I already implied that "us" vs "them" is an easier battle than one based on defence of individual rights: my point was that it's not necessarily the right battle to fight.
And my point was that this is a good battle to fight. At which point presenting it to the people in Europe who are supposed to decide this, as something with the backing of a group (us vs them) rather than of an individual is good strategy. Just because something is presented as "us versus them" does not mean that it has nothing to do with individual rights, that's just how battles get won, with numbers.
Again, it's being presented as another Linux/Free Software vs Commercial Software battle.
I don't know what your understanding of Free Software is - if you don't think it's about individual rights. If your point is that there are more individual rights interests than just Free Software and you want to see those interests discussed, go ahead and begin the discussion. Just don't diss the strategy of finding respected individuals from a group to represent that group's political agenda in a case like this. It's a better strategy than complaining about the narrow mindedness of/. posters on/. .
I do care what a few figureheads have to say, especially when what they say is accurate and well reasoned. At least there is much a better chance that those who are actually making decisions in europe will heed these "figureheads" than that they will read my individual post on/.
I would like to see people discussing personal freedom and rights. I would like to see this as a battle for the individual, not "us" vs "them".
You are two enamoured of Rambo. Groups win more battles than do individuals, even battles fought on behalf of "indivduals".
concerning how dinosaurs died out - some were severely allergic to bee stings, while most others were severely allergic to pollen. I wasn't sure there were honey bees back then:)
My favorite theory is that the dinosaurs experienced their own version of the plague.
These theories are favorites of mine, not because of volumes of evidence to support them, but because I like reminding people that big effects may have small or even microscopic causes.
The plan is to make this very light-weight, and to fit in with how we already pass patches around--just add the sign-off to the end of the explanation part of the patch. That sign-off would be just a single line at the end (possibly after other peoples sign-offs), saying:
Signed-off-by: Random J Developer <random@developer.org>
-- Linus
You seem to disagree with Linus as to how much work is involved in this kind of tracking.
I dissagree with you about what turf and rules belong to "SCO/MS".
Lawyers may care a lot about precedent, but I don't know any programmers who do.
I don't see how any contract or license is enforceable unless both parties agree to its terms. If I hid a clause giving me the rights to your firstborn children in a copy of the GPL shipped with my software, I doubt any court would force compliance just because the software somehow ended up on your file share directory.
A true license can be granted unilaterally, but other parties do not have to avail themselves of the rights or powers granted by the license, Unfortunately, some of what are called licenses today are actually attempts by one party to establish contracts without the other party having the opportunity to acquire prior knowledge of the terms.
I've said this before... an EULA you don't agree with is still an EULA, and you should agree (and follow) the guidelines. You don't see other popular licenses being "tested in court". Everyone just assumes they stick...
I follow such guidlines if they seem reasonable. I do not assume that an EULA is a legally binding contract - I currently do not reside or do business in any of the few states that passed UCITA.
First a disclaimer: The last Microsoft OS I made significant use of was Windows NT 4.
Linux is easier to learn than a Microsoft OS. But I prefer to learn with the aid of books, mentors, and documents, rather than by random exploration. Windows is easier to explore randomly, but that is not how I like to learn.
Some talk about Linux as having a steeper learning curve. That you have to learn more to achieve the same level of productivity. And I admit for some very simple tasks that can be true, but in general, I don't buy that either. I have found there is more to learn with Linux because there is more I can learn with Linux. Not because the learning is necessary to reach any similar level of productivity as on a Windows system.
I find Linux to be easier to use than Windows, but then, I like text filters and the CLI. I find it easier to make cheat sheet files for Linux. I think
grep dog *pets <enter>
is a simpler entry than one of the form
click icon>submenu>find select files dog click search
I suppose I am unique in my reliance on cheat sheet files.
I have worked for some of the largest corporations in the US, none of them in California. I have some religious objections to contracts which require me to assign the rights to the use of my image for company purposes. I have never had any problem getting such clauses deleted, in exchange for the assurance that if any company employee pointed a camera in my direction that it was my responsiblity to make them aware of this deviation in the employee agreement. I was usually just one of many software developers for these corporations. So, I don't think big necessarily means inflexible.
