I was using "about to" in the predictive sense. You're absolutely right, some of those events do happen quite "quickly," even by human or even electronic scales, but in your case we're using the equally fuzzy word, "recently," which is also time-scale dependent. The key however is the event not being in the future.
Agreed. Besides, we could drop a few of these on the very worst places on Earth, and they'd most likely (Well, not in an active volcano, the pressure limitations of the ocean bottom, etc.) be a cake-walk compared to the moon.
>MS is in a strange position where they claimed all their patents are for defensive reasons. If they come out right >now and say X, Y and Z all fall under this patent, don't use it or we will sue, they have effectively went back on >their statements. If they do it in response to another suit, it is defense like they originally claimed.
These are the days of parsing. Clinton parsed "is". Bush is parsing "torture", and a bunch of other words.
Microsoft is parsing "defense". Most of us thought they meant, "defense in court." Apparently they really meant, "defense in the marketplace."
So dpilot was talking with God, and God said, "To Me, a minute is like a million years, and a million years are like a minute." So dpilot said, "In a that vein, is a penny like a billion dollars, and a dollars like a penny?" God replied, "You've got it." Which led dpilot to ask of God, "Can you spare a penny?" "Sure," said God, "in just a minute..."
When you say "about to" in sports, something generally happens pretty fast. When you say "about to" in geology, something generally happens pretty slow. Generally speaking, saying "about to" in cosmology is to geology as geology is to sports.
But not always. At some points in time, the volcano under Yellowstone does go off. Likewise, supernovas happen, and perhaps brane changes too. But to say "about to" or "soon" is just meaningless to human scales of time.
That was kind of my thought, though I'd also been thinking about using a fictitious design for a 50mpg carburetor for something a little more concrete. By copying your design I haven't deprived you of it, nor have I deprived you of the ability to tool along at 50mpg. But it did take you a few thousand bucks to develop it, build the prototypes, including the failures that led you to the working design, etc. You deserve compensation for that effort and investment, because it's in all of our best interests that you continue to invent.
Trademarks? I think not, pretty easily dis/proven. Copyright? Also pretty easy, but how can you copy software you can't get the source for? Even when "leaks" have occurred, the OSS folks have been careful not to look at it. Patents? They're all that's left.
I still say that Intellectual Property is a legal fiction, and when I get time need to write a proper refutation to this: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=318461&cid=20867087 Not that the legal fiction is all bad. Clearly when it has taken some investment to create art or inventions, the artist/inventor needs remuneration, so that he/she will keep on doing that, instead of waiting tables or other non-artistic/non-inventive means of earning a living. The current problems are in finding the right balance, and in really rewarding the creators rather than the mostly the distributors.
With patent infringement, there's "accidental infringement" and "willful infringement," with treble damages on the latter, because of evil intent.
At the moment, the Linux camp is milling around saying, "Patents, what patents? Show us the patents!" and it can be pretty well "documented" with press releases and blogs. Seems to me that it would be pretty darned hard to show any sort of evil intent.
But there are also laws against frivolous lawsuits, SLAPP, and such. Seems to me that threatening IP action without specifics, without opportunity to mitigate, especially when the threatenee has been asking for those specifics, ought to go a long way to landing the threatener in that "bad lawsuit" camp.
Depends on who is winning the big money. Don't forget, this administration is really big on tort reform, limitations of damages, etc.
The fundamental idea is that some defective product can kill you or disable you for life, and you'll get less than the record company will if you pirate a few of their songs.
The administration has come out in favor of the "ownership society," remember. (By the by, "creators" are not necessarily "owners," either.)
I seem to remember hearing that there are some bacteria evolving (pardon me, consulting with their Creator about a small redesign) resistance to low levels of chlorine, like the 3ppm or so commonly found in swimming pools. I haven't heard much, and there's been no general call to migrate away from chlorine to something else. Municipal water supplies have moved to chloramine, but I don't believe that's related to chlorine resistance.
>Given what copyright is supposed to accomplish, I really see no good reason to >allow its assignment to anyone else by the work's original creator.
