Because such a device would be no better than the electronic ones that are already in your computer. The point of the lava lamp is to make random numbers that are more random than conventional computer-generated random numbers(which, scientifically speaking aren't very random).
And yes, it is possible to measure how random a set of numbres is and it's possible to call one set of numbers 'more random' than another set.
That makes it a chaotic source. The problem is to remove known influences from the sampling to end up with random bits only. Let's say I have a sine wave, about 1Hz but modulated by uncontrollable other influences. It would be foolish to sample every 1.1 seconds and treat the results as random numbers. But if I sample every 1.1 seconds and only look at the last digit of a high precision measurement, then it means I measure "chaos" and throw away non-random signal components.
On an unmodulated wave running at 1hz sampling at 1.1 second intervals is effectively the same as sampling at 1 second intervals. If you sample at 1 seconds, your result will be (no matter how precise your instruments) the same each time you poll it. On 1.1 secs, same deal except it takes 10 seconds before the numbers start repeating themselves instead of 1. The same is true for any other polling interval you might choose. So polling at 1.1 is equivalent to polling at 1 and it's the same as polling at 4.325999. With some statistical analysis... it's even the same as polling every 2.35e^x... or any other formula you can think of.
Of course, things are different on a modulated wave, but you are effectively depending on the source of the modulation. You say 'uncontrollable other influences' which is a blanket enough statement to make your final numbers random, but 'uncontrollable other influences' themselves have to be random to make a modulated sine wave itself random. Now, if you have a source of uncontrolled randomness, modulating it to a sine wave is pointless, since you have randomness to begin with.
Isn't the key to generating a truly random number having an essentially analog source?
Well, no. Just a strict analog source would be good if you could poll it at random intervals. Unfortuantely, most regular analog sources follow a sine curve when you get to looking closely enough. Temperature will tend to fluctuate within a X of a degree around a certain temperature. No matter what resolution you look to, it will do the same thing, go a little up, and a little down. Basically following a sine curve. Polling this at random to some number of decimals would be fine, but you can't define 'at random'... which is the whole point. If i told my computer to get the temperature at regular intervals, it would get predictable numbers.... and you can't use random intervals, if you had those you wouldn't have to go through this!
I did over simplify there, the actual tracker would have to be smart enough to know that when a person clicked the next site after having backed up from the first one that they had gone back. There will be some loss there, but with aggregated results it should get lost in the statistics.
The whole thing is further complicated by people using tabbed browsing and multiple windows and such, but still in the base case, it's an interesting idea.
Page rank is cool, uses distributed data to improve search results. Definately AWESOME in the search engine world.
BUT i would also like to see the distributed concept applied to searching itself. Something like this idea, but having the engine return results on what were popular click-thrus for searches. From what i can tell (IANA Google Expert) Google isn't keeping click through data on search results (they are on the adwords, but that's different). By tracking click thru data and calculating how long a user stayed at a clicked result before hitting the back button or otherwise returning to google... good insights can be learned. Aggregate this over millions of users with billions of page views... wouldn't take too long to figure out what everyone wants to see for a particular search result. Combine all of that with improving your searches by what others are searching for... i think you are talking a powerful system.
Granted this whole idea may be liable to spamming and all of that... but that's not part of the concept yet. On the surface, it seems like a good idea.
NOTE: I know other engines track click thrus, but i don't think any of them do it for non-advertising purposes.... if it's purely to improve results then cool. If it's to show you better ads, not cool.
Totally agree. And it's especially annoying when you have to seperately download each of the dependent packages, COMPILE them (because of course there's no rpm or other binary available) and pray they install and work properly. All of that, and when you finally do everything, you find out that the package you originally wanted is still hosed.
Source realeases are nice and all, available for all systems, yada, yada.... but i would love to see more releases having standard binary releases that are self-contained with no or at least minimal dependencies.
Then there's the question of... what do you need a supercomputer for?
