AFAIK, you are allowed explicitly by the fair use doctrine to make a single copy for "archival" purposes. That is to say, as long as you are only using one copy at once, keeping a backup copy made from a legally acquired original is fair and legal. Typically this is brought up in respect to software, but I'm pretty sure it applies to any other medium that conveys copyrighted content as well.
I believe you are talking about a system where the beam can be dynamically focussed on specific points without the need for actual moving elements. I have yet to see anyone do this even on APs. (They have what essentially amount to 2 element phased arrays that are static unless their direction is switched by the user.) This is really cool stuff. It would be difficult to do in a client card though, because physical space would limit the room for array elements. You could do it dynamically with an antenna array about the size of a softball though. Those arrays aren't hard to build at all -- it's hacking the dynamic phase adjustment into the transmitter code that is difficult.:)
This is a good idea, but I believe it too will probably not be allowed by the courts. The reason for this is that most lobbying done by the RIAA/MPAA and other similar agents goes along the lines of, "this will hurt our business and therefore, it is not fair. Oh, and by the way, it could be a tool for copyright infringement." How that might specifically apply to this idea is to say that while such an implementation, (assuming it was technically flawless and thereby uncrackable,) would still violate the intent of the copyright laws as seen by the RIAA/MPAA. They would simply argue that if this were allowed then the laws and precidents that have been around for decades need to be changed because they aren't working any more. Either way, there isn't really anything in the constitution about copyrights, AFAIK, and if that is true, then the Supreme court justices can feel free to interpret the constitution as they see fit. Bottom line: the Supreme court will protect American media industries. They generate far too much revenue both domestically and abroad to be allowed to slip through any cracks. Lets face it, anything that allows people to buy less stuff, especially less U.S. produced stuff bought outside the U.S., will cause an American political leader's feathers to ruffle a bit. Supreme court justices, although they are not beholden to a constituancy as are other political entities, are still usually partisan, and conduct themselves accordingly. That particular aspect of partisanship is what gets them appointed. It is true that the courts have slapped down various attempts by the media companies to limit personal recording capabilities. Those instances were significantly due to the fact that there were clear legitimate uses in each case. In the case of a p2p, "rights managed" system of trading media content based on existing copyright law, the RIAA/MPAA will see it as, "people consuming content that they themselves have not purchased." It is entirely possible that the fair use precidents/legislation/doctrine will simply be ignored, because the last time this sort of thing was suggested, it was in the context of public libraries, which carry great social benefits in ways that are much more obvious than the benfits of such a plan to your friendly neighborhood justice.
This, I'm afraid, is profound truth. One of the things that makes kids these days disrespect their elders is the simple fact that kids have access to more knowledge than their parents did, or care to presently. For instance, when a 15 year old ends up learning about how the phone system works and how it can be subverted, and all sorts of stuff about politics, and starts to develop an excellent BS detector by reading press releases and then looking at the software that the press release was about, they start to feel very empowered. The fact that their parents aren't interested in what they are doing, and that their parents often believe what the media tells them makes their parents look juvenile in their eyes. Regardless of whether or not the 15 year old actually understands the things in life that experience teaches, they certainly believe they know what is going on. Take a look at the authority figures that kids see these days: parents, teachers, school administrators, politicians, and advertising. Most 15 year olds are capable of looking at advertising output, comparing it with what they know to be true, and realizing that it's mostly BS. Most of the teachers in our society aren't paid very well, and therefore, the most capable, most excited about their field, don't go into teaching high school, with occasional exception -- they become professors or engineers. School administrators are essentially the same as politicians, since they are hired directly by elected officials most of the time, and are answerable to those officials and the parents. Since 15 year olds see themselves as the subjects of the schools (and the focus of the school's energies,) they see themselves as the ones who shold be consulted about things, not the school board, who don't have to *go* to the school. PArents, I have already addressed. Where are the wise, caring, justifyably authoritative authority figures? They exist only on the periphery. Most 15 year olds never see them. I know I didn't when I was 15. I still don't, really, and I'm 23.
