It's exactly like sending a postcard in that anyone who picks it up (ie whose server forwards it) can read it. It's just text. Servers can and do routinely keep stuff around, whether in the cache, hard drive or ram. The court realized this and ruled that the ISP is a "mere custod[ian]" of the data. In other words, that data is yours and they only possess it to enable the system to work. The government cannot simply take an action because it is technically simple, it is (and should be) required to consider whether each action is ethical (and/or Constitutional). This is a fantastic ruling on that front.
And yes, if reading email is found to be illegal, then the law will simply be changed to make it legal. Ok, I'll be waiting for that Constitutional amendment to go through. Unless this ruling is overturned (which is possible), that's what would be required.
You're making it harder than it needs to be. The idea with that sort of parallel universe is that it's something our universe doesn't normally interact with, but is part of the same physics and thermodynamic accounting. Since the universes don't interact other than inside black holes, we normally consider energy, entropy, etc, to be conserved purely within our own observable universe. Inside the black holes, the idea goes, energy/information/entropy can be exchanged between the universes. Once that interaction takes place, each individual universe no longer needs to conserve these thermodynamic quantities, but anything "missing" from one must appear in the other.
Basically, in this view, thermodynamics is still right. Information/entropy is conserved. However, what we think of as the universe is not the whole system, so it can appear that it's leaving our universe by going to a mostly disconnected other universe.
Anyway, there are lots of ideas about this sort of thing with all sorts of wrinkles. They're all pretty distasteful scientifically unless we find a way to probe these other universes. From reading the article (but not the whole paper), this approach would be much more satisfying if it stands up, since it might be testable given our current physics. Not testable by waiting for infinity, of course, but since it doesn't rely on some unknown physics connecting us to the alternate universe, we can work out its predictions using what we know already. That may suggest experiments to be done in finite time that would test the theory.
Well, given that probabilities can't exceed 1, I think it's safe to assume I'm referring to the reciprocal of an astronomically large number. Think of it like the astronomical(ly small) gas pressure in intergalactic space.
Yeah, but compare the lifetime of a patent to a product lifecycle. Yeah, those patents will expire, but by then it's quite likely the whole technology will be obsolete. This is a major problem (even more so for software).
Calls from girls? You're mistaking us for people who actually know how to talk to girls! No, parent was right. In the unlikely event that one of these things they call "girls" *does* call, it is absolutely vital that the call get through. The odds of it happening twice in a lifetime are so astronomical as to be the stuff of fiction.
Effort doesn't need to be extraordinarily sophisticated to qualify as extraordinary effort. You don't often *accidentally* read someone else's email in the process of ordinary use of the internet. You have to make a special effort to do so. Consider the parent's physical example -- steaming open an envelope. This requires a bit of care and physical access, yet few would consider it exceptionally difficult. Still, we consider the envelope and mail process to provide sufficient security to give us the expectation that it will not be intercepted by otherwise well-intentioned bystanders. That's really the test that ought to be used in this case. Yes, the police COULD make a concerted effort using only moderate technical sophistication to intercept your email, but that's not the point. The point is they are bound by the Constitution NOT to make that effort without court order.
If we lived in a world where making a flawless duplication of content was expensive and technically difficult, then business models built on profit from the scarcity of copies of that content would be feasible. We don't. Digital copies are fundamentally flawless and easy to make. In the interests of technical progress, those business models simply have to change. The "pirates" will win the cat and mouse game. The only alternative is draconian, unjust laws that would lock us out of using technology to its full potential for "legitimate" uses. I've yet to see an even plausibly effective anti-piracy measure that doesn't stomp on a wide variety of non-infringing uses.
You've gotta watch out for static charges, too. You can blow electrons all over your nice ICs and then zap the hell out of them when you touch 'em and provide a ground path. You can get a deionizing mechanism for your compressor nozzle that will prevent this, as I recall.
There's nothing preventing the maintainers from suspending an account immediately, pending a fair evaluation and possible reinstatement. The options are not simply "do nothing" or "can the account instantly." Like it or not, MMORPGs (or whatever the currently preferred abbreviation is this week) have created worlds that contain items with real-world value. This quite probably creates responsibilities for the maintainers that they can't just opt out of. Obviously, the legal landscape will take time to develop, but there is plenty of precedent for that sort of responsibility. For example, if you construct a playground in your back yard, you are responsible for taking prudent and sufficient steps to prevent people from harming themselves on it. Even though it's on your private property, the mere fact that you have it gives you a potentially expensive responsibility.
