What apologist? All he said was you can't blame this stupid corporate scandal on Bush. He's right. You are the one being irrational going on a 4 page rant about the Bush administration. Let's blame things on Bush that are actually his fault...
You see no connection between a president that authorizes illegal collection of phone records from every single american and dumps them into a NSA database and a president that authorizes the illegal collection of home phone records of board members because she is suspicious of everyone. The president set the precedent that now our home phone records are no longer private.
I could post all your phone records on slashdot and if you sued me then I could point to the NSA and say that phone records don't require a warrant and are merely another type of business record now.
Right, so let's put this in context. Here we're talking about whether or not Brazil's law allowing it to grab Google's logs is or is not consistent with freedom.
I thought the issue presented was more related to the law that the people are accused of violating, not the law that allows the government to subpeona records. Of course governments can compel the production of evidence related to a crime by court order.
In this particular case, we have what, as far as I know, is a functioning representative democracy that has made a policy choice for itself. I tend to give that policy choice a lot of weight, at least to the extent they really are a functioning democracy.
So, you judge a law based on who wrote it rather than its substance? I haven't read the law, I don't know if it is well written or if it really infringes on freedom of speech, but I am not going to assume that it is either a good or bad law merely based on the form of government it was derived from.
I have trouble buying the assertion that an individual can make the decision for situations where "a society recognizes that some things are none of its business" (emphasis added). I believe a society requires at least two individuals. Under the process as you've expressed it, those two individuals can radically disagree, yet you've said "society" recognizes that some things are none of its business.
You asked who decides what is society's business... not who decides for society. But either way, it all starts with the individual.
I suggest that the recognition you want requires some enforcement mechanism to make it apply to society as a whole. Otherwise, you as an individual might decide one way, but the individuals in the Secret Police might decide the other, leaving you with very little freedom in reality. So the question becomes how much of society you want to involve in that decision. A democratic process, such as the one you mentioned, involves enough of the population to give it some legitimacy. It's tough to come up with a non-democratic process that does the same. So maybe democracy and freedom are not the same, but they're intimately related.
I didn't say they weren't intimately related, but you can have a free society that is a dictatorship or monarchy or a totalitarian system that is voted into being by the people. Unbridled democracy was one of the great fears of the founders of the American Republic.
Yes, the legitamacy of laws are derived from the people, but legitimacy of legal or civil rights and freedoms is derived from inalienable or natural rights. This is the foundation of our understanding of legal rights, which work best when they coincide with the nature of our being. This is the foundation of our government, that there are certain inalienable rights inherent to our being.
Who gets to decide which things are none of society's business, and what makes that decision legitimate?
Well, in the US there is a process for doing that.
But really it is the individual who gets to decide what is their right, which is what sometimes leads to conflict. The two thirds majority requirement is an implicit understanding that some things are important enough that even if just a third of the population disagrees strongly enough, then they can cause an awful lot of trouble if they are well motivated.
Individuals can be oppressed, so too can minorities, but if at least a third of the population believes in something very strongly then it is very hard for the remaining 2/3s to impose their will without some level of ongoing violence.
This is a choice the people of Brazil made about how they choose to run their society
Democracy does not equal freedom. Freedom is when a society recognizes that some things are none of its business. Democracy is about what to do with everything else.
Yes, MIT's OpenCourseWare project is a valuable resource. Overall, there is not going to be a substitute for hands on learning in many of their primary subject areas. I think MIT is in a unique position in most of its major subjects like engineering that are going to require a lot of hands on work and it just doesn't make sense to hold back for economic reasons.
In there case it is an instance of something that costs very little extra for them and could greatly benefit many
Overall, simply make classroom participation or at least attendance part of the grade if you want people to show up. Make attendance worth 8-10% of the final grade, and have a no excuses policy that drops 2 percent for every no show except with the deans permission. That way students can make rational decisions about classroom attendence without having to kill themselves if they are under the weather. Just don't hold back the knowledge.
I can't tell you how many classes I skipped in college, far too many, but at least I got a good portion of the knowledge through getting other peoples notes and doing the work.
Some real definitions: - The unlawful use or threat of violence esp. against the state or the public as a politically motivated means of attack or coercion - The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.
I don't accept a definition that depends on whether they win. Or a definition that makes George Washington a terrorist.
I do find it interesting that Mac fans always point to Dell as their preferred price comparision. I mean....Dell? Is that really the space Apple is competing?...