It's been my observation that it's generally not the judges that are at fault. Their job is to handle trials and declare someone innocent or guilty of violating a certain law. There are very specific appeals processes wherein people can have their pleas heard by many judges in the land. I'm not always happy with the results of cases that make it to the supreme court, but most of the time it's not because I could really argue with what the judge(s) have said. It's simply because the law was BS to begin with. The real place where accountability suffers is in Congress. Congressman don't have the benefit of legal teams from both sides of the equation briefing them on their side of the story before they draft a bill. They get the benefit of the rhetoric and BS of whomever gets on one of those committees, usually someone who contributed to the congressman's campaign. These accounts of the real world are almost never unbiased, and it is a general rule that the entities with the most money are usually the most highly represented.
Take the DMCA for example. I usually try to keep up with what is going on in Congress with various bills that relate to IP, free speech, technology, etc. I didn't hear about the DMCA until it was almost too late already. When I heard about it, my jaw dropped. I couldn't believe that our smart, discretionary elected officials had somehow taken it up themselves to draft something so contrary to most of the individual liberty clauses in the constitution. I could not fathom how this happened until I started following the money... Suddenly it became clear. The congressmen involved may not have thought about it this way, but the DMCA was purchased legislation, pure and simple. The congressmen may have thought they were doing the right thing (then again they may not have, who's to say) with the DMCA, but if so, they had a huge amount of fud coming in one ear the entire time.
One decent way to fix this sort of thing: Campaign Finance reform. I'm convinced that if candidates could campaign with dollars obtained only from a single source, i.e.: the government, or perhaps, form a separate campaign finance management division of the government, then we wouldn't have this problem. Many bad laws would be avoided. The situation wherein capitalism runs away with itself in a juggernaut-like rage, like a semi-truck with no brakes going down a huge hill, would probably be somewhat curtailed by our elected officials having to run based on their ability to convince people that they know what is going on and that they know how to govern.
Essentially, campaign finance reform is the most important issue in the country at the moment. Our governement is already very powerful. IT is a very well funded and armed governement, and the people of the country are very unaware of what is going on. If there is no law to curtail what essentially amounts to loose corruption of congress, our government will become corrupt. Period. There are numerous historical examples that show why this is a bad thing.
Doubtful -- at least a 486.. The first machine I bought that was *mine* -- not shared with anyone else was a 486DX33 with a 210 MB HD -- top of the line at the time. No auto-detect on the BIOS either.
This isn't entirely on topic, however, it simply poses another possible view of one of the key points that the post to which I am replying makes.
One could look at the non-regeneration of cartilage as evidence that human joints were actually very well designed. The original post mentioned teflon, which has been used as a surgical replacement for natural cartilage, and does actually wear out. Under normal circumstances, human cartilage wears very little. There are many people in the "twilights of their lives," who have nothing wrong with their cartilage.
Based on this point, I assert that this is not an example of a way in which the human body has been ill-"designed." Actually, I can't think of any others at the moment either. The problems that plague people commonly in modern society are mostly due to our removal from our original surroundings. For example, we weren't designed to spend large portions of our lives inside watching TV, sitting in front of a computer, etc., so we become near-sided as the lenses in our eyes never get stretched to where they would be if we were routinely focussing on something farther away than a few metres. We weren't designed to live sedentary lives, thus we become obese and develop other health problems that are related to a lack of excersize.
Take this as you will, with respect to the creation vs. evolution debate. Whichever side you are a proponent of, it testifies to the effectiveness of either.
I suspect that this is probably something similar to what the MPAA and various other players have done with the DVD encryption (CSS). They make it pathetically easy to disable, on purpose, so that two things happen:
1. It will still deter a lot of people, thus theoretically strengthing their bottom line.
2. When it gets cracked, they will have a legal precident under the DMCA of throwing the book at the victim of their choice, a la that dude from Norway who wrote DeCSS.
I suspect that they are primarily looking for the cultural change here, not the direct tampering with attempts to illegally copy their software.
Let me preface my response to this with a disclaimer that I am not an expert on this matter, but I have read many of the aforementioned obscure papers.
