I'm a bit puzzled by your increasingly combative tone. Unless you work for Apple, this is not a personal argument, so let's not try to make it one. In any case, I'll try to clarify once more, but then I'm done with this topic.
So you said one can always burn to CD to get around restrictions, and I said that this is not a good solution because of the loss in quality. You replied with, "Blah blah blah. CDs are "lossy" too. But they're good enough. If you don't consider [music storage format X] to be good enough, don't buy it." I think you misunderstand what I'm talking about. I'm not complaining about the fact that AAC is a lossy format, but pointing out that when you decode it and then re-encode it in a different format you loose even more quality, and you end up with a lower quality result than if you ripped an ordinary CD.
Whether or not that loss in quality is acceptable will vary between people; my point is that you have to damage the product in order make full use of it, like buying a record album that will only play on one type of player until you put big scratches across it. It doesn't seem like it would be a very satifactory solution to many people when they paid good money for the product.
I said that I hadn't tried iTMS and was only relating the experience of a friend. You said, "Strangely, this seems not to have stopped you from running off at the mouth about something you don't actually have any knowledge of. Maybe you should spend a minute thinking about that."
I spoke about the general deficiencies of services using DRM. Note, neither you nor other respondants really took issue with my characterization of the facts of the matter, but rather argued the restrictions don't really feel so oppressive. I was hoping others with more expience would provide more insight from the inside, and that happened to a degree. Anyway, I though we were discussing DRM not/. posting etiquette, so that seems irrelivent.
On the point of privacy I thought I made myself clear, but let me try one last time. The right to privacy is an important principle in US law, represented everwhere from the 4th amendment to the Constitution to decisions like Roe vs. Wade. The general purpose of this is to limit government and law enforement prying into our homes and private lives. DRM schemes charge your personal computer, which is in your home and for many a basic tool of day to day life, with being a sort of copyright policeman. I find this to be a fundemental violation of the idea of personal privacy, not because it sends information out to others but because it is an imposition of their powers in our private lives. I feel it's a bad path to start down, and it is not inconceivable that these programs will report on people (like other spyware) in the future. Give them an inch and they'll take a mile, so to speak. Until then they will simply be an intrusion and an obstacle to law abiding citizens.
On the question of whether circumventing DRM is a violation of the DMCA (if copyright.gov uses that term I will as well): I've already said IANAL, so I'll refer you to what the lawyers at the EFF said about it. Of course, my interpretation of the law (or yours) is largly irrelivant if I get sued for trying to use the music I payed for; I'm not independantly wealthy, so like most people I probably couldn't wait to be vindicated in the nth appeal and would have to settle (probably bankrupting myself in the process). One need only look at the Sklyarov, DeCSS, or similar cases to see that legal trouble is common for those who try to allow users to exercise their fair use rights, not to mention the situation between Apple and Real I linked to before. I'm not sure they'll ever go after individual users, but "you might not get sued for using your music" is not quite the guarantee I'm looking for from a music service.
"No, it does not, because as soon as you press the "burn CD" button, you've got the exact same thing you would have had if you'd bought the CD in the store."
Actually not quite, because of course you're buying digital music that has been encoded in a lossy format, so the quality of that burned CD is lower than if you'd bought a CD in the store. Then, if you rip it again into mp3 it's even lower. So yes, you can get around it if you're willing to waste the CDs (though there may be a clever way to simply "burn" ISO images) and time and loose a bunch of quality, again all for music you payed to have. All this compared to an mp3 you can get from a true download service (Emusic or others) that you can move around to any computer and burn as many times as you please, one that plays on any portable digital music player.
"'I have known people who had difficulty moving music they bought on their work computer to a their home computer where they wanted to listen to it' That's vague, and sounds bogus to me."
