I read the article up to the point where it inferred that logic was lacking with respect to a car rental company being liable for the injuries caused by a driver who rented that car.
I propose a two-fold answer. As a matter of law, many states have statutes that require owners to be responsible for the accidents involving those who are using their car with permission. That's the end of the legal analysis in most cases. Why do we have that law, you ask? To protect victims.
The policy rationale for requiring owners to be responsible for the use of their vehicle by others is to protect victims by ensuring that when accidents occur there are insurers to compensate innocent victims (at least, this is the rationale in the fault-based systems such as most of the USA). In the case of rental cars the cost of that insurance is incurred by the rental car company, which cost they pass that cost onto the drivers.
How does society dictate that car rental agencies get insurance? By enacting statutes that make owners liable for the negligence of the drivers.
The alternative has been shown to result in patchy coverage of injuries occurring in motor vehicle accidents. This lack of coverage hurts innocent victims who, in fault-based insurance schemes, may have no recourse to compensation from uninsured or underinsured drivers.
Thus, to provide innocent victims with a recourse to compensation, many societies have decided that the owners of vehicles, who shall generally have insurance, shall be responsible for the accidents caused by drivers of their vehicles, who may not have insurance.
Of course this policy and such laws are not uniform. In some cases the owner must be shown to be negligent or otherwise responsible or aware of the driver's behaviour.
I'm not sure if this was the basis for the logic of the Judge in this case, but it's a well known rationale that I thought may be worth sharing.
Iodine 131 is even safer. It's risks are based on the fact that thyroid gland tends to vacuum all the iodine in the body, including isotope 131 where it irradiates your body from inside for a long time.
Iodine builds up in the thyroid, and ingesting radioactive iodine has been linked to thyroid cancer.
Ironically, part of the cure for thyroid cancer is to ingest more radioactive iodine.
Radioactive Iodine is given to the patient with thyroid cancer after their cancer has been removed. If there are any normal thyroid cells or thyroid cancer cells remain in the patient's body (and any thyroid cancer cells retaining this ability to absorb iodine), then these cells will absorb and concentrate the radioactive "poisonous" iodine. Since all other cells of our bodies cannot absorb the toxic iodine, they are unharmed.
That's a thoughtful post. When I said police districts "typically" have extra pay for court time, my basis for saying that is limited to my own experience (i.e. a few districts, all in the same jurisdiction). Everywhere else in the world may be completely different.
> In your overly ornate categorical prescription of the "difference" between the reified 'Science' and 'Arts' as discrete and self-similar fields of human activity, you are conflating intentionality with ontology.
Am I? Indeed. I'm not sure where the conflation you allege took place, but I thought I took a rather logically postivist perspective. Whether I communicated such is a different question.
> You also ascribing a teleological direction to the "progress" of human activity, and authoring a moral judgement upon the "forces" that constrain "scientific progress" within medicine.
No, and yes, respectively.
> Lastly, I suspect you are promulgating Polanyi-Kuhn incommensurablity between scientific paradigms, a notion that has many supporters, but also many detractors, and is in many areas orthogonal to your teleological framing.
I have no idea who Polanyi-Kuhn is or the notion they advanced, or why it applies to this discussion. I shared a well reputed paper because it comments on systemic issues inherent to the field of medical science.
I any event Incommensurability does not seem to be a relevant consideration to the conclusions or observations set out in the article I shared.
> You fail to address the tension between these two theses. In short, your argument as presented, while possessing merit, does not produce a sufficient synthesis to derive a satisfactory conclusion especially when considering your moral focus.
Although you use some big words, which make for an enjoyable read, I must admit in spite of my reasonable effort I've failed to understand what your point is.
Was your purpose in writing this post to make a point? Or was the point to use big words?
With respect, perhaps you might be interested in reading the article, as reading your comment I feel you have not. The flaws indicated in the article are not the result of novel and progressive research that replaces outdated notions, but rather systemic pressures that undermine scientific progress and even promulgates regression.
Further, it seems Sturgeon's Revelation is about the innocent inaccuracies inherent to science fiction and other artistic endeavours, not the manipulative, self-centered and malevolent forces that assault scientific progress in the medical field. Sturgeon's Revelation is a comment on art, not science, though I would expect there is, as you suggest, an epistemological equivalent for scientific research – though again, the article is not a question of the state of knowledge but rather the motivations behind the systemic and prevalent deceptions in the medical field.
Plus, they have the incentive of getting a day's pay for just sitting around in court surfing the web on their laptops until the case comes up and gets dismissed.
As a side note, police districts typically pay officers time-and-a-half or double-time for Court time. I speculate that this is an incentive for the officers to show up, compensation for the perceived hardship of possibly testifying, or to make sure the officers get a lot of experience on the stand so they can become hardened professional witnesses.
The extra pay incentives for showing up at Court is much less of an issue (and has valuable qualities, such as training officers how to testify with respect to serious offences), I believe, than the complete absence of any deterrence or even feedback for the malicious, pointless, or callous issuing of improper tickets.
