Slowing your mind down isnt a cure, you can accomplish the same thing with alcohol, what you dont realize is yes you can use drugs, but these drugs work by slowing your brain down, yes you focus better but you also arent as sharp as you could be.
This shows how little you understand how the brain works and what the drugs do, despite your apparent belief that you have some sort of advanced insight into "how your mind works." The drugs used to treat ADD regulate the dopamine system. That does not slow anything down and it does not in any way resemble the effects of alcohol. And gaining the ability to think about one thing at a time does not reduce my intelligence, make me less sharp, or slow down my thinking process. It means that I can concentrate on the task at hand without putting up with a constant barrage of intrusive, unrelated thoughts. I can put all of my mental energy into doing what I want to be doing instead of expending half of it wondering if Bob's mole is cancerous, thinking about the possible insulators that could be used in the heating element of an electric oven, thinking about places I might go on my next vacation, etc. Those thoughts are undesirable when I am trying to concentrate on something else.
You can either learn how your mind works and adapt the enviornment to suit how you think, or you can hide behind drugs. I'll tell you this, at some point you wont have these drugs, and you wont know how to manage your ADD because you used drugs.
I am not "hiding behind drugs." I am using drugs to allow my brain to compensate for physiological problems that interfere with my life. Do you also tell people who take drugs for MS that they should learn how their bodies work and stop hiding behind drugs? You probably do, but resonable people do not. I have a medical condition and I can take drugs that have exactly the effect that I want them to have. That's treatment, not "hiding."
You dont have to actually DO what you think. I think like that too, but I dont actually DO everything I think. Learn priorities, do whats most important first.
Again, you obviously do not understand how the disorder works and how it interferes with people's lives. I don't have any problems setting priorities. What I do have a problem with is having one thought INVOLUNTARILY replacing another thought. You seem to believe that this is just a matter of people thinking of something else they could be doing and then doing it. That doesn't happen. Many people with ADD frequently find themselves in places or situations when they cannot remember how they got there. They can be thinking about something and then suddenly the train of thought is gone. They know that they were thinking, but they don't know what the subjects was.
When you are in a class listening to a lecture on stuff you already know, or which you can get from the book, you can be solving problems or doing work for other classes in your head instead of thinking about making toast, its a matter of priorities.
The subject matter of extraneous thoughts is not voluntary. This is what you do not seem to understand. ADD can make your brain feel like it's in hyperdrive -- having a constant stream of unrelated thoughts that may last for only a fraction of a second. Setting priorities is great, but actually following them is not always possible with that kind of background noise. Try doing a complex mathematical proof with somebody standing behind you banging cymbals and blowing a trumpet for hours on end while an obnoxious talk radio station is blaring in your ear and see how well you concentrate. That's what it's like. And no, I am not in school. I graduated and lived for many years before I was diagnosed.
Heres another tip, dont cook while your minds on code, you can multitask at cooking, you can be making a salad, cooking a steak, baking a cake, all at once and do this just fine because its all in the same
Re:ADHD=Bored Person Syndrome.
on
Working with ADHD?
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· Score: 4, Informative
I have not met one person who has REAL ADHD, meaning a person who cant even focus on doing what they like to do.
You have met them, you just never noticed it. Unmedicated, I cannot consistently focus on things I like to do. This has nothing at all to do with boredom. I may decide to work on project X that has to be completed very quickly and several hours later find myself working on project Y that is relatively unimportant. Both projects may be fascinating, but the point is that I can't manage to work on the task that I intended to work on without getting distracted with something else. With medication, that is much less of a problem.
But the real problem with ADD is often how it interferes with normal life. You leave the house to mail a letter or a bill and end up in a bookstore a couple of hours later without the letter and unable to remember if it was actually mailed, or if it is sitting on a bookshelf someplace.
This is not a matter of people being lazy and your statement that it is shows how little you know or care about other people. My physics degree is proof enough that I am not lazy. Nor do I consider myself to be inferior to others. And I don't get any special benefits or privileges, despite your belief that I am somehow being coddled by the rest of society.
I do know that you'll never solve the problem with pills, I know that much.
How do you know that? Drugs can be extremely beneficial for people who actually suffer from ADD. The fact is that this is a disorder with a physiological cause that can often be treated using standard medical practices. Studies with MRIs have been done to compare normal brains with ADD brains while doing various mental exercises. There is a clear difference between the two groups.
I hated the public education system, but I loved college. I still couldn't keep track of what was going on in the classroom. Classes were a formality -- I had to learn everything from books and notes. I now take drugs to treat my ADD and the results are dramatic. I can actually think about a single subject without simultaneously thinking about 5 or 6 unrelated things. I can remember what it is that I'm working on in the first place. Before I started taking drugs, I would frequently start cooking dinner, get distracted with something else midway through, and then suddenly realize that I had food on the stove when the smoke alarms start going off half an hour later. Turning away from the stove to get a can of tomato sauce from the pantry should not result in a person deciding that it's a good time to work on fixing a bug that they found two weeks ago, yet this is the "normal" state of affairs for many people who have ADD. ADD is a pain in the ass and drugs allow me and many other people to function almost normally. I resent the suggestion that ADD is imaginary, the result of simple boredom, or just a sign of outright laziness.
