Unfortunately, they didn't think to also drop their geographic restrictions, so this is only available to their US users. I can only presume that they got pressure from the music industry to do this, because they think they can get more out of people in their own countries. Of course, it really just means that overseas Linux users will either download the files illegally or they just won't listen to big 4 music at all.
From http://www.mass.gov/legis/laws/mgl/266-102a.5.htm > Section 102A1/2. (a) Whoever possesses, transports, uses or places or causes another to knowingly or unknowingly possess, transport, use or place > any hoax device or hoax substance with the intent to cause anxiety, unrest, fear or personal discomfort to any person or group of persons shall be > punished by imprisonment in a house of correction for not more than two and one-half years or by imprisonment in the state prison for not more than > five years or by a fine of not more than $5,000, or by both such fine and imprisonment. > > (b) For the purposes of this section, the term "hoax device" shall mean any device that would cause a person reasonably to believe that such device > is an infernal machine. For the purposes of this section, the term "infernal machine" shall mean any device for endangering life or doing unusual > damage to property, or both, by fire or explosion, whether or not contrived to ignite or explode automatically. For the purposes of this section, > the words "hoax substance" shall mean any substance that would cause a person reasonably to believe that such substance is a harmful chemical or > biological agent, a poison, a harmful radioactive substance or any other substance for causing serious bodily injury, endangering life or doing > unusual damage to property, or both.
So firstly, for it to be a 'hoax device', a person would have to 'reasonably to believe that such device is an infernal machine'. Automatically thinking any electronic device is a device for endangering life or damaging property by fire or explosion would be unreasonable, because electronic devices are so ubiquitous.
Secondly, even if the clothing is considered a hoax device under the above definition, for it to be an offence the possession has to be done "with the intent to cause anxiety, unrest, fear or personal discomfort" which wouldn't be the case if it was intended as jewelery.
I think people should look at the big picture before taking this too seriously as a security measure: Programs only run on a system if they are either started by the end-user, or started by some other code on the system which has explicitly allowed that program run. Put another way, the current first line of defense is a 'white-list' like approach where processes only run when they are allowed to run.
The problem is that there are lots of people / large software monopolists in the world who don't know how to code well, and this creates security flaws which cause this authorised code to do things on behalf of other code, including possibly executing arbitrary.
This code is then theoretically built on top of a kernel which attempts to restrict what the code can do even if it is executed (of course, often there are flaws here too, and often the exploited code is run with more privileges than it should have, so the entire system can be compromised).
Virus scanners and other security software of this kind are supposed to provide an extra, reactive layer of defense on top of the existing proactive measure for anything which slips through the cracks. Suggesting that they be turned into another white-list is therefore not a logical suggestion, and implies that they are not being entirely honest:
* They might just want to create hype to utilise unsuspecting journalists to sell more of their products for them.
* Perhaps this is part of another Digital Restrictions Management style plot to take the decisions of what runs on computers from computer owners and give it to some central pseudo-authority so they can (mis)use the power for their own purposes.
Assuming no air resistance, and treating the bus as a single point (perhaps not the most realistic assumptions, but they are probably a reasonable start):
The bus travels at 70 mph (v = 31.2928 m/s) with acceleration due to gravity equal to 9.80665 ms^-2. We assume that the other side of the jump is h metres lower than where the bus left off (to start with, lets make h = 0 m). The bus leaves at an angle of theta relative to the plane perpendicular to gravity, i.e. 0 means it leaves of completely flat. For maximum effect, let theta be 35.26 degrees.
The bus will traval v * cos(theta) * sqrt(2/g * (v * sin(theta) - h)) metres before landing. This comes out at 49.04566 m, or 160.9 feet.
This wasn't contract law, so it doesn't affect that.
They should have written their contract as an "all future earnings" clause...
This contract shall apply to the person who agrees to this contract, and where that person is an officer of a body corporate (including, without limitation, a company), it shall also apply to the body corporate and all subsidaries.
Price of these services a) In the event that the subscriber is an employee of DirecTV Inc, that person shall pay the owner of the website all current assets, and all future income as consideration for this service. b) Where this contract applies to DirecTV Inc or a subsidary, that body corporate shall pay the owner of the website all revenue. c) Where any person intentionally discloses information from this site to any other person, without the permission of the site owner, that person shall pay the owner of the website all current assets, and all future income as consideration for this service. d) In all other cases, these services shall be free.
Then, either the court rules that EULAs on websites are invalid, or DirecTV are bound by it.
Disclaimer: this is not legal advice, but rather political discussion relating to the possible consequences of laws on society.
> if a theory says A is true, find an example where A is not true. I.e., a > counter-example = proof of a negative. A counter-example disproves a positive, which is quite different from proving a negative in general.
e.g. someone claims that all apples are red. I produce a green apple. I have proven that not(all apples are red), that is there exists(apple which is not(red)). I have not proven all apples(are not(red)), which is proving a negative, because I only showed you one example.
However, you are correct that deductive techniques can prove a negative.
> Athiests dont have religious beliefs. Atheists are people who believe religiously and on faith that there is no god. That is a religious belief. > Thus people are able to critize our beliefs and we not theirs. I suspect that the atheists in the.sg authorities might prosecute those who insult atheists(as opposed to genuine evangelism). > i get this shit all the time, whenever some idiot says something ridiculous and then hides > behind religion. and then gets criticised(except in.sg) by people who don't share that belief. Whats wrong with that? > Religion gets exempted all the time for their beliefis(sic) but athiests(sic) are never > given the same benefit. Not in much of the world these days. In.nz, a couple was recently found guilty of "Failing to provide the necessities of life" after praying for one of their children and noticing an improvement(and then the child suddenly died. The prosecution made a big deal about how they prayed for the child, despite evidence that a community nurse agreed the child had improved). At the same time, homosexual couples are now allowed to get married(it may be called a civil union, but the government is just playing name games) in public because a few atheists think it is right. > Take for example Contenscious(sic) Objector status, you aren't allowed to object on a > rational framework that killing is immoral, only a deeply held religious belief. I agree that this is bad, but that is more to do with forcing people to fight a government's cruel war rather than anything to do with religion. > Other great examples are bicycle helmet exemptions for sikhs. Or multiple wife exceptions > for Muslim immigrants (in Canada). Marriage is a covenant before God, not before the state, so perhaps it would be better if the state got out of the marriage business altogether.
