The stone has been around for millenia, presumably. How would dating the stones tell when the stones were placed into their current location. As well, carbon dating applies only to organic materials. What organic material would have been tested?
In other words, how could carbon dating reveal the time at which Stonehenge was placed? Just curious; I'm sure there's some ingenious way of doing it.
Programmers are a lot like lawyers, value-wise. Like lawyers, the value of programmers is, or traditionally has been, their creativity and intellect. Better tools have reduced the value of that personal asset in programmers, but not eliminated it.
It is notably different from most engineering in that the products do not require large capital to distribute, once the creativity is complete.
In this manner, I have often wondered if programmers would work better in limited liability partnerships rather than corporations. A small group of programmers who produce on contract to corporations would be, if well organized, very valuable.
The corporate structure lends itself to growth in traditional economy, whereas a larger programming companies have, in my limited experience, not been efficient. There are exceptions, like Electronic Arts, I think.
But the hierarchical view of corporations, looking down upon employees, is flawed in the programming world because the direction of the company is often better felt by the programmers themselves, and management has often had a terrible disconnect from the technical reality, and a tendency to dictate where they should listen. Good management isn't necessarily this way, but many people cling to this management style.
In a partnership, the partners would be responsible for bringing in clients, the design, the programming, and the effective reuse of code. In a corporation, they are typically responsible only for the programming. I believe savvy programmers would be much better at selecting appropriate clients and choosing the direction of the code. I believe, when it comes to the effective reuse of code, a partnership would have better structures adopted to accommodate it.
This sort of delegation among partners has been very effective, in my opinion, in lawyer partnerships. I believe the effectiveness could translate into programmer partnerships. Mind you, moving programmers into management positions in companies may have the same effect, but I think the hierarchial structure inherently causes problems. The distinguishing feature being that in a partnership, management would also be programmers, and vise versa. There wouldn't just be a "delegation to programmers" by management, so to speak.
Not all the hard questions in Linux's future are technical.
To IBM challengees/anyone:
How would you reconcile the need for innovation in Linux and the growing number of patents owned by a smaller and smaller group of large corporations, where these patents undermine the capacity to innovate?
IBM, being the largest patent filer in the United States, probably has a unique perspective on this. Though I am grateful for their support of, and happy for their benefit from, Linux, I must concede that I wonder what will happen when their patent interests conflict with their Linux interests.
Although we're really close, we'll get to a point where the animation no longer constrains the story.
Well, if we look at some recent Star Wars and Matrix film achievements, I'd say current animation far exceeds constraints of the story. Or rather, it's not the animation capabilities holding back the story. No amount of CG would have made Star Wars good, or The Matrix better. Titanic might be a good example of CG gone right.
Both the parent and grandparent seem to touch, but not quite hit, the mark.
Downloading is protected under, at least, Part VIII of the Copyright Act, which is "private copying". From it, you can infer that you can download as much music as you like. Private copying arose from the days of tape cassettes; it gives musical copyright holders the right to levy blank audio media as a form of remuneration for private copying. It only covers music. Movies and software downloads can violate copyright without permission.
Uploading was upheld on an evidentiary matter. There was insufficient evidence to show that the user intended to upload the music, but rather uploading seemed to be a side-effect of using the peer to peer software, according to the judge.
To be clear, the judge did not "legalize" uploading. He simply stated that there was insufficient evidence to show that the user intended to upload, in other words, he never had the mental culpability (ie. mens rea) to have infringed the copyright.
So, as another posted noted, you can have a shared folder if it is unlikely to be shown that you intended to share its contents, and you can likely download music under the private copying provisions of the Copyright Act.
But remember there were times where glacier covered half the Europe, there were times when Sahara was a green country, when what today is mediterran sea was a valley of a huge river
And we know how many humans survived those climate changes!
The people I know who use Debian, myself included, have less patience for crap that doesn't work. Though harder to install, unlike the other distros, you only ever have to do it once.
Tongue in cheek or no, the myth that Debian is behind other distros has continually been dispelled. Debian/Unstable is consistently ahead of other distros. What other distros besides Debian, and maybe Gentoo, currently include Kernel 2.6.8, KDE 3.3.0, and Firefox RC1?
Debian users simply loathe frigging around with the basics of their system, an experience all too common with some other distros. We prefer to spend our time frigging around on Slashdot, et al. Or advocating free software.
Re:How to infringe & NOT get caught. An 'exper
on
P2P Not Dead, Just Hiding
·
· Score: 2, Informative
If the labels come after you for sharing such a file, tell them to sod off as the file in question is worthless without the other file which you did not share at the same time, did you?
The copyright merely has to "subsist in" the data, not be the recording itself. Even though worthless in isolation, I'm sure this would not hold water in court; it'd be an absurd interpretation of the purpose of the act if the only reason this file existed was to infringe copyright.
Incidentally, the careful choice of the words "subsist in" originally comes from, I do believe, copying large parts of others books into your own. It is ironic that it would apply on these points. Even if the words were less precise, the golden rule of statutory interpretation would protect the copyright owners: it'd be absurd to have for a user to choose to offer a file that contained data only used for copyright to be free of infringement by not having access to it on his own. The intention to infringe is there, as may be the intention to circumvent the law. At worst, it's contributing to infringement, probably exactly proportionate in liability to the amount that it is shared.
Now, if the user didn't intend to share the file, it's a whole different story. As well, there is a question as to whether the person sharing the a 'key' to the copyright infringed it, or contributed to its infringement.