According to Eben Moglen, not only have they released their IP under the GPL, but it doesn't even matter that they kept on distributing for months after they discovered the infringement. Even if they had stopped distributing as soon as they discovered the offending code, they would still have no right to prohibit others from using or distributing Linux. He doesn't seem to think that it matters whether or not they knew about the Unix code; they distributed under the terms of the GPL and the GPL does not make exceptions. He also says that this is not a case of SCO distributing the code inadvertently:
Moglen noted that SCO cannot readily make the claim that it inadvertently released the code, because the GPL requires that when code is released under its auspices, the developers must release the binary, the source code and the license, and the source code must be able to build the binary. Presumably, then, the binary functions the way the creators want it to function and has the capabilities they want it to have.
IBM assigned their Linux copyrights to the FSF. I don't know why this story has not been posted on slashdot before. It has a number of quotes straight from Eben Moglen, the FSF general counsel, that clear up a number of issues that have been debated endlessly here.
That article is nothing more than a vast collection of logical fallacies. It could be used in an introductory philosophy class to demonstrate how not to frame an argument. BM (very fitting initials, IMO) should be ashamed of himself for publishing this drivel.
A case in point: BM goes on at length criticizing the arguments of the Free software movement in general, and RMS in particular. The problem here is that in the beginning of the article, BM produces his own definition of "free" software (based on 'free of cost'), notes that the BM definition differs from the RMS definition (based on 'freedom to modify and redistribute'), and then goes on to criticize RMS's arguments based on the BM definition of "free software." Of course the arguments for Free software are incoherent and ridiculous if the wrong definition of "free" is used! That's why RMS provided the definition in the first place. I don't remember the technical term for this type of argument, but I call it the bait-and-switch argument. It is one of the most offensive logical fallicies because it is always deliberate, and is always used to spread misinformation (lies) about the opponent's opinions (even worse than a strawman argument).
The gun stuff is nothing more than a red herring. I agree that ESR is a gun nut, but what does that have to do with Free software? Absolutely nothing. It's just a shallow attempt to slander the Free software and Open Source communities with the (unrelated) opinions of an extremist.
MS may not actually be in bed with SCO even though they must be overjoyed about this entire debacle. It sounds like SCO may have approached MS with licensing demands at about the same time they started planning the case against IBM (beginning of the year). This makes sense because like IBM, MS has very deep pockets. MS may have negotiated a licensing deal just to make SCO go away and avoid the publicity and expense of yet another lawsuit, however baseless it may have been. If harrasing Linux users and vendors was really their goal, they would have bought SCO outright and pursued the lawsuit(s) themselves. The market value of SCO is pocket change to MS.
As I said, you may be right about the first part of that sentiment. Their case depends on the rapidity with which they stopped distributing. However, I honestly don't know if their notifying developers of the violations will make much of a difference. If there is a strong legal reason to keep the violations confidential until the case reaches a judge, the legal system might not consider that an important component in determining SCO's compliance.
If they stopped distributing and asked the Linux developers to correct any IP problems then this would be a moot point because it assumes that they are not going to attempt to collect damages from Linux developers or users. In return, the Linux developers would overlook past GPL violations by SCO. Doing that would not have any impact on the IBM case since that is a contract violation case, not a normal IP violation. Corporations don't have anything to fear from the GPL. Free software developers don't want proprietary code mixed in with their GPL'd code any more than the owners of the proprietary code. Treat them fairly and respectfully and most of them will cooperate and get the offending code out as quickly as possible. SCO will be facing lawsuits because they are belligerent and threatening, not because someone secretly stuck their code in Linux.
Even if there is a legal reason to keep the specific violations secret, that does not help SCO in terms of compliance with the GPL. Section 7 states that if you cannot follow the terms of the GPL for legal reasons, then you are not allowed to use it. The GPL makes it pretty clear that if any of the terms are violated for any reason, then the license is terminated. I don't know if it can be terminated retroactively, but that isn't an issue in this instance because SCO clearly continued to distribute Linux after they decided to make unallowed IP claims.
SCO would argue that they attempted, within all bounds of reasonable good faith, to comply with the terms of the GPL, and that their efforts were undermined by bad-faith actions of a third party-- actions that they didn't even know about.
Considering that they only stopped distributing Linux on the day that they sent out the infamous letter threatening end users, I think it will be incredibly difficult for SCO to argue that they did not know about any copyright or patent infringements while they were still distributing. They obviously had to know at some point before they filed against IBM, and that was two months before they stopped distribution altogether. It might be difficult to hold them to the terms of the GPL for distribution that was done before they suspected that anything was wrong, but once they did suspect wrongdoing, they had to decide to either stop distributing Linux and pursue IP claims, or just let the matter go. By continuing to distribute Linux while preparing to assert additional IP claims based on that code, their license to distribute was terminated (see clause 7). All distribution after that point is clearly in violation of copyright law, because they had no authorization to redistribute.
Let's say the FSF or Linus does prevail, and forces SCO to give away rights to its proprietary code, or alternatively, collects millions in damages. Such an outcome would put a stake through the heart of the GPL.