I can see the reason... Let's say an inventor is brilliant at X, but couldn't promote or market X if his life depended on it. Inventions are not good if they don't get out there.
But perhaps assignment of ownership is the wrong mechanism for this, and perhaps that's why we're in the trouble we are. But if there were some sort of "assignment of stewardship" instead of ownership, I sadly suspect it would get twisted around until the steward had all the rights, the owner had none, and we'd still be where we are today.
The real problem is the treatment of creators like a cash crop that will always be available, and the preferential treatment of owners. That's a long-term unsustainable model.
The Recording Industry now has very little reason to exist. It's pretty much time for them to either find new value to contribute, or go the way of the buggy whip manufacturers.
The recording industry used to have 5 major missions: 1: Provide studio and production facilities 2: Provide replication and distribution facilities for sales 3: Provide editorial control (quality improvement) 4: Provide distribution for airplay 5: Provide publicity/advertising
It's easy to argue that modern electronics and the internet have reduced the costs of #1 and #2 to the point where the recording industry has nothing terribly special to offer. The internet arguments could also be made about #5, that at the very least it's transformed. That leaves us with #3 and #4. With the quality of much current music, one could argue that they're falling down pretty badly on #4, though they should clearly be doing better, and it *is* an area where they can and should contribute. #5 remains.
Oddly enough, of course the face they present most is #2, one of the most clearly obsolete of their roles.
It's quite simple, the "recording industry" should be transformed, probably to a fraction of what it is, but still a contributory role.
Tell ya what, it ain't gonna happen. We're in an "ownership society," last I heard. For the relevant interpretation of that, "creation" of art/science/IP is no longer valued, the "ownership" of it is. In the fading days of manufacturing in the US, some very powerful people look to IP and licensing as our remaining/next engine of growth. With this attitude in mind, I look for strengthening of IP laws, and more legislation protecting the "rights of IP owners," not less. Note that that's "owners", not "creators." That squares with recent legislation, too. "Creators" seem to be treated kind of like dirt - to be mined, or crops, to be harvested.
IMHO this is a shortsighted attitude, if only because "IP ownership" is entirely a legal/financial fiction. Facts on the ground tend to overcome legal/financial fictions, given time. In the meantime, we deny reality and impair our ability to face it, eventually.
For real space combat I'd want gobs and gobs of small smart 100G+ kinetic-kill weapons, not dogfighting. For the bigger targets I'd want more small smart 100G+ weapons, except they'd be small nukes instead of kinetic kill. Not sure what I'd want for the gap in between, but I don't think human reaction times would cut it in a true space battle, nor would human bodies take the accelerations unless you also posit "inertial dampers." (Star Trek, not Star Wars)
Excerpt from peer comment: As for being constrained, you're right. But remember that in an atmospheric banked turn, much of the centripetal force is supplied by the wings acting against the atmosphere. In space, there ain't no such thing - all centripetal force is supplied by yaw and the main engines. A tight turn in space simply won't look like a tight turn in an atmosphere, in fact it will look WRONG to our conventional sensibilities.
You can train as a bush pilot all you want, but when circumstances change significantly, that training may not be valid. Putting bush pilots into spacecraft with no extra training makes a good movie, but it's even less realistic than putting a frequently-drunk crop-duster played by Randy Quaid into the cockpit of an F16.
As for being constrained, you're right. But remember that in an atmospheric banked turn, much of the centripetal force is supplied by the wings acting against the atmosphere. In space, there ain't no such thing - all centripetal force is supplied by yaw and the main engines. A tight turn in space simply won't look like a tight turn in an atmosphere, in fact it will look WRONG to our conventional sensibilities.
Then again, there's the ultimate argument - it was just a movie, a swashbuckler. Not only that, the first movie was done on a shoestring, and somehow I doubt there was anyone on the payroll to square anything with scientific accuracy.
Keep in mind that the X-wing fighters did classical banked-turns in the dogfights in and around the Death Stars. Not only do you need wings for a banked turn, you need an atmosphere.
