My point still stands that these are useful services that benefit everyone.
As shown by giving your site as the only example? Here's an example. What if I run a "Nicole Kidman nude pictures site" with permission from Nicole Kidman and the photographers. I place ads at the top of my site, and nude pictures of Nicole Kidman at the bottom. Now google comes along and let's people type in "Nicole Kidman nude" and see my pictures without my ads. Not only is that an illegal derivitive work, it is harmful to my business.
Caching is one thing. Extracting just the images without the rest of the site is another thing entirely, and as long as we continue to have copyright law it should not be legal.
Re:Isn't assembly trivial to get from a binary any
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MenuetOS Debuts
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· Score: 1
if he had also written or ported it to C then that would be a fair comment
No it wouldn't. The copyright holder of a program can do anything s/he wants with it, including violating eir own copyright. YLBTYHLHAND.
Re:Isn't assembly trivial to get from a binary any
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MenuetOS Debuts
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· Score: 1
While I guess I agree it shouldn't be at +1 Interesting, the post was more of an attempt at humor than seriousness.
Explain to him that the GPL is a virus. Once you use something GPLed you are required by law to GPL everything you ever write from then on, as well as your children, and your children's children, to 7 generations.
The Congress shall have power... To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes... To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof. - U.S. Constitution, emphasis mine.
Before he enter on the execution of his office, he shall take the following oath or affirmation:--"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
If congress wanted to, they could make a law which says "Microsoft Corporation shall be broken up". They're not going to do that as long as the DOJ defends their actions as reasonable, but if push came to shove, they certainly could make that law, and it would be perfectly constitutional. I'm pretty sure pardon power only applies to criminal law, and wouldn't apply here.
Isn't assembly trivial to get from a binary anyway
on
MenuetOS Debuts
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· Score: 3, Interesting
From the GPL: "The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it."
Guess that means he has to distribute the C version, too.
Does the US Legal system really have much right to tell a Japanese company what technologies it can and cannot develop?
This would be a valid point if the patent described the process of making the hardware. That infringement at least potentially takes place completely outside the US would have to resort to asking other countries for help and if they didn't get it then resort to trade embargos or just give up.
But more likely the patent describes the use of the product, and by selling the product in the US, Sony places itself under US jurisdiction for contributory patent infringement (selling a product which is designed for the primary purpose of infringing patents, essentially). Sounds pretty similar to what Dmitry Sklyarov was allegedly doing, doesn't it?
Email addresses right now guard against spam with security through obscurity. People try to hide their email addresses from the spammers, but no matter how hard you try, once two people know a secret pretty much everyone does.
But then - how does the system the spammer (or telephone caller or whatever) is using to generate the message positively identify them as the authentic sender
The easy (but bad) way is to make everyone's unique ID the product of two primary numbers. But that would make it too difficult to change those numbers if they got into the hands of the wrong person.
Public key signitures are the simplest way to identify the individual sending the message. They still suffer from the problem of not being easily portable, but it's a start. Directory services can easily map unique IDs to public keys, and certificate companies can sign your public key with your unique ID. Actually this is the way Thawte originally tried to implement it's free public key system. Your unique ID was a country code followed by a unique ID within that country (in the US they used SSN). Unfortunately people didn't go for it, probably in part because of the false impression that SSN is a security device.
As for the anonymity of the spammers or the anonymity of email senders/recipients, I by no means want the use of the unique ID to be mandatory. What I want is for an anonymous person to let the recipient of the email know up front that the email is anonymous, and likewise for a psudonymous account.
I am very protective of my privacy, but this system I see as not hurting my privacy but rather letting me know up front what I'm getting into. Unless your name is John Smith or something, you shouldn't think for one second that your name and city isn't enough to tell "the bad guys" everything about you. The number of people who will freely give their name and address to an online service but won't give their social security number amazes me. Personally, if I believe the site needs that information I'll gladly give it. I'm already bombarded with junk mail, I actually like it because it lets me know whether or not the mail carrier came that day. I already can't answer my phone because of telephone solicitations (and because I refuse to pay $8/month for caller ID, I just have people use my cell phone which is illegal to make telephone solicitations to). If not, I prefer to remain completely psudonymous.