Dell is the #1 PC manufacturer, and they advertise pretty heavily. HP is #2, but fewer people think of HP when they think of buying a PC.
And Gateway is #3 and Apple is #4. Dell and Apple are competitors and Dell is top dog, so it makes sense to compare.
The clash between the IRA and the British was clearly divided along Catholic and Protestant lines.
Yes, sure I doubt the poster didn't know that this was how the conflict was identified. But he probably had a good point, which was that being Catholic or Protestant in the context of this conflict had very little to do with religious practice, but mere membership in the group. I'd even go so far to hazzard a guess that many of the so called Catholics and Protestants didn't give a shit about the practice of their religion, except as it related to their identity.
It just happens that being protestant in Northern Ireland probably means that your family has held a historic allegiance to the English Crown, while being Catholic meant that you and your ancestors were either from Ireland before the Enlgish rule or did not convert under English rule.
As with many cases labeled as religious conflicts, it is just a convenient way of distinguishing between the sides but the two sides probably have other differences which are actually at the root of the conflict.
In the case of Northern Ireland it was clearly that two sides held (and still hold) two opposing political views about allegiance and rule by the United Kingdom versus Ireland.
Don't be so naive to think the "troubles" were entirely political.
I'm not sure what you think political means, but yes the "troubles" were very much political. Actual religious differences were very much meaningless except as a way of identifying the other side. Granted without membership in a common religious group it would have been much harder to discriminate the other side in the absense of clear indentifiers.
But in the case of Al Qaeda, it really does seem that we are dealing with a movement that is religious and other differences such as being arab are secondary, at least to Bin Laden and some of his followers. Yes Al Qaeda might have grown out of a Pan Arab nationalism that was thwarted by American, British and Israeli actions over the last 40 years, but it has become more than that do to the vision of Bin Laden for a greater muslim empire which includes all the followers of Al qaeda's vision of Islam. The goal of Al Qaeda really does seek more than self determination for an ethnic group, but the worldwide spread of a Taliban like way of life.
I remember it being used in the 1980s - for example to describe the suicide truck bombing of American Marines stationed in Beruit
Yes, and it was used incorrectly from the start to describe any actions by the enemy, and the enemy themselves, rather than simply (and correctly) the tactic. The bombing of the marines, as much as it sucked, was an attack on a military target. The attack on the world trade center (the first time and the second) were terrorist attacks because it is a civilian target. The attack on the pentagon is borderline, since it was a military target, but since it used a civilian airliner overall I would say it is terrorism.
Any time civilians are purposefully targeted with the use of violence for political effect it is terrorism. The identity of the doer does not decide whether it is terrorism or not.
I think a lot of the summaries have missed the point.
The final "definitions" that they came up are not scientifically useful or even useful for any reason. No better than the previous enumeration of planets. Really a lot worse in that now by definition planets only exist in our solar system. So, all those things that orbit other stars... oh well now they are just thingies that orbit other stars. The draft proposal seemed much better by comparison and provided a much more broadly applicable definition. Hell kick pluto out of the main planets if you want, but do so by increasing some arbitrary size threshold and then don't use planet as part of the name for whatever you are left with, at least if by definition it is now not a planet or any type of planet. Even the dorky sounding "pluton" would have been better than "dwarf planet"
And you have to imagine we are going to be finding a lot more planets around other stars in the coming decades as telescopes and processing power improve. or we would have, now we can't since all we can find is something that has no category of its own, unless they too will get a two word name that includes the word planet, such as "extrasolar planet" even though the word "planet" alone is not applicable.
And the part about clearing the neighborhood of the orbit part of the definition seems like it could be problematic from an observational standpoint. The idea that even if we agree to extend this new "definition" to other star systems, then observations probably won't be sensitive enough to be able to determine if the planet-like object has cleared all the asteroids from the "neighborhood". So, until we actually go to another star system, the likelyhood of finding another object and consitently (with the definition) say that we have found a planet will be nil.
Those of you who think the problem some of us have with these problematic new definitions is merely nostalgia, think again.
Bring back the draft proposed definitions and maybe tinker with those a bit. These ones they came up with need to be thrown out.
Without DRM, information goods are what economists call "public goods". Public goods are non-excludable, which means that if you supply them to one person you are effectively supplying them to everyone. And they are non-rival, meaning that if you give them away, you still have them.
I think you are equating DRM with copyright. Copyright is the legal restriction on your right to copy, DRM is a physical restraint on your ability to copy.
