I think it would be just as plausible to postulate that an intelligence 'outside' the space-time universe caused the universe to exist then (in metaphysical time perhaps- but that's another route), as postulating that the universe is the cause of it's own existence.
You can't superscribe time on top of time. Adding a temporal dimension outside of spacetime essentially embeds the Universe in a higher-order framework. You then just have to redefine the Universe one level up, and you have the same problem as you started with. Just calling it "metaphysical" avoids the problem - you've still constructed an additional framework to solve one problem, yet not resolved said problem at all. While it's plausible, it fails Occam's Razor - it's more complicated.
Regarding the plausibility argument: if you really need an intelligence to create the Universe, why bother disconnecting the intelligence from the Universe? Why not let the intelligence be the Universe, and then you don't have any problems whatsoever? No need for a higher level framework at all. That certainly passes the Occam's Razor test.
You can then add all the additional frameworks you want, because the original problem is solved in the simplest way, and all the additional stuff is unrelated.
1) Quantum Mechanics indeed shows/postulates that something can "cause itself to exist", its not phrased that way of course. Their called "Vacuum Fluctuations", the idea being that there is a finite probability that "empty space" will see the creation of a particle and its anti-particle(thus conservation of energy is preserved). In fact this occurs "all the time"(given the size of the universe). So quantum mechanics, one of the best tested "theories" ever developed, allows for the creation of the universe from nothing.
No. The entire point of vacuum fluctuations is that they are comprised of particle antiparticle pairs. Said zero point energy in fact directly arises in the math from an integration constant times a particle/antiparticle pair. Particles don't arise out of 'nothing' - the 'nothing' is particle/antiparticle pairs.
When you're talking about the creation of the Universe, you're talking about a true 'nothing'. Quantum mechanics doesn't have a "true" 'nothing' at all. Well, QM doesn't work outside of spacetime, so QM can't exactly explain the creation of the Universe itself.
The better answer is that the grandparent is attempting to prove a contradiction using causal terms in an acausal space, which doesn't work.
(for it would have to already exist to cause itself- a contradiction)
There is no "before" the Universe. Time only exists within the Universe. There's no reason to believe that the Universe couldn't have caused the Universe to exist. You're trying to force a causal contradiction on something that's acausal (outside of spacetime).
This, of course, is the problem with trying to use words to describe something that's far outside of human experience. The answer is rarely that simple.
Nope. If the universe just "began by itself", there's no other 'eternal' something in it - there's just the universe.
Said Universe is a perfectly acceptable God.
If you don't require God to be conscious, then the Universe as a whole is God. The Universe is capable of doing anything the Universe is capable of doing (limited definition of omnipotence), and the Universe contains all knowledge in the Universe (limited definition of omniscience). And if the Universe began by itself, well, then, it's the Creator of the Universe, isn't it?
The question then, of course, boils down to whether or not the Universe is conscious. And, of course, you can't prove whether or not something is conscious.
The system is not necessarily more complex. Consciousness does not increase the complexity of a system. Otherwise, I'd have to assume that all other people on the planet are not conscious. My own consciousness is an axiom (via Descartes).
(where here, "conscious" implies "having a will" implies "able to make choices" - you get the idea.)
There is already the PassMe method, which boots from a GBA card through an adapter in the DS slot. Details on dspassme.com
Or the WiFiMe method, which boots from a GBA card with a PC with a wireless card. Only a few chipsets supported right now, though.
Then there's the FlashMe modification, which is a firmware patch. That's the best option, but of course, it requires modding the DS (and having either WiFiMe or PassMe available once for getting an ID #). It's an incredibly minor mod (bridging two pads).
Even worse, why didn't Mr. Prosser end up lying in the mud?
You do know that Prosser only ends up lying in the mud in the book and not in the radio script?
In the radio, the interchange has Arthur simply convincing Prosser that if they just accept that Arthur will be there the entire day, that Arthur doesn't actually need to be there. Oh, and if they want to go off to the pub later, Arthur will cover for them.
Yes, that's right. In the radio series, Arthur convinces Prosser that he can leave. In the book, Ford convinces Prosser that Arthur can leave. In the movie, Ford distracts the entire demolition crew with beer.
The movie wasn't based on the book. It was based on Douglas Adams's brain. Just like the radio series, the TV series, the books, the video game, and the stage play.
Oddly enough, if the details are what you liked about the book, don't read/listen/watch any of the other adaptations, because the details are all totally different.
Personally, I'll just be happy enjoying the movie for its own details. Like that awful, awful groaner "This should give him some zest". That was terrible, yet perfect.
Or did they really expect the rover to last this long and simply said it was a 90 day mission in order to cover their tails?
Ding ding ding, we have a winner. All NASA probes are typically given a very short lifetime and very modest expectations, engineering them for much larger goals. Easier to request money from Congress that way, and also less of a PR disaster if something goes wrong.
What if Microsoft uses a GPL'd font? Is Microsoft now under the GPL?
No.
What if a document of international law uses a GPL'd font, then is all of the world under the GPL?
No.
You can't "accidentally" put yourself under the GPL. It's not like "whoops, I accidentally released this under a license I didn't intend to!" If some international organization releases a document using a GPL font, and they retain copyright ("this document cannot be reproduced, etc., blah blah blah") the document isn't under the GPL. It's under the license they put it under.
Now, assume that the document is, in fact, a program (like, PostScript) and contains "font programs" (like, TrueType, or whatever). Then the document may be a derivative work. But guess what? It still doesn't fall under the GPL. It is just no longer distributable at all (under the license that they want, or no license whatsoever).
I know you were probably being facetious, but poor wording from the FSF and from a lot of GPL advocates has really confused the issue. The question isn't whether or not the document is under the GPL or not. That's the author's decision. It's always the author's decision. The question is whether or not it's releasable under a non-GPL license.
If I don't accept the terms of the license, OSTG could sue for unauthorized access (for example, if I were to copy all of today's content and create SlashPeriod.com).