Perhaps steganography would be more viable, being un-prosecutable by virtue of being undetectable.
Television is an advertisement delivery mechanism. Content is merely a means of isolating a span of consistent attention, long enough to expose consumers to advertisers. By downloading off the net, you circumvent the advertisement delivery mechanism that pays for the shows, so whether or not it's illegal or immoral to download off the net, you can be sure that it will be heavily opposed by the advertisers and the media delivery corporations. That's all that seems to count these days, so if it's not illegal now, it probably will be as soon as they catch on.
According to Edgar (SEC filings), I seem to recall that 96% of google's money comes now from AdSense. It was mostly just licensing their search software in the beginning, but AdSense has really taken off. They are certainly diversifying, and I suspect revenue will soon come from different places. Their brand name is second-to-none in the online universe.
A classic example of Steganography. The more noise, the easier to encode a useful signal. Usenet, radio signals, newspapers, and ebay are all great candidates for hidden messages. Cable television isn't such a great candidate only because it's highly regulated by either media conglomerates or governments.
So in one breath, you state how I should talk to some real engineers who "know these things", because I couldn't possibly know what I was talking about.
Res ipsa loquitur.
And in the next breath, you brush off credentials as being unimportant, since clearly only intelligence is required.
Yes.
And for the coupe-de-grace, you again bring up your well-credentialed, yet nameless, friends as being experts who couldn't possibly be wrong on the subject!
If you found my argument about intelligence, as a prima facie case for a capacity, to be insufficient, I alluded to substance. It is no less of a merit than calling yourself an engineer, and has substantially more merit than talking to yourself.
I am not in a position to publish my friend's contact information without permission. However, if you come up with something useful to say, feel free to email (bhunt6 (at) cogeco.ca), and I can get you in touch with him.
However, I suggest you stick to substance, rather than banter. You haven't supported your arguments with a shred of evidence, or even plausible conjecture.
John Kerry, is that you? Shouldn't you be out campaigning instead of reading Slashdot?
Indeed, at every point, you consistently bring up to something entirely superfluous and barely tangential to the argument.
And you should know who it is you're talking to before you start making assumptions.
You shouldn't put yourself in a situation where your professional qualifications are come into question! (Seriously. Don't hold your credentials out as a professional unless you know what you are saying; they can come back to haunt you.)
For the record, I'm an engineer.
I figured as much.:)
I've discussed it with myself, and I agree that all else being equal, mass adds to the survivability of a vehicle in an accident.
That doesn't really add any support to your argument. Indeed, it forces the reader to bring into question your capacity to make an argument! Hand waving reflects poorly on professionals.
Now, perhaps you would care to present your credentials?
Credentials make people cocky, not correct. One need only intelligence to make a correct assertion. A contest over credentials won't make the points any more or less valid, and denigrates the conversation.
Incidentally, I've discussed this on many occasions with a traffic enginneer, with a masters in rollover accidents, who works for Transport Canada. He would be very curious about your conclusions. It is unfortunate that you didn't support your comments with any substance.
Crumple zones are a safety feature - nothing more.
Crumple zones are a very profitable component of vehicle repairs. Ask a mechanic, or better yet, an insurance adjuster. That doesn't make them less of a safety feature, mind.
The mere fact that you don't recognize them...
Recognizing them as a source of lucrative income does not preclude recognizing them as a safety feature, though in this case it brings their purpose and capacity into question. There was no statement to the effect that I didn't recognize them as a safety feature.
This is a false dilemma; it is not a question of "it's a safety feature or not", but rather "it's a safety feature" and "it was designed with economic incentives or not". With a very functional economic incentive, its capacity as a safety feature must be inherently called into question.
as such tells me that you are trying to push an agenda.
I can't imagine what agenda I would have aside from debuncting the myths of the safety of Smart Cars against the calamity of widespread slashdot ignorance, and drawing an interesting analogy with debuncting the myths of Linux and Windows. This is slashdot. What good would an agenda do here? Regardless, an agenda, an attack on the person, wouldn't debunk the statements.
The video is interesting, but doesn't really add to the debate of Smart Car safety. One accident is not sufficient to base an argument on vehicle safety. I am under the impression that far more road deaths happen from vehicle rollovers than T-bone crashes like the one in the video.
You should ask some physicists, or better yet engineers, about mass and its relation to vehicle safety. Mass is the antithesis of vehicle safety. (Note: Don't mistake size for mass.)
We will continue building cars that have meaning and personality, and we will continue enjoying the hell out of them.
It's a bit short-sighted, and ultimately unsustainable, and probably a source of resentment among the poor and environmentally responsible. But there's no getting around it: big, powerful cars are fun.
That article doesn't say how many small vehicles are on the road, versus larger ones. As a result, there are no conclusions about accident avoidance; if most crashes involve SUV's, for example, but the vast majority of people drive small vehicles, even though there's only a small chance of substantial injury in a SUV, it would still be much safer to drive a small vehicle because it's less likely to be involved in an accident. The converse is true; if there are far more SUV's on the road, and fewer accidents involve SUV's, then they are absolutely safer.
There are actually a number of statistical problems with the conclusions of this article. It ignores many, many relevant points. How many small cars versus large SUV's are on the road. How many types of small cars are there, and how are they distributed? How many types of SUVs, and how are they distributed? If there are 100 types of SUVs, they may be MUCH less safe in spite of this conclusion, if there are also only 20 small car types being measured: None of the SUV's would make it into the top 20, although in aggregate, they would be the least safe. I don't mean to say that this is the case. I doubt it is. Nevertheless, it does put doubt upon the conclusions.