It's vague because I haven't tried it myself, so I can only relate what I've been told. I haven't tried iTMS, Napster, etc. because I object to the entire idea that my computer should police what I do with the music (or movies) I buy, and it is in that sense that I see it as an invasion of privacy. Apple's scheme doesn't seem too bad, for now, but it is a small step down a road to making your devices police your actions and repealing the fair use rights of users. It's unethical and I won't have any part of it if I can help it.
"'you're saying that I can get proper use out of the product I payed for if I'm willing to illegally break into it, because I believe this would violate the DMCA.'
Well, no, it wouldn't violate the law (there is no DMCA; it's Title 17), but don't sweat that."
"`Sec. 1201. Circumvention of copyright protection systems
`(a) VIOLATIONS REGARDING CIRCUMVENTION OF TECHNOLOGICAL MEASURES- (1)(A) No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."
Now I'll admit freely, IANAL, but it seems like a reasonable interpretation of the law. Here's some further info on DRM and the DMCA, and here is a story from a few months ago when Apple was talking about going after Real for just this sort of thing.
I can't comment on any of the other points (don't know about them), but I can say something about the switch to a limited number of downloads. I used them for a while back then, and indeed it rocked. But honestly, I never could understand how the unlimited downloads model could be economically viable, so I can see why they switched to limited downloads. That said, songs work out to something like $0.25-$0.30 a pop, which still beats the hell out of iTMS or Napster. However, I do agree that something should not be sold as "unlimited" when it really isn't.
Well, so you can keep a copy if you want it, one that persists even if you quit the service. THat's part of the reason people like having moving channels and the reason a lot of people are upset about the broadcast flag. No one would be criticising the Napster service if you got to keep a (usable) copy of anything you want indefinitely.:-)
So I guess I'm saying the situation is not quite analogous. Also, there's the fact that people listen to music over and over, whereas most people don't re-watch movies many times, making a movie subscription service seem more reasonable than a music one. Now that I think about it, Netflix vs. DVDs is a much better analogy to the Napster service. It's worthwhile to a lot of people because they don't plan on rewatching most stuff anyway.
Well, Emusic does have a live music section, but I think they're counted as any other part of the subscription. You do get 30sec sample of any song before you buy, for what it's worth. Anyway, I'm not really in to live music, so I haven't checked it out much. I think there may be other services out there more like what you're thinking.
It may be quite permissive, but it still prevents you from exercising some of your legally protected rights. I have known people who had difficulty moving music they bought on their work computer to a their home computer where they wanted to listen to it, so people DO run into problems with iTMS DRM even through normal use. And there are also obsticales if you want to switch to a FOSS OS and still use the music you payed for legally. The point is that a large prison cell may feel less restrictive, but that doesn't mean you're not in prison.
The fact that you can crack the DRM is cold comfort, since you're saying that I can get proper use out of the product I payed for if I'm willing to illegally break into it, because I believe this would violate the DMCA. I wouldn't buy a car from a dealership where they just sent me out into the parking lot with a crowbar and a manual on hotwiring instead of giving me the keys.
Look, from what I've heard, iTMS has one of the best DRM systems, but I still find the whole thing to be an unethical invasion of privacy.
Actually, when you use the Napster service you also have the option to purchase "most" tracks (don't know what that really means) for an additional $0.99 per track. So it really depends on whether you find that $15 a month for essentially an unlimited free trial (until you quit the service) of all the music a value added.
But as another poster pointed out, the music you "purchase" in iTMS or Napster is still not really yours, because you're still restricted by their DRM from doing a lot of things (protected by fair use) with the music you payed for. You're still tied to certian supported platforms and players, restricted in what computers you can move it to, and forbidden from reselling. Personally, I chose Emusic, because I actually own the music I pay for (well, in the sense you own the music on a CD anyway) and can do what I want with it (within the confines of law). There are other services like this out there too. Of course, many major labels/bands won't allow anyone to actually sell their music in a digital format not encumbered by DRM.