DRM turns information goods into private goods. Now they can be sold and owned. They become excludable. The investment needed to produce them can be recovered by charging for their sale.
No, that is what copyright does, not DRM. DRM is something new that is now only being added to the economy based on fears by media companies that now that digital content is far easier to copy than previous forms of content that mere copyright law will not provide a sufficient legal barrier.
I think the flaw in the premise is that we have been operating in a DRM dominated economy until now. Quite the opposite, effective DRM requires a substantial investment in technological infrustructure which until now has not been practical.
I think any question or claim that presuposes that our current or previous system of intelectual property was based on DRM should be looked at suspiciously. Effective DRM is a new economic model, which should not be confused with our previous system where copies could be made more difficult to make, but really it was copyright law which protected the right to copy and allowed an information economy to flourish.
I think the bigger fear at this point is will DRM undercut copyright. If people come to rely on DRM to tell them that they can or cannot make a copy, then only those providers of DRM will be able to make any money. A reliance on DRM could have a very bad effect on the economy as a whole because it would raise the barrier to entry to content originators and providers, essentially creating a DRM tax on every piece of content you wish to protect and make money on. Versus the previous usumption that the legal protections were enough amd that any serious violations of copyright could be tracked down and litigated or prosecuted.
I think DRM is yet another example of people being forced to follow laws rather than simply being expected to.
I don't think it is worth it, nevermind the fact that there is no requirement for DRM'd content to be able to revert to the public domain which is and should continue to be at the foundation of all intelectual property law.
Talk about a negative effect on the economy and society as a whole if copyrights never expired and even if they did then it had no effect beause of DRM, imagine for instance if the Bible was DRM'd in perpetuity and only the Catholic church could make copies.
It's sad, really, when you think of what the Internet could have been.
What is it that you are looking to know? Or are you talking about just newly created entertainment content? Because last time I checked there were definatelt a few places to go to find and get all that there is to know that you can learn about by reading, looking at pictures or seeing video. There are gaps in the knowledge that is available, but you are a member of the human race too and thanks to the Internet and places like wikipedia you can fill in the gaps or at least point them out when you come across them.
Yes, the barbarians are at the gates of Congress and other law making bodies around the world, looking to make access to information less free, but the future is here for those that care to see. Don't be a slacker.
I would never specify in a contract what my prior art is.
Problem is that some companies have a form contract which includes a page for enumerating a list of prior inventions. So, basically, Legal has told HR that you have to sign this form to get the job. Unless you are applying for some Director level position or above, then you aren't worth the time for a laywer to go over your proposed changes to the contract... so it is often either take it or leave it.
For one company I worked for, I actually wrote in the space provided for a list of prior inventions "What's mine is mine and what's yours is yours" and if someone did actually ever read it, then they never told me they had a problem with it and I was able to accept the job.
But you should never work for a company that says anything that you come up with even if it is unrelated to what you are working on for the company and not invented during work hours is owned by them. That is no better than slavery.
I take your point, though people have long used "minor planet" to refer to the asteroids, even though it's clear that they are still not a subset of planets.
Yes, but before there wasn't really a definition of a planet... this time the contradictory definitions are being bult in on purpose.
I tend to attribute something to stupidity rather than malice if at all likely.
Well, I attribute just about everything the Bush administration does to stupidity, not malice. Doesn't mean it doesn't deserve notice or criticism, though i'd think it was just as likely done by a democrat trying to make the Republicans look bad as it was by a Republican trying to actually take evolution out of the curriculum.
The money didn't vanish, it moved. That same $100m should be able to employ equally as many people at Creative, or less better people or more worse people or whatever.
Yes, where they can go on to patent such valuable "inventions" such as "the use of an abundance of molecules of di hydrogen monoxide to facilitate the metabolic function of a self contained biologic entity" or "the business method of purposeful obfuscation of a patent application in order to confuse patent examiners into allowing obvious patents"
So, instead of the descriptor being a subset it is a superset.
Sorry, I should have said mutually exclusive set. Really wikipedia has a good diagram, but the orderly diagram makes it appear to be a logical distinction rather the linguistic mess that it is.
A: Pluto is a planet B: No, Pluto is a dwarf Planet. A: Yes, that's right I said it was a planet. B: But it is a dwarf planet, so you are wrong. A: Isn't a dwarf planet just a type of planet? B: No. A: Then why is it called a planet at all B: uhhh, cause we are really just nostalgic about describing pluto as a planet A: Is that any reason to screw up the defintion for future generations B: Ah just get your own solar system, our defintions are specific to just this one.