To advance the state of the art. And not just in the field of computers, but also in any field that ends up benefitting from this. Which is potentially very many. Aerospace, geology, meterology... there are BUNCHES of fields that greatly benefit having more and more massively powerful computers. Sure, most projects can't afford to have the latest and greatest of the state of the art in supercomputing, but the fact that the state of the art progresses will push prices down on the older technologies that most labs CAN afford. This is a benefit for science as a whole.
HP is for engineers. 'Real' engineers look down on people that use TI's. It's silly, but that's what it is.
In education, TI rules. People can't stand HP calculators. But it's kind of nice to have one while in school, that way no one wants to borrow your calculator. Or if someone does ask to borrow it, and doesn't know how to use it, it's always a good laugh trying to explain how post-fix (or reverse polish, if you prefer) notation works...
I'm not commenting on the parent post itself, but your post doesn't advance the argument.
Why do people need lawyers, can't they just defend themselves in court?
Why do people need mechanics, can't they just fix their own cars?
Why do people need garbage men, can't they just take the trash to the dump themselves?
Well, yes.. they can. But there are people who are specialists in each field that know what they are doing. It's their job. I'm pretty smart, so I could fix my own car but since i know nothing of cars it would involve looking through some instruction books and diagrams and figuring the things out.. it would involve buying or renting tools and researching what tools were best for the job and it would involve me looking for the parts and all of that, then i would need to find a place to work at... or i could just pay the mechanic off. It's his job, afterall.
I could lobby my congressman on zero budjet myself. But if i really wanted access, it would be less time consuming and have a better chance of success if i went through someone who's a pro at it. Someone who's got the knowledge and got the tools. It's his job, afterall. The downside is, you got to pay for that service.
I had a job telemarketing (actually it was business to business marketing, but let's be honest, it's the same thing) for about a month. So instead of calling up regular people, I was calling up car dealerships offering them a promotional marketing package to help them out in selling more cars.
How's that for making you feel slimy? A telemarketer calling up the only people worse than them, car salesmen. *shudder*
Scarcity here means finite. There are only X quantity of some resource. There are only (i have no idea of the real number but let's say) 12.4 trillion US dollar bills in circulation. That's quite a lot, but it's still a scarce resource since you can put a number on it. Since it's scarce, each one has a specific value to it. In this case it's easy, each one is worth one dollar... for other resources, like cars it can be many thousands of dollars, or other's tenths of a dollar...
The opposite is a non-scarce resource. Something that is infinite or at least seemingly infinite. Things like sunlight, air and seawater(at least, when you are near the sea) fall into this category. Although they may not be strictly mathematically infinite, they are in human terms inexhaustible. Therefore, there is almost no value to these things. Nobody can sell air. They could try, but nobody would buy it (unless you are in a trendy oxygen bar) since, after all it's easy to get all the air you want for free. Try selling seawater to a guy on a boat... won't happen.
Scarcity is the premise of economic systems. If suddenly scarce goods became infinite in supply, nothing would have any value. Car, free. House, free. Food, free. Computer, free. What would have value? Information.
Now... what to make of Intellectual Property laws once IP is the only thing of real value?? That's the interesting question...
I saw this one... it's the one where Neo and Sandra Bullock have to keep the plane above 8000 feet or the crazed anthony hopkins blows up the plane. At one point the plane actually jumps a non-built section of highway and clears it to the other side. They finally beat him by standing really still during a recording and looping the video tape while they transfer all the passengers onto another plane.
Ahh, but if it offends *your* tender feelings that they dismiss people as unpatriotic, then tough. It's a two way street. You can't tell someone who is saying 'no don't say that' to 'no don't say that'.
So in the USA you have the freedom to say whatever you like - but if you don't follow the party line you get labelled "unpatriotic" (or maybe "communist", "one of them, not one of us", or even "a supporter of terrorism") ? [Emphasis mine.]
