I don't even think that the NRA agrees with this broad an interpretation of the 2nd Amendment.
In general the Constitution is interpreted such that it is assumed to have no unnecessary words. IANAL though, so I might have the actual practice slightly off.
The general right to bear arms is somewhat more complex than is generally considered, *and* the most questionable laws (federal assault weapons ban) don't appear to have any court rulings surrounding them. But AFAICS (based on my reading of what I could find on Findlaw):
1) The right of the people to have a well-regulated militia is not separate from the right to bear arms.
2) A well-regulated militia would be an all-volunteer force consisting mostly of civilians.
3) Only weapons consistant with a well-regulated militia would be acceptable for the right to bear arms. the second amendment wouldn't grant a right to bear one-man-portable nuclear demolition munitions even though these could be carried by one person, for example.
4) The 2nd Amendment does not preclude specific classes of people (such as convicted felons) from being denied these rights provided that such prohibitions do not interfere with the ability to field a well-regulated militia.
5) The States are not precluded from enacting stricter laws.
Is there a part you think that is wrong with this assessment?
Thanks, AC. I'm sure you won't read this, but maybe someone else will. Well, someone else did:-)
I'm no fan of George Bush. I just don't think he's the demon everyone makes him out to be. He's just a guy trying to do a really hard job. I would not classify Bush as a demon. He has done some good stuff, some bad stuff, and some horrible stuff. But so have most Presidents. My large fear relates to the structure of the government. We are a government of Laws. not a government of Men.
I have been known to point out that, since the only other two presidents named "George" were Washington and George H. W. Bush, it is not incorrect to refer to the current president as George III.
See, I don't think the President has 'trampled all over the Constitution'. If he has broken some rule or another, then the damage has been inadvertent, collateral and temporary, not part of a key piece of some grand dictatorial design. How does your second point support the first? I would certainly think that for the Executive to argue that Habeas Corpus doesn't apply if they merely allege terrorist links to American citizens arrested here at home, that is "trampling all over the Constitution" regardless of intent. This great writ is the keystone of our liberty-- erase it at the will of the Executive and we are no longer Free, and we are no longer a government of Laws but of Men. Is there any other definition of a dictatorship?
I am willing to grant that Bush himself does not appear to be intending to set up a dictatorship for himself. If he did, I think we would have seen more aggressive attacks on checks and balances within our government such that he might have had a chance to achieve absolute power within his eight years in office. Since the attacks themselves seem unable to accomplish this within the time he *can* remain in office, absolute power is obviously not his goal.
However, I think it would be foolish to think that the Bush Administration is not pushing us in the direction of dictatorship regardless of their intentions.
Wow. THanks for the article. Quite chilling, but it also shows that there are responsible people in the current administration and in the FISA Court who are willing to help try to ensure that the rules are followed even if the Administration's commitment to the rules as a whole seems to be lacking.
Agreed. However, one of the more interesting but similar reports I heard was from Sen. Byrd's speech against the AUMF against Saddam where he said that the Bush Administration had published a memo saying "The constitution has served us well." Byrd then went on to ask if the President was talking about his health, noting the lower case c.
Freakin commies in bed with the terrorists. What do they think this country is? A Republic governed by a Constitution? If they want the rule of law they can all go to Canada.
Personally, I think that most Quantum Physics seems to conflate observation with reentanglement.
However, this hypothesis is actually partially testible because it implies that, if we can separate quantum particles without entangling them based on forcing them to choose paths based on states, that this should break the entanglement. I.e. if an entangled photon pair is forced to choose different fiberoptic paths based on differences in the refractive index of a part of the fiber optic cable, and this is dependant on the polarization of the photon, then we would expect under the Copenhagen interpretation either for the photons to take both paths, but for any entanglement to be broken (i.e. 2 entangled photons would take 4 paths, but be unentangled at the end).
If on the other hand, the photons have interndependant but definite states, we would expect them to remain entangled at the end and only take 2 paths. I suspect this is the case because we know that manipulations on one part of the entangled pair are transferred and this would only impact one side of the equation.
Is information transferrance the fundamental problem? Or is it simply the fact that we don't know how to do this without reentanglement? If we can be confident about the state of a particle at one point, does this preclude entanglement absent some other means?
I don't think it is now considered a real paradox since information still cannot be transmitted faster than light. You can never discount the question of whether we simply are approaching the problem wrong. In particular, I am not aware of any specific tests which prove that if quantum particles are selected due to certain criteria, but without other entanglements, that they lose other entanglements.
One example of such a device might be a birefringent beam splitter which would essentially have different physical transmission properties (speed of light) for different entangled photon instances depending on polarity of the photon. Hence it should be possible to alter the trajectory of the photo based entirely on non-entangling techniques. This could be used to filter out photons which didn't match certain polarization criteria without re-entangling them.
The question becomes, if you filter electrons through a birefringent crystal, do they lose their entanglements simply because their trajectory is now defined by their polarization? I don't know of any experiments which have ever tested this. It poses serious challenges to perform but these challenges are technological rather than physical. This is actually interesting because we know that refractive index present in, say, a fiberoptic tube does not cause loss of entanglement. If selective refractivity would then that would go a long way towards experimentally proving the Noncommunication Theorems.