We were still his ally during the time that he was using chemical weapons against Iran and his own people. Note the photo there of Rumsfeld (Reagon special envoy) shaking hands with Saddam occured after those incidents. We probably would have preferred if he stopped, but we weren't about to do anything to stop it, because it was politically inconvenient. Now, whether or not you think that was the right action, let's not pretend that the US only supported him before he was a mass murdering war criminal, because that's simply not true.
Incidentally, I'm an American, and no I don't hate the US; I only recognize that we are not perfect, and I don't wish to view history through rose colored glasses.
"The swastika is a BAD example. It has been a symbol of good luck and peace for THOUSANDS of years. It's name comes from the Sanskrit for "a good luck charm"."
No, the swastika is an excellent example of what I was talking about, a symbol that would make a great many people uncomfortable. I'm aware of the pre-Nazi significance of the swastika, but that's completely irrelevent to the discussion at hand. I'm sure you have good motives, but your pedantry is misplaced.
I don't personally see a great loss if the swastika as a positive symbol is forgotten (as long as people are still free to practice their faiths as they see fit); however, I generally find fear or taboos surrounding any symbols to be silly and misplaced. If people would be half as concerned about stopping the kind practices and ideology that fueled the thrid Reich as they are about combating its symbolism, the world would be a much better place. I do think there's a good argument to be made that the best way to fight the hatred the swastika represents to many would be to reclaim its original meaning (thus rendering it useless as a tool for hate).
But to the people of faith who take offense at it, the things a demon represents are just as real. Now you're saying nothing more than, "but I don't believe what they believe."
I think there may be some additional factors as well. One is that generally it's just harder to hear/understand someone over the phone (quiet, noisy/bad connection, only sound in one ear), and at least subjectively it seems like this really takes more concentration when you're trying to listen and understand. I also wonder if the position of the sound source makes a difference. For example, I find listening to music on headphones much more distracting than music from speakers in the room, even if the subjective volume level is the same. Could it be that sound sources that are perceived to be closer automatically get more attention?
A more analogous situation would be doing something that involves motor skills, visual judgements, and hand-eye coordination like, say, playing video games. Writing while talking will be much harder because some of the same language faculties are required for both tasks. I couldn't write well while talking on the phone. I can't even write well while listening to music with lyrics, but I can sure as heck play video games while on the phone as long as I don't have to hold the phone.
In any case, simplistic analogies probably won't give too much insight. That's the whole reason for doing systematic studies.
I'd say getting more people killed would be a pretty decent definition. By that one, it sounds like saying guys are the "worst drivers" is fair. On the other hand, I think it's probably not a very meaningful division. It probably makes more sense to talk about certain individuals being bad drivers rather than worring about statistical averages of a whole gender. Personally, I'm worried about the group of in car cell phone handset users way more than men or women as a group.
I think it's also important to remember that working with difficult people is often a requirement in academia too. It's not at all uncommon to have to deal with unreasonable peer reviewers, and sometimes you have to deal with unreasonable collegues as well. So if we're comparing to academia, it doesn't sound all that dissimilar.
There are definitely a lot of people who do think of science as somehow infalable or without assumptions, both inside and outside the sciences, but I wouldn't count myself among them. I view the scientific method as a useful tool to answer certain sorts of questions, but as you pointed out, like anything else it must rest upon unproven assumptions.
I think that people give scientific ideas a lot of credulity (not surprising given the great success of science), so it's important to be clear about which ideas are scientific and which are not. It's also important because science is a tool to answer certain sorts of questions, and metaphysics or religion answers different ones. When people get confused about which is which, I think it leads to bad science and bad philosophy.
You're arguing a completely different point. I was making the point that there is a very clearly defined boundry between science, metaphysics, and religion. I was not arguing that science or the scientific method is somehow intrinsically true or does not rest upon assumptions, which is the idea you seem to be attacking. My point is quite limited, only that the criterion of falsifiability (through measurement) defines clearly what is or is not science.
