I think what he meant was "Proving that science fiction can still be great pop-culture entertainment".
There's a big difference between what a sci-fi fan finds entertaining (speculation about future technology and society, viewing the problems of today through the lens of fantasy) and what the average guy on the street finds entertaining (I'm going to resist the temptation to lampoon the average guy's tastes).
Don't believe me? Look at the most popular 'sci-fi' movies in history (truly popular, not just cult classics) and think about whether or not they are really science-fiction the way you think about it. Pop-culture sci-fi uses the futuristic/technology aspects as plot devices to make a fantasy story work. What makes the new Star Trek movie interesting is that it seems to be both science-fiction as well as pop-culture science-fiction at the same time.
A neural network running a simulation of a human brain would be a Turing-complete strong AI
I understand what you're saying here but there are a lot of non-trivial hurdles to get over, even assuming you can accurately scan and simulate the brain.
First, the brain also includes a lot of chemical transmitters which we really don't understand the function of yet. You would have to include them in your model as well, including the ones that don't originate in the brain.
Second, you have to interpret the simulated neuron firing into something that you can actually understand. It's pretty pointless for your brain-on-a-hard-drive to be saying 'hello' if you can't understand what it's saying. An accurate simulation of my mind would have all the neurons that control my breathing, lips, tongue, and vocal cords firing like crazy, but good luck figuring out what I'm saying.
Third, you have to be able to supply meaningful input into the brain. You're essentially talking about submitting a consciousness (assuming your simulation is 100% accurate) to the most horrible sensory deprivation imaginable. In order for your research to be useful, you would have to supply it realistic input (including feedback based on it's output) otherwise the brain would change drastically just from that.
if you live in Oklahoma like I do, it's just coming from coal or oil
And as has been shown many, many times before, the net impact on the environment is still much less than burning fuel in a small internal combustion engine. Power plants have the advantage of higher temperatures, more consistant loads, unlimited weight and size, and being always on. They are much more efficient at pulling energy out of fossil fuels, even including losses due to transmition, charging, and the electrical engine.
another double shot at the end of the day to keep me awake on the road
Maybe you tried to quit because you are chronically sleep deprived due to your caffeine intake? I think I remember reading that caffeine can only fight off four hours of sleep deprivation, after that a different neurochemical kicks in that caffeine doesn't effect. So if you are able to sleep with this much caffeine in your system, you are at least four hours behind on sleep, every single day; even if you got eight hours last night, it doesn't make up for the four hour debt you have built up.
Caffeine is really only useful if you only take it when you need it. Drinking so much everyday that you use up the four hours it gives you just puts you right back in the same boat as everyone else. When you quit that sleep debt hits you like a freight train, combined with the effects of withdrawal (headache and nausea) it is truly miserable. But if you wean yourself off of it slowly and catch up on your missed sleep the dull sleepy feeling will go away, and you could save the $7 a day you spend at Starbucks for something more useful.
Ok, let's just be clear here, Bobby Jindal didn't mock spending money on volcano monitoring, he mocked having money earmarked for volcano monitoring in what was supposed to be an economic stimulus bill. I'm a freaking die hard democrat and even I can admit that there is a huge difference between those two things. One is politicians meddling in things they shouldn't be, the other is a legitimate complaint about the way our laws are written up.
I guess I don't see why Google has a monopoly at all. Does anyone know how Google managed to get exclusive rights to orphaned books especially when, by definition, the owners of the materials weren't present for any negotiations? Why not just open the books up to everyone, including Google. If Google decides to be evil, someone else can pay to have the books scanned and charge whatever they want for them. Alternatively, just put it in the settlement that Google cannot charge for access to the orphaned material.
It really doesn't seem like this should be that hard. There's an audience that wants access to books that no one is expecting royalties on; in an age of unlimited free copying, that should be a no brainer.
Personally, I would argue that such a concept is impossible but even beyond that, what's to say that everyone else in the world other than you isn't already without consciousness?
