Economically rational doesn't mean what you claim it means, and the grandparent and great-grandparent poster were actually correct in arguing that the decision whether to strip or waitress IS a good example of economic rationality. While they tended to use the less technical term "value" instead of "utility" they are correct in their analysis that economically rational decisions involve more than just decisions about monetary gain.
"In economics, rational behavior in economics means that individuals maximize some objective function (e.g., their utility function) under the constraints they face." reference
In this case, the other posters are arguing that including a concept of "self-respect" in the utility function can make the decision to waitress an economically rational one. The argument is that if the increased utility (in the form of self-respect) from waitressing is greater than the increased utility (in the form of income) from stripping, then waitressing is the economically rational choice. If not, then stripping is the economically rational choice.
While you are correct that there are many examples of economically irrational choices, this is actually a textbook example of an economically rational choice. Knowing how economics professors tend to be a zany bunch, I could definitely see this one used in an economics class to explain the concept of utility.
While I think the majority (overall) made the right decision, I find Justice Breyer's dissenting opinion to give the most interesting analysis of the issues involved. In my view he did the correct analysis, but came up with the wrong conclusion based on that analysis.
The majority argues both that the the "well-regulated militia" portion is merely explanatory, particularly when you consider that virtually all male citizens were members of the militia. This is well-reasoned, and makes sense. This is the conclusion that Stevens disagrees with in his dissenting opinion.
However, Breyer argues that the majority is being too lax in their analysis of the constitutionality of these particular laws based on the actual text. The majority doesn't give the particular laws being considered sufficient scrutiny in light of historical and judicial precedent. He is correct, as the majority's analysis is far too sloppy and poorly reasoned.
Breyer is right in that the trigger lock laws are not unreasonable given the assumption that an implicit exception for self-defence is available. The majority fails to consider this in their analysis of the trigger lock laws, and tends to dump this law in with the registrations laws without considering it individually.
He then begins an analysis of the reasonableness of the registration restrictions. He finds that there is significant evidence that handguns cause crime, but that there is significant evidence to support both sides. He however finds that the legislature is best suited to making the decision on whether there is a compelling interest in the registration law, and thus the court must agree that there is.
This gets us to where he goes awry. Breyer argues that the registration restriction does not significantly infringe the constitutional purpose because shotguns and rifles are still allowed, and because handguns can be fired in other jurisdictions.
His analysis is flawed for two reasons.
First, he himself quotes several sources who unequivocally state that handguns (pistols) specifically are an important part of militia training. He ignores this and claims that only rifle training is sufficient to satisfy the military training part of the militia purpose of the second amendment. He builds a strong argument for second amendment protection (even in light of Stevens dissenting opinion) and then discards it for no apparent reason.
Second, Breyer is incorrect in stating that allowing handguns in Maryland is sufficient to allow prohibiting them in D.C.. Just because something constitutionally protected is allowed in another jurisdiction shouldn't be enough to permit the legislature to enact a complete prohibition within their jurisdiction. If such prohibition was allowed, it only requires all jurisdictions to prohibit something to make constitutional protection meaningless.
Had he properly considered these problems, Breyer should have found that the registration laws unreasonably burden the constitutional second amendment protections, and thus should have been struck down.
Your first suggestion is an excellent attack, and not one I had considered. Instead of making chips that act different, ship chips that act the same (except for when a certain undocumented switch is set), but have a hidden way to read the hidden data. This would be more work than just tying off gates, but not THAT much more work. Once you get one of these signed, you can use the data discovered to defeat unsigned chips.
I'm not convinced the second suggestion would work. A key here is that they're using an on-chip random number generator to prevent replay attacks. Either 1.) the random number generator needs to be defeated (to allow replay attacks), 2.) the "patent-holder" key has to be discovered (not likely with a technological attack) or 3.) the unlocking mechanism has to be altered. I was advocating #3, but your suggestion to ship altered chips to be signed would be a good way to defeat #1.
NO, shared cache has been around (at least in servers) a lot longer than dual core. That cache just lived on an off-die chip. There are some small system advantages to having multiple processors on a single die (for instance, L2 cache access latency for shared memory) but the impetus behind this design is simply that the cheapest design for performance per unit silicon area is to put multiple "processors" on a single die.
Once the decision to put multiple processors (cores) on one die has been made, it starts to make sense to make some of the on-die cache shared. This decision is secondary, and isn't significantly different from having a shared off-chip cache.
So, dual core is largely a marketing term for putting multiple processors (cores) on a single die. For those in the industry, this implies certain design, cost, and manufacturing trade-offs and challenges, but for the typical consumer or software designer the distinction is really semantic. Software designers optimizing for performance care about the cache sizes, latencies, and characteristics, but they cared about this long before dual-core processors existed.
Symmetric Multi-Threading (SMT, Hyperthreading) is something completely different, and does involve lots of shared processor structures (besides cache) and represents a completely new set of performance considerations that software needs to be aware of. Regardless of how you feel about SMT or Intel's Hyperthreading in particular, this one isn't just a marketing term.
I read the paper (thanks for the link.) I wouldn't say they cover this thoroughly. In fact, I'd argue that they handwaved this, even though it is the most likely and most important attack vector.
They argue that modifying masks is a problem, which may be true. However, there are several stages of design data before the masks, and I would expect that a corporate-level pirate could have access to something early enough in the process that it could be modified by someone skilled in the art. Design data is probably transfered to the FAB as a flattened layout, with no circuit/design hierarchy. However, it should be possible for someone who knows the chip interfaces related to this unlocking mechanism to work backwards from them and find where to tie things off to make the chip work. The labor cost would probably be pretty low compared to the cost of prepping a second mask to manufacture the modified chips.
There is some subjectivity to this argument, but we can also apply some sound numbers.
The purpose of copyright is to provide an incentive to authors to create works.
To evaluate this, we must calculate the number of works that would be created, given a certain copyright term.
