A propeller is a specific type of wing. Wings are airfoils. Propellers are airfoils. Planes have fixed wings. Helicopters have rotatory wings. Both have wings.
Wow, MIT's AI is pretty impressive. That's a decent series of conclusions. However it still badly files the Turing Test, as that doesn't remotely resemble natural language from a real human.
As someone else said, torrents often include multiple things like songs on a CD. In that case the torrent bandwidth model explicitly leaves you uploading one song to "buy" the download of another song from someone else.
But even with a single file movie you're still toast under this criminal law "financial gain" redefinition. Look at the definition again, but this time lets separate off the comma-other-works clause. It says: The term "financial gain" includes receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value
and it adds the comma-clause: , including the receipt of other copyrighted works.
So "financial gain" means receipt (or expectation of receipt) of anything of value. The "other works" clause is merely a specifically included example of "something of value". Part of a copyrighted work is "something of value" if the entire work is something of value. Trading the first half of a movie to obtain the second half of the movie would fall dead square under this criminal law.
For that matter the tiny chunks that are uploaded in bittorrent may not even qualify for copyright.
Copying a portion of a work does qualify as copying in the copyright sense. Copying only part of a work is a strong indicator to qualify for a fair use exception to copyright, and the smaller the portion the better, but the size of the copied portion is only one factor and it is only an indicator in favor of fair use. If your purpose is to compile the completed work then copying many small pieces one at a time will categorically NOT qualify as fair use, no matter how small the pieces are. You could obtain a single bit from each of 80 million different people to compile a 10 meg file, and I doubt there's a court anywhere in the country that would let you get away with that. Copyright places particular focus on intent and end result. Copying a paragraph from a book for the purpose of writing a critical review of that book is fair use, copying a piece of a movie for the purpose of constructing a new complete copy of that movie is not fair use.
In part you misinterpreted what I was saying, and in part you are unfamiliar with how copyright law actually works.
I was not saying that a download in isolation would be criminal. It takes additional factors/circumstances for criminal law to apply. What I was saying was that in many routine cases of internet-related-infringement the circumstances quite often do exist to trigger criminal copyright law.
Under your reading, if someone gives me a copy of a movie on DVD or CD I have received financial gain. Ihe problem is, I did not infringe anything for the purposes of financial gain. I did not receive stolen property. How is this a crime?
That's not what what I said. In that case you haven't even committed infringement at all, much less committing criminal infringement.
If I give the copy away (without making one for myself) I still have not infringed.
Actually, if that copy was not legitimately created, then that would probably be an infringement of the distribution right. That point is an easily overlooked for two reasons. First, all the focus is usually placed on creating-a-copy infringement and distribution issues are the often the neglected brother. Secondly, the doctrine of First Sale terminates the copyright holder's distribution rights in particular legitimate copy when he sells it, so people ordinarily never hear about or think about distribution rights when dealing with ordinary legitimate purchased copies.
If I trade it with someone for some other movie, I still have not infringed
Not may that technically be infringement, it may technically be criminal infringement. As I said, it's pretty easy for offline activities to fall under that wildly overbroad "financial gain" criminal code as well. The fact that criminal-copyright is virtually never enforced doesn't change the fact that it exists, and that it does technically declare many tens of millions of people to be un-caught un-prosecuted felons.
If I download from Rapidshare, I'm not the one making the copy.
A long time ago I wrote a long post here on Slashdot making essentially that argument. Only the person sending a file is in a position to know for certain the contents of that file, and only they are in a position to know whether or not they have legal authority to distribute that file, and the person sending the file should be considered to be the one creating the copy.
However I've learned a lot about copyright law since then. I actually read the entire U.S. Title 17 copyright law, and I've studied countless court cases on the subject. Long story short, what is reasonable and logical and how the law should work is an entirely different from discussing what the law actually says and how the law actually works. Try to keep in mind that this is a discussion of existing law and legalities, setting aside any views on what the law should be.
The first step to explaining how the law works is to say it reserves to the copyright holder the exclusive right to create copies, the exclusive right to distribute copies, and the exclusive right to public performance. From that point, there are a vast number of exceptions to those exclusive rights, limitations to those exclusive rights, and legal doctrines saying when you are legally permitted to copy/distribute/preform something without needing permission from the copyright holder. So the first pass analysis is that it is infringement for anyone to do any of those things without permission from the copyright holder, unless you can point to some specific law or legal doctrine permitting it.
In downloading a file from Rapidshare (or anywhere), you are physically creating a copy of that file on your harddrive. In legal analysis, that is an act of creating a copy. Where you got it from does not alter the fact that you created a physical copy. That is an act of infringement unless the copyright holder has granted authority to create that copy, or unless you can cite some specific law or doctrine permitting you to create
You make the assumption that the law would be enforced on everyone all at once.
Even further, it implicitly involved the government waving a magic wand to identify the everyone officially guilty under this law:)
It was a purely abstract scenario. The point was if actual full enforcement of the law would provoke an overnight overthrow of the entire government, then perhaps the law itself is insane and intolerable even when it's not being enforced.
They'll arrest and try a few people, there will be complaints, but nothing much will happen.