As for the bicycle helmet example, it is a case of the government staying out of the decision of what is more injurious to ones wellbeing(physical, spiritual). I think it is better than the government making a judgement on this. Of course, if you can present evidence to the government that bicycle helmets are injurious to you in some significant and tangible way, perhaps they will grant you an exception too. > Religious exemptions just go to show how trivial and unimportant our laws are, > basically saying if you believe in a fairy tale then you dont have to follow the law. No, they let the government avoid making judgement on the value of religious beliefs, and so allow for separation of the church and state. Religious exemptions do not generally allow one to substantially infringe on the rights of others, e.g. you don't get an exemption to anti-terror laws because you believe that carrying out 'Jihad' is the sixth pillar of your religion, and you don't get to blow cannabis smoke into peoples faces because you are a Rastafarian.
> As a Christian, I find the backlash against ID vaguely amusing. As a Christian, I don't find the fact that other Christians continue to support creationism or "ID" at all amusing. It makes those who have not yet come to Christ think that all Christians are soft in the head, and obscures the intrinsic truth of Christianity.
> What needs to be understood is the distinction between micro- and macro-evolution. The line between the two is an arbitrary one defined for human convenience. > Nearly no reasonable person would claim that selective pressure over a long period of > time can cause gradual changes to a species' DNA. I think that the scientific community at large contains many reasonable people, so that seems to contradict what you said. Of course, science isn't politics and numbers alone don't make the truth. However, the scientific community comes to its conclusions based on solid evidence.
> This is called micro-evolution, and in fact the large majority of Christians have no > problem with it. You are contradicting what you just said, but anyway, "long periods of time" on an evolutionary scale are the time frames for macroevolution. Microevolution takes a shorter amount of time.
> Also, it's the only process Darwin demonstrated did actually occur. He then generalised > this - changes between species - to species changing into completely different species, by > assuming a very long period of time for micro-evolution to occur. Biological species are defined arbitrarily as distinct groups of individuals which can interbreed. This is a single, quite arbitrary trait. However, you are right that it takes a long time for complete speciation to occur(far too long for experiments to be readily done) and so this cannot be easily tested in vivo.
> ID argues that this wouldn't be enough. Unfortunately for that hypothesis, this is an additional complication which is not required to explain the evidence, and contradicts DNA evidence. The simpler hypothesis, applying evolution at all levels, performs just as well as the far more complex one.
> The Young Universe concept is completely separate from ID and the two shouldn't be confused.
> The only point of difference between evolutionists and ID (different from creationism) is > macro-evolution. We actually don't have substantial evidence (fossil or otherwise) that > mutation ever caused inter-species changes, just the assumption that it could occur, given > that intra-species changes occur. This is completely untrue in the post-genomic era. The genomes of numerous species have been sequenced, and the relationships between the sequences can be studied. There is a high degree of synteny(conservation of genes and gene order) between the human and the mouse genomes. Since "there is more than one way to do it"(sorry for stealing your slogan, Larry), i.e. multiple ways to code for the same function, if each species was created individually, we would expect that they would have no more than 5% similarity of protein sequences, and very little synteny.
> This is the 'flaw' in evolution that IDers seek to have pointed out - macro-evolution > _isn't consistent with the scientific method_. This is utterly untrue. See above. ID is not consistent with the scientific method.
> With all the public backlash and misrepresentation of what the ID movement really stands > for, I thought it important to add a bit of reason into the mix, to give the majority of > people speaking out against ID (who don't really understand what it stands for and just > see it as a Bible-pushing fundamental Christian movement) some idea of what ID is really > all about. I would, however, agree with you that ID and creationism are not fundamentalist Christian concepts. Fundamentalism means interpreting the scriptures and ignoring the traditions.
However, the only reason that a subset of all Christians believe in creationism/ID is b
Except that no-one teaches that(and if they do, they don't understand evolution). They are the result of random variation combined with selective pressure. There is a very big difference.
And yes, it does make sense, because mathematical models show that whenever you have variation, heredity, and selective pressure, you get adaptation. There is a very strong case for the occurrence variation, heredity, and selective pressure in biological populations, and so this is sufficient to explain modern biodiversity.
You might also be interested to know that Christian theological evidence also supports evolution as the source of life on the post-fall earth. Genesis 3:17 "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and dust you will return". That sounds a lot like survival of the fittest to me.
Many people sending one message to one people != Spam
One person sending one(or more) messages to many people = Spam
Where each of a large number of people do something which is individually a lawful action when carried out in isolation, but in aggregate becomes harmful to some person, it is hard to see how that makes the actions of each individual then become illegal(unless there is a law to the contrary). For it to be vigilantism(in the common English usage of the word), each individual would have to do a reasonable harm to the spammer(e.g. chase him/her down, or send a death threat).
And of course, I copy the file onto my (hypothetical) home-made computer, which was completely made by me(lets say I even fabricated the CPU myself) and runs only on software which has been checked by me to contain no DRM code. I should then be able to play any file I have a license for, on this computer. Do you think you can make DRM work then?
The fact is, many people around the world want the right(even if they never exercise that right) to be able to run the operating system they want, even if they wrote it themselves, without it being signed off first by some big company or the government. Why should all these people be denied the right to play the content they paid to license in this situation, just so a few greedy people can make a few dollars extra?
Freedom comes first, money comes second(not that there is nothing between freedom and money on the list). Do the world a favour and never vote for anyone who disagrees.
