Nonsense. If John Gilmore purchased a ticket from the airline in California, and boarded the plane in California, no interstate commerce is involved
Not according to the SCOTUS definition of interstate commerce. The SCOTUS definition of interstate commerce includes growing wheat for yourself in your own farm for your own consumption. As established in Wickard v. Filburn (1942).
Further, the reason why the medical marijuana case (Gonzales v. Raich (2005)) was decided in favor of the U.S. Government was due to the fact that selling marijuana in California affects the underground market for the drug, which crosses state broundaries.
Given these two SCOTUS decisions it seems pretty clear that purchasing a ticket in order to leave one state and enter another is interstate commerce. Further, boarding in one state and exiting in one state is probably interstate commerce too as the option to buy that seat was open to others outside the state and thus your action influenced their market value.
It's a crappy interpretation, imho, but it's currently what we've got.
Whenever someone stands up to say "No!" you're going to complain because they've only done it once?
This sets a precedent. Not to mention endears me to that company in particular. I may well go get a list of artists under that label and go buy something just to support them. Or send in a donation saying "Thank you."
Perhaps Nettwerk Music Group will make the same offer to anybody accused of downloading their music. Perhaps others will join in.
Also, paying the legal expenses is HUGE. Now they can get a big time lawyer, and not have to worry about how they can afford it. Lawyers are not cheap. This is why most people settle. Are you really going to pay $6000 to a lawyer to maybe win, or $5000 to the RIAA to make them go away?
But now the money is not theirs, they will fight, and I pray they will win. But either way, this was a Really Good Thing.
Perhaps I was not explicit enough. There is no higher directed cause needed for the ecosystem to be the way it is. There is no "ladder" to go up. The environment changes based on physics. You want to know where the laws of physics comes from? That's the universe we have. I don't think just because there exist laws of physics there must have been an intelligent being creating those laws. I don't buy the telological argument at any level, and that's really all that's going on here at base. I do not think the universe is too complicated to have arisen randomly. Then once it's here, that's what we have.
But this should not be some sort of new revelation. For any human being alive, a split second change could easily have made us not exist. How is that you ask? Have your parents in a slightly different position the time they had sex and you were conceived. Then it's easy to imagine that your particular sperm cell wasn't the one to make it to the egg (if any made it to the egg at all). Then you wouldn't have existed. To deduce from this that clearly there is some invisible hand inside your mother pushing the "right" sperm into the egg seems ludicrous to me. All the sperm tried, it just so happened that your sperm got there. And now here you are. Could a very small change have eradicated your existence? Sure. The same might well be true for all life on Earth if you go back far enough. It sure doesn't entail that someone had to pick the right outcome.
I think this statement with regards to evolution is not correct. True it is unplanned and random, but the process, as a process is not unguided. Each creature evolves with its evironment as a guide.
Imagine some organism in a world full of oxygen and very little carbon dioxide. Let's say this organism has three offspring (A), (B) and (C). (A) is just like the original organism. (B) uses more carbon dioxide. (C) uses more oxygen and less carbon dioxide. (A) will continue just as the original organism did, (B) will be worse off, and (C) will be better off. Thus (C) and its offspring will be better suited to live in the environment.
The guide is the world the organisms live in. That world may have been created randomly. Each particular mutation may arise randomly. But the process of evolution for each species is guided by the environment of that species.
You also say that life is a statistical anomoly. This seems nontrivially related to the inverse gambler's fallacy. Further, there are hundreds of billions of solar systems. Many of them probably have planets (we have already found some, I suspect we will find that solar systems are more and more likely as we gain the ability to see such things). If the odds of life forming on its own is, let's say, 100,000,000,000 to 1 against (which seems very generous to the people who think life is unlikely, given experiments with the common elements which form the building blocks of life and lightning), and there are 100,000,000,000 planets. On average, there will be life somewhere. Further, the only people that will notice will be from that planet (because there won't be life anywhere else!). They may think themselves extremely special and favored by the universe. They would be wrong.