I don't have any real problem with this, except for the non-defined nature of an emergency. I don't know how you would define an emergency (if you know what it is and when it's coming its not much of an emergency) but I would say something along the lines of "a situation which endangers vital communications links, including those needed for power generation, public safety, and military uses".
If a bot-net rises up that starts disrupting these communication links, extreme measures may be needed to ensure those links stay active. Temporarily closing down nonessential Internet traffic isn't much different from shutting down the freeway when road conditions make driving on it unsafe.
The problem, as usual, is the potential for abuse. I would give the president authority to shut down the Internet for not more than 48 hours, anything more than that should require congressional approval. Make abuse of this system a felony offense to punish any blatant abuses of the system. Of course, that is supposed to be how declaring war works too and that hasn't been followed since WWII.
That this will become a hackers toy, rather than a gamers toy. They're targeting a pretty small market if they feel the need to advertise their Amiga library. Maybe they want to go for the nostalgic and hacker audiences, but unless this brings something to the table that the Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo can't patch into their current consoles I just don't see it gaining any steam.
The point is that it's a way for humanity to get into space. Unless medicine improves dramatically within the next 20 years or so there isn't really any chance of me exploring other planets anyway. I suppose it's possible (if the singularity folks are right) that advances in spaceflight and medicine will happen on that kind of time scale, but I find it unlikely.
Besides, if you're not satisfied with uploading your mind how about this. You send nanomachines into your skull to replace one brain cell at a time with a computer simulated brain cell. Over the course of say 10 years, every brain cell in your head is replaced by the simulated version. You never stopped being you, and now your consciousness is hosted on the computer.
In the final part of the experiment, the put screens up in front of the two groups so the chicks couldn't see them, then moved balls back and forth between the groups letting the chicks see how many were being moved each time. The chicks were able to keep track of how many were in each pile based on how many had moved from one to the other. That seems to indicate not just counting and greater than/less than but also addition and subtraction.
Unless of course they just went to the smelliest pile like many people have speculated.
As has been pointed out, there are many answers to the problem of interstellar travel that don't involve rewriting the physics of the past 150 years.
Medicine may allow us to live indefinitely, making travel to the stars possible by the sheer power of our lifespan. Computers may allow us to upload our consciousness into them, leading to an indefinite lifespan. Medicine may allow us to freeze ourselves and re-thaw when we get to the destination. Space propulsion may allow us to accelerate at 1g for long periods of time, thanks to relativity you would get just about anywhere in a matter of years (ship time).
The problem with doing a full scientific inquiry and building a prototype is that first and foremost, every theory that allows FTL requires negative mass, which has never been produced or discovered and isn't included in any of the common particle models. Unless there's a stable, negative mass particle that the Standard Model doesn't predict, FTL is impossible. I would go so far as to say that since such a particle makes FTL possible, such a particle cannot exist in our universe; it simply leads to too many contradictions of too many basic physics concepts (causality & thermodynamics especially).
We're not talking about violating some esoteric theoretical physics. We're not even talking about violating run of the mill everyday physics (like gravity and aerodynamics). We are talking about some of the very core concepts of physics that make our universe work the way that it does.
FTL leads directly to Time Travel; regardless of how it is performed. Not only does that violate causality (which we experience and rely on everyday but isn't technically proven in theoretical physics) it also violates thermodynamics. Sending something back in time produces a huge (in relative terms) reduction in entropy, something that the universe doesn't allow.
People that argue FTL is inevitable, that our theoretical physics must have a tiny flaw that will allow it to happen, don't understand that this isn't about quantum physics or string theory or even relativity. It's about the basic rules that allow us to understand the universe.
Ah, so you're company pays you to sit at your desk for 40 hours a week? Or does your company pay you to get a weeks worth of work done in a week?
If you're being logical about it, working for 32 hours and getting 44 hours of work done is still better than working 40 hours and getting 40 hours of work done; which is what the article is saying. One of the biggest problems I have with the world in general is people doing what seems right instead of applying logic to the situation.
