I've been pondering this response for a few minutes now, and while I agree that information is revealed by measuring the spin of the particle (indeed, each particle has exactly one bit of entropy in such an experiment), I'm not sure I agree that it's correct to say the information was "transmitted" from New York to Moscow or vice versa. Moreover, there is still the problem that when you measure a spin, you don't know whether its partner's spin has already been measured (and thus your measurement was foreordained), or not (and thus your measurement collapses the quantum superposition state to an eigenstate). It seems funny to talk about information being "transmitted" when nobody involved can tell who is sending and who is receiving.
Consider this. Suppose you tried the same experiment with particles found in cosmic rays. Now, it's conceivable that some of these particles were produced in a decay that conserves angular momentum, and hence that some of these particles have partners in a shared quantum state somewhere across the galaxy. When we measure the spin of such particles, does it make sense to say that we are receiving messages from the other side of the galaxy? Such usages reduces the concept of "transmitting messages" to triviality.
Whether messages are "transmitted" or not, I strongly disagree with your statement that the effect is not "useful". In fact, the effect is immensely useful in that it allows us to rule out experimentally certain types of "hidden variable" theories of quantum mechanics. Surely an effect that tells us something fundamental about the way quantum mechanics works qualifies as "useful", don't you think?
You can use a crystal to create a twin of a photon which will always have the same properties (for example spin or polarisation) as the original photon no matter the distance between them (quantum theory predicts this effect and it has been proven that it exists. The photon teleportation uses it, for example). Now the idea is like this: You create these twins in Paris and send them via fiber to New York and Moskau. In Moskau, I use a filter to polarise my photon and in New York, the polarisation is measured. This doesn't work but why not ?
The experiment works as you describe, and the effect has even been confirmed in the laboratory, but suppose you are the observer in New York. Now, suppose you measure the spin of your particle; let's say you look at the z-component, for the sake of argument. Now, it is true that this does tell you the z component of the particle in Moscow, but ask yourself, what "information" has been transmitted, and to whom? You don't know whether your colleague in Moscow has measured her particle's spin or not, so you can't say whether you are sending or receiving a "message". What's more, you don't have any control over which value for the spin you measure, meaning that you can't even control which message you are sending, even supposing you know for certain that your colleague hasn't looked at her particle yet. So, even though their appear to be curious nonlocal effects, no actual information is being exchanged.
You can find more information about the EPR paradox and Bell's inequality in the physics FAQ, or by doing a search on the keywords "Bell's Inequality" and "EPR paradox".
There seems to be a strong contingent of posts along the lines of, "This is old news," "It's been going on since civilization began," or "You're just now figuring this out?" The implication is that since Katz's conclusions are obvious (to them, anyway, and in retrospect, at least), the situation doesn't even bear discussion. But then you look a little deeper at, for instance, this post I'm responding to. It comes right out and says, "The best way to resolve these issues is an educated public who gets involved with the political process." And how does the writer propose to bring this about? Surely not by shrugging his shoulders and saying, "Well, you know, this really was all discussed at length back in the 1600s." People are reluctant to give up their cherished illusions, even in the face of contrary evidence, and probably our (for, honesty demands that we include ourselves, the participants in this forum) most cherished illusion is that we truly understand the way our world and our society work. You have to show people again and again and yet again examples of why they are wrong before they will start to consider the possibility that they simply have it all wrong.
What's more, even though Jon Katz is likely preaching to the converted with this piece, there may be some value to that as well. Consider this anecdote: I once had the opportunity to see a well-known advocate of creation science (Duane Gish, I believe was his name) debate the dean of Arts and Sciences at the university I attended in those days over the question of Creation Science versus the standard theory of evolution. Despite having truth on his side, and despite being a very competent and knowledgable biologist, the dean got his clock cleaned in that debate. Why? Because Gish had a whole catalog of specious arguments and bogus examples of the "failings" of the standard theory to draw upon in his arguments. Without having the relevant refutations close at hand, the dean was lost. The application to the case at hand is simply this; if you find yourself trying to convince someone that censorship is ultimately harmful, it helps a lot to have heard recently the case argued intelligently so that you don't get tripped up by the opposition's smoke and mirrors.
That's not to say, however, that some of the article's historical errors regarding the history of the pornography taboo are not regrettable. A feature article like this really should be better researched. But let's bear in mind that whether pornography per se was or was not a Victorian invention really isn't important to the point the article is trying to make. Indeed, those claims could be deleted entirely; they scarcely contribute at all to Katz's thesis, which is that censorship is generally harmful to a society like ours that thrives upon the free exchange of ideas. That, at least, is some "old news" that could well stand to be repeated more often.
That is correct. Lunar eclipses can occur only at the full moon, and solar eclipses can occur only at the new moon. I would guess that "heppens to be the first full moon of the year" refers to the coincidence of the first full moon of the year being an eclipse. Because not all full moons are eclipses, this would be somewhat unusual, albeit not particularly remarkable.
So, then, if you found a rare and valuable collectors' item at a rummage sale for a pittance, do you feel you would be morally obligated to inform the owner of its true value? What if you bought it at the stated price and the owner later came asking for it back (offering a refund of the purchase price, of course) because he had found out its true value? What if neither you nor the seller knew about its true value until after the deal was done?
The generally agreed upon morality surrounding making a consensual deal between two parties of roughly equal power is that it is each party's responsibility to look out for its own interests; you don't owe it to the other guy to tell him he's making a bad deal. Now, when one party is more powerful than the other, the moral issue may be more complicated by the possibility of the strong party coercing the weak party into making a bad deal (and as I read the explanation, this was precisely the reason for the CA and OR laws prohibiting tying a loan to purchasing a service in the first place), but in this case Microsoft is clearly the strong party, so I don't think those issues apply here.
At the end of the day, Microsoft made one kind of deal (i.e., handing out $400 with no strings attatched in OR and CA), and it wanted to pretend it had made another (i.e., buying 3 years of MSN was required). A theory of morality in which the moral position of taking advantage of the deal they actually made is comparable to the moral position of murdering someone and getting away with it through a legal loophole is at best peculiar, and certainly not in line with the generally accepted theory.
If the point you are trying to make is that nothing is foolproof, I imagine the antivirus researchers would agree with you. I would be very surprised if they thought they could put together a system that would solve the virus problem once and for all. If they did, they probably wouldn't be using biological immune systems as a prototype, since biological immune systems are far from foolproof. After all, we still get sick from time to time. Sometimes we even die of disease; in fact, without outside intervention in the form of modern medicines and treatments we would die of disease a lot more often than we probably care to think about.
However, like our bodily immune systems, these systems could serve as a first line of defense. Their advantage lies not so much in that they are universal proof against infection (they aren't), but in that against "routine" infections they shut the virus down before it has the opportunity to do any real damage, far faster than would be possible if human intervention were required. Inevitably, some infections will slip through (just as with biological immune systems), and when that happens you need outside intervention; i.e., the computer equivalent of a trip to the doctor's office.
I confess, I'm a little puzzled by all the negative reactions this article is getting. I thought it was an excellent piece of journalism. Where it could have given us a few stock quotes reiterating the stuff in Hawking's books it gives us instead, a real insight into how Hawking thinks, instead of just what he thinks.
