Language is a construct of humans. As others in this thread have pointed out, English is spoken more slowly then Spanish... yet written Spanish to communicate the same concept as something in English may be 30% longer. The answer? Spanish is spoken that much faster to make up for having to say more words. Rate of communication will be held roughly constant, regardless of the language. If you feel English is slow, it's not English's fault, it's just that _you_ want to communicate more quickly. If you managed to do so, few would be able to understand you! (Eventually, my teachers learned to stop calling on my to read aloud in class; I just read too quickly, trying to keep up with my natural reading speed.) You really want humanity to speed up, which isn't about to happen.
Odds are against you ever reading this... but... I didn't forget Wolf3D, it's just that its name is not correct. Wolf3D is actually 2D, just a 3D-looking engine. Doom is 2.5D. Hieght actually matters, though it's not as good as Quake.
This is not a direct comment on the specific issue. I just want to point out to Jon Katz and Slashdot in general that some of the logic used in this post is very dangerous. "I know I didn't have explicit permission but I know they'd want me to do this" and especially "It's for their own good" are very dangerous arguments. It's the same ones used by those people who profile our every click on the internet, you know: "It's for their own good so we can avoid repeating ads and can target ads more towards their interests." I would not compare this endeavor to that sort of profiling by any means:-), but the road to hell[mouth] is paved with good intentions... and a lot of those intentions are really good. You're probably OK this time, but don't get in the habit of justifying things this way; it can be arrogant and elistist to do something like this with somebody else's property without permission. (If you were intending to make a profit, I would be roasting you. I understand the intentions and applaud them, just be careful with that logic.)
Depends on how you look at things. Doom certainly wasn't the first 2.5D game. Elite on the Commodore 64 was full 3D, as are a number of flight sims. Might be the first FPS (First Person Shooter), but even then I'd be surprised.
I'm not going to flame Morficflux... I'm going to flame Cliff.
Cliff, what are you thinking? Knock it off with these "Please do my homework when I could just run a search on Google and get more resources then I know what to do with!"
It's hard to blame Morficflux, but Cliff should know better!
In his words: "The problem is really that ours is the first case of its kind since the Demon Internet 'Net Libel' settlement last week. That case appears to have set a precedent that UK ISPs can be held responsible for the content of newsgroups or websites they host. However, to censor something before it has been published is clearly an over-reaction."
Hold onto that quote. That is the problem. NetBenefit PLC is acting entirely rationally, given the great liability to which they are now exposed. They are not the problem... it is the ruling.
Can you truly say you would do any different if you were completely liable for the contents of your customers web sites? Focus your efforts on the true problem, which is that damnable libel ruling... not NetBenefit PLC.
Therefore, if code is protected for First Amendment reasons, then patents on code cannot be enforced; code is expression, not a machine. Copyright can protect a particular expression, but cannot prevent somebody from using something. (In fact, a little-known part of copyright law is that if you independently come up with something that is copyrighted by something else, you will both have a copyright. As long as you don't look at someone's implementation of something, you cannot be prosecuted (successfully) for copyright infringement.)
Contradiction: Under the conceptions of current law, there should not be anything protectable by both patent law and copyright law; however, the judge in this opinion is implying that code is an expression, thus under copyright law, and the Patent office is quite clearly granting patents based on things (like RSA) that are nothing but code.
Something has to break. This doesn't prove anything, except that current law is incapable of handling "code"... but this proves that quite handily IMHO.
The first time, the cat noticably hovered (at least to my biased eyes) for at least a few microseconds, but then the buttered toast slid around to the top of the cat and the cat landed as normal.
I tightened the strap, which lengthed the amount of time the cat hovered but also deepened (if that's a word) the depth of my scratches. However, the effect of the tightening quickly approached an asymtoptic maximum that had to be at least 3 or 4 milliseconds of "hover time" (again, to my biased eyes).
Unfortunately, I think the Universe tries to prevent this violation of its laws in much the same way the Universe prevents FTL travel via wormholes as described by Hawking (who proposes that vacuum fluctuations will shut down any wormhole that might violate causality)... further tightening of the strap... well... we gave the cat a nice burial, thank goodness the ASPCA wasn't there. The universe was brutal to that poor little cat... I can still hear his screams in my dreams at night...