"Measurments that are made by observers, and the more observers the more the baseline results are changed to meet the common expectations of the observers."
Heh, you've proved my point. This idea is constructed so as to be non-falsifiable. That doesn't make it right or wrong, but it puts it clearly outside the realm of science. The questions you're talking about, such as whether to beleive in the scientific method are also philisophical questions lying outside science. The point is that the distinction is very clear. Science will answer questions like "what happens when I raise the temperature of this beaker" or "how hard can I hit this before it breaks", but those are not the sort of questions you're interested. So let's not confuse science (what the article addresses) and philosophy (what you seem to be interested in).
First of all, while I'm not familiar with the first author, the third author on the paper is Zurek, who is one of the formost experts in the field of quantum decoherence, not some grad student fumbling for a dissertation topic. Secondly, the work on quantum decoherence is not just a matter of interpretation. There are real questions as to how and under what conditions quantum coherence is lost in a system and classical features emerge. It's not just an esoteric problem and has applications to mesoscopic physics (chemistry, nanotech, semiconductors) and is vital to the developement of quantum computation.
"...quantum physics is where science, philosophy, and religion tend to meet."
Actually, there's a pretty clear division due to the scientific method. The scientists referenced in the article may be saying things that sound like far out philosophy, but they're actually working out very concrete results that can be proven or disproven with measurements. Religion and metaphysics fall outside the realm of testible, falsifiable ideas and that is what makes them separate. Your ideas about the metaphysics of reality may be interesting, but they probably are not in the realm of falisiability and so probably don't have a lot to do with the results of research in quantum physics.
Re:Quantum Physics is Like 15th Century Astronomy
on
Subatomic Darwinism
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· Score: 1
Seems like a flawed analogy to me. Quantum physics has actually been very good for producing accurate predictions for experiments. The problem has not been an inability to get the right answer but rather that some questions, like how classical features emerge from quantum mechanics, are so complex that it's just taken a long time to figure out what quantum theory predicts. That's a completely different situation than the case of astronomy and epicycles, where they had to make ad hoc additions to the theory to agree with data. This new work by Zurek is not adding anything to quantum theory, just working out some answers to complex questions using our existing theory.
Slashdot Mirror
Now who's making ad hominem attacks? You could at least try to relate your smears to the topic at hand.
I'm a bit puzzled by your increasingly combative tone. Unless you work for Apple, this is not a personal argument, so let's not try to make it one. In any case, I'll try to clarify once more, but then I'm done with this topic.
So you said one can always burn to CD to get around restrictions, and I said that this is not a good solution because of the loss in quality. You replied with, "Blah blah blah. CDs are "lossy" too. But they're good enough. If you don't consider [music storage format X] to be good enough, don't buy it." I think you misunderstand what I'm talking about. I'm not complaining about the fact that AAC is a lossy format, but pointing out that when you decode it and then re-encode it in a different format you loose even more quality, and you end up with a lower quality result than if you ripped an ordinary CD.
Whether or not that loss in quality is acceptable will vary between people; my point is that you have to damage the product in order make full use of it, like buying a record album that will only play on one type of player until you put big scratches across it. It doesn't seem like it would be a very satifactory solution to many people when they paid good money for the product.
I said that I hadn't tried iTMS and was only relating the experience of a friend. You said, "Strangely, this seems not to have stopped you from running off at the mouth about something you don't actually have any knowledge of. Maybe you should spend a minute thinking about that."
I spoke about the general deficiencies of services using DRM. Note, neither you nor other respondants really took issue with my characterization of the facts of the matter, but rather argued the restrictions don't really feel so oppressive. I was hoping others with more expience would provide more insight from the inside, and that happened to a degree. Anyway, I though we were discussing DRM not /. posting etiquette, so that seems irrelivent.