Most of the outrage seems to center around the "expressing his thoughts at the speed of an imbecille" comment. When I read this comment, I saw in it, not the writer's impatience with, but his empathy for Hawking's condition. The writer was trying to get us to imagine for a moment what it would be like to live that way and how it might change our outlook on life. We have to wonder, could we cope the way Hawking has? In a similar vein, the connection the writer draws between Hawking's condition and his prediction of genetic engineering in the future was insightful.
Of course, if you went in hoping for a slate of predictions about what might await us in the years to come, I can see how you would be disappointed, but, frankly, I am bored with futurists' predictions. They fall basically into two categories: wild and largely unfounded speculation, and timid, conservative predictions of incremental change. I find Hawking himself more interesting than his predictions were likely to be, and I was glad the writer used speculating about the future as a pretext to give us a glimpse into what makes him tick.
I can see where it was useful for church officials to have a sexton to relieve them of the onerous duties of bell ringing and grave digging, I doubt it did much to foster exploration.
A sextant, on the other hand, is useful for making astronomical observations of the sort used in navigation. If you ever try using a sextant, however, you will realize that it isn't much good without a nautical almanac or similar table of celestial positions. Back in the old days (indeed, prior to the invention of the sextant itself) one produced these using an astrolabe, which was a combination observing device and mechanical calculator. Apart from enabling one to produce accurate tables for navigation, it also allowed observations an calculations accurate enough to show that the planets couldn't possibly be in circular orbits about the earth, thus paving the way for the Copernican revolution and earning it its spot among my personal top 10 list of the best gadgets of all time.
I can see how granting patent privileges to inventors makes sense for inventions whose creation entails years of designing, building prototypes, blowing up prototypes, refining, rebuilding, testing, retesting, and going back to the drawing board many times before you finally get a workable invention. When the process involves a few weeks, or even a few months of coding I am a lot less sympathetic (and that is not to mention the more infamous software patents that seem to involve only a few minutes of coding). The investment that goes into such "inventions" simply isn't large enough to justify the patent privileges the "inventors" want to claim. Moreover, it isn't clear that what investment there is particularly needs to be "protected". Consider, unless you have released the source code to your software invention, your competitors will have to develop their own implementation from scratch. Unless their coders are substantially more talented than yours their investment is going to be at least as much as yours. Not only that, but they will be beginning their coding efforts while your invention is already in the market. It seems to me that the original inventor already has a huge advantage. Does he really need patent royalties on top of all that to ensure fair competition in the marketplace? Ask yourself, would Amazon have declined to develop "one-click" shopping if they didn't think they could patent it? I suspect they would have developed it just the same; the investment is small, and the return in the utility of the invention alone (that is, excluding any possibility of royalties) is more than worth it.
And, make no mistake, you should be concerned (perhaps even "worked up") about the privileges being extended to these patent holders. What these people are doing is restricting the kinds of programs that you (yes, you) can write. They are saying that if you use "their" idea, then you (yes, you) have "stolen" that idea, even if you never saw or heard of their implementation when you wrote yours. They are claiming ownership not only over their own programs, but over broad classes of programs not yet written. In short, software patent holders collectively are doing their level best to ensure that nobody can write software except on their terms. When you think about it, these are powerful privileges indeed that we (that's right, us; ultimately the authority to grant patent privileges comes from none other) are granting patent holders, and in exchange we should expect some significant benefits. The truth is, that by and large we aren't benefiting from extending patents to software; in fact, it likely hurts the industry more than it helps it. It certainly favors established companies over new ones, as well as proprietary software over free (both of the "speech" and "beer" variety) software.
So, if software patents are pernicious, then what is to be done? Writing to lawmakers, as you suggest is one possibility, but the legislative wheels turn slowly under the best of circumstances. Relying on the courts is no answer; they are too time-consuming and too expensive. You shouldn't have to go to court just to write software anyhow. Fortunately, we have another resource available. When we see a company behaving unethically we can and should refuse to do business with them. We can and should inform them (always politely, of course) of the reasons for our refusal to do business with them. This is the course that RMS is advocating, and everyone who cares about ending the abuses of the system would be well advised to follow it, in addition to any political action they might be planning.
Of course, a boycott might not work. It may be that Amazon is to big, and we are too few. That is life; there are no guarantees. Nevertheless, pursuing the boycott costs us little: a few dollars more on our holiday shopping bills, if even that. It is a pittance, when you consider what is at stake. We cannot afford to let this pass unchallenged. We cannot afford not to stand up for ourselves.
The government has (reportedly) been increasing the supply of currency, but that is not the same thing as increasing the supply of money. The difference is subtle, but important. You can print all the currency you want, but when people withdraw that currency from the bank their bank balances decrease accordingly, so no actual change in the money supply is realized. (Note that currency lying in a vault is not "money" in any meaningful sense, since it cannot be spent without first withdrawing it, in which case see above.) In order to increase the money supply, you need to do more than just print and/or mint more currency; you actually need to loosen monetary policy, for instance by having the central banks lower interest rates or buy securities.
None of this is to say that there might not be inflation between now and February, and it might conceivably be related to Y2K (although a suitable mechanism eludes me), but if that happens, the cause will not have been merely issuing extra currency.
IIRC, the law was on her side in that case. Apparently in the relevant jurisdiction it was illegal to make a loan where the loan is intended to be used to gamble (even if the gambling is to be done in a jurisdiction where it is legal). It's kind of a weird law (although I can think of some good reasons for it), but was clearly spelled out beforehand. If this is a similar case, then I imagine it will go the same way. (If the specifics differ, then it's anyone's guess how it will turn out.)
The program you're looking for is Dissociated Press. Like most things, it's built into emacs: M-x dissociated-press.
Actually, I found this article vaguely disquieting. Can our "captains of industry" really be so dumb as to be taken in by gibberish like the "semiotics of the letter 'i'"? Give me a break. It all has shades of "The Emperor's New Name". I can just see a conference room full of people thinking, "This sounds like a bunch of iCrap, but everyone else seems to like it, and these guys are professionals."
Still, my favorite part of the article was towards the end, where it mentions the guy in one office who decided to start calling himself Mescaline, or some similar-sounding nonsense. Maybe it isn't such a mystery where they get these names after all: "Omigod, Jamcrackers! Get 'em off of me! Get 'em off of meeeeeee!"
You make an good point. It is always possible to invent new physics to explain any new phenomenon you happen to encounter. However, this is equivalent to admitting that we know nothing about how the universe works, and that we never can know anything about how it works, since you never know what new phenomenon may crop up next; thus, your theories are incapable of making any predictions. It seems clear that whenever possible we should explain new phenomena in terms of old physics.
In the case of the dark matter problem, however, it seems likely that new physics will be required no matter what we do. The reason why is that if there is a whole passel of dark matter lurking in the haloes of galaxies, it can't be made up of baryons (i.e. protons and neutrons). In order for primordial nucleosynthesis to produce the present-day abundances of light elements, there can be no more than about 10% of critical density in baryons; whereas, the amount of dark matter required to explain the observations is around 20%. In fact, all of the types of matter that we know to exist are unsuitable, for one reason or another, as candidates for dark matter. Thus, if the dark matter exists it has to be some sort of "exotic" matter, which is a little troubling.