> i.e. there is a 95% chance that the true value lies within the interval quoted
Unfortunately, statistics will never tell you such a direct answer(i.e. the probability that you are right) unless you are using a Bayesian approach(which they are not, and if they were, they would need to specify a priori assumptions and then update those by the evidence. If you don't agree with the a priori assumptions, the number is meaningless to you).
A more accurate statement of a confidence interval:
Assuming that the measurements(perhaps of the true mean value) really come from the normal distribution, and is equal to some specific value outside the interval [a,b], the probability that we would see evidence as strong as we did is less than or equal to 0.05
That is not equivalent to what you said, although what you said is a common misinterpretation of confidence intervals.
I think that this study is measuring what it says it does correctly(so isn't flawed by its own criterion), but it is measuring the wrong thing.
Think about it: they are measuring highly cited studies that get a "stronger" result than other subsequent studies. However, they simply say "stronger"(at least in the abstract). Whenever you measure something other than by a census, you take a sample. Therefore, as anyone familiar with elementary statistics should know, you have sampling variation. Researchers then usually appeal to the 'central limit theorem' to assume that the mean comes from a normal distribution, and then, knowing the distribution of the mean, make a statement like "We are 95% confident that x is between a and b". The later experiment will make a similar such claim.
Assume the experiment to measure x was performed correctly and identically both times, and there is no change in the effect with respect to time. Each time the experiment is performed, a different mean value of x will be obtained due to sampling error. Since both measurements of x come from an identically distributed population, by symmetry 50% of the time the earlier one will be "stronger" than the later one shows. However, not all highly cited studies are repeated after publication, and not all "me too" studies are published, hence the figure less than 50%.
Clearly, what they should be doing is comparing the confidence intervals, and looking for a statistically percentage of studies which do not overlap. This then would be relevant, as it would show us about non-sampling errors, rather than sampling errors, such as experiments designed or performed or interpreted incorrectly.
This is equivalent to giving in to corporate bullying. Just don't send to people who use Hotmail. After all, if they don't get your e-mail, then it is their fault for staying with hotmail.
The change seems more politically motivated than anything else(it is not that it counts as points towards a threshold as in spamassasin, it sounds like a single test for a polluted proprietary standard). If you let them win, this sort of thing will only happen more often. There is no way they can win unless enough people assume the giant can win and then give in. This applies to any company that tries to force a proprietary "standard" on others, not just Microsoft.
I think it would be fair to label all who add the SPF records as selfish, because they are feeding those who want to force proprietary standards on others, for their own gain(i.e. to get e-mail through). Those who do not add the SPF records are responsible and looking out for the community. I only hope responsibility prevails only selfishness. BTW I can assure you that spammers will just register lots of cheap domains purely for spam through a country where they can do so easily, and add the SPFs. So it is not only a proprietary standard, but also an ineffective one that will kill more signal than it kills noise.
Even the "researchers" don't claim that they can predict the lottery.
What they claim: When lots of people think the same thing it makes "random event generators" give "less random" output.
The best the could possibly find with their data(if they were statistically rigorous): There is more entropy in radio waves during significant world events. Their how it works site actually states they are measuring RF activity. Of course RF activity changes during "significant world events".
If their devices were radioactive material + Geiger counters, or even Lava-lamp images it might be a different story.
The bottleneck is probably bandwidth, not CPU. A network of drones can send traffic in the GBit/s range, and even if these packets are not replied to and the CPU and memory resources can cope, a lot of damage will still be caused.
The only way to make this work is to block traffic at a site far enough back to cope with the level of traffic(and the size of botnets will only grow, so even a reasonably large network company could be knocked out).
Try a Bayesian filter. The statistical inference scheme allows you to set probabilities(although it may be hardcoded into your software) for classifying as spam given that it really isn't(perhaps 0.001 or lower?). With a good Bayesian filter and some filter training, you can get it very accurate, and you can make it personal, so that even if your definition of spam is different from someone elses, you still get what you want and what you don't. Even mozilla/thunderbird has a bayesian filter built into it.
Once your filter works, it is simply the bandwidth cost. Unlike phones, for example, where the cost of the call is paid entirely by the calling party, and telco agreements help to defray the costs for the called party's telco to receive the call at the expense of the calling party, the cost of e-mail is shared between the sending and receiving party. While this is not so good when you are receiving something you don't want, I believe that it is worth it. By accepting the cost of receiving, you also gain freedom from regulation by governments, and to some extent freedom from commercial self-"regulation". If the Internet is too free for you, and you don't like it, can I suggest you use another, more regulated, model, like snail-mail, SMS, PTSN, or use client-pull based methods such as RDF feeds.
The good news is that if everybody just ignores spammers by the use of effective personal filters, they will go away. Spammers don't spam to annoy you, they want money. No one sees the e-mail = No money = No spam.
In my view, when there are technical solutions that will make something impossible(such as filters), heavy-handed government regulation(over and above the existing laws controlling fraud) only make the government take more and more civil liberties away. Today it might just be the spammers. Tommorrow it will be anyone who criticises a politician on the Internet. Heavy-handed government regulation and the Internet should be kept apart.
Property can, by nature, only be held by one(or a limited number) of people at one time. The more people who own it, the less its value to each individual. It has an inherent ownership. This natural ownership is merely re-inforced by the government, not created.
In the vast majority of cases(the output of secure random number generators, and passwords being a few limited exceptions), the more people who posses certain information, the greater the value of that information(or at least, the value does not deteriorate). Therefore, I do not lose if you take a copy of my work, and I might even gain, especially if you contribute back to me. Therefore, industrial "property" is not really propery at all.
IANAL, but I believe lawyers have two words, "mallus in se", and "mallus prohibitum", that address this kind of thing. Mallus in se means inherently immoral/wrong, but not necessarily illegal, and mallus prohibitum means that it is illegal, but not necessarily immoral/wrong.