The purpose of the number is one single thing. It allows you to unambiguously name a person. Name isn't enough, even name and address isn't always enough, besides, both can and frequently do change. This number should only change when it is discovered that two people both accidently got the same number. Even then it should have a pointer to those two new numbers. I guess the other exception would be witness protection program or something, but we're starting to enter a world where that isn't possible anyway.
It doesn't take long down this particular trail of logic before you find yourself in the script of Gattaca.
While thinking about the witness protection program scenario I kind of found myself there. I guess the solution is to take it out of the hands of the government, and instead make it psuedo-voluntary (ie it's not technically mandatory but you'll probably never get a job or a bank account without it). This would make it technically possible to multiple identities, but you'd have to work really really hard at keeping those identities completely separate. I guess this isn't much beyond what we have now, especially in the U.S. with SSNs. I guess the real problem in the U.S. is convincing people to give out their SSN (and convincing companies that possession of an SSN means nothing).
Oh well, that was long winded and I'm not sure that I actually said anything in it. I guess it's "No Score +1 Bonus" for this one.
If you want to spam people, you can just send to consecutive numbers- you're guaranteed a hit.
This is worth it to me for the convenience of being able to set up allow lists for my friends without worrying about my friends switching from AOL to erols. Right now that's the biggest thing stopping me from putting unsolicited email into the big "probably spam" folder.
I want a unique number for everything. Dogs, streets, cities, countries, schools, houses, cars, computers, words, phrases, commercials, tv stations, URLs... Everything, all with a GUID. Then when I do a search on Google for '"Nicole Kidman" naked' I can do a search for "293180921832 528347338338". Don't have to worry about different Nicole Kidmans, and don't have to worry about different meanings of the word naked.
Thing is, most people look after themselves - the only time they look after other people is when it is in there own interests to do so, either because it makes them feel bad to think they haven;t, or becase they expect to gain from it in the long run - human nature's like that, you see.
You should read "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins. After reading that book I am convinced that you are wrong. People act out of selfishness for those who are similar to them, not out of complete selfishness. It doesn't even matter if the other person is your own decendant or not, only that you perceive them to be similar. Most people if given the opportunity to save a human at the expense of a wolf would do so, even if there was a slight risk of the person suffering harm.
Re:DMCA Does Not Depend on the Copyright Clause!
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ACM vs. RIAA
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· Score: 2
I think, what obviously follows from this is that the DMCA only applies to circumvention devices that are sold ("commerce"), and not to those given away for free.
Well, the criminal remedies are limited to cases where there is financial gain involved, but the civil remedies have no such clause. I wasn't aware of the pretense of interstate commerce which was given when the issue was raised, and I'm not sure how much that means legally at this point.
Please explain how US law applies to an international situation?
First of all, the constitutionality is clear. "To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes". As for the jurisdictional issue, that is something specific to the Sklyarov case, and its outcome really doesn't affect anyone else. With that said, I believe they have jurisdiction because the items were sold through a U.S. distributor to U.S. citizens living in the U.S. I think your analogy is missing the "living in the U.S." part. I think a closer analogy (jurisdiction wise only) would be a Mexican drug kingpin who ships drugs into the U.S. IANAL, but I'm pretty sure the jurisdictional question there is clear, assuming the facts which are given are proven.
Hey, DeCSS is not even sold, so how can it be commerce? Much less interstate commerce...
I don't believe that the courts care about whether money changes hands when they determine if something is commerce, and on that point I agree with them. As for interstate commerce, the supreme court has repeatedly held that intrastate commerce may be regulated by congress because it affects interstate commerce. On this point I vehemently disagree, but that's where the precedent currently lies. Consider the recent supreme court ruling regarding medical marijuana in California. The supreme court decided not to rule on the constiutionality of the specific issue of whether it fell under interstate commerce, but they relied on past precedent for that decision. As for DeCSS not being interstate, it clearly was because there wasn't even an attempt at restricting download to within the state. Where the product was made and whether it is legal where it was made is likewise a non-issue. You can buy marijuana in Amsterdam, but assuming you are somehow able to smuggle it back over here that doesn't give you the legal right to sell it once you get here.