So, the question is, which sort of new physics that can explain is the least odious. Besides the dark matter, the contenders are modified Newtonian dynamics ("MOND", in essence a small correction to Newtonian gravitation at low densities), and (I guess) this time-reversed theory. Most physicists find exotic matter to be the lesser of the evils. I don't think this paper will change that. The new theory is sufficiently implausible that it will have to make some pretty strong predictions and have them borne out before anyone will (or, IMO, should) take it seriously. Interestingly enough, MOND has gained a small following because it has made some interesting predictions that have been borne out by observations. Unfortunately I can't recall off the top of my head exactly what they were (a speaker mentioned them as a throwaway comment in a talk here a few weeks ago), but they were the sort of predictions on which the standard model is mute; that is, it neither predicts nor forbids the phenomena that were observed. Unfortunately, nobody has been able to come up with a MOND prediction that would be forbidden by the standard model, so as yet the theory is purely speculative.
If I had to weigh in on the matter I'd say that dark matter is still the best game in town. There are several high-energy physics theories extant that predict an assortment of exotic matter, so there is at least some precedent for dark matter, which is more than the alternatives can say. The smart money is usually on the new theories that bear some resemblance to--or, better still, are incremental refinements of--the old theories; although, that's not to say we shouldn't reserve a small wager for the oddball theories; just don't stake the rent money on it.
A "Big Crunch" seems unlikely given our current knowledge of astrophysics. There are several factors that would seem to argue against an eventual recollapse of the universe. The first is that if we total up all of the matter that we "see", including dark matter detected only through its gravitational effect, we only find about 20% of the critical mass density needed to close the universe. It would be a bit surprising to find that there was another 80% of critical density lurking, undetected even through its gravitational effects.
Another factor that argues against a recollapse is that the time scale test heavily favors open (i.e. expanding forever) models. Basically, for a fixed Hubble constant, closed models are younger than open models. Since the age of the universe derived from the expansion is just barely consistent with globular cluster ages for open models, closed models are real losers unless there is some serious revision in the ages of globular clusters.
Finally, recent measurements suggest that there is a nonzero "cosmological constant", an extra term in the General Relativity field equations that acts as a repulsive counter to gravity. What's more, the measurements seem to indicate that the cosmological constant is not only nonzero, but in fact dominant at the current epoch. If true, and if the cosmological "constant" really is constant (it is typically assumed to be constant with time, but that is not a theoretical necessity) then this would preclude a recollapse, irrespective of the mass density in the universe. (Recollapsing models with positive cosmological constant are possible, but only if the big crunch occurs before the cosmological constant term becomes dominant.)
I am very much shooting from the hip here, but if I had to guess I would say that it's because spectral lines from reflected light are of necessity absorption lines. Now, in order to see absorption lines in a spectrum you have to have some light in that part of the spectrum to begin with, but H and He absorption lines should be saturated (or nearly so) in the star's photosphere; hence, there would be no possibility of seeing absorption lines in those elements from the planet, no matter how abundant those elements happen to be in the planet.
Now, Si and Mg should be pretty rare in the star, so that could account for being able to see those elements, but I would have thought O (along with C and N) would be at least somewhat abundant in the star. In this case I would guess the possibilities are that the O lines don't saturate, or that the stellar O is mostly OII or OIII (singly and doubly ionized, respectively), so that the stellar lines don't coincide with the planetary lines.
As a side note, I think the conventional wisdom of "oxygen as an indicator of life" wouldn't apply here because this planet is likely hot enough that the gas is mostly atomic rather than molecular. Remember that the reason why elemental oxygen is supposed to be so uncommon in planetary atmospheres is that it is so reactive. Thus, the argument goes, if it is there some sort of process (like life) must be replacing it. On the other hand, if the environment is hot enough to dissociate most molecules anyhow, then oxygen's reactivity is less important, so it's not surprising to see it fairly abundant.
If OpenSSH removes the patent encumbered algorithms that are used in vanilla SSH, does that mean that the two cannot interoperate? Or has vanilla SSH included unencumbered algorithms all along, so that the two versions can just use those algorithms to communicate?
I use ssh as my primary way of logging in to my work machines from home, and I'd like to install the free version of ssh, but the machines at work are not under my control. Am I going to run into compatibility problems if I install OpenSSH here but can't convince the powers that be to change over?
-r
Re:God this section of Slashdot gets old quick...
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I can't resist one last shot.
Ok, I'll take one for the road too.
Property rights are founded on the basis that you have a right to use and dispose of your property as you see fit. Nearly everyone concedes this as a right derived from natural law (i.e. a "God-given" right). You are claiming the right to maintain the value of your property by maintaining its scarcity, which is something else entirely. I think you would find that this right is much less universally accepted. To draw an analogy similar to your analogies to forgery and murder, suppose I invented a device to transmute dirt into gold. Do you really claim as "God given" the right to prevent me from using my device in order to prevent me from reducing the scarcity of gold, thereby rendering your stockpile of the stuff worthless? I doubt you would get much sympathy from anyone who valued gold more for its practical uses than for its scarcity. The conclusion is that intellectual property laws derive their moral force solely from the net good that they produce for society. If changes in technology and/or society ever result in intellectual property becoming a net social ill, then those laws can and must be scrapped. Note, however, that I do not advocate scrapping intellectual property laws. I do feel the terms could be made shorter, but honestly I would be happy enough if restrictions on the usage of a piece of IP that one has legally purchased (e.g.DIVX and "nontransferrable licenses") were forbidden, and if there were remedies for an individual or company dragged into court on a bogus claim.
As you point out, this argument starts to sound silly if you replace "copyright violation" with "murder", but that is no flaw in the argument; rather, it is because the social consequences for allowing murder are far more dire than those of removing intellectual property rights.
But I will remind you once more, I do not advocate doing away with copyright entirely; I simply don't think you should be allowed to suppress a product by suing the manufacturer because his product might be used to copy your material, nor do I think you should be allowed to coerce, under threat of lawsuit, other people or institutions (e.g. universities and ISPs) into taking responsibility for tracking down everyone who might be using illegally some piece technology to copy copyrighted material.
The key here is that even if some copyright violators get away with it, most people will buy copyrighted material legally, whether out of honesty, or out of a fear of being one of the few who get caught and made into an example. Companies that trade in intellectual property will still make a ton of money. What they won't be able to do is impose draconian license agreements and suppress new technologies so that they can make many tons of money.
Finally, it's a bit late in the discussion to point this out (but maybe somebody is still reading), but I don't think this is really about using MP3s for piracy. Think about it; the recording industry makes big money off of musicians, and what do they actually do for that money? Answer, they provide the services of marketing and distribution. But with digital music coming on the scene musicians don't need to pay premium rates for distribution (and they haven't really needed to pay a premium for marketing for a while). Who would pay $20 for a CD, when he could pay half that for the equivalent MP3 and have the additional warm fuzzy feeling of knowing that 100% of that money went to the artist (instead of the 5% or less that is more typical now)? In other words, the recording companies are looking at a real possibility of being made obsolete, even if copyright law remains the same. On this score I have no sympathy for them whatsoever; their behavior is comparable to gaslight manufacturers suing light bulb manufacturers for destroying the gaslight business. It will be interesting, however, to see if publishing companies react the same way when "e-book" devices start coming out in a form that is actually as comfortable to read as a real book. Stay tuned to find out.