I quite like the additional criterion of dominance of a body in its neighbourhood. It's not as arbitrary as simply requiring a minimum mass or size.
I think "has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit." is the worst part of the definition, is earth even really a planet under this definition? I mean it can hardly be said to have cleared the neighborhood with a big honking moon sticking around like a pesky little sibling. I really can't see how "neighborhood" or "size" is less arbitrary than a mass which was picked because it represented a threshold where gravitational forces would take over as a formative process.
Demoting Pluto is a small price to pay.
I would agree, except now we are calling something a "dwarf" planet which by definition is not a planet. So, instead of the descriptor being a subset it is a superset. This is very bad. Dwarf has a very specific meaning as a descriptor and planet now has a specific meaning, but "dwarf planet" put together now has a totally unique meaning contrary to the definition of the two words individually. Dwarf simply means "small" as an adjective, to say that it is a small planet, but then in your definition say that it is not a planet at all, is the result of either too little sleep or too many beers.
On the other hand, I do not like the fact that a planet should orbit to Sun to be called a planet. On this point, I preferred the original proposal in orbit around a star. I don't see why our solar system should be any different, why planet-like celestial bodies orbitting other stars are not called planets.
Yes, this is an outrageous change of definition for people that call themselves scientists. That a planet is something that orbits our own star goes against many years of convention without any meaningful physical criteria.
I for one would like to see them bring back the President to give his "big speech" as he was about to do before Anubis took out the communication networks. And it won't really effect the Atlantis series, because they are off in a different Galaxy.
I think the show has had this thing hanging over it, where it was believable to keep the program secret if it was a small group doing some exploration and undermining the rest of the galaxies evil governments with covert actions, but once the US starts building huge space ships and getting attacked from time to time by fleets of motherships... the only honorable thing to do is to let people know what is out there and get ready.
It seems that the threats would have long ago, especially now with the ori, justified a massive mobilization of people and resources to build ships and to prepare defenses.
Imagine our government facing the threat of such proportions and not mobilizing? Sure it is a big change from how SG-1 began, but you can still focus on the team and the sense of mission while you just change the backdrop of the story.
Except for those islands in the middle.. According to Wikipedia, "The geology of the Belcher Islands is Proterozoic" which, I believe, suggests that the land around them eroded away rather than them forming after some sort of impact event.
Actually, I recall some simulations done for the tunguska event, and one of the simulations was for an oblique impact and I think there was a raised area near the middle of the two conical areas. Erosion wouldn't contradict an impact and would be expected after millions of years on this soggy planet. Of course, it was probably just the weight of glaciers that formed the depression, but the shape reminded me of those impact simulations.
The patents were neither obvious or easy at the time of the patent application. Hardware was so slow back then that video encoding and playback from hard drives were difficult. Today, everything is 10 times faster, so it is easy to think of it as trivial. But you need to think of it in terms of what was available in 1997.
I haven't seen the actual patent, but it sounds a lot like the patents that simply apply a well understood concept to new technology. Like patenting a wheel made out of some new alloy, rather than just a patent for the alloy itself.
But would should not have hundreds of open issues a month before release.
It depends on the type of issues. Just knowing the total doesn't tell you anything. Knowing the severity, and how the severity is determined might start to give you the real picture.
It certainly seems like the SAIC developed software suffered from some serious design flaws, sounds like the FBI would be just better off with a wiki type system for collaborative case files. Along with a good document repository with enterprise backups. The biggest not exactly off the shelf solution is the security model that would be needed to tie the system together in a coherant way with probably about 10 to 20 levels of security with a need to have user by user control over access to certain documents. But even that is pretty standard in any enterprise software, and is simply accomplished with a central database of user and group permissions.
One real problem for this system was that it seems like they decided on a client server model, rather than a browser based application. That would have multiplied their rollout costs and reduced the talent pool as much of the industry has gone to a web application model for enterprise software.
I know Lockheed has a lot of enterprise software experience, but I wonder if they will just make the same mistakes again given that there will be a strong inclination not to consider the SAIC system a prototype, but that will mean they might have a harder time learning from both the successes and failures.
Slashdot Mirror
What apologist? All he said was you can't blame this stupid corporate scandal on Bush. He's right. You are the one being irrational going on a 4 page rant about the Bush administration. Let's blame things on Bush that are actually his fault...