Sanctions for copyright violation exist to ensure that copyright law is not ignored. This makes it "mallus prohibitum". Despite propaganda campaigns by the RIAA and MPAA to paint copyright violation as stealing(stealing is mallus in se), and the use of words like piracy(stealing ships and killing people is mallus in se) this does not change the fact that copyright violation is mallus prohibitum. If you take a theological standpoint("thou shalt not steal" != "thou shalt obey copyright laws"), or just use your innate sense of justice(copyright is only a government imposed monopoly, and you are not taking anything from anyone, except for the ability to monopolise the market), there is nothing inherently immoral about copyright violation.
However, I don't believe that laws against something which is not mallus in se are automatically bad. But where they are protecting the ability of someone to gain unjust enrichment, such as through a monopoly beyond what they paid to gain the monopoly, it would be hard to argue they are justified.
Information is free in its default state. It is only government intervention which makes it non-free.
People are prepared to support things that they want. This is not entirely selfless -- supporting things you want is the way to get more of the same. The main problem is that most of the money people pay goes to those conducting various transactions. Of the 99c that Apple charges for their music program, how much do you thing goes to the artists? There is also the hassle of paying(especially if you don't have a credit card already, in which case you have to apply and pay a CC company for the privilege), and the risk that your details will be used to conduct fraud.
I don't get paid due to a government imposed monopoly. Anyone else can apply for a job doing the same type of work as I do(if they have the correct skillset). If, due to government regulation, I was the only person in the country allowed to write software, you might have a point. But my employment is controlled by market economics.
I'm not saying that people shouldn't get paid, I am saying that the ability to repress someone else's freedom to distribute should not last after you have been paid reasonably for your creation. After that, you should still be allowed to distribute the work, but on the same terms as everybody else. The creator has been rewarded, and the price to end users of the information is controlled by market economics and will tend to the marginal cost of distribution(or less, if people are willing to distribute at a loss).
People want music to be free as in speech. I don't think that there are many people who are opposed to paying people the cost of developing some form of information + reasonable profits. The problem is that it is forced upon them. The cost, hassle, and risk of paying, and of restricting freedom afterwards, exceeds the value the creator gets.
Unlike material assets, which have value by themselves, copyright is a government imposed monopoly, created to ensure that creators of works get an incentive to create above those who merely distribute. However, now there are also too many greedy middlemen(RIAA et. al. members), and the total cost paid by the users of the information is far in excess of the costs of production, plus reasonable profit. Governments should therefore be stepping in to ensure most of the money goes to the creators, and that copyright monopoly only lasts until the creator receives the cost of production plus reasonable profit.
Theres always the ISM bands(2.4 GHz, 5GHz) for wireless. IANAL, but I believe that as long as you comply with the Telecommunications act, anyone is free to lay down their own copper, it is just so expensive to do so. The real problem is that bandwidth costs so much. To get a GBit/s connection over SCC to the states could cost 10s of millions, and you still have to pay for bandwidth at the other end.
I agree with you that some political parties have an anti-progress agenda and enough influence to inflict this on the government in exchange for other votes. For example, there are regulations on the use of sodium chloride and other materials of equivalent toxicity in chemistry labs. A certain political party once indicated it would support a ban on "dihydrogen monoxide". Furthermore, even lab-based experiments with transgenic organisms is regulated to the ground, and the cost of field trials is probably the worst in the world(I'm not opposed to government regulation of these things, but at some point there is a line beyond which any more regulation is red tape).
New Zealand still suffers from distribution of wealth problems, but not as badly as much of the rest of the world(the richest 10% owns 52% of the nett worth, according to stats.govt.nz, the most recent, 2002, study by the government on nett worth). However, the rich do not have such a big say in the politics as they do elsewhere in the world, due to the Electoral Integrity Act.
New Zealand used to have a broadcasting tax, but now funding for government sponsored television and radio programming(NZ On Air) comes directly from taxpayer money.
CNN is not losing anything from the parody, no matter how close it is to the original site(assuming it is a parody). They are merely using copyright law to suppress criticism.
The real loser here, regardless of who you support, is the general public. The rich minority controls the press, the executive and legislative governments of many countries, and they use their wealth to threaten lawsuits and suppress anything they don't like even in the absence of any legitimate case.
Blizzard is bad for appealling, but I think the judge is also partly to blame. The following logic is from the judgement...
The Court finds the EULAs and TOU are enforceable under the UCC. First, the defendants did not purchase the Blizzard software, rather they purchased a license for the software. A sale consists in the passing of title from the seller to the buyer. Mo. Rev. Stat. 400.2-106(1) (2000).
When defendants purchased the games, they bought a license to use the software, but did not buy the software. Defendants' argument parallels the "first sale doctrine," although defendants do not use this term.
Under the first sale doctrine, "a sale of a lawfully made copy terminates a copyright holder's authority to interfere with subsequent sales or distribution of that particular copy." Adobe Sys. Inc., 84 F.Supp.2d at 1089 (citations omitted). "The first sale doctrine is only triggered by an actual sale.
Accordingly, a copyright owner does not forfeit his right of distribution by entering into a licensing agreement." Id. Section 117 of the Copyright Act provides that copies of computer programs may be "leased, sold, or otherwise transferred . . . only with the authorization of the copyright owner." 17 U.S.C. 117(b).
-------------- IANAL, but the judge seems very confused here and is clearly interpreting the law in a way which those who wrote it did not intend. First of all, the first sale doctrine has never been intended to apply in the case where copyright itself is transferred. It is always where something is implicitly "licensed" by selling the medium in which it is contained. For example, if I buy I book, I am buying the paper that it is printed on, but I am also being licensed to read the text that is printed on it. There is clearly no difference whatsoever in the case of software, so the judge's distinction here is pedantic and unfair.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, they didn't think to also drop their geographic restrictions, so this is only available to their US users. I can only presume that they got pressure from the music industry to do this, because they think they can get more out of people in their own countries. Of course, it really just means that overseas Linux users will either download the files illegally or they just won't listen to big 4 music at all.
