You don't need to do anything that drastic. @home (at least, AT&T@Home) always does their TOS complience scans from the same host. all you have to do is use either route or ip(chains|fw) to block that host and you're safe. Well, unless the @home people start switching hosts between scans or something like that...nah, that requires too much brain power on their part:)
I don't think it's been "proven" that this is only to copy DVD's!!
you're right, it hasn't, and that is not what the judge said. He said that with DeCSS it is possible to copy a DVD (he didn't say practical, or even economicly feasable. just possible). Actually, the plaintifs only have to prove that there is no other comercially signifigant purpose served by DeCSS.
Oh, and to those people who are saying "but DeCSS is free (beer & speech), so it can't be comercially signifigant:" bull. DeCSS is comercially signifigant because it opens a new market to DVD producers: linux boxes. If we also take into account that the great majority of people using linux are "techies" and therefore more likely to actually have a DVD player, and shell out the dollars for DVDs we begin to see that in all likelyhood this is a rather large market. So, I think an argument can be made for the comercial signifigance of DeCSS, but I also think that there are better arguments to be made.
As to the irreparable injury stuff, what the judge is saying is that distributing a program to circumvent copyright is the same, in effect, as circumventing it directly. So, since copyright infringement is assumed to cause irreparable injury we have a case of a=b, b=c, therefore a=c. Personally, I think this is a pretty good argument, because DeCSS *does* circumvent the copyright protection, and I can see how the judge could reason that distributing a program to circumvent the copyright is the same as circumventing it.
The judge's reasoning against the reverse engeneering argument is, I think, the most shakey part of the entire thing. especially the part involving Section 1201(f). The entire line of reasoning depends on ignoring the fact that CSS decoding is implemented *in software*, and is therefore part of a copyrighted computer program. The fact that CSS is also an encryption algorithm could be taken in such a way as to suggest that it is also a "technological system". But, unless 1201(f) specificly states that "technological systems" cannot be reverse engeneered then I'm not sure where the judge pulled this line of reasoning from.
Personally, I think that the main reason the plaintifs got this injuction was that they sucker punched the defense team with that well timed filing, but I guess we'll see what happens on down the road with this case. I just hope the EFF lawyers are actually better than they appear to be so far.
A soldier's job is not to die for his country. His job is to make the other poor bastard die for his. Well, this phrase and its origin explains everything about your position. This sentence was written by Patton. He was one of the craziest american general in WWII. Maybe some of us don't know but after the surrender of Germany he pressed the american president to launch a nuclear and conventional attack, with the help of the surviving german troops(who hated above all the russians), against Soviet Union
bullshit. after the end of histilities in europe patton planned to resign his commissions and, he put it, "Remove his watch, and wear his short coat so that everyone could kiss his ass." These are not the words of a man who wants to start another war; actually he was rather mad at Eisenhower and Lee (the commanding general of the Supply Services) and planned to write a book to expose mistakes they had made. But, in December of 1945 he died of injuries sustained in a car accident. Which is really a pitty; that book would have most likely been rather intresting.
Yes, since you ask, I do think that in some situations intervention for humanitarian reasons is needed, both to allay human suffering and to reastablish regional stability. Would you rather we let people starve to death, and let regional conflicts spark larger conflicts?
As to your objection that we give preferental treatment to our allies...at the risk of sounding like a sterotypical californian...Like, DUH, man!! Allies are allies, of course they get treated better than anyone else, they are the geopolitical equivalent of friends. Don't you treat your friends better than random people off of the street? I should hope so or they would probly stop being your friend. The same holds true for the larger picture. To maintain a good political relationship with a country we can't be selling arms to their enemys (this gets a tad more complex when we are allied with both sides in a dispute, but that is not relevant here.)
As much as I would like to continue, I must now venture out into that big blue-roofed room (although now it seems to have a black roof, with little holes poked in it....intresting...) and be with my friends (you know...those people whom we treat better than the average person off the street...).
Well, say you had a black hole out in deep space, where there really is very little to pull in. In that case then it might stop growing. As I understand it black holes actually shrink at a rate that is inversely proportional to their mass. That means that, theoreticaly, a black hole could completly vanish (or "evaporate") if it does not keep sucking in more matter.
In the case of these tiny black holes that are under discussion they would have such a weak pull and tiny event horizon (point of no return, nothing escapes a black hole's pull once it has crossed the event horizon) that they would evaporate faster than they would pull in mass, and so they would vanish before hurting, or even effecting, much of anything.