Hence, as Katz implicitly senses (though he might have expressed himself a little more clearly) it is up to the proponents of a copyright and patent system--those who want to create the exception that will limit the freedom of others-- to come up with a rational, workable system, and to justify its existence.
They did, they have, and we now live under it. I reject your burden of proof; you tell me why we should abandon the carefully forged distinction.
It's hardly unusual for clear distinctions to emerge in later eras as the times change. What soldier of Attila the Hun ever heard of copyright? Why would Thomas Jefferson care about the distinction of "idea" and "expression" when expressions were the more expensive things to produce?
Now we have such a distinction, and we toss expressions around more cheaply then anything else. Other distinctions will emerge in the digital era; for instance, we will be forced to define "expression" more clearly, to handle 'dynamic expressions' (such as this very webpage; odds are, slashdot almost never serves the same page twice, so what's protected and what isn't, and how?).
I doubt Jefferson would say the same things if he were alive now and in the discussion; I won't presume to guess what he would say, but I doubt he'd be that blurry today.
I have to repectfully disagree, because there are an infinity of expressions of one idea, esp. in an artistic sense. You are right in that you cannot have one without the other, but I submit that the distinction is almost exactly the distinction between an algorithm (idea) and an implementation (expression). That leans too strongly towards practical ideas, but it holds for philosophical and artistic ones as well. For any idea (bubble sort), there are many implementations (as many as there are languages at a _minimum_, plus variations within). The key about patents is that you do gain possession of an idea/implementation/device, regardless of the various ways of communicating. In the case of copyright, you do not gain the ideas, just the expression. (In fact, there is at least one case [you'll have to look it up yourself] where two mucisians composed essentially the same piece of music; both got a copyright on it, as they came up with it independently.) (BTW, thank you for the respectful tone of your reply; I appreciate it:-) )
Jon Katz in this entire piece has fatally confounded two distinct concepts, Ideas and Expressions.
Ideas are more along the lines of patents, concepts, understandings, scientific theorums, inventions, ways of doing things. This is what Jefferson (which Jon quoted yesterday) was referring to.
A free flow of ideas is importent to a free and prosperous society.
Expressions are, generally, things protected by copyrights. Movies, music, works of art, essays, opinions, speech. A free flow of expressions willingly shared with the society is importent (no censorship), but it is not necessary, vital, or even good to mandate the communal ownership of expressions.
Jon Katz's essay's essential structure was to take the arguments for the free flow of ideas, slide in "expressions" for "ideas", and pass it off as a coherent argument for the free, unfettered flow of expressions... in other words justifying exactly what we all want to do.
You should always be wary of arguments that tell you that what you want to do is not only OK, but moral. Such arguments can be created for nearly everything, and have been used by any number of groups to justify everything from true moral good to atrocities that those committing them thought were not only OK to do, but morally obligated for them to do.
While free flow of ideas has a long and distinguished pedigree, you should actually not be so quick to declare that movies should belong to everybody. Movies aren't ideas, they are expressions. Claiming that you own all movies ever produced, and can presumably do anything you want to them as a result of that ownership (not just "view", but extract sound clips, video clips, use pieces of the composition in other compositions) has a very dangerous downside, which is simply it works both ways.
If you own every expression ever produced by another person, then every person owns every expression ever produced by you. Not "just" any music you've created, or movies you may have made, but everything you've ever typed, every Slashdot post you've ever made, no longer belongs to you, and none of the copyright protections apply to it, including some nice ones like "the right to be credited with authorship".
Jon, and anyone who agrees with him, no longer have the right to complain when Wired runs a story by stealing comments, unaccredited, off of Slashdot; it's perfectly within their rights to do so, as they own your expression as much as you own the right to the expression of today's Top 10 hits. There is no difference between a Slashdot post and a movie, morally or legally.
And that's the problem. Ideas are not expressions, they are quite distinct things that should not be confused. Jon Katz has done a great disservice to the community by so further confusing the issue, and also contributes to the ignorance the average Slashdot poster has about copyright issues. Who can blame them what the content producers of Slashdot itself are clueless about these distinctions, despite writing from positions of moral authority?