No. OSTG would sue for copyright infringement, not "unauthorized access."
The only time "unauthorized access" would come into play is if you tried to DoS OSTG, and that's malicious activity specifically referenced in the recent computer security bills. There's no way what Tridgell did falls under those laws.
There's no access control. I could telnet to port 80 and send the right commands and get the content without ever accessing the Terms of Service. Right?
Sigh. I'm afraid you're very much misunderstanding what copyright does and doesn't provide.
Say I hold copyright on Work X, and I give it to you. Since I have copyright on work X, you can't copy work X and distribute it. That's about all that copyright prevents you from doing.
If you telnet to port 80 and get the page, you now have a copy of copyrighted material. You can't distribute it, because you don't have a license to distribute it. You can wipe your ass with it, if you want to.
Here comes the tricky part. Can I give you Work X, and say "here, this is Work X, but you can't give it to anyone else." Well, I can say it, and even make you sign a contract that includes it. But if you go out and give it to someone else (*give*, not copy), can I sue you and win? No. Right of first sale. That's the extent of copyright - you can control who you give the copyrighted work to, and that's it.
You know the terms of service portion that says "you agree not to sell, resell..." etc.? You never were able to do that in the first place, without any license - it's copyrighted work. So if the OSTG license said you could sell, resell, etc., if you agreed to the license, and you got a copy of the work without agreeing (or seeing) the license, then you couldn't copy it.
There's no access control.
Funny, I see a "Name" and a "Log Out" button (then again, I'm not an AC). Most of what's in the terms of service involve user accounts.
The terms there are the terms of use which are visible at the bottom of every page on Slashdot. There are no such terms of use visible for an open server port.
You cannot agree to something you don't even know exists. The "terms of use" thing on Slashdot is only marginally okay because there's a plausible belief that someone could see it there.
Plaintiff: "Your Honor, he violated our terms of use for the server." Defendant: "I didn't know there were any." Judge: "Where were said terms posted?" Plaintiff: "In... our display department - the basement. Past the broken stairs. In a lavatory with a locked door in a closet that says 'Beware of the Leopard'".
Paraphrased poorly.
On a side note, the licenses usually contain blanket statements that aren't enforceable, simply because the authors don't know what laws do and don't apply. The Slashdot "Terms of Use" cannot, for instance, quietly include a "you agree to pay OSTG $100M for each usage of Slashdot", and then charge the next few thousand people who visit it before someone notices the change.
By the way, the statutory maximum for copyright infringement is $150,000.
This isn't copyright infringement. What of mine did you copy? Likewise, there is no copyright infringement for using a server port. Why are you even mentioning copyright? No one copied anything.
My entire point was you can't make up bizarre and wacko legal licenses for everything. There are some contracts which are illegal, and a "hidden contract" is one of them.
And yes, this is about contracts, not licenses: what copyrighted piece of information do you copy by accessing a server port?
I think you mean the copyright act of 1976? That one that made sweeping changes to the system and is currently being challenged. I'm not aware of any 1972 copyright law.
You're right. That'll teach me for listening to someone else instead of trusting my own memory.
Remember those pesky computer "hacking" laws authored by Congress and signed by the President? Does the phrase unauthorized access ring a bell?
If the access does not require authorization, how is any access unauthorized? Unauthorized access specifically means cases where there is an access-control restriction.
I'd respond to the rest, but the person who responded to you before me did a much better job.
There's a license, you don't have to explicitly agree to it, and I assure you the law still considers you to be bound by it.
Please. "Implicit agreement" licenses get thrown out of court in a heartbeat. We haven't regressed that far. You can't agree to a license you haven't read - pretty darned simple.
Just like the GPL, I can grant you authority to do something, and if you do not "sign" it, you will not have authority to do it. Period. I can even decide after the fact that I don't care that you did it and let you off the hook.
I'm glad I don't live in the US you live in. That would be scary.
Oh, and by reading this post, you agree to give me a million dollars.
Tridge flat out admits that he telnetted to a live server on the bitkeeper port and interacted with the daemon that monitors that port.
Where's the agreement that Tridge had to sign to use it? The port's open to the public. After all, the BitKeeper server could've "closed the door". It didn't. It could've required authentication. It could've been encrypted. It wasn't.
I don't have to sign an agreement to telnet to www.slashdot.org, port 80. If they suddenly put up something on the web that said "You have to sign this license and agree to these terms in order to do this", and I never see that license, how can I be bound by it? Given that there's a thousand ways to prevent unlicensed access, and they did't do any of them, how can it be negligence on my part, and not theirs?
If that isn't either illegal or in violation of a license, then be a man and post your IP. I'll "reverse engineer" your machine and see what interesting thing I can do.
If you think that's illegal, you're out of your mind. You don't have to sign a license agreement to "use" a server just because the server exists. He wasn't presented with a license, he didn't agree to a license. The fact that you're trying to claim someone toying around with a random port is 'illegal' or 'in violation of a license' is just ludicrous.
I wholeheartedly disagree. The length of a copyright should be for a fixed amount of time, regardless of whether the person is alive or dead. Take the following situation:
Yah, I'm an idiot. I completely forgot about the obvious reason of a person dying prematurely. Fixed time makes more sense (like, 10-20 years). Actually, I think if you just restricted copyright to 20 years and patents to 10 years, I'd be perfectly happy.
I think you don't understand how most people work.
Unfortunately, there are a ton of people who simply live off of the earnings from previous inventions and works. Or earnings from deceased relatives' works.
There are personality type B people, after all.
I won't even go into drug companies and slight modifications of drugs to maintain patents (much the same thing, only far, far sleazier).
Your paraphrase is unfair, or disingenuous, whichever. "This Constitution [and some other laws [US Code] and treaties] shall be the supreme Law of the Land." It doesn't say 'or' some other laws and treaties.