For a given copyright curve, this is going to look something like y=ln(x), where x is the term, in years, and y is the number of works created.
To then calculate the number of additional works created, we calculate the marginal increase for each year, which for ln(x) will be 1/x.
So, once we are able to put some suitable constants in to get the scales right (which would require some careful study), we will see that there is a region of copyright where adding additional years will create a significant increase in works created, but as the number of years increases, the marginal benefit for adding additional years will be minimal.
Given the above analysis, and given the great many works that were created, even prior to the Copyright Act of 1976, it seems like the current copyright terms are more than adequate, and that there is no reason to increase the copyright term.
Where this gets subjective is when we consider where on the curve we really should be. There will be a region where the slope of 1/x (the margninal increase in works created per year of copyright added) is changing dramatically, and within that region there is some legitimate debate about where the copyright term should be set.
However, that point is a term substantially lower than current terms. Evidence from patent terms shows that the "framers copyright" of 14 years was about right, maybe 20 is better (current patent terms), but it was the right order of magnitude. Lots of patents are still generated despite their dramatically shorter terms than copyright.
So, it isn't necessary to talk in subjective terms to show that current copyright terms are way out of line with their stated purpose of promoting the progress of science and the useful arts.
You have a legal right to see everything in your patient records, and I believe to receive a copy. The point here is to ensure that the patient doesn't misinterpret the information they're given.
As a simple for instance, suppose the physician wrote: "possible stomach cancer" in your file 2 years ago. The physician might like the chance to tell you "oh, don't worry, that was ruled out by symptom X that was observed in the follow-up appointment 2 weeks later. (We'll ignore the fact that this physician is an idiot because the patient will never again be able to get life insurance.) However, the layman could panic and take inappropriate actions based on a misunderstanding of how the physician chose to chart. This falls into the category of "information that needs to be available, but doesn't need to be easy to get."
It is possible to make a tamper-proof encryption device. They aren't cheap (read: you'll never see one in a system under $500,000), but they are possible. They are used for situations where destroying the encryption keys and all access to the data is considered better than letting the data be viewed by a third party. Even these can be broken, but the requirements are significantly beyond those available to your average hacker.
I don't know how to build a DRM system for audio, but I have a pretty good idea how to do it for video.
The system consists of:
A.) The sender. We will assume the sender is secure. B.) The encryption device on the receiver's computer. This is secure and tamper-proof. C.) The receiver's monitor (also a decryption device, I'll get into this later.
Steps
1.) The sender A encrypts the original data D with the key of the tamper-proof encryption device B, and sends the encrypted data to B. Noone but the sender is able to determine the plaintext at this point, as the plaintext is known only to A, and the key is known only to A and B. This data is flagged with information on what B is allowed to do with it. In this case, it is allowed to reencrypt it for display on a monitor, but not to return it as plaintext or to reencrypt it for sending to another computer.
2.) B requests a public key from monitor C, which will be signed by some trusted third party which identifies it as a monitor. This key will be used to encrypt the data sent to C.
3.) After verifying that C is trusted, B decrypts the data D from sender A, and reencrypts it with the key for monitor C. None of this is observable, as it is all done within the tamper-proof device.
4.) Monitor C consists of a tamper-resistant decryption device that is an integral part of an LCD monitor. Part of the tamper-resistant device would probably have to actually reside on the same silicon as the pixels, to make tampering with the LCD itself impossible. Within Monitor C, the reencrypted data is again decrypted inside the second tamper-resistant device, and is displayed on the LCD monitor.
With this system the data is either:
a.) At the trusted sender, b.) In an untrusted location, but encrypted, c.) Decrypted, but in a tamper-proof or tamper-resistant device, or d.) Displayed on an LCD monitor.
The only way to get the plaintext here is to read it DIRECTLY off the monitor. That isn't practical, would result in a fairly low-quality product, and is an understood weakness in any DRM system.
Building a system like this isn't practical for consumer DRM, because the costs of the tamper-proof encryption devices would be prohibitively expensive, not to mention requiring everyone to replace their TV with a new, more secure (for the movie companies) one. It could be feasible for distribution of movies to cinemas, to try and cut down on high-quality bootlegs of movies being made off of theater copies.
Another problem is that mass producing even a secure version would mean that a determined hacker would have access to not one but hundreds of the same type of device. Simply having significant numbers of them available would increase the standards for tamper-resistance significantly.
Ahhh, but there's the rub, and it's one you're missing but the philosophers already know about.
Physics is largely based on the idea that the universe is experienced the same by all observers (I'll leave relativistic effects out of the discussion.) Observability in physics, especially in the form of experimentation, really means observable, in the same way, to multiple individuals. However, there is one well-known area of the world that is observable, but not observable to multiple people at the same time. That is consciousness. I am able to observe my own consciousness, maybe even make some measurements of it, but it is impossible for me to observe your consciousness in any way. This is a dramatic failing of our physical laws, and for the time being, something that they are utterly unequipped to describe.
It's possible that science will one day have a way to observe consiousness, but as an observer, how will I know if I'm observing your consciousness, or just altering my own?
I think your argument boils down to the first cause argument, but I could be wrong.
This argument can't be won on physical grounds alone.
I think the determinism argument holds, but the randomness argument is much weaker. Events that are random within a given system could simply be events that are acted upon by entities outside that system. Thus, in order to prove that randomness is really randomness, you must prove that nothing exists outside the given system to cause that randomness. This is inherently impossible, and I think is precisely what the incompleteness theorem is all about.
If we assume that there are forms of randomness in the universe that are unpredicatable within the system of the universe (I think a reasonable assumption, given modern physics) then that leaves a great deal of room for what is popularly called free will. Trying to describe events outside that system can only be done on a philosophical basis, since, as previously stated, they are unobservable from within the system of the universe. I agree that your first cause argument makes sense, but it is fundamentally a philosophical argument, and not a scientific one.
To put it more succinctly: Physics says "yup, that's random." Philosophy says "what if it really isn't?"
