They can maybe get you on intent, as it might be argued that you opened up so you can do illegal acts, but that is far fetched.
Of course, if you have published a magazine article in which you have said, essentially, "Phew! Now my massive downloading and sharing of copyrighted materials can't be provably tied to me! What a relief!", it probably doesn't help your case.
If you don't have a log in the first place, you have nothing to turn over to the feds
Well, not necessarily. If there were some kind of lawsuit, and the Feds (or RIAA, or whoever) made a demand along these lines in discovery, I doubt you could get rid of them simply by saying, "Nope, I don't keep logs. Take my word for it." They'd probably petition the court to order you to turn your computer over to them so that they can check for themselves (as if you couldn't destroy such logs). The side with the more expensive lawyers -- i.e., them -- probably wins that argument.
It is watered down. Its emphasis is a little different than TEU, with less discussion of string/M Theory and more discussion of quantum weirdness, relativity, entropy, and the arrow of time. If you enjoy reading about physics (and apparently you do), then most of this material is probably review for you.
One thing that I found interesting was the discussion of how inflationary expansion affected the structure of the universe, and in particular how it put the early universe into a very low-entropy state.
If you have already read TEU, then I highly recommend Lee Smolin's book, Three Roads to Quantum Gravity. Between those two books, you will have covered most of the material in Fabric, and with more satisfying detail.
You tend not to notice it, but the card actually does have such a checkbox. It's checked by default. You have to uncheck it if you don't want to be notified.
Also, the store periodically updates its systems in order to serve you better, and resets your preferences.
The limerick, peculiar to English, Is a verse form that's hard to extinguish,
Once Congress, in session,
Decreed it's suppression, But people got around it by writing the last line without any rhyme or meter.
Here's an idea that has been mentioned before, but merits a mention here. It's not clear how we would "get there from here," but it's food for thought.
Imagine an e-mail system in which the sender of an e-mail would have to pay the recipient a fee specified by the recipient. The e-mail simply would not show up in the recipient's inbox unless the fee is paid.
You would be able to provide "keys" to regular correspondents, legitimate mailing lists, etc., that would allow them to reach your inbox without paying a fee. The keys would be revokable, in case they are abused or fall into the wrong hands.
It would be an expected courtesy, but not enforced, that legitimate e-mail that pays a fee would have the fee refunded once the recipient recognizes the mail as legitimate.
Now, if you're actively seeking e-mails from unknown senders -- for example, if you advertise a product or service and tell people to e-mail you for more information -- then you probably wouldn't charge a fee to reach your inbox. If you're a more typical user, you would set a small fee, probably just a few cents, so as not to deter legitimate mail.
A spammer, assuming he doesn't have keys to millions of inboxes, would need to pay tens of thousands of dollars in order to reach them all, assuming they each require a payment of a few cents.
This would not only deter spam but also compensate its victims. However, it would have little effect on legitimate e-mail.
I think he understands better than most people exactly why free software is on solid legal ground, so I think he'd be a fine person on the witness stand.
Nobody's going to be asking for his legal opinion.
If he is put on the witness stand, it will be or testify on his knowledge of the facts of the case, or to give expert testimony on technical matters.
I have a horrible vision of the lawyer ripping him apart over the rights of closed-source programmers though. RMS thinks all programs should be free, not by choice but as a part of the natural order of things. Any competent lawyer should be able to do a character assassination on him, and by association the entire open source movement, with that material.
Any competent judge should forbid this line of questioning. Gratuitous character assassination of witnesses is not permitted.
If he testifies on factual matters, it is permissible to attack the credibility of the testimony by introducing evidence that directly establishes a propensity to lie on such matters. If he testifies on technical matters, it is permissible to introduce evidence that calls his technical expertise into question.
His political views have no probative value to the case. He could be the head of Communist Party, or Aryan Nations for that matter, and it would not make a whit of difference.
could the government use this technique to start on their national DNA database?
