The software author gets exactly what? Where is the consideration?
The software author gets the promise from the user of the GPL (i.e., someone who makes a derivitive work) to release all of THEIR work under the GPL. It's a contract. (Now, there is no contractual relationship between the developer and the mere user of the software who does not use the GPL.)
This is consideration, and so the GPL, when used to create derivitive works, is a contract.
(Consideration doesn't need to be of real value--a classic example is a father making a contract with his son to pay moneies/give property if the son abandons vice.)
Yes, it is. A license is just a pre-drafted offer for a contract.
The GPL is eminently enforceable because it doesn't take away any rights. It only grants rights.
NO.
The GPL gives a net benefit of rights, but to say "it only grants rights" is wrong, wrong, wrong.
The GPL, in a nutshell:
Point 0: "Anyone can download and use this work." Point 1: "You can make derivitive works off of this work" Point 2: "You must license any derivitive work you make with this license, or a license that works like this license."
This is a contract. Each party gets something, each party agrees to something. Given that this is a contract, and that the GPL is the very first contract of its kind, it very well may be tossed out in court. Toss out Point 2, above, and leave the rest of the GPL standing, and you've almost got a public domain declaration.
(I know perfectly well that software licenses have been largely upheld in court. But, in general, they don't do anything more than limit the sale to one copy and indemnify the software provider. There are a few that have outrageous terms--but, really, those would get dealt with like any other contract.)
(And while I'm rambling--there are derivitive works you can make off of copywritten works. This is what's known as "Fair Use.")
Which means that regardless of whether or not "SCO feels that the GPL is too weak to stand up in court," is moot. They have accepted and continue to accept it's terms by having this Linux kernel source code on their FTP server.
You don't understand what "stand up in court" means, do you?
No contract ever exists without mutual acceptance of a relationship. (You offer, I accept, we each get something, we have a contract.)
A contract "doesn't stand up in court" when one of the parties that agreed to the contract (SCO) decides that they don't like the terms of the contract, take the other party to court / are taken to court by the other party, and the court decides that part of the contract won't be enforced.
Anyone who tries to install Linux knows that, at the least, the command line is where a good portion of the work will get done. Unfortunatly, many distros stop there, and assume that any more in-depth knowledge will be gotten from a different source.
A good linux distribution should have an easy-to-find reference of the common linux commands. Ideally, this will be in every shell--a list of CLI commands, with a short description of what they do.
Won't work. Pandora's box cannot be closed--once the technology becomes usable, it will be used. The only question is by who and what checks there will be on them.
Local police, FBI, or CIA--take your pick. "No one watches me" is not an option.
Depends on how & why they tail you. If they're just watching and your only objection is that they're there (i.e., they're not wrongly interrogating people around you, or interfering with your affairs) then it's not harrassment, it's just surveliance.
Uh, no thanks. Even Ashcroft likes some privacy when he needs to go to the shitter.
So? If he spends half of his job in the shitter, I think his boss (POTUS) needs to be able to know this despite Ashcroft's staff gag-order.
No, I'm not trolling. I simply have a different opinion than you. Believe it or not, rational minds CAN differ!
It's the point of them being able to track you at all times and even tell how fast you are traveling.
Allow me to restate my point then.
It doesn't matter if the police can track you at all times. Nothing stops them from having a police officer follow you throughout the day anyway. (If it's not "search" or "seizure", they generally don't need a warrant.)
The area of concern for any increased governmental power is accountability and security. No one has any just reason whatsoever to worry about a police officer who is doing the job that they're supposed to do. However, we all have a reason to worry about a system that has insufficient checks against police officers using it to abuse their power, or a system that can be accessed by unapproved users.
Ironically, in the case of pseudo-orwellian observation, the cure for the problems is simply uniform application. If we can ALL see what ANYONE is doing, then abuse becomes much harder. Especially if there is a permanent high-data record of what any public servant, politician, or corporate officer does.
Fear imperfect awareness, but do not fear the awareness itself.
"Unauthorized Spying": Survelliance without prior explicit or implied consent of the surveilled.
Obviouslly the OP had your definition in mind; my point was merely that employee surveillance is generally obnoxious (with exceptions) even at the corporate level, as are drug tests (for most professions), email monitoring, etc.
How about I leave the house and drive down the road at 91mph because I feel like it and the police track me going 91, wait for me ahead, and pull me over?
That's what I am worried about.