-r
Re:God this section of Slashdot gets old quick...
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You seem to have made your decision: anyone who thinks that intellectual property laws are too broad and last too long is obviously just out to steal food from the mouths of poor artists' (and corporate executives') children. I won't make any further attempt to convince you otherwise. For anyone else who might still be reading, the argument for curtailing intellectual property rights comes down to these two points:
First, intellectual "property" is not the same as physical property. Copying someone's intellectual property does not deprive them of the use of that property the way stealing physical property would. Any argument based on that supposed analogy is immediately suspect.
Second, as copying becomes easier with the advance of technology, it becomes harder and harder to enforce copyrights without trampling on noninfringing behaviors. Business would argue that the more fundamental right is their right to protect their intellectual property; however, we must not allow that attitude to prevail. The more fundamental right is for us to be able to engage in otherwise legal activities without being molested because our tools "might be used to make illegal copies". If those same tools are outlawed in the name of enforcing intellectual property laws, the harm to society will far outweigh any good that intellectual property laws have ever produced.
I believe that we should offer intellectual property rights to encourage publication, but I disagree that those rights need to be as strong as they are today, and I certainly disagree that they need to get stronger (the latter point being the argument advanced by the recording and film industries, in particular.) I believe that the most charitable motives we can attribute to corporations that advocate expanded intellectual property rights is greed. I see no reason to encourage it, nor to knuckle under to it.
-r
Re:God this section of Slashdot gets old quick...
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Nope, they never have a case or a legitmiate point
Enlighten us. What is their "case or legitimate point" for demanding that all MP3s be removed from campus networks without any proof that any of them infringe any copyrights? What is their case for demanding that products with legitimate, legal uses be pulled from the market or crippled because they "might" be used to illegally copy copyrighted material? What is their case for using the civil justice system as a club to get restrictions enforced that they could never get past a duly elected legislature (even one as heavily influenced by campaign contributions as ours is)? What is thier case for demanding that they be allowed to keep their copyrights for over 4 times the length of time originally envisioned by the writers of the Constitution? What is their case for continuing to own a copyright decades after the person who did the actual creative work is dead; for that matter, what is their case for being entitled to nearly a century of profits for work done by someone else? (Reality check: how many musicians sit on the board of recording companies? How many authors sit on the board of publishing companies?)
In other words, your objection would be more credible if you actually addressed the (IMO quite serious) issues the article raised, instead of just slinging names.
Corporations exist to maximize their bottom line profits. For the most part they will use every legal means at their disposal to achieve that goal. That means that we have to make sure the law really does do what we want it to, and only what we want it to. If any loophole exists, you can be sure businesses will exploit it. Don't get me wrong. I am not opposed to people making an honest profit. I am not even opposed to people getting filthy rich by making honest profit by the bushell (although I do think that as a society we place far too much emphasis on this dubious goal). However, if a law has negative consequences that outweigh its benefits, then that law can and should be changed. That some corporation depends on that law to make staggering amounts of money concerns me not in the least. I am not out to put anyone out of business, but I do not think they have a God-given right to make their executives and stockholders rich at everyone else's expense.
In this case, I think it is clear that there are some fairly negative consequences to the copyright laws as they stand; viz., they produce a chilling effect on legitimate uses of technology, and due to the long copyright terms, the copyrighted material is effectively never given back to the public domain, as was originally intended. We should be thinking about how we can fix copyrights so that these problems are mitigated or eliminated, while retaining the incentive to publish original music, manuscripts, programs and so on. We also need to end the abuse of the civil justice system and put the burden of proof back on the accuser. (Yes, I know, technically it is on the accuser, but having rights does you no good if you can't even afford to set foot in a courtroom to defend them.) If these reforms mean that record executives will wind up making only 5 times instead of 100 times the median household income, (and don't let them fool you into thinking that they will be sent to the poorhouse by reforms; it just won't happen--people will always be willing to pay a fair price for quality entertainment) well, those are the breaks. Nobody promised you a rose garden.
A classroom is a ``public'' place in the sense that it is ``exposed to general view'' (definition 1a, Merriam-Webster). Naturally, a university has the right to insist that only registered students enrolled in a class attend the class' lectures, but all of the notetaking services I'm familliar with use students that are already enrolled in the classes they will be taking notes for. If there are any services that use nonstudents, then they would be on somewhat shakier ground.
And you are correct; you cannot tape a ball game and show it publicly (whether or not you make money from doing so). However, you can report on what happened in the ball game, and the report can be fairly detailed, for instance, it could include inning-by-inning box scores, commentary on the players' performance, and so on. When comparing lectures to ball games, I would argue that notes from a service are a lot closer to box scores than to rebroadcast.
In my experience, the real difficulty with passwords is with accounts that you use very infrequently. Sure, we can all use various tricks to remember a dozen or so reasonably secure passwords, and we can rotate them as necessary. But, when you find yourself needing to log into an account that you haven't used in a long time, can you remember reliably whether it was a year ago May or a year ago July that you last accessed it, and can you remember what password you were using at the time? Ok, so you shouldn't keep around accounts that you seldom use, but it's amazing the way accounts tend to linger long after you've forgotten about them.
Teachers who work hard on coming up with good lectures should be rewarded with the right to determine who can hear them.
Why should teachers be rewarded this way? This makes zero sense to me. Good teachers should be (and frequently are) rewarded with promotions, raises, and recognition from their departments and colleges. Good teachers who are also good writers should be (and frequently are) rewarded with deals with publishing houses to publish books that they write. Why do good teachers need to exercise power over what others can do with ideas learned in that teacher's classroom? For that matter, what teacher worth the title would want to restrict the spread of his knowledge? Isn't that what teaching is all about, disseminating learning?
There isn't really even an argument from the standpoint of job security. Note taking services are not going to put college professors out of business, ever. If nothing else, the priviledge of asking questions and interacting with the professor directly can never be replaced by photocopied notes. My question is, who is being harmed by these notetaking services? The answer is nobody, as far as I can see (unless you count the students foolish enough to think they can substitute buying notes for attending class, but that's a different matter).
How does this differ from, say, box scores being a representation of a baseball game? Isn't there a long-standing tradition that it is perfectly legitimate to summarize and report on events that occurred in a public place?
When I give a lecture, what I see happening is that I stand up in a public place, and I disseminate some knowledge, which the students try to absorb. Probably they will write notes to help them in this process.
Now, what happens if somebody (for the sake of argument, let's say someone who isn't in the class, but who is nevertheless interested) asks one of those students, ``What did Dr. Link go over in class today?'' Well, they will probably report a summary of what happened. They might refer to their notes as they do so. I hope you would not claim that this constitutes an infringement of copyright. The right to talk about what you did in class today seems pretty fundamental to me.