If they did start arresting even just a few random ordinary P2P users I think the national media would pick up on the story, and I think they would have a field day bashing the government for how insane it was. There was a minor media circus over teens and grandmas getting sued by the RIAA, and a significant PR backlash against the RIAA for doing it. Just imagine how much bigger it would be if the story was about the government, and if the kids and grandmas were being sent to prison. I think the media would have a field day asking politicians whether they supported or opposed it.
The public in general are ignorant lazy herd animals, but they do love a good media circus, and they do enjoy a story like this to get outraged over. Of course you are right there wouldn't be rioting in the streets if they just started arresting a few people. However it would be a red-meat issue, and there would be only one politically viable side for politicians to take. They'd fall all over themselves trying to get credit for fixing the law.
I Googled a pair of settlement letters, and you're right I don't see any mention of the criminal law issue in them. I have seen a number of public statements from the copyright industry raising the general threat that these sorts of infringers could be subject to criminal law, and I just assumed it likely they would have included it in the settlement letters.
True, this story is about civil court lawsuits being filed. However I would wager that the "settlement offers" do explicitly raise the threat of criminal charges and prison if you don't give them the money they demand.
Having people think something is crime that can be prosecuted in criminal court when it is demonstrably not so
False. The 1997 NET Act in the US did in fact make most copyright infringement into a felony. In particular the NET Act slipped this cute redefinition into law:
101. The term "financial gain" includes receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value, including the receipt of other copyrighted works.
Any use of Bittorrent or any other P2P pretty much by definition "includes receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value, including the receipt of other copyrighted works". It is also quite easy for offline non-commercial infringement to fall under that definition.
The NET Act adds the following criminal law:
506. Criminal offenses (a) Criminal Infringement.--Any person who infringes a copyright willfully either--
1. for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain, or
2. by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000, shall be punished as provided under section 2319 of title 18. For purposes of this subsection, evidence of reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work, by itself, shall not be sufficient to establish willful infringement.
Note that that is an "or" situation. Under the first clause, even a single minimal infringement is defined as a criminal act if it falls within that crazy redefinition for "financial gain".
The NET act also defines the criminal penalties:
Criminal infringement of a copyright (a) Whoever violates section 506(a) (relating to criminal offenses) of title 17 shall be punished as provided in subsections (b) and (c) of this section and such penalties shall be in addition to any other provisions of title 17 or any other law. (b) Any person who commits an offense under section 506(a)(1) of title 17--
1. shall be imprisoned not more than 5 years, or fined in the amount set forth in this title, or both, if the offense consists of the reproduction or distribution including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of at least 10 copies or phonorecords, of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $2,500;
2. shall be imprisoned not more than 10 years, or fined in the amount set forth in this title, or both, if the offense is a second or subsequent offense under paragraph (1); and
3. shall be imprisoned not more than 1 year, or fined in the amount set forth in this title, or both, in any other case.
So the penalty is up to FIVE YEARS in prison if you have uploaded or downloaded 10 or more infringing files during a half year. The penalty is up to TEN YEARS for a second offense.
Oh, and if it's only a single act of infringement of a single file, then the law is much more generous with you, the crime is merely a felony with up to ONE YEAR in prison.
If you somehow manage not to fall under the "financial gain" definition, 506(a)(2) still makes infringement a felony if the infringement has a total "retail value" of $1,000 within a half year. In that case the prison terms are merely three years if it was ten or more copies with a total retail value of $2,500, six years on a second offense, or merely up to one year in prison for a non "financial-gain" infringement with total claimed retail value under $2,500.
Probably about a quarter of the entire U.S. population are technically unindicted criminal copyright felons subject
Pffft! If your worried about multipath distortion from walls then you obviously have a tin ear, and probably a $5-walkman quality sound system.
Any true audiophile knows you can't hear the full richness and clarity of sound if you've got atmospheric distortion contaminating any part of your audio path. Insisting on vacuum tubes is just the first step in eliminating atmospheric distortion.
Doesn't work. If she has your mind then she's going to be a lesbian.
And don't even try to wiggle out by suggesting a lesbian clone would be hot for a threesome, not unless you already happen to have a kink for a threesome with another guy.
Yeah yeah, I'm critiquing a filk. But a geek filk needs to stand up to some basic logic:)
So, say you put a video sensor and a heat-isolated light source inside the chamber - what does it record?
The description of it being in two different places is a bit awkward. The better description is that this object is either slightly vibrating like a bell, or it's not vibrating at all. So you could say the atoms on the surface are both in the motionless position and simultaneously moved like the surface of a ringing bell, but it's not like the object as a whole is moved to a different place.
So you are trying to see a vibration on an object sitting in one spot. Furthermore this vibration is insanely small. I'm guessing the size of the movement of the surface is probably smaller than the size of a single atom.
In order to "see" a vibration this small you would need to shine a powerful light on it - either a huge number of low energy photons or maybe just one high energy photon. The general result is that however you try to "look" at it is going to hit it a lot harder than the size of the vibration you are looking for. Any method strong enough to see this incredibly small effect winds up being big enough to completely obliterate the thing you were trying to see.
It's like you have a grasshopper sitting on your table, and you've done this neat quantum trick so that it is both alive and dead. So you fire a cannonball at it to measure whether it's heart is beating. The way the cannonball bounces off will tell you that the heart *was* beating or that the heart *wasn't* beating, but either way you've splattered the grasshopper. It is no longer both alive and dead - it's heart is no longer both beating and not-beating at the same time. The cannonball will randomly detect one possibility or the other, and leave you with a boring splattered grasshopper.