If you assume that the major motive force is all from the main engine(s) you realize that in a turn the engines will be firing essentially away from the center-point of the turn. In other words, the thrust in an atmospheric banked turn is almost (almost because of "forward" thrust) 90 degrees off of a turn in a vacuum. Beyond that, with "advanced technology" it should be readily feasible to have thrusts that would at least black out the pilot, if not turn him into jelly. I guess that's what "inertial dampers" (Star Trek, not Star Wars, I know) are for.
The easy explanation for atmospheric-style banked turns was that the Death Star actually had some atmosphere around it, kept in place by artificial gravity fields. The really odd thing about that is that you would then expect it to be laid out like an onion, with the floor of each deck toward the center, whereas the floors of at least the hangar decks were perpendicular to the surface. That would mean secondary artificial gravity expressly for the purpose of holding a local exterior atmosphere. The other reason to have an exterior atmosphere would be for Tad and Bink, or whoever the heck those two guys were, to scrape and paint the exterior hull plating.
The even easier explanation was that Star Wars isn't science fiction, it's a swashbuckler. Scientific accuracy need not apply, especially if it conflicts with ordinary expectations of the viewers. Since most viewers don't have or haven't reasoned out such implications of spaceflight, atmospheric flight expectations rule. (Notice that I haven't even gotten into orbital dynamics, yet.)
Last week my wife and I flew one-way to my hometown, 600+ miles away. We elected to drive the rental car back. When you're short-booking an airline, even the one-way fees on a car rental leave it substantially cheaper.
We had no music along, and facing a long drive, decided to buy a few CDs. We were in the vicinity of a Borders for other reasons, so we went in there to buy. After gagging at the $18+ list price of CDs, I found a few oldies that were "only" $12, and thought we'd like. One was Linda Rondstat's greatest hits, though how they can put that out without including "Heart Like a Wheel" I don't understand. The other CD is the issue.
It was a Cat Stevens live concert CD from back in the late 70's, before he became Yousef Islam. But of course some of the royalties, if indeed the RIAA is paying any royalties on this one, go to Yousef Islam. I seem to remember sometime in the past year that he was trying to travel to the US, and encountering troubles getting a visa because of his religion and relative (former?) prominence. I don't know how it resolved, but let's just say for the moment that the person formerly named "Cat Stevens" is the same person now named "Yousef Islam", who has been at least investigated for terrorism-related issues.
I may well have "contributed materially" to Yousef Islam by purchasing his CD, causing a transfer of royalties. Last I knew making a "material contribution" to terrorism could be construed by the Executive Branch as a really naughty thing, possibly involving a vacation to Cuba. In this odd case, perhaps the RIAA is my friend, because as long as they "forget" to pay Yousef Islam the royalties due for Cat Stevens music, any of us who buy that music are making no "material contribution". But then again, consider the situation Borders is in. They are an intermediary in this entire transaction, so they may well be a business trafficking in "material contributions" to "terrorists," and at that point, any of their customers become suspect. One could of course consider the entire catalog of artists whose works they sell, and the political and religious leanings of all of those artists, their "charitable contributions," etc.
This is all hypothetical, absurd, and the like. It's also a rebuttal to those who look at draconian anti-terror laws and say, "I commit none of these crimes, I have nothing to fear from these laws." Sometimes the definition of "crime" can change, be vague, or cast a wider net than you ever thought possible. Remember, Al Capone was arrested and sent to jail using tax laws, not for bootlegging or racketeering.
I found the most telling portion of TFA to be near the end of the article:
>But the above reasoning is superficial and misleading. Science is fundamentally an >idea-system that has grown around a sort of skeleton wire frame--the scientific method. >The deliberately cultivated scientific habit of mind is mandatory for successful work >in all science and related fields where critical judgment is essential. Scientific >progress constantly demands that facts and hypotheses be checked and rechecked, and >is unmindful of authority. But there lies the problem: The scientific method is alien >to traditional, unreformed religious thought. Only the exceptional individual is able >to exercise such a mindset in a society in which absolute authority comes from above, >questions are asked only with difficulty, the penalties for disbelief are severe, the >intellect is denigrated, and a certainty exists that all answers are already known and >must only be discovered.