On the point of privacy I thought I made myself clear, but let me try one last time. The right to privacy is an important principle in US law, represented everwhere from the 4th amendment to the Constitution to decisions like Roe vs. Wade. The general purpose of this is to limit government and law enforement prying into our homes and private lives. DRM schemes charge your personal computer, which is in your home and for many a basic tool of day to day life, with being a sort of copyright policeman. I find this to be a fundemental violation of the idea of personal privacy, not because it sends information out to others but because it is an imposition of their powers in our private lives. I feel it's a bad path to start down, and it is not inconceivable that these programs will report on people (like other spyware) in the future. Give them an inch and they'll take a mile, so to speak. Until then they will simply be an intrusion and an obstacle to law abiding citizens.
On the question of whether circumventing DRM is a violation of the DMCA (if copyright.gov uses that term I will as well): I've already said IANAL, so I'll refer you to what the lawyers at the EFF said about it. Of course, my interpretation of the law (or yours) is largly irrelivant if I get sued for trying to use the music I payed for; I'm not independantly wealthy, so like most people I probably couldn't wait to be vindicated in the nth appeal and would have to settle (probably bankrupting myself in the process). One need only look at the Sklyarov, DeCSS, or similar cases to see that legal trouble is common for those who try to allow users to exercise their fair use rights, not to mention the situation between Apple and Real I linked to before. I'm not sure they'll ever go after individual users, but "you might not get sued for using your music" is not quite the guarantee I'm looking for from a music service.
Actually not quite, because of course you're buying digital music that has been encoded in a lossy format, so the quality of that burned CD is lower than if you'd bought a CD in the store. Then, if you rip it again into mp3 it's even lower. So yes, you can get around it if you're willing to waste the CDs (though there may be a clever way to simply "burn" ISO images) and time and loose a bunch of quality, again all for music you payed to have. All this compared to an mp3 you can get from a true download service (Emusic or others) that you can move around to any computer and burn as many times as you please, one that plays on any portable digital music player.
It's vague because I haven't tried it myself, so I can only relate what I've been told. I haven't tried iTMS, Napster, etc. because I object to the entire idea that my computer should police what I do with the music (or movies) I buy, and it is in that sense that I see it as an invasion of privacy. Apple's scheme doesn't seem too bad, for now, but it is a small step down a road to making your devices police your actions and repealing the fair use rights of users. It's unethical and I won't have any part of it if I can help it.
You mean H.R.2281 -- Digital Millenium Copyright Act, the one that's referred to as the DMCA on copyright.gov? Seems fair to me to refer to it as such. Anyway, we ignoramuses out there generally believe that the following clause prevents anyone from circumventing the DRM features on a digital music file:
Now I'll admit freely, IANAL, but it seems like a reasonable interpretation of the law. Here's some further info on DRM and the DMCA, and here is a story from a few months ago when Apple was talking about going after Real for just this sort of thing.
I can't comment on any of the other points (don't know about them), but I can say something about the switch to a limited number of downloads. I used them for a while back then, and indeed it rocked. But honestly, I never could understand how the unlimited downloads model could be economically viable, so I can see why they switched to limited downloads. That said, songs work out to something like $0.25-$0.30 a pop, which still beats the hell out of iTMS or Napster. However, I do agree that something should not be sold as "unlimited" when it really isn't.
Well, so you can keep a copy if you want it, one that persists even if you quit the service. THat's part of the reason people like having moving channels and the reason a lot of people are upset about the broadcast flag. No one would be criticising the Napster service if you got to keep a (usable) copy of anything you want indefinitely. :-)
So I guess I'm saying the situation is not quite analogous. Also, there's the fact that people listen to music over and over, whereas most people don't re-watch movies many times, making a movie subscription service seem more reasonable than a music one. Now that I think about it, Netflix vs. DVDs is a much better analogy to the Napster service. It's worthwhile to a lot of people because they don't plan on rewatching most stuff anyway.