You missed a few words, too. "which shall be made in Pursuance thereof". That's the supremacy clause. If a law is made that doesn't follow the Constitution, it's not included as law of the land - i.e., it's void.
Regarding treaties, that's actually been a point of contention over the years, but the Supreme Court has ruled multiple times that treaties cannot supercede the constitution. It's because of the "under the Authority" portion. If you sign a treaty that outlaws a certain religion, for instance, that treaty is void, because you didn't have the authority to sign it. Neverthless, that's a weakly worded portion (especially as the Bill of Rights doesn't say 'Congress shall sign no treaty', just 'Congress shall sign no law').
But that's kindof moot, as the treaties signed require the signatories to pass laws to enforce the provisions of the treaty. A treaty does not give the federal government authority provided to it outside of the constitution.
You are confusing two issues (1) your rights to a copyrighted work (2) perpetual copyright terms. The latter is clearly in conflict with the constitution, the former is not
Huh? While I don't have any right to go in and steal a work even if it isn't copyrighted, they then couldn't distribute it. The instant a non-copyrighted work is distributed, I can copy it and sell it as toilet paper if I want. Without copyright, the original author has no rights over the copies whatsoever (other than possession, if he owns them. You get the point).
Promoting the arts and sciences means making a world where artists and scientist are modivated to create because they feel like they have some incentive, say, by way of patent or copyright licensing.
Yup, that's right. Which is why extending copyright laws past the death of the author is ludicrous. Even having it be the life of the author is ludicrous (you want to encourage them to create again, after all! If they only need to invent one thing, how is that helpful?).
At this point, copyright is far more about creating a non-physical set of property that can be owned ("intellectual property") than about promoting science and the arts. Just the simple fact that artists have to pay for samples of decades-old music should indicate that.
Nothing in the 14th amendment gives corporation the same consideration as people. It's the Santa Clara decision, which is complete and utter horse dung. "Ooh, watch - if we pay $750, suddenly we can 'invent' a person! And better yet! A person who doesn't die!" Friggin retarded. Yah, it's a person. Who can't vote. Or hold office. Or really be held accountable. (I'd love to hear of a corporation arrested.)
But yeah, I know. I was just trying to point out that what the Constitution allows and what we currently have are two completely different things.
Funny thing is, the Constitution would be a wonderful blueprint for a country still. If by some freak miracle, a bunch of sane judges took the bench, one or two decisions could entirely fix the legal system. There are no amendments which guarantee copyright, corporations, or any of that crap - just decisions and laws, both of which can be overturned.
Clause 2: This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
To paraphrase for you: "This Constitution... shall be the supreme Law of the Land;". Certainly seems to be a code of laws to me.
The Copyright Act has clearly established how copyright as an incident of authorship can be transferred to another legal entity. See the Copy right Act (I believe 1972, but could be mistaken).
Laws can't supersede the Constitution. Only amendments can.
I'm aware that the Copyright Act allows copyright to be transfered. The statement was "are our rights being protected as much as the pieces of paper's rights are?" or, more aptly put, "are our rights being protected as much as copyright holder's rights are?" and that is certainly questionable.
There's a reason the Copyright Act of 1972 has been challenged in court so often. It's a very, very questionable reading of the Constitution. Unfortunately, a lot of the US economy is now based on it, and the Supreme Court and Congress have forgotten that their goal is to protect the people of the US. The Constitution should not be abridged simply because of the economic impact. The economy will recover.
The Constitution spells out a number of things very clearly that are still interpretted in law, and that interpretation doesn't necessarily match the literal meaning of the Constitution.
That would make the law unconstitutional. The problem here is that the meaning of the constitution is being stretched in such a way to protect copyright holders.
This makes what the original poster said true: copyright holders are getting far more preference than us, and that person is definitely right that certain things that should be ours by a more literal reading of the Constitution are not.
No, you don't.
Yes. True. There are no rights granted in the Constitution, only "lack of abilities". (Congress shall make no law, etc., etc.) OK. More aptly put, Congress has no ability to restrict distribution and copying once they've stopped promoting the progress of science and useful arts. I may not have the right to have them, but they have no right to say that I can't have them. Close enough. That "lack of ability" is being encroached upon to protect copyright holders.
That "right" is no less precious simply because it's protected in the main body of the Constitution instead of in the Bill of Rights.
(It's like saying "I have the right to practice whatever religion I want." True. I don't have that right. It's just that they have no ability to stop me. But come on, this is semantics.)
But I agree based on my ideology for how it should work, not some warped idea of what my rights are and aren't.
I believe it because it's what the Constitution says. It's not a warped idea of what my rights are - it's that I don't buy the warped view of the Constitution that the Supreme Court and Congress seem to have ("forever less a day" is "finite"). This is better than ideological beliefs, because it's grounded in law.
Let me put this a different way: you're trying to claim it's perfectly valid for Congress to defend copyright holders vigorously, because it's solid law.
What I'm trying to say is that it's not solid law - the only reason it's law at all is because Congress and the Supreme Court are more interested in protecting copyright holders than the interest of the public as a whole. The Copyright Act of 1972 (and its more recent amendments) should be ruled unconstitu
However, private property rights are well-established. I don't like crap laws like this either, but your comparison is naive.
Actually, it's quite apt. It's not private property rights we're talking about here. It's copyright. Copyright exists for a reason in the constitution.
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries
So the Constitution says "yes, Congress is allowed to give authors exclusivity to their original works for a limited time, and allow them to control who has access to it, to promote the progress of science and useful arts."
How, precisely, is it "promoting the progress of science and useful arts" to have copyright extended indefinitely? Note also that it says "authors" - not "decendants of authors" or "corporations of which the author is affiliated."
The Constitution spells out very clearly that the reason for copyright is to promote science and the arts.
Do I have a right to copyrighted works? Yes, once protecting them has stopped advancing arts and science, they should no longer fall under Congress's ability to legislate. And if someone can explain to me how protecting "Steamboat Willie" advances the arts, I'd love to hear it. It advances Disney's economic interests, but it surely diminishes the artistic community as a whole to have everything slowly fall under perpetual copyright.