The GP is right though. The definition of momentum implies mass. Let me see if I can explain in relativistic terms for you why he is right.
Photons do have mass when travelling at c as implied by the definition of momentum and the observation of the momentum of light. The limit of the coefficient of mass as v goes to c is infinite, according to Einstein. I.e. if you take a body with a finite mass and accellerate it to the speed of light, its mass will grow such that the mass would reach an infinite number of times the original when the speed of light would be reached. A photon which is not moving, however, if it existed, would only have an infinitessimal mass (i.e. mass approaching a limit of zero at any speed less than c).
Does this make sense? I am not a physicist though. You may see my notes questioning the Noncommunication Theorems of Quantum Mechanics elsewhere on this thread...
Photons have no standing mass. I.e. if you were to "stop" a photon, it would cease to have mass (technically, its mass would be infinitessimal).
Einsten predicted that as an object approaches the spead of light, its mass would increase to infinity.
The question is: what does 0 * infinity equal? In this case, the photon moving at the speed of light (an infinite number of times greater than its standing mass of 0) has a small, but finite mass hence the momentum, gravity lenses, etc.
It might be more appropriate to say that a photon has an infinitessimal standing mass, and a small but finite mass while moving at the speed of light.
2. Quantum instantaneousness. Two particles can be put into a quantum entanglement, such that their states depend on one another, even though they have not 'picked' a particular state yet. You can separate the two particles (even by a huge distance), collapse one particle into a state and the other particle collapses instantaneously into the corresponding state. This instantaneous effect seems to violate the light-speed rule. However because the experimenter cannot control the state which is selected upon collapse, no "information" is actually transmitted from one location to the other. I don't believe this has actually been tested. I believe there are cases where it should be theoretically possible to control the state selected upon collapse without entanglement and therefore get around the non-communication theorem. I am not a quantum physicist though. At any rate, I think my proposal deserves testing because it would either confirm or destroy certain interpretations of quantum physics:-)
The non-communication theorem seems to be predicated on the idea that we cannot select a quantum state without observation, and that observation can only occur by re-entangling quantum particles. Because re-entanglement would break the prior entanglements, this would prevent using, say, electrom spins in faster-than-light communications. However, I believe that this may be predicated on a technological rather than an essential limitation as I will explain below (and provide details of an experiment which should prove or disprove my theories). Feel free to experiment along these lines. I can always find this post if you don't give me credit;-)
In short the untested (and thought to be untestable) question is: Is the limitation one of actual shared information? Or is it one of the mechanics of quantum entanglement?
Imagine the following aparatus: pairs of photons emitted out opposite sides of an aparatus similar to the Bern fiberoptics experiments. Polarity of photons is entangled. As in Bern, we can shift that polarity and show a corresponding shift on the other side. Unlike the Bern experiments, we attach in the fiber-optic lines, small birefringent beam splitters that split the beam into different components based on polarization. All substances have refractive indexes so introducing a device which changes the refractive index for portions of the beam based on polarization components should not introduce additional quantum entanglements.
Now we should be able to test the following questions: 1) Now that we have selected streams of entangled particles without direct observation or quantum entangelment based on quantum properties, are they still entangled?
2) Can we use such a system for teleporting information across a distance connected by fiberoptic cables?
and of course the larger question: 3) Is the noncommunication theorem predicated on essental quantum limitations or is it simply a technological limitation?
It's pretty obvious that ad-blocking web sites IS akin to resource theft, regardless of how stupid blocking Firefox as a solution is. If you don't like a site's ads, don't visit the site. By whose standards is it resource theft?
If you have an image-only popup ad, does this mean that a blind user of your site is a thief and shouldn't visit your site? If you have a Flash-based ad, does this mean that I shouldn't visit your site in Lynx because I happen to be on a text-only terminal at the moment?
If I am not required to display your page in a media condusive to the ads, why is this different than filtering out the ads?
Seems like a lot of speculation to me. As for the small fraction of the internet being firefox users, I can vouch for the fact that everyone I know that use firfox do a considerable amount of shopping online, as for the IE people...most of them stick to Ebay. But that is just my personal groups. I would concur but for a different reason. I do not think that one can suggest that a work displayed with adblocker is fundamentally a different work than one displayed without, nor do I think that a case relating to TV or video ads can be generalized to cover HTML documents. IANAL, however.....
One of the key differences between television and video content and HTML is that HTML is a semantic markup tool, rather than a media which *requires* certain media choices. Although most people browse the web on web browsers that support Javascript and images, some users may use tools which do not support either of these, or support them partially. These may be dependant on media (text-only terminals, screen readers), or user choices (user doesn't trust Javascript, blocks images from specific servers, increases font sizes for extra visibility, etc), or even other reasons beyond the scope of the standards.
I do think that if a PDF reader were to filter out ads embedded in a PDF document that would be another matter, as would a web browser which filtered out *portions of* images, audio files, etc. based on whether they were advertisements or not. In both those cases, presentation is dictated in the format much more clearly than HTML.