This will be no more of a problem for the GPL then it will be for any other license to publish. SCO can't be forced to give away any rights to their proprietary code. They can either decide to abide by the terms of the GPL and stop all of this nonsense, or they can admit that they violated the Linux copyrights and face the consequences. SCO would not have to worry about countersuits if they played by the rules. If they discovered that there was illegal code in Linux and stopped distributing immediately, notified the developers about the violations and waited for them to be corrected, then none of this would be a problem. That is the correct way to handle this kind of matter. That course of action would have demonstrated a good faith effort to resolve the problem while still protecting whatever IP they may own. Instead, they decided to continue to distribute Linux without a license to do so.
I don't think many people are especially upset about SCO going after IBM. IBM is perfectly capable of either defending itself if SCO is wrong, or just making the problem disappear if they are right. Everybody knows that and it would be of little consequence to the Linux community if that is where the story ended. What does upset me and a lot of other people is that SCO is not stopping at IBM. They have now made very public claims about significant copyright violations inside the kernel, threatened other vendors (even their United Linux partners!) and threatened end users with potential lawsuits if they continue to use Linux. And they have also made claims of copyright or trade secret violations by non-IBM developers, although they have not yet named any specific people.
It may be true that IBM put some code into Linux in violation of agreements they had with SCO. SCO may have valid claims to the copyright on certain portions of the kernel. But the important thing to remember is that they are (or were) also Linux distributors and benefited from the free use and privelledge of distributing code owned and written by other developers and licensed to SCO under the terms of the GPL. By making additional IP claims against that code, SCO is in clear violation of the GPL. If there really is any improper code in Linux, SCO gave up their right to contest its presence by continuing to distribute Linux for months after they learned that it was there. They may have been wronged by IBM, and maybe some other developers, but they are now violating the copyrights and goodwill of honest developers and harming the Free software community with their careless publicity stunts. The people who have contributed to Linux have every right to be angry with SCO. The demands being made by LinuxTag are completely reasonable -- either tell the world what is in the kernel that shouldn't be there so it can be fixed, or stop making illegal IP claims.
I don't think the fact that SCO happens to own the content in question as well as being a redistributor of the same content without knowing, means that they've chosen the second option implicitly.
But they did know. They knew for two months after filing the lawsuit against IBM + the time it took to prepare the filing + the time that it took to decide what to do after they discovered the code. Now, they can still go after IBM for violating whatever licensing agreement they claim to have had, but that absolves anyone else of any wrongdoing unless SCO is going to admit that they distributed and modified Linux (via UnitedLinux) in violation of the GPL.
That might have been true before SCO knew that their code had been placed in Linux illegally (assuming they are correct). But as soon as they even suspected that there was a problem then they had to make a decision as to whether they would allow the code to remain and distributable under the GPL, or if they would make claims of copyright infringement. They continued to distribute for two months after filing the lawsuit and they certainly knew about the offending code long before then.
Note in section 7 the GPL says that if you can't follow the terms of the GPL for legal (or any other) reasons, then you are still not exempt from the terms of the GPL. To quote:
For example, if a patent
license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by
all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then
the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to
refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.
That applies to any legal restrictions on redistribution, not just patents. You can distribute under the GPL or not at all. There is no in-between. When they filed the lawsuit and made the IP claims in public, their license to distribute Linux was terminated.
b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in
whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any
part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third
parties under the terms of this License.
This means that even if some sections were in violation of SCO's copyright, then SCO still has to license the entire kernel under the GPL because other valid non-SCO copyrights are in there. They can't just pick and choose pieces, or even files, and claim that they are not covered. If they are part of the kernel, then SCO has to consider them to be covered if they want to redistribute. So, SCO either gave their implicit consent to release those sections under the GPL, or they can claim that they are and never were covered by the GPL, which means that SCO was distributing Linux without a license or any other permission to do so. If they can't or won't abide by the terms of the GPL for any reason, then they cannot distribute any of the code.
When people talk about scientific tests, they usually mean tests that produce new information and can confirm unique implications of a theory. But that isn't what testability really means. Scientific tests do not have to be experimental in form (astrophysics uses observational tests rather than empirical tests, for example). To be scientific, a theory must be testable in principle. We do not have to have the technology available to actually carry out the tests, and we do not even need to have specific tests in mind. It is good enough if it is obvious that a theory will make assertions about quantifiable and measurable phenomena.
The theory of multiverses is testable. It predicts that there will be random quantum events, among other things. Tests can and have been done to confirm this. What we don't have at this point is a test that can determine whether the standard model of quantum mechanics or the multiverse model (or some hybrid) is more correct. Physicists tend to favor the standard model because it implies less weirdness, not because there is some empirical evidence that points to it as being the correct model.
Science is philosophy. The word Physics is derived from the Greek Physikoi, which means "Natural Philosphy." We think of science and "philosophy" (covering ethics, cosmology, ontology, metaphysics, etc) as being separate because they are taught in separate academic departments in universities. In reality, science is just a highly specialized area of philosophy. You can't study the history of science or philosophy without running into the other. Nor can you study modern philosophy or science without running into the other (scientists who have not noticed this are just not paying attention).