If you're going to claim that basic life (single celled organisms, let's say) may occur reasonably often but in order to evolve there needs to be guidance in the mutation process, I'm just going to claim that the right environment needs to be in place to encourage mutations with the appropriate features. And given the mutations I can speculate with some accuracy (or at least, historically we have been able to) about the conditions at the time which made such mutations useful. This makes my theory bear extra fruit while you simply put some being in and say "it did it", and that tells us nothing extra. So even if the theories were otherwise equivalent in terms of their predictive power, I can predict things about the environment after the fact, and you cannot. This seems to be an extra point in favor of my theory all other things being equal, which, obviously I don't think they are.
You misunderstand the parent's argument. The argument is as such:
1) A majority of people do not believe sharing is wrong. 2) If a majority of people do not believe sharing is wrong, a majority of people believe there are incorrect laws in this area. 3) If a majority of people believe there are incorrect laws in this area, the laws in this area will change. 4) Therefore, the laws in this area will change. (multiple modus ponens)
The point of the argument is that the laws will change if people hold the views that the statistics seem to bear out. There is no point to be made about whether it is morally right or wrong. Someone can hold the above argument and believe sharing is wrong, these are not incompatible positions.
Next time you want to flame someone's point, at least try and get it right.
You can also use any of your normal programs (thunderbird, outlook (shudder), etc) to access it Gmail.
Yahoo! mail does not have this feature.
So if you've always liked your Netscape Messenger . . . you can use it, with Gmail. You don't need to get used to using a web browser to read your email.
*shrug* Frankly, I use PINE, so I couldn't care less.
(Meanwhile I'd really appreciate it if the articles on/. were more than ads for one service/program/etc over another these days . ..)
To be a teacher should require as much education as it does to become a Doctor - possibly more, and they should be paid more, too. The day we see that is the day we see some real advances in society.
I have two family members working to become elementary school teachers for New York State. One is a history major. He needs to take any 8 history courses. One is a math major and she (yes, she) needs to take 8 math courses.
Now, I can see how knowing about the history of africa can help when teaching little kids. I cannot understand how multivariant calculus helps.
It is not so much that teachers should get more education, as they should get better education. They need to learn how to teach. What's effective. How to get the kids to really learn. And they need to be motivated about their jobs.
And then we need to get the same level of motivation on the college level and some training for professors who for the most part have no frickin clue how to teach to a brick wall (and I'm currently in a graduate program teaching courses. So I think I have some right to make that statement too).
Just saying: quantity is not always the answer. What we need is quality.
The issue here is not whether you own the cartridge. The issue is whether you can return the cartridge to a third party manufacturer. Lexmark with this program is saying "We'll give you a rebate on ink if you promise to return the cartridge only to us." (Lexmark argued before the court that they do not require that the user return the cartridge to them when it is empty, only that if they give the empty cartridge to any company, they give it to Lexmark.)
This "Prebate" license was clearly listed on the outside of the box of the reduced cost toner refills.
So the question is: can a company say "We'll give you a discount on our product if you don't go ahead and use it in this specific way."? And if so, is it "deceptive business practice" to actually attempt to enforce that agreement? Remember, shrinkwrap licenses on the outside of the box have been deemed enforceable contracts by law. You may not like this, but it has been upheld time and again, and the court, like it or not, rules based on precedent and law (no matter what the varied partisan yahoos think).
Seems a lot less draconian now doesn't it? I don't think it's a step in a good direction, necessarily, but to all the people shouting "We own nothing!!!" -- that's not what this is about. Really. Read the decision. It's only 14 pages long.
All that said, it would surprise me if this stood up to appeal (though the makeup of the SCOTUS is enough up in the air that nobody can say anything for sure right now). There is a reason why the 9th Circuit is the most overturned circuit in the country, after all. This is quite an odd restriction to be placed upon the consumer, and though I don't know CA law, it wouldn't surprise me if it was eventually considered an undue and unlawful burden and hence the contract isn't valid. However, whether or not the contract is valid, it may be upheld that Lexmark's business practices weren't deceptive, which is what's actually contended here. So we'll have to see if there's an appeal, who ends up on SCOTUS in the coming months, and where it ends up.
But it really isn't the end of the universe guys . . .
Whether or not you actually are liable, you can (and may well) be sued for libel and defamation of character. Even if you're innocent, the question arises: how willing are you to defend yourself? How many lawyers will you hire for how many years just to prove you didn't do it?