But, if we're willing to grant students the right to talk about what they heard in class, then why not the right to write about what they heard in class? (Perhaps they only communicate with their friends by post or email, for instance.) And if we're willing to concede that I'm not being harmed by any of this, then why should I care if they do it for a fee, rather than gratis? Are they somehow harming me by collecting money, when they weren't harming me by doing it for free? It seems wrong for me to invoke the power of the state to punish these students when they are not harming me.
I worry when I see trends like this. I hope I never live to see the day when professors can (or even want to, for that matter) require NDAs for students taking their classes. I like to think that as scholars we are above that sort of thing.
Until I graduated last May, I was an "Associate Instructor" at Indiana University. I taught Intro to Astronomy for five out of the six summers I was resident at IU. If the major note taking service on campus ever offered notes for my class, I never found out about it. Since I taught mostly summer courses I would be surprised if they ever bothered; my class was generally too small to be profitable. I did, however, see the notes produced by the service for another instructor's Intro to Astronomy class. I don't see how they could be considered a copyright violation because they bore no resemblance whatsoever to the instructor's original notes. In fact, they were very much better organized than the instructor's notes. When a student writes notes based on a classroom lecture, the result is necessarily the student's interpretation of what s/he learned from the lecture, and not a direct copy. To see this effect in action, try comparing notes writtten by two different students in the same lecture. Even for very well organized lectures the two students' notes will almost always differ noticably; usually they will differ greatly.
As a more concrete example, consider one class I had in graduate school. The professor had wonderful notes, meticulously laid out with section and equation numbers. He put everything on the board and left plenty of time for the students to copy everything. One day I missed class, so I copied the notes from a classmate. I was stunned to realize that the notes I got from him were nearly incomprehensible. Not that he didn't take faithful notes, mind you, but the notes were not filtered through my own learning process. Looking back over the notes I had taken in previous lectures I found that I did not copy down verbatim the teacher's words, nor even what the teacher put on the board. I underlined or made marginal notes whenever something struck me as particularly important or confusing; I left out things that seemed trivial or obvious, and so on. Paid note takers do the same thing; they have to because the service generally imposes a standard format for all of its notes.
Naturally, the situation is different for handouts. It would be inappropriate to include duplicates of the instructor's handouts in notes that are offered for sale because the handouts would necessarily be copies of the instructor's notes, without any additional interpretation. I still don't think I would object if it were my notes; since I give the same handouts out freely to all the students I don't particularly mind if they pay to get them from another source. However, I can see how such a policy might lend itself to abuse, so I can't fault an instructor who chooses a more restrictive policy. In any case, I see no problem with noting that handouts were given, and perhaps summarizing the contents.
I also think it is reasonable for a university to object to paid note takers sitting in on the classes without being enrolled. Once again, I personally always used an open-door policy in my classes, as did most instructors I knew; my feeling was that anyone who wanted to learn more about astronomy was welcome in my classroom. However, I think there is a legitimate argument that if a company wants to make money off of an instructor's lectures then at least their note taker ought to be paying for a seat in the class, just like the rest of the students. (NB: so far as I know the note taking service that operated on the IU campus used only students enrolled in the classes they were taking notes for.)
Finally, on a more philosophical note (that's a code phrase for ``rant coming up''), I am appalled by universities' recent trend toward viewing the university as a ``business'', and education as a ``product''. The university is supposed to be a repository of knowledge held in common for the good of everyone and a place where new knowledge is created, again, for the good of everyone. Indeed, I believe that ideal is why we use tax money to fund public universities, and why private universities get special tax status. To see universities as institutions throw that ideal out the window in the quest for the almighty buck is bad enough. To see people who call themselves scholars and educators follow suit is positively sickening. If you want to get rich so badly, by all means, head out into the business world and do your best. I wish you all the luck in the world. But let's save the universities for the mission of storing, disseminating, and extending human knowledge. It's what they were meant for, and it's what they are good at.
Indeed. Gravitational effects tend to be miniscule, so any noise in the system tends to kill you. Only by filtering out virtually everything can you hope to see the signal from gravitational physics. To give an example from LIGO, the displacements of the test masses in LIGO are roughly 10^-16 cm, or about 10^-8 of the diameter of a hydrogen atom. An interesting bit of trivia Kip Thorne mentioned in one talk he gave was that the test masses behave classically in LIGO I, but by the time LIGO II comes along quantum mechanical effects will start to become measurable. That means that if LIGO II comes to pass, it will be the first time that the quantum mechanical behavior of a macroscopic object has been observed directly. Amazing stuff indeed.
Slashdot Mirror
Consider this. Suppose you tried the same experiment with particles found in cosmic rays. Now, it's conceivable that some of these particles were produced in a decay that conserves angular momentum, and hence that some of these particles have partners in a shared quantum state somewhere across the galaxy. When we measure the spin of such particles, does it make sense to say that we are receiving messages from the other side of the galaxy? Such usages reduces the concept of "transmitting messages" to triviality.
Whether messages are "transmitted" or not, I strongly disagree with your statement that the effect is not "useful". In fact, the effect is immensely useful in that it allows us to rule out experimentally certain types of "hidden variable" theories of quantum mechanics. Surely an effect that tells us something fundamental about the way quantum mechanics works qualifies as "useful", don't you think?
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The experiment works as you describe, and the effect has even been confirmed in the laboratory, but suppose you are the observer in New York. Now, suppose you measure the spin of your particle; let's say you look at the z-component, for the sake of argument. Now, it is true that this does tell you the z component of the particle in Moscow, but ask yourself, what "information" has been transmitted, and to whom? You don't know whether your colleague in Moscow has measured her particle's spin or not, so you can't say whether you are sending or receiving a "message". What's more, you don't have any control over which value for the spin you measure, meaning that you can't even control which message you are sending, even supposing you know for certain that your colleague hasn't looked at her particle yet. So, even though their appear to be curious nonlocal effects, no actual information is being exchanged.
You can find more information about the EPR paradox and Bell's inequality in the physics FAQ, or by doing a search on the keywords "Bell's Inequality" and "EPR paradox".
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What's more, even though Jon Katz is likely preaching to the converted with this piece, there may be some value to that as well. Consider this anecdote: I once had the opportunity to see a well-known advocate of creation science (Duane Gish, I believe was his name) debate the dean of Arts and Sciences at the university I attended in those days over the question of Creation Science versus the standard theory of evolution. Despite having truth on his side, and despite being a very competent and knowledgable biologist, the dean got his clock cleaned in that debate. Why? Because Gish had a whole catalog of specious arguments and bogus examples of the "failings" of the standard theory to draw upon in his arguments. Without having the relevant refutations close at hand, the dean was lost. The application to the case at hand is simply this; if you find yourself trying to convince someone that censorship is ultimately harmful, it helps a lot to have heard recently the case argued intelligently so that you don't get tripped up by the opposition's smoke and mirrors.
That's not to say, however, that some of the article's historical errors regarding the history of the pornography taboo are not regrettable. A feature article like this really should be better researched. But let's bear in mind that whether pornography per se was or was not a Victorian invention really isn't important to the point the article is trying to make. Indeed, those claims could be deleted entirely; they scarcely contribute at all to Katz's thesis, which is that censorship is generally harmful to a society like ours that thrives upon the free exchange of ideas. That, at least, is some "old news" that could well stand to be repeated more often.