Also, I don't think you really understand how science works. The fact that no one has thought of a way to test a theory does not make it unscientific. It is impossible to test a theory before the theory has been formulated.
There are two criteria that a theory must satisfy in order to be considered a scientific theory. It must have explanatory power and it must be consistent with the evidence at hand. The ideas presented in the article satisfy both. In fact, many of the ideas are based on the results of experiments that have been done in just the last couple of years. The purpose of tests and experiments is largely to provide a measure of how effectively a theory is able to provide an explanation. Experiments that are inconsistent with the predictions of a theory obviously show that the explanatory power of the theory is limited. When experiments validate a theory, we interpret that as increasing the explanatory power of the theory. In new and highly speculative areas of physics, the absence of original experiments does not make the theories unscientific, it just prevents us from making a strong judgement about which theory is most likely to be correct, and which theories are obviously false.
Re:About as viral as accidentally giving away secr
on
What if SCO is Right?
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· Score: 1
I believe that is their argument. But if they ask a court to punish others for violating their IP then they are also asking for a court to hold others to a different standard of law. What they are arguing is that the other Linux vendors violated SCO IP by publishing the code without a license. If SCO code really is in the kernel then that argument is completely correct. But that also means that SCO was publishing the rest of the Linux code without a license because they published GPL and SCO owned non-GPL code together. The GPL doesn't allow that, so SCO published other peoples' copyrighted code without a license. Presumably, they will argue that they should not be considered to be in violation of the law because they did not know that they were publishing GPL and non-GPL code all in the same package. If that is their argument then I have trouble seeing how they could say that no one else can use the same argument. If SCO is not in violation because they acted in good faith, then doesn't that mean that the other Linux vendors are also not in violation because they acted in good faith?
As you pointed out, none of this can prevent them from filing suit if they really want to. I just can't understand why they would since it will definately open them up to lawsuits from Linux developers, vendors and the FSF (since SCO published the GNU tools along with the kernel). I also don't think a judge would let them get away with an argument that invokes that kind of double-standard.
Re:About as viral as accidentally giving away secr
on
What if SCO is Right?
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· Score: 1
But doesn't this argument also apply to the other Linux vendors? How can SCO claim that they should not be bound by the terms of the GPL because they did not know that the offending IP was in there and then turn around and claim that everyone else should be held liable for IP violations even though they also did not know about the offending code (with the possible exception of IBM)? They are not the only victims here if they are right and code was inserted in violation of other licensing agreements. Remember that they are also bound by a license for using other peoples' IP. They now want to violate that license by making IP claims against the code that the GPL does not allow them to make. Doing that revokes their end of the license agreement. In other words, they have been distributing copyrighted code without permission to do so. They may be able to sue users and other vendors for inadvertantly violating SCO's IP, but that will open them up to countersuits.
I also have trouble with their claim that they did not distribute their Unix code under the terms of the GPL on purpose and should therefore be allowed to claim that it is not (and never was) covered by the GPL. They filed the suit against IBM in March, but they only stopped distributing their own version of Linux on Wednesday of this week! That means that they have been knowingly publishing the offending code under the GPL for two months after they publicly claimed that it was not covered by the GPL. How can they possibly claim that they distributed that code without knowing that it really came from Unix if they distributed said code for two months after they claimed that it came from Unix? That's a nonsensical claim. They have no case against anyone other than IBM because they already published that code under the GPL on purpose. If they really wanted to retain all legal rights to that IP, then they would have stopped publishing Linux as soon as they even suspected that it was in there.
There's actually a lot going on in AI research and theory right now, but much of it is based on a bottom-up approach rather than the top-down approach that Minsky favors. That's what he's upset about IMO (this has been a long-running debate with both sides claiming that the other is not really a valid approach to AI). What researchers have finally realized is that AI is a far more difficult problem than anyone thought it was 40 years ago. We don't have a good understanding of what intelligence is in the first place, so building an artificial (or synthetic, the new buzzword) intelligence is impossible at this point. Much of the current research is now focused on understanding the brain and how it does what it does. This is important because it is the only truly intelligent thing that we know of. How can we replicate the functionality of something that we do not understand? Minsky does not seem to be a fan of mixing neuroscience and AI research, but that is where the most exciting discoveries are being made.
AI as a science is not dead. It is only now becoming a true science and evolving beyond simple engineering problems. Science is slow. Physics has been around as a science for 400 years, and we still do not understand how the universe really works at a fundamental level (the details keep on changing). Why should anyone expect the problem of intelligence to be solved (or nearly solved) in a short 40 years? If it were that simple, then I would question value of the answer as an addition to the human knowledge base.
SCO was around with an x86 UNIX flavor long before the open-source, free software, GPL + whatever else right to knowledge doctrine became so infused into current culture.
What has that got to do with the merit of the suit? Their claim is that Linux could not have become a production-quality OS without the illegal use of SCO technology. The fact that they had an x86 OS before Linux was written does not make that claim any less specious. They still have to provide actual evidence that technology was acquired improperly, and mere coincidence doesn't count. They can't file suit against the Linux developers directly because that would open them up to a huge copyright violation countersuit since Caldera actively participated in the distribution of GPL'd software. So, the next best entity for them to sue is a large company that has decided to support Linux: IBM. They claim that IBM violated NDAs with SCO, and that is why Linux is the quality OS it is today. Nevermind that IBM did not begin contributing to Linux until after the technology in question was in place (SCO can't possibly be talking about the 0S/390 contributions). Nor does it matter to them that Linux would still be a good OS without any of the IBM contributions. IBM has been good for Linux, but it certainly did not write the core kernel code.