There is no fair-use exception in the DMCA...
Nothing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use, under this title.
Perhaps you know more about what exactly that sentence was supposed to mean. I never followed or heard about the intent of congress when they were first drafting the DMCA. But I took that sentence to mean that there is a DMCA exemption for fair use. Do you read it a different way?
There is no exception for circumventing access protections of old works.
No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
I guess you could argue that an expired copyrighted work is a work protected under title 17 (Copyrights), but I read this as only applying to works which are at the time of infringement protected under copyright law.
It actively hampers the progress of science (Felten, Sklyarov, etc).
AFAIK charges were never brought against Felton under the DMCA. I don't think they could have been won if they had. Selling E-book cracking software in binary form did very little to promote the progress of science (arguably it helped gain access to scientific works, but so would breaking copyright law). DeCSS arguably did promote the progress of science, and I'd certainly argue that it falls under the first ammendment. Now two issues come up. First of all, is the DMCA copyright law or is it commerce law, or is it both (and if both which parts are which). Secondly, is there a fair use exception in the DMCA. I believe there is, which means you might be able to get away with DeCSS but ultimately you can't make the law itself unconstitutional. For all practical purposes though, if the DMCA is ruled unconstitutional because there is no fair use exception, congress can simply add a fair use exception and pass it once again. I guess the hope is that we can convince congress by then that the DMCA is a bad law in the first place.
Actually the best possible outcome would be for the supreme court to start enforcing the interstate commerce clause. The federal government has no business controlling the actions of individuals which take place solely within the state, unless those actions infringe upon the basic rights we are given under the constitution.
In my 'revisionist' view, the Federal Government's authority under the Commerce Clause, which merely allocates to Congress the power 'to regulate Commerce...among the several states,' does not extend to the regulation of wholly intrastate, point of sale transactions. - Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas
Re:DMCA Does Not Depend on the Copyright Clause!
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ACM vs. RIAA
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· Score: 2
No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
Fine for the parts which are commerce (I'll even assume they're going to get away with intrastate commerce, under the pretense that it affects interstate commerce), but how exactly is cicumvention of a technological measure interstate commerce? This isn't so much of a rhetorical question, I really want to know.
In any case, the Felton case seems like it is clearly out of the scope of congress' powers. But I also don't think the Felton case is under the scope of the DMCA, so that's not much of a challen there. The Sklyarov case is clearly international commerce (assuming jurisdictional issues pan out), so that's unlikely to be unconstitutional. DeCSS is likewise clearly interstate commerce, although there is more of a chance of it being unconstitutional due to free speech.
I don't think there are any cases out there of pure circumvention. I would think this would rely on the "promote the progress of science" power of congress, though.
How many atoms there are in 12 grams of C-12 is a constant.
No. If you define a kg as the mass of a certain object, and the mass of that object changes, then the number of atoms in 12 grams of C-12 also changes. If something changes, it's not a constant. Yes, you could define Avogadro's number to be exactly 6.022x10^23, but if you do that you have to either redefine the mole or redefine the kilogram. Presumably you would keep the definition of the mole and remove the definition of the kilogram, as defining Avogadro's number would in effect define the kilogram. Now you have the problem that your definition of the kilogram is essentially useless, since it's virtually impossible to count 6.022x10^23 atoms of C-12. We'd be better off with the definition we have now.
Ultimately scientists are trying to get a definition of the kilogram more like that of the meter or second. Something with a measurable integer or reciprical of an integer. At that point Advogadro's number will be a constant, but if it's turns out to be an integer we've probably discovered a brand new formula that was never discovered before.
SI units used to be about simple math, but more recently coming up with measurable references has taken precedence. I don't even think a cubic cm of water weighs a gram any more, actually I'm almost certain it doesn't. Close, but not exactly. Advogadro's number will probably wind up with a similar fate. Close to 6.022E23, but not exactly.
There are ways of measuring gravity without a known mass standard.