You see no connection between a president that authorizes illegal collection of phone records from every single american and dumps them into a NSA database and a president that authorizes the illegal collection of home phone records of board members because she is suspicious of everyone. The president set the precedent that now our home phone records are no longer private.
I could post all your phone records on slashdot and if you sued me then I could point to the NSA and say that phone records don't require a warrant and are merely another type of business record now.
Right, so let's put this in context. Here we're talking about whether or not Brazil's law allowing it to grab Google's logs is or is not consistent with freedom.
I thought the issue presented was more related to the law that the people are accused of violating, not the law that allows the government to subpeona records. Of course governments can compel the production of evidence related to a crime by court order.
In this particular case, we have what, as far as I know, is a functioning representative democracy that has made a policy choice for itself. I tend to give that policy choice a lot of weight, at least to the extent they really are a functioning democracy.
So, you judge a law based on who wrote it rather than its substance? I haven't read the law, I don't know if it is well written or if it really infringes on freedom of speech, but I am not going to assume that it is either a good or bad law merely based on the form of government it was derived from.
I have trouble buying the assertion that an individual can make the decision for situations where "a society recognizes that some things are none of its business" (emphasis added). I believe a society requires at least two individuals. Under the process as you've expressed it, those two individuals can radically disagree, yet you've said "society" recognizes that some things are none of its business.
You asked who decides what is society's business... not who decides for society. But either way, it all starts with the individual.
I suggest that the recognition you want requires some enforcement mechanism to make it apply to society as a whole. Otherwise, you as an individual might decide one way, but the individuals in the Secret Police might decide the other, leaving you with very little freedom in reality. So the question becomes how much of society you want to involve in that decision. A democratic process, such as the one you mentioned, involves enough of the population to give it some legitimacy. It's tough to come up with a non-democratic process that does the same. So maybe democracy and freedom are not the same, but they're intimately related.
I didn't say they weren't intimately related, but you can have a free society that is a dictatorship or monarchy or a totalitarian system that is voted into being by the people. Unbridled democracy was one of the great fears of the founders of the American Republic.
Yes, the legitamacy of laws are derived from the people, but legitimacy of legal or civil rights and freedoms is derived from inalienable or natural rights. This is the foundation of our understanding of legal rights, which work best when they coincide with the nature of our being. This is the foundation of our government, that there are certain inalienable rights inherent to our being.
Who gets to decide which things are none of society's business, and what makes that decision legitimate?
Well, in the US there is a process for doing that.
But really it is the individual who gets to decide what is their right, which is what sometimes leads to conflict. The two thirds majority requirement is an implicit understanding that some things are important enough that even if just a third of the population disagrees strongly enough, then they can cause an awful lot of trouble if they are well motivated.
Individuals can be oppressed, so too can minorities, but if at least a third of the population believes in something very strongly then it is very hard for the remaining 2/3s to impose their will without some level of ongoing violence.
So who gets to decide? I do.
This is a choice the people of Brazil made about how they choose to run their society
Democracy does not equal freedom. Freedom is when a society recognizes that some things are none of its business. Democracy is about what to do with everything else.
Yes, MIT's OpenCourseWare project is a valuable resource. Overall, there is not going to be a substitute for hands on learning in many of their primary subject areas. I think MIT is in a unique position in most of its major subjects like engineering that are going to require a lot of hands on work and it just doesn't make sense to hold back for economic reasons.
In there case it is an instance of something that costs very little extra for them and could greatly benefit many
So go learn yourself some Java young people: 6.092 Java Preparation for 6.170
Overall, simply make classroom participation or at least attendance part of the grade if you want people to show up. Make attendance worth 8-10% of the final grade, and have a no excuses policy that drops 2 percent for every no show except with the deans permission. That way students can make rational decisions about classroom attendence without having to kill themselves if they are under the weather. Just don't hold back the knowledge.
I can't tell you how many classes I skipped in college, far too many, but at least I got a good portion of the knowledge through getting other peoples notes and doing the work.
Some real definitions:
- The unlawful use or threat of violence esp. against the state or the public as a politically motivated means of attack or coercion
- The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.
I don't accept a definition that depends on whether they win. Or a definition that makes George Washington a terrorist.
I do find it interesting that Mac fans always point to Dell as their preferred price comparision. I mean....Dell? Is that really the space Apple is competing? ...
Dell is the #1 PC manufacturer, and they advertise pretty heavily. HP is #2, but fewer people think of HP when they think of buying a PC.