I also don't understand what you think is so bad about believing in a right to knowledge. What's wrong with me believing that I have a right to know what my computer is doing?
The baby bells have a monopoly on the infrustructure. They should be forced to share their infrastructure with competitors because without that requirement there is NO legal way for companies like Covad to compete. Covad cannot install lines all over the city and provide a second phone line to my house because a baby bell already has exclusive contracts for that activity. The only way to allow competition is to force the monopolists to share their infrastructure. Covad has to pay for use of the infrastructure, including colocation fees. They don't have to pay for the "final mile" part of the infrustructure, and shouldn't have to, because it costs the bell absolutely nothing to provide it. Covad has paid for the equipment to implement line sharing and they pay rent to the bell for use of CO space. The actual sharing costs the bell nothing and does not prevent them from using the remaining bandwidth for voice.
I have absolutely no sympathy for monopolists who are required to give something back to communities in exchange for the monopoly. It's a fair trade.
I don't know if the stuff that is published at CC is mostly crap or not. What I do know is that whether something is published on the internet by the author or by a traditional paper publisher has little, if anything, to do with its quality. The publisher's primary role is not to act as a filter or as a "cook," but to act as a distributer. Publishers exist to make money and that is the only reason they exist. With the exception of some academic and alternative publishers, they don't care if a book is good, if the information that is presented is accurate, or anything else that most people would say contributes to quality. What they care about is selling a book to as many people as possible. If they think people want crap, that's what they will (and do) sell.
Anyone can witness this for themselves by taking a trip to the closest B&N. There are some good books, but there are also books full of conspiracy theories, nonsense presented as science, books telling you how to become powerful by rearranging your living room, etc. Just about every crank site on the internet has an analogue in book form. There are entire sections of most book stores that can be labled as crap. If publishers are acting as "cooks" then they should consider going to cooking school. I would rather eat the raw ingredients than most of the stuff they shovel out. The majority of the food they serve is Jell-o with almonds, potato chips, rice, and sausage floating inside, laid out on a bed of pasta with cinnamon-spiked marinara sauce and garnished with hefty slices of deep-fried spam. Sometimes they add horseradish sauce and pour imitation maple syrup over the top. It's been cooked, but I don't know anyone who would want to eat it.
Re:Seems like common sense to me
on
Vision is a 'Reflex'
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· Score: 3, Informative
Not only does it seem like common sense, but it isn't even a new idea in neurobiology. The only thing that might be new about this is attaching the label "reflex" to it. Evolutionary psychologists and vision researchers have been talking about this stuff for at least the last decade, and probably longer. There is nothing new about the idea that visual illusions exist because visual stimuli are ambiguous and the brain interprets them according to the most likely (most frequent) source. I hope that this is just a case of an uninformed PR rep oversimplifying their theory.
The article also misrepresented some of the research that has gone on in the past. Visual circuits have been traced and analyzed in an effort to learn how the brain sees, not what it sees (which is what their theory is really about). Researchers want to know how the brain is able to detect motion against a noisy background, how people are able to represent 3-D objects in their heads, how the brain assembles thousands of visual cues into a coherent representation of the world. (Some brain injuries disrupt these functions -- there are people who cannot see motion - moving objects are percieved as stationary objects that jump around discontinuously - some people are not able to construct an image of everything that their eyes detect - they can only see one or two distinct objects at a time). The observation that vision is a kind of reflex does not even begin to answer questions about how the visual system works. I don't see how they can call it a theory of vision if it doesn't offer any explanation for fundamental problems that visual systems must solve.
Also the comment about detecting the source of sounds is incorrect. The neural circuit that takes care of that has been known for a long time. It localizes sounds by comparing phase differences between sounds arriving at each ear. In fact, it has even been demonstrated that the circuit trains itself to do this task (a great example of how Hebbian learning works).
I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that the person who wrote the article didn't understand a bit of their theory.
I'd rather have them be paid a fair wage for their work and have protection from inhumane working conditions. Your statement raises a false dichotemy. There are more situations that can arise than starvation or exploitation. Should I be able to round up homeless people and enslave them using the argument that they are better of being enslaved than starving on the street?
And how does a desire to force corporations to follow laws amount to socialism? And what's wrong with socialism in the first place? Who probably don't even know what socialism is, you just throw the term around in an attempt to devalue the opinions of people who disagree with you.
Corporations have been ruled to be legal persons by the courts, but the concept is absurd to the point that the court decisions cannot be enforced. Nor has full enforcement ever been attempted. If you argue that corporations are persons and entitled to the same rights as persons, then you also must accept that corporations have the right to vote, the right to run for office, etc. Corporations should be counted as persons in the census, but they are not.