Things only remain in two quantum states at the same time so long as you don't "touch" them, and any attempt to "look" at it involves bouncing a cannon ball off it.
One of the reasons scientists are so drawn to creating bigger quantum states like this is because of the intuitive expectation that "bigger" quantum stuff should show these weird quantum effects in some bigger more obvious way so that we can finally get a good look at this quantum weirdness and see what is going on, but as usual quantum mechanics confounds that intuitive hope. (Sorry for that huge run-on sentence:D)
A good way to understand quantum mechanics is almost like it's some intelligent trickster opponent deliberately hiding from sight, with an evil sense of humor about it. You are free to see the results after quantum mechanics has done it's weird stuff, but it never lets you see anything weird while it is happening. Lets say you've thought up some neat experiment that should enable to get a forbidden peek at this hidden weird quantum stuff while it's happening. There's a pretty good rule of thumb you can use to figure out how your experiment will turn out... think of quantum mechanics as that evil opponent deliberately hiding from you and then then try to figure out how it's going to sabotage you so you can't actually get a look. That's how the physics will actually turn out. The evil opponent rigged the rules of physics to screw up your attempt to get a peek, and he rigged those rules long before you dreamt up your clever idea to try to peek.
Quantum mechanics is much easier to understand once you just accept that the weird nonsensical stuff is real and works, and once you just accept that the laws of physics are an evil conspiracy to keep the weird stuff hidden. Quantum mechanics can do useful work and do apparently "impossible" things for you, once you abandon all hope of peeking behind the curtain.
Tell them that they ought to look up the weird uncle first.
Actually they should look at the father first, the weird uncle second, the normal uncle third, and after that move on to the priest and the mother.
And just to vent another beef, I really hate the way reporters and politicians going wacko demonizing the internet. Aside from the fact that almost all abuse is either within the family or family-trusted links such as priests, there is another communication system that pre-dates the internet and which has been used by vastly larger numbers of pedophiles to communicate with children in their homes. That communication network is, of course, the telephone. Almost all "anti-pedo" internet laws (proposed laws or actual laws) should by all logic and by any rational standard, equally apply to telephones. Of course such laws would only draw raging public ridicule if they were proposed in relation to telephones.
the fact that teenagers are universally fucking retarded
Actually I'd say people are universally fucking retarded (although I admit I tend to consider myself slightly less retarded than average).
it makes a hell of a lot of sense to bind sex up in taboos and rules
Taboos and rules work well with toddlers and small children, where "because I said so" is a solid justification for "don't stick your head in the stove". However teenagers develop bullshit-detectors, and they actively rebel against taboos and fraudulent/irrational rules. This is why, as studies have demonstrated, teens have sex earlier and get pregnant more often and get more STDs when people like you try to shovel abstinence only education programs down their throats. They recognize that they are being force-feed hypocritical and fantasy-land crap, and they lose respect for the people feeding it to them and actively reject everything associated with it. When subjected to taboos-and-rules crap, they disdain the pregnancy and STD warnings as scare tactics. It gets mentally disregarded as just more unreliable preachy garbage.
Teens inherently become aware of sexuality, they feel it within themselves in addition to seeing that it exists in society around them. And when they are offered information regarding sex, when they are treated with respect and they are offered accurate informative useful information about sex, they eagerly devour that information. It is just about the only area of education where students will almost universally skip hanging with their friends for the chance to go to class and learn about a subject. When they get useful and informative information about sex, they actually value that information, and they value and respect that teacher for being straight with them. When they are taught about the likelihood of pregnancy in a non-preachy non-moralizing non-scaretactic manner, when they are taught honestly about the relatively low but very real risks of various STDs, taught that they can run to the doctor to cure most STDs, taught that herpes is relatively minor but incurable, taught that AIDs is rare but obviously very serious and incurable, they take those risks more seriously than when the taboo-and-rules approach tries to inflate them into some laughable boogiemonster scare tactic. Teens taught comprehensive sex-ed actually do delay their first sex somewhat, and when they do engage in sex they do so far more safely with less pregnancy and less STDs.
The taboo-and-rules approach to telling kinds not to have sex just backfires, and they develop disdain for everything you have to say about sex. Abstinence education causes teens to have sex earlier, causes teen pregnancy to increase, and it just fuels the spread of STDs.
Preachy moralizing abstinence crusaders are hurting kids. They make things worse, but they are on such a self-righteous crusade that they go into full blown denial. Their cause is good, their intent is good, they want to make things better and help people, and they refuse to accept the possibility that they are making things worse. They are the good-guys doing the good-thing so they ignore or reject evidence that they are actually causing harm.
Furthermore, sex offenders are disproportionately raised (created) in deeply religious taboo-and-rules sexually repressive homes. If you are looking for some sexually sick fuck raping and torturing and murdering women, and you have two suspects, one raised on a hippy free-love commune and the other raised in a deeply religious taboo-riddled sexually repressive home, police statistics say the taboo-raised suspect is almost certainly the guilty one.
