The idea that FTL naturally makes time travel possible is tightly bound to the structure of relativity. Since time travel seems to lead to causality paradoxes (e.g., going back in time and killing yourself), the conclusion seems to be that FTL leads to paradoxes, and that makes physicists suspect that FTL isn't actually physically possible.
Either that, or causality violations can happen. The problem with allowing causality violations, as I understand it, is that it causes problems for quantum mechanics. Something like the information required to describe the universe at time T1 can't be extracted from the universe at any later time T2.
However, I'd like to conjecture that there is no causality violation because you are carrying part of the light cone with you in the bubble.
If the information gets outside your light cone it doesn't matter what kind of trick you used to make it happen... wormholes, warp bubbles, or rotating cylinders... you've violated causality.
"If the work done by the students in the class is valuable enough of itself to be worth publishing, then they should be able to publish, just as if they had done original research in any other class."
I think you need to read this OTHER slashdot article, just posted, about the relationship between open source and the scientific method. If the work done by the students in the class is valuable enough of itself to be worth publishing, then they should be able to publish, just as if they had done original research in any other class.
We're not talking about routine homework assignments here, we're talking about a student who believed, AND was able to convince the head of the department, that what they had created was inherently valuable.
Actually the Federal Government, and I think the State and Local levels as well, have partial exemption to software copy-right law.
Sure, and in Permanence they do too... they had a military ship running on credit because the projected benefit of the mission was greater than the microtransaction costs.
IMHO, if the media corporations ever seriously tried to fully institute a "Rights Economy" on the Feds it would quickly lead to most of their legal protections made void.
They just have to come up with a good enough excuse... in Permanence the excuse was that allowing the military to opt out of the rights economy would allow them to defect with military hardware. The microtransactions on the military were seen as the equivalent of a scuttling charge.
Once they impose the rights economy on everyone else, people will see the federal exceptions as the equivalent of franking privileges, and call for their elimination.
Fine, I'll be more explicit. Starting in Vista, Windows Explorer won't open HTML files itself.
Where did I even suggest that having Windows Explorer "open HTML files" had anything to do with the problem I'm talking about? You're going off on a completely irrelevant tangent.
Windows Explorer uses HTML internally, for rendering content inside the Windows Explorer window. There are ActiveX controls that are only intended for use by Windows Explorer in this context. The control panel is one of these situations, and control panel applets are ActiveX controls too. Windows Media Player uses internal HTML files similarly. As do many third party applications.
It doesn't matter whether the shell called Windows Explorer calls another shell called Internet Explorer in certain circumstances or not. What matters is that there is a mechanism IN THE HTML CONTROL to run applets that have capabilities and expose privileges that should not be available to the HTML control directly. Unlike other HTML rendering engines where the shell application loads these kinds of plugins, in Windows the HTML control makes the decision whether these will be used. This is an inherently insecure design.
That's why Microsoft quit using the HTML control in Outlook. Because the HTML control is inherently insecure. They need to eliminate it completely, redesign the API so it uses an explicit plugin mechanism instead of a global set of heuristics (security zones), and take the hit from people whinng about broken third party applications that use the current API.
Oh, and people thinking of using Microsoft's HTML control in your own applications (I'm looking at you, AOL)... ship webkit instead.
Entering a URL in Windows Explorer opens that URL in your default browser now, not in the Explorer window.
What does that have to do with whether Windows Explorer is a wrapper around the HTML control or not? You can make IE itself open specific mime types, URL methods, or file extensions in Firefox by changing the helper application... in fact that was the basis of an exploit not so long ago to IE and Firefox handling quoting differently.
In Windows Vista, Windows Update is implemented as a Control Panel applet.
Many control panel applets are also wrappers around the HTML control.
And so we move another step towards the future described in Karl Schroeder's novel Permanence, where even the military has to pay microtransaction fees continually to keep their equipment running... even when they're chasing down people who refuse to take part in the "Rights Economy".
Gecko and Webkit do not have a security model that is deeply and unfixably broken. The HTML control makes the control itself responsible for security, rather than the application around it, so it has to guess at whether a request from an untrusted object to execute unsandboxed code through the ActiveX embedding API should be granted or not, instead of only allowing components (such as I/O slaves in KHTML/Webkit) explicitly embedded by the application to run.
The application uses a rendering engine, generally known as "Trident" or simply "MSHTML", to render HTML. This wasn't removed, but it's not really an issue, because it by itself does not unfairly compete with Firefox and other browsers.
I don't care if it competes against other browsers. I care that Microsoft embedded it into the OS in completely inappropriate ways to get around their consent decree with the DoJ, and in the process of doing so they created a security nightmare that we will not awake from any time soon.
The whole "anti-competitive" part of this has long since become a convenient distraction that has let Microsoft avoid taking the hit they need to make applications that use it secure.
IE has not been part of any of those components since XP.