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The generally agreed upon morality surrounding making a consensual deal between two parties of roughly equal power is that it is each party's responsibility to look out for its own interests; you don't owe it to the other guy to tell him he's making a bad deal. Now, when one party is more powerful than the other, the moral issue may be more complicated by the possibility of the strong party coercing the weak party into making a bad deal (and as I read the explanation, this was precisely the reason for the CA and OR laws prohibiting tying a loan to purchasing a service in the first place), but in this case Microsoft is clearly the strong party, so I don't think those issues apply here.
At the end of the day, Microsoft made one kind of deal (i.e., handing out $400 with no strings attatched in OR and CA), and it wanted to pretend it had made another (i.e., buying 3 years of MSN was required). A theory of morality in which the moral position of taking advantage of the deal they actually made is comparable to the moral position of murdering someone and getting away with it through a legal loophole is at best peculiar, and certainly not in line with the generally accepted theory.
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However, like our bodily immune systems, these systems could serve as a first line of defense. Their advantage lies not so much in that they are universal proof against infection (they aren't), but in that against "routine" infections they shut the virus down before it has the opportunity to do any real damage, far faster than would be possible if human intervention were required. Inevitably, some infections will slip through (just as with biological immune systems), and when that happens you need outside intervention; i.e., the computer equivalent of a trip to the doctor's office.
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Most of the outrage seems to center around the "expressing his thoughts at the speed of an imbecille" comment. When I read this comment, I saw in it, not the writer's impatience with, but his empathy for Hawking's condition. The writer was trying to get us to imagine for a moment what it would be like to live that way and how it might change our outlook on life. We have to wonder, could we cope the way Hawking has? In a similar vein, the connection the writer draws between Hawking's condition and his prediction of genetic engineering in the future was insightful.
Of course, if you went in hoping for a slate of predictions about what might await us in the years to come, I can see how you would be disappointed, but, frankly, I am bored with futurists' predictions. They fall basically into two categories: wild and largely unfounded speculation, and timid, conservative predictions of incremental change. I find Hawking himself more interesting than his predictions were likely to be, and I was glad the writer used speculating about the future as a pretext to give us a glimpse into what makes him tick.
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A sextant, on the other hand, is useful for making astronomical observations of the sort used in navigation. If you ever try using a sextant, however, you will realize that it isn't much good without a nautical almanac or similar table of celestial positions. Back in the old days (indeed, prior to the invention of the sextant itself) one produced these using an astrolabe, which was a combination observing device and mechanical calculator. Apart from enabling one to produce accurate tables for navigation, it also allowed observations an calculations accurate enough to show that the planets couldn't possibly be in circular orbits about the earth, thus paving the way for the Copernican revolution and earning it its spot among my personal top 10 list of the best gadgets of all time.
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And, make no mistake, you should be concerned (perhaps even "worked up") about the privileges being extended to these patent holders. What these people are doing is restricting the kinds of programs that you (yes, you) can write. They are saying that if you use "their" idea, then you (yes, you) have "stolen" that idea, even if you never saw or heard of their implementation when you wrote yours. They are claiming ownership not only over their own programs, but over broad classes of programs not yet written. In short, software patent holders collectively are doing their level best to ensure that nobody can write software except on their terms. When you think about it, these are powerful privileges indeed that we (that's right, us; ultimately the authority to grant patent privileges comes from none other) are granting patent holders, and in exchange we should expect some significant benefits. The truth is, that by and large we aren't benefiting from extending patents to software; in fact, it likely hurts the industry more than it helps it. It certainly favors established companies over new ones, as well as proprietary software over free (both of the "speech" and "beer" variety) software.
So, if software patents are pernicious, then what is to be done? Writing to lawmakers, as you suggest is one possibility, but the legislative wheels turn slowly under the best of circumstances. Relying on the courts is no answer; they are too time-consuming and too expensive. You shouldn't have to go to court just to write software anyhow. Fortunately, we have another resource available. When we see a company behaving unethically we can and should refuse to do business with them. We can and should inform them (always politely, of course) of the reasons for our refusal to do business with them. This is the course that RMS is advocating, and everyone who cares about ending the abuses of the system would be well advised to follow it, in addition to any political action they might be planning.
Of course, a boycott might not work. It may be that Amazon is to big, and we are too few. That is life; there are no guarantees. Nevertheless, pursuing the boycott costs us little: a few dollars more on our holiday shopping bills, if even that. It is a pittance, when you consider what is at stake. We cannot afford to let this pass unchallenged. We cannot afford not to stand up for ourselves.
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None of this is to say that there might not be inflation between now and February, and it might conceivably be related to Y2K (although a suitable mechanism eludes me), but if that happens, the cause will not have been merely issuing extra currency.
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Actually, I found this article vaguely disquieting. Can our "captains of industry" really be so dumb as to be taken in by gibberish like the "semiotics of the letter 'i'"? Give me a break. It all has shades of "The Emperor's New Name". I can just see a conference room full of people thinking, "This sounds like a bunch of iCrap, but everyone else seems to like it, and these guys are professionals."
Still, my favorite part of the article was towards the end, where it mentions the guy in one office who decided to start calling himself Mescaline, or some similar-sounding nonsense. Maybe it isn't such a mystery where they get these names after all: "Omigod, Jamcrackers! Get 'em off of me! Get 'em off of meeeeeee!"
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In the case of the dark matter problem, however, it seems likely that new physics will be required no matter what we do. The reason why is that if there is a whole passel of dark matter lurking in the haloes of galaxies, it can't be made up of baryons (i.e. protons and neutrons). In order for primordial nucleosynthesis to produce the present-day abundances of light elements, there can be no more than about 10% of critical density in baryons; whereas, the amount of dark matter required to explain the observations is around 20%. In fact, all of the types of matter that we know to exist are unsuitable, for one reason or another, as candidates for dark matter. Thus, if the dark matter exists it has to be some sort of "exotic" matter, which is a little troubling.
So, the question is, which sort of new physics that can explain is the least odious. Besides the dark matter, the contenders are modified Newtonian dynamics ("MOND", in essence a small correction to Newtonian gravitation at low densities), and (I guess) this time-reversed theory. Most physicists find exotic matter to be the lesser of the evils. I don't think this paper will change that. The new theory is sufficiently implausible that it will have to make some pretty strong predictions and have them borne out before anyone will (or, IMO, should) take it seriously. Interestingly enough, MOND has gained a small following because it has made some interesting predictions that have been borne out by observations. Unfortunately I can't recall off the top of my head exactly what they were (a speaker mentioned them as a throwaway comment in a talk here a few weeks ago), but they were the sort of predictions on which the standard model is mute; that is, it neither predicts nor forbids the phenomena that were observed. Unfortunately, nobody has been able to come up with a MOND prediction that would be forbidden by the standard model, so as yet the theory is purely speculative.