Most importantly, however, this article does not reflect general vehicle safety, only the safety of vehicles that have been in crashes with other vehicles (from my brief skim of it). Perhaps more SUV's are in more crashes in general, or more accidents involving roll-overs that do not involve other vehicles. Crash safety is not overall safety.
Any conclusion would be speculative, but I must suggest that this article is not very indicative of an SUV's actual safety on the road, only its safety when hitting other vehicles. A substantial proportion of accidents, to be sure, but nowhere nearly enough to be conclusive. The brievity of the article, and its shady but lofty conclusions make me question its merit and intention.
This has got to be the biggest bunch of B.S. I've ever read. And the moderators who modded the parent post up should be ashamed of themselves for their complete and total lack of understanding of simple physics.
A rudimentary knowledge of physics is no compensation for ignorance of traffic engineering and safety. Prior to spreading FUD, perhaps read the referenced, or looking up on google a relevant, article. (Would you do any less if Windows were claimed to be the patron saint of network efficiency?)
Everything else aside, the vehicle is LESS SAFE to the occupants because it's lighter. I suppose that makes it more safe to the people in the other vehicle. When two masses hit, the lighter mass undergoes a greater change in velocity. This will be "felt" by the occupants, which means they're going to be injured easier.
Don't confuse traffic safety with head-on collisions. The latter is a relatively very small, albeit sensational, component of traffic safety. Breaking distance, vehicle responsiveness, and accident avoidance, on the other hand, are fundamental components to traffic safety, especially in emergency situations. They generally increase the occupants safety, including the rare cases of head-on collisions. I'm not saying the Smart Car is less safe in head-on collisions; it may or may not be. But it is certainly generally more safe.
[The crumple zone is there so] the occupants of the car do not feel the full "smack" of going from 60mph to 0mph in a hundredth of a second. Decelerating that quickly will severely injure a person. Airbags can help, but regular cars have those as well. Advantage larger car.
Bear in mind that "crumple zones" are an industry invention that makes a fender bender a multi-thousand dollar affair, proceeds to said industry. They increase the distance of sudden deceleration by up to two feet. A Smart Car car, on the other hand, has half the weight of the average vehicle, meaning that its capacity to decelerate prior to the accident is increased dramatically, not including its greater capacity for avoidance. Your capacity to safely stop suddenly is less important if you can avoid or break more efficiently.
Reduce braking distance Having done any research into vehicle safety would reveal this (though, admittedly, I didn't mention it, presuming that anyone with a iota of physics background would take this for granted): Even though you can't reduce reaction time, the next most important factor in traffic safety is braking distance, which is directly proportional to mass. You stop faster with less weight.
Accident avoidance After that, I understand the next most important safety factor is avoidance, a function of lateral traction, proportional to tire width, gumminess, and closeness of the axels, and inversely proportional to mass. The less your mass, the more lateral traction. If you can avoid or stop before the accident, the odds of a detrimental accident decrease.
Functions of time So, as you say, "it's not the speed that kills you, it's the sudden stop", the Smart Car simply slows faster prior to the sudden stop, so when that sudden stop happens, you're going much slower. Safety as a human function is directly proportional to the time of the stages in an accident: realization, reaction, braking or avoidance, and impact. More effective braking and avoidance make your time more useful.
Crumple zones Albeit, in a smaller vehicle, there is a small but substantial increase in the potentially vital impact component. However, if you put a 730kg (1600lb) vehicle (the Smart car) against an average vehicle sized sedan at 1500kg (3300lb), the sedan will simply stop further away from the point where the driver realized and acted on an emergency situation. That distance translates into not just fewer accidents, but lower speed at the point of impact, hence less force involved in the impact, and hence fewer and less severe injuries.
Emperical questions To measure the safety, you have to look at the merits of the differences between this vehicle and others. These merits are not necessarily obvious, involving at least: * How do most accidents happen? * How do most injuries happen? I believe the vast majority of accidents are rear-enders, which can be substantially reduced with better breaking distance and avoidance. * How many vehicle accidents are related to inadequate lateral traction? * Does the increase in avoidance and braking capacity result in fewer accidents? * Lower the cost insurance? * Lower fatalities? Of the owners? Of SUV drivers? * Result in fewer fender-benders? * How many are head-on collisions? (The only case where this vehicle would seem to be substantially less safe, isn't it? This is the case where momentum clashes and your body velocity goes from +X to -X)
Geneology of Driving These are sort of anecdotal arguments that I've bought into: Humans aren't designed to acquire and react to information at speeds provided for by vehicles, though we have compensated very well. Two factors remain very good at making drivers more comfortable, and hence more adequate: visibility and fit. The more visiblity you have, the less compensation your brain has to do to make up for blind spots. The better you feel you have control of the vehicle, ie. how it 'fits' you, the less time your brain spend compensating for unresponsive or poorly responsive mechanics. However, a large car can have both of these. There is also a question of security; insecure drivers, ie. those in a smart car who are uncomfortable being surrounded by SUV's, may react poorly (or perhaps drive more cautiously; who's to say).
I hope that clarifies the reality and reveals to you how physics of lighter vehicles can, and typically emperically does, make them inherently safer. Bear in mind, the old Volvo tank model of safety has its merits, too. But the Smart Car is not a death trap, unlike nearly all SUV's (save the Subaru Forrester, in the USA, iirc).