I gave up on Microsoft operating systems back about Windows NT 4 Service Pack 3. At that time, I decided, based on a Linux system that I had seen several years earlier, that Linux was a superior operating system . That is, for my needs, I concluded Linux was ahead of MS operating systems by at least a few years.
I found Microsoft's representation of what its products could do and how they compared to other products to be a misrepresentation. Since then, I have heard so much BS out of MS that I am not about to try any of their newer operating systems, no matter how much improvement MS and their shills claim. My limited earlier experience was that Linux improves at a much faster rate than MS operating systems. Since I am unwilling to give new MS operating systems a try, I take it as a matter of faith that by now they must be at least a decade behind Linux.
are a good thing for Microsoft. They make lousy operating systems and they keep corrupting their otherwise decent office applications with more and more bloat, much of it as a result of tightening integration with their operating systems. IMO they do need to find something else that they can do well, especially something that won't be corrupted by delusions of granduer from their operating system division. With all the different things they try their hand at, they may actually stumble on to something profitable before their operating system revenue vanishes in competiton with superior operating systems. This and the revenue stream from their office products (apparently bloat and continuous forced obscelence don't bother other people as much as they do me) are strong arguments against the idea of selling their stock short.
I'll just add that all the complaints about ESR's ego, bring to my mind how well he must have done in keeping his, supposedly gigantic, ego out of the orignal jargon file.
It should probably be mentioned that people have been trying to solve both the "folding problem" and the "function problem" for a lot longer than a decade. What the article envisions would require that both of these problems and a number of other, scracely more tractable, problems be solved.
I love the way that everyone is just flaming Microsoft, without any knowledge at all of what Palladium is or what the Nexus is or what the implications are of the system.
With the ever open(cough) and absolutely honest(cough, cough) Microsoft Corporation dispensing the information, will I ever have even a chance of discovering the truth of such things?
Dare I trust the information they have provided or the assurances they have given?!?
What of Microsoft's business partners in this, can I trust them? How confident can I be that they have been neither manipulated nor influenced?
Do I want Microsoft involved in anything that has to do with authentication?
Can I count on the wisdom of my fellow consumers to protect me from scams that should have no chance of working in a free market?
I don't believe service pack 6 for NT4 was available in 96 - and if we're going to compare apples to apples, instead of oranges - since Linux development is all a matter of applied patches. With a similar twist, I could say I'm running a Linux system that's, what?, 10 years old.
While I was going to school, I was taught how to take hold of an opinion and defend it, but I was not taught how to evaluate whether I had sufficient experience to be qualified to express an opinion. I was not taught to say, "I don't know." It was never one of the answers on a multiple choice test, and thus, by default, it was never the "correct" answer. While I was taught the concepts of first hand, second hand, and third hand information, I was never encouraged to apply those concepts in a coherent manner.
I remember, from school, an exercise where the students form a line and a message is passed orally form one end of the line to the other. The result is compared to the original message. Has anyone ever seen a variation on the exercise, where the students are trained to use simple feedback techniques for communication and told the goal of the exercise at the beginning?
So what happens when you have a bunch of people, with insufficient data and no experience, forming and expressing opinions without ever bothering to evaluate whether or not they should? You get noise, lots of noise! When the game does not reward those who take care to speak the truth and it does not punish those who say anything whether it is true or not, the truth usually gets buried in the noise! What happens when people talk but don't communicate? You get more noise!
How do you reduce the noise and amplify the signal? Oh, but isn't censorship a bad thing?
"Insufficient data, Captain." This line from Star Trek is an under appreciated gem.
I am not uniformly opposed to censorship. It's who does the censoring, why, and how, that bothers me. Self censorship sounds like an excellent idea! It cuts the noise at the source. How do you train people to do such a thing?
I think reasonable skepticism is valuable. How do you distinguish "reasonable skepticism" from "conspiracy theories"? More importantly, how you get such included in an education?