And Gateway is #3 and Apple is #4. Dell and Apple are competitors and Dell is top dog, so it makes sense to compare.
The clash between the IRA and the British was clearly divided along Catholic and Protestant lines.
Yes, sure I doubt the poster didn't know that this was how the conflict was identified. But he probably had a good point, which was that being Catholic or Protestant in the context of this conflict had very little to do with religious practice, but mere membership in the group. I'd even go so far to hazzard a guess that many of the so called Catholics and Protestants didn't give a shit about the practice of their religion, except as it related to their identity.
It just happens that being protestant in Northern Ireland probably means that your family has held a historic allegiance to the English Crown, while being Catholic meant that you and your ancestors were either from Ireland before the Enlgish rule or did not convert under English rule.
As with many cases labeled as religious conflicts, it is just a convenient way of distinguishing between the sides but the two sides probably have other differences which are actually at the root of the conflict.
In the case of Northern Ireland it was clearly that two sides held (and still hold) two opposing political views about allegiance and rule by the United Kingdom versus Ireland.
Don't be so naive to think the "troubles" were entirely political.
I'm not sure what you think political means, but yes the "troubles" were very much political. Actual religious differences were very much meaningless except as a way of identifying the other side. Granted without membership in a common religious group it would have been much harder to discriminate the other side in the absense of clear indentifiers.
But in the case of Al Qaeda, it really does seem that we are dealing with a movement that is religious and other differences such as being arab are secondary, at least to Bin Laden and some of his followers. Yes Al Qaeda might have grown out of a Pan Arab nationalism that was thwarted by American, British and Israeli actions over the last 40 years, but it has become more than that do to the vision of Bin Laden for a greater muslim empire which includes all the followers of Al qaeda's vision of Islam. The goal of Al Qaeda really does seek more than self determination for an ethnic group, but the worldwide spread of a Taliban like way of life.
I remember it being used in the 1980s - for example to describe the suicide truck bombing of American Marines stationed in Beruit
Yes, and it was used incorrectly from the start to describe any actions by the enemy, and the enemy themselves, rather than simply (and correctly) the tactic. The bombing of the marines, as much as it sucked, was an attack on a military target. The attack on the world trade center (the first time and the second) were terrorist attacks because it is a civilian target. The attack on the pentagon is borderline, since it was a military target, but since it used a civilian airliner overall I would say it is terrorism.
Any time civilians are purposefully targeted with the use of violence for political effect it is terrorism. The identity of the doer does not decide whether it is terrorism or not.
I think a lot of the summaries have missed the point.
The final "definitions" that they came up are not scientifically useful or even useful for any reason. No better than the previous enumeration of planets. Really a lot worse in that now by definition planets only exist in our solar system. So, all those things that orbit other stars... oh well now they are just thingies that orbit other stars. The draft proposal seemed much better by comparison and provided a much more broadly applicable definition. Hell kick pluto out of the main planets if you want, but do so by increasing some arbitrary size threshold and then don't use planet as part of the name for whatever you are left with, at least if by definition it is now not a planet or any type of planet. Even the dorky sounding "pluton" would have been better than "dwarf planet"
And you have to imagine we are going to be finding a lot more planets around other stars in the coming decades as telescopes and processing power improve. or we would have, now we can't since all we can find is something that has no category of its own, unless they too will get a two word name that includes the word planet, such as "extrasolar planet" even though the word "planet" alone is not applicable.
And the part about clearing the neighborhood of the orbit part of the definition seems like it could be problematic from an observational standpoint. The idea that even if we agree to extend this new "definition" to other star systems, then observations probably won't be sensitive enough to be able to determine if the planet-like object has cleared all the asteroids from the "neighborhood". So, until we actually go to another star system, the likelyhood of finding another object and consitently (with the definition) say that we have found a planet will be nil.
Those of you who think the problem some of us have with these problematic new definitions is merely nostalgia, think again.
Bring back the draft proposed definitions and maybe tinker with those a bit. These ones they came up with need to be thrown out.
Without DRM, information goods are what economists call "public goods". Public goods are non-excludable, which means that if you supply them to one person you are effectively supplying them to everyone. And they are non-rival, meaning that if you give them away, you still have them.
I think you are equating DRM with copyright. Copyright is the legal restriction on your right to copy, DRM is a physical restraint on your ability to copy.
DRM turns information goods into private goods. Now they can be sold and owned. They become excludable. The investment needed to produce them can be recovered by charging for their sale.