The lawsuit isn't bad because the website is going to get convicted it's because if these suits are going to continue popping up websites will not be allowed to let comments be posted due to the cost of proving themselves innocent.
Being a litigious society sucks because of the amount of time and money wasted on lawyers. And that's really 99% of the reason why we should care.
Now you will receive us. We do not ask for your poor, or your hungry. We do not want your tired and sick. It is your corrupt we claim. It is your evil that will be sought by us. With every breath, we shall hunt them down. Each day we will spill their blood, 'til it rains down from the skies. Do not kill. Do not rape. Do not steal. These are principles which every man of every faith can embrace. These are not polite suggestions, these are codes of behavior, and those of you that ignore them will pay the dearest cost. There are varying degrees of evil. We urge you lesser forms of filth, not to push the bounds and cross over, in to true corruption, into our domain. For if you do, one day you will look behind you and you will see we three, and on that day you will reap it. And we will send you to whatever god you wish.
The original poster was merely confused about which theorems to use. Church's Thesis states that a number-theoretic function is effectively computable if and only if it is recursive.
Church's Theorem states that arithmetic is not effectively computable. Thus being a truth of arithmetic is not recursive, if one accepts Church's Thesis.
Thus, for anything that is a recursive system or computes solely in recursive manners (like all current computers), there are truths of arithmetic that the computer cannot get to.
However, this does not show that the truth of arithmetic is not one that couldn't be proven by a non-recursive means. It's just very hard to understand what those means would be.
To that end, one should look to Boycott-RIAA.com. Also, for general use, googling the artist name and "RIAA" tends to find out the information you're looking for . ..
I for one do not buy RIAA music. Though I did buy two other CDs this year, and go to a concert.
Since he doesn't have the job yet, I haven't found out from the inside how it really works, but I'll point out that even if he can't do a whole lot, it's a lot more useful for bringing about effective change than making a few comments on Slashdot.
Clearly you don't understand Texas Hold-'em. There is no card counting required, beyond to 6 (two in your hand, 4 on the table). Any player who is so bad that he can't read the board isn't going to be a challenge to anybody decent.
Since decks are made out of 52 cards, and you get two of them, it gets very easily to calculate probabilities for a human (mostly involves multiplying by 2).
Finally, making the probabalistic move every time will not do as well, because if you do that you would absolutely never bluff. A bot to be good in the long run must bluff, otherwise it is far too predictable and you can gain too much information from its bets and raises.
To give a quick example: If there's 100$ in the pot, and the bot bets 10$, I need to believe I'll win 1/11 times in order to justify my call. If I know that the bot never bluffs and only bets there when he's best, I can fold every time and save 10$. If the bot bluffs 1/11 times though, I suddenly have an actually complicated decision. And note if I fold those complicated decisions every time I lose more money, because he is betting more hands and I am folding each time he bets.
So no, straight up probabilities simply won't cut it.
(For more information, see Sklansky's Theory of Poker.)
Granted, bluffing is definitely a good thing. That's why a really good poker bot absolutely must bluff. I presume these bots use game theoretical algorithms to decide when and how often to bluff.
If two bots were identical and one bluffed 3% of the time (and didn't bluff away all of his chips), in the long run the bluffing bot should win. Because the non-bluffing bot will believe the bluffing bot has a hand those extra 3% of hands, and thus the bluffing bot will in the long run win more than half of the hands and do better in the long run.
The interesting question is how often one should program the computer to bluff in what situations. . .
The hurting stops when we get politicians who care. Right now the people who are in office simply aren't addressing this as an issue, because they don't see it as one. Their powerful lobbyists aren't pushing for patent reform nearly as much as other things (like laws which line their pockets better), so there isn't a real problem yet. When Microsoft, IBM and a few other big names start coming out and publically denouncing the patent system for screwing over innovation we might start to see some patent reform. But right now nobody cares, so nothing is going to get fixed anytime soon.
(Note: I did call my congressmen and senators about this issue prior to the previous election. I also have a friend who is attempting to get a job with the patent office specifically to try and fix some of these problems. I hope he succeeds.)
Well, I for one count on buying at least 6 consoles. One for the living room, one for the kitchen, one for the bedroom, one for the bathroom, and one for my car. The last one, of course, is my spare in case any of the other 5 breaks.