Since any attempt to prevent an impact is likely to fail for any number of reasons:
bureaucratic foul up, miscalculation, wrong person in charge making wrong decision, uncoordinated response (oops, we pushed this way, while you pushed that way)
etc., (from the book, maybe not yet written, 1001 Ways That Humans Can Screw Up Big Projects)
Perhaps, it would be better to think about how best to record our efforts for our silent galactic neighbors, or future visitors to planet earth.
We could conceivably end up with valuable data concerning:
reduce it to much smaller pieces approach - How much energy does it take to boil away all or part of an atmosphere?
too little too late approaches - Either full impact or a very, very near miss
oops approach - What happens if it breaks into two to a couple of dozen pieces, most of which hit?
2. Don't claim it is "better" until it has been road-tested for a while. At least 3 years and preferrably 15.
15 years is a long time to wait to perform an evaluation. I would expect most implementors of a methodology would prefer a quicker turn around in getting at least a rough estimate of its usefullness: Is this better, worse, or about the same?
3. Identify where it works and where it does not, or at least be clear about the domains and situations and scope about where it does work so far.
XP works best with projects that are small, or at least not huge, which makes waiting even 3 years for an evaluation a long time.
I think what you mean by point 2 is that it is better to have more data with which to judge rather than less data, and with that I agree. One of the best ways of collecting more data in this case, is to go to a meeting where there are people who have used the methodology or are in the process of using it, and get data from them as to how development with the methodology compared to their development experience without the methodology. These meetings usually attract people who are excited by XP, so the data may be a little biased, but at least you have more data.
And here I thought the major argument against clonnning was the difficulty in getting the creator's permission to copy his work with or without modifications.
Re:attempt at expanded thinking(amature)
on
Rare Earth
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· Score: 1
complex equilibriums (varied and interacting)
It occured to me that one item on my list needed clarification. It seems odd to describe life via death, but that is what I have done here. In life as we know it, these equalibriums are not reached except in death. Life is perhaps better described as a continual shifting away from one incredibly complex equalibrium. I did not want to use the phrase "complex chemical interatctions", because I am attempting to generalize lifes principles and alternative life forms might not rely so heavily on chemical reactions.
attempt at expanded thinking(amature)
on
Rare Earth
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· Score: 1
OK! Here is an attempt to expand our thinking a little bit, but first you have to start with what you know or it ends up being all wild speculation.
Start with life as we know it - generalized:
ATP - chemical bonds - short term energy storage glucose, etc., - chemical bonds - long term energy storage DNA - information encoding - long term data storage RNA - information encoding - short term data storage polymerase, transcriptase, etc., - encoding and decoding mechanisms semi permeable membranes - semipermeable barriers - compartmentalization water & energy (phototrophs, chemo--) - electron source - energy high water - transport system (building materials, waste, information, components) oxygen - electron sink - energy low proteins - functional components ribosomes - construction mechanism for components per instructions in data
All of above must be able to interact with at least one or two of the others.
complex equilibriums (varied and interacting)
Any life form failing to have all of the general qualities above, we would fail to recognize as living. Not that they don't exist, but we would not know them to be alive even if we met them.
lipids, proteins, complex protein structures - self assembling units
This last does not seem absolutely essential, but it is common to all known life forms ( even some viruses have self assembling protein coats )
The above list is some of those things that are common to all life as we know it and some attempts at generalization. I have my doubts that this list is exhaustive or that it even represents most of the more important principles of life. It does not at all address what principles are involved in building the complexity into life that we associate with intelligence. Indeed our knowledge is so limited that I doubt the ability of mankind's best minds to even come close to preparing such a list.
Given our limited knowledge of chemistry and physics it is difficult to imagine a life form that is not carbon based, and in which water does not play a major role. Water is something of a super solvent with a lot of interesting properties that contribute very significantly to some of the other qualities associated with life as we know it. But who knows what some other compound might be capable of at temperatures and pressures that are rarely observed by us?
The most likely alternative for a life form that makes use of chemical bonds for energy storage with a non-carbon costruction base would be silicon based. The bonds that silicon forms do not admit of as rich a variety in as small a number of atoms as carbon does. This makes such a life form seem unlikely because functional components would of necessity be relatively large in size and life as we know it has a certain elegance difficult to imagine with significantly larger functional components. Some of the objections based on instability of various silicon compounds might possibly find their answers in behaviors at different temperatures, pressures, and in different solvents. While it is simple for us to conceive of silicon based information systems, it is more difficult to picture how they would be integrated with carbon based functional components or how they themselves might be fashioned from components functioning within a chemical system. Material transport systems and compartmentalization are unknowns with a silicon construction base.