From http://www.mass.gov/legis/laws/mgl/266-102a.5.htm
> Section 102A1/2. (a) Whoever possesses, transports, uses or places or causes another to knowingly or unknowingly possess, transport, use or place
> any hoax device or hoax substance with the intent to cause anxiety, unrest, fear or personal discomfort to any person or group of persons shall be
> punished by imprisonment in a house of correction for not more than two and one-half years or by imprisonment in the state prison for not more than
> five years or by a fine of not more than $5,000, or by both such fine and imprisonment.
>
> (b) For the purposes of this section, the term "hoax device" shall mean any device that would cause a person reasonably to believe that such device
> is an infernal machine. For the purposes of this section, the term "infernal machine" shall mean any device for endangering life or doing unusual
> damage to property, or both, by fire or explosion, whether or not contrived to ignite or explode automatically. For the purposes of this section,
> the words "hoax substance" shall mean any substance that would cause a person reasonably to believe that such substance is a harmful chemical or
> biological agent, a poison, a harmful radioactive substance or any other substance for causing serious bodily injury, endangering life or doing
> unusual damage to property, or both.
So firstly, for it to be a 'hoax device', a person would have to 'reasonably to believe that such device is an infernal machine'. Automatically thinking any electronic device is a device for endangering life or damaging property by fire or explosion would be unreasonable, because electronic devices are so ubiquitous.
Secondly, even if the clothing is considered a hoax device under the above definition, for it to be an offence the possession has to be done "with the intent to cause anxiety, unrest, fear or personal discomfort" which wouldn't be the case if it was intended as jewelery.
I think people should look at the big picture before taking this too seriously as a security measure: Programs only run on a system if they are either started by the end-user, or started by some other code on the system which has explicitly allowed that program run. Put another way, the current first line of defense is a 'white-list' like approach where processes only run when they are allowed to run.
The problem is that there are lots of people / large software monopolists in the world who don't know how to code well, and this creates security flaws which cause this authorised code to do things on behalf of other code, including possibly executing arbitrary.
This code is then theoretically built on top of a kernel which attempts to restrict what the code can do even if it is executed (of course, often there are flaws here too, and often the exploited code is run with more privileges than it should have, so the entire system can be compromised).
Virus scanners and other security software of this kind are supposed to provide an extra, reactive layer of defense on top of the existing proactive measure for anything which slips through the cracks. Suggesting that they be turned into another white-list is therefore not a logical suggestion, and implies that they are not being entirely honest:
* They might just want to create hype to utilise unsuspecting journalists to sell more of their products for them.
* Perhaps this is part of another Digital Restrictions Management style plot to take the decisions of what runs on computers from computer owners and give it to some central pseudo-authority so they can (mis)use the power for their own purposes.
Assuming no air resistance, and treating the bus as a single point (perhaps not the most realistic assumptions, but they are probably a reasonable start):
The bus travels at 70 mph (v = 31.2928 m/s) with acceleration due to gravity equal to 9.80665 ms^-2. We assume that the other side of the jump is h metres lower than where the bus left off (to start with, lets make h = 0 m). The bus leaves at an angle of theta relative to the plane perpendicular to gravity, i.e. 0 means it leaves of completely flat. For maximum effect, let theta be 35.26 degrees.
The bus will traval v * cos(theta) * sqrt(2/g * (v * sin(theta) - h)) metres before landing. This comes out at 49.04566 m, or 160.9 feet.
This wasn't contract law, so it doesn't affect that.
They should have written their contract as an "all future earnings" clause...
This contract shall apply to the person who agrees to this contract, and where that person is an officer of a body corporate (including, without limitation, a company), it shall also apply to the body corporate and all subsidaries.
Price of these services
a) In the event that the subscriber is an employee of DirecTV Inc, that person shall pay the owner of the website all current assets, and all future income as consideration for this service.
b) Where this contract applies to DirecTV Inc or a subsidary, that body corporate shall pay the owner of the website all revenue.
c) Where any person intentionally discloses information from this site to any other person, without the permission of the site owner, that person shall pay the owner of the website all current assets, and all future income as consideration for this service.
d) In all other cases, these services shall be free.
Then, either the court rules that EULAs on websites are invalid, or DirecTV are bound by it.
Disclaimer: this is not legal advice, but rather political discussion relating to the possible consequences of laws on society.
> if a theory says A is true, find an example where A is not true. I.e., a
> counter-example = proof of a negative.
A counter-example disproves a positive, which is quite different from proving a negative in general.
e.g. someone claims that all apples are red.
I produce a green apple.
I have proven that not(all apples are red), that is there exists(apple which is not(red)). I have not proven all apples(are not(red)), which is proving a negative, because I only showed you one example.
However, you are correct that deductive techniques can prove a negative.
> Athiests dont have religious beliefs. .sg authorities might prosecute those who insult atheists(as opposed to genuine evangelism). .sg) by people who don't share that belief. Whats wrong with that? .nz, a couple was recently found guilty of "Failing to provide the necessities of life" after praying for one of their children and noticing an improvement(and then the child suddenly died. The prosecution made a big deal about how they prayed for the child, despite evidence that a community nurse agreed the child had improved). At the same time, homosexual couples are now allowed to get married(it may be called a civil union, but the government is just playing name games) in public because a few atheists think it is right.
Atheists are people who believe religiously and on faith that there is no god. That is a religious belief.
> Thus people are able to critize our beliefs and we not theirs.
I suspect that the atheists in the
> i get this shit all the time, whenever some idiot says something ridiculous and then hides
> behind religion.
and then gets criticised(except in
> Religion gets exempted all the time for their beliefis(sic) but athiests(sic) are never
> given the same benefit.
