For instance, an electronic circuit is not a thing, it's an idea, just like an algorithm.
Care to explain?
Can you explain why it should be possible to patent an idea for a better monkey wrench, but not an idea for a better algorithm?
Patents don't exist in a state of nature; they were created because they bring a net benefit to society. For a variety of reasons, patents on algorithms impede progress and economic growth; they do not produce a net benefit to society, so they should not be granted.
Think of it the other way, say you are Red Hat, trademarked Fedora and OhSoEvil, and I redistribute your code as Pink Box, but I made some mistakes and/or intentionally screw up, add keyloggers and phone home. Do you like me distributing them as Fedora and OhSoEvil, with About Box saying "this is Fedora and OhSoEvil"? Don't you want to prevent this from happening?
Of course Red Hat wants to prevent that from happening. That doesn't answer the two questions, though. They were not rhetorical questions meant to imply that a certain view is correct, but legitimate questions that, I believe, cut to the heart of the matter.
From a user's perspective, it's inconvenient if every trademarked program in my Linux distribution not created by the distribution itself is renamed from its original. When I use a web browser, I want to know that it's Firefox, or Konqueror, or whatever. When I want to give Scribus a try, I don't want to have to figure out what it's called in my distribution's apt repository, I want to type "apt-cache search scribus" and to see if it's there. On the flip side, I'm sure that the vast majority of trademark holders don't want distributions to rename their programs. So, how is a balance to be struck? Does this need to be addressed in an open source project's license?
Yes the people are free to pick a different brand name, and it's the obvious choice since BitTorrent is trademarked.
That's not what the previous poster asked. He asked if people have to pick a different brand name. For example, let's say that somebody wants to repackage the GPL portions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux in order to make their own very similar distribution called Pink Box Linux. Pink Box Linux contains many programs with trademarked names. Is PBL required to rename every one of those trademarked programs? We all agree that it's allowed to, but does it have to?
Iraq war had nothing to do with Al-Qaeda nor WMDs.
It sure did. From the war in Afghanistan, which was started in response to Al Qaeda, the Bush administration learned the lesson that it could "take the gloves off" and get away with it. WMDs were the official pretext for doing so in Iraq.
That's not true. Those who claim to agree with me and who use terrorist tactics are still terrorists, and there are freedom fighters who don't agree with me.
The "one side's terrorists are the other side's freedom fighters" meme is tired and old. My side doesn't have terrorists (or political power, for that matter. Hm.)
Its not even a theory since it is not falsifiable...
Only scientific theories and hypotheses need to be falsifiable. Nonscientific theories do not need to be falsifiable. Don't fall into the trap of equating scientific theory with nonscientific theory; they mean very different things.
I'm not an expert, but I too see lots of people missing the point, so I'll add my two cents. There are lots of comments talking about implementation techniques, and those are very good things to do, but that's implementation, not design.
Design is about turning analysis models into implementation. Analysis models are the result of analyzing what your system needs to do; they describe what it does, not how it does it. Use some type of formal modeling language (there are several) to exhaustively describe the behavior of your system in a way that is provably consistent. Iteratively refine the formal model until you get enough detail to implement. Use tools (you might have to write some) to prove that your implementation matches the formal design model. When the design is good, use the techniques that others have mentioned to generate a rock solid implementation.
Writing ultra-stable software is hard. Most choose not to do it. IMO it's less fun than coming up with something in your head and banging out some Python to do it, but it is possible.
Since Bush was in 2000-2003, with 2003 - 2000 = 3, several is the wrong word to use:
"several(a): (used with count nouns) of an indefinite number more than 2 or 3 but not many; "several letters came in the mail"; "several people were injured in the accident" "
Thanks.
If you look carefully, you'll find that 3 is "more than 2 or 3". Please, if you're going to be pedantic, be pedantic about it.
It would have been more productive to point out that a 3% increase approximately keeps pace with inflation, and is therefore no big deal. Quibbling about irrelevant word usage doesn't help one's position at all (not that pro/anti-politician posts are relevant to begin with.)
That's absolutely correct, which causes me to wonder what it has to do with the post you respond to. Quoting information that does not address the relationship between rotational speed and data density does not say anything about the previous poster's claim. *How* were they incorrect to assert that it's harder to make the largest drives as fast as smaller drives? I don't deny that the reason might be different than the one stated, but simply asserting so doesn't do anything for us.
If it is, in fact, just as easy to make large drives as fast as small drives, then where are the 15k rpm 300+ GB drives?
It is possible to have faith in something that is falsifiable, but it's not really part of a scientific process.
I guess it depends what you mean by "part of a scientific process". You can have faith about something without affecting that process at all, and if you then discover that your faith was misplaced, it's common and reasonable to change your mind.