I'm not a lawyer either, and I certainly don't know UK law, however, I do know that under US contract law, if there is a section of the contract that is illegal, even if both parties agree to it, it is not binding.
So if you sign a lease which says that "The landlord has the right to evict you without notice at any time." that clause is actually not legal, and not enforceable, and does not void the contract. At least in the US. So they can say "By buying this disk you cannot copy this disk" as much as they want, if the law gives you that right, you can exercise it.
Furthermore, I see no reason from your description to believe that they aren't simply just lying. As I said, I don't know UK law, but there's no reason for me to believe that just because I see a flashing banner that says "X is illegal" that X is illegal. They're trying to discourage piracy; making people believe all copying is legal certainly will do that much . . . whether or not it's true.
However, all encrypted data is meant to be read by it's purchaser. If the intention of encrypting audio cds is so that the purchaser cannot listen to it . . . well, I don't think anybody is going to say that.
However, if you are intended to be able to listen to the data (say in the case of the audio cd) then you have a right to listen to it in another medium, via fair use, if fair use is upheld. The intended user is using it in ways that are consistent with fair use laws.
If the encryption were merely used to tack on another charge to pirates, say, then that wouldn't really be a problem I don't think (ie- charged with circumvention of encryption, breaking copyright law, etc). It would just be another example of trying to stiffen penalties on people who break the law.
But if you're claiming the intent of the encryption is to keep the purchaser from being able to access the data . . . I have to just believe you're wrong.
If it's Fair use to rip your CDs, then it's Fair Use to rip your CDs even if there is DRM in the way. You are converting from one medium to another. This would severely weaken the DMCA, a law about which we have all been complaining profusely.
You're right that the music and video industries can try and implement more and more complicated DRM in order to make it very hard for people to rip said materials. However, they will continue to be broken. And if the conversion is legal, the tool used to do the conversion (via the Betamax decision) is legal as well.
All of which is indeed important and good for the consumer in the long term. (Now I'm just hoping this wasn't an april fool's joke by the zdnet bloggers . ..)
Actually, I think this is big news, and here's why:
If they say that it's ok for fair use to be able to rip media for personal use, then it follows that they must admit users can do the same for DVDs.
If they are saying it is only allowed in cases where compact discs are involved, then the question becomes: "What makes music special in this way?"
I for one cannot think of why it would be ok to rip cds but not rip dvds. If it is fair use to rip a medium (cd) for use on another device (like an iPod), it should be just as legal to rip a medium (dvd) for use on another device (like xine).
They better think hard and long as to why one is okay and not the other, because the courts will draw the analogy I just made and agree that if some ripping is ok, then all should be (so long as you have the media in question legally, of course).
[offtopic] Anybody whose studied psychology -- and English -- will know that things belonging to men and things belonging to women do not correlate to things belonging to certain areas.
An apostrophe before an s indicates possession, not plurality.
Also, while "stigmata" is the correct Latin plural of "stigma", "stigmas" is preferred, as "stigmata" also has a religious meaning: feeling the pains associated with the crucifixion of Jesus. Not to mention that scare quotes aren't necessary.
So why do I nitpick? Because when your argument is written improperly it reflects badly on you and your argument's validity. [/offtopic]
The fact of the matter is that there is an inherent difference in the construction of the male brain and the female brain. It is debated how much this affects things, but it is generally agreed that men are better, on average, at certain tasks than women, and vice versa.
Certainly many people are touchy about this fact; however, I think they seem to be missing two key points of the above statement: 1) these generalizations are only on average and 2) it works both ways.
Nobody says "women are inferior to men" only that "women have different inherent abilities from men". Not so degrading now, is it?
Nobody says "all women are worse than all men" just that "the average woman has more trouble with task X than the average man".
With girls at a place like Harvard, it seems pretty clear to me that they are not average women and thus are exempt from the above generalization.
Slashdot Mirror
Nonsense. If John Gilmore purchased a ticket from the airline in California, and boarded the plane in California, no interstate commerce is involved
Not according to the SCOTUS definition of interstate commerce. The SCOTUS definition of interstate commerce includes growing wheat for yourself in your own farm for your own consumption. As established in Wickard v. Filburn (1942).