Furthermore, there are abundant cases of countries that changed their laws on pornography (either criminalizing it or decriminalizing it), and the fact is that rape and other sex crimes are significantly HIGHER when a culture represses and criminalizes porn, the fact is that rape and other sex crimes are significantly LOWER when a culture accepts
No sane person would call teens sending their teenage boy/girlfriends a dirty picture of themselves pedophiles or bring them up on child porn charges.
The law does say that, but in this case the law is neither sane nor does it qualify as a person. So I guess your statement remains technically correct:)
The reality is that many people feel they must do whatever is necessary to please others. So many girls are raped because a guy says, "do it for me" or other pressures.
Yeah... I went to a used car lot and I asked the sales man to sell me a car for $500 below the sticker price, and he decided to go along with my request. An obvious case of theft.
Yeah... and when a man doesn't want to have sex, and a woman seduces him into changing his mind, that's obviously rape too.
Rape is a serious crime, and you're making a mockery of it.
And perhaps you recall the news story of a 17 year old guy who was sentenced to a mandatory 10 year minimum prison term for "statutory rape", for preforming consensual oral sex on his 15 year old girlfriend? Another example making a complete mockery of rape.
If you have sex and use a condom, there is a 2% chance of failure. Every time.
You are misinterpreting standard terminology. As someone else mentioned, terminology for condom failure is a per year statistic. The pregnancy rate for regular condom users is 2% per year.
If we conservatively assume a typical condom user having sex just twice per week, that would mean 104 condom uses resulting in a 2% chance of producing a single pregnancy. That means 104*50 = 5200 condom uses on average to result in a single pregnancy. That means a 99.98% success (non-pregnancy) rate per usage, and a 0.02% failure (pregnancy) rate per usage. The average usage rate with condoms is probably more like double that, especially when you factor in that people occasionally have sex / use a condom two or even three times in a single night. That would put the true statistics for condoms closer to 99.99% success vs 0.01% chance of pregnancy per use.
I didn't say you were "statistically likely" to get pregnant after fifty tries.
If we multiply what you said out over 50 times, yes, that is exactly what you said.
You said "If you have sex and use a condom, there is a 2% chance of failure. Every time.". A little basic math multiplying it 50 times works out to 36.4% non-pregnancy rate vs a 63.6% chance of (one or more) pregnancy.
If you aren't ready to accept the natural consequences of the result of an act, then maybe you shouldn't be doing that act.
Wow, that is a mind-boggling argument. I is really no different from "if man were meant to fly then God would have given us wings" suggesting that it is WRONG or BAD to build airplanes. Doh. Are you naked, living in a cave, and hunting berries and squirrels with your bare hands?
The "natural consequences" of jumping out of an airplane is falling to your death. Therefore you argue there is something wrong with using parachutes??
The "natural consequences" of going deep under water is drowning. Therefore you argue there is something wrong with using scuba gear??
What sort of wacky logic is that?
Some people consider jumping out of airplanes to be fun. Well, if someone finds that fun, we've invented these neat things call parachutes exactly to prevent the "natural consequences" of jumping out of an airplane.
And just to follow through on that analogy, if someone jumps out of an airplane and their parachute fails and they crash into some trees or something and they are bleeding to death, then you suggest there is something wrong with calling in a doctor to treat that condition and prevent the bleeding from continuing on to its "natural consequence" of death? If your scuba gear fails and you inhale some water then you suggest there is something wrong with you having a doctor intervene to prevent your drowning condition from proceeding to your "natural consequence" death?
I completely agree with all the problems you cite for a.kids type domain, and I completely agree the correct thing to do would be for people to use second level walledgarden.org type domains. However the world sucks, stupid people routinely demand idiotic and destructive things, and politicians all too often give it to them.
So while I agree with everything you say, I support a.kids type domain to the extent that it can be used to siphon off these people and their bad ideas. It provides an outlet where these people can satisfy their crusade-compulsion and they can play out their bad ideas. A place where they can fight with each other over all of the problems you list, a place they can do all the dumb things they like and cause all the damage they wish, all within a contained area. All without causing any harm or damage outside their pointless harmless.kids domain.
You're right the correct thing for them to do is just apply for a routine second level domain where they can do whatever they like, but obviously they already can do that, and obviously they are not going to be satisfied with that. These activists don't actually want to set up some kid-safe area, they don't actually want to do anything themselves, they are fighting to make the do something. They don't want to solve their problem, they want the government to solve it for them. And their "problem" isn't that they don't like what they are accessing on the internet, their problem is that they don't like what other people can find on the internet. They don't want something fixed for themselves, they are crusaders who want to forcibly impose their "help" upon everyone else. They are fanatically "helpful" people who want to run around forcibly applying leaches to everyone in order to prevent fictional diseases.
I say a bad idea such as a.kids domain might be a useful idea if it gives these destructively-helpful people the illusion that they are successfully helping their intended victims.... err I mean helping their intended beneficiaries.
Now I admit that it may lead to a problem with these people making demands that schools and libraries have some sort of mandatory filter restricted to the.kids domain. And yes, I acknowledge that some children (and adults) may become victims of that sort of idiocy. However I believe that attempting to impose that sort of filter would be completely unworkable and it would be an almost instantaneous blatant failure. I believe it would result in far less harm than their current efforts to impose upon students some ideological-candyland version of the full internet.