I think rather than my definition of faith being too narrow, your definition of science is too broad.
I don't think I defined science, but I think that my definition of science is more narrow than that of most. I believe in science by experimental observation, and I believe that just because you use scientific techniques to show that your hypothesis is consistent with the evidence doesn't make your activity science. For example, archaeology isn't science, because you can't experimentally verify how people lived long ago. Science is about conducting experiments and showing that the results are consistent with a hypothesis (or that they aren't, and then disavowing or modifying that hypothesis.)
Another poster put it well: science is about disproving things, not proving things. Science is great for falsifying hypotheses; what we call theories are the "least bad" hypotheses, the ones that have not yet been shown to be false.
So depending on how you define "theory of evolution", I either believe or don't believe that it is a scientific theory. The aspects of it that we can experimentally observe are definitely biological science, but the fossil record does not constitute experimental evidence, so paleontology is no more scientific than archaeology.
It has no explanatory power, so why would you teach it in a science class, unless to demonstrate a set of assertions which aren't science, but the ID advocates sure are not going to want that.
Nevertheless, that's still a good reason to teach *about* it in science class. It makes a great case study for what is science and what isn't.
I have had similar experiences to those of the earlier poster who talked about being modded down in discussions like this. The solution is to not take it personally; it's obvious if a moderation is ideologically biased, and that says more about the moderator than it does about your post. They'll get it in metamod, no doubt.
I disagree that faith is limited to discussing only those things that we can't perceive, and that science covers what we can.
I agree. It's certainly possible for somebody to have faith in something that is falsifiable. For example, it's reasonable for a scientist to have faith that her hypothesis is correct before proving it.
People who suggest that there is an inherent conflict between faith and science tend to use a limited definition of faith. Faith is simply the axioms of one's belief system; if something hasn't been proven and you believe it anyway, that's faith. Example: "Reason is desirable, and a reasonable thing is better than an unreasonable thing." I firmly believe it, but of course I can't prove it to you; nobody can.
In other words, your document doesn't show them saying anything like what is claimed by this story. How about you actually find one that does?
They can't. The claim in the story summary is obviously a miscommunication of what you quoted: that the RIAA thinks it's bad to make available for download content that they own the copyright to. This looked likely even before you so kindly posted the actual original source.
This game of "telephone" is really unfortunate, because the RIAA's claim in its original form *is* an interesting one to discuss. If you make available on your favorite P2P network a copyrighted work that you do not have the rights to, and nobody copies it, have you still committed a crime? I would say no, but I have no idea what a court would say.
In the worst possible case, I think governments will strongly intervene -- they will have to -- to guarantee (and subsidize) oil supplies to the most crucial consumers (food producers, electricity producers, emergency responders, armed forces) while the rest of us will have to use mass transportation and convert ASAP to a regimen of energy efficiency and renewable energy.
In the worst possible case, the closest thing to government will be the roving bands of marauders looking for you and for me because they're hungry. And then, after we've survived (after eating our own loved ones) long enough to suffer the worst effects of radiation poisoning, the red sulfurous bowels of the Earth ("Hell") will open up and Satan will come out, point at me and say "Hey guys, he's hiding over there!"
That would be the worst possible case: collapse of civilization, cannibalism of one's own family, radiation poisoning, being eaten by roving bands of marauders and then learning that one guessed wrong about that whole religion thing.
Granted, to an anarchist it might be worse if governments strongly intervene.
The sellers are using the same argument many software spammers use. "We're not selling you the software. You should already own the software. We're just selling you a backup copy... wink, wink."
The same reasoning could be used... "I wasn't selling him cocaine illegally. I was filling his prescription for cocaine. No, I didn't check to see if he had one. I made it clear that if he didn't have a prescription, he shouldn't buy the cocaine from me."
Think the cocaine argument would fly in court? Then why would the fair use argument these pirates are trying stand up?
How are those examples in any way related to this situation?
That being said, it is perfectly reasonable to expect to be able to buy a copy that you're legally allowed to make yourself; that you can't in the US is an example of bad law. Similarly, if someone convinces you that they are allowed to purchase something, you perform the legally required amount of due diligence (which in most cases is "zero"), and then it turns out that they fooled you, it's their fault, not yours, and if the law doesn't recognize that, the law is broken.
Wireless technology is one area where FCC regulations have trumped open source licenses.
To be clear, FCC regulations do not allow one to break copyright law. If one is extending GPL'd code in a way that FCC regulations do not allow one to distribute, the fact that one is not allowed to distribute that code legally prevents one from distributing binaries compiled from that code.
IANAL, but my impression is that it's mere speculation that open source software that controls radio transmission hardware is somehow prohibited by FCC regulations. There are open source projects that do give one the ability to control radio transmission hardware, and I haven't heard of any of them being shut down or restricted in any way by the FCC. If anybody has any hard evidence on this, I'm interested in seeing it.