The shell program Microsoft calls IE so they can pretend that they're not violating the consent decree isn't.
The HTML rendering engine that is the real problem, because of its deep and unfixable security flaws baked into the very API of it, is the important part.
Microsoft is not removing anything, they are hiding one of the shell applications around the HTML control. All the same dangerous and insecure code will still be there, as part of Windows Explorer and Control Panel and Windows Media Player and Windows Update. Stil rendering websites for you, still displaying untrusted content.
First, Microsoft has NOT REMOVED IE. I;ll get back to that.
Second, Safari is not bound into the Finder and Software Update and System Preferences and so on so that you can't replace Safari with another browser.
Third, Safari is not bound into the Finder and Software Update and System Preferences and so on so that attackers can use cross-zone exploits to launch ActiveX controls with full local user privileges.
Safari is just another application. I use Camino on my Mac Mini and Safari never pops up unrequested, the way Internet Explorer does no matter how hard I try and avoid it on Windows.
Internet Explorer is not just another application, it's a deeply embedded part of the OS. Microsoft has not removed it from Windows, all they've done is hide it from a few of the places it comes into play. It's still there, as part of Windows Explorer and the Control Panel and Windows Update and Windows Media Player.
OK, when they updated UFS in Panther I was all ^_^ because I was tired of HFS+ turning up x_x, and then they decided to make Spotlight dependent on HFS+ and I was all o_O and half the guys on Slashdot were telling me that UFS was -_+ and ZFS was coming and they were all:) over that, well guys, what kind of emoticon are you mainlining now?
Slashdot Mirror
The idea that FTL naturally makes time travel possible is tightly bound to the structure of relativity. Since time travel seems to lead to causality paradoxes (e.g., going back in time and killing yourself), the conclusion seems to be that FTL leads to paradoxes, and that makes physicists suspect that FTL isn't actually physically possible.
Either that, or causality violations can happen. The problem with allowing causality violations, as I understand it, is that it causes problems for quantum mechanics. Something like the information required to describe the universe at time T1 can't be extracted from the universe at any later time T2.
However, I'd like to conjecture that there is no causality violation because you are carrying part of the light cone with you in the bubble.
If the information gets outside your light cone it doesn't matter what kind of trick you used to make it happen... wormholes, warp bubbles, or rotating cylinders... you've violated causality.
You still end up with global causality violation if an object can communicate outside its light cone.
Informative...
What does that have to do with what I wrote?
"If the work done by the students in the class is valuable enough of itself to be worth publishing, then they should be able to publish, just as if they had done original research in any other class."
verb-noun requires less typing
Instead of "search forward left bracket leave mark search forward right bracket ..."
You say "find left bracket change matching", which is the verbal equivalent of "f[c%" in vi.
Not quite "change index", but THAT could be a macro for "f[c%".
At my last job we called this "talking to the bear".
We found that occasionally slipping a live programmer in in place of the stuffed bear improved the quality of the process.
I think you need to read this OTHER slashdot article, just posted, about the relationship between open source and the scientific method. If the work done by the students in the class is valuable enough of itself to be worth publishing, then they should be able to publish, just as if they had done original research in any other class.
We're not talking about routine homework assignments here, we're talking about a student who believed, AND was able to convince the head of the department, that what they had created was inherently valuable.
Actually the Federal Government, and I think the State and Local levels as well, have partial exemption to software copy-right law.
Sure, and in Permanence they do too... they had a military ship running on credit because the projected benefit of the mission was greater than the microtransaction costs.
IMHO, if the media corporations ever seriously tried to fully institute a "Rights Economy" on the Feds it would quickly lead to most of their legal protections made void.
They just have to come up with a good enough excuse... in Permanence the excuse was that allowing the military to opt out of the rights economy would allow them to defect with military hardware. The microtransactions on the military were seen as the equivalent of a scuttling charge.
Once they impose the rights economy on everyone else, people will see the federal exceptions as the equivalent of franking privileges, and call for their elimination.
Fine, I'll be more explicit. Starting in Vista, Windows Explorer won't open HTML files itself.
Where did I even suggest that having Windows Explorer "open HTML files" had anything to do with the problem I'm talking about? You're going off on a completely irrelevant tangent.
Windows Explorer uses HTML internally, for rendering content inside the Windows Explorer window. There are ActiveX controls that are only intended for use by Windows Explorer in this context. The control panel is one of these situations, and control panel applets are ActiveX controls too. Windows Media Player uses internal HTML files similarly. As do many third party applications.
It doesn't matter whether the shell called Windows Explorer calls another shell called Internet Explorer in certain circumstances or not. What matters is that there is a mechanism IN THE HTML CONTROL to run applets that have capabilities and expose privileges that should not be available to the HTML control directly. Unlike other HTML rendering engines where the shell application loads these kinds of plugins, in Windows the HTML control makes the decision whether these will be used. This is an inherently insecure design.