Yes, today it is unusual for the average user to go over 15gb in a month. I'd bet the median user is probably around 3gb. The problem is that 5 years ago the median was probably around.5gb. And 5 years from now the median will be around 25gb.
Is Time Warner going to adjust the bandwidth that you get 'for free' with the plan as time goes on? Or are they just going to let your bill slowly creep up, $1 at a time without even having to tell you about it? Unlike phones, which have used this model successfully for decades, the amount of data used on average is going to increase exponentially as time goes on.
While I agree with the general tone of your comment, your comparison is not really valid. TV signals are broadcast, all users get the same thing. Furthermore, the TV signals aren't sent over the big pipes of the Internet, they are received at your local cable companies offices and sent through the companies cable lines from there. The Internet is different data for each individual, and ISPs do pay a per gigabyte fee to send data across the big pipes that make up the backbone of the Internet.
In all honesty, I would be ok with a per gigabyte fee if the fees were reasonable. Say, $10 for a 10 mbps link plus whatever the ISP pays to send my data through the trunk lines (I'll even throw in a +15% on that figure so they can make their profit).
Maybe this is redundant but I think it needs to be said.
If you're on Time Warner, call and complain. Tell them that as a result of this new policy you are researching alternatives and as soon as you find one you will be canceling service. Let them know that you will be telling you family and friends who are less technically minded to start looking for alternatives too. Remind them that even if their profits on heavy users are slimmer, it is those same users who the rest of their customers go to for advice.
Then follow through, and make sure that everyone you get to switch tells the operator that "A friend who is very knowledgeable recently canceled your service because... and recommended I do the same."
Storms are created by temperatures differences, which are in turn created by sunlight warming different areas at different rates. So yes, the same kinds of things will happen on Jupiter, if nothing else based on the temperature difference from the day to the night side. The real question is, why has the Red Spot been so stable for so long?
Think about it; surface features shouldn't effect warming rates since all solar radiation is absorbed long before it gets to the surface. Pockets of atmosphere will absorb heat at different rates, but those pockets aren't stationary. That leaves complex, self-correcting fluid dynamics or massive surface features that significantly change the wind patterns hundreds or thousands of miles up or something we just don't understand yet. All of which are pretty interesting.
My theory: Having children leads to the end of all meaningful morality.
Morality is defined by what a reasonable person in society says it is. When people have children they are no longer reasonable, their genes don't let them be. It is paramount that a person's children be protected from any and all harm and given every advantage possible; because of this, parents can no longer judge what is in the best interest of society.
I wish I could say I was joking more than I am. Unfortunately, I've had this conversation with someone before. Them: "You don't want universal healthcare, the quality of your care will go down". Me: "What if I value everyone having care more important that some hypothetical reduction to my care?". Them: "You'll understand once you have children".
We had to be careful not to write above a 6th grade level, though, to reach the widest audience.
So not much different from the US then? Seriously, almost all newspapers and magazines are written at the 6th grade level. It's kind of sad really, but then I remember hearing my high school classmates read aloud senior year and many of them probably couldn't even manage that level.
Granted, there's a big difference between random high school kid and someone in the medical community; I imagine it would be hard to document medical procedures while trying to use short words. Kind of reminds me of that website that tries to explain the theory of relativity using four letter words or less.
It kind of makes me wonder if there were groups of professional copiers who were pissed off 500 years ago when Gutenberg introduced movable type to Europe. I suspect that 100 years from now, the businesses that are bemoaning the freedom that the Internet provides will be footnotes in our grand children's history books; whereas the advent of the Internet will be regarded as on par with irrigation, the plow, and the printing press.
It's hard for me to even get pissed off at the music, movie, and news agencies anymore; in a way, I feel sorry for them. They lack the imagination and creativity necessary to change in the face of massive technological upheaval. In 20 years they will either have changed so much as to be unrecognizable or someone will have risen up to take their place. Hand copiers of books lasted decades after Gutenberg's press was introduced, but their demise was just as inevitable.