However, with regard to HTML, extneding the idea that skipping ads was creating a new infringing work would be problematic. It would potentially ban screen readers, locking blind people out of the internet because such might skip image and flash-based advertisements automatically. It would also raise the following question:
suppose you have a television with a burned out picture tube. A company sponsors a silent, video-only ad with no audio track. Is your broken television creating a new work or just presenting an old one differently? It is, after all, skipping the ad. In short, unlike the court case cited, the original work is left intact, but is presented in a way in which some content is lost. This is very different from editing out offending portions of the content.
Just to note: IANAL. The above comment is not legal advoce. Please don';t take it as such.
However, I have a hard time imagining how a case about television ads can be generalized to cover popup ads especially when several accepted means of displaying the content may skip it.
Aside from the obvious differences between HTTP and FTP which complicate your case....
I would make the case differently as follows:
Web severs provide content in a number of formats including HTML, various image formats, and more. While image files, PDF's and other files specify in close detail the final appearance of content, HTML does not. It merely states general intents. The HTML browser is under no legal obligation to present the work using any specific method. For example, consuming the work and presenting it to the user could be done with or without graphics, printed on paged media or displayed in pageless media, or "performed" through a text-to-speech engine found on web browsers for those who either choose not to or cannot view the contents through a standard visual interface. All of these uses are accepted, standards-compliant uses of the content conforming with the content as it is distributed.
It is therefore difficult to see how changing the presentation of structured information in an HTML document amounts to creating an unauthorized derivative work. Unlike skipping ads on a television show, an HTML document does *not* specify a medium of presentation nor would one be required to present it in a medium supporting the required advertisements (images in pop-ads would be skipped by screen readers anyway-- does this mean that screen readers are contributory infringers and such sites should start suing blind visitors?).
I would however note that the content purveyors have the right to distribute the content how they see fit. It may be stupid and counterproductive to ban Firefox, but so is the Microsoft Free Fridays Apache module and nobody suggests that this cannot be installed on web servers. If figure that the trend away from requireing IE on sites offered to the public is a response to customer demand, and that fighting this demand is generally foolish anyway.
If the aim is to block technologies which skip the ads, I wonder if they choose to block lynx, audio-based web browsers, etc. and whether the sites are Section 508 complaint. Picking on Firefox will do nothing but get the sites a bad reputation.
Then let you provide a counter-example for some time I had to spend getting WIndows working. It is from the time period just before Windows 98 support finally ended at Microsoft and that timing gives you an idea of how little I actually do work with Windows.
I had a customer who was using Windows 98-based point of sale terminals. These would connect over the network to a Windows 2000 workstation to access what looked like some sort of Dbase files directly. At one point, we had to reinstall Windows 98 on one of the terminals. Simple, right?
Note that these terminals don't usually have keyboards attached to them-- everything is done through the touchscreen. Once I got it reloaded, I could not connect to the Windows 2000 system without typing in login credentials. so I called MS Tech support, paid my $35 dollars, etc. only to be told by the technical support person that getting rid of the necessity to type in the login credentials was impossible (yet everything was working properly on the other Windows 98 workstations).
After reading the Windows 98 Resource Kit several times, I discovered that there was a registry key that allowed you to bypass the credentials screen. It was hidden somewhere like HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Netowrking\Real Mode Netoworking\Autologin or something like that.
Solving that problem took me 3 days for which I had to charge my customer. I did get a refund form MS but that did not substantially reduce my bill to my customer.
Even in more mainstream cases, I watch people struggle with adware and spyware all the time, and I don't have to worry about that. Sure, sometimes I do spend some time getting things working, but that sometimes happens on Windows too. And usually when it happens, I am trying to do something new *or* I am trying to do something entirely unusual and it is not supported (how many applications don't support append-only log files?).
In cases like yours it really pays to either start hitting the mailing list or paying someone for support. All computer systems can run into problems particularly during installation and asking questions from someone who really understands how the computers work can be a godsend. Chances are that the issue you mention had its roots in BIOS or in some disconnect between the hardware and BIOS (maybe you set it to boot from a different drive than the primary master?).
People say about Windows "It just works, but when it doesn't I can call tech support.'
My opinion is that since I have left Microsoft, their tech support has gone down the tubes (as they moved it all to India), and that it doesn't just work all the time. Calling tech support usually just costs me time *and* money. But with Linux, I can understnad it and make it work always without worrying about some obscure registry key that needs to be changed for one environment or another.
Even when I get stuck, I can hire people who know more than I do to get an answer if I need it *now* or I can get free support in the mailing lists.
In short, I get better support from better people, for a product that more often just works than I ever can get from Microsoft. To give you an idea:
I tool the LPIC-2 exam when it was still in beta (and was a unified 201-202 exam). THere was no study material available except a topic outline which required that I learn how to troubleshoot the Linux boot process (at the time limited to LILO). SInce my systems never have boot problems, I was in a bind-- how to I study this while building my troubleshooting ability?
My solution (back in 2000) was to build my own live Linux CD from scratch, boot process and all (and yes, using LILO). I learned a *lot* about the boot process and three days later, passed the test.