It would probably not be cost-effective to use this techinique for the purposes of compiling a large database. My guess is that it will only be used when needed.
Someday in the not-very-distant future, law enforcement agencies probably will start compiling large DNA databases. However, this technique is not the revolution that will make that happen.
You don't need a court order to collect and analyze DNA at all.
You do need a warrant to forcibly extract DNA. However, if law enforcement officials find DNA at the crime scene, or anywhere else (without conducting an illegal search), they are permitted to analyze it and use it.
But as previous posters have already noted, the machine still has to know the meanings of words in order to do a good translation.
For example, to translate "big box" and "big man" into Arabic, you'd actually use different words for big, since the box is inanimate, but the man is animate.
I think that one of the major points of the statistical technique is to deal with precisely this sort of thing.
It doesn't have to know the "meaning" of words like "box" or "man," it just has to have seen them in a particular context before. If it has, then it knows that "big" is usually translated one way when it appears with "man," and another way when it appears with "box." So it just follows those observed patterns, without knowing anything about "meaning."
In principle (the article hints at this), it might even be possible in the future to make good guesses about combinations that it hasn't seen before, by inferring rules about how things are put together. For example, it encounters the phrase "strong box," which it hasn't seen before. But it has seen many other words that frequently are associated with inanimate-strong and that are also frequently associated with inanimate-big, and many words that frequently are associated with animated-strong and also frequently associated with animate-big, but few words that are frequently associated with inanimate-big and animate-strong. So it infers that inanimate-strong is somehow "parallel" to inanimate-big. Since it also finds that "box" is more typically associated with inanimate-big than with animate-big, it infers that the version of "strong" that goes with "box" is the one that is parallel to inanimate-big. Therefore, it selects inanimate-strong. Ta da!
It may be possible for this approach to address that issue somewhat. Statistics can be collected not only on associations of words with other words, but also on associations of groups of words or phrases with others. So if the translator has learned from documents in which the phrase "put it down" appears near the word "ill" and the word "dog," and from other documents in which the phrase is associated with the word "heavy," it can make a good guess.
Clearly, it would need to learn from a tremendous amount of input data before it could begin to approach the experience of a human, and hence make guesses of similar quality to a human translator. However, the amount of available source material is increasing so rapidly that it may be possible for a translator to get pretty darn smart this way.
They don't even look right on Windows, if you change the color scheme from the default.
If you're setting up a system for a user who is so naive that you fear they might fall for these deceptive ads, consider giving them a distinctive color scheme to help them recognize the fakes.
I disagree. A content-neutral "time, place or manner" restriction would be more consistent with the spirit of the First Amendment, and with existing case law, than a content-based restriction.
Spamming, in terms of its public nuisance value, is somewhat like blaring your message with multikilowatt speakers in a residential neighborhood at 3:00 A.M. It doesn't matter whether those speakers are playing a commercial advertisement, a political message, a religious message, music, gibberish, or anything else. The annoyment of the residents has nothing to do with the content of the message, and the behavior is illegal regardless of the content of the message. Spam should be treated the same way.
This sort of thing only bothers me when the manufacturer takes action to restrict the customer's ability to use the product as the customer desires, and the customer doesn't realize this until he gets it home.
As long as the customer is made aware of the artificially engineered restrictions, then I figure it's cool. Customers who don't want to accept those restrictions don't have to buy the product. It's not like DeLL has a monopoly on printers.
The moderation/karma system rewards early posting, so it's not at all surprising that many threads are dominated by posts from users who have not taken the time to read the articles, do a little supplementary research, think a little, and formulate well-informed, well-considered opinions.
On the subject of the two-button mouse: the Aqua human interface guidelines specifiy that a contextual menu should not be used for any feature that is not also accessible through another UI control. Assuming for sake of argument that all software everwhere follows the Aqua HIG, you never have to control-click on a Mac.
Right. In Safari, for example, if you want to open a link in a new window, you don't have to control-click.