Ticketing innocent people does not deter bad behaviour, and it undermines the credibility of the justice system.
The great problem, in my opinion, with the police doling out tickets like this is that there is neither feedback nor consequence to the police officer. He puts out a ticket, you have enormous cost to access justice, and he has absolutely no deterrence from causing you and others the same cost to access justice in the future. This is economic waste and impugnes the reputation, validity and motivation of the justice system.
In my humble opinion, every ticket that's dismissed at Court should be made known to the police officer, it should be recorded against his record, and it should be made an offence to systemically issue tickets that are dismissed – the offence being a species of barratry.
Barrators, as a matter of interest, have a special place in hell, the Eighth circle, fifth bolgia, according to Dante.
If you med types want to arrogantly view yourselves as gods or even scientists because you know a little biology,
There isn't even much in the way of actual science or biology. For example, the well reputed author of Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science claims that "as much as 90 percent of the published medical information that doctors rely on is flawed".
So? I'd gladly take a misdemeanor if it meant they had no evidence that a crime was committed.
First, if there was no evidence a crime was committed, the court couldn't convict you of using encryption to conceal evidence about a crime. It's a prerequisite that the primary crime that has had evidence encrypted be proven before encrypting the evidence can become a crime itself. If there is a reasonable doubt about the primary crime, there's reasonable doubt about the crime of encrypting.
Further, refusing to provide the information necessary to decrypt a device as required by a valid warrant or Court order is a separate offence, and not a misdemeanor. It's contempt of court, and often can carry a penalty greater than the charge.
While encrypting information related to a crime may be a misdemeanor, it likely only comes into play in sentencing for the primary crime for which the evidence was encrypted.
Where a variable such as as 'm' varies on input complexity it presumably does so linearly, in which case O(m * n^c) asymptotically approaches a * n^(c+1); i.e. is O( n^(c+1) ). O(n^5) in Vlad's case.
I reference 'm' separately as a linear coefficient directly from Vlad's paper; please feel free to take up the issue with him if you wish, or let me know if I've mischaracterized his complexity analysis.
I thought the most famous NP complete problem was the travelling salesman. Simply because it is easier to explain, and layman can much easier relate to it (though bugglars might prefer the knapsack problem).
Sir –
I agree that Travelling Salesman is probably the most famous of the these problems, but as a generic problem it has been shown to be only NP Hard, and not NP Complete. That being said, variations on TSP are NP Complete, and it would have been fine to reference it as the most famous of this sort of problem.
Correction: the big-Oh should be O(m*n^c), where c is a number that does not increase with the complexity of the input, though `n` and 'm' may.
Usually the size of the input increases complexity, but I believe in the case of satisfiability that complexity is proportional to the number of Horne clauses - clauses with at most one positive literal - because of difficulties reducing Horne clauses. I seem to recall that reducing Horne clauses to non-Horne clauses is itself a NP complete problem, everything else (which is severable) in determining satisfiability is provably polynomial.
In Vlad's proof he's found a solution to NP problems that are O(m * n^4).
I did some graduate research on satisfiability, so perhaps I can offer some illumination.
Satisfiability is a logic problem. Given a set of clauses that "or" a set of literals, which literals (and clauses) may be true or false, all "and"ed together, the question is: is there a set of literals (when true or false) that result in the overall statement being true. E.g.
X = (A or B) & (!A or !B) & (A or !B)
The question is: Is there a combination of A and B being true or false that would result in X being true? (In this example, X is true when A is true and B is false.)
3-SAT is satisfiability but with only 3-literals per clause e.g.
X = (A or B or C) and (A or !B or !C) and (!A or B or C)...
There's a polynomial-time mapping from any satisfiability problem to 3-SAT, as there is between all NP complete problems, which mapping is why they are so-classified. In other words, if you solve one NP complete problem in polynomial time (namely big-O notation O(ax^n) where n is the complexity i.e. number of literals) you solve them all in polynomial time. The most famous of these NP complete problems is probably the Knapsack problem, though there are quite a few.
All to say, it's a logic puzzle that has quite a few applications but no simple solution yet.
I'm not sure if the above is in layman terms, but I hope it is somewhat helpful.
You don't have the right to use a technology developed by someone else (e.g. H.264) without paying. It's nice if you have such an option and I understand why you would prefer it, but there is no inherent right to it. Arguments like yours are what sometimes weaken the FOSS movement. People who do not understand what FOSS is all about think it is full of whiny people who want to get everything for free. Guess what? You (me, everybody) don't deserve to get a video codec for free. There are some things that we deserve to get for free, but video codecs are not one of them.
With respect, your statements that one does not have an inherent right to use a technology as the starting point for an analysis is not correct, from a legal and policy perspective, in a free and democratic society.