I disagree that everything has a cost in this context. That is microsoft speaking. No, it is standard economics, and it is correct. Even if both systems were equal in cost (time and money) of acquisition, cost of installation. cost of maintenance, etc. there is still an opportunity cost associated with the choice. When you commit to a path, you make trying to follow aspects of the other path more expensive.
Most people dick around so much at their jobs day by day that any time taken to learn something new easily just eats away into this down time. If they didn't have to struggle to learn some new software they would just be on-line reading slashdot or something similar. Even if we take your argument at face value, that learning time is costing the person valuable Slashdot time:-)
The point is simple-- because you choose to do one thing, you cannot do another thing without added cost. This is opportunity cost in economics terms.
I think piracy hurts Linux in developing and home user markets because when one uses pirated software, one is not required to make the decision on whether to spend money on the software or not. Businesses hav greater liability and hence this is less of a factor.
All else being equal, people wills stick with what they know because that always costs less time.
Because I know Linux really well, I generally find that Windows costs me an inordinate amount of time and the opportunity cost is prohibitive (I can do a lot of things on Linux that I can't even dream about doing on Windows without a much larger budget than I have). So I am not going to dismiss the idea that, for Windows power user, Linux adoption takes a lot of time. The systems are different and both have learning curves attached.
This being said, I think that Linux for *average* Windows users has been ready on the business end for quite some time (since at least 2000) and for home use are getting close. There are many applications which still pose obstacles in consumer space, but these will make it soon enough.
In fact, in the business sector, Linux is a no-brainer choice. I am starting to help customers move from Microsoft Access to Once:Radix (an open source web-based program similar to Access but with a real RDBMS behind it). And many of my customers are expressing a desire to get rid of WIndows desktop systems in their places of buisness.
To get a punitive award there must be a reprehensible conduct (generally speaking). For example, acting in bad faith where they had a duty to act in the utmost good faith (i.e. uberimma fides). Acting in bad faith alone is often not sufficient for punitive damages where there is no duty to act in good faith. IANAL, and I don't know if the words "duty" and "uberimma fides" are defined as such but as a layman, I would *think* that there would be a duty to act in good faith to follow court orders.
I would further argue here that punative damages ought to be substantial in cases where they are awarded for abusing the court system to harrass defendants.
you probably want to send it to the company's attourney, registered agent, and the CEO. If they fail to respond, cc your Representative in the House, the SEC, and the IRS with a note that this calls into question their honesty and willingness to obey the law when it comes to finances.
IANAL though. If it were me, I would harrass back by informing the SEC and IRS of their willingness to pay and implying that they are not showing a willingness to obey financial regulats, so their tax and SEC filings should be suspect.
Actually, I would send such a thing certified mail and fax just because it makes one's case stronger and is cheaper than registered mail (registered mail has a chain of custody component that certified mail does not but both require signatures for delivery so you know it got there). IANAL though.
I know that is not necessary for something like this but it always helps to be able to show that the letter did get where it was supposed to go. Basically makes it a little more difficult for them to ignore.
Basically it establishes a paper trail so that if you have to take further action, you have hard evidence on your side.
There is a simple solution to this problem: punitive damages. If someone can show that there is a pattern where they are either neglecting their duties to pay damages (including attourneys fees) or outright acting in bad faith, they should be punished and *more* money should go to the person they are harrassing. Maybe 3 times more?
IANAL, so I don't know if this is provided for, and with a company the size of Capitol, it is unlikely to me that a lein against nonmonetary assets would be more than an annoyance, so the only way to rectify this is to point out to larger companies that they have responsibilities under the law to honor judgements and that failure to do so will have consequences which are not in their favor.
IANAL, again:-) However, the question of bridges between GPL and proprietary code is likely to be a more complex issue than anyone wants to admit, particularly RMS... In short, I suspect there are many cases where GPL code can be indirectly at least linked to proprietary code under standard EULAs provided that certain distribution conditions are met (i.e. a) the proprietary code is not derivative of GPL code, b) is distribute as a separate work, and c) any derivative portions are licensed under the LGPL or a similarly mutually compatible license). Examples might include the nVidia drivers for Linux and ndiswrapper.
One of the real difficulties with the GPL vs LGPL is that you can run into questions involving "what constitutes derivation?" and "what is the work as a whole?" Does linking invoke these always? If so, then ndiswrapper in that it allows linking of the Linux kernel to closed source network drivers is a clear violation of every Linux kernel developer's copyrights. Does it? And by what definition? (ndiswrapper is clearly derivative of the Linux kernel and is released under terms compatible with the GPL, and it seems to me difficult to argue that the closed source drivers it supports are either derivative of part of the same work as a whole.)
Suppose again, that you have a pre-existing proprietary system written for an entirely different environment which you create an LGPL bridge to use to link it to a GPL'd code (similar to the nVidia drivers). Clearly the proprietary system is not derivative of the free version and since nVidia distributes their drivers separately from the Linux kernel, it seems hard to make the claim that they are part of the "work as a whole."
Because these are vague questions, I have no doubt (but IANAL) that different jurisdictions will give inconsistant interpretations of the license in cases which are more borderline than these (I would argue that both the nVidia drivers and ndiswrapper are allowed by the GPL because both cases essentially allow for the porting of drivers developed for other products to this software, and since they are distributed separately, they are not by any interpretation part of the same work as a whole). I would further note that RMS has been very critical of nVidia but has stopped short of accusing them of license violations publically at least.