In this particular scenario, only certain operations could be usefully performed by a quantum core. A simultaneous comparison of *many* possible solutions would be possible, providing something like linear time scaling with N number of possible solutions. The quantum core would still require N cycles to create the superposition of states required to perform such a calculation. This, however, is a lot better than the exponential scaling that would be seen with a conventional core. One possible way to speed this up would be to use a cascaded type of qubit structure, wherein you have a "cache" of superimposed states ready to go ahead of time. This would work very well if you had the same number of possible solutions every time, with only a few varying. Then, repeated calculations would only require ~1+(number of solutions changing) after the inital calculation.
As someone else said, the real problem with all of this is that maintaining the superimposed states is incredibly difficult at the present time and that the only way that really works thus far is by very comprehensive error correction within the "core", which requires a lot of qubit redundancy -- sort of like parity checking on steroids.
I think that the most likely form that this will take is a quantum dot matrix type structure integrated onto a traditional microprocessor, with a special internal bus and cache that deals with the vastly different types of IO that such a device would require. The interaction between qubits would essentially take place entirely in the optical domain -- this means that it would integrate naturally, perhaps essentially, into optical networking schemes. It's not that far off... I'd expect to see laboratory prototypes of this sort of thing within 5 years. Of course, there are actually people developing software for this type of thing. It's possible to simulate a quantum core using traditional means for the purpose of algorithm experimentation -- but you don't get the speed advantage.
Sounds like they came up with some new method of making a qubit. If this is the case, and they *did* actually patent it, it's another case of the patent system being corrupt. (I don't know the specific research you are referring to, but the idea of 'switching' a single atom is something that has been investigated for some time now (early 80s.)) In any case, it is amazing to see that in the last 2 years or so, quantum computing technology has gone from, "well, this works, in theory," to "damn!! it's only a 4 qubit machine, but it HAULS." I was doing some background research for a project that I worked on last semester and it amazed me that from the point in time wherein I started writing the paper to the time when the paper was completed, my research was *already* out of date. Keep in mind that there is not, as of yet, a real quantum computer, but there have been actual functioning quantum computing cores. That is to say that qubits have been made, and they interact with each other, doing calculations, and not losing data. This is a big step, and it has been made only in the last year. I haven't looked at the current research on this in the last couple of months, so I bet there is something even more impressive to say for someone who has the time/energy to go peruse Phys. Review Letters or any of the other publications that are likely to have incredibly boring but informative articles on what is currently going on.
Yes, this is true. It is illegal for direct marketers, or anyone, for that matter, to call your cell phone unsolicited. Which brings me to another point: How often do you use your phone? Most of my communications take place over email, in person, or briefly on my cell phone. Once I get DSL, I'll have no use for a phone. They can call me as much as they want, and my ringer will be off. This is one excellent way to avoid BS calls. In addition to this, they will still call you *many* times before realising that you never answer your phone. I know this because at the moment, my folks have two phone lines. One is data only, but does have a phone connected to it. Occasionally, I have a reason to turn the ringer on, and I have received on average about 5 calls/night on this line, which is almost never answered.
Perhaps you are forgetting something... Those guys at Columbine killed themselves, too. Why would they CARE if they got shot if they were planning on killing themselves anyway? You're right, it might make some otherwise sane person think twice before shooting, but sane people don't shoot other people unless they have a VERY good reason, and then they try to shoot them in such a manner as to do only the necessary amount damage. Perhaps you've forgotten about the bombs as well. It wouldn't be difficult for someone to kill a whole bunch of people in a school without risking their lives directly even if everyone had a gun. I know someone who has killed someone before, with a gun, because the other guy got pissed off at him, and started waving a gun in his face. He freaked out and blew him away. Now he's going to be in prison for a very long time, and his friend is dead. Neither one of them had any real use for owning a gun except for the fact that it made them feel better to have one -- they were no more likely than anyone else to actually *need* one for something. But, because they were available, and *normal* people still occasionally do dumb things and freak out, one guy is dead and the other is in prison, dealing with the fact that he blew his friend away in his living room with his wife and kids at home. I certainly hope that your post was a joke intended to piss people off.