Hell, in an ideal world I would fully support a.xxx domain. In theory it's a great idea. Let porn sites or anyone else grab a.xxx domain if they like, cool. The only reason I don't support it is because in the real world idiots view.xxx as some sort of "fix" for their "problem", and then they obviously expect that "fix" to actually work for solving their problem. They expect "bad" stuff is supposed to be in the.xxx domain, and only within the.xxx domain. So they expect laws to make that true, they expect laws to force things to actually work the way they want and expect them to work. They start demanding stupid destructive and unworkable laws to imprison anyone who puts "objectionable" material on a normal general website. And then all of the problems you list in your post become a catastrophic plague upon the internet itself.
The only problem with your post is that you offered a reasonable rational solution. You often can't fix an unreasonable irrational fanatical people-problem with a reasonable rational fix.
Firstly, you shouldn't have been modded troll. I guess the moderator couldn't find the -1 Mistaken mod option;)
The things I've heard about
A perfect example of what we are talking about - how how cultural groups can selectively ignore overwhelming data when it has "unappealing" implications for their beliefs, and who cultural groups can selectively accept and selectively reinforce anything to support what they would prefer to be true. More than 99 percent of the general public knows squat about climatology and the evidence. They know nothing about it, and they know they know nothing about it. So what people routinely do is turn to "trusted authorities" to learn what the main important points are and what the correct final position is. Those "trusted authorities" tend to be the icons of cultural groups. For example people who culturally identify with some group will tend to receive (and trust) information and arguments from a small number of famous and influential individuals. A significant point here is that individuals often become icons for some group exactly because they are highly motivated to hold and defend certain beliefs. These icons study some subject for any scrap of information to support their position. They take a big complex issue and boil it down to a small number of key points to support that position. The general public cannot become experts in every subject and on every issue. The general public hears cherry-picked information, potentially misleading cherry-picked points to make a case. And from there it turns into public relations war of opinion. Instead of looking objectively at all of the information, it becomes a matter of trusting the judgment and opinions of their own group and their own cultural icons, and it becomes a matter of reflexively rejecting conflicting data on the basis that it is cannot be trusted. No rational consideration of information - just the simple mental shortcut of dismissing other sources source as biased and untrustworthy.
Lets look at the list you gave: The things I've heard about include miscalibrated sensors
Yes, scientists is every field inevitably have to deal with miscalibrated sensors. They inevitably happen, they inevitably exist. And someone who wants to look for them they will find them. If someone wants to make a list of them, to publish, they can do so. However a rather obvious point is that when miscalibrations happen the error can go in either direction, and that the two possibilities are generally statistically equal. And we get to the problem of people cherry picking misleading "data" to support a position. If you you cherry pick and publish examples that all go in the same direction then you can manufacture a fiction pointing in a desired direction.
And a further point, most common reason people can point to known miscalibrations is exactly because the scientists involved identified that miscalibration, corrected for that miscalibration, and communicated that information exactly for the purpose of ensuring everyone else involved corrected for that error.
There are dozens of satellites, thousands of aerial instruments, and tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of ground instruments. If someone wants to cherry-pick a few specific cases in order to paint a misleading picture, it not hard to do so.
The things I've heard about include... locations that got hotter due to the urban heat island effect
Yeah. Scientists figured that out almost exactly two hundred. The effect was first published in 1810.
Yes, the urban heat island effect does present a real challenge to analyzing the data from some locations. Scientists already KNOW that. They already account for that. Just to illustrate, the urban heat effect is very large at night but very small during the day. So to a first approximation, you can compare day-vs-night temperatures for each location to identify where it is happening and how big the effect is. That is obviously an oversim
Denialists have eternally been trying to claim evolution is impossible, and that a scientific explanation for the origin of the first life is impossible. You've doubtless hear the tired old denialist line comparing it to having a tornado blow through a junk yard and having it RANDOMLY assemble a 747. Denialists saying that it requires hundreds of protiens in a complex cell, and coming up with wild probability calculations for it.
This experiment proves for the twelve-billionth time that evolution does work and does actually happen, and it proves yet again how clueless the denialist claims and calculations are. Evolution doesn't start with the first complex cell - evolution starts from the simplest replicator. We still don't know what the first simplest replicator was, but this experiment demonstrates that all it takes is a single molecule. This is merely one proof-of-principle example of a single molecule replicator. It is merely one example out of countless possible molecules capable of self replication. And as I indicated earlier, this is hardly going to be the simplest replicator, we still haven't discovered the simplest replicator.
Quoting from your other post: it's just like a mechanic taking parts from a bunch of different cars, slapping them together, getting something that turns over, and then expressing surprise that a car was able to arise from all of the jumbled parts.
No, it's more like they stuck three sticks of wood together in a triangle, stuck a wheel on each corner to make a primitive tricycle. And the huge point is that they witnessed it replicate and EVOLVE and IMPROVE. This is not about some idiotic tornado blowing trough a junk yard and RANDOMLY assembling a 747. This is about three sticks and three wheels making a replicating tricycle, and then you look back later and start finding working bicycles, and then you look back later you start seeing go-carts. And those go-carts will eventually evolve into model-T Fords, and those model T-Fords will eventually evolve into Rolls Royces and Formula 1 race cars. And they will evolve into Wright-brothers-style almost-sorta-kinda-flying contraptions, which will evolve into biplanes, which eventually evolve into simple jets, which eventually evolve into 747s.