That's why Microsoft quit using the HTML control in Outlook. Because the HTML control is inherently insecure. They need to eliminate it completely, redesign the API so it uses an explicit plugin mechanism instead of a global set of heuristics (security zones), and take the hit from people whinng about broken third party applications that use the current API.
Oh, and people thinking of using Microsoft's HTML control in your own applications (I'm looking at you, AOL)... ship webkit instead.
Carl "Bing" Morro is the protagonist of the novel "Never Lark Nor Eagle" by Ray Castagnaro.
Microsoft "Bing"
Microsoft "Morro"
If the next one is Microsoft "Carl" I think Ray needs to talk to his lawyers.
Entering a URL in Windows Explorer opens that URL in your default browser now, not in the Explorer window.
What does that have to do with whether Windows Explorer is a wrapper around the HTML control or not? You can make IE itself open specific mime types, URL methods, or file extensions in Firefox by changing the helper application... in fact that was the basis of an exploit not so long ago to IE and Firefox handling quoting differently.
In Windows Vista, Windows Update is implemented as a Control Panel applet.
Many control panel applets are also wrappers around the HTML control.
And so we move another step towards the future described in Karl Schroeder's novel Permanence, where even the military has to pay microtransaction fees continually to keep their equipment running... even when they're chasing down people who refuse to take part in the "Rights Economy".
They got Kermit the Frog and Big Bird naming their products now.
Gecko and Webkit do not have a security model that is deeply and unfixably broken. The HTML control makes the control itself responsible for security, rather than the application around it, so it has to guess at whether a request from an untrusted object to execute unsandboxed code through the ActiveX embedding API should be granted or not, instead of only allowing components (such as I/O slaves in KHTML/Webkit) explicitly embedded by the application to run.
The application uses a rendering engine, generally known as "Trident" or simply "MSHTML", to render HTML. This wasn't removed, but it's not really an issue, because it by itself does not unfairly compete with Firefox and other browsers.
I don't care if it competes against other browsers. I care that Microsoft embedded it into the OS in completely inappropriate ways to get around their consent decree with the DoJ, and in the process of doing so they created a security nightmare that we will not awake from any time soon.
The whole "anti-competitive" part of this has long since become a convenient distraction that has let Microsoft avoid taking the hit they need to make applications that use it secure.
Control Panel: Huh? Not true; that's just standard Windows Explorer.
Since Windows Explorer is also a shell around the HTML control, this is a difference that makes no difference.
About the only "fundamental" part of Windows where their HTML rendering engine is used that I know of at this point is the help system.
Cite, please.
IE has not been part of any of those components since XP.
The shell program Microsoft calls IE so they can pretend that they're not violating the consent decree isn't.
The HTML rendering engine that is the real problem, because of its deep and unfixable security flaws baked into the very API of it, is the important part.
As an Apple guy, I can tell you this is completely wrong. WebKit (the engine powering Safari) is a shared framework.
I didn't say it's "not a shared framework", I said it's not deeply embedded and integrated into the OS in the way the Microsoft HTML control is.
Finder doesn't use Webkit.
Applications like System Preferences and iTunes and Software Update don't use Webkit.
Unlike the Microsoft HTML control, Webkit doesn't contain components that allow you to run untrusted code via cross-zone exploits.
The design of Webkit, unlike the Microsoft HTML control, is not an unfixable and unavoidable security hole.
Microsoft is not removing anything, they are hiding one of the shell applications around the HTML control. All the same dangerous and insecure code will still be there, as part of Windows Explorer and Control Panel and Windows Media Player and Windows Update. Stil rendering websites for you, still displaying untrusted content.
First, Microsoft has NOT REMOVED IE. I;ll get back to that.
Second, Safari is not bound into the Finder and Software Update and System Preferences and so on so that you can't replace Safari with another browser.
Third, Safari is not bound into the Finder and Software Update and System Preferences and so on so that attackers can use cross-zone exploits to launch ActiveX controls with full local user privileges.
Safari is just another application. I use Camino on my Mac Mini and Safari never pops up unrequested, the way Internet Explorer does no matter how hard I try and avoid it on Windows.
Internet Explorer is not just another application, it's a deeply embedded part of the OS. Microsoft has not removed it from Windows, all they've done is hide it from a few of the places it comes into play. It's still there, as part of Windows Explorer and the Control Panel and Windows Update and Windows Media Player.
Everyone should have at least one semester in PDP-11 assembly language.
Why doesn't slashdot support Unicode again?
Ø_ö?
Remember when it was possible to read all of Usenet?
OK, when they updated UFS in Panther I was all ^_^ because I was tired of HFS+ turning up x_x, and then they decided to make Spotlight dependent on HFS+ and I was all o_O and half the guys on Slashdot were telling me that UFS was -_+ and ZFS was coming and they were all :) over that, well guys, what kind of emoticon are you mainlining now?