God, I'm not worried about that. You might as well bitch about radar detectors. (Speed Limits, while a tad bit low, are a good idea. You going at 91 anywhere but a nearly-empty highway is reckless endangerment--and in NYS, it'll [rightly] get you tossed in jail.)
Anyway...
If you're going to worry about tracking, worry about inaccuracy and corruption. Worry about psychotic ex-boyfriends hacking the system and coming after you. Worry about being politically opporessed. And after you worry, figure out an effective check on the darn thing. (A local log of who pings for your location would solve the first; standard checks against corruption would help against the second.)
Sorry, but "easing the mind of a suspicious boss" is still "unauthorized spying" by any reasonable definition of the term.
"Unauthorized Spying" : Spying or other surveliance upon an individual or target without legal authorization to do so.
Seems to me that a suspicious boss can have "legal authorization" to find out where their employees are. Espeically if the boss is giving the cell phone.
We're at break-neck speed down that slope as ideas and concepts are being reclassified "priveleges" rather than rights, which imply that we are nothing more than border-line disobedient kids who need discipline for 'bad thoughts' rather than as adults in a free society.
You DO realize that "slippery slope" is one of the rhetorical fallicies, right?
Someone else noted a case in 1973 about obsinity at the SCOTUS--obcinities were decided thirty years ago to be a local concern.
Now, for eveyone complaining about speech--this isn't a speech issue. It's a trade issue.
If a person is making a positive contribution to society (not in jail, has a job, pays taxes, etc.) what right does anybody else have to tell them what they can and cannot say, do, smoke, eat, drink when it does affect other people.
They're the government. Y'see, when a group of humanoids grows to a certain point, they form a goverment that helps them all get along. There's nothing wrong with this--especially since someone who really wants to go against their local gov't can just up and move, or participate and get the law changed.
I am hoping there is more to this case than just buying an adult magazine, but according to the article the offense took place in Texas, which makes it less surprising that such a rediculous case is even being considered. I also find it interesting that his appeal was denied because obcenity charges were a state issue. Doesn't the federal court system have a certain responsiblity to step in when a state is being accused of infringing on a constitutional right?
SCOTUS has ruled on obcinitly laws before, and the federal take is "it's a local issue with local standards." In one state it may be perfectly legal for women to walk around naked on the beach; in another, a woman showing even her aeriolis can be indecent exposure.
Obscinity, dangerous speach, treason, government secrets, contractual gag orders, judicial proceedings, lies, slander, and libel are all non-protected speach. Baning them will not impugn the first amendment.
It drives me nuts to hear such blatant hypocrisy from someone who is so often touted as being "revolutionary". More like elitist and closed-minded if you ask me.
In order to stand for something, you have to stand aginst something. The FSF doesn't stand for democracy, or open discussion, or even "freedom." They stand for "Free Software"--or, to translate from zealot-speak, "strong copyleft."
Stallman et al, if they choose, don't need to be honset, fair, or anyting else when it comes to promoting their cause. It's horribly stupid of them to be so, but they are, after all, sterling examples of the hacker argument method:
If your point is not accepted as said, restate you point again, but LOUDER.
Where or what threat is this sort of document to a government for by and of a people?
In any sufficiently large population, there is a dangerous minority that will project their own personal failings onto the population's government. And in any democracy, there will be a minority that feels it can go against the will of the whole.
To defend against this tyranny of rebellious minority, certain ideas may be censored. The best judge of these is the parts of government closest to the people--or, rather, those most removed from political whim. Juries and/or judges of the law.
(Oh, and in many ways the government IS smarter than the populace--espeically when taken as an aggrivate.)
What's to stop me from doing that for my personal income tax?
The IRS rule that limits Schedule C (self-employment) tax deductions from nonprofiting business to the actual funds from the business.
I.e., if I spend $500 to operate my book-selling business, and only make $450, I don't get to deduct $50 from my taxable income. If I make $550, however, I only need to increase my taxable income by $50, rather than $550.
MS can pull this off because their employees and stockholders all pay income tax.
Actually, from a tactical point of view, they were smart.
Come again?
Since 9/11, Al-Quaeda has seen the USA activly seek them out like the USA has sought out no foe since Vietnam. We deposed their biggest support-government, toppled a terroist-supporter (Hussein may have not supported Al-Queada, but he did support suicide bombers in Israel) in center of the Arab world, and generally got far more engaged in Al-Quaeda's world than we were on 9/10/01.