Second Life in particular seems to be set up with the idea of permitting value for its items (tho i've never played, just going from comments here). IMO that'll make them especially culpable for maintaining an equitable system to prevent users value from just vanishing. It doesn't mean they can't shut down or go out of business, merely that they can't do so arbitrarily and they may have restrictions on how they can make that decision and what kind of notification they have to provide.
Anyway, IANAL and none of the above is set yet, but that's my opinion of how things will play out based on a very crude knowledge of laws and a bit of logic....
Freedom is freedom. You can't say "oh, well, this is good freedom, so it's all right. That's bad freedom, so we don't like that." If you want real freedom, you have to give freedom, not select uses that are "good freedom." If you want people to do something different, convince them not to. Or convince everyone else to ignore them or force their hand. Taking that freedom away is a horribly inept way to deal with it. That's just silly. Do you really think folks want "freedom to steal" and "freedom to murder" just because they want real freedom? People who actually want complete, absolute freedom are rare, and that anarchistic view is so harmful to social order that it's just not a very good argument against the GPL. "Your right to swing your arm ends where my nose begins," and all that business...
The FSF's view is that locking software away to prevent users from modifying it is a harmful, unethical practice. They, and everyone who uses the GPL, believe it is better not to help people who want to lock their code away. The idea is to encourage more people to contribute to the library of free software by enticing them with the right to reuse some GPL code. This goal is more important than preserving the ethically questionable "freedom" to use software in a way that's harmful.
No, it's not a precise mathematical circle. Compared to the more elliptical orbits of the other planets, it's relatively circular by comparison. You'd only be off by a percent or so in the worst case if you just approximated it with a mathematically perfect circle.
If you want to practice proper pedantry, none of these orbits are elliptical either. If you're not willing to accept approximation, they're all N-body dynamical orbits with N = the number of objects in the universe. Since N = 3 is already analytically insoluble, good luck...
Others have said it, probably better, but the GPL is not really aligned with either socialism or capitalism, merely with the idea that software (and perhaps more generally information, but it only deals with software) should not have artificial restrictions placed on its duplication. This embraces aspects of socialism ("share the wealth") and capitalism (only scarce commodities have value, and information by its nature is not scarce). You can argue about whether it's beneficial to an economy to enforce artificial scarcity through patents and copyrights, but that's really not a question of capitalism vs socialism.
Now, many people argue that the FSF is hypocritical because in a very real sense, GPLed software is less free than, say, Berkeley or MIT Licensed software. However, IMO this is consistent with their aim not merely to create free software, but to rid the world of non-free software. Basically, you can embrace their view that software should be free (as in freedom) and reap the benefits of their efforts. If they did not choose a license that required you to join the movement by making your derived software free, then they'd merely be aiding those who use their software and give nothing back to the community.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. As a proprietary developer, you lose nothing due to the existence of GPLed software. You're not free to use that code in your product, but in your view you had no right to expect anyone to license you software that would do what you needed anyway. I frankly don't understand the argument that the GPL somehow takes something away from would-be proprietary developers. Sure, it's harder to sell your program when someone can download a GPL competitor for free (neglecting support costs), but hey... that's capitalism at its finest. If someone is willing to sell for $0, only a broken market would allow you to sell at >$0.
I dunno, non-rectangular buildings are rare. Given the high profile nature of this one, and the fact that its shape became its name, the fact that it has a really mundane reason behind its unique design is interesting to me. You can imagine all sorts of strategic or philosophical reasons why they might have singled out a pentagonal ring shape for the building. But, it's none of those... it's just a quirk of history, and the explanation of that quirk was newsworthy to me. It's also interesting as a window into bureaucratic decision making.
I was being a little silly there, but after staring at screens all day, my brain gets really tired and reading printed words is a relaxing change. Also, the distraction of all the other things that the internet offers is removed by not being right there.
In addition to that sort of reason, I simply enjoy having time to read the newspaper while not rotting my brain on the internet. I spend too much time in front of a terminal or laptop as it is. Having the paper in the living room is better for a break. Plus, having it arrive on my doorstep gives me an incentive to look through it, even sections I may not really be interested in. When I had no newspaper subscription, I tended not to read as regularly or thoroughly. Finally, my baby son really likes the noise it makes when he rustles and tears the pages and shakes them around, and that alone is worth the buck a day or whatever it is...