Science IS NOT technology, and today it seems that it's technology that's highly valued. I won't say that science is down the toilet in the US, but the rise of things like "creation science" and homeopathy are clear pointers in wrong direction.
There was a Hal Clement novel, title forgotten, but something about fire and/or ice, that spoke to this same issue. The scientific method rules, and it's a way of thought. Lose the way of thought and you just have technology.
It all depends on your "good old boy" network. Technically you're right, but in practice the limitation may be just as bad, or worse. It really depends on the surrounding culture - the good old boys.
It's not necessary to burn people in the streets to kill science, not at all.
It's just necessary to establish an environment where science, and *funding of science* are first tested to be religiously acceptable. It's just necessary to establish an environment where science isn't as highly valued as it was, say in the 40's, 50's, and 60's.
Fire not necessary, the changes in attitude are where the real damage happens.
You have a point, but don't forget that I may choose to be running Red Pill (TM). Red Pill is MY virtualization software, run for MY reasons. As part of its startup, Red Pill does an extensive set of "metal checks" to make sure it's running on real metal, not on some Blue Pill. Lest some Blue Pill do "clock leveling" and make machine performance consistent, but at a lower level, Red Pill has had me input hardware configuration data, so it knows what the clock (and other aspects of the system) really ought to be, not just that it acts consistently.
Red Pill's code for making sure that something evil isn't running on the GPU is a little sketchier, since the necessarygut-level details aren't as readily available, but it will use whatever hardware data you can give it.
Of course Red Pill (TM) is purely hypothetical, and since none of my hardware has hardware virtualization support, and software-only virtualization won't cut the undetectable aspects, I'm not running it. But I'm also certain that if Blue Pill shows up in the wild, Red Pill will not be far behind. Another arms race.
Slashdot Mirror
I was using "about to" in the predictive sense. You're absolutely right, some of those events do happen quite "quickly," even by human or even electronic scales, but in your case we're using the equally fuzzy word, "recently," which is also time-scale dependent. The key however is the event not being in the future.
>I find the mix of lack of morality and the excess of $ deeply disturbing.
BINGO!
I find that attitude disturbing in general, but especially scary when it pervades the LEGAL field.
Agreed. Besides, we could drop a few of these on the very worst places on Earth, and they'd most likely (Well, not in an active volcano, the pressure limitations of the ocean bottom, etc.) be a cake-walk compared to the moon.
Seen both. I suppose you're right.
>MS is in a strange position where they claimed all their patents are for defensive reasons. If they come out right
>now and say X, Y and Z all fall under this patent, don't use it or we will sue, they have effectively went back on
>their statements. If they do it in response to another suit, it is defense like they originally claimed.
These are the days of parsing. Clinton parsed "is". Bush is parsing "torture", and a bunch of other words.
Microsoft is parsing "defense". Most of us thought they meant, "defense in court." Apparently they really meant, "defense in the marketplace."
So dpilot was talking with God, and God said, "To Me, a minute is like a million years, and a million years are like a minute." So dpilot said, "In a that vein, is a penny like a billion dollars, and a dollars like a penny?" God replied, "You've got it." Which led dpilot to ask of God, "Can you spare a penny?" "Sure," said God, "in just a minute..."
When you say "about to" in sports, something generally happens pretty fast.
When you say "about to" in geology, something generally happens pretty slow.
Generally speaking, saying "about to" in cosmology is to geology as geology is to sports.
But not always. At some points in time, the volcano under Yellowstone does go off. Likewise, supernovas happen, and perhaps brane changes too. But to say "about to" or "soon" is just meaningless to human scales of time.
That was kind of my thought, though I'd also been thinking about using a fictitious design for a 50mpg carburetor for something a little more concrete. By copying your design I haven't deprived you of it, nor have I deprived you of the ability to tool along at 50mpg. But it did take you a few thousand bucks to develop it, build the prototypes, including the failures that led you to the working design, etc. You deserve compensation for that effort and investment, because it's in all of our best interests that you continue to invent.
Incidentally, to save a moment of google: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1437244,00.asp
Trademarks? I think not, pretty easily dis/proven.