It really depends on what is meant when you say 'feel'. The researchers seem to be using a defination that means "reacts to and learns from" which to me is not only obvious it is also pointless. The only definition of 'feel' that matters to me is the one that implies consciousness. This is pretty pointless unless you can demonstrate that the crab has a stream of thought that goes something like "Ow! that freakin hurts, better not do that again". Even that won't stop me eating meat, one animal killing and eating another is as natural as it gets, and we evolved canines for a reason.
Your understanding is incorrect but very understandable. The problem is that what is and isn't pornographic is highly subjective. Generally, as far as child pornography is concerned, it is merely enough that the pictures are of someone under 18 years of age and "intended to arouse sexual desire". Which does seems appallingly vague. In this case though, it seems pretty clear that the pictures were intended to excite her boyfriend.
The questions here are: 1) Can a person sexually abuse his/her self? 2) Is the purpose of child pornography laws to punish for the harming of the particular child in the photographs or to shut down the child porn network itself? I can imagine an argument that although she wasn't harmed in the taking of these pictures, these pictures do harm society by supplying material to a network of people that do harm children. 3) If she's to young to consent to the pictures because she can't make rational decisions regarding her sexuality, why can she be charged for making a poor decision regarding her sexuality?
I've got a thought, maybe it's a crazy one or maybe it's a good one, I don't know. Every law that congress passes should have a section titled "Purpose" which describes, in detailed but plain English, what the goal of the law is. When cases go to trial, the judge and jury review the law and also the stated purpose of the law and unless the trial is fulfilling the stated purpose, no crime has been committed.
This does two things. One, it prevents wanton abuses of the system by those looking to make a name for themselves or make an example of others. Two, it requires that lawmakers actually stop and think about what the law is intended to do and, hopefully, think about whether the more technical portions of the law actually will achieve that aim.
Slashdot Mirror
I think what he meant was "Proving that science fiction can still be great pop-culture entertainment".
There's a big difference between what a sci-fi fan finds entertaining (speculation about future technology and society, viewing the problems of today through the lens of fantasy) and what the average guy on the street finds entertaining (I'm going to resist the temptation to lampoon the average guy's tastes).
Don't believe me? Look at the most popular 'sci-fi' movies in history (truly popular, not just cult classics) and think about whether or not they are really science-fiction the way you think about it. Pop-culture sci-fi uses the futuristic/technology aspects as plot devices to make a fantasy story work. What makes the new Star Trek movie interesting is that it seems to be both science-fiction as well as pop-culture science-fiction at the same time.
A neural network running a simulation of a human brain would be a Turing-complete strong AI
I understand what you're saying here but there are a lot of non-trivial hurdles to get over, even assuming you can accurately scan and simulate the brain.
First, the brain also includes a lot of chemical transmitters which we really don't understand the function of yet. You would have to include them in your model as well, including the ones that don't originate in the brain.
Second, you have to interpret the simulated neuron firing into something that you can actually understand. It's pretty pointless for your brain-on-a-hard-drive to be saying 'hello' if you can't understand what it's saying. An accurate simulation of my mind would have all the neurons that control my breathing, lips, tongue, and vocal cords firing like crazy, but good luck figuring out what I'm saying.
Third, you have to be able to supply meaningful input into the brain. You're essentially talking about submitting a consciousness (assuming your simulation is 100% accurate) to the most horrible sensory deprivation imaginable. In order for your research to be useful, you would have to supply it realistic input (including feedback based on it's output) otherwise the brain would change drastically just from that.
if you live in Oklahoma like I do, it's just coming from coal or oil
And as has been shown many, many times before, the net impact on the environment is still much less than burning fuel in a small internal combustion engine. Power plants have the advantage of higher temperatures, more consistant loads, unlimited weight and size, and being always on. They are much more efficient at pulling energy out of fossil fuels, even including losses due to transmition, charging, and the electrical engine.