So yes, too much protection is being given to pieces of paper - copyrighted works. They're supposed to fall into the public domain. I have a right to use those works once they've stopped "promoting the Progress of Science and useful Arts", and that right is being slowly eroded.
The medicine argument would be even more apt if we were talking about patents, but we're not, so I won't go there.
Careful with italics tags. You should preview more often.
You know, after a certain point, these excuses wear thin. When more than 75% of a series sucks, it deserves to get canceled.
More than 75% of season 4 does not suck (2 episodes out of the entire season suck, and they don't suck if you use them as a cathartic release. It's enjoyable seeing characters who annoy the crap out of you die). That's what they were trying to get renewed.
Besides, the grandparent was just upset that Season 4 looked as bad as Season 2 & 3. It's not. It's just that the first two episodes are a massive cathartic purging of all of the combined crap of 3 years.
Well, I watched the first episode of the new season of Enterprise, "Storm Front" last night.
The guy in charge of the fourth season of Enterprise (Manny Coto) was asked "Why Nazis?" regarding Storm Front. His response (bitterly)? "You'd have to ask Berman and Braga." Storm Front is the last vestige of the crap that Berman and Braga have been spewing for the first three years.
Watch the second episode of Storm Front, and you'll see what I mean. Suddenly, all the annoying characters and stupid plotlines that Berman and Braga put forward just vanish in one episode. That was the whole point. Coto had to have the Nazis in there. So he did as little with them as he could - two episodes, and they're gone, and all the crap gone with them.
The fourth season of Enterprise is much better than the previous seasons. Unfortunately, Paramount (and Berman) had no intention of letting Enterprise run for more seasons anyway, because it was under someone else's control. There's simply no way that Enterprise, on UPN, could've drawn enough viewers to make Paramount realize Berman was an idiot - which, of course, was the point. Berman hands over reigns, says "okay, if you can do a better job, go ahead."... and then promptly sets the show up to fail miserably.
I don't understand your 'scalability and longevity issue'. There is enough uranium in sea water with the use of breeder reactors to potentially last us billions of years.
Sorry, I thought I made that clear. It's not with the uranium supply - obviously we have plenty - it's the uranium waste and storage. The management of waste storage (and other radioactive parts) basically means that any highly radioactive power generation plant can't really scale easy.
Just imagine pebble bed reactors generating all the power on Earth, times 10 - now imagine handling all the waste and storing the waste, year after year. It's not an easy solution. Is it solvable? Yes, probably. Is it maintainable for multiple centuries? I don't think so. I could be wrong, but I will never claim that people are crazy to be worried about things buried in their backyard.
I say "year after year" because fossil fuels have been generating power on Earth for about a century, and in my mind, it wasn't forward-thinking enough. Given the huge cost that the world will incur shifting away from fossil fuels, I'd want any new fuel source to be maintainable for on the order of a millenium. This may seem crazy, but one century barely gave us enough time to actually get to an efficient distribution and optimization level with fossil fuels.
We've proven over the decades from the hundreds of nuclear reactors have been providing power all over the world that we can handle the process safely
Not this kind of process. In a pebble bed plant, the manufacturing plants have to ensure that the pebbles will fuel a meltdown-safe plant. Like I said, the argument against pebble-bed reactors is quite valid - it's just moving the risk from the plant to the pebble manufacturing plant. So claiming that pebble bed reactors answer all the critics is wrong - they don't. The proper answer to the critics is that pebble bed reactors can be made just as safe as fossil fuel plants, with proper regulation.
I agree regarding the fact that nuclear is quite safe compared to the other power generation methods - but then again, it's also one of the most highly regulated. Unfortunately, that also makes it one of the least profitable.
First off, until I see a design for a portable car-sized nuclear reactor, nuclear is not an end-all be-all for energy needs. For that, you need to tack on hydrogen fuel cells, which aren't quite here yet. Until you can couple local small energy needs to larger facilities, you've got to worry about how much the world's energy consumption can grow. Hopefully, that time is not that far off.
Nuclear is almost a perfect solution for electricity generation, though not entirely perfect. While pebble bed reactors remove the meltdown possibility, you still have the disposal and storage concerns. Most likely these would put an upper bound on the scalability (and longevity) of the design as a whole.
I'm not saying nuclear's not a good idea - especially in the short run, it's a terrific idea, as it requires the least amount of infrastructure. But it does have a scalability and longevity issue that's human-scale, and so it shouldn't be a final design.
As for what would constitute a "final design" in my eyes would be something like space power satellites - how you transmit the power will probably limit scalability, but longevity is assured - or clean fusion, both of which are not viable now.
(As an aside, one of the quite valid criticisms of pebble-bed reactors is that they aren't really accident-proof. The reactor is, but the fuel is not - if the fuel is improperly manufactured, the reactor could be extremely dangerous. Essentially, you've moved the risk from the reactor to the fuel manufacturer. Yes, safeguards and inspections would prevent this - but this is true of a normal nuclear reactor as well.)
P2P users don't actively upload. The terminology is that data coming from the source PC is generally uploaded, and the destination PC downloads it. However, there is no active attempt to send data to anyone, but rather the recipients are connecting on their own. You are not intentionally sending an "illegal" file to a recipient, but rather making it available, and recipients with either legal rights (already own it) or not may retrieve it.
This argument is relatively semantic - the question then becomes whether or not the person participating in a BitTorrent swarm is allowed to make the file available for download to other people. By saying "yes, those downloaders are allowed to do so just because they're using BitTorrent" means that you can make the same argument for piracy uses, and then you can only be held liable for your own infringement.
Besides, that argument has already been tried in court for P2P, and it's failed every time - the persons making the file available are still held liable for contributory infringement.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it would be just as plausible to postulate that an intelligence 'outside' the space-time universe caused the universe to exist then (in metaphysical time perhaps- but that's another route), as postulating that the universe is the cause of it's own existence.