Copyright? Also pretty easy, but how can you copy software you can't get the source for? Even when "leaks" have occurred, the OSS folks have been careful not to look at it.
Patents? They're all that's left.
I still say that Intellectual Property is a legal fiction, and when I get time need to write a proper refutation to this: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=318461&cid=20867087
Not that the legal fiction is all bad. Clearly when it has taken some investment to create art or inventions, the artist/inventor needs remuneration, so that he/she will keep on doing that, instead of waiting tables or other non-artistic/non-inventive means of earning a living. The current problems are in finding the right balance, and in really rewarding the creators rather than the mostly the distributors.
Amusing thought...
With patent infringement, there's "accidental infringement" and "willful infringement," with treble damages on the latter, because of evil intent.
At the moment, the Linux camp is milling around saying, "Patents, what patents? Show us the patents!" and it can be pretty well "documented" with press releases and blogs. Seems to me that it would be pretty darned hard to show any sort of evil intent.
But there are also laws against frivolous lawsuits, SLAPP, and such. Seems to me that threatening IP action without specifics, without opportunity to mitigate, especially when the threatenee has been asking for those specifics, ought to go a long way to landing the threatener in that "bad lawsuit" camp.
Depends on who is winning the big money. Don't forget, this administration is really big on tort reform, limitations of damages, etc.
The fundamental idea is that some defective product can kill you or disable you for life, and you'll get less than the record company will if you pirate a few of their songs.
The administration has come out in favor of the "ownership society," remember. (By the by, "creators" are not necessarily "owners," either.)
Chlorine resistance...
I seem to remember hearing that there are some bacteria evolving (pardon me, consulting with their Creator about a small redesign) resistance to low levels of chlorine, like the 3ppm or so commonly found in swimming pools. I haven't heard much, and there's been no general call to migrate away from chlorine to something else. Municipal water supplies have moved to chloramine, but I don't believe that's related to chlorine resistance.
>Given what copyright is supposed to accomplish, I really see no good reason to
>allow its assignment to anyone else by the work's original creator.
I can see the reason... Let's say an inventor is brilliant at X, but couldn't promote or market X if his life depended on it. Inventions are not good if they don't get out there.
But perhaps assignment of ownership is the wrong mechanism for this, and perhaps that's why we're in the trouble we are. But if there were some sort of "assignment of stewardship" instead of ownership, I sadly suspect it would get twisted around until the steward had all the rights, the owner had none, and we'd still be where we are today.
The real problem is the treatment of creators like a cash crop that will always be available, and the preferential treatment of owners. That's a long-term unsustainable model.
Let's phrase it a different way:
The Recording Industry now has very little reason to exist. It's pretty much time for them to either find new value to contribute, or go the way of the buggy whip manufacturers.
The recording industry used to have 5 major missions:
1: Provide studio and production facilities
2: Provide replication and distribution facilities for sales
3: Provide editorial control (quality improvement)
4: Provide distribution for airplay
5: Provide publicity/advertising
It's easy to argue that modern electronics and the internet have reduced the costs of #1 and #2 to the point where the recording industry has nothing terribly special to offer. The internet arguments could also be made about #5, that at the very least it's transformed. That leaves us with #3 and #4. With the quality of much current music, one could argue that they're falling down pretty badly on #4, though they should clearly be doing better, and it *is* an area where they can and should contribute. #5 remains.
Oddly enough, of course the face they present most is #2, one of the most clearly obsolete of their roles.
It's quite simple, the "recording industry" should be transformed, probably to a fraction of what it is, but still a contributory role.
Tell ya what, it ain't gonna happen. We're in an "ownership society," last I heard. For the relevant interpretation of that, "creation" of art/science/IP is no longer valued, the "ownership" of it is. In the fading days of manufacturing in the US, some very powerful people look to IP and licensing as our remaining/next engine of growth. With this attitude in mind, I look for strengthening of IP laws, and more legislation protecting the "rights of IP owners," not less. Note that that's "owners", not "creators." That squares with recent legislation, too. "Creators" seem to be treated kind of like dirt - to be mined, or crops, to be harvested.