I'm not exactly sure why I tried to quit
another double shot at the end of the day to keep me awake on the road
Maybe you tried to quit because you are chronically sleep deprived due to your caffeine intake? I think I remember reading that caffeine can only fight off four hours of sleep deprivation, after that a different neurochemical kicks in that caffeine doesn't effect. So if you are able to sleep with this much caffeine in your system, you are at least four hours behind on sleep, every single day; even if you got eight hours last night, it doesn't make up for the four hour debt you have built up.
Caffeine is really only useful if you only take it when you need it. Drinking so much everyday that you use up the four hours it gives you just puts you right back in the same boat as everyone else. When you quit that sleep debt hits you like a freight train, combined with the effects of withdrawal (headache and nausea) it is truly miserable. But if you wean yourself off of it slowly and catch up on your missed sleep the dull sleepy feeling will go away, and you could save the $7 a day you spend at Starbucks for something more useful.
Ok, let's just be clear here, Bobby Jindal didn't mock spending money on volcano monitoring, he mocked having money earmarked for volcano monitoring in what was supposed to be an economic stimulus bill. I'm a freaking die hard democrat and even I can admit that there is a huge difference between those two things. One is politicians meddling in things they shouldn't be, the other is a legitimate complaint about the way our laws are written up.
I guess I don't see why Google has a monopoly at all. Does anyone know how Google managed to get exclusive rights to orphaned books especially when, by definition, the owners of the materials weren't present for any negotiations? Why not just open the books up to everyone, including Google. If Google decides to be evil, someone else can pay to have the books scanned and charge whatever they want for them. Alternatively, just put it in the settlement that Google cannot charge for access to the orphaned material.
It really doesn't seem like this should be that hard. There's an audience that wants access to books that no one is expecting royalties on; in an age of unlimited free copying, that should be a no brainer.
So you make the argument that you would become a philosophical zombie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie)?
Personally, I would argue that such a concept is impossible but even beyond that, what's to say that everyone else in the world other than you isn't already without consciousness?
Just from reading the summary, I'll say this.
I don't have any real problem with this, except for the non-defined nature of an emergency. I don't know how you would define an emergency (if you know what it is and when it's coming its not much of an emergency) but I would say something along the lines of "a situation which endangers vital communications links, including those needed for power generation, public safety, and military uses".
If a bot-net rises up that starts disrupting these communication links, extreme measures may be needed to ensure those links stay active. Temporarily closing down nonessential Internet traffic isn't much different from shutting down the freeway when road conditions make driving on it unsafe.
The problem, as usual, is the potential for abuse. I would give the president authority to shut down the Internet for not more than 48 hours, anything more than that should require congressional approval. Make abuse of this system a felony offense to punish any blatant abuses of the system. Of course, that is supposed to be how declaring war works too and that hasn't been followed since WWII.
That this will become a hackers toy, rather than a gamers toy. They're targeting a pretty small market if they feel the need to advertise their Amiga library. Maybe they want to go for the nostalgic and hacker audiences, but unless this brings something to the table that the Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo can't patch into their current consoles I just don't see it gaining any steam.
The point is that it's a way for humanity to get into space. Unless medicine improves dramatically within the next 20 years or so there isn't really any chance of me exploring other planets anyway. I suppose it's possible (if the singularity folks are right) that advances in spaceflight and medicine will happen on that kind of time scale, but I find it unlikely.
Besides, if you're not satisfied with uploading your mind how about this. You send nanomachines into your skull to replace one brain cell at a time with a computer simulated brain cell. Over the course of say 10 years, every brain cell in your head is replaced by the simulated version. You never stopped being you, and now your consciousness is hosted on the computer.
In the final part of the experiment, the put screens up in front of the two groups so the chicks couldn't see them, then moved balls back and forth between the groups letting the chicks see how many were being moved each time. The chicks were able to keep track of how many were in each pile based on how many had moved from one to the other. That seems to indicate not just counting and greater than/less than but also addition and subtraction.
Unless of course they just went to the smelliest pile like many people have speculated.
As has been pointed out, there are many answers to the problem of interstellar travel that don't involve rewriting the physics of the past 150 years.