Other non-carbon construction bases for chemical bond energy storage are much less plausible than silicon.
Other forms of energy storage do not prompt our imaginations to visualize complex varied and interacting equilibriums, and visions of nuclear or solar powered robots seem the best we can imagine for mechanisms to build functional components. The idea of a self-assembling robot seems almost absurd, whereas ribosomes have apects of self-assembly.
The combination of all the listed qualities is really such an amazing thing that God may, perhaps, pardon us if we are unable to imagine how he might have done it differently.
I'll take your questions in reverse order. But first it is important to remember that other nations at various times have executed laws in a manner that is different from our own. Just because, a law is executed in a manner different from that of the USA does not mean that it is not executed.
Example: Ancient Egypt: Law against robbing tombs. Various methods employed in execution include physically building large pyramids with traps and such. Note I, at least, would consider a pyramid a kind of technology.
Another example: Modern day USA: Copyright law. The technology in this case has two parts, an encryption scheme called CSS and a decryption device commonly called a DVD player. The purpose of this technology is to protect the copyrights of those who hold such copyrights for movies; An effort, not by Congress, to physically, in an automated sense, execute copyright law. But then the content industry enlisted the aid of Congress. Congress has passed the DMCA, not a constitutional amendment, which says,
`Sec. 1201. Circumvention of copyright protection systems
`(a) VIOLATIONS REGARDING CIRCUMVENTION OF TECHNOLOGICAL MEASURES- (1)(A) No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title. The prohibition contained in the preceding sentence shall take effect at the end of the 2-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this chapter.
[snip]
`(3) As used in this subsection--
`(A) to `circumvent a technological measure' means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner; and
`(B) a technological measure `effectively controls access to a work' if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.
It goes on to give the DMCA the teeth necessary to protect this "technological measure".
Evidence that the DMCA executes copyright via a protected technology and does a poor job of it:
There have been numerous complaints that the DMCA fails to protect fair use and other rights formerly enjoyed under copyright law. The DMCA says,
`(c) OTHER RIGHTS, ETC., NOT AFFECTED- (1) Nothing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use, under this title.
So why isn't the Department of Justice taking care to faithfully execute this clause with respect to the execution of copyright law? Because the Department of Justice is not executing copyright law where these complaints are concerned, a protected technology is doing that job. Note that there is no requirement for the technology to preserve such "rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement" in order to qualify under the DMCA. The only requirement the DMCA places on the technology is that it "effectively controls access to a work". So, the DMCA blithely tells the Department of Justice to make sure that "rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use," are not affected, while arranging for protection of a technology to do the Department of Justice's job. Do you see the problem here? It is not a small problem! The Department of Justice ends up protecting a technology that is supplanting itself under the DMCA and getting a black eye for failing to execute the "NOT AFFECTED" clause from the perspective of those who don't realize what's happening.
I will admit it is not a good or flexible method of executing a law. It certainly does not address things like due process. But what do you expect of the execution of a US law outside the purview of the executive branch of government? It's not supposed to happen, right?
So, Congress did not use a multitude of slaves to execute copyright law. Duh! Slaves were the tools of the Pharaohs, laws are the tools of Congress. While Congress may be able to pass any kind of law it wants, even laws doing away with the executive and judicial branches of government, that does not mean those laws are all valid. It would save US citizens a lot of grief and money if Congress would undertake some measure of care to only pass laws that are constitutional. One aspect of this is not passing laws that are self executing or that execute existing laws.
How exactly is Congress executing the DMCA?
Who said anything about their executing the DMCA? I am talking about Congress using the DMCA to execute copyright law; using one law to execute another. I suppose, if you insist on calling the DMCA an extension of copyright, then I would have to say that the DMCA partially executes itself with the aid of "technological measures". Don't tell me it can't be done. They've done it, with the collaboration of the content industry, and that is not how the US government is supposed to work! I prefer to think of the DMCA as a separate law; if they ruled the DMCA unconstitutional tomorrow, there would still be copyright law.