And Katz, that's the worst thing about this entire essay. Your entire premise was based on a bait-and-switch tactic that had no basis in reality, that in fact doesn't even begin to make sense, and based on this glaring error, you get all morally superior over those who may disagree with you. That is inexcusable arrogance.
but I could do a better job a showing rotation is possible than these pseudo-physicists could at showing it couldn't be done. Most of them don't even mention Coriolis effects in their discussion of the physics of a moving model inside a rotating space ship.
Then please do so.
Air friction will very quickly drag each individual M&M into the same inertial frame as the air itself, which had long since adjusted to the normal rotation. (Let's forget about random variations in the airflow caused by ventilation that absolutely must keep the air moving at all times, or cause harmful-or-deadly dust pockets to form; even if the model was connected by something, which people seem to imply it wasn't, the entire model would quickly migrate to other locations.)
I haven't seen the movie but I assume it actually held together, despite a lack of glue. Instead, even if the astronaut could magically (or through extensive practice) nullify the rotation of the spacecraft, in a matter of seconds, the M&M would take the velocity of the air around it and begin hiking back to the outside. The only effect of Coriolis "force" (which isn't, of course) would be if you wanted to compute where it was going to land.
This was a science-fiction movie about science and that's an accomplishment in itself.
Perhaps, but my professors don't think much of that argument. "Well, prof, I did the assignment! Even though it completely failed to meet any of the requirements, I don't think I deserve this flunking grade!"
This movie sucked me right in, and I enjoyed it (in spite of the self-indulgent tracking shot it opens with). So shoot me.
Accurate != enjoyable, which too many geeks forget aometimes. But enjoyable != accurate, and for that matter, enjoyable != good. If you want to enjoy it, fine. But it doesn't make it accurate or good. (I enjoy the occasional bad Easter marshmallow candy too, but it still is cheap crap.)
The zero-g pas-de-deux was brilliant, and there were a number of things I doubt any of these griping geeks could have done as well in a million years.
Of all the demographics I can think of to say that about, geeks, the culture where prestige is measured in accomplishments, are the last I would say that about.
If they rebroadcast the signal in its entirity with no modifications whatsoever to the source signal in such a way that watching iCraveTV is totally 100% like watching TV on a television in every way so that the only way you can tell the difference is the size and quality of the signal, then where did those advertising banners come from?
Adding advertisements that can't be removed is every bit as much a modification to the signal as deleting the advertisements off of the original signal (which they don't do). If they could be seperated by the average Joe (by adding a button to turn them totally off), then you might be able to claim that the signal truly is the original signal... but if you can't seperate the two, then they are not two entities, they are one.
Your Sony logo on the TV is not integral to the signal. With a TV swapout, it might say Panasonic, but the signal is the same on both TV's. The advertising banners were intrinsic to the television feed, and THAT's the point. It's an addition to the signal, which means it is no longer the original signal.
So your sysadmin can create a standard build for your department, section, group or your personal sorry a... that fits your exact needs.
Unfortunately, at this present time, your sysadmin has never heard of "usability". What opinions he may have are probably completely fallacious. With nearly 100% probability, that sysadmin will create a system that (s)he thinks is comfortable (for the sysadmin!), alienating the users who are neither computer experts nor reading the mind of the sysadmin.
And there will be global standards. They are called "GNOME", "KDE", "Redhat", "SuSE", and a number of other things. Your 'normal' users will not significantly change the default parameters on the GNOME or KDE installation the distro ships with. (How many Windows desktops still have the sickenly-blue/cyan background on them? And that's an _easy_ setting to change now-a-days, both browsers will let you change it with a simple context menu!)
Your sysadmin will always be able to create a customized system, but the standards created by KDE and GNOME should be usable standards. You want to destroy that usability, that's your choice, but there should be a focus on usability in those who are setting the de facto standards.
Thinking that we should not standardize globally is... a lost cause. It will happen, de facto, and those who are doing it should consider these issues carefully, rather then ignoring them.
I wanted to keep this out of the "question" itself.
I'm not saying that all linux desktops will be on this standard, I'm simply talking about those who are. I'm sure you'll always be able to do what you like with your own desktop, but we need to start getting some standards for the standard distributions.
It is well known that Linux is, in usability terms, an unusable piece of trash, where the interface is changing widely from machine to machine, depending on what window manager is installed and exactly how the user set it up. For those who are trying to move Linux to everybody's desktop, there's a long row to hoe before it even comes close to ideal usability. So, in light of that, do you have any recommendations for standardizing the linux desktop that would provide "maximum bang for the buck"? In other words, what's the most importent thing to add as soon as possible in terms of usability?