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AFAIK, you are allowed explicitly by the fair use doctrine to make a single copy for "archival" purposes. That is to say, as long as you are only using one copy at once, keeping a backup copy made from a legally acquired original is fair and legal. Typically this is brought up in respect to software, but I'm pretty sure it applies to any other medium that conveys copyrighted content as well.
I believe you are talking about a system where the beam can be dynamically focussed on specific points without the need for actual moving elements. I have yet to see anyone do this even on APs. (They have what essentially amount to 2 element phased arrays that are static unless their direction is switched by the user.) This is really cool stuff. It would be difficult to do in a client card though, because physical space would limit the room for array elements. You could do it dynamically with an antenna array about the size of a softball though. Those arrays aren't hard to build at all -- it's hacking the dynamic phase adjustment into the transmitter code that is difficult. :)
This is a good idea, but I believe it too will probably not be allowed by the courts. The reason for this is that most lobbying done by the RIAA/MPAA and other similar agents goes along the lines of, "this will hurt our business and therefore, it is not fair. Oh, and by the way, it could be a tool for copyright infringement." How that might specifically apply to this idea is to say that while such an implementation, (assuming it was technically flawless and thereby uncrackable,) would still violate the intent of the copyright laws as seen by the RIAA/MPAA. They would simply argue that if this were allowed then the laws and precidents that have been around for decades need to be changed because they aren't working any more. Either way, there isn't really anything in the constitution about copyrights, AFAIK, and if that is true, then the Supreme court justices can feel free to interpret the constitution as they see fit. Bottom line: the Supreme court will protect American media industries. They generate far too much revenue both domestically and abroad to be allowed to slip through any cracks. Lets face it, anything that allows people to buy less stuff, especially less U.S. produced stuff bought outside the U.S., will cause an American political leader's feathers to ruffle a bit. Supreme court justices, although they are not beholden to a constituancy as are other political entities, are still usually partisan, and conduct themselves accordingly. That particular aspect of partisanship is what gets them appointed. It is true that the courts have slapped down various attempts by the media companies to limit personal recording capabilities. Those instances were significantly due to the fact that there were clear legitimate uses in each case. In the case of a p2p, "rights managed" system of trading media content based on existing copyright law, the RIAA/MPAA will see it as, "people consuming content that they themselves have not purchased." It is entirely possible that the fair use precidents/legislation/doctrine will simply be ignored, because the last time this sort of thing was suggested, it was in the context of public libraries, which carry great social benefits in ways that are much more obvious than the benfits of such a plan to your friendly neighborhood justice.
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This, I'm afraid, is profound truth. One of the things that makes kids these days disrespect their elders is the simple fact that kids have access to more knowledge than their parents did, or care to presently. For instance, when a 15 year old ends up learning about how the phone system works and how it can be subverted, and all sorts of stuff about politics, and starts to develop an excellent BS detector by reading press releases and then looking at the software that the press release was about, they start to feel very empowered. The fact that their parents aren't interested in what they are doing, and that their parents often believe what the media tells them makes their parents look juvenile in their eyes. Regardless of whether or not the 15 year old actually understands the things in life that experience teaches, they certainly believe they know what is going on. Take a look at the authority figures that kids see these days: parents, teachers, school administrators, politicians, and advertising. Most 15 year olds are capable of looking at advertising output, comparing it with what they know to be true, and realizing that it's mostly BS. Most of the teachers in our society aren't paid very well, and therefore, the most capable, most excited about their field, don't go into teaching high school, with occasional exception -- they become professors or engineers. School administrators are essentially the same as politicians, since they are hired directly by elected officials most of the time, and are answerable to those officials and the parents. Since 15 year olds see themselves as the subjects of the schools (and the focus of the school's energies,) they see themselves as the ones who shold be consulted about things, not the school board, who don't have to *go* to the school. PArents, I have already addressed. Where are the wise, caring, justifyably authoritative authority figures? They exist only on the periphery. Most 15 year olds never see them. I know I didn't when I was 15. I still don't, really, and I'm 23.