How does a technology execute a law?
See above. Recommended exercise: Watch or read a little "futuristic" Science Fiction keeping in mind that today's science fiction may be tomorrows "technological measure" and that laws that are passed today affect the future as well as today.
Laws are neither computer programs nor mathematical theorems.
HaHa. I don't think the founding fathers would find it funny, and I use the word "execute" because they did.
Section 1. The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.
Section 3. He shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in case of disagreement between them, with respect to the time of adjournment, he may adjourn them to such time as he shall think proper; he shall receive ambassadors and other public ministers;he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed, and shall commission all the officers of the United States.
It seems clear to me that with the DMCA Congress attempts to execute copyright law via a protected technology.
If Congress gets away with usurping the president's power to execute laws, what chance that the rest of the US Constitution will be enforced?
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And my point was that this is a good battle to fight. At which point presenting it to the people in Europe who are supposed to decide this, as something with the backing of a group (us vs them) rather than of an individual is good strategy. Just because something is presented as "us versus them" does not mean that it has nothing to do with individual rights, that's just how battles get won, with numbers.
Again, it's being presented as another Linux/Free Software vs Commercial Software battle.
I don't know what your understanding of Free Software is - if you don't think it's about individual rights. If your point is that there are more individual rights interests than just Free Software and you want to see those interests discussed, go ahead and begin the discussion. Just don't diss the strategy of finding respected individuals from a group to represent that group's political agenda in a case like this. It's a better strategy than complaining about the narrow mindedness of /. posters on /. .
I do care what a few figureheads have to say, especially when what they say is accurate and well reasoned. At least there is much a better chance that those who are actually making decisions in europe will heed these "figureheads" than that they will read my individual post on /.
I would like to see people discussing personal freedom and rights. I would like to see this as a battle for the individual, not "us" vs "them".
You are two enamoured of Rambo. Groups win more battles than do individuals, even battles fought on behalf of "indivduals".
concerning how dinosaurs died out - some were severely allergic to bee stings, while most others were severely allergic to pollen. I wasn't sure there were honey bees back then :)
My favorite theory is that the dinosaurs experienced their own version of the plague.
These theories are favorites of mine, not because of volumes of evidence to support them, but because I like reminding people that big effects may have small or even microscopic causes.
You seem to disagree with Linus as to how much work is involved in this kind of tracking.
I dissagree with you about what turf and rules belong to "SCO/MS".
Lawyers may care a lot about precedent, but I don't know any programmers who do.
A true license can be granted unilaterally, but other parties do not have to avail themselves of the rights or powers granted by the license, Unfortunately, some of what are called licenses today are actually attempts by one party to establish contracts without the other party having the opportunity to acquire prior knowledge of the terms.
I follow such guidlines if they seem reasonable. I do not assume that an EULA is a legally binding contract - I currently do not reside or do business in any of the few states that passed UCITA.
Linux is easier to learn than a Microsoft OS. But I prefer to learn with the aid of books, mentors, and documents, rather than by random exploration. Windows is easier to explore randomly, but that is not how I like to learn.
Some talk about Linux as having a steeper learning curve. That you have to learn more to achieve the same level of productivity. And I admit for some very simple tasks that can be true, but in general, I don't buy that either. I have found there is more to learn with Linux because there is more I can learn with Linux. Not because the learning is necessary to reach any similar level of productivity as on a Windows system.
is a simpler entry than one of the formI suppose I am unique in my reliance on cheat sheet files.I find Linux to be easier to use than Windows, but then, I like text filters and the CLI. I find it easier to make cheat sheet files for Linux. I think
I have worked for some of the largest corporations in the US, none of them in California. I have some religious objections to contracts which require me to assign the rights to the use of my image for company purposes. I have never had any problem getting such clauses deleted, in exchange for the assurance that if any company employee pointed a camera in my direction that it was my responsiblity to make them aware of this deviation in the employee agreement. I was usually just one of many software developers for these corporations. So, I don't think big necessarily means inflexible.