Well, Emusic does have a live music section, but I think they're counted as any other part of the subscription. You do get 30sec sample of any song before you buy, for what it's worth. Anyway, I'm not really in to live music, so I haven't checked it out much. I think there may be other services out there more like what you're thinking.
It may be quite permissive, but it still prevents you from exercising some of your legally protected rights. I have known people who had difficulty moving music they bought on their work computer to a their home computer where they wanted to listen to it, so people DO run into problems with iTMS DRM even through normal use. And there are also obsticales if you want to switch to a FOSS OS and still use the music you payed for legally. The point is that a large prison cell may feel less restrictive, but that doesn't mean you're not in prison.
The fact that you can crack the DRM is cold comfort, since you're saying that I can get proper use out of the product I payed for if I'm willing to illegally break into it, because I believe this would violate the DMCA. I wouldn't buy a car from a dealership where they just sent me out into the parking lot with a crowbar and a manual on hotwiring instead of giving me the keys.
Look, from what I've heard, iTMS has one of the best DRM systems, but I still find the whole thing to be an unethical invasion of privacy.
Can't you record movies off HBO, etc.?
Actually, when you use the Napster service you also have the option to purchase "most" tracks (don't know what that really means) for an additional $0.99 per track. So it really depends on whether you find that $15 a month for essentially an unlimited free trial (until you quit the service) of all the music a value added.
But as another poster pointed out, the music you "purchase" in iTMS or Napster is still not really yours, because you're still restricted by their DRM from doing a lot of things (protected by fair use) with the music you payed for. You're still tied to certian supported platforms and players, restricted in what computers you can move it to, and forbidden from reselling. Personally, I chose Emusic, because I actually own the music I pay for (well, in the sense you own the music on a CD anyway) and can do what I want with it (within the confines of law). There are other services like this out there too. Of course, many major labels/bands won't allow anyone to actually sell their music in a digital format not encumbered by DRM.
We were still his ally during the time that he was using chemical weapons against Iran and his own people. Note the photo there of Rumsfeld (Reagon special envoy) shaking hands with Saddam occured after those incidents. We probably would have preferred if he stopped, but we weren't about to do anything to stop it, because it was politically inconvenient. Now, whether or not you think that was the right action, let's not pretend that the US only supported him before he was a mass murdering war criminal, because that's simply not true.
Incidentally, I'm an American, and no I don't hate the US; I only recognize that we are not perfect, and I don't wish to view history through rose colored glasses.
Bush submitted to congress exactly 3 reasons for going to war with Iraq:
See his statement here.
Western intelligence agencies also said Saddam had a lot of WMDs he didn't have. I think for many of us we have no credulity left.
No, the swastika is an excellent example of what I was talking about, a symbol that would make a great many people uncomfortable. I'm aware of the pre-Nazi significance of the swastika, but that's completely irrelevent to the discussion at hand. I'm sure you have good motives, but your pedantry is misplaced.
I don't personally see a great loss if the swastika as a positive symbol is forgotten (as long as people are still free to practice their faiths as they see fit); however, I generally find fear or taboos surrounding any symbols to be silly and misplaced. If people would be half as concerned about stopping the kind practices and ideology that fueled the thrid Reich as they are about combating its symbolism, the world would be a much better place. I do think there's a good argument to be made that the best way to fight the hatred the swastika represents to many would be to reclaim its original meaning (thus rendering it useless as a tool for hate).
But to the people of faith who take offense at it, the things a demon represents are just as real. Now you're saying nothing more than, "but I don't believe what they believe."
If it were a confederate flag, or worse a Swastika, it would make a LOT of people uncomfortable.
I think there may be some additional factors as well. One is that generally it's just harder to hear/understand someone over the phone (quiet, noisy/bad connection, only sound in one ear), and at least subjectively it seems like this really takes more concentration when you're trying to listen and understand. I also wonder if the position of the sound source makes a difference. For example, I find listening to music on headphones much more distracting than music from speakers in the room, even if the subjective volume level is the same. Could it be that sound sources that are perceived to be closer automatically get more attention?