Not in much of the world these days. In
> Take for example Contenscious(sic) Objector status, you aren't allowed to object on a
> rational framework that killing is immoral, only a deeply held religious belief.
I agree that this is bad, but that is more to do with forcing people to fight a government's cruel war rather than anything to do with religion.
> Other great examples are bicycle helmet exemptions for sikhs. Or multiple wife exceptions
> for Muslim immigrants (in Canada).
Marriage is a covenant before God, not before the state, so perhaps it would be better if the state got out of the marriage business altogether.
As for the bicycle helmet example, it is a case of the government staying out of the decision of what is more injurious to ones wellbeing(physical, spiritual). I think it is better than the government making a judgement on this. Of course, if you can present evidence to the government that bicycle helmets are injurious to you in some significant and tangible way, perhaps they will grant you an exception too.
> Religious exemptions just go to show how trivial and unimportant our laws are,
> basically saying if you believe in a fairy tale then you dont have to follow the law.
No, they let the government avoid making judgement on the value of religious beliefs, and so allow for separation of the church and state. Religious exemptions do not generally allow one to substantially infringe on the rights of others, e.g. you don't get an exemption to anti-terror laws because you believe that carrying out 'Jihad' is the sixth pillar of your religion, and you don't get to blow cannabis smoke into peoples faces because you are a Rastafarian.
> As a Christian, I find the backlash against ID vaguely amusing.
As a Christian, I don't find the fact that other Christians continue to support creationism or "ID" at all amusing. It makes those who have not yet come to Christ think that all Christians are soft in the head, and obscures the intrinsic truth of Christianity.
> What needs to be understood is the distinction between micro- and macro-evolution.
The line between the two is an arbitrary one defined for human convenience.
> Nearly no reasonable person would claim that selective pressure over a long period of
> time can cause gradual changes to a species' DNA.
I think that the scientific community at large contains many reasonable people, so that seems to contradict what you said. Of course, science isn't politics and numbers alone don't make the truth. However, the scientific community comes to its conclusions based on solid evidence.
> This is called micro-evolution, and in fact the large majority of Christians have no
> problem with it.
You are contradicting what you just said, but anyway, "long periods of time" on an evolutionary scale are the time frames for macroevolution. Microevolution takes a shorter amount of time.
> Also, it's the only process Darwin demonstrated did actually occur. He then generalised
> this - changes between species - to species changing into completely different species, by
> assuming a very long period of time for micro-evolution to occur.
Biological species are defined arbitrarily as distinct groups of individuals which can interbreed. This is a single, quite arbitrary trait. However, you are right that it takes a long time for complete speciation to occur(far too long for experiments to be readily done) and so this cannot be easily tested in vivo.
> ID argues that this wouldn't be enough.
Unfortunately for that hypothesis, this is an additional complication which is not required to explain the evidence, and contradicts DNA evidence. The simpler hypothesis, applying evolution at all levels, performs just as well as the far more complex one.
> The Young Universe concept is completely separate from ID and the two shouldn't be confused.
> The only point of difference between evolutionists and ID (different from creationism) is
> macro-evolution. We actually don't have substantial evidence (fossil or otherwise) that
> mutation ever caused inter-species changes, just the assumption that it could occur, given
> that intra-species changes occur.
This is completely untrue in the post-genomic era. The genomes of numerous species have been sequenced, and the relationships between the sequences can be studied. There is a high degree of synteny(conservation of genes and gene order) between the human and the mouse genomes. Since "there is more than one way to do it"(sorry for stealing your slogan, Larry), i.e. multiple ways to code for the same function, if each species was created individually, we would expect that they would have no more than 5% similarity of protein sequences, and very little synteny.
> This is the 'flaw' in evolution that IDers seek to have pointed out - macro-evolution
> _isn't consistent with the scientific method_.
This is utterly untrue. See above. ID is not consistent with the scientific method.
> With all the public backlash and misrepresentation of what the ID movement really stands
> for, I thought it important to add a bit of reason into the mix, to give the majority of
> people speaking out against ID (who don't really understand what it stands for and just
> see it as a Bible-pushing fundamental Christian movement) some idea of what ID is really
> all about.
I would, however, agree with you that ID and creationism are not fundamentalist Christian concepts. Fundamentalism means interpreting the scriptures and ignoring the traditions.
However, the only reason that a subset of all Christians believe in creationism/ID is b
Except that no-one teaches that(and if they do, they don't understand evolution). They are the result of random variation combined with selective pressure. There is a very big difference.
And yes, it does make sense, because mathematical models show that whenever you have variation, heredity, and selective pressure, you get adaptation. There is a very strong case for the occurrence variation, heredity, and selective pressure in biological populations, and so this is sufficient to explain modern biodiversity.
You might also be interested to know that Christian theological evidence also supports evolution as the source of life on the post-fall earth. Genesis 3:17 "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and dust you will return". That sounds a lot like survival of the fittest to me.
Many people sending one message to one people != Spam
One person sending one(or more) messages to many people = Spam
Where each of a large number of people do something which is individually a lawful action when carried out in isolation, but in aggregate becomes harmful to some person, it is hard to see how that makes the actions of each individual then become illegal(unless there is a law to the contrary). For it to be vigilantism(in the common English usage of the word), each individual would have to do a reasonable harm to the spammer(e.g. chase him/her down, or send a death threat).
And of course, I copy the file onto my (hypothetical) home-made computer, which was completely made by me(lets say I even fabricated the CPU myself) and runs only on software which has been checked by me to contain no DRM code. I should then be able to play any file I have a license for, on this computer. Do you think you can make DRM work then?
The fact is, many people around the world want the right(even if they never exercise that right) to be able to run the operating system they want, even if they wrote it themselves, without it being signed off first by some big company or the government. Why should all these people be denied the right to play the content they paid to license in this situation, just so a few greedy people can make a few dollars extra?