IMHO this is a shortsighted attitude, if only because "IP ownership" is entirely a legal/financial fiction. Facts on the ground tend to overcome legal/financial fictions, given time. In the meantime, we deny reality and impair our ability to face it, eventually.
What's really scary is that I saw "This Island Earth" before MST3K. But then again, I thought the movie was pretty silly even before MST3K.
I *HATE* when that happens, those alien abductions will do it every time.
For real space combat I'd want gobs and gobs of small smart 100G+ kinetic-kill weapons, not dogfighting. For the bigger targets I'd want more small smart 100G+ weapons, except they'd be small nukes instead of kinetic kill. Not sure what I'd want for the gap in between, but I don't think human reaction times would cut it in a true space battle, nor would human bodies take the accelerations unless you also posit "inertial dampers." (Star Trek, not Star Wars)
Excerpt from peer comment:
As for being constrained, you're right. But remember that in an atmospheric banked turn, much of the centripetal force is supplied by the wings acting against the atmosphere. In space, there ain't no such thing - all centripetal force is supplied by yaw and the main engines. A tight turn in space simply won't look like a tight turn in an atmosphere, in fact it will look WRONG to our conventional sensibilities.
You can train as a bush pilot all you want, but when circumstances change significantly, that training may not be valid. Putting bush pilots into spacecraft with no extra training makes a good movie, but it's even less realistic than putting a frequently-drunk crop-duster played by Randy Quaid into the cockpit of an F16.
As for being constrained, you're right. But remember that in an atmospheric banked turn, much of the centripetal force is supplied by the wings acting against the atmosphere. In space, there ain't no such thing - all centripetal force is supplied by yaw and the main engines. A tight turn in space simply won't look like a tight turn in an atmosphere, in fact it will look WRONG to our conventional sensibilities.
Then again, there's the ultimate argument - it was just a movie, a swashbuckler. Not only that, the first movie was done on a shoestring, and somehow I doubt there was anyone on the payroll to square anything with scientific accuracy.
Keep in mind that the X-wing fighters did classical banked-turns in the dogfights in and around the Death Stars. Not only do you need wings for a banked turn, you need an atmosphere.
If you assume that the major motive force is all from the main engine(s) you realize that in a turn the engines will be firing essentially away from the center-point of the turn. In other words, the thrust in an atmospheric banked turn is almost (almost because of "forward" thrust) 90 degrees off of a turn in a vacuum. Beyond that, with "advanced technology" it should be readily feasible to have thrusts that would at least black out the pilot, if not turn him into jelly. I guess that's what "inertial dampers" (Star Trek, not Star Wars, I know) are for.
The easy explanation for atmospheric-style banked turns was that the Death Star actually had some atmosphere around it, kept in place by artificial gravity fields. The really odd thing about that is that you would then expect it to be laid out like an onion, with the floor of each deck toward the center, whereas the floors of at least the hangar decks were perpendicular to the surface. That would mean secondary artificial gravity expressly for the purpose of holding a local exterior atmosphere. The other reason to have an exterior atmosphere would be for Tad and Bink, or whoever the heck those two guys were, to scrape and paint the exterior hull plating.
The even easier explanation was that Star Wars isn't science fiction, it's a swashbuckler. Scientific accuracy need not apply, especially if it conflicts with ordinary expectations of the viewers. Since most viewers don't have or haven't reasoned out such implications of spaceflight, atmospheric flight expectations rule. (Notice that I haven't even gotten into orbital dynamics, yet.)
Let's bring this one home...
Last week my wife and I flew one-way to my hometown, 600+ miles away. We elected to drive the rental car back. When you're short-booking an airline, even the one-way fees on a car rental leave it substantially cheaper.
We had no music along, and facing a long drive, decided to buy a few CDs. We were in the vicinity of a Borders for other reasons, so we went in there to buy. After gagging at the $18+ list price of CDs, I found a few oldies that were "only" $12, and thought we'd like. One was Linda Rondstat's greatest hits, though how they can put that out without including "Heart Like a Wheel" I don't understand. The other CD is the issue.