Medicine may allow us to live indefinitely, making travel to the stars possible by the sheer power of our lifespan.
Computers may allow us to upload our consciousness into them, leading to an indefinite lifespan.
Medicine may allow us to freeze ourselves and re-thaw when we get to the destination.
Space propulsion may allow us to accelerate at 1g for long periods of time, thanks to relativity you would get just about anywhere in a matter of years (ship time).
The problem with doing a full scientific inquiry and building a prototype is that first and foremost, every theory that allows FTL requires negative mass, which has never been produced or discovered and isn't included in any of the common particle models. Unless there's a stable, negative mass particle that the Standard Model doesn't predict, FTL is impossible. I would go so far as to say that since such a particle makes FTL possible, such a particle cannot exist in our universe; it simply leads to too many contradictions of too many basic physics concepts (causality & thermodynamics especially).
We're not talking about violating some esoteric theoretical physics. We're not even talking about violating run of the mill everyday physics (like gravity and aerodynamics). We are talking about some of the very core concepts of physics that make our universe work the way that it does.
FTL leads directly to Time Travel; regardless of how it is performed. Not only does that violate causality (which we experience and rely on everyday but isn't technically proven in theoretical physics) it also violates thermodynamics. Sending something back in time produces a huge (in relative terms) reduction in entropy, something that the universe doesn't allow.
People that argue FTL is inevitable, that our theoretical physics must have a tiny flaw that will allow it to happen, don't understand that this isn't about quantum physics or string theory or even relativity. It's about the basic rules that allow us to understand the universe.
Ah, so you're company pays you to sit at your desk for 40 hours a week? Or does your company pay you to get a weeks worth of work done in a week?
If you're being logical about it, working for 32 hours and getting 44 hours of work done is still better than working 40 hours and getting 40 hours of work done; which is what the article is saying. One of the biggest problems I have with the world in general is people doing what seems right instead of applying logic to the situation.
Yes, today it is unusual for the average user to go over 15gb in a month. I'd bet the median user is probably around 3gb. The problem is that 5 years ago the median was probably around .5gb. And 5 years from now the median will be around 25gb.
Is Time Warner going to adjust the bandwidth that you get 'for free' with the plan as time goes on? Or are they just going to let your bill slowly creep up, $1 at a time without even having to tell you about it? Unlike phones, which have used this model successfully for decades, the amount of data used on average is going to increase exponentially as time goes on.
While I agree with the general tone of your comment, your comparison is not really valid. TV signals are broadcast, all users get the same thing. Furthermore, the TV signals aren't sent over the big pipes of the Internet, they are received at your local cable companies offices and sent through the companies cable lines from there. The Internet is different data for each individual, and ISPs do pay a per gigabyte fee to send data across the big pipes that make up the backbone of the Internet.
In all honesty, I would be ok with a per gigabyte fee if the fees were reasonable. Say, $10 for a 10 mbps link plus whatever the ISP pays to send my data through the trunk lines (I'll even throw in a +15% on that figure so they can make their profit).
Maybe this is redundant but I think it needs to be said.
If you're on Time Warner, call and complain. Tell them that as a result of this new policy you are researching alternatives and as soon as you find one you will be canceling service. Let them know that you will be telling you family and friends who are less technically minded to start looking for alternatives too. Remind them that even if their profits on heavy users are slimmer, it is those same users who the rest of their customers go to for advice.
Then follow through, and make sure that everyone you get to switch tells the operator that "A friend who is very knowledgeable recently canceled your service because... and recommended I do the same."
Storms are created by temperatures differences, which are in turn created by sunlight warming different areas at different rates. So yes, the same kinds of things will happen on Jupiter, if nothing else based on the temperature difference from the day to the night side. The real question is, why has the Red Spot been so stable for so long?