Further, the reason why the medical marijuana case (Gonzales v. Raich (2005)) was decided in favor of the U.S. Government was due to the fact that selling marijuana in California affects the underground market for the drug, which crosses state broundaries.
Given these two SCOTUS decisions it seems pretty clear that purchasing a ticket in order to leave one state and enter another is interstate commerce. Further, boarding in one state and exiting in one state is probably interstate commerce too as the option to buy that seat was open to others outside the state and thus your action influenced their market value.
It's a crappy interpretation, imho, but it's currently what we've got.
Whenever someone stands up to say "No!" you're going to complain because they've only done it once?
This sets a precedent. Not to mention endears me to that company in particular. I may well go get a list of artists under that label and go buy something just to support them. Or send in a donation saying "Thank you."
Perhaps Nettwerk Music Group will make the same offer to anybody accused of downloading their music. Perhaps others will join in.
Also, paying the legal expenses is HUGE. Now they can get a big time lawyer, and not have to worry about how they can afford it. Lawyers are not cheap. This is why most people settle. Are you really going to pay $6000 to a lawyer to maybe win, or $5000 to the RIAA to make them go away?
But now the money is not theirs, they will fight, and I pray they will win. But either way, this was a Really Good Thing.
Perhaps I was not explicit enough. There is no higher directed cause needed for the ecosystem to be the way it is. There is no "ladder" to go up. The environment changes based on physics. You want to know where the laws of physics comes from? That's the universe we have. I don't think just because there exist laws of physics there must have been an intelligent being creating those laws. I don't buy the telological argument at any level, and that's really all that's going on here at base. I do not think the universe is too complicated to have arisen randomly. Then once it's here, that's what we have.
But this should not be some sort of new revelation. For any human being alive, a split second change could easily have made us not exist. How is that you ask? Have your parents in a slightly different position the time they had sex and you were conceived. Then it's easy to imagine that your particular sperm cell wasn't the one to make it to the egg (if any made it to the egg at all). Then you wouldn't have existed. To deduce from this that clearly there is some invisible hand inside your mother pushing the "right" sperm into the egg seems ludicrous to me. All the sperm tried, it just so happened that your sperm got there. And now here you are. Could a very small change have eradicated your existence? Sure. The same might well be true for all life on Earth if you go back far enough. It sure doesn't entail that someone had to pick the right outcome.
it was an unplanned, unguided and random process.
I think this statement with regards to evolution is not correct. True it is unplanned and random, but the process, as a process is not unguided. Each creature evolves with its evironment as a guide.
Imagine some organism in a world full of oxygen and very little carbon dioxide. Let's say this organism has three offspring (A), (B) and (C). (A) is just like the original organism. (B) uses more carbon dioxide. (C) uses more oxygen and less carbon dioxide. (A) will continue just as the original organism did, (B) will be worse off, and (C) will be better off. Thus (C) and its offspring will be better suited to live in the environment.
The guide is the world the organisms live in. That world may have been created randomly. Each particular mutation may arise randomly. But the process of evolution for each species is guided by the environment of that species.
You also say that life is a statistical anomoly. This seems nontrivially related to the inverse gambler's fallacy. Further, there are hundreds of billions of solar systems. Many of them probably have planets (we have already found some, I suspect we will find that solar systems are more and more likely as we gain the ability to see such things). If the odds of life forming on its own is, let's say, 100,000,000,000 to 1 against (which seems very generous to the people who think life is unlikely, given experiments with the common elements which form the building blocks of life and lightning), and there are 100,000,000,000 planets. On average, there will be life somewhere. Further, the only people that will notice will be from that planet (because there won't be life anywhere else!). They may think themselves extremely special and favored by the universe. They would be wrong.
If you're going to claim that basic life (single celled organisms, let's say) may occur reasonably often but in order to evolve there needs to be guidance in the mutation process, I'm just going to claim that the right environment needs to be in place to encourage mutations with the appropriate features. And given the mutations I can speculate with some accuracy (or at least, historically we have been able to) about the conditions at the time which made such mutations useful. This makes my theory bear extra fruit while you simply put some being in and say "it did it", and that tells us nothing extra. So even if the theories were otherwise equivalent in terms of their predictive power, I can predict things about the environment after the fact, and you cannot. This seems to be an extra point in favor of my theory all other things being equal, which, obviously I don't think they are.