For example, if nVidia is allowed to distribute such closed source Linux drivers legally, does this mean that if I distribute a Linux kernel-based distro which includes these drivers, have I now violated the GPL in that the nVidia drivers are *now* part of the work as a whole? Or is this mere aggregation? Does this open up the possibility of lawsuits against some but not all Linux distributors even though nVidia, the developer, hasn't violated anyone's copyrights? I.e. can bundling of otherwise non-infringing works together in aggregate form an infringing work if they are sufficiently related to create a new "work as a whole?" Where do you draw the line between that and mere aggregation?
In short, the GPL seems to allow (and in practice almost certainly does allow) the ability to create LGPL wrappers to connect pre-existing proprietary software (which is non-derivative) with GPL'd applications provided that they are not distributed as part of the work as a whole (note that this may not apply to the question of Apple's Objective C plugins for the GCC a while back because it is unclear that these a) had such a bridge, and b) were not written originally for the GCC and hence were not derivative). Yet it is not clear what rights it gives people downstream to distribute ready-to-use systems including that software.
So I am not sure there is much proprietary code out there that could not be wrapped and connected to GPL code. I just don't think there is a way to write propreitary code initially for this purpose in a cost-effective way.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't even think that the NRA agrees with this broad an interpretation of the 2nd Amendment.
In general the Constitution is interpreted such that it is assumed to have no unnecessary words. IANAL though, so I might have the actual practice slightly off.
The general right to bear arms is somewhat more complex than is generally considered, *and* the most questionable laws (federal assault weapons ban) don't appear to have any court rulings surrounding them. But AFAICS (based on my reading of what I could find on Findlaw):
1) The right of the people to have a well-regulated militia is not separate from the right to bear arms.
2) A well-regulated militia would be an all-volunteer force consisting mostly of civilians.
3) Only weapons consistant with a well-regulated militia would be acceptable for the right to bear arms. the second amendment wouldn't grant a right to bear one-man-portable nuclear demolition munitions even though these could be carried by one person, for example.
4) The 2nd Amendment does not preclude specific classes of people (such as convicted felons) from being denied these rights provided that such prohibitions do not interfere with the ability to field a well-regulated militia.
5) The States are not precluded from enacting stricter laws.
Is there a part you think that is wrong with this assessment?
I have been known to point out that, since the only other two presidents named "George" were Washington and George H. W. Bush, it is not incorrect to refer to the current president as George III. See, I don't think the President has 'trampled all over the Constitution'. If he has broken some rule or another, then the damage has been inadvertent, collateral and temporary, not part of a key piece of some grand dictatorial design. How does your second point support the first? I would certainly think that for the Executive to argue that Habeas Corpus doesn't apply if they merely allege terrorist links to American citizens arrested here at home, that is "trampling all over the Constitution" regardless of intent. This great writ is the keystone of our liberty-- erase it at the will of the Executive and we are no longer Free, and we are no longer a government of Laws but of Men. Is there any other definition of a dictatorship?
I am willing to grant that Bush himself does not appear to be intending to set up a dictatorship for himself. If he did, I think we would have seen more aggressive attacks on checks and balances within our government such that he might have had a chance to achieve absolute power within his eight years in office. Since the attacks themselves seem unable to accomplish this within the time he *can* remain in office, absolute power is obviously not his goal.
However, I think it would be foolish to think that the Bush Administration is not pushing us in the direction of dictatorship regardless of their intentions.
Wow. THanks for the article. Quite chilling, but it also shows that there are responsible people in the current administration and in the FISA Court who are willing to help try to ensure that the rules are followed even if the Administration's commitment to the rules as a whole seems to be lacking.
Agreed. However, one of the more interesting but similar reports I heard was from Sen. Byrd's speech against the AUMF against Saddam where he said that the Bush Administration had published a memo saying "The constitution has served us well." Byrd then went on to ask if the President was talking about his health, noting the lower case c.
ANd I was going to say:
Outlook, Notes, ccMail....
Freakin commies in bed with the terrorists. What do they think this country is? A Republic governed by a Constitution? If they want the rule of law they can all go to Canada.
Personally, I think that most Quantum Physics seems to conflate observation with reentanglement.
However, this hypothesis is actually partially testible because it implies that, if we can separate quantum particles without entangling them based on forcing them to choose paths based on states, that this should break the entanglement. I.e. if an entangled photon pair is forced to choose different fiberoptic paths based on differences in the refractive index of a part of the fiber optic cable, and this is dependant on the polarization of the photon, then we would expect under the Copenhagen interpretation either for the photons to take both paths, but for any entanglement to be broken (i.e. 2 entangled photons would take 4 paths, but be unentangled at the end).
If on the other hand, the photons have interndependant but definite states, we would expect them to remain entangled at the end and only take 2 paths. I suspect this is the case because we know that manipulations on one part of the entangled pair are transferred and this would only impact one side of the equation.