Freedom comes first, money comes second(not that there is nothing between freedom and money on the list). Do the world a favour and never vote for anyone who disagrees.
> i.e. there is a 95% chance that the true value lies within the interval quoted
Unfortunately, statistics will never tell you such a direct answer(i.e. the probability that you are right) unless you are using a Bayesian approach(which they are not, and if they were, they would need to specify a priori assumptions and then update those by the evidence. If you don't agree with the a priori assumptions, the number is meaningless to you).
A more accurate statement of a confidence interval:
Assuming that the measurements(perhaps of the true mean value) really come from the normal distribution, and is equal to some specific value outside the interval [a,b], the probability that we would see evidence as strong as we did is less than or equal to 0.05
That is not equivalent to what you said, although what you said is a common misinterpretation of confidence intervals.
I think that this study is measuring what it says it does correctly(so isn't flawed by its own criterion), but it is measuring the wrong thing.
Think about it: they are measuring highly cited studies that get a "stronger" result than other subsequent studies. However, they simply say "stronger"(at least in the abstract). Whenever you measure something other than by a census, you take a sample. Therefore, as anyone familiar with elementary statistics should know, you have sampling variation. Researchers then usually appeal to the 'central limit theorem' to assume that the mean comes from a normal distribution, and then, knowing the distribution of the mean, make a statement like "We are 95% confident that x is between a and b". The later experiment will make a similar such claim.
Assume the experiment to measure x was performed correctly and identically both times, and there is no change in the effect with respect to time. Each time the experiment is performed, a different mean value of x will be obtained due to sampling error. Since both measurements of x come from an identically distributed population, by symmetry 50% of the time the earlier one will be "stronger" than the later one shows. However, not all highly cited studies are repeated after publication, and not all "me too" studies are published, hence the figure less than 50%.
Clearly, what they should be doing is comparing the confidence intervals, and looking for a statistically percentage of studies which do not overlap. This then would be relevant, as it would show us about non-sampling errors, rather than sampling errors, such as experiments designed or performed or interpreted incorrectly.
This is equivalent to giving in to corporate bullying. Just don't send to people who use Hotmail. After all, if they don't get your e-mail, then it is their fault for staying with hotmail.
The change seems more politically motivated than anything else(it is not that it counts as points towards a threshold as in spamassasin, it sounds like a single test for a polluted proprietary standard). If you let them win, this sort of thing will only happen more often. There is no way they can win unless enough people assume the giant can win and then give in. This applies to any company that tries to force a proprietary "standard" on others, not just Microsoft.
I think it would be fair to label all who add the SPF records as selfish, because they are feeding those who want to force proprietary standards on others, for their own gain(i.e. to get e-mail through). Those who do not add the SPF records are responsible and looking out for the community. I only hope responsibility prevails only selfishness. BTW I can assure you that spammers will just register lots of cheap domains purely for spam through a country where they can do so easily, and add the SPFs. So it is not only a proprietary standard, but also an ineffective one that will kill more signal than it kills noise.
Even the "researchers" don't claim that they can predict the lottery.
What they claim: When lots of people think the same thing it makes "random event generators" give "less random" output.
The best the could possibly find with their data(if they were statistically rigorous): There is more entropy in radio waves during significant world events. Their
how it works site actually states they are measuring RF activity. Of course RF activity changes during "significant world events".
If their devices were radioactive material + Geiger counters, or even Lava-lamp images it might be a different story.
The bottleneck is probably bandwidth, not CPU. A network of drones can send traffic in the GBit/s range, and even if these packets are not replied to and the CPU and memory resources can cope, a lot of damage will still be caused.
The only way to make this work is to block traffic at a site far enough back to cope with the level of traffic(and the size of botnets will only grow, so even a reasonably large network company could be knocked out).
Try a Bayesian filter. The statistical inference scheme allows you to set probabilities(although it may be hardcoded into your software) for classifying as spam given that it really isn't(perhaps 0.001 or lower?). With a good Bayesian filter and some filter training, you can get it very accurate, and you can make it personal, so that even if your definition of spam is different from someone elses, you still get what you want and what you don't. Even mozilla/thunderbird has a bayesian filter built into it.
Once your filter works, it is simply the bandwidth cost. Unlike phones, for example, where the cost of the call is paid entirely by the calling party, and telco agreements help to defray the costs for the called party's telco to receive the call at the expense of the calling party, the cost of e-mail is shared between the sending and receiving party. While this is not so good when you are receiving something you don't want, I believe that it is worth it. By accepting the cost of receiving, you also gain freedom from regulation by governments, and to some extent freedom from commercial self-"regulation". If the Internet is too free for you, and you don't like it, can I suggest you use another, more regulated, model, like snail-mail, SMS, PTSN, or use client-pull based methods such as RDF feeds.
The good news is that if everybody just ignores spammers by the use of effective personal filters, they will go away. Spammers don't spam to annoy you, they want money. No one sees the e-mail = No money = No spam.
In my view, when there are technical solutions that will make something impossible(such as filters), heavy-handed government regulation(over and above the existing laws controlling fraud) only make the government take more and more civil liberties away. Today it might just be the spammers. Tommorrow it will be anyone who criticises a politician on the Internet. Heavy-handed government regulation and the Internet should be kept apart.
Property can, by nature, only be held by one(or a limited number) of people at one time. The more people who own it, the less its value to each individual. It has an inherent ownership. This natural ownership is merely re-inforced by the government, not created.
In the vast majority of cases(the output of secure random number generators, and passwords being a few limited exceptions), the more people who posses certain information, the greater the value of that information(or at least, the value does not deteriorate). Therefore, I do not lose if you take a copy of my work, and I might even gain, especially if you contribute back to me. Therefore, industrial "property" is not really propery at all.
IANAL, but I believe lawyers have two words, "mallus in se", and "mallus prohibitum", that address this kind of thing. Mallus in se means inherently immoral/wrong, but not necessarily illegal, and mallus prohibitum means that it is illegal, but not necessarily immoral/wrong.