In the scenario we're building (Whether you agree with it or not) 3a doesn't apply.
The operative clause is 3a:
3a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
In this scenario, party A has no obligation to offer the source code to anyone else, ever, so long as they accompany every copy with a complete machine-readable version of the source code.
Party A has to be careful to SELL the end result to party B, and put no further restrictions on party B. In that case, party B may resell the just the binary under the first-sale doctrine.
The catch here is that party A now has no protection from party B redistributing the source, should party B so choose, only a general view that it is against party B's best interests to do so. Pretty risky business if you're party A.
So, the unqualified people wouldn't be hired if the pay was high enough, since they could simply be passed over in favor of the more qualified applicants.
However, I have at least one friend who has a real passion for CS but went into medicine because the pay is better and he perceived the labor market to be more stable. Is he as good of a doctor as one for whom medicine is their passion? No, but he's good enough to get a well-paying job, and one that pays more than most CS jobs. If CS had paid more, he might have stayed in CS. This is why higher pay results in more qualified workers being available. People choose their career paths, and pay is a factor in that decision.
While 1 million per year MAY be so high as to produce the kinds of high-end effects you propose (early retirement, part-time work, etc.) I doubt a million dollars per year is as much money as you act like it is.
- Qualified potential US applicants by and large don't want to work at Microsoft
- Microsoft isn't paying enough to attract qualified US applicants
Yeah, one or both is likely. MS isn't the darling of the tech world it once was; you're no longer a millionaire after 7 years. The compensation structure has chnaged a few times since 2000 when people were leaving MS in droves to do startups. Many people think we made some poor hiring decisions around that time frame (after all, _I_ was hired, and my main motivation for interviewing was to get a free trip to Seattle and to mouth-off about how awesome linux was to a bunch of MSFT people:)
MSFT doesn't aim to be the pay-leader, so people purely motivated by that will probably look elsewhere.
That said, I think many tech companies have open positions and describe having difficulty filling them. Does the entire sector, as a whole, not pay enough? Are there people out there that are not working for anyone, rather than work for what they deem to be too little? Said another way, if you see that across the board, tech companies have open heads, it's hard to suggest that it is purely a Microsoft problem related to salary or other undesirability. Doesn't Google have difficulty hiring people? Apple?
Yes, if a given industry is having trouble finding qualified applicants, then it isn't paying enough for qualified labor. The obvious way to show this is that if CS graduates were paid a million dollars per year starting out, people would be leaving other careers in droves to pursue a career in computer science. This is freshman economics at work. Now, clearly technology companies can't afford that kind of pay, but that just means that employers have trouble finding qualified applicants at a price they're willing to pay. Freshman economics says "tough noogies, you can't have more at the current price than the quantity supplied at the current price." That's how free markets work. The H1-B program is about changing the rules by finding an additional supplier of labor who is willing to produce more at the current price. The overall result of adding this new supplier will be to drive prices down and quantities up, at the expense of existing workers. Moving jobs overseas does the same thing economically as raising the H1-B cap, however the H1-B changes may come more slowly.
Now, is free trade in the labor market good for the global economy? Most economic models say yes. Is it good for the US economy? The answer is less clear, though the answer leans towards it being good for the US economy. Is it good for technology workers? Probably not, as with new competition they will have to accept lower wages.
So, don't think for a minute that there is a "labor shortage" in IT. The so-called labor shortage is just a result of normal supply and demand. Expanding the H1-B program should be viewed as what it is, and attempt to apply free trade to the IT labor market, with the result being new low-cost overseas competition for US technology jobs. Whether or not this is a good thing depends on your perspective, but adding H1-B workers is going to have a serious effect on US IT workers.
No, you're just not paying attention. The artical's author was talking about downloading and installing the game requires a lot more hoops to just through in order to function. He never mentions that his applications needed any type of secret sauce thats being held back from him. Why don't you try reading the artical again.
In which case, this is a good thing, as NO application should be installing things into system areas without my EXPLICIT say-so, and this is exacty what LUA was designed to prevent.
This publisher produces a collection of downloadable games that include demos. The problem this publisher is having is that downloading these demos is really installing an application, so LUA makes it a lot less convenient.
There are a few options here:
Live with it. You install an application, you MUST get permission. This is good security policy for your users.
You redesign your demos to install and run in a per-user space (like the desktop), instead of a system space. If Microsoft doesn't allow this, then there is a reasonable objection.
You restructure your applications to run a scripts within a larger application framework, so the user only has to install the framework once. This is similar to the previous item.
The second problem discussed is the games explorer, which really is a bigger problem. For small games, they will undoubtedly be "unrated" content, and will thus be blocked by most parents if they appear in games explorer. However, it's not clear if Microsoft will let them just install as normal applications. This is an overall games industry problem, as there is no clearinghouse to let a small game get a "yup, you're clean, E" rating for a low price from ESRB or some other ratings organization. I can't see a good fix, and I think Microsoft is responding to industry pressure on this one.
Well, typically the mechanism is that monopolies are allowed to continue to exist when they compete fairly. Sometimes economies of scale produce natural monopolies, where the most efficient form of the market is a single, large, monopoly producer. Others are not able to compete simply due to the nature of the market. Operating system software MAY even be an industry like this. The problem is that Microsoft forced their competitors out of the market with unfair business practices, and unfair business practices are what should not be tolerated.
I've known enough people in the welfare system to know that you're both right.
This mother buying her child a Genesis was better than many welfare parents in that she actually thought about her kids. I know around here, kids are often viewed as a source of income to the more lazy welfare parents, as a lot of the money dries up when the kid turns 5. Trust me, those parents aren't spending that extra income on their kids, either.