By my logic, that Catholic is only biased against Catholicism if he refuses to talk about his beliefs during the zoning meeting because of their nature; he's not a bigot if he refuses to talk about them because they're irrelevant.
This isn't about "talking about his beliefs".
This is about wanting to start the meeting with a Catholic prayer and such.
Prayer is one example of talking about your beliefs, as is proselytizing, as are lots of other things. All are prohibited in the context of government by popular interpretations of "separation of 'church' and state". This should be obvious to you.
I notice that you fail to address the statement directly and instead quibble about one small phrase. If I did say "pray", would you still disagree?
This is the second time you've tried to restate your position.
If you think this is a restatement of my position, then you do not understand my position, which is hard to believe, because I've explained it clearly, though that would explain why you continue to fail to disprove it. Or are you coming to agree with me that it's not reasonable to divorce government from the belief systems of its constituents?
What about what *I* don't want to pay to support? huh?
Maybe we should compromise by having government pay for as little as possible. That way, you can pay for what you want to support and I can pay for what I want to support, and we'll both be happy.
Slashdot Mirror
Care to explain?
Patents don't exist in a state of nature; they were created because they bring a net benefit to society. For a variety of reasons, patents on algorithms impede progress and economic growth; they do not produce a net benefit to society, so they should not be granted.
Of course Red Hat wants to prevent that from happening. That doesn't answer the two questions, though. They were not rhetorical questions meant to imply that a certain view is correct, but legitimate questions that, I believe, cut to the heart of the matter.
From a user's perspective, it's inconvenient if every trademarked program in my Linux distribution not created by the distribution itself is renamed from its original. When I use a web browser, I want to know that it's Firefox, or Konqueror, or whatever. When I want to give Scribus a try, I don't want to have to figure out what it's called in my distribution's apt repository, I want to type "apt-cache search scribus" and to see if it's there. On the flip side, I'm sure that the vast majority of trademark holders don't want distributions to rename their programs. So, how is a balance to be struck? Does this need to be addressed in an open source project's license?
That's not what the previous poster asked. He asked if people have to pick a different brand name. For example, let's say that somebody wants to repackage the GPL portions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux in order to make their own very similar distribution called Pink Box Linux. Pink Box Linux contains many programs with trademarked names. Is PBL required to rename every one of those trademarked programs? We all agree that it's allowed to, but does it have to?
Second question: is that desirable?
Would that increase or decrease my cynicism?
Then you have missed out on a very drool-worthy piece of tech: the Westinghouse LVM-37W1, a 37" LCD with 1920x1080 resolution for under $2000.
It sure did. From the war in Afghanistan, which was started in response to Al Qaeda, the Bush administration learned the lesson that it could "take the gloves off" and get away with it. WMDs were the official pretext for doing so in Iraq.
The "one side's terrorists are the other side's freedom fighters" meme is tired and old. My side doesn't have terrorists (or political power, for that matter. Hm.)
Only scientific theories and hypotheses need to be falsifiable. Nonscientific theories do not need to be falsifiable. Don't fall into the trap of equating scientific theory with nonscientific theory; they mean very different things.
Design is about turning analysis models into implementation. Analysis models are the result of analyzing what your system needs to do; they describe what it does, not how it does it. Use some type of formal modeling language (there are several) to exhaustively describe the behavior of your system in a way that is provably consistent. Iteratively refine the formal model until you get enough detail to implement. Use tools (you might have to write some) to prove that your implementation matches the formal design model. When the design is good, use the techniques that others have mentioned to generate a rock solid implementation.
Writing ultra-stable software is hard. Most choose not to do it. IMO it's less fun than coming up with something in your head and banging out some Python to do it, but it is possible.
I couldn't have put it better myself. Well, maybe I could have, but now I don't have to.
If you look carefully, you'll find that 3 is "more than 2 or 3". Please, if you're going to be pedantic, be pedantic about it.
It would have been more productive to point out that a 3% increase approximately keeps pace with inflation, and is therefore no big deal. Quibbling about irrelevant word usage doesn't help one's position at all (not that pro/anti-politician posts are relevant to begin with.)
That's absolutely correct, which causes me to wonder what it has to do with the post you respond to. Quoting information that does not address the relationship between rotational speed and data density does not say anything about the previous poster's claim. *How* were they incorrect to assert that it's harder to make the largest drives as fast as smaller drives? I don't deny that the reason might be different than the one stated, but simply asserting so doesn't do anything for us.
If it is, in fact, just as easy to make large drives as fast as small drives, then where are the 15k rpm 300+ GB drives?
The word "zealot" has been diluted. A zealot nowadays is a talker, not a doer.