Labels are a form of free speech. Just as someone has the right to call the president fascist, someone else has the right to label the first person however they want. That's what's fun about free speech. What's even more fun is the concept of majority rule (ie... democracy) If enough people agree with the first guy then the president is thrown out next term. If enough people agree with the second guy, then the pres stays.
That is how the system works. It is self-contradictory to defend the first guy's right to speak by attacking the second guy's right to it.
And what is the point of an "opposition" if they are not allowed to oppose ?
They are allowed to oppose, but they aren't necessarily allowed to oppose without themselves being opposed. It's a two way street.
No, What it *Should* be is that there all cars are identical and provided by the race authorities which are assigned to the drivers at random on race day.
With something like this, it makes it a fair race since the only determining factor is driver skill and not team wealth.
but they also help protect joe citizen who puts waaaay too damn many devices on the power strip (Hmmm... nobody HERE would be guilty of that, would they?)
No, because everyone here uses devices that have freaking wall wort plugs. They are just not as efficient. It ends up taking three or four power strips daisy-chained together to put your three computers, two monitors, KVM switch, cable modem, router, hub, printer, scanner, sound equipment, fax, fridge, TV, VCR, Satellite Receiver, Tivo, and PS2.
(if anyone didn't notice, i was joking... for crissakes don't try putting all those devices on one wall plug... besides, if you've got that much equipment all in one place... move into a bigger apartment)
My family and i used to live overseas as employees of Uncle Sam. As such we had an APO address of the same style that military personel living overseas do. Once upon a time, one of our state-side family members sent us a little care package with various household goodies and food items. Well, it happens that one of the bottles of syrup in the box burst and consequently had maple syrup leaking everywhere. We received the care package complete (minus the offending bottle of syrup) cleaned up and repackaged with a personal note from some postal worker in one of the transit stations along the way explaining how he really appreciated the work we were doing overseas (he could tell by the APO address) for our country, and that he knew how important this package would be to us so he took the little bit of extra time to clean everything up as best he could.
No matter what the popular jokes are about the Post Office, its just like any other agency or company.... there are people in any organization that spoil it for everyone, and, like this particular person, ones that reflect dedication and caring to their profession.
The supreme court has ruled that there are certain fair uses to copyrighted material. Among which are the making of copies for personal use, time shifting, media shifting, or backup. When you purchase a copyrighted product, you effectively become a licensee of that content. It's limited in that you can't redistribute the content nor play it in a public place, but you OWN that content, you don't own the copyright to it, but you own it and can do what you please with your copy or copies.
When someone makes a song, or movie, or book or anything else that is copyrightable, he makes a copytight on that original piece of work. The copyright is not on a particular rendition of it. When the person who wrote the happy birthday song wrote it, it's the song that is copyrighted, not the particular piece of sheet music that he put out. He owns the SONG. It's not like the only legitimate copies of it have to come from his original piece of sheet music or from his own first recording. The SONG is the big deal not the media he put it on (it does have to be on a medium to get copyrighted, but that's incidental). He now controls the song whether it shows up in a movie, whether someone records it on a CD or whether someone sings it at a child's birthday party (didn't know you were breaking the law singing happy birthday to your kid in public, did you?) and all these people owe him royalties. Additionally, any given performance of that song (provided the performer paid to be allowed to perform it in public) is copyrighted to the person singing it. In that case any recording of the song is copyrighted, but not the song. The song is the copyrighted material, the performance is copytighted material and it has nothing to do with the medium on which it resides.
When someone has purchased a copyrighted product, they have fair use to the content, if they make a copy of it for themselves, obviously that's cool, you said it yourself... what's the difference if someone else makes the copy for them? There is no difference. I could take my DMB CD over to my buddy's house, and make my fair use copy over there, right? Given that the content is what's important, not the medium, if my buddy happens to own the CD too, he can make me a copy from his CD. Why would that be suddenly illegal if he gives it to me over the internet?
Back to tower records, no you are not allowed to do that, but not because it would be illegal... it's just not their policy to do it, and it probably never will be. Tower records is looking at it as a $15 piece of plastic. That's all it is to them. So, you better fork over the $15 or they call the cops. To them, the medium is important. They paid $7 to get it in the shop, they need to get $15 to let it go.