In a free culture everyone has an inherent right to do anything, subject to the restrictions imposed and enforced by way of the rule of law. "Anything" includes using video codecs. This is the starting point of the analysis of rights in a free society.
In the case of video codecs, namely source code and executable binaries, an inherent right granting anyone use over it may be limited by intellectual property laws that define, identify, and restrict the use of certain creations under threat of civil and criminal penalty, on the basis that society deems these creations to be of value and therefore encourages this creation by granting over them a limited monopoly that can be traded for compensation. The types of intellectual properties typically recognized is short: copyright, trademark, patent and trade secrets. Any and all of these may apply to an a video codec, circumstances depending.
In general, patents and copyright are going to be the protections most relied upon to restrict a video codec from the inherent right to free usage. These are temporary protections, meaning that the law reverts to the inherent state of a free right to usage after the applicable copyrights and patents have expired.
All to say, everyone has an inherent right to use the intellectual creations of others, such as video codes. There may be temporary limitations on that inherent right of free use, but these limitations are neither inherent to nor permanent over the intellectual creation. They are, rather, artificial impositions made by the rule of law in an effort to advance economic and social benefits.
While this may come across as pedantic, and I'm not endorsing the grandparent post, I feel is important to understand the analysis that underlies this particular question of rights and freedoms, and in particular the purpose of those protections – a consideration often distant from the argument.
Thank you for the opportunity to make this response.
How can the rest of us live in freedom if we live under near perpetual duress that we too will be taken away and left to rot?
Sir –
I've little to tell you, except suggesting you find a sensible new sovereign state. I'm sorry I wish I could say otherwise.
To enjoy an illusion of living in freedom you must live in ignorance. The spectacle (the bread and circuses) is meant – designed – to make ignorance easy. I suspect, though, that the spectacle offers as little comfort for those that can think as the superficial illusion of freedom does.
Please allow me to make some statements which I feel may be illuminating for you, and refer you to this comment for references.
In some other countries, people are simply killed, or are given severe enough punishment that it acts to prevent crime. You steal something and are caught, you lose a hand. This means that fewer people are inclined to steal with that sort of punishment. If you do some horrible crime, you don't get put in prison for life, you lose your life.
With respect, your hypothetical is of course not relevant to comparisons to other Western countries, most of which have incarceration rates at a fraction of those in the U.S., a greater respect for human rights, and higher quality of prison facilities. Indeed, most of the prisoners in the U.S. (i.e. 3/4) would seem to be in prison for non-violent crimes.
Amputation is an example of judicial corporeal punishment. As a general rule, judicial corporeal punishment is practiced in few countries, and executed rarely. The specific corporeal punishment of amputation is an even rarer rarer Islamic idiosyncrasy (i.e. is practiced only in Saudi Arabia, Iran and Northern Nigeria).
Finally, deterrence against crime is one of the justifications for and purposes of what we call a criminal justice system. The other justification and purpose is segregation of violent or repeat offenders. Deterrence is not specific to corporeal punishment.
I humbly suggest that when questioning whether the United States has a systemic incarceration issue, you should aim a little higher than comparing it to three of the most despotic, backwards countries to ever blight the earth. It may be more productive to look to countries such as Japan or Denmark which have (a) a significantly lower crime rate, and (b) a fraction of the prison population, and (c) significantly better government infrastructure (for statistics, etc.) and (d) better protection of human rights, to speculate on what the U.S. may be doing so horrendously wrong. Hint: the prison industrial complex, a private industry and a massive lobbyist, is motivated by financial gain, and operates without regard to the public policy and purpose of a criminal justice system. A comparison to Saudi Arabia does not serve any useful purpose, unless you seek a specious basis for feeling good about senselessly depriving millions of people of their freedom.
People in US prisons are also get more than prisoners do in most other countries, which encourages people to stay in prison rather than having to try surviving in society. People whine about human rights here, but honestly, if people are ready to rape and murder, they should be ready to have all of their rights removed, including protection from other criminals.
Again, violent crime is not why the vast majority of American prisoners are incarcerated. Second, I do not believe the U.S. prisons are among the best in the world; quite the opposite, as I understand it.
In any event, human rights are a response to the invariable and inevitable gravitation of governments towards giving themselves the power to punish their own citizens with arbitrary and capricious will.
Thank you for providing the opportunity to comment on such vast and sweeping ignorances.
COURTS have jurisdiction, not parties, and the jurisdiction means they have the power to HEAR the lawsuit.
Sir –
Even more pedantically: Courts and other dispute resolution bodies (e.g. arbitrators) have what we refer to as "jurisdiction" when these bodies have the power to determine the outcome of a dispute i.e. the power to issue an award that is enforceable over the people (in personam), subject-matter, and property (in rem) in issue.
I've been taught through experience that the word "jurisdiction" ought to always be accompanied by an adjective that answers the question "over what?" Determining issues of jurisdiction is typically a nuanced analysis, but worth learning about if you wish to understand how the rule of law operates. Disputes over billions of dollars are regularly swayed by issues of jurisdiction.