I found Microsoft's representation of what its products could do and how they compared to other products to be a misrepresentation. Since then, I have heard so much BS out of MS that I am not about to try any of their newer operating systems, no matter how much improvement MS and their shills claim. My limited earlier experience was that Linux improves at a much faster rate than MS operating systems. Since I am unwilling to give new MS operating systems a try, I take it as a matter of faith that by now they must be at least a decade behind Linux.
are a good thing for Microsoft. They make lousy operating systems and they keep corrupting their otherwise decent office applications with more and more bloat, much of it as a result of tightening integration with their operating systems.
IMO they do need to find something else that they can do well, especially something that won't be corrupted by delusions of granduer from their operating system division. With all the different things they try their hand at, they may actually stumble on to something profitable before their operating system revenue vanishes in competiton with superior operating systems. This and the revenue stream from their office products (apparently bloat and continuous forced obscelence don't bother other people as much as they do me) are strong arguments against the idea of selling their stock short.
I'll just add that all the complaints about ESR's ego, bring to my mind how well he must have done in keeping his, supposedly gigantic, ego out of the orignal jargon file.
It should probably be mentioned that people have been trying to solve both the "folding problem" and the "function problem" for a lot longer than a decade. What the article envisions would require that both of these problems and a number of other, scracely more tractable, problems be solved.
With the ever open(cough) and absolutely honest(cough, cough) Microsoft Corporation dispensing the information, will I ever have even a chance of discovering the truth of such things?
Dare I trust the information they have provided or the assurances they have given?!?
What of Microsoft's business partners in this, can I trust them? How confident can I be that they have been neither manipulated nor influenced?
Do I want Microsoft involved in anything that has to do with authentication?
Can I count on the wisdom of my fellow consumers to protect me from scams that should have no chance of working in a free market?
caveat emptor
I don't believe service pack 6 for NT4 was available in 96 - and if we're going to compare apples to apples, instead of oranges - since Linux development is all a matter of applied patches. With a similar twist, I could say I'm running a Linux system that's, what?, 10 years old.
Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction.
While I was going to school, I was taught how to take hold of an opinion and defend it, but I was not taught how to evaluate whether I had sufficient experience to be qualified to express an opinion. I was not taught to say, "I don't know." It was never one of the answers on a multiple choice test, and thus, by default, it was never the "correct" answer. While I was taught the concepts of first hand, second hand, and third hand information, I was never encouraged to apply those concepts in a coherent manner.
I remember, from school, an exercise where the students form a line and a message is passed orally form one end of the line to the other. The result is compared to the original message. Has anyone ever seen a variation on the exercise, where the students are trained to use simple feedback techniques for communication and told the goal of the exercise at the beginning?
So what happens when you have a bunch of people, with insufficient data and no experience, forming and expressing opinions without ever bothering to evaluate whether or not they should? You get noise, lots of noise! When the game does not reward those who take care to speak the truth and it does not punish those who say anything whether it is true or not, the truth usually gets buried in the noise! What happens when people talk but don't communicate? You get more noise!
How do you reduce the noise and amplify the signal? Oh, but isn't censorship a bad thing?
"Insufficient data, Captain." This line from Star Trek is an under appreciated gem.
I am not uniformly opposed to censorship. It's who does the censoring, why, and how, that bothers me. Self censorship sounds like an excellent idea! It cuts the noise at the source. How do you train people to do such a thing?
I think reasonable skepticism is valuable. How do you distinguish "reasonable skepticism" from "conspiracy theories"? More importantly, how you get such included in an education?
bureaucratic foul up, miscalculation, wrong person in charge making wrong decision, uncoordinated response (oops, we pushed this way, while you pushed that way)
etc., (from the book, maybe not yet written, 1001 Ways That Humans Can Screw Up Big Projects)
Perhaps, it would be better to think about how best to record our efforts for our silent galactic neighbors, or future visitors to planet earth.
We could conceivably end up with valuable data concerning:
reduce it to much smaller pieces approach - How much energy does it take to boil away all or part of an atmosphere?
too little too late approaches - Either full impact or a very, very near miss
oops approach - What happens if it breaks into two to a couple of dozen pieces, most of which hit?