Corporations also must be subject to the same laws and responsibilities that other persons are subject to. The 14th amendment makes it clear that every person is entitled to equal protection under the law. The courts have consistently interpreted this as meaning that if some class of persons are not held to the same obligations and subject to the same punishments for breaking the law, then those who are prosecuted under those laws have been denied equal protection. Try arguing in court that you cannot be jailed or executed for murder or manslaughter because "corporate persons" are never jailed or executed. That wouldn't get you very far. Why? Because corporations are not the same as people! In fact, we have an entirely different set of laws for corporations (ever hear of corporate law?).
Speaking of rights, doesn't the fact that corporations can be owned violate the 13th amendment? Slavery is illegal. If corporations are entitled to the same rights as other legal persons, then the have the right to be free of ownership. That reasoning doesn't work because it is self-contradictory. Corporations must be owned to exist. Without ownership they disappear. It is logically impossible to make the claim that they are somehow persons. They aren't. They are legal constructs that are allowed to exist by Congress. Congress doesn't have to allow them, but they do in order to encourage commerce and trade. And what gives Congress the power to pass such laws? The Constitution gives Congress the right to regulate interstate and foreign trade. Congress cannot regulate me the way that Corporations can be regulated, because I do not exist to encourage trade. Persons do not exist for any particular reason. Corporations do have to exist for a reason, and those reasons are outlined in corporate charters.
Imagine what would happen if we maintained logical coherence in the legal system and said that Corporations really do have all of the rights of persons. I could go out and form hundreds or thousands of corporations and then on voting day, each of them would be entitled to vote for whoever I want them to vote for. Nobody is going to allow that and if a corporation sued for the right to vote, the courts would probably rule that they cannot be citizens because they are not persons, and thus have no right to vote. Boneheaded rulings that count Corporations as persons when it comes to some things but not for others (usually to benifit the corporation) should not be allowed. They are absurd and self-contradictory.
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This shows how little you understand how the brain works and what the drugs do, despite your apparent belief that you have some sort of advanced insight into "how your mind works." The drugs used to treat ADD regulate the dopamine system. That does not slow anything down and it does not in any way resemble the effects of alcohol. And gaining the ability to think about one thing at a time does not reduce my intelligence, make me less sharp, or slow down my thinking process. It means that I can concentrate on the task at hand without putting up with a constant barrage of intrusive, unrelated thoughts. I can put all of my mental energy into doing what I want to be doing instead of expending half of it wondering if Bob's mole is cancerous, thinking about the possible insulators that could be used in the heating element of an electric oven, thinking about places I might go on my next vacation, etc. Those thoughts are undesirable when I am trying to concentrate on something else.
I am not "hiding behind drugs." I am using drugs to allow my brain to compensate for physiological problems that interfere with my life. Do you also tell people who take drugs for MS that they should learn how their bodies work and stop hiding behind drugs? You probably do, but resonable people do not. I have a medical condition and I can take drugs that have exactly the effect that I want them to have. That's treatment, not "hiding."
Again, you obviously do not understand how the disorder works and how it interferes with people's lives. I don't have any problems setting priorities. What I do have a problem with is having one thought INVOLUNTARILY replacing another thought. You seem to believe that this is just a matter of people thinking of something else they could be doing and then doing it. That doesn't happen. Many people with ADD frequently find themselves in places or situations when they cannot remember how they got there. They can be thinking about something and then suddenly the train of thought is gone. They know that they were thinking, but they don't know what the subjects was.
The subject matter of extraneous thoughts is not voluntary. This is what you do not seem to understand. ADD can make your brain feel like it's in hyperdrive -- having a constant stream of unrelated thoughts that may last for only a fraction of a second. Setting priorities is great, but actually following them is not always possible with that kind of background noise. Try doing a complex mathematical proof with somebody standing behind you banging cymbals and blowing a trumpet for hours on end while an obnoxious talk radio station is blaring in your ear and see how well you concentrate. That's what it's like. And no, I am not in school. I graduated and lived for many years before I was diagnosed.
But the real problem with ADD is often how it interferes with normal life. You leave the house to mail a letter or a bill and end up in a bookstore a couple of hours later without the letter and unable to remember if it was actually mailed, or if it is sitting on a bookshelf someplace.
This is not a matter of people being lazy and your statement that it is shows how little you know or care about other people. My physics degree is proof enough that I am not lazy. Nor do I consider myself to be inferior to others. And I don't get any special benefits or privileges, despite your belief that I am somehow being coddled by the rest of society.
I hated the public education system, but I loved college. I still couldn't keep track of what was going on in the classroom. Classes were a formality -- I had to learn everything from books and notes. I now take drugs to treat my ADD and the results are dramatic. I can actually think about a single subject without simultaneously thinking about 5 or 6 unrelated things. I can remember what it is that I'm working on in the first place. Before I started taking drugs, I would frequently start cooking dinner, get distracted with something else midway through, and then suddenly realize that I had food on the stove when the smoke alarms start going off half an hour later. Turning away from the stove to get a can of tomato sauce from the pantry should not result in a person deciding that it's a good time to work on fixing a bug that they found two weeks ago, yet this is the "normal" state of affairs for many people who have ADD. ADD is a pain in the ass and drugs allow me and many other people to function almost normally. I resent the suggestion that ADD is imaginary, the result of simple boredom, or just a sign of outright laziness.