Consider, a Java or JavaScript program is downloaded to your computer, may be cached several times on your hard-drive, is loaded and executed. Furthermore, it may be stored and redistributed by proxies and web caches.
So presumably such programs are considered public domain.
False logic. It is generally taken to mean that implicit permission has been granted to distribute as necessary in order for the content to be used. It does not necessarily grant any other rights.
By this same argument, all web pages are in the public domain; this is clearly false, and not a desirable state of being, unless you are a multi-billion dollar conglomerate with total control over the anarchy that would result.
Copyrights are not a discrete entity, they are a constellation of entities that can be sliced, diced, and split as agreed to by the owners and those who would use the content.
The rest of your post is mostly irrelevent (fortunately) as it is based on a false premise.
Can someone point at the MP4 encoder/decoder? The majority of my CD's are classical, and around 2/3s of them are destroyed by even the best MP3 encoding. I would like to see if MP4 can do better, but I can't find it; search engines get lost in the noise of all the @#*&'in MP3 sites who include MP4 in the page so the search engines find them... even Google was fooled, and that's quite impressive in its own way.
Oh... whoops. Took the wrong tack on my previous posts. May I point out that... Public owns airwaves -> Public owns content implies AT&T owns phone lines -> AT&T owns phone conversations Slashdot owns servers -> Slashdot owns your comments University owns dorm rooms -> University owns content of dorm rooms Medium !=== content.
The airwaves may be owned by the public; and if you could somehow re-broadcast "airwaves", maybe you'd be right.
But sorry, ICraveTV isn't rebroadcasting "airwaves"... they're broadcasting "movies", "shows", and "advertisements", none of which "belong" to the public just for the use of a public communications vehicle. (Or does the public own your car, because you used it on public roads?)
And they do offer advertising arrangements... sounds like alteration to me if you're adding ads, even if they're not "in the program"... I sure don't see banner ads on TV when I watch it.
The answer to that question depends on the algorithms in question, but in all likelihood, the second watermark would be detectable, and the first watermark might still show up. These things don't work the way you'd necessarily expect... as have been evidenced by hordes of posters on this topic.
Because the proven algorithms are designed to securely transmit a message from A to B while C can't understand the encrypted message.
They want standards that
Prevent copying to the largest extent possible (prevent C from ever entering the loop between A (the DVD produced) and B (the player program)). This is not really encrytion, but designing a closed box. Security through obscurity... literally. (look it up with provided link)
Makes sure that if you do copy it, you can't use it. This is something like encryption, but it's called "watermarking", and has different purposes, techniques, and ways of defeating it. (In general, ways to strip the watermarking exist, but degrade the signal to one extent or another.) This is entirely unhandled by "proven" encryption like RSA et al. New theory on how to uniquely watermark these items without degrading them so far as to be useless, yet making them secure enough that it is not trivial to strip the watermark, is a difficult problem that may or may not even be solvable.
Also, they may want to be able to track you, even if you get through all that.
Now, at some points you can use proven encryption, but you can't just take a system designed for simple secure communication between A and B and apply it to this scenario; you need to develop a more sophisticated system, none of which (to my knowlege) have been in existance long enough to be "proven".
Are they REALLY advances in robotics? Or is it just that things that have been around for a long time are finally economical/desirable to sell to the public?
"Electronic dog" is only a term, not a reflection of reality. Would you mistake AIBO for a real dog? Or a robotic snake for a real snake? (That one's more likely, since a snake mostly moves and slithers, but I bet it still couldn't survive like a real snake does.) Is it REALLY that sophisticated?
Heck, maybe the answer to my question is "yes", but the importent point here is that there is a long, long way between robotic limbs directly interfacing with humans and a snake that moves (not breaths, not exists self-sufficiently, not thinks, just moves) in the same fashion as a real snake.
So, to answer your questions, we are still a long way from prothetic limbs.