Sanctions for copyright violation exist to ensure that copyright law is not ignored. This makes it "mallus prohibitum". Despite propaganda campaigns by the RIAA and MPAA to paint copyright violation as stealing(stealing is mallus in se), and the use of words like piracy(stealing ships and killing people is mallus in se) this does not change the fact that copyright violation is mallus prohibitum. If you take a theological standpoint("thou shalt not steal" != "thou shalt obey copyright laws"), or just use your innate sense of justice(copyright is only a government imposed monopoly, and you are not taking anything from anyone, except for the ability to monopolise the market), there is nothing inherently immoral about copyright violation.
However, I don't believe that laws against something which is not mallus in se are automatically bad. But where they are protecting the ability of someone to gain unjust enrichment, such as through a monopoly beyond what they paid to gain the monopoly, it would be hard to argue they are justified.
Information is free in its default state. It is only government intervention which makes it non-free.
People are prepared to support things that they want. This is not entirely selfless -- supporting things you want is the way to get more of the same. The main problem is that most of the money people pay goes to those conducting various transactions. Of the 99c that Apple charges for their music program, how much do you thing goes to the artists? There is also the hassle of paying(especially if you don't have a credit card already, in which case you have to apply and pay a CC company for the privilege), and the risk that your details will be used to conduct fraud.
I don't get paid due to a government imposed monopoly. Anyone else can apply for a job doing the same type of work as I do(if they have the correct skillset). If, due to government regulation, I was the only person in the country allowed to write software, you might have a point. But my employment is controlled by market economics.
I'm not saying that people shouldn't get paid, I am saying that the ability to repress someone else's freedom to distribute should not last after you have been paid reasonably for your creation. After that, you should still be allowed to distribute the work, but on the same terms as everybody else. The creator has been rewarded, and the price to end users of the information is controlled by market economics and will tend to the marginal cost of distribution(or less, if people are willing to distribute at a loss).
People want music to be free as in speech. I don't think that there are many people who are opposed to paying people the cost of developing some form of information + reasonable profits. The problem is that it is forced upon them. The cost, hassle, and risk of paying, and of restricting freedom afterwards, exceeds the value the creator gets.
Unlike material assets, which have value by themselves, copyright is a government imposed monopoly, created to ensure that creators of works get an incentive to create above those who merely distribute. However, now there are also too many greedy middlemen(RIAA et. al. members), and the total cost paid by the users of the information is far in excess of the costs of production, plus reasonable profit. Governments should therefore be stepping in to ensure most of the money goes to the creators, and that copyright monopoly only lasts until the creator receives the cost of production plus reasonable profit.
Theres always the ISM bands(2.4 GHz, 5GHz) for wireless. IANAL, but I believe that as long as you comply with the Telecommunications act, anyone is free to lay down their own copper, it is just so expensive to do so. The real problem is that bandwidth costs so much. To get a GBit/s connection over SCC to the states could cost 10s of millions, and you still have to pay for bandwidth at the other end.
I agree with you that some political parties have an anti-progress agenda and enough influence to inflict this on the government in exchange for other votes. For example, there are regulations on the use of sodium chloride and other materials of equivalent toxicity in chemistry labs. A certain political party once indicated it would support a ban on "dihydrogen monoxide". Furthermore, even lab-based experiments with transgenic organisms is regulated to the ground, and the cost of field trials is probably the worst in the world(I'm not opposed to government regulation of these things, but at some point there is a line beyond which any more regulation is red tape).
New Zealand still suffers from distribution of wealth problems, but not as badly as much of the rest of the world(the richest 10% owns 52% of the nett worth, according to stats.govt.nz, the most recent, 2002, study by the government on nett worth). However, the rich do not have such a big say in the politics as they do elsewhere in the world, due to the Electoral Integrity Act.
New Zealand used to have a broadcasting tax, but now funding for government sponsored television and radio programming(NZ On Air) comes directly from taxpayer money.
CNN is not losing anything from the parody, no matter how close it is to the original site(assuming it is a parody). They are merely using copyright law to suppress criticism.
The real loser here, regardless of who you support, is the general public. The rich minority controls the press, the executive and legislative governments of many countries, and they use their wealth to threaten lawsuits and suppress anything they don't like even in the absence of any legitimate case.
Blizzard is bad for appealling, but I think the judge is also partly to blame. The following logic is from the judgement...
The Court finds the EULAs and TOU are enforceable under the UCC. First, the defendants did not purchase the Blizzard software, rather they purchased a license for the software. A sale
consists in the passing of title from the seller to the buyer. Mo. Rev. Stat. 400.2-106(1) (2000).
When defendants purchased the games, they bought a license to use the software, but did not buy the
software. Defendants' argument parallels the "first sale doctrine," although defendants do not use this term.
Under the first sale doctrine, "a sale of a lawfully made copy terminates a copyright holder's authority to interfere with subsequent sales or distribution of that particular copy." Adobe Sys. Inc., 84 F.Supp.2d at 1089 (citations omitted). "The first sale doctrine is only triggered by an actual sale.
Accordingly, a copyright owner does not forfeit his right of distribution by entering into a licensing agreement." Id. Section 117 of the Copyright Act provides that copies of computer programs may be "leased, sold, or otherwise transferred . . . only with the authorization of the copyright owner." 17 U.S.C. 117(b).
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IANAL, but the judge seems very confused here and is clearly interpreting the law in a way which those who wrote it did not intend. First of all, the first sale doctrine has never been intended to apply in the case where copyright itself is transferred. It is always where something is implicitly "licensed" by selling the medium in which it is contained. For example, if I buy I book, I am buying the paper that it is printed on, but I am also being licensed to read the text that is printed on it. There is clearly no difference whatsoever in the case of software, so the judge's distinction here is pedantic and unfair.