Think about it; surface features shouldn't effect warming rates since all solar radiation is absorbed long before it gets to the surface. Pockets of atmosphere will absorb heat at different rates, but those pockets aren't stationary. That leaves complex, self-correcting fluid dynamics or massive surface features that significantly change the wind patterns hundreds or thousands of miles up or something we just don't understand yet. All of which are pretty interesting.
My theory: Having children leads to the end of all meaningful morality.
Morality is defined by what a reasonable person in society says it is. When people have children they are no longer reasonable, their genes don't let them be. It is paramount that a person's children be protected from any and all harm and given every advantage possible; because of this, parents can no longer judge what is in the best interest of society.
I wish I could say I was joking more than I am. Unfortunately, I've had this conversation with someone before. Them: "You don't want universal healthcare, the quality of your care will go down". Me: "What if I value everyone having care more important that some hypothetical reduction to my care?". Them: "You'll understand once you have children".
We had to be careful not to write above a 6th grade level, though, to reach the widest audience.
So not much different from the US then? Seriously, almost all newspapers and magazines are written at the 6th grade level. It's kind of sad really, but then I remember hearing my high school classmates read aloud senior year and many of them probably couldn't even manage that level.
Granted, there's a big difference between random high school kid and someone in the medical community; I imagine it would be hard to document medical procedures while trying to use short words. Kind of reminds me of that website that tries to explain the theory of relativity using four letter words or less.
It kind of makes me wonder if there were groups of professional copiers who were pissed off 500 years ago when Gutenberg introduced movable type to Europe. I suspect that 100 years from now, the businesses that are bemoaning the freedom that the Internet provides will be footnotes in our grand children's history books; whereas the advent of the Internet will be regarded as on par with irrigation, the plow, and the printing press.
It's hard for me to even get pissed off at the music, movie, and news agencies anymore; in a way, I feel sorry for them. They lack the imagination and creativity necessary to change in the face of massive technological upheaval. In 20 years they will either have changed so much as to be unrecognizable or someone will have risen up to take their place. Hand copiers of books lasted decades after Gutenberg's press was introduced, but their demise was just as inevitable.
This is called denial of exculpatory evidence, and is solid grounds for a complete case dismissal. So why would the DA do such a thing?
Because this isn't a trial and no charges have been filed yet. If charges are filed, he will have to turn the photos over to the defense.
It really depends on what is meant when you say 'feel'. The researchers seem to be using a defination that means "reacts to and learns from" which to me is not only obvious it is also pointless. The only definition of 'feel' that matters to me is the one that implies consciousness. This is pretty pointless unless you can demonstrate that the crab has a stream of thought that goes something like "Ow! that freakin hurts, better not do that again". Even that won't stop me eating meat, one animal killing and eating another is as natural as it gets, and we evolved canines for a reason.
Your understanding is incorrect but very understandable. The problem is that what is and isn't pornographic is highly subjective. Generally, as far as child pornography is concerned, it is merely enough that the pictures are of someone under 18 years of age and "intended to arouse sexual desire". Which does seems appallingly vague. In this case though, it seems pretty clear that the pictures were intended to excite her boyfriend.
The questions here are:
1) Can a person sexually abuse his/her self?
2) Is the purpose of child pornography laws to punish for the harming of the particular child in the photographs or to shut down the child porn network itself? I can imagine an argument that although she wasn't harmed in the taking of these pictures, these pictures do harm society by supplying material to a network of people that do harm children.
3) If she's to young to consent to the pictures because she can't make rational decisions regarding her sexuality, why can she be charged for making a poor decision regarding her sexuality?
I've got a thought, maybe it's a crazy one or maybe it's a good one, I don't know. Every law that congress passes should have a section titled "Purpose" which describes, in detailed but plain English, what the goal of the law is. When cases go to trial, the judge and jury review the law and also the stated purpose of the law and unless the trial is fulfilling the stated purpose, no crime has been committed.
This does two things. One, it prevents wanton abuses of the system by those looking to make a name for themselves or make an example of others. Two, it requires that lawmakers actually stop and think about what the law is intended to do and, hopefully, think about whether the more technical portions of the law actually will achieve that aim.