A more analogous situation would be doing something that involves motor skills, visual judgements, and hand-eye coordination like, say, playing video games. Writing while talking will be much harder because some of the same language faculties are required for both tasks. I couldn't write well while talking on the phone. I can't even write well while listening to music with lyrics, but I can sure as heck play video games while on the phone as long as I don't have to hold the phone.
In any case, simplistic analogies probably won't give too much insight. That's the whole reason for doing systematic studies.
I'd say getting more people killed would be a pretty decent definition. By that one, it sounds like saying guys are the "worst drivers" is fair. On the other hand, I think it's probably not a very meaningful division. It probably makes more sense to talk about certain individuals being bad drivers rather than worring about statistical averages of a whole gender. Personally, I'm worried about the group of in car cell phone handset users way more than men or women as a group.
I think it's also important to remember that working with difficult people is often a requirement in academia too. It's not at all uncommon to have to deal with unreasonable peer reviewers, and sometimes you have to deal with unreasonable collegues as well. So if we're comparing to academia, it doesn't sound all that dissimilar.
There are definitely a lot of people who do think of science as somehow infalable or without assumptions, both inside and outside the sciences, but I wouldn't count myself among them. I view the scientific method as a useful tool to answer certain sorts of questions, but as you pointed out, like anything else it must rest upon unproven assumptions.
I think that people give scientific ideas a lot of credulity (not surprising given the great success of science), so it's important to be clear about which ideas are scientific and which are not. It's also important because science is a tool to answer certain sorts of questions, and metaphysics or religion answers different ones. When people get confused about which is which, I think it leads to bad science and bad philosophy.
You're arguing a completely different point. I was making the point that there is a very clearly defined boundry between science, metaphysics, and religion. I was not arguing that science or the scientific method is somehow intrinsically true or does not rest upon assumptions, which is the idea you seem to be attacking. My point is quite limited, only that the criterion of falsifiability (through measurement) defines clearly what is or is not science.
Heh, you've proved my point. This idea is constructed so as to be non-falsifiable. That doesn't make it right or wrong, but it puts it clearly outside the realm of science. The questions you're talking about, such as whether to beleive in the scientific method are also philisophical questions lying outside science. The point is that the distinction is very clear. Science will answer questions like "what happens when I raise the temperature of this beaker" or "how hard can I hit this before it breaks", but those are not the sort of questions you're interested. So let's not confuse science (what the article addresses) and philosophy (what you seem to be interested in).
First of all, while I'm not familiar with the first author, the third author on the paper is Zurek, who is one of the formost experts in the field of quantum decoherence, not some grad student fumbling for a dissertation topic. Secondly, the work on quantum decoherence is not just a matter of interpretation. There are real questions as to how and under what conditions quantum coherence is lost in a system and classical features emerge. It's not just an esoteric problem and has applications to mesoscopic physics (chemistry, nanotech, semiconductors) and is vital to the developement of quantum computation.
Actually, there's a pretty clear division due to the scientific method. The scientists referenced in the article may be saying things that sound like far out philosophy, but they're actually working out very concrete results that can be proven or disproven with measurements. Religion and metaphysics fall outside the realm of testible, falsifiable ideas and that is what makes them separate. Your ideas about the metaphysics of reality may be interesting, but they probably are not in the realm of falisiability and so probably don't have a lot to do with the results of research in quantum physics.
Seems like a flawed analogy to me. Quantum physics has actually been very good for producing accurate predictions for experiments. The problem has not been an inability to get the right answer but rather that some questions, like how classical features emerge from quantum mechanics, are so complex that it's just taken a long time to figure out what quantum theory predicts. That's a completely different situation than the case of astronomy and epicycles, where they had to make ad hoc additions to the theory to agree with data. This new work by Zurek is not adding anything to quantum theory, just working out some answers to complex questions using our existing theory.