However, a parent buying their kid a brand-new video game system with the welfare check is also a sign of how broken the system is. Too many of the welfare parents I see don't know how to get out of the system, only how to work it to their advantage. If they get a job, their welfare money dries up faster than their income outpaces the additional expenses (read: childcare and healthcare.) The system doesn't teach them the skills they would need to get a GOOD job. They also make you run around to all kinds of classes and things, but none of these seem to teach the important skills of budgeting and making do on a low income. Things that the rest of us take for granted were never taught to this group. Ideas like: Run the A/C at 78, not 65; Don't buy cable if you can't afford it; Don't spend your entire income the day you get it; and, yes, buy older or used products(including video game systems) to save money; don't occur to this group. Dealing with these problems is key to getting the ones who want out of the system out.
I make a good salary, and I still take all of the above money-saving tips very seriously. I buy video game systems a generation (or two) behind. I only buy games once they've hit the greatest hits, and even then I often buy them used. I have tried to teach these kinds of things to a friend I have who is on welfare, and she always gives me the brush-off, saying that it won't make a difference. This is out of ignorance on her part, not laziness. The system needs be be redesigned to help people with this kind of ignorance get out.
On the other hand, the system also needs to be redesigned to prevent the kind of abuse where the parents *INTENTIONALLY* barely feed and clothe the kids, while spending the welfare money on their own frivolities. One way to help would be to provide less cash and more restricted coupons like food stamps, while expanding the food stamp program to cover non-food items like toilet paper and children's clothes.
I read the article, and for the most part I think you gave reasonable answers.
For the allofmp3 question, you at least appeared not to be farmiliar with what the poster was asking, which is fair.
I think the question that really made people mad was the multi-part question, the Gray Area one. If I read it correctly, your fundamental point was: You have no established legal right to make.mp3 copies of CDs that you have legally purchased, even for personal use. I think that simple sentence was the only one that really needed to be said. I think the rest of your answer was based on that, but distracted from this fundamental point. I'm fairly confident that I knew what you were saying, and even I was a little confused. I could definitely see someone less willing to accept that uncomfortable truth having a harder time understanding that answer.
Just to clarify, did I understand you correctly on that point?
What takes up all the power is inefficiency in the power supply. Many consumer electronics power supplies pull about 50% of their max power when simply plugged in. The power supplies are made this way because it's cheaper and low standby power is not a major selling point.
Some specific items also waste power on things that are just plain inefficient. I believe some CRT televisions run an internal heating element when turned off.
The idea of planets is really only meaningful in the political or cultural sphere
makes you think that the general public would not be concerned if scientists have redefined the meaning of a planet? It's scientists who should not care about changing the definition of a planet. The general public cares a great deal, as these scientists are redefining their culture.
From reading the material on derivative works, it looks like the Ninth Circuit would consider adding stickers to an existing photograph to be an inappropriate creation of a derivative work, whereas the Seventh Circuit might decide the exact opposite.
If limited to splicing of purchased VHS tapes, the two courts might each decide the case differently, making even VHS splicing a murky legal choice, at best.
I would really like to see the full text of the Judge's ruling in this case, as that is the only way to know on what grounds he made the decision. From the little bit we get from the article, he seems more likely to mimic the Ninth Circuit ruling.
Copyright law protects the creator of a work from derivative works, in part, from derivative works that the creator may not feel puts their own work in its best light. I make photographs, were someone to buy the entire edition of one of my nature photographs and insert obvious "photoshopping" and sell them, those works would indirectly reflect negatively on my work and decrease the value of my other work. Inserting 'care bears', or christmas ornaments on my trees might do the same thing. (Parody excepted, of course.)
What if I bought copies of your photographs, put stickers of care bears or christas ornaments onto each copy, and then sold those? What If I cut out all the animals in your photographs, and then sold those? This isn't nearly as clear-cut if the editor isn't making copies, but is instead editing copies they actually purchased. I think it's pretty clear that using photoshop to edit someone else's photographs is inappropriate, but is putting stickers on them illegal?
I think everyone agreed that DVD copying and reselling was on pretty shaky ground, as there was real copying going on. Allowing this might have the effect you imply, as it would allow derivative works of GPL programs.
However, the less shaky ground, and the part that I need access to the ruling to understand, is what about edited VHS tapes. From what I remember, one of the services would take your VHS tape, LITERALLY cut out the naughty parts, splice the remainder back together and return it to you. In that case, they are ONLY altering the physical item, and there is CLEARLY no copying going on.
Allowing physical edits should be no problem for the GPL. It does get a little murky if someone receives a tape with a GPL work on it, splices their edits into the physical tape, and then returns them to the sender, but I'm comfortable allowing that, as anything important added would probably already be a derivative work of the original, and subject to the terms of the GPL. Either way the paying user would have no right to redistribute the altered version, beyond selling the physical media.
Are we talking financial assets or copyright? Either way: My family does not have a right to indefinite income just because I did something good.
Upon your death, your spouse should receive all of your financial assets, since you are essentially partners. Once both you and your spouse have died, a "reasonable" inheritence should be available to provide for your inheritors, and any remaining *excess* financial assets should be divided between the state and your inheritors, as the state has no interest in concentrating all national wealth in a few families who produce nothing of value.
As for artistic copyright, there are two reasons why it should not be indefinite. The weaker argument is the same as the inheritance argument. The public has no interest in concentrating all knowledge and art within a few families (or businesses) who no longer produce anything of value. It's reasonable to expect your efforts to provide for your immediate family, but there is no reason to expect your grandchildren to continue to have significant income from a book you wrote 50-100 years ago, let alone even longer.
The stronger argument against artistic copyright is that knowledge and the written word are a part of our culture, and once produced, only partially belong to the original author. The framers of the constitution understood this. Copyright was a way to ensure that authors would be compensated for their labors, and as a result the public would have a rich culture and body of knowledge. However, copyright is a double-edged sword. By extending it for too long, it ceases to become an incentive to produce new works. Instead, the focus becomes on preserving the income from old works. The case in question is an excellent example. Instead of becoming an author and producing new books, Clare Milne, Disney, and the others involved are fighting over the rights to an existing work whose original author is dead. The public is worse off because they neither have access to the old work, nor do they have any new works, since the parties involved are too busy fighting over the old one.