DISCLAIMER: IANAHEP (I Am Not A High Energy Physicst) and could be completly wrong.
There is one small problem with your calculations: where in the world would the black hole get a million tons of mass? Even in the world of High Energy physics you can't just create mass, it has to come from somewhere. At most the scientists are going to be slinging around a few atoms of some of gold...last time I checked atoms of gold were not measured in tons so the mass isn't comming from there. And it sure isn't going to get that much mass by somehow converting the energy into mass. Here is some more High School physics: 1 eV=1.602*10^-19 J 100 GeV (100 billion eV)=1.602*10^-8 J E=mc^2 1.602*10^-8J=m(3.00*10^8)^2 m=1.78*10^-25 kg
And that is if every shred of energy in the system is converted to mass.
So, in total, we have less than a kilogram of mass avaliable to make a black hole. What kind of event horizon do you think this will create? I don't know the equation offhand but I would be willing to bet it would be *damn* small. As in sub-atomic, if that is even possible.
And if we consider that black holes actually decrease in mass at a rate that is inversely proportional to their mass, then the only conclution that seems logical to me is that these tiny black holes will "evaporate" before they can do any damage, or really have any effect on anything. That is, if they are even created which is doubtful.
You cannot deny Microsoft the right to pick a favorable setup and at the same time clamour that the test should be rigged in favour of Linux.
The point of contention was not that Microsoft got to tweak their set-up; the point of contention was that Linux experts did not get to tweak the Linux set-up (or in the case of the second test, did not get anything aproaching the same access to the box as the NT experts). I'm sure you know there were no experts from any large company that works with Linux. In fact, there were no experts at all from any company that is involved with linux. I'm sure that, given the chance, any number of companies would gladly send someone out to help Mindcraft tune Linux in order to assure a fair and unbiased test. Redhat immediately comes to mind, as does VA Research.
If Linux is any good it will perform well compared to NT no matter what the external conditions are
So, lemmie get this straight. If one OS is better than another...external conditions don't matter? Wow, what kinda wierd parallel universe are you living in? Well then, how about running the test on a Pentium 90? 64 megs of RAM, a nice 6 gig IDE hard drive...your basic small business server. If NT is so much better then I'm sure it will be able to kick linux's ass on that setup too.
You don't need to do anything that drastic. @home (at least, AT&T@Home) always does their TOS complience scans from the same host. all you have to do is use either route or ip(chains|fw) to block that host and you're safe. Well, unless the @home people start switching hosts between scans or something like that...nah, that requires too much brain power on their part :)
I don't think it's been "proven" that this is only to copy DVD's!!
you're right, it hasn't, and that is not what the judge said. He said that with DeCSS it is possible to copy a DVD (he didn't say practical, or even economicly feasable. just possible). Actually, the plaintifs only have to prove that there is no other comercially signifigant purpose served by DeCSS.
Oh, and to those people who are saying "but DeCSS is free (beer & speech), so it can't be comercially signifigant:" bull. DeCSS is comercially signifigant because it opens a new market to DVD producers: linux boxes. If we also take into account that the great majority of people using linux are "techies" and therefore more likely to actually have a DVD player, and shell out the dollars for DVDs we begin to see that in all likelyhood this is a rather large market. So, I think an argument can be made for the comercial signifigance of DeCSS, but I also think that there are better arguments to be made.
As to the irreparable injury stuff, what the judge is saying is that distributing a program to circumvent copyright is the same, in effect, as circumventing it directly. So, since copyright infringement is assumed to cause irreparable injury we have a case of a=b, b=c, therefore a=c. Personally, I think this is a pretty good argument, because DeCSS *does* circumvent the copyright protection, and I can see how the judge could reason that distributing a program to circumvent the copyright is the same as circumventing it.
The judge's reasoning against the reverse engeneering argument is, I think, the most shakey part of the entire thing. especially the part involving Section 1201(f). The entire line of reasoning depends on ignoring the fact that CSS decoding is implemented *in software*, and is therefore part of a copyrighted computer program. The fact that CSS is also an encryption algorithm could be taken in such a way as to suggest that it is also a "technological system". But, unless 1201(f) specificly states that "technological systems" cannot be reverse engeneered then I'm not sure where the judge pulled this line of reasoning from.
Personally, I think that the main reason the plaintifs got this injuction was that they sucker punched the defense team with that well timed filing, but I guess we'll see what happens on down the road with this case. I just hope the EFF lawyers are actually better than they appear to be so far.