If I had to weigh in on the matter I'd say that dark matter is still the best game in town. There are several high-energy physics theories extant that predict an assortment of exotic matter, so there is at least some precedent for dark matter, which is more than the alternatives can say. The smart money is usually on the new theories that bear some resemblance to--or, better still, are incremental refinements of--the old theories; although, that's not to say we shouldn't reserve a small wager for the oddball theories; just don't stake the rent money on it.
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Another factor that argues against a recollapse is that the time scale test heavily favors open (i.e. expanding forever) models. Basically, for a fixed Hubble constant, closed models are younger than open models. Since the age of the universe derived from the expansion is just barely consistent with globular cluster ages for open models, closed models are real losers unless there is some serious revision in the ages of globular clusters.
Finally, recent measurements suggest that there is a nonzero "cosmological constant", an extra term in the General Relativity field equations that acts as a repulsive counter to gravity. What's more, the measurements seem to indicate that the cosmological constant is not only nonzero, but in fact dominant at the current epoch. If true, and if the cosmological "constant" really is constant (it is typically assumed to be constant with time, but that is not a theoretical necessity) then this would preclude a recollapse, irrespective of the mass density in the universe. (Recollapsing models with positive cosmological constant are possible, but only if the big crunch occurs before the cosmological constant term becomes dominant.)
Now, Si and Mg should be pretty rare in the star, so that could account for being able to see those elements, but I would have thought O (along with C and N) would be at least somewhat abundant in the star. In this case I would guess the possibilities are that the O lines don't saturate, or that the stellar O is mostly OII or OIII (singly and doubly ionized, respectively), so that the stellar lines don't coincide with the planetary lines.
As a side note, I think the conventional wisdom of "oxygen as an indicator of life" wouldn't apply here because this planet is likely hot enough that the gas is mostly atomic rather than molecular. Remember that the reason why elemental oxygen is supposed to be so uncommon in planetary atmospheres is that it is so reactive. Thus, the argument goes, if it is there some sort of process (like life) must be replacing it. On the other hand, if the environment is hot enough to dissociate most molecules anyhow, then oxygen's reactivity is less important, so it's not surprising to see it fairly abundant.
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I use ssh as my primary way of logging in to my work machines from home, and I'd like to install the free version of ssh, but the machines at work are not under my control. Am I going to run into compatibility problems if I install OpenSSH here but can't convince the powers that be to change over?
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Ok, I'll take one for the road too.
Property rights are founded on the basis that you have a right to use and dispose of your property as you see fit. Nearly everyone concedes this as a right derived from natural law (i.e. a "God-given" right). You are claiming the right to maintain the value of your property by maintaining its scarcity, which is something else entirely. I think you would find that this right is much less universally accepted. To draw an analogy similar to your analogies to forgery and murder, suppose I invented a device to transmute dirt into gold. Do you really claim as "God given" the right to prevent me from using my device in order to prevent me from reducing the scarcity of gold, thereby rendering your stockpile of the stuff worthless? I doubt you would get much sympathy from anyone who valued gold more for its practical uses than for its scarcity. The conclusion is that intellectual property laws derive their moral force solely from the net good that they produce for society. If changes in technology and/or society ever result in intellectual property becoming a net social ill, then those laws can and must be scrapped. Note, however, that I do not advocate scrapping intellectual property laws. I do feel the terms could be made shorter, but honestly I would be happy enough if restrictions on the usage of a piece of IP that one has legally purchased (e.g.DIVX and "nontransferrable licenses") were forbidden, and if there were remedies for an individual or company dragged into court on a bogus claim.
As you point out, this argument starts to sound silly if you replace "copyright violation" with "murder", but that is no flaw in the argument; rather, it is because the social consequences for allowing murder are far more dire than those of removing intellectual property rights.
But I will remind you once more, I do not advocate doing away with copyright entirely; I simply don't think you should be allowed to suppress a product by suing the manufacturer because his product might be used to copy your material, nor do I think you should be allowed to coerce, under threat of lawsuit, other people or institutions (e.g. universities and ISPs) into taking responsibility for tracking down everyone who might be using illegally some piece technology to copy copyrighted material.
The key here is that even if some copyright violators get away with it, most people will buy copyrighted material legally, whether out of honesty, or out of a fear of being one of the few who get caught and made into an example. Companies that trade in intellectual property will still make a ton of money. What they won't be able to do is impose draconian license agreements and suppress new technologies so that they can make many tons of money.
Finally, it's a bit late in the discussion to point this out (but maybe somebody is still reading), but I don't think this is really about using MP3s for piracy. Think about it; the recording industry makes big money off of musicians, and what do they actually do for that money? Answer, they provide the services of marketing and distribution. But with digital music coming on the scene musicians don't need to pay premium rates for distribution (and they haven't really needed to pay a premium for marketing for a while). Who would pay $20 for a CD, when he could pay half that for the equivalent MP3 and have the additional warm fuzzy feeling of knowing that 100% of that money went to the artist (instead of the 5% or less that is more typical now)? In other words, the recording companies are looking at a real possibility of being made obsolete, even if copyright law remains the same. On this score I have no sympathy for them whatsoever; their behavior is comparable to gaslight manufacturers suing light bulb manufacturers for destroying the gaslight business. It will be interesting, however, to see if publishing companies react the same way when "e-book" devices start coming out in a form that is actually as comfortable to read as a real book. Stay tuned to find out.
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First, intellectual "property" is not the same as physical property. Copying someone's intellectual property does not deprive them of the use of that property the way stealing physical property would. Any argument based on that supposed analogy is immediately suspect.
Second, as copying becomes easier with the advance of technology, it becomes harder and harder to enforce copyrights without trampling on noninfringing behaviors. Business would argue that the more fundamental right is their right to protect their intellectual property; however, we must not allow that attitude to prevail. The more fundamental right is for us to be able to engage in otherwise legal activities without being molested because our tools "might be used to make illegal copies". If those same tools are outlawed in the name of enforcing intellectual property laws, the harm to society will far outweigh any good that intellectual property laws have ever produced.
I believe that we should offer intellectual property rights to encourage publication, but I disagree that those rights need to be as strong as they are today, and I certainly disagree that they need to get stronger (the latter point being the argument advanced by the recording and film industries, in particular.) I believe that the most charitable motives we can attribute to corporations that advocate expanded intellectual property rights is greed. I see no reason to encourage it, nor to knuckle under to it.
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Enlighten us. What is their "case or legitimate point" for demanding that all MP3s be removed from campus networks without any proof that any of them infringe any copyrights? What is their case for demanding that products with legitimate, legal uses be pulled from the market or crippled because they "might" be used to illegally copy copyrighted material? What is their case for using the civil justice system as a club to get restrictions enforced that they could never get past a duly elected legislature (even one as heavily influenced by campaign contributions as ours is)? What is thier case for demanding that they be allowed to keep their copyrights for over 4 times the length of time originally envisioned by the writers of the Constitution? What is their case for continuing to own a copyright decades after the person who did the actual creative work is dead; for that matter, what is their case for being entitled to nearly a century of profits for work done by someone else? (Reality check: how many musicians sit on the board of recording companies? How many authors sit on the board of publishing companies?)
In other words, your objection would be more credible if you actually addressed the (IMO quite serious) issues the article raised, instead of just slinging names.