I think I misunderstood you... You were saying that you can measure g without a known mass standard. That is certainly the case. I thought you were referring to G when you said "measuring gravity". Mia culpa.
For example, you could measure the acceleration of an object falling freely in a vacuum chamber (only need length and time measurements).
Only if you know your exact distance from the earth's center (as well as the earth's mass). How do you determine that? To measure G you need to use a torsion balance, and that requires a definition of kg (since G is defined in terms of N*m^2/kg^2).
My main point was regarding the feasibility of using that as a reference. Transitions of cesium atoms or whatever the second uses is easy to measure using an atomic clock.
In any case, we already have a similar definition. "The mole is the amount of substance of a system which contains as many elementary entities as there are atoms in 0.012 kilogram of carbon 12." I guess it would be sufficient to simply pick a particular fixed number near 6.02x10^23 to be exactly equal to a mole.
I am aware that Jordan Hubbard merely changed employers, which is precisely why I compared it to Linus working for Transmeta. The fact of the matter is that Jordan no longer has time to work on FreeBSD in ways that it does not further the goals of Apple, and is not even required to provide his work to the community at all. While that wasn't enough for me to jump off the FreeBSD bandwagon, reading this announcement was.
The push back in the schedule is not the kicker, although the fact that it was by a whole year is disturbing. That 14 of the 15 people working on SMPng have not been active in the project in 6 months is writing on the wall.
Finally, I hope that the developers working on 5.0-CURRENT don't take this as an excuse to down tools and take a few months off since that will only ensure that we slip again. We've taken on some truly significant challenges with 5.0 and it will take everyone working as hard as they can to both meet this new deadline and release something
that lives up to everyone's expectations.
You know that's exactly what the developers are going to do. No one wants to contribute to a sinking ship, at least not without getting paid for it. If the November 2002 date requires everyone working as hard as they can then I guarantee you that date will not be met.
By "involved in FreeBSD for 6 years", I don't mean to imply that I contributed any code. I used the software for every server I had control over, and convinced my employer to use it for some as well.
This wasn't meant to be a troll, just an honest opinion as to my particular guess as to where the FreeBSD project is going, and the fact that they have lost me as a user. Perhaps others feel the same way (at least 14 others apparently do). Maybe not. Personally I've decided to spend my time and energy on Linux from now on. While the demise of FreeBSD is by no means certain, it has become a reasonable possibility and I guarantee you that Linux will survive longer than FreeBSD.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe there is an exception for public figures.
http://images.google.com/
My point still stands that these are useful services that benefit everyone.
As shown by giving your site as the only example? Here's an example. What if I run a "Nicole Kidman nude pictures site" with permission from Nicole Kidman and the photographers. I place ads at the top of my site, and nude pictures of Nicole Kidman at the bottom. Now google comes along and let's people type in "Nicole Kidman nude" and see my pictures without my ads. Not only is that an illegal derivitive work, it is harmful to my business.
Caching is one thing. Extracting just the images without the rest of the site is another thing entirely, and as long as we continue to have copyright law it should not be legal.
if he had also written or ported it to C then that would be a fair comment
No it wouldn't. The copyright holder of a program can do anything s/he wants with it, including violating eir own copyright. YLBTYHLHAND.
While I guess I agree it shouldn't be at +1 Interesting, the post was more of an attempt at humor than seriousness.
Explain to him that the GPL is a virus. Once you use something GPLed you are required by law to GPL everything you ever write from then on, as well as your children, and your children's children, to 7 generations.
If congress wanted to, they could make a law which says "Microsoft Corporation shall be broken up". They're not going to do that as long as the DOJ defends their actions as reasonable, but if push came to shove, they certainly could make that law, and it would be perfectly constitutional. I'm pretty sure pardon power only applies to criminal law, and wouldn't apply here.
From the GPL: "The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it."
Guess that means he has to distribute the C version, too.
Does the US Legal system really have much right to tell a Japanese company what technologies it can and cannot develop?
This would be a valid point if the patent described the process of making the hardware. That infringement at least potentially takes place completely outside the US would have to resort to asking other countries for help and if they didn't get it then resort to trade embargos or just give up.