An interesting viewpoint on your text above is that most likely an "illustrated childrens book "Pooh smokes a pack!"" would be a fair use parody even if the book isn't out of copyright. What being out of copyright would allow is for the general public to universally share and benefit from a work, and would encourage the previous copyright holders to continue to produce new works that would overall increase our literary and artistic heritage, or otherwise contribute to society as a whole. If not that, then it would at least allow new authors to expand on the existing work in new ways. Either way, once the original author has been sufficiently provided for that they are willing to produce and distribute the work in the first place, futher copyright creates no benefit for the public.
Slashdot Mirror
"In economics, rational behavior in economics means that individuals maximize some objective function (e.g., their utility function) under the constraints they face." reference
In this case, the other posters are arguing that including a concept of "self-respect" in the utility function can make the decision to waitress an economically rational one. The argument is that if the increased utility (in the form of self-respect) from waitressing is greater than the increased utility (in the form of income) from stripping, then waitressing is the economically rational choice. If not, then stripping is the economically rational choice.
While you are correct that there are many examples of economically irrational choices, this is actually a textbook example of an economically rational choice. Knowing how economics professors tend to be a zany bunch, I could definitely see this one used in an economics class to explain the concept of utility.
While I think the majority (overall) made the right decision, I find Justice Breyer's dissenting opinion to give the most interesting analysis of the issues involved. In my view he did the correct analysis, but came up with the wrong conclusion based on that analysis.
The majority argues both that the the "well-regulated militia" portion is merely explanatory, particularly when you consider that virtually all male citizens were members of the militia. This is well-reasoned, and makes sense. This is the conclusion that Stevens disagrees with in his dissenting opinion.
However, Breyer argues that the majority is being too lax in their analysis of the constitutionality of these particular laws based on the actual text. The majority doesn't give the particular laws being considered sufficient scrutiny in light of historical and judicial precedent. He is correct, as the majority's analysis is far too sloppy and poorly reasoned.
Breyer is right in that the trigger lock laws are not unreasonable given the assumption that an implicit exception for self-defence is available. The majority fails to consider this in their analysis of the trigger lock laws, and tends to dump this law in with the registrations laws without considering it individually.
He then begins an analysis of the reasonableness of the registration restrictions. He finds that there is significant evidence that handguns cause crime, but that there is significant evidence to support both sides. He however finds that the legislature is best suited to making the decision on whether there is a compelling interest in the registration law, and thus the court must agree that there is.
This gets us to where he goes awry. Breyer argues that the registration restriction does not significantly infringe the constitutional purpose because shotguns and rifles are still allowed, and because handguns can be fired in other jurisdictions.
His analysis is flawed for two reasons.
First, he himself quotes several sources who unequivocally state that handguns (pistols) specifically are an important part of militia training. He ignores this and claims that only rifle training is sufficient to satisfy the military training part of the militia purpose of the second amendment. He builds a strong argument for second amendment protection (even in light of Stevens dissenting opinion) and then discards it for no apparent reason.
Second, Breyer is incorrect in stating that allowing handguns in Maryland is sufficient to allow prohibiting them in D.C.. Just because something constitutionally protected is allowed in another jurisdiction shouldn't be enough to permit the legislature to enact a complete prohibition within their jurisdiction. If such prohibition was allowed, it only requires all jurisdictions to prohibit something to make constitutional protection meaningless.
Had he properly considered these problems, Breyer should have found that the registration laws unreasonably burden the constitutional second amendment protections, and thus should have been struck down.
Your first suggestion is an excellent attack, and not one I had considered. Instead of making chips that act different, ship chips that act the same (except for when a certain undocumented switch is set), but have a hidden way to read the hidden data. This would be more work than just tying off gates, but not THAT much more work. Once you get one of these signed, you can use the data discovered to defeat unsigned chips.
I'm not convinced the second suggestion would work. A key here is that they're using an on-chip random number generator to prevent replay attacks. Either 1.) the random number generator needs to be defeated (to allow replay attacks), 2.) the "patent-holder" key has to be discovered (not likely with a technological attack) or 3.) the unlocking mechanism has to be altered. I was advocating #3, but your suggestion to ship altered chips to be signed would be a good way to defeat #1.
NO, shared cache has been around (at least in servers) a lot longer than dual core. That cache just lived on an off-die chip. There are some small system advantages to having multiple processors on a single die (for instance, L2 cache access latency for shared memory) but the impetus behind this design is simply that the cheapest design for performance per unit silicon area is to put multiple "processors" on a single die.
Once the decision to put multiple processors (cores) on one die has been made, it starts to make sense to make some of the on-die cache shared. This decision is secondary, and isn't significantly different from having a shared off-chip cache.
So, dual core is largely a marketing term for putting multiple processors (cores) on a single die. For those in the industry, this implies certain design, cost, and manufacturing trade-offs and challenges, but for the typical consumer or software designer the distinction is really semantic. Software designers optimizing for performance care about the cache sizes, latencies, and characteristics, but they cared about this long before dual-core processors existed.
Symmetric Multi-Threading (SMT, Hyperthreading) is something completely different, and does involve lots of shared processor structures (besides cache) and represents a completely new set of performance considerations that software needs to be aware of. Regardless of how you feel about SMT or Intel's Hyperthreading in particular, this one isn't just a marketing term.
I read the paper (thanks for the link.) I wouldn't say they cover this thoroughly. In fact, I'd argue that they handwaved this, even though it is the most likely and most important attack vector.
They argue that modifying masks is a problem, which may be true. However, there are several stages of design data before the masks, and I would expect that a corporate-level pirate could have access to something early enough in the process that it could be modified by someone skilled in the art. Design data is probably transfered to the FAB as a flattened layout, with no circuit/design hierarchy. However, it should be possible for someone who knows the chip interfaces related to this unlocking mechanism to work backwards from them and find where to tie things off to make the chip work. The labor cost would probably be pretty low compared to the cost of prepping a second mask to manufacture the modified chips.