It was a Cat Stevens live concert CD from back in the late 70's, before he became Yousef Islam. But of course some of the royalties, if indeed the RIAA is paying any royalties on this one, go to Yousef Islam. I seem to remember sometime in the past year that he was trying to travel to the US, and encountering troubles getting a visa because of his religion and relative (former?) prominence. I don't know how it resolved, but let's just say for the moment that the person formerly named "Cat Stevens" is the same person now named "Yousef Islam", who has been at least investigated for terrorism-related issues.
I may well have "contributed materially" to Yousef Islam by purchasing his CD, causing a transfer of royalties. Last I knew making a "material contribution" to terrorism could be construed by the Executive Branch as a really naughty thing, possibly involving a vacation to Cuba. In this odd case, perhaps the RIAA is my friend, because as long as they "forget" to pay Yousef Islam the royalties due for Cat Stevens music, any of us who buy that music are making no "material contribution". But then again, consider the situation Borders is in. They are an intermediary in this entire transaction, so they may well be a business trafficking in "material contributions" to "terrorists," and at that point, any of their customers become suspect. One could of course consider the entire catalog of artists whose works they sell, and the political and religious leanings of all of those artists, their "charitable contributions," etc.
This is all hypothetical, absurd, and the like. It's also a rebuttal to those who look at draconian anti-terror laws and say, "I commit none of these crimes, I have nothing to fear from these laws." Sometimes the definition of "crime" can change, be vague, or cast a wider net than you ever thought possible. Remember, Al Capone was arrested and sent to jail using tax laws, not for bootlegging or racketeering.
I found the most telling portion of TFA to be near the end of the article:
>But the above reasoning is superficial and misleading. Science is fundamentally an
>idea-system that has grown around a sort of skeleton wire frame--the scientific method.
>The deliberately cultivated scientific habit of mind is mandatory for successful work
>in all science and related fields where critical judgment is essential. Scientific
>progress constantly demands that facts and hypotheses be checked and rechecked, and
>is unmindful of authority. But there lies the problem: The scientific method is alien
>to traditional, unreformed religious thought. Only the exceptional individual is able
>to exercise such a mindset in a society in which absolute authority comes from above,
>questions are asked only with difficulty, the penalties for disbelief are severe, the
>intellect is denigrated, and a certainty exists that all answers are already known and
>must only be discovered.
Science IS NOT technology, and today it seems that it's technology that's highly valued. I won't say that science is down the toilet in the US, but the rise of things like "creation science" and homeopathy are clear pointers in wrong direction.
There was a Hal Clement novel, title forgotten, but something about fire and/or ice, that spoke to this same issue. The scientific method rules, and it's a way of thought. Lose the way of thought and you just have technology.
It all depends on your "good old boy" network. Technically you're right, but in practice the limitation may be just as bad, or worse. It really depends on the surrounding culture - the good old boys.
It's not necessary to burn people in the streets to kill science, not at all.
It's just necessary to establish an environment where science, and *funding of science* are first tested to be religiously acceptable.
It's just necessary to establish an environment where science isn't as highly valued as it was, say in the 40's, 50's, and 60's.
Fire not necessary, the changes in attitude are where the real damage happens.
You have a point, but don't forget that I may choose to be running Red Pill (TM). Red Pill is MY virtualization software, run for MY reasons. As part of its startup, Red Pill does an extensive set of "metal checks" to make sure it's running on real metal, not on some Blue Pill. Lest some Blue Pill do "clock leveling" and make machine performance consistent, but at a lower level, Red Pill has had me input hardware configuration data, so it knows what the clock (and other aspects of the system) really ought to be, not just that it acts consistently.
Red Pill's code for making sure that something evil isn't running on the GPU is a little sketchier, since the necessarygut-level details aren't as readily available, but it will use whatever hardware data you can give it.
Of course Red Pill (TM) is purely hypothetical, and since none of my hardware has hardware virtualization support, and software-only virtualization won't cut the undetectable aspects, I'm not running it. But I'm also certain that if Blue Pill shows up in the wild, Red Pill will not be far behind. Another arms race.