It's been my observation that it's generally not the judges that are at fault. Their job is to handle trials and declare someone innocent or guilty of violating a certain law. There are very specific appeals processes wherein people can have their pleas heard by many judges in the land. I'm not always happy with the results of cases that make it to the supreme court, but most of the time it's not because I could really argue with what the judge(s) have said. It's simply because the law was BS to begin with. The real place where accountability suffers is in Congress. Congressman don't have the benefit of legal teams from both sides of the equation briefing them on their side of the story before they draft a bill. They get the benefit of the rhetoric and BS of whomever gets on one of those committees, usually someone who contributed to the congressman's campaign. These accounts of the real world are almost never unbiased, and it is a general rule that the entities with the most money are usually the most highly represented. Take the DMCA for example. I usually try to keep up with what is going on in Congress with various bills that relate to IP, free speech, technology, etc. I didn't hear about the DMCA until it was almost too late already. When I heard about it, my jaw dropped. I couldn't believe that our smart, discretionary elected officials had somehow taken it up themselves to draft something so contrary to most of the individual liberty clauses in the constitution. I could not fathom how this happened until I started following the money... Suddenly it became clear. The congressmen involved may not have thought about it this way, but the DMCA was purchased legislation, pure and simple. The congressmen may have thought they were doing the right thing (then again they may not have, who's to say) with the DMCA, but if so, they had a huge amount of fud coming in one ear the entire time. One decent way to fix this sort of thing: Campaign Finance reform. I'm convinced that if candidates could campaign with dollars obtained only from a single source, i.e.: the government, or perhaps, form a separate campaign finance management division of the government, then we wouldn't have this problem. Many bad laws would be avoided. The situation wherein capitalism runs away with itself in a juggernaut-like rage, like a semi-truck with no brakes going down a huge hill, would probably be somewhat curtailed by our elected officials having to run based on their ability to convince people that they know what is going on and that they know how to govern. Essentially, campaign finance reform is the most important issue in the country at the moment. Our governement is already very powerful. IT is a very well funded and armed governement, and the people of the country are very unaware of what is going on. If there is no law to curtail what essentially amounts to loose corruption of congress, our government will become corrupt. Period. There are numerous historical examples that show why this is a bad thing.
Doubtful -- at least a 486.. The first machine I bought that was *mine* -- not shared with anyone else was a 486DX33 with a 210 MB HD -- top of the line at the time. No auto-detect on the BIOS either.
This isn't entirely on topic, however, it simply poses another possible view of one of the key points that the post to which I am replying makes. One could look at the non-regeneration of cartilage as evidence that human joints were actually very well designed. The original post mentioned teflon, which has been used as a surgical replacement for natural cartilage, and does actually wear out. Under normal circumstances, human cartilage wears very little. There are many people in the "twilights of their lives," who have nothing wrong with their cartilage. Based on this point, I assert that this is not an example of a way in which the human body has been ill-"designed." Actually, I can't think of any others at the moment either. The problems that plague people commonly in modern society are mostly due to our removal from our original surroundings. For example, we weren't designed to spend large portions of our lives inside watching TV, sitting in front of a computer, etc., so we become near-sided as the lenses in our eyes never get stretched to where they would be if we were routinely focussing on something farther away than a few metres. We weren't designed to live sedentary lives, thus we become obese and develop other health problems that are related to a lack of excersize. Take this as you will, with respect to the creation vs. evolution debate. Whichever side you are a proponent of, it testifies to the effectiveness of either.
1. It will still deter a lot of people, thus theoretically strengthing their bottom line.
2. When it gets cracked, they will have a legal precident under the DMCA of throwing the book at the victim of their choice, a la that dude from Norway who wrote DeCSS.
I suspect that they are primarily looking for the cultural change here, not the direct tampering with attempts to illegally copy their software.