It's interesting to note, that they didn't commit terrorism in how we usually define it. (The intentional targeting of civilians). They hit military and economic infrastructure, the civilians were "collateral damage" to use the favorite term of the news media and administration. Thus over-all, they used a great tactical plan.
A plan that causes your enemy to become determined to engage your territory and hunt you down is a horrible tactical plan; if the 9/11 attacks had actually demoralized America, the Taliban would still be in power today.
(Now, _POLITCIALLY_ Al-Quaeda may have had a great plan, and if their goal was "get the USA to stop sitting on its ass and acking like jerks", they've succeeded... but I doubt that was what they were going for.)
And considering we still haven't destroyed Al-Quaida, they seem to have got away with it too.
It's hard to destroy a movement--but we seem to have been rather effective in coming very close. Before the invasion of Afghanistan, we expected loads of Al-Quaeda attacks--but there hasn't even been as many as frequently as there were before 9/11.
Remember: Al-Quada is the agressor in this conflict. By any historical standard of win/loss, the west is easily succeeding in its "war on terrorism." The enemy's home is under siege, our home is all but immune to attack, and the enemy's reasons for fighting are slowly but surely disappearing.
As to your "non-resident resident" note, at the very least those who live in DC should be considered part of Maryland or Virginia for the purposes of anything larger than a citywide function and be able to act accordingly (eg. voting). But that isn't an available option. And really neither is your suggestion to move out.
Bullocks.
DC's a puny city--and it's got loads of suburbs. Congress SHOULD have extended the Metro out to the suburbs, and banned all long-term residential housing inside the city. If you're not posted there by the government or visiting, you shouldn't go to bed at night in the city.
Plus, it would be perfectly viable to place everyone whose a first or second generation resident of DC into one of the fifty states--and anyone else who moves in can just keep their current state citizenship. Heck, try it--I suspect that it wouldn't even take an act of congress to stay a resident of one of the fifty states and move to DC.
If anyone, it's the damnned left-wing pieces of crap who insist on controlling what everyone sees and hears through the media, education, and other outlets.
Like Fox News?;)
(I'll admit that left-leaning people have done a fair bit of damage to the free exchange of ideas--but left-leaning people also ended segregation, so it's not all bad.)
Why is it that CNN wouldn't ever show pictures of the injured of 9/11, yet as soon as theres a blown-apart Iraqi kid, it's all over the place?
Because we ALL saw the 9/11/01 attacks, and there weren't that many wounded?
There were ambulances lined up on the freeway waiting to help the wounded--and they sat there until they were told to go home.
Judging purely by their results, Al-Queada was a bunch of idiots. They struck too early in the morning to hit a full building, and the buildings that they did hit fell straight down instead of falling over--killing most of their victims.
Simple military truth: deaths enrage the opponent, wounds cripple them.
Y'know, there's a real easy way to fix that, if you happen to live in DC.
Move to a suburb or a different city.
IMO, _no one_ should be a resident of DC. you can live there, but you should be a "non-resident resident" of some other state. Just like if you're on an overseas base, serving in congress, etc...
The lesson is that as soon as you support somebody else's standard, then nobody has any reason to use your standard.
Maybe you're not familiar with Internet Explorer, or Windows, or Microsoft Word?
MS has made their market by supporting other folk's standards and--this is the important part--GIVING THE USER A REASON TO USE MS! Historically, this has been cost...
and I'm sure that an OSS.NET implementation can beat MS on dollar-cost. Maybe even time-cost too.
This is a scientific discussion. You were gratuitously abusing the term to make an argument-by-belittlement against cosmological models (which is pretty ironic given that you were trying to _support_ one).
This is/. It's an informal forum for discussion of "geek stuff." As happens often, I have no stake in the outcome of one cosmological model over another among the theorists--especially when they're so far out that they're essentially atheist theology.
Different beasts - the model you favour assumes as an axiom that forces act in the extra direction. This would cause very visible effects. _Really_ visible effects - the most obvious of which being the propagation of matter through all available spatial directions unless some magical force acted to confine it.
(magical? That's an argument by belittlement!;) )
I am not read up on the membrane model--I merely stated that, of the models listed among the parent, it was the one that sounded most sensible. I very much may have misunderstood that--which is fine. I misunderstand sects of Bhuddism and Islam too. In any case...