To give some leeway to its author, the headline could be interpreted "Sony must show [the Court] has jurisdiction to sue PS3 hacker", or "Sony must show it has [chosen the Court with] jurisdiction to sue the PS3 hacker".
This kind of thing happens day in and day out in the U.S. We make more people rot in confinement than the worst despotic regimes in history. And there are many effective ways to get around the protections offered by your 'rights', making them nearly meaningless in practice.
Quite right. This map says quite a lot, I believe.
I believe either half or a quarter of all prisoners in the world (I cannot recall offhand which) are in the United States. It is the land of the free, for those lucky enough to avoid a criminal conviction machine that incarcerates at a rate considered preposterous – and contrary or without regard to its stated purpose – elsewhere.
Alas, many Americans seem to be in denial about uncontroverted facts such as these, and as a result unable and unwilling to question the reason such a reality has come about.
Thank you very much for the reply. I'm very grateful for illuminating these annals of the rise of common law legal profession for me, and I sincerely appreciate your time and effort.
The correct short title is the Quebec Act (1774).
Thank you for the correction – I understand what you had meant now, with the Quebec Act as an example of the beginning of the breakdown of the requirement that legal work be done by sole practitioners. I misread your illustration to mean a change in British law.
Senior figures in the Judges' Council have often argued that not being tied to single clients makes barristers more independent and aware of their duty to the system of justice as a whole, and justifies continuing to draw judges almost exclusively from the bar on that and similar bases.
If I may speak from my experience as a practitioner who's worn most hats (and gowns) in the profession, this is an interesting and valid concern, that I've not heard spoken of often. The distinction between barrister and solicitor is generally referred to as a historical anomaly that interferes with economic efficiency and consistency (e.g. with respect to costs, as you mentioned). I had often wondered why there was a separation between barrister and solicitor; this supports more than a historical impetus: a substantive benefit to society.
With the breakdown of the distinction, I've also noticed reduced specialization, and the near-elimination of a judge-barrister relationship that would develop from multiple appearances. Such a relationship permits more efficient communication because each would often know the others concerns in advance and be able to speak to them efficiently and effectively. Where such Judge-barrister relationships do develop are in the few specialized lawyers whom some Judges know well, and a flood of ephemeral, young, inexperienced, and unknown faces that are capable of saying virtually anything — without any real consequence — to get whatever relief their client desires — shifting the burden of competent analysis entirely to the Judge (or Master). While the Judge or Master is often going to be good at such analysis, the absence of specialized speakers is, I expect, much less efficient and efficacious.
I would be quite interested in knowing more about the rise of the barrister, but I've imposed too much to ask.
I will write back if I find out the firm claiming to have written the U.S. constitution.
Thank you, again, for the fascinating conversation.
Don't act as if there is a disconnect between science and religion. Only the most ignorant theologians and scientists will tell you that there is. Some of the greatest scientific minds in history have belonged to one religion or another.
Sir —
I'm not sure you were responding to the correct post. Though the subject of this thread of comments has the word "science" in it, my comment itself made no mention of or reference to science, either directly or indirectly (i.e. it had nothing to do with science).
I'm curious about the meaning of this statement, because it is so ambiguous. What does it mean to you to "believe in the Bible"? Do you believe in (and I don't mean to oversimplify by putting it in a list) the Bible being one or more of the following:
1. a literally true set of statements? (I take it it's not this, because you reject eg rapture) 2. divine statements (whether those statements are true or not, or in Hebrew or otherwise)? 3. helpful guidelines for human life? 4. a significant history that gives itself meaning? 5. access to a social and culture community of people who also "believe in the Bible"?
Is your belief "in the Bible" one of the above, or something different? I grew up in a non-denominational culture, and I simply don't know or understand the relationship between the Bible (as a non-fictional book, fictional book, divine communication, guideline to life, meaningful artefact, cultural centerpiece or otherwise) and its rational followers. I'm genuinely, and deeply curious.
Incidentally, I hardly ever think to refer to The Scripture Project: http://www.project-reason.org/scripture_project/, but this seems an apt opportunity for pointing out what I believe is one of the most important works on the Bible.
Slashdot Mirror
Sir –
I read the article up to the point where it inferred that logic was lacking with respect to a car rental company being liable for the injuries caused by a driver who rented that car.
I propose a two-fold answer. As a matter of law, many states have statutes that require owners to be responsible for the accidents involving those who are using their car with permission. That's the end of the legal analysis in most cases. Why do we have that law, you ask? To protect victims.
The policy rationale for requiring owners to be responsible for the use of their vehicle by others is to protect victims by ensuring that when accidents occur there are insurers to compensate innocent victims (at least, this is the rationale in the fault-based systems such as most of the USA). In the case of rental cars the cost of that insurance is incurred by the rental car company, which cost they pass that cost onto the drivers.