There is some subjectivity to this argument, but we can also apply some sound numbers.
The purpose of copyright is to provide an incentive to authors to create works.
To evaluate this, we must calculate the number of works that would be created, given a certain copyright term.
For a given copyright curve, this is going to look something like y=ln(x), where x is the term, in years, and y is the number of works created.
To then calculate the number of additional works created, we calculate the marginal increase for each year, which for ln(x) will be 1/x.
So, once we are able to put some suitable constants in to get the scales right (which would require some careful study), we will see that there is a region of copyright where adding additional years will create a significant increase in works created, but as the number of years increases, the marginal benefit for adding additional years will be minimal.
Given the above analysis, and given the great many works that were created, even prior to the Copyright Act of 1976, it seems like the current copyright terms are more than adequate, and that there is no reason to increase the copyright term.
Where this gets subjective is when we consider where on the curve we really should be. There will be a region where the slope of 1/x (the margninal increase in works created per year of copyright added) is changing dramatically, and within that region there is some legitimate debate about where the copyright term should be set.
However, that point is a term substantially lower than current terms. Evidence from patent terms shows that the "framers copyright" of 14 years was about right, maybe 20 is better (current patent terms), but it was the right order of magnitude. Lots of patents are still generated despite their dramatically shorter terms than copyright.
So, it isn't necessary to talk in subjective terms to show that current copyright terms are way out of line with their stated purpose of promoting the progress of science and the useful arts.
Let's be absolutely clear:
You have a legal right to see everything in your patient records, and I believe to receive a copy. The point here is to ensure that the patient doesn't misinterpret the information they're given.
As a simple for instance, suppose the physician wrote: "possible stomach cancer" in your file 2 years ago. The physician might like the chance to tell you "oh, don't worry, that was ruled out by symptom X that was observed in the follow-up appointment 2 weeks later. (We'll ignore the fact that this physician is an idiot because the patient will never again be able to get life insurance.) However, the layman could panic and take inappropriate actions based on a misunderstanding of how the physician chose to chart. This falls into the category of "information that needs to be available, but doesn't need to be easy to get."
It can work... but you have to do it in hardware.
It is possible to make a tamper-proof encryption device. They aren't cheap (read: you'll never see one in a system under $500,000), but they are possible. They are used for situations where destroying the encryption keys and all access to the data is considered better than letting the data be viewed by a third party. Even these can be broken, but the requirements are significantly beyond those available to your average hacker.
I don't know how to build a DRM system for audio, but I have a pretty good idea how to do it for video.
The system consists of:
A.) The sender. We will assume the sender is secure.
B.) The encryption device on the receiver's computer. This is secure and tamper-proof.
C.) The receiver's monitor (also a decryption device, I'll get into this later.
Steps
1.) The sender A encrypts the original data D with the key of the tamper-proof encryption device B, and sends the encrypted data to B. Noone but the sender is able to determine the plaintext at this point, as the plaintext is known only to A, and the key is known only to A and B. This data is flagged with information on what B is allowed to do with it. In this case, it is allowed to reencrypt it for display on a monitor, but not to return it as plaintext or to reencrypt it for sending to another computer.
2.) B requests a public key from monitor C, which will be signed by some trusted third party which identifies it as a monitor. This key will be used to encrypt the data sent to C.
3.) After verifying that C is trusted, B decrypts the data D from sender A, and reencrypts it with the key for monitor C. None of this is observable, as it is all done within the tamper-proof device.
4.) Monitor C consists of a tamper-resistant decryption device that is an integral part of an LCD monitor. Part of the tamper-resistant device would probably have to actually reside on the same silicon as the pixels, to make tampering with the LCD itself impossible. Within Monitor C, the reencrypted data is again decrypted inside the second tamper-resistant device, and is displayed on the LCD monitor.
With this system the data is either:
a.) At the trusted sender,
b.) In an untrusted location, but encrypted,
c.) Decrypted, but in a tamper-proof or tamper-resistant device, or
d.) Displayed on an LCD monitor.
The only way to get the plaintext here is to read it DIRECTLY off the monitor. That isn't practical, would result in a fairly low-quality product, and is an understood weakness in any DRM system.
Building a system like this isn't practical for consumer DRM, because the costs of the tamper-proof encryption devices would be prohibitively expensive, not to mention requiring everyone to replace their TV with a new, more secure (for the movie companies) one. It could be feasible for distribution of movies to cinemas, to try and cut down on high-quality bootlegs of movies being made off of theater copies.
Another problem is that mass producing even a secure version would mean that a determined hacker would have access to not one but hundreds of the same type of device. Simply having significant numbers of them available would increase the standards for tamper-resistance significantly.
Ahhh, but there's the rub, and it's one you're missing but the philosophers already know about.
Physics is largely based on the idea that the universe is experienced the same by all observers (I'll leave relativistic effects out of the discussion.) Observability in physics, especially in the form of experimentation, really means observable, in the same way, to multiple individuals. However, there is one well-known area of the world that is observable, but not observable to multiple people at the same time. That is consciousness. I am able to observe my own consciousness, maybe even make some measurements of it, but it is impossible for me to observe your consciousness in any way. This is a dramatic failing of our physical laws, and for the time being, something that they are utterly unequipped to describe.
It's possible that science will one day have a way to observe consiousness, but as an observer, how will I know if I'm observing your consciousness, or just altering my own?
I think your argument boils down to the first cause argument, but I could be wrong.
This argument can't be won on physical grounds alone.
I think the determinism argument holds, but the randomness argument is much weaker. Events that are random within a given system could simply be events that are acted upon by entities outside that system. Thus, in order to prove that randomness is really randomness, you must prove that nothing exists outside the given system to cause that randomness. This is inherently impossible, and I think is precisely what the incompleteness theorem is all about.