If there is "more reality outside of our universe", we may simply not be noticing effects of it because not enough time has passed since the formation of "our universe." If there is a seperate reality beneath the "aether*" of our reality, we may simply not notice effects because the fabric of space-time isn't "linked" across the barrier, or isn't "linked" enough to cause a detectable difference.
(I use the term "aether" to mean the "fabric of space time." It's neither matter nor energy, but the actual fabric of existance. At the very least, it's a convenient word.)
This is why you are actively supporting a model that makes more assumptions than usual?
Once again: I am not "actively supporting" anything. I'm engaging in a discussion on/.
As for parsimony--while the simplest answer is the one that should be used until disproven, that doesn't mean that the simplest answer is always right. I put forth that we are incapable of emphiriacly proving any cosmological model, and so in this realm of theorism, parsimony need not be the ruling principle that it is in science.
Firstly, you apparently have been misinformed about the definition of the word "theory".
No, I'm not. I'm simply using the colloquial form, which is neither more nor less correct than the scientific in this sense.
Proposing larger spaces for embedding as a mathematical crutch is fine as long as they don't have a material effect on the observable universe, but if there's a fourth spatial direction that forces can propagate in, why do we only observe three directions?
For the same reason that we don't normally percieve the motion of our system through the galaxy, or our galaxy through the universe? We may simply not be looking in the right place, or not have been looking for a long enough time.
The biggest problem when we get to this kind of speculative theorising is that the theorists must essentially invent the language to describe their theory--well, that and that they have to normally work under an assumption of continuity and non-deception, which is really not all that much of a problem given how close theorists are to scientists (as opposed to being close to priests and philosiphers, whose catagory they're in.)
Conjecturing about the basic construction of our (immediate) cosmos is a great thing--but the further out a theorist gets, the more arrogant the assumption of knowledge is.
Slashdot Mirror
The software author gets exactly what? Where is the consideration?
The software author gets the promise from the user of the GPL (i.e., someone who makes a derivitive work) to release all of THEIR work under the GPL. It's a contract. (Now, there is no contractual relationship between the developer and the mere user of the software who does not use the GPL.)
This is consideration, and so the GPL, when used to create derivitive works, is a contract.
(Consideration doesn't need to be of real value--a classic example is a father making a contract with his son to pay moneies/give property if the son abandons vice.)
A license is not a contract.
Yes, it is. A license is just a pre-drafted offer for a contract.
The GPL is eminently enforceable because it doesn't take away any rights. It only grants rights.
NO.
The GPL gives a net benefit of rights, but to say "it only grants rights" is wrong, wrong, wrong.
The GPL, in a nutshell:
Point 0: "Anyone can download and use this work."
Point 1: "You can make derivitive works off of this work"
Point 2: "You must license any derivitive work you make with this license, or a license that works like this license."
This is a contract. Each party gets something, each party agrees to something. Given that this is a contract, and that the GPL is the very first contract of its kind, it very well may be tossed out in court. Toss out Point 2, above, and leave the rest of the GPL standing, and you've almost got a public domain declaration.
(I know perfectly well that software licenses have been largely upheld in court. But, in general, they don't do anything more than limit the sale to one copy and indemnify the software provider. There are a few that have outrageous terms--but, really, those would get dealt with like any other contract.)
(And while I'm rambling--there are derivitive works you can make off of copywritten works. This is what's known as "Fair Use.")
Which means that regardless of whether or not "SCO feels that the GPL is too weak to stand up in court," is moot. They have accepted and continue to accept it's terms by having this Linux kernel source code on their FTP server.
You don't understand what "stand up in court" means, do you?
No contract ever exists without mutual acceptance of a relationship. (You offer, I accept, we each get something, we have a contract.)
A contract "doesn't stand up in court" when one of the parties that agreed to the contract (SCO) decides that they don't like the terms of the contract, take the other party to court / are taken to court by the other party, and the court decides that part of the contract won't be enforced.
Anyone who tries to install Linux knows that, at the least, the command line is where a good portion of the work will get done. Unfortunatly, many distros stop there, and assume that any more in-depth knowledge will be gotten from a different source.
A good linux distribution should have an easy-to-find reference of the common linux commands. Ideally, this will be in every shell--a list of CLI commands, with a short description of what they do.
Won't work. Pandora's box cannot be closed--once the technology becomes usable, it will be used. The only question is by who and what checks there will be on them.
Local police, FBI, or CIA--take your pick. "No one watches me" is not an option.