How does society dictate that car rental agencies get insurance? By enacting statutes that make owners liable for the negligence of the drivers.
The alternative has been shown to result in patchy coverage of injuries occurring in motor vehicle accidents. This lack of coverage hurts innocent victims who, in fault-based insurance schemes, may have no recourse to compensation from uninsured or underinsured drivers.
Thus, to provide innocent victims with a recourse to compensation, many societies have decided that the owners of vehicles, who shall generally have insurance, shall be responsible for the accidents caused by drivers of their vehicles, who may not have insurance.
Of course this policy and such laws are not uniform. In some cases the owner must be shown to be negligent or otherwise responsible or aware of the driver's behaviour.
I'm not sure if this was the basis for the logic of the Judge in this case, but it's a well known rationale that I thought may be worth sharing.
The rest of the article was tl;dr.
Several provinces also have legislation protecting the right to pursue remedy by Courts (effectively allowing class proceedings).
This sort of legislation arose in response to arbitration clauses such as the one in AT&T, and in particular one in an agreement with Dell Computer (see Dell Computer Corp. v. Union des consommateurs, 2007 SCC 34, [2007] 2 S.C.R. 801), that prevented class proceedings. See e.g. paragraph 64 of Griffin v. Dell Canada Inc., 2010 ONCA 29 (CanLII) .
An example of the legislation in question is in section 7 of the Consumer Protection Act, 2002 in Ontario.
Sir –
Just to add to your comments with some trivia:
Iodine 131 is even safer. It's risks are based on the fact that thyroid gland tends to vacuum all the iodine in the body, including isotope 131 where it irradiates your body from inside for a long time.
Iodine builds up in the thyroid, and ingesting radioactive iodine has been linked to thyroid cancer.
Ironically, part of the cure for thyroid cancer is to ingest more radioactive iodine.
See e.g. http://www.endocrineweb.com/conditions/thyroid-cancer/thyroid-cancer
Radioactive Iodine is given to the patient with thyroid cancer after their cancer has been removed. If there are any normal thyroid cells or thyroid cancer cells remain in the patient's body (and any thyroid cancer cells retaining this ability to absorb iodine), then these cells will absorb and concentrate the radioactive "poisonous" iodine. Since all other cells of our bodies cannot absorb the toxic iodine, they are unharmed.
Sir –
That's a thoughtful post. When I said police districts "typically" have extra pay for court time, my basis for saying that is limited to my own experience (i.e. a few districts, all in the same jurisdiction). Everywhere else in the world may be completely different.
Sir –
> In your overly ornate categorical prescription of the "difference" between the reified 'Science' and 'Arts' as discrete and self-similar fields of human activity, you are conflating intentionality with ontology.
Am I? Indeed. I'm not sure where the conflation you allege took place, but I thought I took a rather logically postivist perspective. Whether I communicated such is a different question.
> You also ascribing a teleological direction to the "progress" of human activity, and authoring a moral judgement upon the "forces" that constrain "scientific progress" within medicine.
No, and yes, respectively.
> Lastly, I suspect you are promulgating Polanyi-Kuhn incommensurablity between scientific paradigms, a notion that has many supporters, but also many detractors, and is in many areas orthogonal to your teleological framing.
I have no idea who Polanyi-Kuhn is or the notion they advanced, or why it applies to this discussion. I shared a well reputed paper because it comments on systemic issues inherent to the field of medical science.
I any event Incommensurability does not seem to be a relevant consideration to the conclusions or observations set out in the article I shared.
> You fail to address the tension between these two theses. In short, your argument as presented, while possessing merit, does not produce a sufficient synthesis to derive a satisfactory conclusion especially when considering your moral focus.
Although you use some big words, which make for an enjoyable read, I must admit in spite of my reasonable effort I've failed to understand what your point is.
Was your purpose in writing this post to make a point? Or was the point to use big words?
More to the point: Did you read the article, yet?
Sir –
With respect, perhaps you might be interested in reading the article, as reading your comment I feel you have not. The flaws indicated in the article are not the result of novel and progressive research that replaces outdated notions, but rather systemic pressures that undermine scientific progress and even promulgates regression.
Further, it seems Sturgeon's Revelation is about the innocent inaccuracies inherent to science fiction and other artistic endeavours, not the manipulative, self-centered and malevolent forces that assault scientific progress in the medical field. Sturgeon's Revelation is a comment on art, not science, though I would expect there is, as you suggest, an epistemological equivalent for scientific research – though again, the article is not a question of the state of knowledge but rather the motivations behind the systemic and prevalent deceptions in the medical field.
Plus, they have the incentive of getting a day's pay for just sitting around in court surfing the web on their laptops until the case comes up and gets dismissed.
As a side note, police districts typically pay officers time-and-a-half or double-time for Court time. I speculate that this is an incentive for the officers to show up, compensation for the perceived hardship of possibly testifying, or to make sure the officers get a lot of experience on the stand so they can become hardened professional witnesses.