(Unless you don't mind controlling a limb with three motors (manipulating each motor directly) and having no direct feedback, not to mention having the strength of a three-year old child and no reliability. What do you even mean by "prosthetic"? Indistinguishable replacement? Or does Captain Hook have a prosthetic?:-) )
Slashdot Mirror
Language is a construct of humans. As others in this thread have pointed out, English is spoken more slowly then Spanish... yet written Spanish to communicate the same concept as something in English may be 30% longer. The answer? Spanish is spoken that much faster to make up for having to say more words. Rate of communication will be held roughly constant, regardless of the language. If you feel English is slow, it's not English's fault, it's just that _you_ want to communicate more quickly. If you managed to do so, few would be able to understand you! (Eventually, my teachers learned to stop calling on my to read aloud in class; I just read too quickly, trying to keep up with my natural reading speed.) You really want humanity to speed up, which isn't about to happen.
Odds are against you ever reading this... but... I didn't forget Wolf3D, it's just that its name is not correct. Wolf3D is actually 2D, just a 3D-looking engine. Doom is 2.5D. Hieght actually matters, though it's not as good as Quake.
This is not a direct comment on the specific issue. I just want to point out to Jon Katz and Slashdot in general that some of the logic used in this post is very dangerous. "I know I didn't have explicit permission but I know they'd want me to do this" and especially "It's for their own good" are very dangerous arguments. It's the same ones used by those people who profile our every click on the internet, you know: "It's for their own good so we can avoid repeating ads and can target ads more towards their interests." I would not compare this endeavor to that sort of profiling by any means :-), but the road to hell[mouth] is paved with good intentions... and a lot of those intentions are really good. You're probably OK this time, but don't get in the habit of justifying things this way; it can be arrogant and elistist to do something like this with somebody else's property without permission. (If you were intending to make a profit, I would be roasting you. I understand the intentions and applaud them, just be careful with that logic.)
Depends on how you look at things. Doom certainly wasn't the first 2.5D game. Elite on the Commodore 64 was full 3D, as are a number of flight sims. Might be the first FPS (First Person Shooter), but even then I'd be surprised.
Cliff, what are you thinking? Knock it off with these "Please do my homework when I could just run a search on Google and get more resources then I know what to do with!"
It's hard to blame Morficflux, but Cliff should know better!
In his words: "The problem is really that ours is the first case of its kind since the Demon Internet 'Net Libel' settlement last week. That case appears to have set a precedent that UK ISPs can be held responsible for the content of newsgroups or websites they host. However, to censor something before it has been published is clearly an over-reaction."
Hold onto that quote. That is the problem. NetBenefit PLC is acting entirely rationally, given the great liability to which they are now exposed. They are not the problem... it is the ruling.
Can you truly say you would do any different if you were completely liable for the contents of your customers web sites? Focus your efforts on the true problem, which is that damnable libel ruling... not NetBenefit PLC.
Copyrights cover particular expressions.
The two domains do not overlap.
Therefore, if code is protected for First Amendment reasons, then patents on code cannot be enforced; code is expression, not a machine. Copyright can protect a particular expression, but cannot prevent somebody from using something. (In fact, a little-known part of copyright law is that if you independently come up with something that is copyrighted by something else, you will both have a copyright. As long as you don't look at someone's implementation of something, you cannot be prosecuted (successfully) for copyright infringement.)
Contradiction: Under the conceptions of current law, there should not be anything protectable by both patent law and copyright law; however, the judge in this opinion is implying that code is an expression, thus under copyright law, and the Patent office is quite clearly granting patents based on things (like RSA) that are nothing but code.
Something has to break. This doesn't prove anything, except that current law is incapable of handling "code"... but this proves that quite handily IMHO.
Well, I tried it and it just didn't work.
The first time, the cat noticably hovered (at least to my biased eyes) for at least a few microseconds, but then the buttered toast slid around to the top of the cat and the cat landed as normal.
I tightened the strap, which lengthed the amount of time the cat hovered but also deepened (if that's a word) the depth of my scratches. However, the effect of the tightening quickly approached an asymtoptic maximum that had to be at least 3 or 4 milliseconds of "hover time" (again, to my biased eyes).
Unfortunately, I think the Universe tries to prevent this violation of its laws in much the same way the Universe prevents FTL travel via wormholes as described by Hawking (who proposes that vacuum fluctuations will shut down any wormhole that might violate causality)... further tightening of the strap... well... we gave the cat a nice burial, thank goodness the ASPCA wasn't there. The universe was brutal to that poor little cat... I can still hear his screams in my dreams at night...