It's not as bad as you make out...
What used to take 20 cycles now takes 4000 cycles, but those 4000 cycles happen in the same time as the 20 cycles. It's more like 20 old cycles now take 400 new cycles, but those 400 new cycles happen in the same time as 5 old cycles, so there's still a substantial performance improvement. This gives the best of both worlds -- a real world improvement in performance and a faster development cycle (less time spent on optimization).
Same with my samsung something or other. Except instead of a beep, its a sort of tricorder sound every 30 seconds. It'd actually be a great voice/txt msg alert because it grabs your attention without being too intrusive/unpleasant. That is, until it's repeated every 30 seconds for an hour. Then it begins to destroy your sanity. Of course, there's no option to change / disable (even when on mute), and the sound is not available for other uses.
The phone also ignores the mute setting for your alarms. That'd be a fine _option_, but 90% of the time, when I say mute, I really mean MUTE and don't want anything louder than the vibrate under any circumstances... oh well. It's still a huge step up from my previous Sony-Ericsson pos phone...
Did you understand what he was saying? Looks like it. Even if he had a usage error, he got an interesting point across. All I can get from your message is you're a dick.
Plus, you're wrong. Between is perfectly acceptable as he used it, and actually preferable to among.
It does read that way, doesn't it? My post was contradictory but I don't think my actual thoughts were quite so bad... What I really meant is that while a struggling musician is a better spokesperson than a former star, they still can't make a very good argument in favor of this move. Hence, the apparent contradiction.
Sure, I have no problem with a performer getting paid the market rate. I have no problem with musicians or athletes making a huge amount of money. Maybe it's unfortunate that our society rewards those things over more "productive" pursuits, but that's a really complicated question. Regardless, given that the market is there, let the money go to the stars who do the production. However, once people aren't interested in seeing you perform (which is mostly true of the Supremes), don't expect any sympathy from me. You already made more money than 99% of the people out there, let alone the other musicians.
And none of this has anything to do with making money from old recordings. If anything, I think that an old musician complaining about the revenue being cut off because they haven't produced anything new in a while is a great argument that limited copyrights do a better job at encouraging creative output. Society is better served by the musicians who continue to create new works than by those who want to kick back and rake it in from their 30 year old creations.
The struggling musician is, in general, a better spokesperson for increasing music royalties, but it's kind of ridiculous to think this sort of fee structure will really trickle that far down the food chain. The starving musician starves because his music isn't getting to a wide audience, so until he's already hit it big under the current fee structure, he's not going to see a dime of these radio royalties.
Seriously... excuse me if I have no sympathy for someone who has an extremely lucrative career for a few years, spends their millions, and doesn't know where to turn for more... I seem to recall a story about a cricket and an ant...
Right, it's not like they're continuing to provide a service, pay their power bills, employ staff to keep the transmitters working, etc. They're just collecting a paycheck by trampling on her rights. Those millions she already made were not nearly enough compensation for those few hours of music she put on records. Why should she have to continue to be productive to put food on the table? Why can't she just sit and reap the rewards of her creativity the same way the rest of us do?
Slashdot Mirror
You're making it harder than it needs to be. The idea with that sort of parallel universe is that it's something our universe doesn't normally interact with, but is part of the same physics and thermodynamic accounting. Since the universes don't interact other than inside black holes, we normally consider energy, entropy, etc, to be conserved purely within our own observable universe. Inside the black holes, the idea goes, energy/information/entropy can be exchanged between the universes. Once that interaction takes place, each individual universe no longer needs to conserve these thermodynamic quantities, but anything "missing" from one must appear in the other.
Basically, in this view, thermodynamics is still right. Information/entropy is conserved. However, what we think of as the universe is not the whole system, so it can appear that it's leaving our universe by going to a mostly disconnected other universe.
Anyway, there are lots of ideas about this sort of thing with all sorts of wrinkles. They're all pretty distasteful scientifically unless we find a way to probe these other universes. From reading the article (but not the whole paper), this approach would be much more satisfying if it stands up, since it might be testable given our current physics. Not testable by waiting for infinity, of course, but since it doesn't rely on some unknown physics connecting us to the alternate universe, we can work out its predictions using what we know already. That may suggest experiments to be done in finite time that would test the theory.
Well, given that probabilities can't exceed 1, I think it's safe to assume I'm referring to the reciprocal of an astronomically large number. Think of it like the astronomical(ly small) gas pressure in intergalactic space.