The extra pay incentives for showing up at Court is much less of an issue (and has valuable qualities, such as training officers how to testify with respect to serious offences), I believe, than the complete absence of any deterrence or even feedback for the malicious, pointless, or callous issuing of improper tickets.
Ticketing innocent people does not deter bad behaviour, and it undermines the credibility of the justice system.
Sir –
The great problem, in my opinion, with the police doling out tickets like this is that there is neither feedback nor consequence to the police officer. He puts out a ticket, you have enormous cost to access justice, and he has absolutely no deterrence from causing you and others the same cost to access justice in the future. This is economic waste and impugnes the reputation, validity and motivation of the justice system.
In my humble opinion, every ticket that's dismissed at Court should be made known to the police officer, it should be recorded against his record, and it should be made an offence to systemically issue tickets that are dismissed – the offence being a species of barratry.
Barrators, as a matter of interest, have a special place in hell, the Eighth circle, fifth bolgia, according to Dante.
Just a thought.
If you med types want to arrogantly view yourselves as gods or even scientists because you know a little biology,
There isn't even much in the way of actual science or biology. For example, the well reputed author of Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science claims that "as much as 90 percent of the published medical information that doctors rely on is flawed".
Sir –
So? I'd gladly take a misdemeanor if it meant they had no evidence that a crime was committed.
First, if there was no evidence a crime was committed, the court couldn't convict you of using encryption to conceal evidence about a crime. It's a prerequisite that the primary crime that has had evidence encrypted be proven before encrypting the evidence can become a crime itself. If there is a reasonable doubt about the primary crime, there's reasonable doubt about the crime of encrypting.
Further, refusing to provide the information necessary to decrypt a device as required by a valid warrant or Court order is a separate offence, and not a misdemeanor. It's contempt of court, and often can carry a penalty greater than the charge.
While encrypting information related to a crime may be a misdemeanor, it likely only comes into play in sentencing for the primary crime for which the evidence was encrypted.
I hope that's helpful food for thought.
... how watching Fox News leaves viewers less informed.
Where a variable such as as 'm' varies on input complexity it presumably does so linearly, in which case O(m * n^c) asymptotically approaches a * n^(c+1); i.e. is O( n^(c+1) ). O(n^5) in Vlad's case.
I reference 'm' separately as a linear coefficient directly from Vlad's paper; please feel free to take up the issue with him if you wish, or let me know if I've mischaracterized his complexity analysis.
I thought the most famous NP complete problem was the travelling salesman. Simply because it is easier to explain, and layman can much easier relate to it (though bugglars might prefer the knapsack problem).
Sir –
I agree that Travelling Salesman is probably the most famous of the these problems, but as a generic problem it has been shown to be only NP Hard, and not NP Complete. That being said, variations on TSP are NP Complete, and it would have been fine to reference it as the most famous of this sort of problem.
Correction: the big-Oh should be O(m*n^c), where c is a number that does not increase with the complexity of the input, though `n` and 'm' may.
Usually the size of the input increases complexity, but I believe in the case of satisfiability that complexity is proportional to the number of Horne clauses - clauses with at most one positive literal - because of difficulties reducing Horne clauses. I seem to recall that reducing Horne clauses to non-Horne clauses is itself a NP complete problem, everything else (which is severable) in determining satisfiability is provably polynomial.
In Vlad's proof he's found a solution to NP problems that are O(m * n^4).
Sir –
I did some graduate research on satisfiability, so perhaps I can offer some illumination.
Satisfiability is a logic problem. Given a set of clauses that "or" a set of literals, which literals (and clauses) may be true or false, all "and"ed together, the question is: is there a set of literals (when true or false) that result in the overall statement being true. E.g.
X = (A or B) & (!A or !B) & (A or !B)
The question is: Is there a combination of A and B being true or false that would result in X being true? (In this example, X is true when A is true and B is false.)
3-SAT is satisfiability but with only 3-literals per clause e.g.
X = (A or B or C) and (A or !B or !C) and (!A or B or C) ...
There's a polynomial-time mapping from any satisfiability problem to 3-SAT, as there is between all NP complete problems, which mapping is why they are so-classified. In other words, if you solve one NP complete problem in polynomial time (namely big-O notation O(ax^n) where n is the complexity i.e. number of literals) you solve them all in polynomial time. The most famous of these NP complete problems is probably the Knapsack problem, though there are quite a few.
All to say, it's a logic puzzle that has quite a few applications but no simple solution yet.
I'm not sure if the above is in layman terms, but I hope it is somewhat helpful.
You don't have the right to use a technology developed by someone else (e.g. H.264) without paying. It's nice if you have such an option and I understand why you would prefer it, but there is no inherent right to it.