You can't superscribe time on top of time. Adding a temporal dimension outside of spacetime essentially embeds the Universe in a higher-order framework. You then just have to redefine the Universe one level up, and you have the same problem as you started with. Just calling it "metaphysical" avoids the problem - you've still constructed an additional framework to solve one problem, yet not resolved said problem at all. While it's plausible, it fails Occam's Razor - it's more complicated.
Regarding the plausibility argument: if you really need an intelligence to create the Universe, why bother disconnecting the intelligence from the Universe? Why not let the intelligence be the Universe, and then you don't have any problems whatsoever? No need for a higher level framework at all. That certainly passes the Occam's Razor test.
You can then add all the additional frameworks you want, because the original problem is solved in the simplest way, and all the additional stuff is unrelated.
1) Quantum Mechanics indeed shows/postulates that something can "cause itself to exist", its not phrased that way of course. Their called "Vacuum Fluctuations", the idea being that there is a finite probability that "empty space" will see the creation of a particle and its anti-particle(thus conservation of energy is preserved). In fact this occurs "all the time"(given the size of the universe). So quantum mechanics, one of the best tested "theories" ever developed, allows for the creation of the universe from nothing.
No. The entire point of vacuum fluctuations is that they are comprised of particle antiparticle pairs. Said zero point energy in fact directly arises in the math from an integration constant times a particle/antiparticle pair. Particles don't arise out of 'nothing' - the 'nothing' is particle/antiparticle pairs.
When you're talking about the creation of the Universe, you're talking about a true 'nothing'. Quantum mechanics doesn't have a "true" 'nothing' at all. Well, QM doesn't work outside of spacetime, so QM can't exactly explain the creation of the Universe itself.
The better answer is that the grandparent is attempting to prove a contradiction using causal terms in an acausal space, which doesn't work.
(for it would have to already exist to cause itself- a contradiction)
There is no "before" the Universe. Time only exists within the Universe. There's no reason to believe that the Universe couldn't have caused the Universe to exist. You're trying to force a causal contradiction on something that's acausal (outside of spacetime).
This, of course, is the problem with trying to use words to describe something that's far outside of human experience. The answer is rarely that simple.
Nope. If the universe just "began by itself", there's no other 'eternal' something in it - there's just the universe.
Said Universe is a perfectly acceptable God.
If you don't require God to be conscious, then the Universe as a whole is God. The Universe is capable of doing anything the Universe is capable of doing (limited definition of omnipotence), and the Universe contains all knowledge in the Universe (limited definition of omniscience). And if the Universe began by itself, well, then, it's the Creator of the Universe, isn't it?
The question then, of course, boils down to whether or not the Universe is conscious. And, of course, you can't prove whether or not something is conscious.
The system is not necessarily more complex. Consciousness does not increase the complexity of a system. Otherwise, I'd have to assume that all other people on the planet are not conscious. My own consciousness is an axiom (via Descartes).
(where here, "conscious" implies "having a will" implies "able to make choices" - you get the idea.)
There is already the PassMe method, which boots from a GBA card through an adapter in the DS slot. Details on dspassme.com
Or the WiFiMe method, which boots from a GBA card with a PC with a wireless card. Only a few chipsets supported right now, though.
Then there's the FlashMe modification, which is a firmware patch. That's the best option, but of course, it requires modding the DS (and having either WiFiMe or PassMe available once for getting an ID #). It's an incredibly minor mod (bridging two pads).
Even worse, why didn't Mr. Prosser end up lying in the mud?
You do know that Prosser only ends up lying in the mud in the book and not in the radio script?
In the radio, the interchange has Arthur simply convincing Prosser that if they just accept that Arthur will be there the entire day, that Arthur doesn't actually need to be there. Oh, and if they want to go off to the pub later, Arthur will cover for them.
Yes, that's right. In the radio series, Arthur convinces Prosser that he can leave. In the book, Ford convinces Prosser that Arthur can leave. In the movie, Ford distracts the entire demolition crew with beer.
The movie wasn't based on the book. It was based on Douglas Adams's brain. Just like the radio series, the TV series, the books, the video game, and the stage play.
Oddly enough, if the details are what you liked about the book, don't read/listen/watch any of the other adaptations, because the details are all totally different.
Personally, I'll just be happy enjoying the movie for its own details. Like that awful, awful groaner "This should give him some zest". That was terrible, yet perfect.
Or did they really expect the rover to last this long and simply said it was a 90 day mission in order to cover their tails?
Ding ding ding, we have a winner. All NASA probes are typically given a very short lifetime and very modest expectations, engineering them for much larger goals. Easier to request money from Congress that way, and also less of a PR disaster if something goes wrong.
What if Microsoft uses a GPL'd font? Is Microsoft now under the GPL?
No.
What if a document of international law uses a GPL'd font, then is all of the world under the GPL?
No.
You can't "accidentally" put yourself under the GPL. It's not like "whoops, I accidentally released this under a license I didn't intend to!" If some international organization releases a document using a GPL font, and they retain copyright ("this document cannot be reproduced, etc., blah blah blah") the document isn't under the GPL. It's under the license they put it under.
Now, assume that the document is, in fact, a program (like, PostScript) and contains "font programs" (like, TrueType, or whatever). Then the document may be a derivative work. But guess what? It still doesn't fall under the GPL. It is just no longer distributable at all (under the license that they want, or no license whatsoever).
I know you were probably being facetious, but poor wording from the FSF and from a lot of GPL advocates has really confused the issue. The question isn't whether or not the document is under the GPL or not. That's the author's decision. It's always the author's decision. The question is whether or not it's releasable under a non-GPL license.
If I don't accept the terms of the license, OSTG could sue for unauthorized access (for example, if I were to copy all of today's content and create SlashPeriod.com).
No. OSTG would sue for copyright infringement, not "unauthorized access."