To complain about people not understanding Linux or open source would be entirely hypocritical of this community, with all the posts about the lack of safety of Smart Cars posted here! This is one of the safest vehicles in the world.
Lighter = safer Everything else aside, this vehicle is safer because it's lighter. There is no substitute for a lack of mass when your vehicle becomes a ball of plastic and metal momentum; the more weight, the more force is required to curb that momentum, so to speak. Force, in this case, typically translates into rolling, or crumpling. Modern vehicles do lots of both, particuarly SUV's. So bear in mind, mass is an inherent evil in vehicle safety.
Solid cage = safer Second, this little critter has a solid cage that can withstand the problem I just mentioned - its own mass. Most vehicles will crumple under their own mass at moderate speeds. At 65 km/h, head-on this car will walk away mostly unscathed, and the passenger will only have minor injuries.
Lateral weakness = myth From the side, the risk of being "T-boned", or laterally impaled, is highly overrated. The solid beam connecting the rear wheels, the axle, and the similarly reinforced front wheels, in such close proximity pretty much insure that if you are hit, unless it's a motorcycle, two of your strongest and most reinforced points of impact (the tires) are involved in the crash. Furthermore, there is a metal cage surrounding you that can easily withstand substantial impact.
Run-over = myth The risk that it will be "run over" are also highly overrated. If a big vehicle hits a smart car, it becomes a wedge, pushing the larger vehicle into the air so that the larger vehicle can dissipate its energy on other things, like concrete, pavement and telephone poles.
See, eg. Smart and Tough, The National Post, 6/11/04
Arguing that this car isn't safe is being on the wrong side of competence, akin to arguing the superiority of Microsoft Windows' security. There may be valid points, but for the most part, you're just wrong.
(Not to sound too cynicial, but I think it's a valid point, and hypocricy is a peeve)
Actually, I was speaking of 200w/m^2 before PV conversion. At 1au, the Earth receives about 1.3kw/m^2 in space. By passing through the atmosphere, most of that energy is lost.
I wouldn't say "lost", per se. It's converted to other forms of energy, like wind, wave and tidal power, which may also be harnessed.
And I think most people don't realize that the US has plans for just about everything - they had recently released (under the FOIA) plans for invading Canada. We'll probably never go to war against Canada in at least the next 200 years, but I'm glad we're prepared in case something should go terribly wrong. We probably have to have plans to defeat every country (including a secession of US states) and almost every hostile structure of weapons, etc., if the need ever arises. This is only a small part of that. And I'd guess they also have separate plans for dealing with any severe political aftermath.
Canada and the US have mutual plans to annex their neighbors, by mutual consent of the provinces/states or by force to preempt unilateral actions. Many states have these plans, though they are very rarely used. Democratic states typically adhere to the "do as little as possible so as to offend as few as possible so as to get re-elected", a great pacifist.
I think, though, that the USA and Russia have the most extensive contingency plans I have ever heard of. Indeed, both states have vast relatively autonomous underground operations bordering on secret cities. That link is relatively paranoid, justified or no, but it does illustrate the point. The USA and Russia are prepared for many, many situations, many beyond our consideration.
The context here is that someone is suggesting that the 5th ammendment can be used to argue against copyright extensions. The suggestion was that the public owns the "private property", and that by extending the copyright, Congress is taking property from the public and giving it to the original writer without compensation. So, Lessig says that the 5th ammendment would make (hypothetically) a better argument for extensions that against them. But Congress doesn't need a 5th ammemdment interpretation to back granting copyrights -- it has an enumerated power.
Good analysis; it's tangential, but the point that copyright is property stands out. Incidentally, in a conference, he eloquently explained this dilemma of 5th amendment constitutional redress to copyright reform. Unfortunately, I only know it from heresay (though I might see him on Friday and ask); suffice that he, and others of note, consider it a likely crux.
I'm using that term "natural law" as meant by Jefferson and Locke. Certain rights are inherit in being human, or given by God.
Ah, yes. Incidentally, I seem to recall that Locke used natural law to justify copyright as an intrinsic right inherent to creation. In other words, when you create, you have a natural right to benefit. The copyright monopoly is how that benefit has played out.
I'm pointing out a distiction between this sort of right and copyright, which is a "right" invented for pragmatic purposes. That is, the advancement of the arts and useful sciences.
Do you believe this distinction would be strong enough to hold up at the Supreme Court of the US?
Fundamental/natural rights are upheld to advance personal protection from the state. It could be argued that this is pragmatic insofar as advancing democracy and capitalism.
This strikes me as a bit superfluous, because I strongly suspect that almost all case law surrounding the redress clause of the 5th refers to appropriation of real property. The distinction between intellectual property and real property is much more hazy than between fundamental/natural rights. In that sense, do you "own" your land anymore than your copyright insofar as it is defined by a system created, endorsed, and enforced by the state.
I find any distinction very difficult; when the state builds a highway through your land, are you no less entitled to redress for your loss of benefit than when it usurps your right to benefit from your literary works for the public good?
Slashdot Mirror
Curious: How do you carbon-date stone?
The stone has been around for millenia, presumably. How would dating the stones tell when the stones were placed into their current location. As well, carbon dating applies only to organic materials. What organic material would have been tested?
In other words, how could carbon dating reveal the time at which Stonehenge was placed? Just curious; I'm sure there's some ingenious way of doing it.