Yeah, but compare the lifetime of a patent to a product lifecycle. Yeah, those patents will expire, but by then it's quite likely the whole technology will be obsolete. This is a major problem (even more so for software).
Effort doesn't need to be extraordinarily sophisticated to qualify as extraordinary effort. You don't often *accidentally* read someone else's email in the process of ordinary use of the internet. You have to make a special effort to do so. Consider the parent's physical example -- steaming open an envelope. This requires a bit of care and physical access, yet few would consider it exceptionally difficult. Still, we consider the envelope and mail process to provide sufficient security to give us the expectation that it will not be intercepted by otherwise well-intentioned bystanders. That's really the test that ought to be used in this case. Yes, the police COULD make a concerted effort using only moderate technical sophistication to intercept your email, but that's not the point. The point is they are bound by the Constitution NOT to make that effort without court order.
If we lived in a world where making a flawless duplication of content was expensive and technically difficult, then business models built on profit from the scarcity of copies of that content would be feasible. We don't. Digital copies are fundamentally flawless and easy to make. In the interests of technical progress, those business models simply have to change. The "pirates" will win the cat and mouse game. The only alternative is draconian, unjust laws that would lock us out of using technology to its full potential for "legitimate" uses. I've yet to see an even plausibly effective anti-piracy measure that doesn't stomp on a wide variety of non-infringing uses.
You've gotta watch out for static charges, too. You can blow electrons all over your nice ICs and then zap the hell out of them when you touch 'em and provide a ground path. You can get a deionizing mechanism for your compressor nozzle that will prevent this, as I recall.
There's nothing preventing the maintainers from suspending an account immediately, pending a fair evaluation and possible reinstatement. The options are not simply "do nothing" or "can the account instantly." Like it or not, MMORPGs (or whatever the currently preferred abbreviation is this week) have created worlds that contain items with real-world value. This quite probably creates responsibilities for the maintainers that they can't just opt out of. Obviously, the legal landscape will take time to develop, but there is plenty of precedent for that sort of responsibility. For example, if you construct a playground in your back yard, you are responsible for taking prudent and sufficient steps to prevent people from harming themselves on it. Even though it's on your private property, the mere fact that you have it gives you a potentially expensive responsibility.
Second Life in particular seems to be set up with the idea of permitting value for its items (tho i've never played, just going from comments here). IMO that'll make them especially culpable for maintaining an equitable system to prevent users value from just vanishing. It doesn't mean they can't shut down or go out of business, merely that they can't do so arbitrarily and they may have restrictions on how they can make that decision and what kind of notification they have to provide.
Anyway, IANAL and none of the above is set yet, but that's my opinion of how things will play out based on a very crude knowledge of laws and a bit of logic....
The FSF's view is that locking software away to prevent users from modifying it is a harmful, unethical practice. They, and everyone who uses the GPL, believe it is better not to help people who want to lock their code away. The idea is to encourage more people to contribute to the library of free software by enticing them with the right to reuse some GPL code. This goal is more important than preserving the ethically questionable "freedom" to use software in a way that's harmful.
Blah.
No, it's not a precise mathematical circle. Compared to the more elliptical orbits of the other planets, it's relatively circular by comparison. You'd only be off by a percent or so in the worst case if you just approximated it with a mathematically perfect circle.
If you want to practice proper pedantry, none of these orbits are elliptical either. If you're not willing to accept approximation, they're all N-body dynamical orbits with N = the number of objects in the universe. Since N = 3 is already analytically insoluble, good luck...
The Earth's eccentricity is 0.0167 -- that is EXTREMELY close to circular.
Others have said it, probably better, but the GPL is not really aligned with either socialism or capitalism, merely with the idea that software (and perhaps more generally information, but it only deals with software) should not have artificial restrictions placed on its duplication. This embraces aspects of socialism ("share the wealth") and capitalism (only scarce commodities have value, and information by its nature is not scarce). You can argue about whether it's beneficial to an economy to enforce artificial scarcity through patents and copyrights, but that's really not a question of capitalism vs socialism.