A rigorous definition may be necessary but not sufficient for the "usefulness" of a scientific term. In this case, it doesn't seem like the proposed definitions are useful.
If we determined (for example) that bodies above a certain mass had some other properties of interest, or that stellar systems with a certain number of bodies above a certain mass had some interesting properties, then it would be useful to define "planets" as being bodies of at least that mass. The class of such bodies would be a regular subject of analysis, and it's easier to say "planets" than to say "non-stellar gravitationally stellar-bound bodies of Werkeltroff-Schmeltergruber-Minayevich mass or greater."
See, in the ordinary course of developing a scientific lexicon, we discover scientifically useful concepts, and then define terms for those concepts in order to provide economy of expression.
In this case, however, it seems that we have a term that already exists in the popular lexicon, but no related scientific concept with a compelling need for the term.
So why bother? Why not just allow the term to continue its peaceful existence in the popular lexicon, without attaching an arbitrary definition to it? Are we trying to serve some purpose other than allowing slashdot geeks another way to point out where the popular press gets something wrong? If we can identify a purpose for a definition, I the definition will probably follow naturually from the identified purpose; if not, then the whole discussion is silly, at best.
"In sum, substantial evidence does not support the jury's verdict that Rambus breached its duties" to disclose patents, the judges wrote in the ruling. "No reasonable jury could find otherwise."
...something seems wrong when a 3-judge federal circuit court can overturn the ruling of a jury with language like that.
It's not at all unusual for an appellate court to reverse a jury's verdict. However, the standards for doing so are very high; it's not sufficient that the appellate court strongly disagree with the verdict, but rather that no reasonable jury could reach the verdict based on the evidence before it.
In a sense, it is a procedural review, because a jury's finding that can not reasonably be based on the evidence generally means that the finding is on a question that should not have been submitted to the jury in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
They can maybe get you on intent, as it might be argued that you opened up so you can do illegal acts, but that is far fetched.
Of course, if you have published a magazine article in which you have said, essentially, "Phew! Now my massive downloading and sharing of copyrighted materials can't be provably tied to me! What a relief!", it probably doesn't help your case.
If you don't have a log in the first place, you have nothing to turn over to the feds
Well, not necessarily. If there were some kind of lawsuit, and the Feds (or RIAA, or whoever) made a demand along these lines in discovery, I doubt you could get rid of them simply by saying, "Nope, I don't keep logs. Take my word for it." They'd probably petition the court to order you to turn your computer over to them so that they can check for themselves (as if you couldn't destroy such logs). The side with the more expensive lawyers -- i.e., them -- probably wins that argument.
It is watered down. Its emphasis is a little different than TEU, with less discussion of string/M Theory and more discussion of quantum weirdness, relativity, entropy, and the arrow of time. If you enjoy reading about physics (and apparently you do), then most of this material is probably review for you.
One thing that I found interesting was the discussion of how inflationary expansion affected the structure of the universe, and in particular how it put the early universe into a very low-entropy state.
If you have already read TEU, then I highly recommend Lee Smolin's book, Three Roads to Quantum Gravity. Between those two books, you will have covered most of the material in Fabric, and with more satisfying detail.
You tend not to notice it, but the card actually does have such a checkbox. It's checked by default. You have to uncheck it if you don't want to be notified.
Also, the store periodically updates its systems in order to serve you better, and resets your preferences.
use strict; use warnings;
my $haiku_lists_itself; print
`cat $0`
Here's a real challenge:
Write a self-listing haiku
without such "cheating."
Is it possible?
I have no idea of how.
I would guess it's not.
Here's an idea that has been mentioned before, but merits a mention here. It's not clear how we would "get there from here," but it's food for thought.
Imagine an e-mail system in which the sender of an e-mail would have to pay the recipient a fee specified by the recipient. The e-mail simply would not show up in the recipient's inbox unless the fee is paid.
You would be able to provide "keys" to regular correspondents, legitimate mailing lists, etc., that would allow them to reach your inbox without paying a fee. The keys would be revokable, in case they are abused or fall into the wrong hands.