Cheers
Programmers are a lot like lawyers, value-wise. Like lawyers, the value of programmers is, or traditionally has been, their creativity and intellect. Better tools have reduced the value of that personal asset in programmers, but not eliminated it.
It is notably different from most engineering in that the products do not require large capital to distribute, once the creativity is complete.
In this manner, I have often wondered if programmers would work better in limited liability partnerships rather than corporations. A small group of programmers who produce on contract to corporations would be, if well organized, very valuable.
The corporate structure lends itself to growth in traditional economy, whereas a larger programming companies have, in my limited experience, not been efficient. There are exceptions, like Electronic Arts, I think.
But the hierarchical view of corporations, looking down upon employees, is flawed in the programming world because the direction of the company is often better felt by the programmers themselves, and management has often had a terrible disconnect from the technical reality, and a tendency to dictate where they should listen. Good management isn't necessarily this way, but many people cling to this management style.
In a partnership, the partners would be responsible for bringing in clients, the design, the programming, and the effective reuse of code. In a corporation, they are typically responsible only for the programming. I believe savvy programmers would be much better at selecting appropriate clients and choosing the direction of the code. I believe, when it comes to the effective reuse of code, a partnership would have better structures adopted to accommodate it.
This sort of delegation among partners has been very effective, in my opinion, in lawyer partnerships. I believe the effectiveness could translate into programmer partnerships. Mind you, moving programmers into management positions in companies may have the same effect, but I think the hierarchial structure inherently causes problems. The distinguishing feature being that in a partnership, management would also be programmers, and vise versa. There wouldn't just be a "delegation to programmers" by management, so to speak.
Just food for thought.
Not all the hard questions in Linux's future are technical.
To IBM challengees/anyone:
How would you reconcile the need for innovation in Linux and the growing number of patents owned by a smaller and smaller group of large corporations, where these patents undermine the capacity to innovate?
IBM, being the largest patent filer in the United States, probably has a unique perspective on this. Though I am grateful for their support of, and happy for their benefit from, Linux, I must concede that I wonder what will happen when their patent interests conflict with their Linux interests.
Although we're really close, we'll get to a point where the animation no longer constrains the story.
Well, if we look at some recent Star Wars and Matrix film achievements, I'd say current animation far exceeds constraints of the story. Or rather, it's not the animation capabilities holding back the story. No amount of CG would have made Star Wars good, or The Matrix better. Titanic might be a good example of CG gone right.
Both the parent and grandparent seem to touch, but not quite hit, the mark.
Downloading is protected under, at least, Part VIII of the Copyright Act, which is "private copying". From it, you can infer that you can download as much music as you like. Private copying arose from the days of tape cassettes; it gives musical copyright holders the right to levy blank audio media as a form of remuneration for private copying. It only covers music. Movies and software downloads can violate copyright without permission.
Uploading was upheld on an evidentiary matter. There was insufficient evidence to show that the user intended to upload the music, but rather uploading seemed to be a side-effect of using the peer to peer software, according to the judge.
To be clear, the judge did not "legalize" uploading. He simply stated that there was insufficient evidence to show that the user intended to upload, in other words, he never had the mental culpability (ie. mens rea) to have infringed the copyright.
So, as another posted noted, you can have a shared folder if it is unlikely to be shown that you intended to share its contents, and you can likely download music under the private copying provisions of the Copyright Act.
But remember there were times where glacier covered half the Europe, there were times when Sahara was a green country, when what today is mediterran sea was a valley of a huge river
And we know how many humans survived those climate changes!
The people I know who use Debian, myself included, have less patience for crap that doesn't work. Though harder to install, unlike the other distros, you only ever have to do it once.
Tongue in cheek or no, the myth that Debian is behind other distros has continually been dispelled. Debian/Unstable is consistently ahead of other distros. What other distros besides Debian, and maybe Gentoo, currently include Kernel 2.6.8, KDE 3.3.0, and Firefox RC1?
Debian users simply loathe frigging around with the basics of their system, an experience all too common with some other distros. We prefer to spend our time frigging around on Slashdot, et al. Or advocating free software.
If the labels come after you for sharing such a file, tell them to sod off as the file in question is worthless without the other file which you did not share at the same time, did you?
The copyright merely has to "subsist in" the data, not be the recording itself. Even though worthless in isolation, I'm sure this would not hold water in court; it'd be an absurd interpretation of the purpose of the act if the only reason this file existed was to infringe copyright.
Incidentally, the careful choice of the words "subsist in" originally comes from, I do believe, copying large parts of others books into your own. It is ironic that it would apply on these points. Even if the words were less precise, the golden rule of statutory interpretation would protect the copyright owners: it'd be absurd to have for a user to choose to offer a file that contained data only used for copyright to be free of infringement by not having access to it on his own. The intention to infringe is there, as may be the intention to circumvent the law. At worst, it's contributing to infringement, probably exactly proportionate in liability to the amount that it is shared.
Now, if the user didn't intend to share the file, it's a whole different story. As well, there is a question as to whether the person sharing the a 'key' to the copyright infringed it, or contributed to its infringement.
Perhaps steganography would be more viable, being un-prosecutable by virtue of being undetectable.