The media is not the content. You can't copyright media, only original content.
No, the guy has the right to the content. If he owns the CD he has the right to the content in digital form whether he gets it off the internet or rips it himself. If he has the rights to the content (which he does by having purchased the CD) then all he is doing by DLing it off the net is moving 1's and 0's. There is no distinction. Your analogy is flawed, if you go into tower records and take the CD, you are stealing physical property. (In such a case, the charge would be petty theft, not copyright infringement) When you get something off the net (if you don't have the rights to it) you are violating copyright law. Which, necessarily, you can't be doing if you have the right to the content.
DMCA is irrelevant to this. Plain old copyright law suffices to nail the so-called "sharers".
Actually, no it doesn't. Plain old copyright law required that the defendant had to actually make some money for it to be illegal. Just making copies and even distributing them for free was legal. It was a fair use to do it like that. It wasn't till the DMCA came around that distributing copyright material (for free or not) was illegal. So yes, DMCA is very relevant to this.
Is stealing from the mafia ok? It's a legitimate moral question.
Morally, there's no problem, legally, there is. You can't steal from anyone, mafia or otherwise. You can't even steal your own property back if someone stole it from you. You have to go through the legal channels.
Of course, the mafia(or other illegal organization) probably isn't going to report the theft. "Uhh, officer, that guy stole my suitcase full of drugs" won't fly too well on a police report. The mafia will just kill you instead.
This is your last chance. After this there is no turning back. You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your Windows environment and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep Open Source goes... Remember, all I'm offering is the truth, nothing more...
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Because such a device would be no better than the electronic ones that are already in your computer. The point of the lava lamp is to make random numbers that are more random than conventional computer-generated random numbers(which, scientifically speaking aren't very random).
And yes, it is possible to measure how random a set of numbres is and it's possible to call one set of numbers 'more random' than another set.
That makes it a chaotic source. The problem is to remove known influences from the sampling to end up with random bits only. Let's say I have a sine wave, about 1Hz but modulated by uncontrollable other influences. It would be foolish to sample every 1.1 seconds and treat the results as random numbers. But if I sample every 1.1 seconds and only look at the last digit of a high precision measurement, then it means I measure "chaos" and throw away non-random signal components.
On an unmodulated wave running at 1hz sampling at 1.1 second intervals is effectively the same as sampling at 1 second intervals. If you sample at 1 seconds, your result will be (no matter how precise your instruments) the same each time you poll it. On 1.1 secs, same deal except it takes 10 seconds before the numbers start repeating themselves instead of 1. The same is true for any other polling interval you might choose. So polling at 1.1 is equivalent to polling at 1 and it's the same as polling at 4.325999. With some statistical analysis... it's even the same as polling every 2.35e^x... or any other formula you can think of.
Of course, things are different on a modulated wave, but you are effectively depending on the source of the modulation. You say 'uncontrollable other influences' which is a blanket enough statement to make your final numbers random, but 'uncontrollable other influences' themselves have to be random to make a modulated sine wave itself random. Now, if you have a source of uncontrolled randomness, modulating it to a sine wave is pointless, since you have randomness to begin with.
Isn't the key to generating a truly random number having an essentially analog source?
Well, no. Just a strict analog source would be good if you could poll it at random intervals. Unfortuantely, most regular analog sources follow a sine curve when you get to looking closely enough. Temperature will tend to fluctuate within a X of a degree around a certain temperature. No matter what resolution you look to, it will do the same thing, go a little up, and a little down. Basically following a sine curve. Polling this at random to some number of decimals would be fine, but you can't define 'at random'... which is the whole point. If i told my computer to get the temperature at regular intervals, it would get predictable numbers.... and you can't use random intervals, if you had those you wouldn't have to go through this!
Let me know when they can make a monkey with four asses.