Arguments like yours are what sometimes weaken the FOSS movement. People who do not understand what FOSS is all about think it is full of whiny people who want to get everything for free. Guess what? You (me, everybody) don't deserve to get a video codec for free. There are some things that we deserve to get for free, but video codecs are not one of them.
Sir —
To preface, I suggest you may wish to read Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity, which I believe supports the following statements.
With respect, your statements that one does not have an inherent right to use a technology as the starting point for an analysis is not correct, from a legal and policy perspective, in a free and democratic society.
In a free culture everyone has an inherent right to do anything, subject to the restrictions imposed and enforced by way of the rule of law. "Anything" includes using video codecs. This is the starting point of the analysis of rights in a free society.
In the case of video codecs, namely source code and executable binaries, an inherent right granting anyone use over it may be limited by intellectual property laws that define, identify, and restrict the use of certain creations under threat of civil and criminal penalty, on the basis that society deems these creations to be of value and therefore encourages this creation by granting over them a limited monopoly that can be traded for compensation. The types of intellectual properties typically recognized is short: copyright, trademark, patent and trade secrets. Any and all of these may apply to an a video codec, circumstances depending.
In general, patents and copyright are going to be the protections most relied upon to restrict a video codec from the inherent right to free usage. These are temporary protections, meaning that the law reverts to the inherent state of a free right to usage after the applicable copyrights and patents have expired.
All to say, everyone has an inherent right to use the intellectual creations of others, such as video codes. There may be temporary limitations on that inherent right of free use, but these limitations are neither inherent to nor permanent over the intellectual creation. They are, rather, artificial impositions made by the rule of law in an effort to advance economic and social benefits.
While this may come across as pedantic, and I'm not endorsing the grandparent post, I feel is important to understand the analysis that underlies this particular question of rights and freedoms, and in particular the purpose of those protections – a consideration often distant from the argument.
Thank you for the opportunity to make this response.
How can the rest of us live in freedom if we live under near perpetual duress that we too will be taken away and left to rot?
Sir –
I've little to tell you, except suggesting you find a sensible new sovereign state. I'm sorry I wish I could say otherwise.
To enjoy an illusion of living in freedom you must live in ignorance. The spectacle (the bread and circuses) is meant – designed – to make ignorance easy. I suspect, though, that the spectacle offers as little comfort for those that can think as the superficial illusion of freedom does.
Sir –
Please allow me to make some statements which I feel may be illuminating for you, and refer you to this comment for references.
In some other countries, people are simply killed, or are given severe enough punishment that it acts to prevent crime. You steal something and are caught, you lose a hand. This means that fewer people are inclined to steal with that sort of punishment. If you do some horrible crime, you don't get put in prison for life, you lose your life.
With respect, your hypothetical is of course not relevant to comparisons to other Western countries, most of which have incarceration rates at a fraction of those in the U.S., a greater respect for human rights, and higher quality of prison facilities. Indeed, most of the prisoners in the U.S. (i.e. 3/4) would seem to be in prison for non-violent crimes.
Amputation is an example of judicial corporeal punishment. As a general rule, judicial corporeal punishment is practiced in few countries, and executed rarely. The specific corporeal punishment of amputation is an even rarer rarer Islamic idiosyncrasy (i.e. is practiced only in Saudi Arabia, Iran and Northern Nigeria).
Finally, deterrence against crime is one of the justifications for and purposes of what we call a criminal justice system. The other justification and purpose is segregation of violent or repeat offenders. Deterrence is not specific to corporeal punishment.
I humbly suggest that when questioning whether the United States has a systemic incarceration issue, you should aim a little higher than comparing it to three of the most despotic, backwards countries to ever blight the earth. It may be more productive to look to countries such as Japan or Denmark which have (a) a significantly lower crime rate, and (b) a fraction of the prison population, and (c) significantly better government infrastructure (for statistics, etc.) and (d) better protection of human rights, to speculate on what the U.S. may be doing so horrendously wrong. Hint: the prison industrial complex, a private industry and a massive lobbyist, is motivated by financial gain, and operates without regard to the public policy and purpose of a criminal justice system. A comparison to Saudi Arabia does not serve any useful purpose, unless you seek a specious basis for feeling good about senselessly depriving millions of people of their freedom.
People in US prisons are also get more than prisoners do in most other countries, which encourages people to stay in prison rather than having to try surviving in society. People whine about human rights here, but honestly, if people are ready to rape and murder, they should be ready to have all of their rights removed, including protection from other criminals.
Again, violent crime is not why the vast majority of American prisoners are incarcerated. Second, I do not believe the U.S. prisons are among the best in the world; quite the opposite, as I understand it.
In any event, human rights are a response to the invariable and inevitable gravitation of governments towards giving themselves the power to punish their own citizens with arbitrary and capricious will.
Thank you for providing the opportunity to comment on such vast and sweeping ignorances.
COURTS have jurisdiction, not parties, and the jurisdiction means they have the power to HEAR the lawsuit.