15 years is a long time to wait to perform an evaluation. I would expect most implementors of a methodology would prefer a quicker turn around in getting at least a rough estimate of its usefullness: Is this better, worse, or about the same?
3. Identify where it works and where it does not, or at least be clear about the domains and situations and scope about where it does work so far.
XP works best with projects that are small, or at least not huge, which makes waiting even 3 years for an evaluation a long time.
I think what you mean by point 2 is that it is better to have more data with which to judge rather than less data, and with that I agree. One of the best ways of collecting more data in this case, is to go to a meeting where there are people who have used the methodology or are in the process of using it, and get data from them as to how development with the methodology compared to their development experience without the methodology. These meetings usually attract people who are excited by XP, so the data may be a little biased, but at least you have more data.
And here I thought the major argument against clonnning was the difficulty in getting the creator's permission to copy his work with or without modifications.
It occured to me that one item on my list needed clarification. It seems odd to describe life via death, but that is what I have done here. In life as we know it, these equalibriums are not reached except in death. Life is perhaps better described as a continual shifting away from one incredibly complex equalibrium. I did not want to use the phrase "complex chemical interatctions", because I am attempting to generalize lifes principles and alternative life forms might not rely so heavily on chemical reactions.
Start with life as we know it - generalized
ATP - chemical bonds - short term energy storage
glucose, etc., - chemical bonds - long term energy storage
DNA - information encoding - long term data storage
RNA - information encoding - short term data storage
polymerase, transcriptase, etc., - encoding and decoding mechanisms
semi permeable membranes - semipermeable barriers - compartmentalization
water & energy (phototrophs, chemo--) - electron source - energy high
water - transport system (building materials, waste, information, components)
oxygen - electron sink - energy low
proteins - functional components
ribosomes - construction mechanism for components per instructions in data
All of above must be able to interact with at least one or two of the others.
complex equilibriums (varied and interacting)
Any life form failing to have all of the general qualities above, we would fail to recognize as living. Not that they don't exist, but we would not know them to be alive even if we met them.
lipids, proteins, complex protein structures - self assembling units
This last does not seem absolutely essential, but it is common to all known life forms ( even some viruses have self assembling protein coats )
The above list is some of those things that are common to all life as we know it and some attempts at generalization. I have my doubts that this list is exhaustive or that it even represents most of the more important principles of life. It does not at all address what principles are involved in building the complexity into life that we associate with intelligence. Indeed our knowledge is so limited that I doubt the ability of mankind's best minds to even come close to preparing such a list.
Given our limited knowledge of chemistry and physics it is difficult to imagine a life form that is not carbon based, and in which water does not play a major role. Water is something of a super solvent with a lot of interesting properties that contribute very significantly to some of the other qualities associated with life as we know it. But who knows what some other compound might be capable of at temperatures and pressures that are rarely observed by us?
The most likely alternative for a life form that makes use of chemical bonds for energy storage with a non-carbon costruction base would be silicon based. The bonds that silicon forms do not admit of as rich a variety in as small a number of atoms as carbon does. This makes such a life form seem unlikely because functional components would of necessity be relatively large in size and life as we know it has a certain elegance difficult to imagine with significantly larger functional components. Some of the objections based on instability of various silicon compounds might possibly find their answers in behaviors at different temperatures, pressures, and in different solvents. While it is simple for us to conceive of silicon based information systems, it is more difficult to picture how they would be integrated with carbon based functional components or how they themselves might be fashioned from components functioning within a chemical system. Material transport systems and compartmentalization are unknowns with a silicon construction base.
Other non-carbon construction bases for chemical bond energy storage are much less plausible than silicon.
Other forms of energy storage do not prompt our imaginations to visualize complex varied and interacting equilibriums, and visions of nuclear or solar powered robots seem the best we can imagine for mechanisms to build functional components. The idea of a self-assembling robot seems almost absurd, whereas ribosomes have apects of self-assembly.
The combination of all the listed qualities is really such an amazing thing that God may, perhaps, pardon us if we are unable to imagine how he might have done it differently.