They already can. Actually, it's five asses. The prototype one they have developed is named Darl McBride and the asses are named Sontag, Bench, Wilson, Hunsaker and Broughton
I did over simplify there, the actual tracker would have to be smart enough to know that when a person clicked the next site after having backed up from the first one that they had gone back. There will be some loss there, but with aggregated results it should get lost in the statistics.
The whole thing is further complicated by people using tabbed browsing and multiple windows and such, but still in the base case, it's an interesting idea.
Page rank is cool, uses distributed data to improve search results. Definately AWESOME in the search engine world.
BUT i would also like to see the distributed concept applied to searching itself. Something like this idea, but having the engine return results on what were popular click-thrus for searches. From what i can tell (IANA Google Expert) Google isn't keeping click through data on search results (they are on the adwords, but that's different). By tracking click thru data and calculating how long a user stayed at a clicked result before hitting the back button or otherwise returning to google... good insights can be learned. Aggregate this over millions of users with billions of page views... wouldn't take too long to figure out what everyone wants to see for a particular search result. Combine all of that with improving your searches by what others are searching for... i think you are talking a powerful system.
Granted this whole idea may be liable to spamming and all of that... but that's not part of the concept yet. On the surface, it seems like a good idea.
NOTE: I know other engines track click thrus, but i don't think any of them do it for non-advertising purposes.... if it's purely to improve results then cool. If it's to show you better ads, not cool.
Totally agree. And it's especially annoying when you have to seperately download each of the dependent packages, COMPILE them (because of course there's no rpm or other binary available) and pray they install and work properly. All of that, and when you finally do everything, you find out that the package you originally wanted is still hosed.
Source realeases are nice and all, available for all systems, yada, yada.... but i would love to see more releases having standard binary releases that are self-contained with no or at least minimal dependencies.
Then there's the question of ... what do you need a supercomputer for?
To advance the state of the art. And not just in the field of computers, but also in any field that ends up benefitting from this. Which is potentially very many. Aerospace, geology, meterology... there are BUNCHES of fields that greatly benefit having more and more massively powerful computers. Sure, most projects can't afford to have the latest and greatest of the state of the art in supercomputing, but the fact that the state of the art progresses will push prices down on the older technologies that most labs CAN afford. This is a benefit for science as a whole.
HP is for engineers. 'Real' engineers look down on people that use TI's. It's silly, but that's what it is.
In education, TI rules. People can't stand HP calculators. But it's kind of nice to have one while in school, that way no one wants to borrow your calculator. Or if someone does ask to borrow it, and doesn't know how to use it, it's always a good laugh trying to explain how post-fix (or reverse polish, if you prefer) notation works...
"so wait, the plus sign comes AFTER?!?! WTF?!?!"
I'm not commenting on the parent post itself, but your post doesn't advance the argument.
Why do people need lawyers, can't they just defend themselves in court?
Why do people need mechanics, can't they just fix their own cars?
Why do people need garbage men, can't they just take the trash to the dump themselves?
Well, yes.. they can. But there are people who are specialists in each field that know what they are doing. It's their job. I'm pretty smart, so I could fix my own car but since i know nothing of cars it would involve looking through some instruction books and diagrams and figuring the things out.. it would involve buying or renting tools and researching what tools were best for the job and it would involve me looking for the parts and all of that, then i would need to find a place to work at... or i could just pay the mechanic off. It's his job, afterall.
I could lobby my congressman on zero budjet myself. But if i really wanted access, it would be less time consuming and have a better chance of success if i went through someone who's a pro at it. Someone who's got the knowledge and got the tools. It's his job, afterall. The downside is, you got to pay for that service.
http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/history/coldwar/pe. htm
Airforce seems to think he went 714.
"He experienced temperatures as low as minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit and a maximum speed of 714 miles per hour, exceeding the speed of sound. "
I had a job telemarketing (actually it was business to business marketing, but let's be honest, it's the same thing) for about a month. So instead of calling up regular people, I was calling up car dealerships offering them a promotional marketing package to help them out in selling more cars.