You misunderstand the parent's argument. The argument is as such:
1) A majority of people do not believe sharing is wrong.
2) If a majority of people do not believe sharing is wrong, a majority of people believe there are incorrect laws in this area.
3) If a majority of people believe there are incorrect laws in this area, the laws in this area will change.
4) Therefore, the laws in this area will change. (multiple modus ponens)
The point of the argument is that the laws will change if people hold the views that the statistics seem to bear out. There is no point to be made about whether it is morally right or wrong. Someone can hold the above argument and believe sharing is wrong, these are not incompatible positions.
Next time you want to flame someone's point, at least try and get it right.
And by Eastern Europe I mean former Soviet Block countries & their neighbors.
Translation:
In Soviet Russia Companies Outsource YOU!
You can also use any of your normal programs (thunderbird, outlook (shudder), etc) to access it Gmail.
/. were more than ads for one service/program/etc over another these days . . .)
Yahoo! mail does not have this feature.
So if you've always liked your Netscape Messenger . . . you can use it, with Gmail. You don't need to get used to using a web browser to read your email.
*shrug* Frankly, I use PINE, so I couldn't care less.
(Meanwhile I'd really appreciate it if the articles on
To be a teacher should require as much education as it does to become a Doctor - possibly more, and they should be paid more, too. The day we see that is the day we see some real advances in society.
I have two family members working to become elementary school teachers for New York State. One is a history major. He needs to take any 8 history courses. One is a math major and she (yes, she) needs to take 8 math courses.
Now, I can see how knowing about the history of africa can help when teaching little kids. I cannot understand how multivariant calculus helps.
It is not so much that teachers should get more education, as they should get better education. They need to learn how to teach. What's effective. How to get the kids to really learn. And they need to be motivated about their jobs.
And then we need to get the same level of motivation on the college level and some training for professors who for the most part have no frickin clue how to teach to a brick wall (and I'm currently in a graduate program teaching courses. So I think I have some right to make that statement too).
Just saying: quantity is not always the answer. What we need is quality.
From the actual decision (http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/ACRA_v_Lexmark/ACR A_v_Lexmark_9th_circuit_ruling.pdf), "The key issue here is whether Lexmark misleads consumers and engages in unfair competition when it advertises cartridges for sale at a reduced price but with restrictions on their use."
The issue here is not whether you own the cartridge. The issue is whether you can return the cartridge to a third party manufacturer. Lexmark with this program is saying "We'll give you a rebate on ink if you promise to return the cartridge only to us." (Lexmark argued before the court that they do not require that the user return the cartridge to them when it is empty, only that if they give the empty cartridge to any company, they give it to Lexmark.)
This "Prebate" license was clearly listed on the outside of the box of the reduced cost toner refills.
So the question is: can a company say "We'll give you a discount on our product if you don't go ahead and use it in this specific way."? And if so, is it "deceptive business practice" to actually attempt to enforce that agreement? Remember, shrinkwrap licenses on the outside of the box have been deemed enforceable contracts by law. You may not like this, but it has been upheld time and again, and the court, like it or not, rules based on precedent and law (no matter what the varied partisan yahoos think).
Seems a lot less draconian now doesn't it? I don't think it's a step in a good direction, necessarily, but to all the people shouting "We own nothing!!!" -- that's not what this is about. Really. Read the decision. It's only 14 pages long.
All that said, it would surprise me if this stood up to appeal (though the makeup of the SCOTUS is enough up in the air that nobody can say anything for sure right now). There is a reason why the 9th Circuit is the most overturned circuit in the country, after all. This is quite an odd restriction to be placed upon the consumer, and though I don't know CA law, it wouldn't surprise me if it was eventually considered an undue and unlawful burden and hence the contract isn't valid. However, whether or not the contract is valid, it may be upheld that Lexmark's business practices weren't deceptive, which is what's actually contended here. So we'll have to see if there's an appeal, who ends up on SCOTUS in the coming months, and where it ends up.
But it really isn't the end of the universe guys . . .
We do have the records, but DRM prohibits us from showing them.
And what law prevents you from showing me that stuff?
Catch-22.