It would be an expected courtesy, but not enforced, that legitimate e-mail that pays a fee would have the fee refunded once the recipient recognizes the mail as legitimate.
Now, if you're actively seeking e-mails from unknown senders -- for example, if you advertise a product or service and tell people to e-mail you for more information -- then you probably wouldn't charge a fee to reach your inbox. If you're a more typical user, you would set a small fee, probably just a few cents, so as not to deter legitimate mail.
A spammer, assuming he doesn't have keys to millions of inboxes, would need to pay tens of thousands of dollars in order to reach them all, assuming they each require a payment of a few cents.
This would not only deter spam but also compensate its victims. However, it would have little effect on legitimate e-mail.
Nobody's going to be asking for his legal opinion.
If he is put on the witness stand, it will be or testify on his knowledge of the facts of the case, or to give expert testimony on technical matters.
Any competent judge should forbid this line of questioning. Gratuitous character assassination of witnesses is not permitted.
If he testifies on factual matters, it is permissible to attack the credibility of the testimony by introducing evidence that directly establishes a propensity to lie on such matters. If he testifies on technical matters, it is permissible to introduce evidence that calls his technical expertise into question.
His political views have no probative value to the case. He could be the head of Communist Party, or Aryan Nations for that matter, and it would not make a whit of difference.
The easiest answer is probably the honest one: "I just pulled a random prediction out of my ass. Duh. Why do you think we're called analysts?"
The Quantum Machine states:
"BREAKING NEWS: LYNDS AFFAIR MAY BE A SOCIOLOGICAL EXPERIMENT (AS ORSON WELLS AND THE WAR OF THE WORLDS) AFTER ALL (news story in development)"
For whatever that's worth. Maybe an actual news story will develop there. For now, there's no content. Much like Lynds' paper, which is here.
could the government use this technique to start on their national DNA database?
It would probably not be cost-effective to use this techinique for the purposes of compiling a large database. My guess is that it will only be used when needed.
Someday in the not-very-distant future, law enforcement agencies probably will start compiling large DNA databases. However, this technique is not the revolution that will make that happen.
You don't need a court order to collect and analyze DNA at all.
You do need a warrant to forcibly extract DNA. However, if law enforcement officials find DNA at the crime scene, or anywhere else (without conducting an illegal search), they are permitted to analyze it and use it.
But as previous posters have already noted, the machine still has to know the meanings of words in order to do a good translation.
For example, to translate "big box" and "big man" into Arabic, you'd actually use different words for big, since the box is inanimate, but the man is animate.
I think that one of the major points of the statistical technique is to deal with precisely this sort of thing.
It doesn't have to know the "meaning" of words like "box" or "man," it just has to have seen them in a particular context before. If it has, then it knows that "big" is usually translated one way when it appears with "man," and another way when it appears with "box." So it just follows those observed patterns, without knowing anything about "meaning."
In principle (the article hints at this), it might even be possible in the future to make good guesses about combinations that it hasn't seen before, by inferring rules about how things are put together. For example, it encounters the phrase "strong box," which it hasn't seen before. But it has seen many other words that frequently are associated with inanimate-strong and that are also frequently associated with inanimate-big, and many words that frequently are associated with animated-strong and also frequently associated with animate-big, but few words that are frequently associated with inanimate-big and animate-strong. So it infers that inanimate-strong is somehow "parallel" to inanimate-big. Since it also finds that "box" is more typically associated with inanimate-big than with animate-big, it infers that the version of "strong" that goes with "box" is the one that is parallel to inanimate-big. Therefore, it selects inanimate-strong. Ta da!
It may be possible for this approach to address that issue somewhat. Statistics can be collected not only on associations of words with other words, but also on associations of groups of words or phrases with others. So if the translator has learned from documents in which the phrase "put it down" appears near the word "ill" and the word "dog," and from other documents in which the phrase is associated with the word "heavy," it can make a good guess.