A soldier's job is not to die for his country. His job is to make the other poor bastard die for his. Well, this phrase and its origin explains everything about your position. This sentence was written by Patton. He was one of the craziest american general in WWII. Maybe some of us don't know but after the surrender of Germany he pressed the american president to launch a nuclear and conventional attack, with the help of the surviving german troops(who hated above all the russians), against Soviet Union
bullshit. after the end of histilities in europe patton planned to resign his commissions and, he put it, "Remove his watch, and wear his short coat so that everyone could kiss his ass." These are not the words of a man who wants to start another war; actually he was rather mad at Eisenhower and Lee (the commanding general of the Supply Services) and planned to write a book to expose mistakes they had made. But, in December of 1945 he died of injuries sustained in a car accident. Which is really a pitty; that book would have most likely been rather intresting.
Yes, since you ask, I do think that in some situations intervention for humanitarian reasons is needed, both to allay human suffering and to reastablish regional stability. Would you rather we let people starve to death, and let regional conflicts spark larger conflicts?
As to your objection that we give preferental treatment to our allies...at the risk of sounding like a sterotypical californian...Like, DUH, man!! Allies are allies, of course they get treated better than anyone else, they are the geopolitical equivalent of friends. Don't you treat your friends better than random people off of the street? I should hope so or they would probly stop being your friend. The same holds true for the larger picture. To maintain a good political relationship with a country we can't be selling arms to their enemys (this gets a tad more complex when we are allied with both sides in a dispute, but that is not relevant here.)
As much as I would like to continue, I must now venture out into that big blue-roofed room (although now it seems to have a black roof, with little holes poked in it....intresting...) and be with my friends (you know...those people whom we treat better than the average person off the street...).
-Philip
Well, say you had a black hole out in deep space, where there really is very little to pull in. In that case then it might stop growing. As I understand it black holes actually shrink at a rate that is inversely proportional to their mass. That means that, theoreticaly, a black hole could completly vanish (or "evaporate") if it does not keep sucking in more matter.
In the case of these tiny black holes that are under discussion they would have such a weak pull and tiny event horizon (point of no return, nothing escapes a black hole's pull once it has crossed the event horizon) that they would evaporate faster than they would pull in mass, and so they would vanish before hurting, or even effecting, much of anything.
DISCLAIMER: IANAHEP (I Am Not A High Energy Physicst) and could be completly wrong.
There is one small problem with your calculations: where in the world would the black hole get a million tons of mass? Even in the world of High Energy physics you can't just create mass, it has to come from somewhere. At most the scientists are going to be slinging around a few atoms of some of gold...last time I checked atoms of gold were not measured in tons so the mass isn't comming from there. And it sure isn't going to get that much mass by somehow converting the energy into mass. Here is some more High School physics:
1 eV=1.602*10^-19 J
100 GeV (100 billion eV)=1.602*10^-8 J
E=mc^2
1.602*10^-8J=m(3.00*10^8)^2
m=1.78*10^-25 kg
And that is if every shred of energy in the system is converted to mass.
So, in total, we have less than a kilogram of mass avaliable to make a black hole. What kind of event horizon do you think this will create? I don't know the equation offhand but I would be willing to bet it would be *damn* small. As in sub-atomic, if that is even possible.
And if we consider that black holes actually decrease in mass at a rate that is inversely proportional to their mass, then the only conclution that seems logical to me is that these tiny black holes will "evaporate" before they can do any damage, or really have any effect on anything. That is, if they are even created which is doubtful.
You cannot deny Microsoft the right to pick a favorable setup and at the same time clamour that the test should be rigged in favour of Linux.
The point of contention was not that Microsoft got to tweak their set-up; the point of contention was that Linux experts did not get to tweak the Linux set-up (or in the case of the second test, did not get anything aproaching the same access to the box as the NT experts). I'm sure you know there were no experts from any large company that works with Linux. In fact, there were no experts at all from any company that is involved with linux. I'm sure that, given the chance, any number of companies would gladly send someone out to help Mindcraft tune Linux in order to assure a fair and unbiased test. Redhat immediately comes to mind, as does VA Research.
If Linux is any good it will perform well compared to NT no matter what the external conditions are
So, lemmie get this straight. If one OS is better than another...external conditions don't matter? Wow, what kinda wierd parallel universe are you living in? Well then, how about running the test on a Pentium 90? 64 megs of RAM, a nice 6 gig IDE hard drive...your basic small business server. If NT is so much better then I'm sure it will be able to kick linux's ass on that setup too.