Thats called harrasment
Depends on how & why they tail you. If they're just watching and your only objection is that they're there (i.e., they're not wrongly interrogating people around you, or interfering with your affairs) then it's not harrassment, it's just surveliance.
Uh, no thanks. Even Ashcroft likes some privacy when he needs to go to the shitter.
So? If he spends half of his job in the shitter, I think his boss (POTUS) needs to be able to know this despite Ashcroft's staff gag-order.
Rhetorical fallacy sometimes, but in the world of jurisprudence not at all, since courts lend plenty of weight to precedent in making their decisions.
;) Setting of precedent is not slippery slope--in fact, it's a very valid rhetorical argument.
*sigh*
Go back and read the web page again.
A slippery slope is "if we do X, then we'll have to do Y, and then Z!" not "If we do X now, we'll always have to do X."
None. Which is why you should leave your company phone at home (or at work) and have a seperate home phone.
Ok, not "none." They can easily assert the right to track where their property (the phone) is.
You are obviously trolling now
No, I'm not trolling. I simply have a different opinion than you. Believe it or not, rational minds CAN differ!
It's the point of them being able to track you at all times and even tell how fast you are traveling.
Allow me to restate my point then.
It doesn't matter if the police can track you at all times. Nothing stops them from having a police officer follow you throughout the day anyway. (If it's not "search" or "seizure", they generally don't need a warrant.)
The area of concern for any increased governmental power is accountability and security. No one has any just reason whatsoever to worry about a police officer who is doing the job that they're supposed to do. However, we all have a reason to worry about a system that has insufficient checks against police officers using it to abuse their power, or a system that can be accessed by unapproved users.
Ironically, in the case of pseudo-orwellian observation, the cure for the problems is simply uniform application. If we can ALL see what ANYONE is doing, then abuse becomes much harder. Especially if there is a permanent high-data record of what any public servant, politician, or corporate officer does.
Fear imperfect awareness, but do not fear the awareness itself.
"Unauthorized Spying": Survelliance without prior explicit or implied consent of the surveilled.
Obviouslly the OP had your definition in mind; my point was merely that employee surveillance is generally obnoxious (with exceptions) even at the corporate level, as are drug tests (for most professions), email monitoring, etc.
Ooh, that sounds like a good definition.
But, still, bosses and parents fall under that.
How about I leave the house and drive down the road at 91mph because I feel like it and the police track me going 91, wait for me ahead, and pull me over?
That's what I am worried about.
God, I'm not worried about that. You might as well bitch about radar detectors. (Speed Limits, while a tad bit low, are a good idea. You going at 91 anywhere but a nearly-empty highway is reckless endangerment--and in NYS, it'll [rightly] get you tossed in jail.)
Anyway...
If you're going to worry about tracking, worry about inaccuracy and corruption. Worry about psychotic ex-boyfriends hacking the system and coming after you. Worry about being politically opporessed. And after you worry, figure out an effective check on the darn thing. (A local log of who pings for your location would solve the first; standard checks against corruption would help against the second.)
Sorry, but "easing the mind of a suspicious boss" is still "unauthorized spying" by any reasonable definition of the term.
"Unauthorized Spying" : Spying or other surveliance upon an individual or target without legal authorization to do so.
Seems to me that a suspicious boss can have "legal authorization" to find out where their employees are. Espeically if the boss is giving the cell phone.
Yeah, that's them.
Thanks a bundle.
I agree that it should be kept in private, but I wanted to give a conservitive example.
We're at break-neck speed down that slope as ideas and concepts are being reclassified "priveleges" rather than rights, which imply that we are nothing more than border-line disobedient kids who need discipline for 'bad thoughts' rather than as adults in a free society.
You DO realize that "slippery slope" is one of the rhetorical fallicies, right?
Someone else noted a case in 1973 about obsinity at the SCOTUS--obcinities were decided thirty years ago to be a local concern.
Now, for eveyone complaining about speech--this isn't a speech issue. It's a trade issue.
If a person is making a positive contribution to society (not in jail, has a job, pays taxes, etc.) what right does anybody else have to tell them what they can and cannot say, do, smoke, eat, drink when it does affect other people.
They're the government. Y'see, when a group of humanoids grows to a certain point, they form a goverment that helps them all get along. There's nothing wrong with this--especially since someone who really wants to go against their local gov't can just up and move, or participate and get the law changed.