Is information transferrance the fundamental problem? Or is it simply the fact that we don't know how to do this without reentanglement? If we can be confident about the state of a particle at one point, does this preclude entanglement absent some other means?
One example of such a device might be a birefringent beam splitter which would essentially have different physical transmission properties (speed of light) for different entangled photon instances depending on polarity of the photon. Hence it should be possible to alter the trajectory of the photo based entirely on non-entangling techniques. This could be used to filter out photons which didn't match certain polarization criteria without re-entangling them.
The question becomes, if you filter electrons through a birefringent crystal, do they lose their entanglements simply because their trajectory is now defined by their polarization? I don't know of any experiments which have ever tested this. It poses serious challenges to perform but these challenges are technological rather than physical. This is actually interesting because we know that refractive index present in, say, a fiberoptic tube does not cause loss of entanglement. If selective refractivity would then that would go a long way towards experimentally proving the Noncommunication Theorems.
The GP is right though. The definition of momentum implies mass. Let me see if I can explain in relativistic terms for you why he is right.
Photons do have mass when travelling at c as implied by the definition of momentum and the observation of the momentum of light. The limit of the coefficient of mass as v goes to c is infinite, according to Einstein. I.e. if you take a body with a finite mass and accellerate it to the speed of light, its mass will grow such that the mass would reach an infinite number of times the original when the speed of light would be reached. A photon which is not moving, however, if it existed, would only have an infinitessimal mass (i.e. mass approaching a limit of zero at any speed less than c).
Does this make sense? I am not a physicist though. You may see my notes questioning the Noncommunication Theorems of Quantum Mechanics elsewhere on this thread...
Photons have no standing mass. I.e. if you were to "stop" a photon, it would cease to have mass (technically, its mass would be infinitessimal).
Einsten predicted that as an object approaches the spead of light, its mass would increase to infinity.
The question is: what does 0 * infinity equal? In this case, the photon moving at the speed of light (an infinite number of times greater than its standing mass of 0) has a small, but finite mass hence the momentum, gravity lenses, etc.
It might be more appropriate to say that a photon has an infinitessimal standing mass, and a small but finite mass while moving at the speed of light.
The non-communication theorem seems to be predicated on the idea that we cannot select a quantum state without observation, and that observation can only occur by re-entangling quantum particles. Because re-entanglement would break the prior entanglements, this would prevent using, say, electrom spins in faster-than-light communications. However, I believe that this may be predicated on a technological rather than an essential limitation as I will explain below (and provide details of an experiment which should prove or disprove my theories). Feel free to experiment along these lines. I can always find this post if you don't give me credit
In short the untested (and thought to be untestable) question is: Is the limitation one of actual shared information? Or is it one of the mechanics of quantum entanglement?
Imagine the following aparatus: pairs of photons emitted out opposite sides of an aparatus similar to the Bern fiberoptics experiments. Polarity of photons is entangled. As in Bern, we can shift that polarity and show a corresponding shift on the other side. Unlike the Bern experiments, we attach in the fiber-optic lines, small birefringent beam splitters that split the beam into different components based on polarization. All substances have refractive indexes so introducing a device which changes the refractive index for portions of the beam based on polarization components should not introduce additional quantum entanglements.
Now we should be able to test the following questions:
1) Now that we have selected streams of entangled particles without direct observation or quantum entangelment based on quantum properties, are they still entangled?
2) Can we use such a system for teleporting information across a distance connected by fiberoptic cables?
and of course the larger question:
3) Is the noncommunication theorem predicated on essental quantum limitations or is it simply a technological limitation?
If you have an image-only popup ad, does this mean that a blind user of your site is a thief and shouldn't visit your site?
If you have a Flash-based ad, does this mean that I shouldn't visit your site in Lynx because I happen to be on a text-only terminal at the moment?
If I am not required to display your page in a media condusive to the ads, why is this different than filtering out the ads?
One of the key differences between television and video content and HTML is that HTML is a semantic markup tool, rather than a media which *requires* certain media choices. Although most people browse the web on web browsers that support Javascript and images, some users may use tools which do not support either of these, or support them partially. These may be dependant on media (text-only terminals, screen readers), or user choices (user doesn't trust Javascript, blocks images from specific servers, increases font sizes for extra visibility, etc), or even other reasons beyond the scope of the standards.
I do think that if a PDF reader were to filter out ads embedded in a PDF document that would be another matter, as would a web browser which filtered out *portions of* images, audio files, etc. based on whether they were advertisements or not. In both those cases, presentation is dictated in the format much more clearly than HTML.
However, with regard to HTML, extneding the idea that skipping ads was creating a new infringing work would be problematic. It would potentially ban screen readers, locking blind people out of the internet because such might skip image and flash-based advertisements automatically. It would also raise the following question:
suppose you have a television with a burned out picture tube. A company sponsors a silent, video-only ad with no audio track. Is your broken television creating a new work or just presenting an old one differently? It is, after all, skipping the ad. In short, unlike the court case cited, the original work is left intact, but is presented in a way in which some content is lost. This is very different from editing out offending portions of the content.
Just to note: IANAL. The above comment is not legal advoce. Please don';t take it as such.
However, I have a hard time imagining how a case about television ads can be generalized to cover popup ads especially when several accepted means of displaying the content may skip it.