But more likely the patent describes the use of the product, and by selling the product in the US, Sony places itself under US jurisdiction for contributory patent infringement (selling a product which is designed for the primary purpose of infringing patents, essentially). Sounds pretty similar to what Dmitry Sklyarov was allegedly doing, doesn't it?
a word processor's fucntion is to faciliate word processing.
I find your spelling error to be 100% failure. You shouldn't have bothered hitting "Submit"
Email addresses right now guard against spam with security through obscurity. People try to hide their email addresses from the spammers, but no matter how hard you try, once two people know a secret pretty much everyone does.
But then - how does the system the spammer (or telephone caller or whatever) is using to generate the message positively identify them as the authentic sender
The easy (but bad) way is to make everyone's unique ID the product of two primary numbers. But that would make it too difficult to change those numbers if they got into the hands of the wrong person.
Public key signitures are the simplest way to identify the individual sending the message. They still suffer from the problem of not being easily portable, but it's a start. Directory services can easily map unique IDs to public keys, and certificate companies can sign your public key with your unique ID. Actually this is the way Thawte originally tried to implement it's free public key system. Your unique ID was a country code followed by a unique ID within that country (in the US they used SSN). Unfortunately people didn't go for it, probably in part because of the false impression that SSN is a security device.
As for the anonymity of the spammers or the anonymity of email senders/recipients, I by no means want the use of the unique ID to be mandatory. What I want is for an anonymous person to let the recipient of the email know up front that the email is anonymous, and likewise for a psudonymous account.
I am very protective of my privacy, but this system I see as not hurting my privacy but rather letting me know up front what I'm getting into. Unless your name is John Smith or something, you shouldn't think for one second that your name and city isn't enough to tell "the bad guys" everything about you. The number of people who will freely give their name and address to an online service but won't give their social security number amazes me. Personally, if I believe the site needs that information I'll gladly give it. I'm already bombarded with junk mail, I actually like it because it lets me know whether or not the mail carrier came that day. I already can't answer my phone because of telephone solicitations (and because I refuse to pay $8/month for caller ID, I just have people use my cell phone which is illegal to make telephone solicitations to). If not, I prefer to remain completely psudonymous.
The purpose of the number is one single thing. It allows you to unambiguously name a person. Name isn't enough, even name and address isn't always enough, besides, both can and frequently do change. This number should only change when it is discovered that two people both accidently got the same number. Even then it should have a pointer to those two new numbers. I guess the other exception would be witness protection program or something, but we're starting to enter a world where that isn't possible anyway.
It doesn't take long down this particular trail of logic before you find yourself in the script of Gattaca.
While thinking about the witness protection program scenario I kind of found myself there. I guess the solution is to take it out of the hands of the government, and instead make it psuedo-voluntary (ie it's not technically mandatory but you'll probably never get a job or a bank account without it). This would make it technically possible to multiple identities, but you'd have to work really really hard at keeping those identities completely separate. I guess this isn't much beyond what we have now, especially in the U.S. with SSNs. I guess the real problem in the U.S. is convincing people to give out their SSN (and convincing companies that possession of an SSN means nothing).
Oh well, that was long winded and I'm not sure that I actually said anything in it. I guess it's "No Score +1 Bonus" for this one.
If you want to spam people, you can just send to consecutive numbers- you're guaranteed a hit.
This is worth it to me for the convenience of being able to set up allow lists for my friends without worrying about my friends switching from AOL to erols. Right now that's the biggest thing stopping me from putting unsolicited email into the big "probably spam" folder.
I want a unique number for everything. Dogs, streets, cities, countries, schools, houses, cars, computers, words, phrases, commercials, tv stations, URLs... Everything, all with a GUID. Then when I do a search on Google for '"Nicole Kidman" naked' I can do a search for "293180921832 528347338338". Don't have to worry about different Nicole Kidmans, and don't have to worry about different meanings of the word naked.
change them if you get too many prank phone calls or too much spam
On the other hand, if everyone had a single unique ID number you would be able to easily block prank phone calls and spam.
Is that supposed to say at least 10% or at least 1? Or is 10% really the maximum?