The only time "unauthorized access" would come into play is if you tried to DoS OSTG, and that's malicious activity specifically referenced in the recent computer security bills. There's no way what Tridgell did falls under those laws.
There's no access control. I could telnet to port 80 and send the right commands and get the content without ever accessing the Terms of Service. Right?
Sigh. I'm afraid you're very much misunderstanding what copyright does and doesn't provide.
Say I hold copyright on Work X, and I give it to you. Since I have copyright on work X, you can't copy work X and distribute it. That's about all that copyright prevents you from doing.
If you telnet to port 80 and get the page, you now have a copy of copyrighted material. You can't distribute it, because you don't have a license to distribute it. You can wipe your ass with it, if you want to.
Here comes the tricky part. Can I give you Work X, and say "here, this is Work X, but you can't give it to anyone else." Well, I can say it, and even make you sign a contract that includes it. But if you go out and give it to someone else (*give*, not copy), can I sue you and win? No. Right of first sale. That's the extent of copyright - you can control who you give the copyrighted work to, and that's it.
You know the terms of service portion that says "you agree not to sell, resell..." etc.? You never were able to do that in the first place, without any license - it's copyrighted work. So if the OSTG license said you could sell, resell, etc., if you agreed to the license, and you got a copy of the work without agreeing (or seeing) the license, then you couldn't copy it.
There's no access control.
Funny, I see a "Name" and a "Log Out" button (then again, I'm not an AC). Most of what's in the terms of service involve user accounts.
Ah, now you're learning!
The terms there are the terms of use which are visible at the bottom of every page on Slashdot. There are no such terms of use visible for an open server port.
You cannot agree to something you don't even know exists. The "terms of use" thing on Slashdot is only marginally okay because there's a plausible belief that someone could see it there.
Plaintiff: "Your Honor, he violated our terms of use for the server."
Defendant: "I didn't know there were any."
Judge: "Where were said terms posted?"
Plaintiff: "In... our display department - the basement. Past the broken stairs. In a lavatory with a locked door in a closet that says 'Beware of the Leopard'".
Paraphrased poorly.
On a side note, the licenses usually contain blanket statements that aren't enforceable, simply because the authors don't know what laws do and don't apply. The Slashdot "Terms of Use" cannot, for instance, quietly include a "you agree to pay OSTG $100M for each usage of Slashdot", and then charge the next few thousand people who visit it before someone notices the change.
By the way, the statutory maximum for copyright infringement is $150,000.
This isn't copyright infringement. What of mine did you copy? Likewise, there is no copyright infringement for using a server port. Why are you even mentioning copyright? No one copied anything.
My entire point was you can't make up bizarre and wacko legal licenses for everything. There are some contracts which are illegal, and a "hidden contract" is one of them.
And yes, this is about contracts, not licenses: what copyrighted piece of information do you copy by accessing a server port?
I think you mean the copyright act of 1976? That one that made sweeping changes to the system and is currently being challenged. I'm not aware of any 1972 copyright law.
You're right. That'll teach me for listening to someone else instead of trusting my own memory.
Remember those pesky computer "hacking" laws authored by Congress and signed by the President? Does the phrase unauthorized access ring a bell?
If the access does not require authorization, how is any access unauthorized? Unauthorized access specifically means cases where there is an access-control restriction.
I'd respond to the rest, but the person who responded to you before me did a much better job.
There's a license, you don't have to explicitly agree to it, and I assure you the law still considers you to be bound by it.
Please. "Implicit agreement" licenses get thrown out of court in a heartbeat. We haven't regressed that far. You can't agree to a license you haven't read - pretty darned simple.
Just like the GPL, I can grant you authority to do something, and if you do not "sign" it, you will not have authority to do it. Period. I can even decide after the fact that I don't care that you did it and let you off the hook.
I'm glad I don't live in the US you live in. That would be scary.
Oh, and by reading this post, you agree to give me a million dollars.
Tridge flat out admits that he telnetted to a live server on the bitkeeper port and interacted with the daemon that monitors that port.
Where's the agreement that Tridge had to sign to use it? The port's open to the public. After all, the BitKeeper server could've "closed the door". It didn't. It could've required authentication. It could've been encrypted. It wasn't.
I don't have to sign an agreement to telnet to www.slashdot.org, port 80. If they suddenly put up something on the web that said "You have to sign this license and agree to these terms in order to do this", and I never see that license, how can I be bound by it? Given that there's a thousand ways to prevent unlicensed access, and they did't do any of them, how can it be negligence on my part, and not theirs?
If that isn't either illegal or in violation of a license, then be a man and post your IP. I'll "reverse engineer" your machine and see what interesting thing I can do.
If you think that's illegal, you're out of your mind. You don't have to sign a license agreement to "use" a server just because the server exists. He wasn't presented with a license, he didn't agree to a license. The fact that you're trying to claim someone toying around with a random port is 'illegal' or 'in violation of a license' is just ludicrous.
I wholeheartedly disagree. The length of a copyright should be for a fixed amount of time, regardless of whether the person is alive or dead. Take the following situation:
Yah, I'm an idiot. I completely forgot about the obvious reason of a person dying prematurely. Fixed time makes more sense (like, 10-20 years). Actually, I think if you just restricted copyright to 20 years and patents to 10 years, I'd be perfectly happy.
I think you don't understand how most people work.
Unfortunately, there are a ton of people who simply live off of the earnings from previous inventions and works. Or earnings from deceased relatives' works.
There are personality type B people, after all.
I won't even go into drug companies and slight modifications of drugs to maintain patents (much the same thing, only far, far sleazier).
Your paraphrase is unfair, or disingenuous, whichever. "This Constitution [and some other laws [US Code] and treaties] shall be the supreme Law of the Land." It doesn't say 'or' some other laws and treaties.
You missed a few words, too. "which shall be made in Pursuance thereof". That's the supremacy clause. If a law is made that doesn't follow the Constitution, it's not included as law of the land - i.e., it's void.