IBM assigned their Linux copyrights to the FSF. I don't know why this story has not been posted on slashdot before. It has a number of quotes straight from Eben Moglen, the FSF general counsel, that clear up a number of issues that have been debated endlessly here.
No, I'm just a Pompous Ass (tm). That still doesn't make BM any more correct.
A case in point: BM goes on at length criticizing the arguments of the Free software movement in general, and RMS in particular. The problem here is that in the beginning of the article, BM produces his own definition of "free" software (based on 'free of cost'), notes that the BM definition differs from the RMS definition (based on 'freedom to modify and redistribute'), and then goes on to criticize RMS's arguments based on the BM definition of "free software." Of course the arguments for Free software are incoherent and ridiculous if the wrong definition of "free" is used! That's why RMS provided the definition in the first place. I don't remember the technical term for this type of argument, but I call it the bait-and-switch argument. It is one of the most offensive logical fallicies because it is always deliberate, and is always used to spread misinformation (lies) about the opponent's opinions (even worse than a strawman argument).
The gun stuff is nothing more than a red herring. I agree that ESR is a gun nut, but what does that have to do with Free software? Absolutely nothing. It's just a shallow attempt to slander the Free software and Open Source communities with the (unrelated) opinions of an extremist.
MS may not actually be in bed with SCO even though they must be overjoyed about this entire debacle. It sounds like SCO may have approached MS with licensing demands at about the same time they started planning the case against IBM (beginning of the year). This makes sense because like IBM, MS has very deep pockets. MS may have negotiated a licensing deal just to make SCO go away and avoid the publicity and expense of yet another lawsuit, however baseless it may have been. If harrasing Linux users and vendors was really their goal, they would have bought SCO outright and pursued the lawsuit(s) themselves. The market value of SCO is pocket change to MS.
Even if there is a legal reason to keep the specific violations secret, that does not help SCO in terms of compliance with the GPL. Section 7 states that if you cannot follow the terms of the GPL for legal reasons, then you are not allowed to use it. The GPL makes it pretty clear that if any of the terms are violated for any reason, then the license is terminated. I don't know if it can be terminated retroactively, but that isn't an issue in this instance because SCO clearly continued to distribute Linux after they decided to make unallowed IP claims.
It may be true that IBM put some code into Linux in violation of agreements they had with SCO. SCO may have valid claims to the copyright on certain portions of the kernel. But the important thing to remember is that they are (or were) also Linux distributors and benefited from the free use and privelledge of distributing code owned and written by other developers and licensed to SCO under the terms of the GPL. By making additional IP claims against that code, SCO is in clear violation of the GPL. If there really is any improper code in Linux, SCO gave up their right to contest its presence by continuing to distribute Linux for months after they learned that it was there. They may have been wronged by IBM, and maybe some other developers, but they are now violating the copyrights and goodwill of honest developers and harming the Free software community with their careless publicity stunts. The people who have contributed to Linux have every right to be angry with SCO. The demands being made by LinuxTag are completely reasonable -- either tell the world what is in the kernel that shouldn't be there so it can be fixed, or stop making illegal IP claims.
Note in section 7 the GPL says that if you can't follow the terms of the GPL for legal (or any other) reasons, then you are still not exempt from the terms of the GPL. To quote:
That applies to any legal restrictions on redistribution, not just patents. You can distribute under the GPL or not at all. There is no in-between. When they filed the lawsuit and made the IP claims in public, their license to distribute Linux was terminated.The theory of multiverses is testable. It predicts that there will be random quantum events, among other things. Tests can and have been done to confirm this. What we don't have at this point is a test that can determine whether the standard model of quantum mechanics or the multiverse model (or some hybrid) is more correct. Physicists tend to favor the standard model because it implies less weirdness, not because there is some empirical evidence that points to it as being the correct model.
Also, I don't think you really understand how science works. The fact that no one has thought of a way to test a theory does not make it unscientific. It is impossible to test a theory before the theory has been formulated.
There are two criteria that a theory must satisfy in order to be considered a scientific theory. It must have explanatory power and it must be consistent with the evidence at hand. The ideas presented in the article satisfy both. In fact, many of the ideas are based on the results of experiments that have been done in just the last couple of years. The purpose of tests and experiments is largely to provide a measure of how effectively a theory is able to provide an explanation. Experiments that are inconsistent with the predictions of a theory obviously show that the explanatory power of the theory is limited. When experiments validate a theory, we interpret that as increasing the explanatory power of the theory. In new and highly speculative areas of physics, the absence of original experiments does not make the theories unscientific, it just prevents us from making a strong judgement about which theory is most likely to be correct, and which theories are obviously false.
As you pointed out, none of this can prevent them from filing suit if they really want to. I just can't understand why they would since it will definately open them up to lawsuits from Linux developers, vendors and the FSF (since SCO published the GNU tools along with the kernel). I also don't think a judge would let them get away with an argument that invokes that kind of double-standard.