Aside from the obvious differences between HTTP and FTP which complicate your case....
I would make the case differently as follows:
Web severs provide content in a number of formats including HTML, various image formats, and more. While image files, PDF's and other files specify in close detail the final appearance of content, HTML does not. It merely states general intents. The HTML browser is under no legal obligation to present the work using any specific method. For example, consuming the work and presenting it to the user could be done with or without graphics, printed on paged media or displayed in pageless media, or "performed" through a text-to-speech engine found on web browsers for those who either choose not to or cannot view the contents through a standard visual interface. All of these uses are accepted, standards-compliant uses of the content conforming with the content as it is distributed.
It is therefore difficult to see how changing the presentation of structured information in an HTML document amounts to creating an unauthorized derivative work. Unlike skipping ads on a television show, an HTML document does *not* specify a medium of presentation nor would one be required to present it in a medium supporting the required advertisements (images in pop-ads would be skipped by screen readers anyway-- does this mean that screen readers are contributory infringers and such sites should start suing blind visitors?).
I would however note that the content purveyors have the right to distribute the content how they see fit. It may be stupid and counterproductive to ban Firefox, but so is the Microsoft Free Fridays Apache module and nobody suggests that this cannot be installed on web servers. If figure that the trend away from requireing IE on sites offered to the public is a response to customer demand, and that fighting this demand is generally foolish anyway.
If the aim is to block technologies which skip the ads, I wonder if they choose to block lynx, audio-based web browsers, etc. and whether the sites are Section 508 complaint. Picking on Firefox will do nothing but get the sites a bad reputation.
Then let you provide a counter-example for some time I had to spend getting WIndows working. It is from the time period just before Windows 98 support finally ended at Microsoft and that timing gives you an idea of how little I actually do work with Windows.
I had a customer who was using Windows 98-based point of sale terminals. These would connect over the network to a Windows 2000 workstation to access what looked like some sort of Dbase files directly. At one point, we had to reinstall Windows 98 on one of the terminals. Simple, right?
Note that these terminals don't usually have keyboards attached to them-- everything is done through the touchscreen. Once I got it reloaded, I could not connect to the Windows 2000 system without typing in login credentials. so I called MS Tech support, paid my $35 dollars, etc. only to be told by the technical support person that getting rid of the necessity to type in the login credentials was impossible (yet everything was working properly on the other Windows 98 workstations).
After reading the Windows 98 Resource Kit several times, I discovered that there was a registry key that allowed you to bypass the credentials screen. It was hidden somewhere like HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Netowrking\Real Mode Netoworking\Autologin or something like that.
Solving that problem took me 3 days for which I had to charge my customer. I did get a refund form MS but that did not substantially reduce my bill to my customer.
Even in more mainstream cases, I watch people struggle with adware and spyware all the time, and I don't have to worry about that. Sure, sometimes I do spend some time getting things working, but that sometimes happens on Windows too. And usually when it happens, I am trying to do something new *or* I am trying to do something entirely unusual and it is not supported (how many applications don't support append-only log files?).
In cases like yours it really pays to either start hitting the mailing list or paying someone for support. All computer systems can run into problems particularly during installation and asking questions from someone who really understands how the computers work can be a godsend. Chances are that the issue you mention had its roots in BIOS or in some disconnect between the hardware and BIOS (maybe you set it to boot from a different drive than the primary master?).
People say about Windows "It just works, but when it doesn't I can call tech support.'
My opinion is that since I have left Microsoft, their tech support has gone down the tubes (as they moved it all to India), and that it doesn't just work all the time. Calling tech support usually just costs me time *and* money. But with Linux, I can understnad it and make it work always without worrying about some obscure registry key that needs to be changed for one environment or another.
Even when I get stuck, I can hire people who know more than I do to get an answer if I need it *now* or I can get free support in the mailing lists.
In short, I get better support from better people, for a product that more often just works than I ever can get from Microsoft. To give you an idea:
I tool the LPIC-2 exam when it was still in beta (and was a unified 201-202 exam). THere was no study material available except a topic outline which required that I learn how to troubleshoot the Linux boot process (at the time limited to LILO). SInce my systems never have boot problems, I was in a bind-- how to I study this while building my troubleshooting ability?
My solution (back in 2000) was to build my own live Linux CD from scratch, boot process and all (and yes, using LILO). I learned a *lot* about the boot process and three days later, passed the test.
The point is simple-- because you choose to do one thing, you cannot do another thing without added cost. This is opportunity cost in economics terms.
but not everyone sees it that way.
I think piracy hurts Linux in developing and home user markets because when one uses pirated software, one is not required to make the decision on whether to spend money on the software or not. Businesses hav greater liability and hence this is less of a factor.
All else being equal, people wills stick with what they know because that always costs less time.
Because I know Linux really well, I generally find that Windows costs me an inordinate amount of time and the opportunity cost is prohibitive (I can do a lot of things on Linux that I can't even dream about doing on Windows without a much larger budget than I have). So I am not going to dismiss the idea that, for Windows power user, Linux adoption takes a lot of time. The systems are different and both have learning curves attached.