Thing is, most people look after themselves - the only time they look after other people is when it is in there own interests to do so, either because it makes them feel bad to think they haven;t, or becase they expect to gain from it in the long run - human nature's like that, you see.
You should read "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins. After reading that book I am convinced that you are wrong. People act out of selfishness for those who are similar to them, not out of complete selfishness. It doesn't even matter if the other person is your own decendant or not, only that you perceive them to be similar. Most people if given the opportunity to save a human at the expense of a wolf would do so, even if there was a slight risk of the person suffering harm.
I think, what obviously follows from this is that the DMCA only applies to circumvention devices that are sold ("commerce"), and not to those given away for free.
Well, the criminal remedies are limited to cases where there is financial gain involved, but the civil remedies have no such clause. I wasn't aware of the pretense of interstate commerce which was given when the issue was raised, and I'm not sure how much that means legally at this point.
Please explain how US law applies to an international situation?
First of all, the constitutionality is clear. "To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes". As for the jurisdictional issue, that is something specific to the Sklyarov case, and its outcome really doesn't affect anyone else. With that said, I believe they have jurisdiction because the items were sold through a U.S. distributor to U.S. citizens living in the U.S. I think your analogy is missing the "living in the U.S." part. I think a closer analogy (jurisdiction wise only) would be a Mexican drug kingpin who ships drugs into the U.S. IANAL, but I'm pretty sure the jurisdictional question there is clear, assuming the facts which are given are proven.
Hey, DeCSS is not even sold, so how can it be commerce? Much less interstate commerce...
I don't believe that the courts care about whether money changes hands when they determine if something is commerce, and on that point I agree with them. As for interstate commerce, the supreme court has repeatedly held that intrastate commerce may be regulated by congress because it affects interstate commerce. On this point I vehemently disagree, but that's where the precedent currently lies. Consider the recent supreme court ruling regarding medical marijuana in California. The supreme court decided not to rule on the constiutionality of the specific issue of whether it fell under interstate commerce, but they relied on past precedent for that decision. As for DeCSS not being interstate, it clearly was because there wasn't even an attempt at restricting download to within the state. Where the product was made and whether it is legal where it was made is likewise a non-issue. You can buy marijuana in Amsterdam, but assuming you are somehow able to smuggle it back over here that doesn't give you the legal right to sell it once you get here.
There is no fair-use exception in the DMCA...
Perhaps you know more about what exactly that sentence was supposed to mean. I never followed or heard about the intent of congress when they were first drafting the DMCA. But I took that sentence to mean that there is a DMCA exemption for fair use. Do you read it a different way?
There is no exception for circumventing access protections of old works.
I guess you could argue that an expired copyrighted work is a work protected under title 17 (Copyrights), but I read this as only applying to works which are at the time of infringement protected under copyright law.
It actively hampers the progress of science (Felten, Sklyarov, etc).
AFAIK charges were never brought against Felton under the DMCA. I don't think they could have been won if they had. Selling E-book cracking software in binary form did very little to promote the progress of science (arguably it helped gain access to scientific works, but so would breaking copyright law). DeCSS arguably did promote the progress of science, and I'd certainly argue that it falls under the first ammendment. Now two issues come up. First of all, is the DMCA copyright law or is it commerce law, or is it both (and if both which parts are which). Secondly, is there a fair use exception in the DMCA. I believe there is, which means you might be able to get away with DeCSS but ultimately you can't make the law itself unconstitutional. For all practical purposes though, if the DMCA is ruled unconstitutional because there is no fair use exception, congress can simply add a fair use exception and pass it once again. I guess the hope is that we can convince congress by then that the DMCA is a bad law in the first place.
Actually the best possible outcome would be for the supreme court to start enforcing the interstate commerce clause. The federal government has no business controlling the actions of individuals which take place solely within the state, unless those actions infringe upon the basic rights we are given under the constitution.
No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
Fine for the parts which are commerce (I'll even assume they're going to get away with intrastate commerce, under the pretense that it affects interstate commerce), but how exactly is cicumvention of a technological measure interstate commerce? This isn't so much of a rhetorical question, I really want to know.
