repair is completed; and
(2) with respect to any computer program or part thereof that is not necessary for that machine to be activated, such program or part thereof is not accessed or used other than to make such new copy by virtue of the activation of the machine.
(d) Definitions. - For purposes of this section -
(1) the ''maintenance'' of a machine is the servicing of the machine in order to make it work in accordance with its original specifications and any changes to those specifications authorized for that machine; and
(2) the ''repair'' of a machine is the restoring of the machine to the state of working in accordance with its original specifications and any changes to those specifications authorized for that machine.
Suppose you buy a piece of software and after installing and using it for a while, you decide to read the shrinkwrap agreement. You discover to your horror, that by running the software you agree to give your first-born son to the software company. They sue to get your son. Would the judge hand him over?
That would depend on whether or not you live in a state that has passed the UCITA legislation.
However, the character copyright expires when the first copyrighted work containing that character expires.
In other words, "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" would still have decades left of Disney ownership, but anyone in the world would have been free to create new Mickey Mouse cartoons, because the character would be out of copyright. That's what Disney was so desperate to prevent.
BTW, Here is an interesting article that makes the argument that Mickey Mouse is already in the public domain, due to a defective copyright notice on the first Mickey Mouse film!
The best title in the entire series has to be The Complete Idiot's Guide To Enhancing Self-Esteem.
Plus, it's well established that song titles can't be copyrighted.
This bill, if passed, appears to provide a convenient excuse for the government to outlaw public school and library access to forums like slashdot that permit anonymous posting.
How ironic that the act is titled the Who Is E-Mailing Our Kids Act, when it has absolutely nothing to do with people emailing kids, and everything to do with the ability of kids to email other people.
This bill should be relabelled the "Child Identification to Pedophiles Act of 2001."
By forbidding the use of anonymous email, this law mandates the disclosure of the identity of children when they use the internet.
If the purpose of the law was really to protect children, it would be completely reversed. It would require that any minor who wishes to use the net be provided with the ability to safely and anonymously do so, without the risk of their identity being discovered by third parties on the internet.
The purpose of copyright is not to benefit authors. The purpose of copyright is to benefit the general public by encouraging authors to publish works, which, at the time the Constitution was written, meant open publication. The idea of a "closed source copyrighted work" is something that would have appalled the founding fathers. The entire purpose of creating a copyright clause was to eliminate proprietary licensing of writings, specifically the restrictive licensing of navigational maps.
... To promote the progress of science and useful arts,"
... to secure for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;"
Map makers didn't want to sell maps, because they could be easily copied. Therefore, mapmakers resorted to individually licensing maps to ship captains, as trade secrets, and the result was that no one could study, compare, and correct maps, and inaccurate maps proliferated, often resulting in loss of life.
This situation is very similar to the situation with commercial closed-source software, where the "state of the art" swirls around in a fog of secrecy. Only the authors of closed-source software are in a position to study, compare, and correct source code, and their publishers all spend inordinate amounts of effort in mutually preventing themselves, and the rest of the world, from doing so.
Certainly, rewarding authors is not incompatable with benefiting the public, but it is important to remember that copyright has a purpose, and a permissible means.
The purpose of copyright is stated in the constitution:
The Congress shall have power
The means of promoting progress is:
"by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;"
Note that the constitution does NOT say:
The Congress shall have power
because the promotion of progress, not the rewarding of authors, is the sole legitimate purpose of copyright.
Think of the GPL as an effort to repair our failed copyright system.
I've read Title 17 from beginning to end, and what you are talking about doesn't exist.
Steve -- what section of the copyright statutes assign the copyrights of derivitive works to the original copyright owner?
No, under copyright law the use of software is by default unrestricted.
17 USC 117 (a) Making of Additional Copy or Adaptation by Owner of Copy. - Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:
(1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner, or
(2) [you are making a backup copy]
This covers the case where you "make a copy" of a piece of software by loading it into a computer, and make an "adaptation" of the software by executing it, thus changing the variables in the software.
Unless you agree, as part of a contractual license, to restrictions over your right to use a piece of software, you have the right, by default, to use the software, by virtue of your ownership of the copy. Right of first sale.
I made another posting elsewhere in this article that addresses some of your other points. Feel free to comment here or there if you think I have erred.