Now, many people argue that the FSF is hypocritical because in a very real sense, GPLed software is less free than, say, Berkeley or MIT Licensed software. However, IMO this is consistent with their aim not merely to create free software, but to rid the world of non-free software. Basically, you can embrace their view that software should be free (as in freedom) and reap the benefits of their efforts. If they did not choose a license that required you to join the movement by making your derived software free, then they'd merely be aiding those who use their software and give nothing back to the community.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. As a proprietary developer, you lose nothing due to the existence of GPLed software. You're not free to use that code in your product, but in your view you had no right to expect anyone to license you software that would do what you needed anyway. I frankly don't understand the argument that the GPL somehow takes something away from would-be proprietary developers. Sure, it's harder to sell your program when someone can download a GPL competitor for free (neglecting support costs), but hey... that's capitalism at its finest. If someone is willing to sell for $0, only a broken market would allow you to sell at >$0.
I dunno, non-rectangular buildings are rare. Given the high profile nature of this one, and the fact that its shape became its name, the fact that it has a really mundane reason behind its unique design is interesting to me. You can imagine all sorts of strategic or philosophical reasons why they might have singled out a pentagonal ring shape for the building. But, it's none of those... it's just a quirk of history, and the explanation of that quirk was newsworthy to me. It's also interesting as a window into bureaucratic decision making.
I was being a little silly there, but after staring at screens all day, my brain gets really tired and reading printed words is a relaxing change. Also, the distraction of all the other things that the internet offers is removed by not being right there.
In addition to that sort of reason, I simply enjoy having time to read the newspaper while not rotting my brain on the internet. I spend too much time in front of a terminal or laptop as it is. Having the paper in the living room is better for a break. Plus, having it arrive on my doorstep gives me an incentive to look through it, even sections I may not really be interested in. When I had no newspaper subscription, I tended not to read as regularly or thoroughly. Finally, my baby son really likes the noise it makes when he rustles and tears the pages and shakes them around, and that alone is worth the buck a day or whatever it is...
Same with my samsung something or other. Except instead of a beep, its a sort of tricorder sound every 30 seconds. It'd actually be a great voice/txt msg alert because it grabs your attention without being too intrusive/unpleasant. That is, until it's repeated every 30 seconds for an hour. Then it begins to destroy your sanity. Of course, there's no option to change / disable (even when on mute), and the sound is not available for other uses.
The phone also ignores the mute setting for your alarms. That'd be a fine _option_, but 90% of the time, when I say mute, I really mean MUTE and don't want anything louder than the vibrate under any circumstances... oh well. It's still a huge step up from my previous Sony-Ericsson pos phone...
Did you understand what he was saying? Looks like it. Even if he had a usage error, he got an interesting point across. All I can get from your message is you're a dick.
Plus, you're wrong. Between is perfectly acceptable as he used it, and actually preferable to among.
It does read that way, doesn't it? My post was contradictory but I don't think my actual thoughts were quite so bad... What I really meant is that while a struggling musician is a better spokesperson than a former star, they still can't make a very good argument in favor of this move. Hence, the apparent contradiction.
Sure, I have no problem with a performer getting paid the market rate. I have no problem with musicians or athletes making a huge amount of money. Maybe it's unfortunate that our society rewards those things over more "productive" pursuits, but that's a really complicated question. Regardless, given that the market is there, let the money go to the stars who do the production. However, once people aren't interested in seeing you perform (which is mostly true of the Supremes), don't expect any sympathy from me. You already made more money than 99% of the people out there, let alone the other musicians.
And none of this has anything to do with making money from old recordings. If anything, I think that an old musician complaining about the revenue being cut off because they haven't produced anything new in a while is a great argument that limited copyrights do a better job at encouraging creative output. Society is better served by the musicians who continue to create new works than by those who want to kick back and rake it in from their 30 year old creations.
The struggling musician is, in general, a better spokesperson for increasing music royalties, but it's kind of ridiculous to think this sort of fee structure will really trickle that far down the food chain. The starving musician starves because his music isn't getting to a wide audience, so until he's already hit it big under the current fee structure, he's not going to see a dime of these radio royalties.
Seriously... excuse me if I have no sympathy for someone who has an extremely lucrative career for a few years, spends their millions, and doesn't know where to turn for more... I seem to recall a story about a cricket and an ant...
Right, it's not like they're continuing to provide a service, pay their power bills, employ staff to keep the transmitters working, etc. They're just collecting a paycheck by trampling on her rights. Those millions she already made were not nearly enough compensation for those few hours of music she put on records. Why should she have to continue to be productive to put food on the table? Why can't she just sit and reap the rewards of her creativity the same way the rest of us do?
Oh... wait...