No idiotic tornados randomly making 747s in a junk yard. Evolution is real, evolution works, and evolution does automatically produce a continuing line of successive improvements. Once evolution gets started it can and *will* assemble 747s. And it can get started with 3 sticks and three wheels that kinda-sorta form a primitive tricycle. And no one believes that three-sticks-and-three-wheels tricycle is the actual first and simplest that go things started. We still don't know the simplest replicator that can get things started. But we do know it can be just a single molecule, and we know we had an entire planet covered in almost limitless constantly changing random complex molecules, and there are an almost limitless number of molecule forms that can replicate, and there were hundreds of millions of years for any one of those molecules to come across any one of the possible replicators.
And this is also just one experiment, and it obviously only demonstrates the few limited things it was designed to test, just like you don't demonstrate all of Relativity in one particular experiment. For example another interesting experiment I'm aware of has demonstrated that basic lipids - the stuff that makes up the skin of actual cells - can self-assemble into hollow cells, that those empty "cells" can grow my naturally sucking up any additional free lipids they bump into, and that those empty "cells" can can naturally divide into a pair of child "cells" merely from physical agitation such as waves or splashing. Whatever chemicals are inside those natural non-living lipid cells would obviously be split to the insides of the split cells. And other experiments have been working with simple metabolism-style chemical reactions that can grow and evolve while multiplying acros
Slashdot Mirror
A propeller is a specific type of wing.
Wings are airfoils.
Propellers are airfoils.
Planes have fixed wings.
Helicopters have rotatory wings.
Both have wings.
Wow, MIT's AI is pretty impressive. That's a decent series of conclusions. However it still badly files the Turing Test, as that doesn't remotely resemble natural language from a real human.
-
I think I'll name him Bob.
-
As someone else said, torrents often include multiple things like songs on a CD. In that case the torrent bandwidth model explicitly leaves you uploading one song to "buy" the download of another song from someone else.
But even with a single file movie you're still toast under this criminal law "financial gain" redefinition. Look at the definition again, but this time lets separate off the comma-other-works clause. It says:
The term "financial gain" includes receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value
and it adds the comma-clause:
, including the receipt of other copyrighted works.
So "financial gain" means receipt (or expectation of receipt) of anything of value. The "other works" clause is merely a specifically included example of "something of value". Part of a copyrighted work is "something of value" if the entire work is something of value. Trading the first half of a movie to obtain the second half of the movie would fall dead square under this criminal law.
For that matter the tiny chunks that are uploaded in bittorrent may not even qualify for copyright.
Copying a portion of a work does qualify as copying in the copyright sense.
Copying only part of a work is a strong indicator to qualify for a fair use exception to copyright, and the smaller the portion the better, but the size of the copied portion is only one factor and it is only an indicator in favor of fair use. If your purpose is to compile the completed work then copying many small pieces one at a time will categorically NOT qualify as fair use, no matter how small the pieces are. You could obtain a single bit from each of 80 million different people to compile a 10 meg file, and I doubt there's a court anywhere in the country that would let you get away with that. Copyright places particular focus on intent and end result. Copying a paragraph from a book for the purpose of writing a critical review of that book is fair use, copying a piece of a movie for the purpose of constructing a new complete copy of that movie is not fair use.
-
In part you misinterpreted what I was saying, and in part you are unfamiliar with how copyright law actually works.
I was not saying that a download in isolation would be criminal. It takes additional factors/circumstances for criminal law to apply. What I was saying was that in many routine cases of internet-related-infringement the circumstances quite often do exist to trigger criminal copyright law.
Under your reading, if someone gives me a copy of a movie on DVD or CD I have received financial gain. Ihe problem is, I did not infringe anything for the purposes of financial gain. I did not receive stolen property. How is this a crime?
That's not what what I said. In that case you haven't even committed infringement at all, much less committing criminal infringement.
If I give the copy away (without making one for myself) I still have not infringed.
Actually, if that copy was not legitimately created, then that would probably be an infringement of the distribution right. That point is an easily overlooked for two reasons. First, all the focus is usually placed on creating-a-copy infringement and distribution issues are the often the neglected brother. Secondly, the doctrine of First Sale terminates the copyright holder's distribution rights in particular legitimate copy when he sells it, so people ordinarily never hear about or think about distribution rights when dealing with ordinary legitimate purchased copies.
If I trade it with someone for some other movie, I still have not infringed
Not may that technically be infringement, it may technically be criminal infringement. As I said, it's pretty easy for offline activities to fall under that wildly overbroad "financial gain" criminal code as well. The fact that criminal-copyright is virtually never enforced doesn't change the fact that it exists, and that it does technically declare many tens of millions of people to be un-caught un-prosecuted felons.
If I download from Rapidshare, I'm not the one making the copy.
A long time ago I wrote a long post here on Slashdot making essentially that argument. Only the person sending a file is in a position to know for certain the contents of that file, and only they are in a position to know whether or not they have legal authority to distribute that file, and the person sending the file should be considered to be the one creating the copy.
However I've learned a lot about copyright law since then. I actually read the entire U.S. Title 17 copyright law, and I've studied countless court cases on the subject. Long story short, what is reasonable and logical and how the law should work is an entirely different from discussing what the law actually says and how the law actually works. Try to keep in mind that this is a discussion of existing law and legalities, setting aside any views on what the law should be.