In this particular scenario, only certain operations could be usefully performed by a quantum core. A simultaneous comparison of *many* possible solutions would be possible, providing something like linear time scaling with N number of possible solutions. The quantum core would still require N cycles to create the superposition of states required to perform such a calculation. This, however, is a lot better than the exponential scaling that would be seen with a conventional core. One possible way to speed this up would be to use a cascaded type of qubit structure, wherein you have a "cache" of superimposed states ready to go ahead of time. This would work very well if you had the same number of possible solutions every time, with only a few varying. Then, repeated calculations would only require ~1+(number of solutions changing) after the inital calculation.
As someone else said, the real problem with all of this is that maintaining the superimposed states is incredibly difficult at the present time and that the only way that really works thus far is by very comprehensive error correction within the "core", which requires a lot of qubit redundancy -- sort of like parity checking on steroids.
I think that the most likely form that this will take is a quantum dot matrix type structure integrated onto a traditional microprocessor, with a special internal bus and cache that deals with the vastly different types of IO that such a device would require. The interaction between qubits would essentially take place entirely in the optical domain -- this means that it would integrate naturally, perhaps essentially, into optical networking schemes. It's not that far off... I'd expect to see laboratory prototypes of this sort of thing within 5 years. Of course, there are actually people developing software for this type of thing. It's possible to simulate a quantum core using traditional means for the purpose of algorithm experimentation -- but you don't get the speed advantage.
Sounds like they came up with some new method of making a qubit. If this is the case, and they *did* actually patent it, it's another case of the patent system being corrupt. (I don't know the specific research you are referring to, but the idea of 'switching' a single atom is something that has been investigated for some time now (early 80s.)) In any case, it is amazing to see that in the last 2 years or so, quantum computing technology has gone from, "well, this works, in theory," to "damn!! it's only a 4 qubit machine, but it HAULS." I was doing some background research for a project that I worked on last semester and it amazed me that from the point in time wherein I started writing the paper to the time when the paper was completed, my research was *already* out of date. Keep in mind that there is not, as of yet, a real quantum computer, but there have been actual functioning quantum computing cores. That is to say that qubits have been made, and they interact with each other, doing calculations, and not losing data. This is a big step, and it has been made only in the last year. I haven't looked at the current research on this in the last couple of months, so I bet there is something even more impressive to say for someone who has the time/energy to go peruse Phys. Review Letters or any of the other publications that are likely to have incredibly boring but informative articles on what is currently going on.
Yes, this is true. It is illegal for direct marketers, or anyone, for that matter, to call your cell phone unsolicited. Which brings me to another point: How often do you use your phone? Most of my communications take place over email, in person, or briefly on my cell phone. Once I get DSL, I'll have no use for a phone. They can call me as much as they want, and my ringer will be off. This is one excellent way to avoid BS calls. In addition to this, they will still call you *many* times before realising that you never answer your phone. I know this because at the moment, my folks have two phone lines. One is data only, but does have a phone connected to it. Occasionally, I have a reason to turn the ringer on, and I have received on average about 5 calls/night on this line, which is almost never answered.
Perhaps you are forgetting something... Those guys at Columbine killed themselves, too. Why would they CARE if they got shot if they were planning on killing themselves anyway? You're right, it might make some otherwise sane person think twice before shooting, but sane people don't shoot other people unless they have a VERY good reason, and then they try to shoot them in such a manner as to do only the necessary amount damage. Perhaps you've forgotten about the bombs as well. It wouldn't be difficult for someone to kill a whole bunch of people in a school without risking their lives directly even if everyone had a gun. I know someone who has killed someone before, with a gun, because the other guy got pissed off at him, and started waving a gun in his face. He freaked out and blew him away. Now he's going to be in prison for a very long time, and his friend is dead. Neither one of them had any real use for owning a gun except for the fact that it made them feel better to have one -- they were no more likely than anyone else to actually *need* one for something. But, because they were available, and *normal* people still occasionally do dumb things and freak out, one guy is dead and the other is in prison, dealing with the fact that he blew his friend away in his living room with his wife and kids at home. I certainly hope that your post was a joke intended to piss people off.