Television is an advertisement delivery mechanism. Content is merely a means of isolating a span of consistent attention, long enough to expose consumers to advertisers. By downloading off the net, you circumvent the advertisement delivery mechanism that pays for the shows, so whether or not it's illegal or immoral to download off the net, you can be sure that it will be heavily opposed by the advertisers and the media delivery corporations. That's all that seems to count these days, so if it's not illegal now, it probably will be as soon as they catch on.
According to Edgar (SEC filings), I seem to recall that 96% of google's money comes now from AdSense. It was mostly just licensing their search software in the beginning, but AdSense has really taken off. They are certainly diversifying, and I suspect revenue will soon come from different places. Their brand name is second-to-none in the online universe.
So, open source is like some sort of backup system for IBM's source code, then?
:)
That IBM can lose source code to an entire operating system helps dispel any argument that, for posterity, source code is safer in companies.
A classic example of Steganography. The more noise, the easier to encode a useful signal. Usenet, radio signals, newspapers, and ebay are all great candidates for hidden messages. Cable television isn't such a great candidate only because it's highly regulated by either media conglomerates or governments.
So in one breath, you state how I should talk to some real engineers who "know these things", because I couldn't possibly know what I was talking about.
Res ipsa loquitur.
And in the next breath, you brush off credentials as being unimportant, since clearly only intelligence is required.
Yes.
And for the coupe-de-grace, you again bring up your well-credentialed, yet nameless, friends as being experts who couldn't possibly be wrong on the subject!
If you found my argument about intelligence, as a prima facie case for a capacity, to be insufficient, I alluded to substance. It is no less of a merit than calling yourself an engineer, and has substantially more merit than talking to yourself.
I am not in a position to publish my friend's contact information without permission. However, if you come up with something useful to say, feel free to email (bhunt6 (at) cogeco.ca), and I can get you in touch with him.
However, I suggest you stick to substance, rather than banter. You haven't supported your arguments with a shred of evidence, or even plausible conjecture.
John Kerry, is that you? Shouldn't you be out campaigning instead of reading Slashdot?
Indeed, at every point, you consistently bring up to something entirely superfluous and barely tangential to the argument.
And you should know who it is you're talking to before you start making assumptions.
:)
You shouldn't put yourself in a situation where your professional qualifications are come into question! (Seriously. Don't hold your credentials out as a professional unless you know what you are saying; they can come back to haunt you.)
For the record, I'm an engineer.
I figured as much.
I've discussed it with myself, and I agree that all else being equal, mass adds to the survivability of a vehicle in an accident.
That doesn't really add any support to your argument. Indeed, it forces the reader to bring into question your capacity to make an argument! Hand waving reflects poorly on professionals.
Now, perhaps you would care to present your credentials?
Credentials make people cocky, not correct. One need only intelligence to make a correct assertion. A contest over credentials won't make the points any more or less valid, and denigrates the conversation.
Incidentally, I've discussed this on many occasions with a traffic enginneer, with a masters in rollover accidents, who works for Transport Canada. He would be very curious about your conclusions. It is unfortunate that you didn't support your comments with any substance.
Crumple zones are a safety feature - nothing more.
...
Crumple zones are a very profitable component of vehicle repairs. Ask a mechanic, or better yet, an insurance adjuster. That doesn't make them less of a safety feature, mind.
The mere fact that you don't recognize them
Recognizing them as a source of lucrative income does not preclude recognizing them as a safety feature, though in this case it brings their purpose and capacity into question. There was no statement to the effect that I didn't recognize them as a safety feature.
This is a false dilemma; it is not a question of "it's a safety feature or not", but rather "it's a safety feature" and "it was designed with economic incentives or not". With a very functional economic incentive, its capacity as a safety feature must be inherently called into question.
as such tells me that you are trying to push an agenda.
I can't imagine what agenda I would have aside from debuncting the myths of the safety of Smart Cars against the calamity of widespread slashdot ignorance, and drawing an interesting analogy with debuncting the myths of Linux and Windows. This is slashdot. What good would an agenda do here? Regardless, an agenda, an attack on the person, wouldn't debunk the statements.
The video is interesting, but doesn't really add to the debate of Smart Car safety. One accident is not sufficient to base an argument on vehicle safety. I am under the impression that far more road deaths happen from vehicle rollovers than T-bone crashes like the one in the video.
You should ask some physicists, or better yet engineers, about mass and its relation to vehicle safety. Mass is the antithesis of vehicle safety. (Note: Don't mistake size for mass.)
We will continue building cars that have meaning and personality, and we will continue enjoying the hell out of them.
It's a bit short-sighted, and ultimately unsustainable, and probably a source of resentment among the poor and environmentally responsible. But there's no getting around it: big, powerful cars are fun.
That article doesn't say how many small vehicles are on the road, versus larger ones. As a result, there are no conclusions about accident avoidance; if most crashes involve SUV's, for example, but the vast majority of people drive small vehicles, even though there's only a small chance of substantial injury in a SUV, it would still be much safer to drive a small vehicle because it's less likely to be involved in an accident. The converse is true; if there are far more SUV's on the road, and fewer accidents involve SUV's, then they are absolutely safer.
There are actually a number of statistical problems with the conclusions of this article. It ignores many, many relevant points. How many small cars versus large SUV's are on the road. How many types of small cars are there, and how are they distributed? How many types of SUVs, and how are they distributed? If there are 100 types of SUVs, they may be MUCH less safe in spite of this conclusion, if there are also only 20 small car types being measured: None of the SUV's would make it into the top 20, although in aggregate, they would be the least safe. I don't mean to say that this is the case. I doubt it is. Nevertheless, it does put doubt upon the conclusions.