Example: Ancient Egypt: Law against robbing tombs. Various methods employed in execution include physically building large pyramids with traps and such. Note I, at least, would consider a pyramid a kind of technology.
Another example: Modern day USA: Copyright law. The technology in this case has two parts, an encryption scheme called CSS and a decryption device commonly called a DVD player. The purpose of this technology is to protect the copyrights of those who hold such copyrights for movies; An effort, not by Congress, to physically, in an automated sense, execute copyright law. But then the content industry enlisted the aid of Congress. Congress has passed the DMCA, not a constitutional amendment, which says,
`Sec. 1201. Circumvention of copyright protection systems
`(a) VIOLATIONS REGARDING CIRCUMVENTION OF TECHNOLOGICAL MEASURES- (1)(A) No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title. The prohibition contained in the preceding sentence shall take effect at the end of the 2-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this chapter.
[snip]
`(3) As used in this subsection--
`(A) to `circumvent a technological measure' means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner; and
`(B) a technological measure `effectively controls access to a work' if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.
It goes on to give the DMCA the teeth necessary to protect this "technological measure".
Evidence that the DMCA executes copyright via a protected technology and does a poor job of it:
There have been numerous complaints that the DMCA fails to protect fair use and other rights formerly enjoyed under copyright law. The DMCA says,
`(c) OTHER RIGHTS, ETC., NOT AFFECTED- (1) Nothing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use, under this title.
So why isn't the Department of Justice taking care to faithfully execute this clause with respect to the execution of copyright law? Because the Department of Justice is not executing copyright law where these complaints are concerned, a protected technology is doing that job. Note that there is no requirement for the technology to preserve such "rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement" in order to qualify under the DMCA. The only requirement the DMCA places on the technology is that it "effectively controls access to a work". So, the DMCA blithely tells the Department of Justice to make sure that "rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use," are not affected, while arranging for protection of a technology to do the Department of Justice's job. Do you see the problem here? It is not a small problem! The Department of Justice ends up protecting a technology that is supplanting itself under the DMCA and getting a black eye for failing to execute the "NOT AFFECTED" clause from the perspective of those who don't realize what's happening.
I will admit it is not a good or flexible method of executing a law. It certainly does not address things like due process. But what do you expect of the execution of a US law outside the purview of the executive branch of government? It's not supposed to happen, right?
So, Congress did not use a multitude of slaves to execute copyright law. Duh! Slaves were the tools of the Pharaohs, laws are the tools of Congress. While Congress may be able to pass any kind of law it wants, even laws doing away with the executive and judicial branches of government, that does not mean those laws are all valid. It would save US citizens a lot of grief and money if Congress would undertake some measure of care to only pass laws that are constitutional. One aspect of this is not passing laws that are self executing or that execute existing laws.
How exactly is Congress executing the DMCA?
Who said anything about their executing the DMCA? I am talking about Congress using the DMCA to execute copyright law; using one law to execute another. I suppose, if you insist on calling the DMCA an extension of copyright, then I would have to say that the DMCA partially executes itself with the aid of "technological measures". Don't tell me it can't be done. They've done it, with the collaboration of the content industry, and that is not how the US government is supposed to work! I prefer to think of the DMCA as a separate law; if they ruled the DMCA unconstitutional tomorrow, there would still be copyright law.
How does a technology execute a law?
See above. Recommended exercise: Watch or read a little "futuristic" Science Fiction keeping in mind that today's science fiction may be tomorrows "technological measure" and that laws that are passed today affect the future as well as today.
Laws are neither computer programs nor mathematical theorems.
HaHa. I don't think the founding fathers would find it funny, and I use the word "execute" because they did.
Section 3. He shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in case of disagreement between them, with respect to the time of adjournment, he may adjourn them to such time as he shall think proper; he shall receive ambassadors and other public ministers; he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed, and shall commission all the officers of the United States.
It seems clear to me that with the DMCA Congress attempts to execute copyright law via a protected technology.
If Congress gets away with usurping the president's power to execute laws, what chance that the rest of the US Constitution will be enforced?