How's that for making you feel slimy? A telemarketer calling up the only people worse than them, car salesmen. *shudder*
Worst part is, they probably went right on with the sales pitch anyway.
Scarcity here means finite. There are only X quantity of some resource. There are only (i have no idea of the real number but let's say) 12.4 trillion US dollar bills in circulation. That's quite a lot, but it's still a scarce resource since you can put a number on it. Since it's scarce, each one has a specific value to it. In this case it's easy, each one is worth one dollar... for other resources, like cars it can be many thousands of dollars, or other's tenths of a dollar...
The opposite is a non-scarce resource. Something that is infinite or at least seemingly infinite. Things like sunlight, air and seawater(at least, when you are near the sea) fall into this category. Although they may not be strictly mathematically infinite, they are in human terms inexhaustible. Therefore, there is almost no value to these things. Nobody can sell air. They could try, but nobody would buy it (unless you are in a trendy oxygen bar) since, after all it's easy to get all the air you want for free. Try selling seawater to a guy on a boat... won't happen.
Scarcity is the premise of economic systems. If suddenly scarce goods became infinite in supply, nothing would have any value. Car, free. House, free. Food, free. Computer, free. What would have value? Information.
Now... what to make of Intellectual Property laws once IP is the only thing of real value?? That's the interesting question...
I saw this one... it's the one where Neo and Sandra Bullock have to keep the plane above 8000 feet or the crazed anthony hopkins blows up the plane. At one point the plane actually jumps a non-built section of highway and clears it to the other side. They finally beat him by standing really still during a recording and looping the video tape while they transfer all the passengers onto another plane.
And if it offends your tender feelings, tough.
Ahh, but if it offends *your* tender feelings that they dismiss people as unpatriotic, then tough. It's a two way street. You can't tell someone who is saying 'no don't say that' to 'no don't say that'.
So in the USA you have the freedom to say whatever you like - but if you don't follow the party line you get labelled "unpatriotic" (or maybe "communist", "one of them, not one of us", or even "a supporter of terrorism") ? [Emphasis mine.]
Labels are a form of free speech. Just as someone has the right to call the president fascist, someone else has the right to label the first person however they want. That's what's fun about free speech. What's even more fun is the concept of majority rule (ie... democracy) If enough people agree with the first guy then the president is thrown out next term. If enough people agree with the second guy, then the pres stays.
That is how the system works. It is self-contradictory to defend the first guy's right to speak by attacking the second guy's right to it.
And what is the point of an "opposition" if they are not allowed to oppose ?
They are allowed to oppose, but they aren't necessarily allowed to oppose without themselves being opposed. It's a two way street.
No, What it *Should* be is that there all cars are identical and provided by the race authorities which are assigned to the drivers at random on race day.
With something like this, it makes it a fair race since the only determining factor is driver skill and not team wealth.
Will never happen, but would be cool.
but they also help protect joe citizen who puts waaaay too damn many devices on the power strip (Hmmm... nobody HERE would be guilty of that, would they?)
No, because everyone here uses devices that have freaking wall wort plugs. They are just not as efficient. It ends up taking three or four power strips daisy-chained together to put your three computers, two monitors, KVM switch, cable modem, router, hub, printer, scanner, sound equipment, fax, fridge, TV, VCR, Satellite Receiver, Tivo, and PS2.
(if anyone didn't notice, i was joking... for crissakes don't try putting all those devices on one wall plug... besides, if you've got that much equipment all in one place... move into a bigger apartment)
My family and i used to live overseas as employees of Uncle Sam. As such we had an APO address of the same style that military personel living overseas do. Once upon a time, one of our state-side family members sent us a little care package with various household goodies and food items. Well, it happens that one of the bottles of syrup in the box burst and consequently had maple syrup leaking everywhere. We received the care package complete (minus the offending bottle of syrup) cleaned up and repackaged with a personal note from some postal worker in one of the transit stations along the way explaining how he really appreciated the work we were doing overseas (he could tell by the APO address) for our country, and that he knew how important this package would be to us so he took the little bit of extra time to clean everything up as best he could.