The first step to explaining how the law works is to say it reserves to the copyright holder the exclusive right to create copies, the exclusive right to distribute copies, and the exclusive right to public performance. From that point, there are a vast number of exceptions to those exclusive rights, limitations to those exclusive rights, and legal doctrines saying when you are legally permitted to copy/distribute/preform something without needing permission from the copyright holder. So the first pass analysis is that it is infringement for anyone to do any of those things without permission from the copyright holder, unless you can point to some specific law or legal doctrine permitting it.
In downloading a file from Rapidshare (or anywhere), you are physically creating a copy of that file on your harddrive. In legal analysis, that is an act of creating a copy. Where you got it from does not alter the fact that you created a physical copy. That is an act of infringement unless the copyright holder has granted authority to create that copy, or unless you can cite some specific law or doctrine permitting you to create
You make the assumption that the law would be enforced on everyone all at once.
Even further, it implicitly involved the government waving a magic wand to identify the everyone officially guilty under this law :)
It was a purely abstract scenario. The point was if actual full enforcement of the law would provoke an overnight overthrow of the entire government, then perhaps the law itself is insane and intolerable even when it's not being enforced.
They'll arrest and try a few people, there will be complaints, but nothing much will happen.
If they did start arresting even just a few random ordinary P2P users I think the national media would pick up on the story, and I think they would have a field day bashing the government for how insane it was. There was a minor media circus over teens and grandmas getting sued by the RIAA, and a significant PR backlash against the RIAA for doing it. Just imagine how much bigger it would be if the story was about the government, and if the kids and grandmas were being sent to prison. I think the media would have a field day asking politicians whether they supported or opposed it.
The public in general are ignorant lazy herd animals, but they do love a good media circus, and they do enjoy a story like this to get outraged over. Of course you are right there wouldn't be rioting in the streets if they just started arresting a few people. However it would be a red-meat issue, and there would be only one politically viable side for politicians to take. They'd fall all over themselves trying to get credit for fixing the law.
-
I Googled a pair of settlement letters, and you're right I don't see any mention of the criminal law issue in them. I have seen a number of public statements from the copyright industry raising the general threat that these sorts of infringers could be subject to criminal law, and I just assumed it likely they would have included it in the settlement letters.
-
It's a civil court where these cases are going.
True, this story is about civil court lawsuits being filed. However I would wager that the "settlement offers" do explicitly raise the threat of criminal charges and prison if you don't give them the money they demand.
Having people think something is crime that can be prosecuted in criminal court when it is demonstrably not so
False. The 1997 NET Act in the US did in fact make most copyright infringement into a felony. In particular the NET Act slipped this cute redefinition into law:
101. The term "financial gain" includes receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value, including the receipt of other copyrighted works.
Any use of Bittorrent or any other P2P pretty much by definition "includes receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value, including the receipt of other copyrighted works". It is also quite easy for offline non-commercial infringement to fall under that definition.
The NET Act adds the following criminal law:
506. Criminal offenses
(a) Criminal Infringement.--Any person who infringes a copyright willfully either--
1. for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain, or
2. by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000, shall be punished as provided under section 2319 of title 18. For purposes of this subsection, evidence of reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work, by itself, shall not be sufficient to establish willful infringement.
Note that that is an "or" situation. Under the first clause, even a single minimal infringement is defined as a criminal act if it falls within that crazy redefinition for "financial gain".
The NET act also defines the criminal penalties:
Criminal infringement of a copyright
(a) Whoever violates section 506(a) (relating to criminal offenses) of title 17 shall be punished as provided in subsections (b) and (c) of this section and such penalties shall be in addition to any other provisions of title 17 or any other law.
(b) Any person who commits an offense under section 506(a)(1) of title 17--
1. shall be imprisoned not more than 5 years, or fined in the amount set forth in this title, or both, if the offense consists of the reproduction or distribution including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of at least 10 copies or phonorecords, of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $2,500;
2. shall be imprisoned not more than 10 years, or fined in the amount set forth in this title, or both, if the offense is a second or subsequent offense under paragraph (1); and
3. shall be imprisoned not more than 1 year, or fined in the amount set forth in this title, or both, in any other case.
So the penalty is up to FIVE YEARS in prison if you have uploaded or downloaded 10 or more infringing files during a half year. The penalty is up to TEN YEARS for a second offense.
Oh, and if it's only a single act of infringement of a single file, then the law is much more generous with you, the crime is merely a felony with up to ONE YEAR in prison.
If you somehow manage not to fall under the "financial gain" definition, 506(a)(2) still makes infringement a felony if the infringement has a total "retail value" of $1,000 within a half year. In that case the prison terms are merely three years if it was ten or more copies with a total retail value of $2,500, six years on a second offense, or merely up to one year in prison for a non "financial-gain" infringement with total claimed retail value under $2,500.
Probably about a quarter of the entire U.S. population are technically unindicted criminal copyright felons subject
I was handed 12 hours of video with overdriven audio that can't be corrected (there's no good correction for clipped audio)
Yes, there is a good correction. The first step is properly scaling the video to match the audio. A 10x contrast adjustment should be about right.