No, that is what copyright does, not DRM. DRM is something new that is now only being added to the economy based on fears by media companies that now that digital content is far easier to copy than previous forms of content that mere copyright law will not provide a sufficient legal barrier.
I think the flaw in the premise is that we have been operating in a DRM dominated economy until now. Quite the opposite, effective DRM requires a substantial investment in technological infrustructure which until now has not been practical.
I think any question or claim that presuposes that our current or previous system of intelectual property was based on DRM should be looked at suspiciously. Effective DRM is a new economic model, which should not be confused with our previous system where copies could be made more difficult to make, but really it was copyright law which protected the right to copy and allowed an information economy to flourish.
I think the bigger fear at this point is will DRM undercut copyright. If people come to rely on DRM to tell them that they can or cannot make a copy, then only those providers of DRM will be able to make any money. A reliance on DRM could have a very bad effect on the economy as a whole because it would raise the barrier to entry to content originators and providers, essentially creating a DRM tax on every piece of content you wish to protect and make money on. Versus the previous usumption that the legal protections were enough amd that any serious violations of copyright could be tracked down and litigated or prosecuted.
I think DRM is yet another example of people being forced to follow laws rather than simply being expected to.
I don't think it is worth it, nevermind the fact that there is no requirement for DRM'd content to be able to revert to the public domain which is and should continue to be at the foundation of all intelectual property law.
Talk about a negative effect on the economy and society as a whole if copyrights never expired and even if they did then it had no effect beause of DRM, imagine for instance if the Bible was DRM'd in perpetuity and only the Catholic church could make copies.
What is it that you are looking to know? Or are you talking about just newly created entertainment content? Because last time I checked there were definatelt a few places to go to find and get all that there is to know that you can learn about by reading, looking at pictures or seeing video. There are gaps in the knowledge that is available, but you are a member of the human race too and thanks to the Internet and places like wikipedia you can fill in the gaps or at least point them out when you come across them.
Just to name a few.
Yes, the barbarians are at the gates of Congress and other law making bodies around the world, looking to make access to information less free, but the future is here for those that care to see. Don't be a slacker.
I would never specify in a contract what my prior art is.
Problem is that some companies have a form contract which includes a page for enumerating a list of prior inventions. So, basically, Legal has told HR that you have to sign this form to get the job. Unless you are applying for some Director level position or above, then you aren't worth the time for a laywer to go over your proposed changes to the contract... so it is often either take it or leave it.
For one company I worked for, I actually wrote in the space provided for a list of prior inventions "What's mine is mine and what's yours is yours" and if someone did actually ever read it, then they never told me they had a problem with it and I was able to accept the job.
But you should never work for a company that says anything that you come up with even if it is unrelated to what you are working on for the company and not invented during work hours is owned by them. That is no better than slavery.
I take your point, though people have long used "minor planet" to refer to the asteroids, even though it's clear that they are still not a subset of planets.
Yes, but before there wasn't really a definition of a planet... this time the contradictory definitions are being bult in on purpose.
I tend to attribute something to stupidity rather than malice if at all likely.
Well, I attribute just about everything the Bush administration does to stupidity, not malice. Doesn't mean it doesn't deserve notice or criticism, though i'd think it was just as likely done by a democrat trying to make the Republicans look bad as it was by a Republican trying to actually take evolution out of the curriculum.
The money didn't vanish, it moved. That same $100m should be able to employ equally as many people at Creative, or less better people or more worse people or whatever.
Yes, where they can go on to patent such valuable "inventions" such as "the use of an abundance of molecules of di hydrogen monoxide to facilitate the metabolic function of a self contained biologic entity" or "the business method of purposeful obfuscation of a patent application in order to confuse patent examiners into allowing obvious patents"
So, instead of the descriptor being a subset it is a superset.
Sorry, I should have said mutually exclusive set. Really wikipedia has a good diagram, but the orderly diagram makes it appear to be a logical distinction rather the linguistic mess that it is.
A: Pluto is a planet
B: No, Pluto is a dwarf Planet.
A: Yes, that's right I said it was a planet.
B: But it is a dwarf planet, so you are wrong.
A: Isn't a dwarf planet just a type of planet?
B: No.
A: Then why is it called a planet at all
B: uhhh, cause we are really just nostalgic about describing pluto as a planet
A: Is that any reason to screw up the defintion for future generations
B: Ah just get your own solar system, our defintions are specific to just this one.