Hence, as Katz implicitly senses (though he might have expressed himself a little more clearly) it is up to the proponents of a copyright and patent system--those who want to create the exception that will limit the freedom of others-- to come up with a rational, workable system, and to justify its existence.
They did, they have, and we now live under it. I reject your burden of proof; you tell me why we should abandon the carefully forged distinction.
It's hardly unusual for clear distinctions to emerge in later eras as the times change. What soldier of Attila the Hun ever heard of copyright? Why would Thomas Jefferson care about the distinction of "idea" and "expression" when expressions were the more expensive things to produce?
Now we have such a distinction, and we toss expressions around more cheaply then anything else. Other distinctions will emerge in the digital era; for instance, we will be forced to define "expression" more clearly, to handle 'dynamic expressions' (such as this very webpage; odds are, slashdot almost never serves the same page twice, so what's protected and what isn't, and how?).
I doubt Jefferson would say the same things if he were alive now and in the discussion; I won't presume to guess what he would say, but I doubt he'd be that blurry today.
I have to repectfully disagree, because there are an infinity of expressions of one idea, esp. in an artistic sense. You are right in that you cannot have one without the other, but I submit that the distinction is almost exactly the distinction between an algorithm (idea) and an implementation (expression). That leans too strongly towards practical ideas, but it holds for philosophical and artistic ones as well. For any idea (bubble sort), there are many implementations (as many as there are languages at a _minimum_, plus variations within). The key about patents is that you do gain possession of an idea/implementation/device, regardless of the various ways of communicating. In the case of copyright, you do not gain the ideas, just the expression. (In fact, there is at least one case [you'll have to look it up yourself] where two mucisians composed essentially the same piece of music; both got a copyright on it, as they came up with it independently.) (BTW, thank you for the respectful tone of your reply; I appreciate it :-) )
Jon Katz in this entire piece has fatally confounded two distinct concepts, Ideas and Expressions.
Ideas are more along the lines of patents, concepts, understandings, scientific theorums, inventions, ways of doing things. This is what Jefferson (which Jon quoted yesterday) was referring to.
A free flow of ideas is importent to a free and prosperous society.
Expressions are, generally, things protected by copyrights. Movies, music, works of art, essays, opinions, speech. A free flow of expressions willingly shared with the society is importent (no censorship), but it is not necessary, vital, or even good to mandate the communal ownership of expressions.
Jon Katz's essay's essential structure was to take the arguments for the free flow of ideas, slide in "expressions" for "ideas", and pass it off as a coherent argument for the free, unfettered flow of expressions... in other words justifying exactly what we all want to do.
You should always be wary of arguments that tell you that what you want to do is not only OK, but moral. Such arguments can be created for nearly everything, and have been used by any number of groups to justify everything from true moral good to atrocities that those committing them thought were not only OK to do, but morally obligated for them to do.
While free flow of ideas has a long and distinguished pedigree, you should actually not be so quick to declare that movies should belong to everybody. Movies aren't ideas, they are expressions. Claiming that you own all movies ever produced, and can presumably do anything you want to them as a result of that ownership (not just "view", but extract sound clips, video clips, use pieces of the composition in other compositions) has a very dangerous downside, which is simply it works both ways.
If you own every expression ever produced by another person, then every person owns every expression ever produced by you. Not "just" any music you've created, or movies you may have made, but everything you've ever typed, every Slashdot post you've ever made, no longer belongs to you, and none of the copyright protections apply to it, including some nice ones like "the right to be credited with authorship".
Jon, and anyone who agrees with him, no longer have the right to complain when Wired runs a story by stealing comments, unaccredited, off of Slashdot; it's perfectly within their rights to do so, as they own your expression as much as you own the right to the expression of today's Top 10 hits. There is no difference between a Slashdot post and a movie, morally or legally.
And that's the problem. Ideas are not expressions, they are quite distinct things that should not be confused. Jon Katz has done a great disservice to the community by so further confusing the issue, and also contributes to the ignorance the average Slashdot poster has about copyright issues. Who can blame them what the content producers of Slashdot itself are clueless about these distinctions, despite writing from positions of moral authority?