Whether or not you actually are liable, you can (and may well) be sued for libel and defamation of character. Even if you're innocent, the question arises: how willing are you to defend yourself? How many lawyers will you hire for how many years just to prove you didn't do it?
The lawsuit isn't bad because the website is going to get convicted it's because if these suits are going to continue popping up websites will not be allowed to let comments be posted due to the cost of proving themselves innocent.
Being a litigious society sucks because of the amount of time and money wasted on lawyers. And that's really 99% of the reason why we should care.
You getting laid, and me getting laid?
Now you will receive us.
We do not ask for your poor, or your hungry.
We do not want your tired and sick.
It is your corrupt we claim.
It is your evil that will be sought by us.
With every breath, we shall hunt them down.
Each day we will spill their blood, 'til it rains down from the skies.
Do not kill. Do not rape. Do not steal. These are principles which every man of every faith can embrace.
These are not polite suggestions, these are codes of behavior, and those of you that ignore them will pay the dearest cost.
There are varying degrees of evil. We urge you lesser forms of filth, not to push the bounds and cross over, in to true corruption, into our domain.
For if you do, one day you will look behind you and you will see we three, and on that day you will reap it.
And we will send you to whatever god you wish.
[/obligitory quote]
The original poster was merely confused about which theorems to use. Church's Thesis states that a number-theoretic function is effectively computable if and only if it is recursive.
Church's Theorem states that arithmetic is not effectively computable. Thus being a truth of arithmetic is not recursive, if one accepts Church's Thesis.
Thus, for anything that is a recursive system or computes solely in recursive manners (like all current computers), there are truths of arithmetic that the computer cannot get to.
However, this does not show that the truth of arithmetic is not one that couldn't be proven by a non-recursive means. It's just very hard to understand what those means would be.
To that end, one should look to Boycott-RIAA.com. Also, for general use, googling the artist name and "RIAA" tends to find out the information you're looking for . . .
I for one do not buy RIAA music. Though I did buy two other CDs this year, and go to a concert.
I hope more people start doing the same.
Since he doesn't have the job yet, I haven't found out from the inside how it really works, but I'll point out that even if he can't do a whole lot, it's a lot more useful for bringing about effective change than making a few comments on Slashdot.
Clearly you don't understand Texas Hold-'em. There is no card counting required, beyond to 6 (two in your hand, 4 on the table). Any player who is so bad that he can't read the board isn't going to be a challenge to anybody decent.
Since decks are made out of 52 cards, and you get two of them, it gets very easily to calculate probabilities for a human (mostly involves multiplying by 2).
Finally, making the probabalistic move every time will not do as well, because if you do that you would absolutely never bluff. A bot to be good in the long run must bluff, otherwise it is far too predictable and you can gain too much information from its bets and raises.
To give a quick example: If there's 100$ in the pot, and the bot bets 10$, I need to believe I'll win 1/11 times in order to justify my call. If I know that the bot never bluffs and only bets there when he's best, I can fold every time and save 10$. If the bot bluffs 1/11 times though, I suddenly have an actually complicated decision. And note if I fold those complicated decisions every time I lose more money, because he is betting more hands and I am folding each time he bets.
So no, straight up probabilities simply won't cut it.
(For more information, see Sklansky's Theory of Poker.)
Granted, bluffing is definitely a good thing. That's why a really good poker bot absolutely must bluff. I presume these bots use game theoretical algorithms to decide when and how often to bluff.
If two bots were identical and one bluffed 3% of the time (and didn't bluff away all of his chips), in the long run the bluffing bot should win. Because the non-bluffing bot will believe the bluffing bot has a hand those extra 3% of hands, and thus the bluffing bot will in the long run win more than half of the hands and do better in the long run.
The interesting question is how often one should program the computer to bluff in what situations. . .
The hurting stops when we get politicians who care. Right now the people who are in office simply aren't addressing this as an issue, because they don't see it as one. Their powerful lobbyists aren't pushing for patent reform nearly as much as other things (like laws which line their pockets better), so there isn't a real problem yet. When Microsoft, IBM and a few other big names start coming out and publically denouncing the patent system for screwing over innovation we might start to see some patent reform. But right now nobody cares, so nothing is going to get fixed anytime soon.