This being said, I think that Linux for *average* Windows users has been ready on the business end for quite some time (since at least 2000) and for home use are getting close. There are many applications which still pose obstacles in consumer space, but these will make it soon enough.
In fact, in the business sector, Linux is a no-brainer choice. I am starting to help customers move from Microsoft Access to Once:Radix (an open source web-based program similar to Access but with a real RDBMS behind it). And many of my customers are expressing a desire to get rid of WIndows desktop systems in their places of buisness.
Best Wishes.
Chris Travers
I would further argue here that punative damages ought to be substantial in cases where they are awarded for abusing the court system to harrass defendants.
you probably want to send it to the company's attourney, registered agent, and the CEO. If they fail to respond, cc your Representative in the House, the SEC, and the IRS with a note that this calls into question their honesty and willingness to obey the law when it comes to finances.
IANAL though. If it were me, I would harrass back by informing the SEC and IRS of their willingness to pay and implying that they are not showing a willingness to obey financial regulats, so their tax and SEC filings should be suspect.
Actually, I would send such a thing certified mail and fax just because it makes one's case stronger and is cheaper than registered mail (registered mail has a chain of custody component that certified mail does not but both require signatures for delivery so you know it got there). IANAL though.
I know that is not necessary for something like this but it always helps to be able to show that the letter did get where it was supposed to go. Basically makes it a little more difficult for them to ignore.
Basically it establishes a paper trail so that if you have to take further action, you have hard evidence on your side.
There is a simple solution to this problem: punitive damages. If someone can show that there is a pattern where they are either neglecting their duties to pay damages (including attourneys fees) or outright acting in bad faith, they should be punished and *more* money should go to the person they are harrassing. Maybe 3 times more?
IANAL, so I don't know if this is provided for, and with a company the size of Capitol, it is unlikely to me that a lein against nonmonetary assets would be more than an annoyance, so the only way to rectify this is to point out to larger companies that they have responsibilities under the law to honor judgements and that failure to do so will have consequences which are not in their favor.
IANAL, again :-) However, the question of bridges between GPL and proprietary code is likely to be a more complex issue than anyone wants to admit, particularly RMS... In short, I suspect there are many cases where GPL code can be indirectly at least linked to proprietary code under standard EULAs provided that certain distribution conditions are met (i.e. a) the proprietary code is not derivative of GPL code, b) is distribute as a separate work, and c) any derivative portions are licensed under the LGPL or a similarly mutually compatible license). Examples might include the nVidia drivers for Linux and ndiswrapper.
One of the real difficulties with the GPL vs LGPL is that you can run into questions involving "what constitutes derivation?" and "what is the work as a whole?" Does linking invoke these always? If so, then ndiswrapper in that it allows linking of the Linux kernel to closed source network drivers is a clear violation of every Linux kernel developer's copyrights. Does it? And by what definition? (ndiswrapper is clearly derivative of the Linux kernel and is released under terms compatible with the GPL, and it seems to me difficult to argue that the closed source drivers it supports are either derivative of part of the same work as a whole.)
Suppose again, that you have a pre-existing proprietary system written for an entirely different environment which you create an LGPL bridge to use to link it to a GPL'd code (similar to the nVidia drivers). Clearly the proprietary system is not derivative of the free version and since nVidia distributes their drivers separately from the Linux kernel, it seems hard to make the claim that they are part of the "work as a whole."
Because these are vague questions, I have no doubt (but IANAL) that different jurisdictions will give inconsistant interpretations of the license in cases which are more borderline than these (I would argue that both the nVidia drivers and ndiswrapper are allowed by the GPL because both cases essentially allow for the porting of drivers developed for other products to this software, and since they are distributed separately, they are not by any interpretation part of the same work as a whole). I would further note that RMS has been very critical of nVidia but has stopped short of accusing them of license violations publically at least.
For example, if nVidia is allowed to distribute such closed source Linux drivers legally, does this mean that if I distribute a Linux kernel-based distro which includes these drivers, have I now violated the GPL in that the nVidia drivers are *now* part of the work as a whole? Or is this mere aggregation? Does this open up the possibility of lawsuits against some but not all Linux distributors even though nVidia, the developer, hasn't violated anyone's copyrights? I.e. can bundling of otherwise non-infringing works together in aggregate form an infringing work if they are sufficiently related to create a new "work as a whole?" Where do you draw the line between that and mere aggregation?
In short, the GPL seems to allow (and in practice almost certainly does allow) the ability to create LGPL wrappers to connect pre-existing proprietary software (which is non-derivative) with GPL'd applications provided that they are not distributed as part of the work as a whole (note that this may not apply to the question of Apple's Objective C plugins for the GCC a while back because it is unclear that these a) had such a bridge, and b) were not written originally for the GCC and hence were not derivative). Yet it is not clear what rights it gives people downstream to distribute ready-to-use systems including that software.
So I am not sure there is much proprietary code out there that could not be wrapped and connected to GPL code. I just don't think there is a way to write propreitary code initially for this purpose in a cost-effective way.
My point being:
How does the ability to link to old-style BSD code make the license more proprietary-friendly than the ability to link to LGPL code?
You have not answered that question.