Clearly, it would need to learn from a tremendous amount of input data before it could begin to approach the experience of a human, and hence make guesses of similar quality to a human translator. However, the amount of available source material is increasing so rapidly that it may be possible for a translator to get pretty darn smart this way.
Heh! Shades of Zenon Panoussis vs. Scientology.
Hint: They don't look right on Mac OS X, either.
They don't even look right on Windows, if you change the color scheme from the default.
If you're setting up a system for a user who is so naive that you fear they might fall for these deceptive ads, consider giving them a distinctive color scheme to help them recognize the fakes.
Or just get them a Mac instead.
I disagree. A content-neutral "time, place or manner" restriction would be more consistent with the spirit of the First Amendment, and with existing case law, than a content-based restriction.
Spamming, in terms of its public nuisance value, is somewhat like blaring your message with multikilowatt speakers in a residential neighborhood at 3:00 A.M. It doesn't matter whether those speakers are playing a commercial advertisement, a political message, a religious message, music, gibberish, or anything else. The annoyment of the residents has nothing to do with the content of the message, and the behavior is illegal regardless of the content of the message. Spam should be treated the same way.
This sort of thing only bothers me when the manufacturer takes action to restrict the customer's ability to use the product as the customer desires, and the customer doesn't realize this until he gets it home.
As long as the customer is made aware of the artificially engineered restrictions, then I figure it's cool. Customers who don't want to accept those restrictions don't have to buy the product. It's not like DeLL has a monopoly on printers.
The moderation/karma system rewards early posting, so it's not at all surprising that many threads are dominated by posts from users who have not taken the time to read the articles, do a little supplementary research, think a little, and formulate well-informed, well-considered opinions.
But the English system goes by powers of two; e.g, 16 cups = 8 pints = 4 quarts = 2 half gallon = 1 gallon.
... 768? Aw, crap!
= 128 ounces = 256 tablespoons = 768 teaspoons =
On the subject of the two-button mouse: the Aqua human interface guidelines specifiy that a contextual menu should not be used for any feature that is not also accessible through another UI control. Assuming for sake of argument that all software everwhere follows the Aqua HIG, you never have to control-click on a Mac.
Right. In Safari, for example, if you want to open a link in a new window, you don't have to control-click.
You can also command-click.
Running a camel into the WTC would not have caused much damage.
I think PETA would disagree.
scientific terms need an absolute definition
A rigorous definition may be necessary but not sufficient for the "usefulness" of a scientific term. In this case, it doesn't seem like the proposed definitions are useful.
If we determined (for example) that bodies above a certain mass had some other properties of interest, or that stellar systems with a certain number of bodies above a certain mass had some interesting properties, then it would be useful to define "planets" as being bodies of at least that mass. The class of such bodies would be a regular subject of analysis, and it's easier to say "planets" than to say "non-stellar gravitationally stellar-bound bodies of Werkeltroff-Schmeltergruber-Minayevich mass or greater."
See, in the ordinary course of developing a scientific lexicon, we discover scientifically useful concepts, and then define terms for those concepts in order to provide economy of expression.
In this case, however, it seems that we have a term that already exists in the popular lexicon, but no related scientific concept with a compelling need for the term.
So why bother? Why not just allow the term to continue its peaceful existence in the popular lexicon, without attaching an arbitrary definition to it? Are we trying to serve some purpose other than allowing slashdot geeks another way to point out where the popular press gets something wrong? If we can identify a purpose for a definition, I the definition will probably follow naturually from the identified purpose; if not, then the whole discussion is silly, at best.
How about TeleZapper?
It's not at all unusual for an appellate court to reverse a jury's verdict. However, the standards for doing so are very high; it's not sufficient that the appellate court strongly disagree with the verdict, but rather that no reasonable jury could reach the verdict based on the evidence before it.
In a sense, it is a procedural review, because a jury's finding that can not reasonably be based on the evidence generally means that the finding is on a question that should not have been submitted to the jury in the first place.