I am hoping there is more to this case than just buying an adult magazine, but according to the article the offense took place in Texas, which makes it less surprising that such a rediculous case is even being considered. I also find it interesting that his appeal was denied because obcenity charges were a state issue. Doesn't the federal court system have a certain responsiblity to step in when a state is being accused of infringing on a constitutional right?
SCOTUS has ruled on obcinitly laws before, and the federal take is "it's a local issue with local standards." In one state it may be perfectly legal for women to walk around naked on the beach; in another, a woman showing even her aeriolis can be indecent exposure.
Obscinity, dangerous speach, treason, government secrets, contractual gag orders, judicial proceedings, lies, slander, and libel are all non-protected speach. Baning them will not impugn the first amendment.
It drives me nuts to hear such blatant hypocrisy from someone who is so often touted as being "revolutionary". More like elitist and closed-minded if you ask me.
In order to stand for something, you have to stand aginst something. The FSF doesn't stand for democracy, or open discussion, or even "freedom." They stand for "Free Software"--or, to translate from zealot-speak, "strong copyleft."
Stallman et al, if they choose, don't need to be honset, fair, or anyting else when it comes to promoting their cause. It's horribly stupid of them to be so, but they are, after all, sterling examples of the hacker argument method:
If your point is not accepted as said, restate you point again, but LOUDER.
Where or what threat is this sort of document to a government for by and of a people?
In any sufficiently large population, there is a dangerous minority that will project their own personal failings onto the population's government. And in any democracy, there will be a minority that feels it can go against the will of the whole.
To defend against this tyranny of rebellious minority, certain ideas may be censored. The best judge of these is the parts of government closest to the people--or, rather, those most removed from political whim. Juries and/or judges of the law.
(Oh, and in many ways the government IS smarter than the populace--espeically when taken as an aggrivate.)
What's to stop me from doing that for my personal income tax?
The IRS rule that limits Schedule C (self-employment) tax deductions from nonprofiting business to the actual funds from the business.
I.e., if I spend $500 to operate my book-selling business, and only make $450, I don't get to deduct $50 from my taxable income. If I make $550, however, I only need to increase my taxable income by $50, rather than $550.
MS can pull this off because their employees and stockholders all pay income tax.
Actually, from a tactical point of view, they were smart.
Come again?
Since 9/11, Al-Quaeda has seen the USA activly seek them out like the USA has sought out no foe since Vietnam. We deposed their biggest support-government, toppled a terroist-supporter (Hussein may have not supported Al-Queada, but he did support suicide bombers in Israel) in center of the Arab world, and generally got far more engaged in Al-Quaeda's world than we were on 9/10/01.
It's interesting to note, that they didn't commit terrorism in how we usually define it. (The intentional targeting of civilians). They hit military and economic infrastructure, the civilians were "collateral damage" to use the favorite term of the news media and administration. Thus over-all, they used a great tactical plan.
A plan that causes your enemy to become determined to engage your territory and hunt you down is a horrible tactical plan; if the 9/11 attacks had actually demoralized America, the Taliban would still be in power today.
(Now, _POLITCIALLY_ Al-Quaeda may have had a great plan, and if their goal was "get the USA to stop sitting on its ass and acking like jerks", they've succeeded... but I doubt that was what they were going for.)
And considering we still haven't destroyed Al-Quaida, they seem to have got away with it too.
It's hard to destroy a movement--but we seem to have been rather effective in coming very close. Before the invasion of Afghanistan, we expected loads of Al-Quaeda attacks--but there hasn't even been as many as frequently as there were before 9/11.
Remember: Al-Quada is the agressor in this conflict. By any historical standard of win/loss, the west is easily succeeding in its "war on terrorism." The enemy's home is under siege, our home is all but immune to attack, and the enemy's reasons for fighting are slowly but surely disappearing.
As to your "non-resident resident" note, at the very least those who live in DC should be considered part of Maryland or Virginia for the purposes of anything larger than a citywide function and be able to act accordingly (eg. voting). But that isn't an available option. And really neither is your suggestion to move out.
Bullocks.
DC's a puny city--and it's got loads of suburbs. Congress SHOULD have extended the Metro out to the suburbs, and banned all long-term residential housing inside the city. If you're not posted there by the government or visiting, you shouldn't go to bed at night in the city.