Most importantly, however, this article does not reflect general vehicle safety, only the safety of vehicles that have been in crashes with other vehicles (from my brief skim of it). Perhaps more SUV's are in more crashes in general, or more accidents involving roll-overs that do not involve other vehicles. Crash safety is not overall safety.
Any conclusion would be speculative, but I must suggest that this article is not very indicative of an SUV's actual safety on the road, only its safety when hitting other vehicles. A substantial proportion of accidents, to be sure, but nowhere nearly enough to be conclusive. The brievity of the article, and its shady but lofty conclusions make me question its merit and intention.
This has got to be the biggest bunch of B.S. I've ever read. And the moderators who modded the parent post up should be ashamed of themselves for their complete and total lack of understanding of simple physics.
A rudimentary knowledge of physics is no compensation for ignorance of traffic engineering and safety. Prior to spreading FUD, perhaps read the referenced, or looking up on google a relevant, article. (Would you do any less if Windows were claimed to be the patron saint of network efficiency?)
Everything else aside, the vehicle is LESS SAFE to the occupants because it's lighter. I suppose that makes it more safe to the people in the other vehicle. When two masses hit, the lighter mass undergoes a greater change in velocity. This will be "felt" by the occupants, which means they're going to be injured easier.
Don't confuse traffic safety with head-on collisions. The latter is a relatively very small, albeit sensational, component of traffic safety. Breaking distance, vehicle responsiveness, and accident avoidance, on the other hand, are fundamental components to traffic safety, especially in emergency situations. They generally increase the occupants safety, including the rare cases of head-on collisions. I'm not saying the Smart Car is less safe in head-on collisions; it may or may not be. But it is certainly generally more safe.
[The crumple zone is there so] the occupants of the car do not feel the full "smack" of going from 60mph to 0mph in a hundredth of a second. Decelerating that quickly will severely injure a person. Airbags can help, but regular cars have those as well. Advantage larger car.
Bear in mind that "crumple zones" are an industry invention that makes a fender bender a multi-thousand dollar affair, proceeds to said industry. They increase the distance of sudden deceleration by up to two feet. A Smart Car car, on the other hand, has half the weight of the average vehicle, meaning that its capacity to decelerate prior to the accident is increased dramatically, not including its greater capacity for avoidance. Your capacity to safely stop suddenly is less important if you can avoid or break more efficiently.
See, also: this comment
Lighter is safer. Ask any traffic engineer.
Reduce braking distance
Having done any research into vehicle safety would reveal this (though, admittedly, I didn't mention it, presuming that anyone with a iota of physics background would take this for granted): Even though you can't reduce reaction time, the next most important factor in traffic safety is braking distance, which is directly proportional to mass. You stop faster with less weight.
Accident avoidance
After that, I understand the next most important safety factor is avoidance, a function of lateral traction, proportional to tire width, gumminess, and closeness of the axels, and inversely proportional to mass. The less your mass, the more lateral traction. If you can avoid or stop before the accident, the odds of a detrimental accident decrease.
Functions of time
So, as you say, "it's not the speed that kills you, it's the sudden stop", the Smart Car simply slows faster prior to the sudden stop, so when that sudden stop happens, you're going much slower. Safety as a human function is directly proportional to the time of the stages in an accident: realization, reaction, braking or avoidance, and impact. More effective braking and avoidance make your time more useful.
Crumple zones
Albeit, in a smaller vehicle, there is a small but substantial increase in the potentially vital impact component. However, if you put a 730kg (1600lb) vehicle (the Smart car) against an average vehicle sized sedan at 1500kg (3300lb), the sedan will simply stop further away from the point where the driver realized and acted on an emergency situation. That distance translates into not just fewer accidents, but lower speed at the point of impact, hence less force involved in the impact, and hence fewer and less severe injuries.
Emperical questions
To measure the safety, you have to look at the merits of the differences between this vehicle and others. These merits are not necessarily obvious, involving at least:
* How do most accidents happen?
* How do most injuries happen? I believe the vast majority of accidents are rear-enders, which can be substantially reduced with better breaking distance and avoidance.
* How many vehicle accidents are related to inadequate lateral traction?
* Does the increase in avoidance and braking capacity result in fewer accidents?
* Lower the cost insurance?
* Lower fatalities? Of the owners? Of SUV drivers?
* Result in fewer fender-benders?
* How many are head-on collisions? (The only case where this vehicle would seem to be substantially less safe, isn't it? This is the case where momentum clashes and your body velocity goes from +X to -X)
Geneology of Driving
These are sort of anecdotal arguments that I've bought into: Humans aren't designed to acquire and react to information at speeds provided for by vehicles, though we have compensated very well. Two factors remain very good at making drivers more comfortable, and hence more adequate: visibility and fit. The more visiblity you have, the less compensation your brain has to do to make up for blind spots. The better you feel you have control of the vehicle, ie. how it 'fits' you, the less time your brain spend compensating for unresponsive or poorly responsive mechanics. However, a large car can have both of these. There is also a question of security; insecure drivers, ie. those in a smart car who are uncomfortable being surrounded by SUV's, may react poorly (or perhaps drive more cautiously; who's to say).
I hope that clarifies the reality and reveals to you how physics of lighter vehicles can, and typically emperically does, make them inherently safer. Bear in mind, the old Volvo tank model of safety has its merits, too. But the Smart Car is not a death trap, unlike nearly all SUV's (save the Subaru Forrester, in the USA, iirc).