I guess it depends what you mean by "part of a scientific process". You can have faith about something without affecting that process at all, and if you then discover that your faith was misplaced, it's common and reasonable to change your mind.
I don't think I defined science, but I think that my definition of science is more narrow than that of most. I believe in science by experimental observation, and I believe that just because you use scientific techniques to show that your hypothesis is consistent with the evidence doesn't make your activity science. For example, archaeology isn't science, because you can't experimentally verify how people lived long ago. Science is about conducting experiments and showing that the results are consistent with a hypothesis (or that they aren't, and then disavowing or modifying that hypothesis.)
Another poster put it well: science is about disproving things, not proving things. Science is great for falsifying hypotheses; what we call theories are the "least bad" hypotheses, the ones that have not yet been shown to be false.
So depending on how you define "theory of evolution", I either believe or don't believe that it is a scientific theory. The aspects of it that we can experimentally observe are definitely biological science, but the fossil record does not constitute experimental evidence, so paleontology is no more scientific than archaeology.
The problem is people. Most people see nothing wrong with forcing others to follow their beliefs.
Nevertheless, that's still a good reason to teach *about* it in science class. It makes a great case study for what is science and what isn't.
I have had similar experiences to those of the earlier poster who talked about being modded down in discussions like this. The solution is to not take it personally; it's obvious if a moderation is ideologically biased, and that says more about the moderator than it does about your post. They'll get it in metamod, no doubt.
I agree. It's certainly possible for somebody to have faith in something that is falsifiable. For example, it's reasonable for a scientist to have faith that her hypothesis is correct before proving it.
People who suggest that there is an inherent conflict between faith and science tend to use a limited definition of faith. Faith is simply the axioms of one's belief system; if something hasn't been proven and you believe it anyway, that's faith. Example: "Reason is desirable, and a reasonable thing is better than an unreasonable thing." I firmly believe it, but of course I can't prove it to you; nobody can.
They can't. The claim in the story summary is obviously a miscommunication of what you quoted: that the RIAA thinks it's bad to make available for download content that they own the copyright to. This looked likely even before you so kindly posted the actual original source.
This game of "telephone" is really unfortunate, because the RIAA's claim in its original form *is* an interesting one to discuss. If you make available on your favorite P2P network a copyrighted work that you do not have the rights to, and nobody copies it, have you still committed a crime? I would say no, but I have no idea what a court would say.
Or if not never, then at least not this month... d'oh!
In the worst possible case, the closest thing to government will be the roving bands of marauders looking for you and for me because they're hungry. And then, after we've survived (after eating our own loved ones) long enough to suffer the worst effects of radiation poisoning, the red sulfurous bowels of the Earth ("Hell") will open up and Satan will come out, point at me and say "Hey guys, he's hiding over there!"
That would be the worst possible case: collapse of civilization, cannibalism of one's own family, radiation poisoning, being eaten by roving bands of marauders and then learning that one guessed wrong about that whole religion thing.
Granted, to an anarchist it might be worse if governments strongly intervene.
How are those examples in any way related to this situation?
That being said, it is perfectly reasonable to expect to be able to buy a copy that you're legally allowed to make yourself; that you can't in the US is an example of bad law. Similarly, if someone convinces you that they are allowed to purchase something, you perform the legally required amount of due diligence (which in most cases is "zero"), and then it turns out that they fooled you, it's their fault, not yours, and if the law doesn't recognize that, the law is broken.
To be clear, FCC regulations do not allow one to break copyright law. If one is extending GPL'd code in a way that FCC regulations do not allow one to distribute, the fact that one is not allowed to distribute that code legally prevents one from distributing binaries compiled from that code.
IANAL, but my impression is that it's mere speculation that open source software that controls radio transmission hardware is somehow prohibited by FCC regulations. There are open source projects that do give one the ability to control radio transmission hardware, and I haven't heard of any of them being shut down or restricted in any way by the FCC. If anybody has any hard evidence on this, I'm interested in seeing it.
How do you get "any corporation" from "some of the smaller commercial outfits"?
Prayer is one example of talking about your beliefs, as is proselytizing, as are lots of other things. All are prohibited in the context of government by popular interpretations of "separation of 'church' and state". This should be obvious to you.
I notice that you fail to address the statement directly and instead quibble about one small phrase. If I did say "pray", would you still disagree?
If you think this is a restatement of my position, then you do not understand my position, which is hard to believe, because I've explained it clearly, though that would explain why you continue to fail to disprove it. Or are you coming to agree with me that it's not reasonable to divorce government from the belief systems of its constituents?
Maybe we should compromise by having government pay for as little as possible. That way, you can pay for what you want to support and I can pay for what I want to support, and we'll both be happy.