Plus, it would be perfectly viable to place everyone whose a first or second generation resident of DC into one of the fifty states--and anyone else who moves in can just keep their current state citizenship. Heck, try it--I suspect that it wouldn't even take an act of congress to stay a resident of one of the fifty states and move to DC.
If anyone, it's the damnned left-wing pieces of crap who insist on controlling what everyone sees and hears through the media, education, and other outlets.
;)
Like Fox News?
(I'll admit that left-leaning people have done a fair bit of damage to the free exchange of ideas--but left-leaning people also ended segregation, so it's not all bad.)
Why is it that CNN wouldn't ever show pictures of the injured of 9/11, yet as soon as theres a blown-apart Iraqi kid, it's all over the place?
Because we ALL saw the 9/11/01 attacks, and there weren't that many wounded?
There were ambulances lined up on the freeway waiting to help the wounded--and they sat there until they were told to go home.
Judging purely by their results, Al-Queada was a bunch of idiots. They struck too early in the morning to hit a full building, and the buildings that they did hit fell straight down instead of falling over--killing most of their victims.
Simple military truth: deaths enrage the opponent, wounds cripple them.
Y'know, there's a real easy way to fix that, if you happen to live in DC.
Move to a suburb or a different city.
IMO, _no one_ should be a resident of DC. you can live there, but you should be a "non-resident resident" of some other state. Just like if you're on an overseas base, serving in congress, etc...
The lesson is that as soon as you support somebody else's standard, then nobody has any reason to use your standard.
.NET implementation can beat MS on dollar-cost. Maybe even time-cost too.
Maybe you're not familiar with Internet Explorer, or Windows, or Microsoft Word?
MS has made their market by supporting other folk's standards and--this is the important part--GIVING THE USER A REASON TO USE MS! Historically, this has been cost...
and I'm sure that an OSS
This is a scientific discussion. You were gratuitously abusing the term to make an argument-by-belittlement against cosmological models (which is pretty ironic given that you were trying to _support_ one).
/. It's an informal forum for discussion of "geek stuff." As happens often, I have no stake in the outcome of one cosmological model over another among the theorists--especially when they're so far out that they're essentially atheist theology.
;) )
/.
This is
Different beasts - the model you favour assumes as an axiom that forces act in the extra direction. This would cause very visible effects. _Really_ visible effects - the most obvious of which being the propagation of matter through all available spatial directions unless some magical force acted to confine it.
(magical? That's an argument by belittlement!
I am not read up on the membrane model--I merely stated that, of the models listed among the parent, it was the one that sounded most sensible. I very much may have misunderstood that--which is fine. I misunderstand sects of Bhuddism and Islam too. In any case...
If there is "more reality outside of our universe", we may simply not be noticing effects of it because not enough time has passed since the formation of "our universe." If there is a seperate reality beneath the "aether*" of our reality, we may simply not notice effects because the fabric of space-time isn't "linked" across the barrier, or isn't "linked" enough to cause a detectable difference.
(I use the term "aether" to mean the "fabric of space time." It's neither matter nor energy, but the actual fabric of existance. At the very least, it's a convenient word.)
This is why you are actively supporting a model that makes more assumptions than usual?
Once again: I am not "actively supporting" anything. I'm engaging in a discussion on
As for parsimony--while the simplest answer is the one that should be used until disproven, that doesn't mean that the simplest answer is always right. I put forth that we are incapable of emphiriacly proving any cosmological model, and so in this realm of theorism, parsimony need not be the ruling principle that it is in science.
Firstly, you apparently have been misinformed about the definition of the word "theory".
No, I'm not. I'm simply using the colloquial form, which is neither more nor less correct than the scientific in this sense.
Proposing larger spaces for embedding as a mathematical crutch is fine as long as they don't have a material effect on the observable universe, but if there's a fourth spatial direction that forces can propagate in, why do we only observe three directions?
For the same reason that we don't normally percieve the motion of our system through the galaxy, or our galaxy through the universe? We may simply not be looking in the right place, or not have been looking for a long enough time.
The biggest problem when we get to this kind of speculative theorising is that the theorists must essentially invent the language to describe their theory--well, that and that they have to normally work under an assumption of continuity and non-deception, which is really not all that much of a problem given how close theorists are to scientists (as opposed to being close to priests and philosiphers, whose catagory they're in.)
Conjecturing about the basic construction of our (immediate) cosmos is a great thing--but the further out a theorist gets, the more arrogant the assumption of knowledge is.