Corporations exist to maximize their bottom line profits. For the most part they will use every legal means at their disposal to achieve that goal. That means that we have to make sure the law really does do what we want it to, and only what we want it to. If any loophole exists, you can be sure businesses will exploit it. Don't get me wrong. I am not opposed to people making an honest profit. I am not even opposed to people getting filthy rich by making honest profit by the bushell (although I do think that as a society we place far too much emphasis on this dubious goal). However, if a law has negative consequences that outweigh its benefits, then that law can and should be changed. That some corporation depends on that law to make staggering amounts of money concerns me not in the least. I am not out to put anyone out of business, but I do not think they have a God-given right to make their executives and stockholders rich at everyone else's expense.
In this case, I think it is clear that there are some fairly negative consequences to the copyright laws as they stand; viz., they produce a chilling effect on legitimate uses of technology, and due to the long copyright terms, the copyrighted material is effectively never given back to the public domain, as was originally intended. We should be thinking about how we can fix copyrights so that these problems are mitigated or eliminated, while retaining the incentive to publish original music, manuscripts, programs and so on. We also need to end the abuse of the civil justice system and put the burden of proof back on the accuser. (Yes, I know, technically it is on the accuser, but having rights does you no good if you can't even afford to set foot in a courtroom to defend them.) If these reforms mean that record executives will wind up making only 5 times
instead of 100 times the median household income, (and don't let them fool you into thinking that they will be sent to the poorhouse by reforms; it just won't happen--people will always be willing to pay a fair price for quality entertainment) well, those are the breaks. Nobody promised you a rose garden.
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And you are correct; you cannot tape a ball game and show it publicly (whether or not you make money from doing so). However, you can report on what happened in the ball game, and the report can be fairly detailed, for instance, it could include inning-by-inning box scores, commentary on the players' performance, and so on. When comparing lectures to ball games, I would argue that notes from a service are a lot closer to box scores than to rebroadcast.
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Why should teachers be rewarded this way? This makes zero sense to me. Good teachers should be (and frequently are) rewarded with promotions, raises, and recognition from their departments and colleges. Good teachers who are also good writers should be (and frequently are) rewarded with deals with publishing houses to publish books that they write. Why do good teachers need to exercise power over what others can do with ideas learned in that teacher's classroom? For that matter, what teacher worth the title would want to restrict the spread of his knowledge? Isn't that what teaching is all about, disseminating learning?
There isn't really even an argument from the standpoint of job security. Note taking services are not going to put college professors out of business, ever. If nothing else, the priviledge of asking questions and interacting with the professor directly can never be replaced by photocopied notes. My question is, who is being harmed by these notetaking services? The answer is nobody, as far as I can see (unless you count the students foolish enough to think they can substitute buying notes for attending class, but that's a different matter).
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How does this differ from, say, box scores being a representation of a baseball game? Isn't there a long-standing tradition that it is perfectly legitimate to summarize and report on events that occurred in a public place?
When I give a lecture, what I see happening is that I stand up in a public place, and I disseminate some knowledge, which the students try to absorb. Probably they will write notes to help them in this process.
Now, what happens if somebody (for the sake of argument, let's say someone who isn't in the class, but who is nevertheless interested) asks one of those students, ``What did Dr. Link go over in class today?'' Well, they will probably report a summary of what happened. They might refer to their notes as they do so. I hope you would not claim that this constitutes an infringement of copyright. The right to talk about what you did in class today seems pretty fundamental to me.
But, if we're willing to grant students the right to talk about what they heard in class, then why not the right to write about what they heard in class? (Perhaps they only communicate with their friends by post or email, for instance.) And if we're willing to concede that I'm not being harmed by any of this, then why should I care if they do it for a fee, rather than gratis? Are they somehow harming me by collecting money, when they weren't harming me by doing it for free? It seems wrong for me to invoke the power of the state to punish these students when they are not harming me.
I worry when I see trends like this. I hope I never live to see the day when professors can (or even want to, for that matter) require NDAs for students taking their classes. I like to think that as scholars we are above that sort of thing.
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As a more concrete example, consider one class I had in graduate school. The professor had wonderful notes, meticulously laid out with section and equation numbers. He put everything on the board and left plenty of time for the students to copy everything. One day I missed class, so I copied the notes from a classmate. I was stunned to realize that the notes I got from him were nearly incomprehensible. Not that he didn't take faithful notes, mind you, but the notes were not filtered through my own learning process. Looking back over the notes I had taken in previous lectures I found that I did not copy down verbatim the teacher's words, nor even what the teacher put on the board. I underlined or made marginal notes whenever something struck me as particularly important or confusing; I left out things that seemed trivial or obvious, and so on. Paid note takers do the same thing; they have to because the service generally imposes a standard format for all of its notes.
Naturally, the situation is different for handouts. It would be inappropriate to include duplicates of the instructor's handouts in notes that are offered for sale because the handouts would necessarily be copies of the instructor's notes, without any additional interpretation. I still don't think I would object if it were my notes; since I give the same handouts out freely to all the students I don't particularly mind if they pay to get them from another source. However, I can see how such a policy might lend itself to abuse, so I can't fault an instructor who chooses a more restrictive policy. In any case, I see no problem with noting that handouts were given, and perhaps summarizing the contents.
I also think it is reasonable for a university to object to paid note takers sitting in on the classes without being enrolled. Once again, I personally always used an open-door policy in my classes, as did most instructors I knew; my feeling was that anyone who wanted to learn more about astronomy was welcome in my classroom. However, I think there is a legitimate argument that if a company wants to make money off of an instructor's lectures then at least their note taker ought to be paying for a seat in the class, just like the rest of the students. (NB: so far as I know the note taking service that operated on the IU campus used only students enrolled in the classes they were taking notes for.)
Finally, on a more philosophical note (that's a code phrase for ``rant coming up''), I am appalled by universities' recent trend toward viewing the university as a ``business'', and education as a ``product''. The university is supposed to be a repository of knowledge held in common for the good of everyone and a place where new knowledge is created, again, for the good of everyone. Indeed, I believe that ideal is why we use tax money to fund public universities, and why private universities get special tax status. To see universities as institutions throw that ideal out the window in the quest for the almighty buck is bad enough. To see people who call themselves scholars and educators follow suit is positively sickening. If you want to get rich so badly, by all means, head out into the business world and do your best. I wish you all the luck in the world. But let's save the universities for the mission of storing, disseminating, and extending human knowledge. It's what they were meant for, and it's what they are good at.
-r
Indeed. Gravitational effects tend to be miniscule, so any noise in the system tends to kill you. Only by filtering out virtually everything can you hope to see the signal from gravitational physics. To give an example from LIGO, the displacements of the test masses in LIGO are roughly 10^-16 cm, or about 10^-8 of the diameter of a hydrogen atom. An interesting bit of trivia Kip Thorne mentioned in one talk he gave was that the test masses behave classically in LIGO I, but by the time LIGO II comes along quantum mechanical effects will start to become measurable. That means that if LIGO II comes to pass, it will be the first time that the quantum mechanical behavior of a macroscopic object has been observed directly. Amazing stuff indeed.
-r