I also have trouble with their claim that they did not distribute their Unix code under the terms of the GPL on purpose and should therefore be allowed to claim that it is not (and never was) covered by the GPL. They filed the suit against IBM in March, but they only stopped distributing their own version of Linux on Wednesday of this week! That means that they have been knowingly publishing the offending code under the GPL for two months after they publicly claimed that it was not covered by the GPL. How can they possibly claim that they distributed that code without knowing that it really came from Unix if they distributed said code for two months after they claimed that it came from Unix? That's a nonsensical claim. They have no case against anyone other than IBM because they already published that code under the GPL on purpose. If they really wanted to retain all legal rights to that IP, then they would have stopped publishing Linux as soon as they even suspected that it was in there.
AI as a science is not dead. It is only now becoming a true science and evolving beyond simple engineering problems. Science is slow. Physics has been around as a science for 400 years, and we still do not understand how the universe really works at a fundamental level (the details keep on changing). Why should anyone expect the problem of intelligence to be solved (or nearly solved) in a short 40 years? If it were that simple, then I would question value of the answer as an addition to the human knowledge base.
I also don't understand what you think is so bad about believing in a right to knowledge. What's wrong with me believing that I have a right to know what my computer is doing?
I have absolutely no sympathy for monopolists who are required to give something back to communities in exchange for the monopoly. It's a fair trade.
Anyone can witness this for themselves by taking a trip to the closest B&N. There are some good books, but there are also books full of conspiracy theories, nonsense presented as science, books telling you how to become powerful by rearranging your living room, etc. Just about every crank site on the internet has an analogue in book form. There are entire sections of most book stores that can be labled as crap. If publishers are acting as "cooks" then they should consider going to cooking school. I would rather eat the raw ingredients than most of the stuff they shovel out. The majority of the food they serve is Jell-o with almonds, potato chips, rice, and sausage floating inside, laid out on a bed of pasta with cinnamon-spiked marinara sauce and garnished with hefty slices of deep-fried spam. Sometimes they add horseradish sauce and pour imitation maple syrup over the top. It's been cooked, but I don't know anyone who would want to eat it.
The article also misrepresented some of the research that has gone on in the past. Visual circuits have been traced and analyzed in an effort to learn how the brain sees, not what it sees (which is what their theory is really about). Researchers want to know how the brain is able to detect motion against a noisy background, how people are able to represent 3-D objects in their heads, how the brain assembles thousands of visual cues into a coherent representation of the world. (Some brain injuries disrupt these functions -- there are people who cannot see motion - moving objects are percieved as stationary objects that jump around discontinuously - some people are not able to construct an image of everything that their eyes detect - they can only see one or two distinct objects at a time). The observation that vision is a kind of reflex does not even begin to answer questions about how the visual system works. I don't see how they can call it a theory of vision if it doesn't offer any explanation for fundamental problems that visual systems must solve.
Also the comment about detecting the source of sounds is incorrect. The neural circuit that takes care of that has been known for a long time. It localizes sounds by comparing phase differences between sounds arriving at each ear. In fact, it has even been demonstrated that the circuit trains itself to do this task (a great example of how Hebbian learning works).
I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that the person who wrote the article didn't understand a bit of their theory.
And how does a desire to force corporations to follow laws amount to socialism? And what's wrong with socialism in the first place? Who probably don't even know what socialism is, you just throw the term around in an attempt to devalue the opinions of people who disagree with you.
Corporations also must be subject to the same laws and responsibilities that other persons are subject to. The 14th amendment makes it clear that every person is entitled to equal protection under the law. The courts have consistently interpreted this as meaning that if some class of persons are not held to the same obligations and subject to the same punishments for breaking the law, then those who are prosecuted under those laws have been denied equal protection. Try arguing in court that you cannot be jailed or executed for murder or manslaughter because "corporate persons" are never jailed or executed. That wouldn't get you very far. Why? Because corporations are not the same as people! In fact, we have an entirely different set of laws for corporations (ever hear of corporate law?).
Speaking of rights, doesn't the fact that corporations can be owned violate the 13th amendment? Slavery is illegal. If corporations are entitled to the same rights as other legal persons, then the have the right to be free of ownership. That reasoning doesn't work because it is self-contradictory. Corporations must be owned to exist. Without ownership they disappear. It is logically impossible to make the claim that they are somehow persons. They aren't. They are legal constructs that are allowed to exist by Congress. Congress doesn't have to allow them, but they do in order to encourage commerce and trade. And what gives Congress the power to pass such laws? The Constitution gives Congress the right to regulate interstate and foreign trade. Congress cannot regulate me the way that Corporations can be regulated, because I do not exist to encourage trade. Persons do not exist for any particular reason. Corporations do have to exist for a reason, and those reasons are outlined in corporate charters.
Imagine what would happen if we maintained logical coherence in the legal system and said that Corporations really do have all of the rights of persons. I could go out and form hundreds or thousands of corporations and then on voting day, each of them would be entitled to vote for whoever I want them to vote for. Nobody is going to allow that and if a corporation sued for the right to vote, the courts would probably rule that they cannot be citizens because they are not persons, and thus have no right to vote. Boneheaded rulings that count Corporations as persons when it comes to some things but not for others (usually to benifit the corporation) should not be allowed. They are absurd and self-contradictory.