(Note: I did call my congressmen and senators about this issue prior to the previous election. I also have a friend who is attempting to get a job with the patent office specifically to try and fix some of these problems. I hope he succeeds.)
Well, I for one count on buying at least 6 consoles. One for the living room, one for the kitchen, one for the bedroom, one for the bathroom, and one for my car. The last one, of course, is my spare in case any of the other 5 breaks.
Doesn't everybody do this?
I'm not a lawyer either, and I certainly don't know UK law, however, I do know that under US contract law, if there is a section of the contract that is illegal, even if both parties agree to it, it is not binding.
So if you sign a lease which says that "The landlord has the right to evict you without notice at any time." that clause is actually not legal, and not enforceable, and does not void the contract. At least in the US. So they can say "By buying this disk you cannot copy this disk" as much as they want, if the law gives you that right, you can exercise it.
Furthermore, I see no reason from your description to believe that they aren't simply just lying. As I said, I don't know UK law, but there's no reason for me to believe that just because I see a flashing banner that says "X is illegal" that X is illegal. They're trying to discourage piracy; making people believe all copying is legal certainly will do that much . . . whether or not it's true.
However, all encrypted data is meant to be read by it's purchaser. If the intention of encrypting audio cds is so that the purchaser cannot listen to it . . . well, I don't think anybody is going to say that.
However, if you are intended to be able to listen to the data (say in the case of the audio cd) then you have a right to listen to it in another medium, via fair use, if fair use is upheld. The intended user is using it in ways that are consistent with fair use laws.
If the encryption were merely used to tack on another charge to pirates, say, then that wouldn't really be a problem I don't think (ie- charged with circumvention of encryption, breaking copyright law, etc). It would just be another example of trying to stiffen penalties on people who break the law.
But if you're claiming the intent of the encryption is to keep the purchaser from being able to access the data . . . I have to just believe you're wrong.
If it's Fair use to rip your CDs, then it's Fair Use to rip your CDs even if there is DRM in the way. You are converting from one medium to another. This would severely weaken the DMCA, a law about which we have all been complaining profusely.
.)
You're right that the music and video industries can try and implement more and more complicated DRM in order to make it very hard for people to rip said materials. However, they will continue to be broken. And if the conversion is legal, the tool used to do the conversion (via the Betamax decision) is legal as well.
All of which is indeed important and good for the consumer in the long term. (Now I'm just hoping this wasn't an april fool's joke by the zdnet bloggers . .
Actually, I think this is big news, and here's why:
If they say that it's ok for fair use to be able to rip media for personal use, then it follows that they must admit users can do the same for DVDs.
If they are saying it is only allowed in cases where compact discs are involved, then the question becomes: "What makes music special in this way?"
I for one cannot think of why it would be ok to rip cds but not rip dvds. If it is fair use to rip a medium (cd) for use on another device (like an iPod), it should be just as legal to rip a medium (dvd) for use on another device (like xine).
They better think hard and long as to why one is okay and not the other, because the courts will draw the analogy I just made and agree that if some ripping is ok, then all should be (so long as you have the media in question legally, of course).
[offtopic]
Anybody whose studied psychology -- and English -- will know that things belonging to men and things belonging to women do not correlate to things belonging to certain areas.
An apostrophe before an s indicates possession, not plurality.
Also, while "stigmata" is the correct Latin plural of "stigma", "stigmas" is preferred, as "stigmata" also has a religious meaning: feeling the pains associated with the crucifixion of Jesus. Not to mention that scare quotes aren't necessary.
So why do I nitpick? Because when your argument is written improperly it reflects badly on you and your argument's validity.
[/offtopic]
The fact of the matter is that there is an inherent difference in the construction of the male brain and the female brain. It is debated how much this affects things, but it is generally agreed that men are better, on average, at certain tasks than women, and vice versa.
Certainly many people are touchy about this fact; however, I think they seem to be missing two key points of the above statement: 1) these generalizations are only on average and 2) it works both ways.
Nobody says "women are inferior to men" only that "women have different inherent abilities from men". Not so degrading now, is it?
Nobody says "all women are worse than all men" just that "the average woman has more trouble with task X than the average man".
With girls at a place like Harvard, it seems pretty clear to me that they are not average women and thus are exempt from the above generalization.
But people enjoy getting annoyed about things.