No matter what the popular jokes are about the Post Office, its just like any other agency or company.... there are people in any organization that spoil it for everyone, and, like this particular person, ones that reflect dedication and caring to their profession.
The supreme court has ruled that there are certain fair uses to copyrighted material. Among which are the making of copies for personal use, time shifting, media shifting, or backup. When you purchase a copyrighted product, you effectively become a licensee of that content. It's limited in that you can't redistribute the content nor play it in a public place, but you OWN that content, you don't own the copyright to it, but you own it and can do what you please with your copy or copies.
When someone makes a song, or movie, or book or anything else that is copyrightable, he makes a copytight on that original piece of work. The copyright is not on a particular rendition of it. When the person who wrote the happy birthday song wrote it, it's the song that is copyrighted, not the particular piece of sheet music that he put out. He owns the SONG. It's not like the only legitimate copies of it have to come from his original piece of sheet music or from his own first recording. The SONG is the big deal not the media he put it on (it does have to be on a medium to get copyrighted, but that's incidental). He now controls the song whether it shows up in a movie, whether someone records it on a CD or whether someone sings it at a child's birthday party (didn't know you were breaking the law singing happy birthday to your kid in public, did you?) and all these people owe him royalties. Additionally, any given performance of that song (provided the performer paid to be allowed to perform it in public) is copyrighted to the person singing it. In that case any recording of the song is copyrighted, but not the song. The song is the copyrighted material, the performance is copytighted material and it has nothing to do with the medium on which it resides.
When someone has purchased a copyrighted product, they have fair use to the content, if they make a copy of it for themselves, obviously that's cool, you said it yourself... what's the difference if someone else makes the copy for them? There is no difference. I could take my DMB CD over to my buddy's house, and make my fair use copy over there, right? Given that the content is what's important, not the medium, if my buddy happens to own the CD too, he can make me a copy from his CD. Why would that be suddenly illegal if he gives it to me over the internet?
Back to tower records, no you are not allowed to do that, but not because it would be illegal... it's just not their policy to do it, and it probably never will be. Tower records is looking at it as a $15 piece of plastic. That's all it is to them. So, you better fork over the $15 or they call the cops. To them, the medium is important. They paid $7 to get it in the shop, they need to get $15 to let it go.
The media is not the content. You can't copyright media, only original content.
No, the guy has the right to the content. If he owns the CD he has the right to the content in digital form whether he gets it off the internet or rips it himself. If he has the rights to the content (which he does by having purchased the CD) then all he is doing by DLing it off the net is moving 1's and 0's. There is no distinction. Your analogy is flawed, if you go into tower records and take the CD, you are stealing physical property. (In such a case, the charge would be petty theft, not copyright infringement) When you get something off the net (if you don't have the rights to it) you are violating copyright law. Which, necessarily, you can't be doing if you have the right to the content.
DMCA is irrelevant to this. Plain old copyright law suffices to nail the so-called "sharers".
Actually, no it doesn't. Plain old copyright law required that the defendant had to actually make some money for it to be illegal. Just making copies and even distributing them for free was legal. It was a fair use to do it like that. It wasn't till the DMCA came around that distributing copyright material (for free or not) was illegal. So yes, DMCA is very relevant to this.
Is stealing from the mafia ok? It's a legitimate moral question.
Morally, there's no problem, legally, there is. You can't steal from anyone, mafia or otherwise. You can't even steal your own property back if someone stole it from you. You have to go through the legal channels.
Of course, the mafia(or other illegal organization) probably isn't going to report the theft. "Uhh, officer, that guy stole my suitcase full of drugs" won't fly too well on a police report. The mafia will just kill you instead.
This is your last chance. After this there is no turning back. You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your Windows environment and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep Open Source goes... Remember, all I'm offering is the truth, nothing more...