I quite like the additional criterion of dominance of a body in its neighbourhood. It's not as arbitrary as simply requiring a minimum mass or size.
I think "has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit." is the worst part of the definition, is earth even really a planet under this definition? I mean it can hardly be said to have cleared the neighborhood with a big honking moon sticking around like a pesky little sibling. I really can't see how "neighborhood" or "size" is less arbitrary than a mass which was picked because it represented a threshold where gravitational forces would take over as a formative process.
Demoting Pluto is a small price to pay.
I would agree, except now we are calling something a "dwarf" planet which by definition is not a planet. So, instead of the descriptor being a subset it is a superset. This is very bad. Dwarf has a very specific meaning as a descriptor and planet now has a specific meaning, but "dwarf planet" put together now has a totally unique meaning contrary to the definition of the two words individually. Dwarf simply means "small" as an adjective, to say that it is a small planet, but then in your definition say that it is not a planet at all, is the result of either too little sleep or too many beers.
On the other hand, I do not like the fact that a planet should orbit to Sun to be called a planet. On this point, I preferred the original proposal in orbit around a star. I don't see why our solar system should be any different, why planet-like celestial bodies orbitting other stars are not called planets.
Yes, this is an outrageous change of definition for people that call themselves scientists. That a planet is something that orbits our own star goes against many years of convention without any meaningful physical criteria.
10 million terrorists
10 million? Maybe 10,000.
Terrorism isn't nearly the threat that Communism is.
I for one would like to see them bring back the President to give his "big speech" as he was about to do before Anubis took out the communication networks. And it won't really effect the Atlantis series, because they are off in a different Galaxy.
I think the show has had this thing hanging over it, where it was believable to keep the program secret if it was a small group doing some exploration and undermining the rest of the galaxies evil governments with covert actions, but once the US starts building huge space ships and getting attacked from time to time by fleets of motherships... the only honorable thing to do is to let people know what is out there and get ready.
It seems that the threats would have long ago, especially now with the ori, justified a massive mobilization of people and resources to build ships and to prepare defenses.
Imagine our government facing the threat of such proportions and not mobilizing? Sure it is a big change from how SG-1 began, but you can still focus on the team and the sense of mission while you just change the backdrop of the story.
Except for those islands in the middle.. According to Wikipedia, "The geology of the Belcher Islands is Proterozoic" which, I believe, suggests that the land around them eroded away rather than them forming after some sort of impact event.
Actually, I recall some simulations done for the tunguska event, and one of the simulations was for an oblique impact and I think there was a raised area near the middle of the two conical areas. Erosion wouldn't contradict an impact and would be expected after millions of years on this soggy planet. Of course, it was probably just the weight of glaciers that formed the depression, but the shape reminded me of those impact simulations.
Anyone else think that Hudson Bay and Foxe Basin look like an impact crater from an oblique impact?
2 .915233,-83.935547&spn=28.413586,63.984375
http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&t=k&om=1&ll=6
The patents were neither obvious or easy at the time of the patent application. Hardware was so slow back then that video encoding and playback from hard drives were difficult. Today, everything is 10 times faster, so it is easy to think of it as trivial. But you need to think of it in terms of what was available in 1997.
I haven't seen the actual patent, but it sounds a lot like the patents that simply apply a well understood concept to new technology. Like patenting a wheel made out of some new alloy, rather than just a patent for the alloy itself.
But would should not have hundreds of open issues a month before release.
It depends on the type of issues. Just knowing the total doesn't tell you anything. Knowing the severity, and how the severity is determined might start to give you the real picture.
It certainly seems like the SAIC developed software suffered from some serious design flaws, sounds like the FBI would be just better off with a wiki type system for collaborative case files. Along with a good document repository with enterprise backups. The biggest not exactly off the shelf solution is the security model that would be needed to tie the system together in a coherant way with probably about 10 to 20 levels of security with a need to have user by user control over access to certain documents. But even that is pretty standard in any enterprise software, and is simply accomplished with a central database of user and group permissions.
One real problem for this system was that it seems like they decided on a client server model, rather than a browser based application. That would have multiplied their rollout costs and reduced the talent pool as much of the industry has gone to a web application model for enterprise software.
I know Lockheed has a lot of enterprise software experience, but I wonder if they will just make the same mistakes again given that there will be a strong inclination not to consider the SAIC system a prototype, but that will mean they might have a harder time learning from both the successes and failures.