If we assume that there are forms of randomness in the universe that are unpredicatable within the system of the universe (I think a reasonable assumption, given modern physics) then that leaves a great deal of room for what is popularly called free will. Trying to describe events outside that system can only be done on a philosophical basis, since, as previously stated, they are unobservable from within the system of the universe. I agree that your first cause argument makes sense, but it is fundamentally a philosophical argument, and not a scientific one.
To put it more succinctly: Physics says "yup, that's random." Philosophy says "what if it really isn't?"
... "But it's turtles all the way down!"
In the scenario we're building (Whether you agree with it or not) 3a doesn't apply.
The operative clause is 3a:
3a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
In this scenario, party A has no obligation to offer the source code to anyone else, ever, so long as they accompany every copy with a complete machine-readable version of the source code.
Party A has to be careful to SELL the end result to party B, and put no further restrictions on party B. In that case, party B may resell the just the binary under the first-sale doctrine.
The catch here is that party A now has no protection from party B redistributing the source, should party B so choose, only a general view that it is against party B's best interests to do so. Pretty risky business if you're party A.
As always, IANAL, and this is not legal advice.
Qualified? No.
So, the unqualified people wouldn't be hired if the pay was high enough, since they could simply be passed over in favor of the more qualified applicants.
However, I have at least one friend who has a real passion for CS but went into medicine because the pay is better and he perceived the labor market to be more stable. Is he as good of a doctor as one for whom medicine is their passion? No, but he's good enough to get a well-paying job, and one that pays more than most CS jobs. If CS had paid more, he might have stayed in CS. This is why higher pay results in more qualified workers being available. People choose their career paths, and pay is a factor in that decision.
While 1 million per year MAY be so high as to produce the kinds of high-end effects you propose (early retirement, part-time work, etc.) I doubt a million dollars per year is as much money as you act like it is.
Yeah, one or both is likely. MS isn't the darling of the tech world it once was; you're no longer a millionaire after 7 years. The compensation structure has chnaged a few times since 2000 when people were leaving MS in droves to do startups. Many people think we made some poor hiring decisions around that time frame (after all, _I_ was hired, and my main motivation for interviewing was to get a free trip to Seattle and to mouth-off about how awesome linux was to a bunch of MSFT people :)
MSFT doesn't aim to be the pay-leader, so people purely motivated by that will probably look elsewhere.
That said, I think many tech companies have open positions and describe having difficulty filling them. Does the entire sector, as a whole, not pay enough? Are there people out there that are not working for anyone, rather than work for what they deem to be too little? Said another way, if you see that across the board, tech companies have open heads, it's hard to suggest that it is purely a Microsoft problem related to salary or other undesirability. Doesn't Google have difficulty hiring people? Apple?
Yes, if a given industry is having trouble finding qualified applicants, then it isn't paying enough for qualified labor. The obvious way to show this is that if CS graduates were paid a million dollars per year starting out, people would be leaving other careers in droves to pursue a career in computer science. This is freshman economics at work. Now, clearly technology companies can't afford that kind of pay, but that just means that employers have trouble finding qualified applicants at a price they're willing to pay. Freshman economics says "tough noogies, you can't have more at the current price than the quantity supplied at the current price." That's how free markets work. The H1-B program is about changing the rules by finding an additional supplier of labor who is willing to produce more at the current price. The overall result of adding this new supplier will be to drive prices down and quantities up, at the expense of existing workers. Moving jobs overseas does the same thing economically as raising the H1-B cap, however the H1-B changes may come more slowly.
Now, is free trade in the labor market good for the global economy? Most economic models say yes. Is it good for the US economy? The answer is less clear, though the answer leans towards it being good for the US economy. Is it good for technology workers? Probably not, as with new competition they will have to accept lower wages.
So, don't think for a minute that there is a "labor shortage" in IT. The so-called labor shortage is just a result of normal supply and demand. Expanding the H1-B program should be viewed as what it is, and attempt to apply free trade to the IT labor market, with the result being new low-cost overseas competition for US technology jobs. Whether or not this is a good thing depends on your perspective, but adding H1-B workers is going to have a serious effect on US IT workers.
In which case, this is a good thing, as NO application should be installing things into system areas without my EXPLICIT say-so, and this is exacty what LUA was designed to prevent.
This publisher produces a collection of downloadable games that include demos. The problem this publisher is having is that downloading these demos is really installing an application, so LUA makes it a lot less convenient.
There are a few options here:
The second problem discussed is the games explorer, which really is a bigger problem. For small games, they will undoubtedly be "unrated" content, and will thus be blocked by most parents if they appear in games explorer. However, it's not clear if Microsoft will let them just install as normal applications. This is an overall games industry problem, as there is no clearinghouse to let a small game get a "yup, you're clean, E" rating for a low price from ESRB or some other ratings organization. I can't see a good fix, and I think Microsoft is responding to industry pressure on this one.
Well, typically the mechanism is that monopolies are allowed to continue to exist when they compete fairly. Sometimes economies of scale produce natural monopolies, where the most efficient form of the market is a single, large, monopoly producer. Others are not able to compete simply due to the nature of the market. Operating system software MAY even be an industry like this. The problem is that Microsoft forced their competitors out of the market with unfair business practices, and unfair business practices are what should not be tolerated.
I've known enough people in the welfare system to know that you're both right.
This mother buying her child a Genesis was better than many welfare parents in that she actually thought about her kids. I know around here, kids are often viewed as a source of income to the more lazy welfare parents, as a lot of the money dries up when the kid turns 5. Trust me, those parents aren't spending that extra income on their kids, either.
However, a parent buying their kid a brand-new video game system with the welfare check is also a sign of how broken the system is. Too many of the welfare parents I see don't know how to get out of the system, only how to work it to their advantage. If they get a job, their welfare money dries up faster than their income outpaces the additional expenses (read: childcare and healthcare.) The system doesn't teach them the skills they would need to get a GOOD job. They also make you run around to all kinds of classes and things, but none of these seem to teach the important skills of budgeting and making do on a low income. Things that the rest of us take for granted were never taught to this group. Ideas like: Run the A/C at 78, not 65; Don't buy cable if you can't afford it; Don't spend your entire income the day you get it; and, yes, buy older or used products(including video game systems) to save money; don't occur to this group. Dealing with these problems is key to getting the ones who want out of the system out.