Regarding treaties, that's actually been a point of contention over the years, but the Supreme Court has ruled multiple times that treaties cannot supercede the constitution. It's because of the "under the Authority" portion. If you sign a treaty that outlaws a certain religion, for instance, that treaty is void, because you didn't have the authority to sign it. Neverthless, that's a weakly worded portion (especially as the Bill of Rights doesn't say 'Congress shall sign no treaty', just 'Congress shall sign no law').
But that's kindof moot, as the treaties signed require the signatories to pass laws to enforce the provisions of the treaty. A treaty does not give the federal government authority provided to it outside of the constitution.
You are confusing two issues (1) your rights to a copyrighted work (2) perpetual copyright terms. The latter is clearly in conflict with the constitution, the former is not
Huh? While I don't have any right to go in and steal a work even if it isn't copyrighted, they then couldn't distribute it. The instant a non-copyrighted work is distributed, I can copy it and sell it as toilet paper if I want. Without copyright, the original author has no rights over the copies whatsoever (other than possession, if he owns them. You get the point).
Promoting the arts and sciences means making a world where artists and scientist are modivated to create because they feel like they have some incentive, say, by way of patent or copyright licensing.
Yup, that's right. Which is why extending copyright laws past the death of the author is ludicrous. Even having it be the life of the author is ludicrous (you want to encourage them to create again, after all! If they only need to invent one thing, how is that helpful?).
At this point, copyright is far more about creating a non-physical set of property that can be owned ("intellectual property") than about promoting science and the arts. Just the simple fact that artists have to pay for samples of decades-old music should indicate that.
Now if it weren't for the 14th Amendment
Nothing in the 14th amendment gives corporation the same consideration as people. It's the Santa Clara decision, which is complete and utter horse dung. "Ooh, watch - if we pay $750, suddenly we can 'invent' a person! And better yet! A person who doesn't die!" Friggin retarded. Yah, it's a person. Who can't vote. Or hold office. Or really be held accountable. (I'd love to hear of a corporation arrested.)
But yeah, I know. I was just trying to point out that what the Constitution allows and what we currently have are two completely different things.
Funny thing is, the Constitution would be a wonderful blueprint for a country still. If by some freak miracle, a bunch of sane judges took the bench, one or two decisions could entirely fix the legal system. There are no amendments which guarantee copyright, corporations, or any of that crap - just decisions and laws, both of which can be overturned.
Odd, because it seems to claim that it is.
To paraphrase for you: "This Constitution ... shall be the supreme Law of the Land;". Certainly seems to be a code of laws to me.
The Copyright Act has clearly established how copyright as an incident of authorship can be transferred to another legal entity. See the Copy right Act (I believe 1972, but could be mistaken).
Laws can't supersede the Constitution. Only amendments can.
I'm aware that the Copyright Act allows copyright to be transfered. The statement was "are our rights being protected as much as the pieces of paper's rights are?" or, more aptly put, "are our rights being protected as much as copyright holder's rights are?" and that is certainly questionable.
There's a reason the Copyright Act of 1972 has been challenged in court so often. It's a very, very questionable reading of the Constitution. Unfortunately, a lot of the US economy is now based on it, and the Supreme Court and Congress have forgotten that their goal is to protect the people of the US. The Constitution should not be abridged simply because of the economic impact. The economy will recover.
The Constitution spells out a number of things very clearly that are still interpretted in law, and that interpretation doesn't necessarily match the literal meaning of the Constitution.
That would make the law unconstitutional. The problem here is that the meaning of the constitution is being stretched in such a way to protect copyright holders.
This makes what the original poster said true: copyright holders are getting far more preference than us, and that person is definitely right that certain things that should be ours by a more literal reading of the Constitution are not.
No, you don't.
Yes. True. There are no rights granted in the Constitution, only "lack of abilities". (Congress shall make no law, etc., etc.) OK. More aptly put, Congress has no ability to restrict distribution and copying once they've stopped promoting the progress of science and useful arts. I may not have the right to have them, but they have no right to say that I can't have them. Close enough. That "lack of ability" is being encroached upon to protect copyright holders.
That "right" is no less precious simply because it's protected in the main body of the Constitution instead of in the Bill of Rights.
(It's like saying "I have the right to practice whatever religion I want." True. I don't have that right. It's just that they have no ability to stop me. But come on, this is semantics.)
But I agree based on my ideology for how it should work, not some warped idea of what my rights are and aren't.
I believe it because it's what the Constitution says. It's not a warped idea of what my rights are - it's that I don't buy the warped view of the Constitution that the Supreme Court and Congress seem to have ("forever less a day" is "finite"). This is better than ideological beliefs, because it's grounded in law.
Let me put this a different way: you're trying to claim it's perfectly valid for Congress to defend copyright holders vigorously, because it's solid law.
What I'm trying to say is that it's not solid law - the only reason it's law at all is because Congress and the Supreme Court are more interested in protecting copyright holders than the interest of the public as a whole. The Copyright Act of 1972 (and its more recent amendments) should be ruled unconstitu
Actually, it's quite apt. It's not private property rights we're talking about here. It's copyright. Copyright exists for a reason in the constitution.
So the Constitution says "yes, Congress is allowed to give authors exclusivity to their original works for a limited time, and allow them to control who has access to it, to promote the progress of science and useful arts."
How, precisely, is it "promoting the progress of science and useful arts" to have copyright extended indefinitely? Note also that it says "authors" - not "decendants of authors" or "corporations of which the author is affiliated."
The Constitution spells out very clearly that the reason for copyright is to promote science and the arts.
Do I have a right to copyrighted works? Yes, once protecting them has stopped advancing arts and science, they should no longer fall under Congress's ability to legislate. And if someone can explain to me how protecting "Steamboat Willie" advances the arts, I'd love to hear it. It advances Disney's economic interests, but it surely diminishes the artistic community as a whole to have everything slowly fall under perpetual copyright.