And Katz, that's the worst thing about this entire essay. Your entire premise was based on a bait-and-switch tactic that had no basis in reality, that in fact doesn't even begin to make sense, and based on this glaring error, you get all morally superior over those who may disagree with you. That is inexcusable arrogance.
but I could do a better job a showing rotation is possible than these pseudo-physicists could at showing it couldn't be done. Most of them don't even mention Coriolis effects in their discussion of the physics of a moving model inside a rotating space ship.
Then please do so.
Air friction will very quickly drag each individual M&M into the same inertial frame as the air itself, which had long since adjusted to the normal rotation. (Let's forget about random variations in the airflow caused by ventilation that absolutely must keep the air moving at all times, or cause harmful-or-deadly dust pockets to form; even if the model was connected by something, which people seem to imply it wasn't, the entire model would quickly migrate to other locations.)
I haven't seen the movie but I assume it actually held together, despite a lack of glue. Instead, even if the astronaut could magically (or through extensive practice) nullify the rotation of the spacecraft, in a matter of seconds, the M&M would take the velocity of the air around it and begin hiking back to the outside. The only effect of Coriolis "force" (which isn't, of course) would be if you wanted to compute where it was going to land.
This was a science-fiction movie about science and that's an accomplishment in itself.
Perhaps, but my professors don't think much of that argument. "Well, prof, I did the assignment! Even though it completely failed to meet any of the requirements, I don't think I deserve this flunking grade!"
This movie sucked me right in, and I enjoyed it (in spite of the self-indulgent tracking shot it opens with). So shoot me.
Accurate != enjoyable, which too many geeks forget aometimes. But enjoyable != accurate, and for that matter, enjoyable != good. If you want to enjoy it, fine. But it doesn't make it accurate or good. (I enjoy the occasional bad Easter marshmallow candy too, but it still is cheap crap.)
The zero-g pas-de-deux was brilliant, and there were a number of things I doubt any of these griping geeks could have done as well in a million years.
Of all the demographics I can think of to say that about, geeks, the culture where prestige is measured in accomplishments, are the last I would say that about.
Seperate===seperable. Seperate is exactly equivalent to seperable. They were not seperable, therefore they were not seperate.
Adding advertisements that can't be removed is every bit as much a modification to the signal as deleting the advertisements off of the original signal (which they don't do). If they could be seperated by the average Joe (by adding a button to turn them totally off), then you might be able to claim that the signal truly is the original signal... but if you can't seperate the two, then they are not two entities, they are one.
Your Sony logo on the TV is not integral to the signal. With a TV swapout, it might say Panasonic, but the signal is the same on both TV's. The advertising banners were intrinsic to the television feed, and THAT's the point. It's an addition to the signal, which means it is no longer the original signal.
Unfortunately, at this present time, your sysadmin has never heard of "usability". What opinions he may have are probably completely fallacious. With nearly 100% probability, that sysadmin will create a system that (s)he thinks is comfortable (for the sysadmin!), alienating the users who are neither computer experts nor reading the mind of the sysadmin.
And there will be global standards. They are called "GNOME", "KDE", "Redhat", "SuSE", and a number of other things. Your 'normal' users will not significantly change the default parameters on the GNOME or KDE installation the distro ships with. (How many Windows desktops still have the sickenly-blue/cyan background on them? And that's an _easy_ setting to change now-a-days, both browsers will let you change it with a simple context menu!)
Your sysadmin will always be able to create a customized system, but the standards created by KDE and GNOME should be usable standards. You want to destroy that usability, that's your choice, but there should be a focus on usability in those who are setting the de facto standards.
Thinking that we should not standardize globally is... a lost cause. It will happen, de facto, and those who are doing it should consider these issues carefully, rather then ignoring them.
I'm not saying that all linux desktops will be on this standard, I'm simply talking about those who are. I'm sure you'll always be able to do what you like with your own desktop, but we need to start getting some standards for the standard distributions.
It is well known that Linux is, in usability terms, an unusable piece of trash, where the interface is changing widely from machine to machine, depending on what window manager is installed and exactly how the user set it up. For those who are trying to move Linux to everybody's desktop, there's a long row to hoe before it even comes close to ideal usability. So, in light of that, do you have any recommendations for standardizing the linux desktop that would provide "maximum bang for the buck"? In other words, what's the most importent thing to add as soon as possible in terms of usability?