I make a good salary, and I still take all of the above money-saving tips very seriously. I buy video game systems a generation (or two) behind. I only buy games once they've hit the greatest hits, and even then I often buy them used. I have tried to teach these kinds of things to a friend I have who is on welfare, and she always gives me the brush-off, saying that it won't make a difference. This is out of ignorance on her part, not laziness. The system needs be be redesigned to help people with this kind of ignorance get out.
On the other hand, the system also needs to be redesigned to prevent the kind of abuse where the parents *INTENTIONALLY* barely feed and clothe the kids, while spending the welfare money on their own frivolities. One way to help would be to provide less cash and more restricted coupons like food stamps, while expanding the food stamp program to cover non-food items like toilet paper and children's clothes.
Or more importantly: "If you don't vote for X, and prove it to me, I'll kill your family."
I read the article, and for the most part I think you gave reasonable answers.
For the allofmp3 question, you at least appeared not to be farmiliar with what the poster was asking, which is fair.
I think the question that really made people mad was the multi-part question, the Gray Area one. If I read it correctly, your fundamental point was: You have no established legal right to make .mp3 copies of CDs that you have legally purchased, even for personal use. I think that simple sentence was the only one that really needed to be said. I think the rest of your answer was based on that, but distracted from this fundamental point. I'm fairly confident that I knew what you were saying, and even I was a little confused. I could definitely see someone less willing to accept that uncomfortable truth having a harder time understanding that answer.
Just to clarify, did I understand you correctly on that point?
Thanks!
What takes up all the power is inefficiency in the power supply. Many consumer electronics power supplies pull about 50% of their max power when simply plugged in. The power supplies are made this way because it's cheaper and low standby power is not a major selling point.
Some specific items also waste power on things that are just plain inefficient. I believe some CRT televisions run an internal heating element when turned off.
Very helpful link.
From reading the material on derivative works, it looks like the Ninth Circuit would consider adding stickers to an existing photograph to be an inappropriate creation of a derivative work, whereas the Seventh Circuit might decide the exact opposite.
If limited to splicing of purchased VHS tapes, the two courts might each decide the case differently, making even VHS splicing a murky legal choice, at best.
I would really like to see the full text of the Judge's ruling in this case, as that is the only way to know on what grounds he made the decision. From the little bit we get from the article, he seems more likely to mimic the Ninth Circuit ruling.
What if I bought copies of your photographs, put stickers of care bears or christas ornaments onto each copy, and then sold those? What If I cut out all the animals in your photographs, and then sold those? This isn't nearly as clear-cut if the editor isn't making copies, but is instead editing copies they actually purchased. I think it's pretty clear that using photoshop to edit someone else's photographs is inappropriate, but is putting stickers on them illegal?
I think everyone agreed that DVD copying and reselling was on pretty shaky ground, as there was real copying going on. Allowing this might have the effect you imply, as it would allow derivative works of GPL programs.
However, the less shaky ground, and the part that I need access to the ruling to understand, is what about edited VHS tapes. From what I remember, one of the services would take your VHS tape, LITERALLY cut out the naughty parts, splice the remainder back together and return it to you. In that case, they are ONLY altering the physical item, and there is CLEARLY no copying going on.
Allowing physical edits should be no problem for the GPL. It does get a little murky if someone receives a tape with a GPL work on it, splices their edits into the physical tape, and then returns them to the sender, but I'm comfortable allowing that, as anything important added would probably already be a derivative work of the original, and subject to the terms of the GPL. Either way the paying user would have no right to redistribute the altered version, beyond selling the physical media.
Are we talking financial assets or copyright? Either way: My family does not have a right to indefinite income just because I did something good.
Upon your death, your spouse should receive all of your financial assets, since you are essentially partners. Once both you and your spouse have died, a "reasonable" inheritence should be available to provide for your inheritors, and any remaining *excess* financial assets should be divided between the state and your inheritors, as the state has no interest in concentrating all national wealth in a few families who produce nothing of value.
As for artistic copyright, there are two reasons why it should not be indefinite. The weaker argument is the same as the inheritance argument. The public has no interest in concentrating all knowledge and art within a few families (or businesses) who no longer produce anything of value. It's reasonable to expect your efforts to provide for your immediate family, but there is no reason to expect your grandchildren to continue to have significant income from a book you wrote 50-100 years ago, let alone even longer.
The stronger argument against artistic copyright is that knowledge and the written word are a part of our culture, and once produced, only partially belong to the original author. The framers of the constitution understood this. Copyright was a way to ensure that authors would be compensated for their labors, and as a result the public would have a rich culture and body of knowledge. However, copyright is a double-edged sword. By extending it for too long, it ceases to become an incentive to produce new works. Instead, the focus becomes on preserving the income from old works. The case in question is an excellent example. Instead of becoming an author and producing new books, Clare Milne, Disney, and the others involved are fighting over the rights to an existing work whose original author is dead. The public is worse off because they neither have access to the old work, nor do they have any new works, since the parties involved are too busy fighting over the old one.
An interesting viewpoint on your text above is that most likely an "illustrated childrens book "Pooh smokes a pack!"" would be a fair use parody even if the book isn't out of copyright. What being out of copyright would allow is for the general public to universally share and benefit from a work, and would encourage the previous copyright holders to continue to produce new works that would overall increase our literary and artistic heritage, or otherwise contribute to society as a whole. If not that, then it would at least allow new authors to expand on the existing work in new ways. Either way, once the original author has been sufficiently provided for that they are willing to produce and distribute the work in the first place, futher copyright creates no benefit for the public.