So yes, too much protection is being given to pieces of paper - copyrighted works. They're supposed to fall into the public domain. I have a right to use those works once they've stopped "promoting the Progress of Science and useful Arts", and that right is being slowly eroded.
The medicine argument would be even more apt if we were talking about patents, but we're not, so I won't go there.
Careful with italics tags. You should preview more often.
You know, after a certain point, these excuses wear thin. When more than 75% of a series sucks, it deserves to get canceled.
More than 75% of season 4 does not suck (2 episodes out of the entire season suck, and they don't suck if you use them as a cathartic release. It's enjoyable seeing characters who annoy the crap out of you die). That's what they were trying to get renewed.
Besides, the grandparent was just upset that Season 4 looked as bad as Season 2 & 3. It's not. It's just that the first two episodes are a massive cathartic purging of all of the combined crap of 3 years.
Well, I watched the first episode of the new season of Enterprise, "Storm Front" last night.
... and then promptly sets the show up to fail miserably.
The guy in charge of the fourth season of Enterprise (Manny Coto) was asked "Why Nazis?" regarding Storm Front. His response (bitterly)? "You'd have to ask Berman and Braga." Storm Front is the last vestige of the crap that Berman and Braga have been spewing for the first three years.
Watch the second episode of Storm Front, and you'll see what I mean. Suddenly, all the annoying characters and stupid plotlines that Berman and Braga put forward just vanish in one episode. That was the whole point. Coto had to have the Nazis in there. So he did as little with them as he could - two episodes, and they're gone, and all the crap gone with them.
The fourth season of Enterprise is much better than the previous seasons. Unfortunately, Paramount (and Berman) had no intention of letting Enterprise run for more seasons anyway, because it was under someone else's control. There's simply no way that Enterprise, on UPN, could've drawn enough viewers to make Paramount realize Berman was an idiot - which, of course, was the point. Berman hands over reigns, says "okay, if you can do a better job, go ahead."
I don't understand your 'scalability and longevity issue'. There is enough uranium in sea water with the use of breeder reactors to potentially last us billions of years.
Sorry, I thought I made that clear. It's not with the uranium supply - obviously we have plenty - it's the uranium waste and storage. The management of waste storage (and other radioactive parts) basically means that any highly radioactive power generation plant can't really scale easy.
Just imagine pebble bed reactors generating all the power on Earth, times 10 - now imagine handling all the waste and storing the waste, year after year. It's not an easy solution. Is it solvable? Yes, probably. Is it maintainable for multiple centuries? I don't think so. I could be wrong, but I will never claim that people are crazy to be worried about things buried in their backyard.
I say "year after year" because fossil fuels have been generating power on Earth for about a century, and in my mind, it wasn't forward-thinking enough. Given the huge cost that the world will incur shifting away from fossil fuels, I'd want any new fuel source to be maintainable for on the order of a millenium. This may seem crazy, but one century barely gave us enough time to actually get to an efficient distribution and optimization level with fossil fuels.
We've proven over the decades from the hundreds of nuclear reactors have been providing power all over the world that we can handle the process safely
Not this kind of process. In a pebble bed plant, the manufacturing plants have to ensure that the pebbles will fuel a meltdown-safe plant. Like I said, the argument against pebble-bed reactors is quite valid - it's just moving the risk from the plant to the pebble manufacturing plant. So claiming that pebble bed reactors answer all the critics is wrong - they don't. The proper answer to the critics is that pebble bed reactors can be made just as safe as fossil fuel plants, with proper regulation.
I agree regarding the fact that nuclear is quite safe compared to the other power generation methods - but then again, it's also one of the most highly regulated. Unfortunately, that also makes it one of the least profitable.
hell, we in the US won't even change the CAFE standards for cars or tax the SUV's out of existence.
Yes we did.
Not that I'm saying it's sufficient, of course, but try to stick to facts while ranting.
It is called a nuclear reactor.
First off, until I see a design for a portable car-sized nuclear reactor, nuclear is not an end-all be-all for energy needs. For that, you need to tack on hydrogen fuel cells, which aren't quite here yet. Until you can couple local small energy needs to larger facilities, you've got to worry about how much the world's energy consumption can grow. Hopefully, that time is not that far off.
Nuclear is almost a perfect solution for electricity generation, though not entirely perfect. While pebble bed reactors remove the meltdown possibility, you still have the disposal and storage concerns. Most likely these would put an upper bound on the scalability (and longevity) of the design as a whole.
I'm not saying nuclear's not a good idea - especially in the short run, it's a terrific idea, as it requires the least amount of infrastructure. But it does have a scalability and longevity issue that's human-scale, and so it shouldn't be a final design.
As for what would constitute a "final design" in my eyes would be something like space power satellites - how you transmit the power will probably limit scalability, but longevity is assured - or clean fusion, both of which are not viable now.
(As an aside, one of the quite valid criticisms of pebble-bed reactors is that they aren't really accident-proof. The reactor is, but the fuel is not - if the fuel is improperly manufactured, the reactor could be extremely dangerous. Essentially, you've moved the risk from the reactor to the fuel manufacturer. Yes, safeguards and inspections would prevent this - but this is true of a normal nuclear reactor as well.)
P2P users don't actively upload. The terminology is that data coming from the source PC is generally uploaded, and the destination PC downloads it. However, there is no active attempt to send data to anyone, but rather the recipients are connecting on their own. You are not intentionally sending an "illegal" file to a recipient, but rather making it available, and recipients with either legal rights (already own it) or not may retrieve it.
This argument is relatively semantic - the question then becomes whether or not the person participating in a BitTorrent swarm is allowed to make the file available for download to other people. By saying "yes, those downloaders are allowed to do so just because they're using BitTorrent" means that you can make the same argument for piracy uses, and then you can only be held liable for your own infringement.
Besides, that argument has already been tried in court for P2P, and it's failed every time - the persons making the file available are still held liable for contributory infringement.