Sir –
Even more pedantically: Courts and other dispute resolution bodies (e.g. arbitrators) have what we refer to as "jurisdiction" when these bodies have the power to determine the outcome of a dispute i.e. the power to issue an award that is enforceable over the people (in personam), subject-matter, and property (in rem) in issue.
I've been taught through experience that the word "jurisdiction" ought to always be accompanied by an adjective that answers the question "over what?" Determining issues of jurisdiction is typically a nuanced analysis, but worth learning about if you wish to understand how the rule of law operates. Disputes over billions of dollars are regularly swayed by issues of jurisdiction.
To give some leeway to its author, the headline could be interpreted "Sony must show [the Court] has jurisdiction to sue PS3 hacker", or "Sony must show it has [chosen the Court with] jurisdiction to sue the PS3 hacker".
Sir —
This kind of thing happens day in and day out in the U.S. We make more people rot in confinement than the worst despotic regimes in history. And there are many effective ways to get around the protections offered by your 'rights', making them nearly meaningless in practice.
Quite right. This map says quite a lot, I believe.
I believe either half or a quarter of all prisoners in the world (I cannot recall offhand which) are in the United States. It is the land of the free, for those lucky enough to avoid a criminal conviction machine that incarcerates at a rate considered preposterous – and contrary or without regard to its stated purpose – elsewhere.
Alas, many Americans seem to be in denial about uncontroverted facts such as these, and as a result unable and unwilling to question the reason such a reality has come about.
Slashdot appears twice as often as MSNBC.
Sir —
Thank you very much for the reply. I'm very grateful for illuminating these annals of the rise of common law legal profession for me, and I sincerely appreciate your time and effort.
The correct short title is the Quebec Act (1774).
Thank you for the correction – I understand what you had meant now, with the Quebec Act as an example of the beginning of the breakdown of the requirement that legal work be done by sole practitioners. I misread your illustration to mean a change in British law.
Senior figures in the Judges' Council have often argued that not being tied to single clients makes barristers more independent and aware of their duty to the system of justice as a whole, and justifies continuing to draw judges almost exclusively from the bar on that and similar bases.
If I may speak from my experience as a practitioner who's worn most hats (and gowns) in the profession, this is an interesting and valid concern, that I've not heard spoken of often. The distinction between barrister and solicitor is generally referred to as a historical anomaly that interferes with economic efficiency and consistency (e.g. with respect to costs, as you mentioned). I had often wondered why there was a separation between barrister and solicitor; this supports more than a historical impetus: a substantive benefit to society.
With the breakdown of the distinction, I've also noticed reduced specialization, and the near-elimination of a judge-barrister relationship that would develop from multiple appearances. Such a relationship permits more efficient communication because each would often know the others concerns in advance and be able to speak to them efficiently and effectively. Where such Judge-barrister relationships do develop are in the few specialized lawyers whom some Judges know well, and a flood of ephemeral, young, inexperienced, and unknown faces that are capable of saying virtually anything — without any real consequence — to get whatever relief their client desires — shifting the burden of competent analysis entirely to the Judge (or Master). While the Judge or Master is often going to be good at such analysis, the absence of specialized speakers is, I expect, much less efficient and efficacious.
I would be quite interested in knowing more about the rise of the barrister, but I've imposed too much to ask.
I will write back if I find out the firm claiming to have written the U.S. constitution.
Thank you, again, for the fascinating conversation.
Sir —
That answer is exceedingly helpful, and duly appreciated. Thank you.
I would indeed enjoy following up, if I knew how to slashdot pm!
Don't act as if there is a disconnect between science and religion. Only the most ignorant theologians and scientists will tell you that there is. Some of the greatest scientific minds in history have belonged to one religion or another.
Sir —
I'm not sure you were responding to the correct post. Though the subject of this thread of comments has the word "science" in it, my comment itself made no mention of or reference to science, either directly or indirectly (i.e. it had nothing to do with science).
Sir —
we believe in the Bible
I'm curious about the meaning of this statement, because it is so ambiguous. What does it mean to you to "believe in the Bible"? Do you believe in (and I don't mean to oversimplify by putting it in a list) the Bible being one or more of the following:
1. a literally true set of statements? (I take it it's not this, because you reject eg rapture)
2. divine statements (whether those statements are true or not, or in Hebrew or otherwise)?
3. helpful guidelines for human life?
4. a significant history that gives itself meaning?
5. access to a social and culture community of people who also "believe in the Bible"?
Is your belief "in the Bible" one of the above, or something different? I grew up in a non-denominational culture, and I simply don't know or understand the relationship between the Bible (as a non-fictional book, fictional book, divine communication, guideline to life, meaningful artefact, cultural centerpiece or otherwise) and its rational followers. I'm genuinely, and deeply curious.
Incidentally, I hardly ever think to refer to The Scripture Project: http://www.project-reason.org/scripture_project/, but this seems an apt opportunity for pointing out what I believe is one of the most important works on the Bible.