Consider, a Java or JavaScript program is downloaded to your computer, may be cached several times on your hard-drive, is loaded and executed. Furthermore, it may be stored and redistributed by proxies and web caches.
So presumably such programs are considered public domain.
False logic. It is generally taken to mean that implicit permission has been granted to distribute as necessary in order for the content to be used. It does not necessarily grant any other rights.
By this same argument, all web pages are in the public domain; this is clearly false, and not a desirable state of being, unless you are a multi-billion dollar conglomerate with total control over the anarchy that would result.
Copyrights are not a discrete entity, they are a constellation of entities that can be sliced, diced, and split as agreed to by the owners and those who would use the content.
The rest of your post is mostly irrelevent (fortunately) as it is based on a false premise.
Can someone point at the MP4 encoder/decoder? The majority of my CD's are classical, and around 2/3s of them are destroyed by even the best MP3 encoding. I would like to see if MP4 can do better, but I can't find it; search engines get lost in the noise of all the @#*&'in MP3 sites who include MP4 in the page so the search engines find them... even Google was fooled, and that's quite impressive in its own way.
Oh... whoops. Took the wrong tack on my previous posts. May I point out that... Public owns airwaves -> Public owns content implies AT&T owns phone lines -> AT&T owns phone conversations Slashdot owns servers -> Slashdot owns your comments University owns dorm rooms -> University owns content of dorm rooms Medium !=== content.
The airwaves may be owned by the public; and if you could somehow re-broadcast "airwaves", maybe you'd be right.
But sorry, ICraveTV isn't rebroadcasting "airwaves"... they're broadcasting "movies", "shows", and "advertisements", none of which "belong" to the public just for the use of a public communications vehicle. (Or does the public own your car, because you used it on public roads?)
And they do offer advertising arrangements... sounds like alteration to me if you're adding ads, even if they're not "in the program"... I sure don't see banner ads on TV when I watch it.
The answer to that question depends on the algorithms in question, but in all likelihood, the second watermark would be detectable, and the first watermark might still show up. These things don't work the way you'd necessarily expect... as have been evidenced by hordes of posters on this topic.
They want standards that
- Prevent copying to the largest extent possible (prevent C from ever entering the loop between A (the DVD produced) and B (the player program)). This is not really encrytion, but designing a closed box. Security through obscurity... literally. (look it up with provided link)
- Makes sure that if you do copy it, you can't use it. This is something like encryption, but it's called "watermarking", and has different purposes, techniques, and ways of defeating it. (In general, ways to strip the watermarking exist, but degrade the signal to one extent or another.) This is entirely unhandled by "proven" encryption like RSA et al. New theory on how to uniquely watermark these items without degrading them so far as to be useless, yet making them secure enough that it is not trivial to strip the watermark, is a difficult problem that may or may not even be solvable.
- Also, they may want to be able to track you, even if you get through all that.
Now, at some points you can use proven encryption, but you can't just take a system designed for simple secure communication between A and B and apply it to this scenario; you need to develop a more sophisticated system, none of which (to my knowlege) have been in existance long enough to be "proven".Are they REALLY advances in robotics? Or is it just that things that have been around for a long time are finally economical/desirable to sell to the public?
:-) )
"Electronic dog" is only a term, not a reflection of reality. Would you mistake AIBO for a real dog? Or a robotic snake for a real snake? (That one's more likely, since a snake mostly moves and slithers, but I bet it still couldn't survive like a real snake does.) Is it REALLY that sophisticated?
Heck, maybe the answer to my question is "yes", but the importent point here is that there is a long, long way between robotic limbs directly interfacing with humans and a snake that moves (not breaths, not exists self-sufficiently, not thinks, just moves) in the same fashion as a real snake.
So, to answer your questions, we are still a long way from prothetic limbs.
(Unless you don't mind controlling a limb with three motors (manipulating each motor directly) and having no direct feedback, not to mention having the strength of a three-year old child and no reliability. What do you even mean by "prosthetic"? Indistinguishable replacement? Or does Captain Hook have a prosthetic?
I have to agree that this article is useless. It also is dubious in other ways, such as misspelling simple words (like "sensored" [sic]).
I would not put much stock in this posting.