To complain about people not understanding Linux or open source would be entirely hypocritical of this community, with all the posts about the lack of safety of Smart Cars posted here! This is one of the safest vehicles in the world.
Lighter = safer
Everything else aside, this vehicle is safer because it's lighter. There is no substitute for a lack of mass when your vehicle becomes a ball of plastic and metal momentum; the more weight, the more force is required to curb that momentum, so to speak. Force, in this case, typically translates into rolling, or crumpling. Modern vehicles do lots of both, particuarly SUV's. So bear in mind, mass is an inherent evil in vehicle safety.
Solid cage = safer
Second, this little critter has a solid cage that can withstand the problem I just mentioned - its own mass. Most vehicles will crumple under their own mass at moderate speeds. At 65 km/h, head-on this car will walk away mostly unscathed, and the passenger will only have minor injuries.
Lateral weakness = myth
From the side, the risk of being "T-boned", or laterally impaled, is highly overrated. The solid beam connecting the rear wheels, the axle, and the similarly reinforced front wheels, in such close proximity pretty much insure that if you are hit, unless it's a motorcycle, two of your strongest and most reinforced points of impact (the tires) are involved in the crash. Furthermore, there is a metal cage surrounding you that can easily withstand substantial impact.
Run-over = myth
The risk that it will be "run over" are also highly overrated. If a big vehicle hits a smart car, it becomes a wedge, pushing the larger vehicle into the air so that the larger vehicle can dissipate its energy on other things, like concrete, pavement and telephone poles.
See, eg. Smart and Tough, The National Post, 6/11/04
Arguing that this car isn't safe is being on the wrong side of competence, akin to arguing the superiority of Microsoft Windows' security. There may be valid points, but for the most part, you're just wrong.
(Not to sound too cynicial, but I think it's a valid point, and hypocricy is a peeve)
it still uses water. That's as scarce as gas in Arizona.
Interestingly and scarily enough, (clean) water is a lot more expensive than gas. It's what, $1 for an 8 oz bottle, versus $1 for a gallon of gas?
The developing world is interesting because they still have no notion of paying for drinking water, for better or worse.
Actually, I was speaking of 200w/m^2 before PV conversion. At 1au, the Earth receives about 1.3kw/m^2 in space. By passing through the atmosphere, most of that energy is lost.
I wouldn't say "lost", per se. It's converted to other forms of energy, like wind, wave and tidal power, which may also be harnessed.
ok, it isn't the moon landings
You mean, it isn't riddled with controversy?
And I think most people don't realize that the US has plans for just about everything - they had recently released (under the FOIA) plans for invading Canada. We'll probably never go to war against Canada in at least the next 200 years, but I'm glad we're prepared in case something should go terribly wrong. We probably have to have plans to defeat every country (including a secession of US states) and almost every hostile structure of weapons, etc., if the need ever arises. This is only a small part of that. And I'd guess they also have separate plans for dealing with any severe political aftermath.
Canada and the US have mutual plans to annex their neighbors, by mutual consent of the provinces/states or by force to preempt unilateral actions. Many states have these plans, though they are very rarely used. Democratic states typically adhere to the "do as little as possible so as to offend as few as possible so as to get re-elected", a great pacifist.
I think, though, that the USA and Russia have the most extensive contingency plans I have ever heard of. Indeed, both states have vast relatively autonomous underground operations bordering on secret cities. That link is relatively paranoid, justified or no, but it does illustrate the point. The USA and Russia are prepared for many, many situations, many beyond our consideration.
The context here is that someone is suggesting that the 5th ammendment can be used to argue against copyright extensions. The suggestion was that the public owns the "private property", and that by extending the copyright, Congress is taking property from the public and giving it to the original writer without compensation. So, Lessig says that the 5th ammendment would make (hypothetically) a better argument for extensions that against them. But Congress doesn't need a 5th ammemdment interpretation to back granting copyrights -- it has an enumerated power.
Good analysis; it's tangential, but the point that copyright is property stands out. Incidentally, in a conference, he eloquently explained this dilemma of 5th amendment constitutional redress to copyright reform. Unfortunately, I only know it from heresay (though I might see him on Friday and ask); suffice that he, and others of note, consider it a likely crux.
I'm using that term "natural law" as meant by Jefferson and Locke. Certain rights are inherit in being human, or given by God.
Ah, yes. Incidentally, I seem to recall that Locke used natural law to justify copyright as an intrinsic right inherent to creation. In other words, when you create, you have a natural right to benefit. The copyright monopoly is how that benefit has played out.
I'm pointing out a distiction between this sort of right and copyright, which is a "right" invented for pragmatic purposes. That is, the advancement of the arts and useful sciences.
Do you believe this distinction would be strong enough to hold up at the Supreme Court of the US?
Fundamental/natural rights are upheld to advance personal protection from the state. It could be argued that this is pragmatic insofar as advancing democracy and capitalism.
This strikes me as a bit superfluous, because I strongly suspect that almost all case law surrounding the redress clause of the 5th refers to appropriation of real property. The distinction between intellectual property and real property is much more hazy than between fundamental/natural rights. In that sense, do you "own" your land anymore than your copyright insofar as it is defined by a system created, endorsed, and enforced by the state.
I find any distinction very difficult; when the state builds a highway through your land, are you no less entitled to redress for your loss of benefit than when it usurps your right to benefit from your literary works for the public good?