In any case, the Felton case seems like it is clearly out of the scope of congress' powers. But I also don't think the Felton case is under the scope of the DMCA, so that's not much of a challen there. The Sklyarov case is clearly international commerce (assuming jurisdictional issues pan out), so that's unlikely to be unconstitutional. DeCSS is likewise clearly interstate commerce, although there is more of a chance of it being unconstitutional due to free speech.
I don't think there are any cases out there of pure circumvention. I would think this would rely on the "promote the progress of science" power of congress, though.
Please stop trolling.
You know FreeBSD sucks, and you just won't admit it.
How many atoms there are in 12 grams of C-12 is a constant.
No. If you define a kg as the mass of a certain object, and the mass of that object changes, then the number of atoms in 12 grams of C-12 also changes. If something changes, it's not a constant. Yes, you could define Avogadro's number to be exactly 6.022x10^23, but if you do that you have to either redefine the mole or redefine the kilogram. Presumably you would keep the definition of the mole and remove the definition of the kilogram, as defining Avogadro's number would in effect define the kilogram. Now you have the problem that your definition of the kilogram is essentially useless, since it's virtually impossible to count 6.022x10^23 atoms of C-12. We'd be better off with the definition we have now.
Ultimately scientists are trying to get a definition of the kilogram more like that of the meter or second. Something with a measurable integer or reciprical of an integer. At that point Advogadro's number will be a constant, but if it's turns out to be an integer we've probably discovered a brand new formula that was never discovered before.
SI units used to be about simple math, but more recently coming up with measurable references has taken precedence. I don't even think a cubic cm of water weighs a gram any more, actually I'm almost certain it doesn't. Close, but not exactly. Advogadro's number will probably wind up with a similar fate. Close to 6.022E23, but not exactly.
There are ways of measuring gravity without a known mass standard.
I think I misunderstood you... You were saying that you can measure g without a known mass standard. That is certainly the case. I thought you were referring to G when you said "measuring gravity". Mia culpa.
The mole is not a constant, it is a unit. In fact, it is one of the 7 SI base units. See here.
For example, you could measure the acceleration of an object falling freely in a vacuum chamber (only need length and time measurements).
Only if you know your exact distance from the earth's center (as well as the earth's mass). How do you determine that? To measure G you need to use a torsion balance, and that requires a definition of kg (since G is defined in terms of N*m^2/kg^2).
My main point was regarding the feasibility of using that as a reference. Transitions of cesium atoms or whatever the second uses is easy to measure using an atomic clock.
In any case, we already have a similar definition. "The mole is the amount of substance of a system which contains as many elementary entities as there are atoms in 0.012 kilogram of carbon 12." I guess it would be sufficient to simply pick a particular fixed number near 6.02x10^23 to be exactly equal to a mole.
I am aware that Jordan Hubbard merely changed employers, which is precisely why I compared it to Linus working for Transmeta. The fact of the matter is that Jordan no longer has time to work on FreeBSD in ways that it does not further the goals of Apple, and is not even required to provide his work to the community at all. While that wasn't enough for me to jump off the FreeBSD bandwagon, reading this announcement was.
The push back in the schedule is not the kicker, although the fact that it was by a whole year is disturbing. That 14 of the 15 people working on SMPng have not been active in the project in 6 months is writing on the wall.
You know that's exactly what the developers are going to do. No one wants to contribute to a sinking ship, at least not without getting paid for it. If the November 2002 date requires everyone working as hard as they can then I guarantee you that date will not be met.
By "involved in FreeBSD for 6 years", I don't mean to imply that I contributed any code. I used the software for every server I had control over, and convinced my employer to use it for some as well.
This wasn't meant to be a troll, just an honest opinion as to my particular guess as to where the FreeBSD project is going, and the fact that they have lost me as a user. Perhaps others feel the same way (at least 14 others apparently do). Maybe not. Personally I've decided to spend my time and energy on Linux from now on. While the demise of FreeBSD is by no means certain, it has become a reasonable possibility and I guarantee you that Linux will survive longer than FreeBSD.