Then you sit down the person who gave it to you, tie them in the chair in a dark room, and make them watch the 12 hours of audio and video.
Problem corrected.
-
musical instruments (you know, those expensive things you don't have to plug in)
Pffft! I plug my harmonica into the wall.
-
Pffft! If your worried about multipath distortion from walls then you obviously have a tin ear, and probably a $5-walkman quality sound system.
Any true audiophile knows you can't hear the full richness and clarity of sound if you've got atmospheric distortion contaminating any part of your audio path. Insisting on vacuum tubes is just the first step in eliminating atmospheric distortion.
-
Doesn't work. If she has your mind then she's going to be a lesbian.
And don't even try to wiggle out by suggesting a lesbian clone would be hot for a threesome, not unless you already happen to have a kink for a threesome with another guy.
Yeah yeah, I'm critiquing a filk. But a geek filk needs to stand up to some basic logic :)
-
So, say you put a video sensor and a heat-isolated light source inside the chamber - what does it record?
The description of it being in two different places is a bit awkward. The better description is that this object is either slightly vibrating like a bell, or it's not vibrating at all. So you could say the atoms on the surface are both in the motionless position and simultaneously moved like the surface of a ringing bell, but it's not like the object as a whole is moved to a different place.
So you are trying to see a vibration on an object sitting in one spot. Furthermore this vibration is insanely small. I'm guessing the size of the movement of the surface is probably smaller than the size of a single atom.
In order to "see" a vibration this small you would need to shine a powerful light on it - either a huge number of low energy photons or maybe just one high energy photon. The general result is that however you try to "look" at it is going to hit it a lot harder than the size of the vibration you are looking for. Any method strong enough to see this incredibly small effect winds up being big enough to completely obliterate the thing you were trying to see.
It's like you have a grasshopper sitting on your table, and you've done this neat quantum trick so that it is both alive and dead. So you fire a cannonball at it to measure whether it's heart is beating. The way the cannonball bounces off will tell you that the heart *was* beating or that the heart *wasn't* beating, but either way you've splattered the grasshopper. It is no longer both alive and dead - it's heart is no longer both beating and not-beating at the same time. The cannonball will randomly detect one possibility or the other, and leave you with a boring splattered grasshopper.
Things only remain in two quantum states at the same time so long as you don't "touch" them, and any attempt to "look" at it involves bouncing a cannon ball off it.
One of the reasons scientists are so drawn to creating bigger quantum states like this is because of the intuitive expectation that "bigger" quantum stuff should show these weird quantum effects in some bigger more obvious way so that we can finally get a good look at this quantum weirdness and see what is going on, but as usual quantum mechanics confounds that intuitive hope. (Sorry for that huge run-on sentence :D)
A good way to understand quantum mechanics is almost like it's some intelligent trickster opponent deliberately hiding from sight, with an evil sense of humor about it. You are free to see the results after quantum mechanics has done it's weird stuff, but it never lets you see anything weird while it is happening. Lets say you've thought up some neat experiment that should enable to get a forbidden peek at this hidden weird quantum stuff while it's happening. There's a pretty good rule of thumb you can use to figure out how your experiment will turn out... think of quantum mechanics as that evil opponent deliberately hiding from you and then then try to figure out how it's going to sabotage you so you can't actually get a look. That's how the physics will actually turn out. The evil opponent rigged the rules of physics to screw up your attempt to get a peek, and he rigged those rules long before you dreamt up your clever idea to try to peek.
Quantum mechanics is much easier to understand once you just accept that the weird nonsensical stuff is real and works, and once you just accept that the laws of physics are an evil conspiracy to keep the weird stuff hidden. Quantum mechanics can do useful work and do apparently "impossible" things for you, once you abandon all hope of peeking behind the curtain.
-
To infer from this that it went through both slits is, at best, non-sequitur, and at worse, philosophy.
I want to argue against your comment, and agree with it, at the same time.
You've Schroedinger's catified me!
-
Tell them that they ought to look up the weird uncle first.
Actually they should look at the father first, the weird uncle second, the normal uncle third, and after that move on to the priest and the mother.
And just to vent another beef, I really hate the way reporters and politicians going wacko demonizing the internet. Aside from the fact that almost all abuse is either within the family or family-trusted links such as priests, there is another communication system that pre-dates the internet and which has been used by vastly larger numbers of pedophiles to communicate with children in their homes. That communication network is, of course, the telephone. Almost all "anti-pedo" internet laws (proposed laws or actual laws) should by all logic and by any rational standard, equally apply to telephones. Of course such laws would only draw raging public ridicule if they were proposed in relation to telephones.
-
the fact that teenagers are universally fucking retarded
Actually I'd say people are universally fucking retarded (although I admit I tend to consider myself slightly less retarded than average).
it makes a hell of a lot of sense to bind sex up in taboos and rules
Taboos and rules work well with toddlers and small children, where "because I said so" is a solid justification for "don't stick your head in the stove". However teenagers develop bullshit-detectors, and they actively rebel against taboos and fraudulent/irrational rules. This is why, as studies have demonstrated, teens have sex earlier and get pregnant more often and get more STDs when people like you try to shovel abstinence only education programs down their throats. They recognize that they are being force-feed hypocritical and fantasy-land crap, and they lose respect for the people feeding it to them and actively reject everything associated with it. When subjected to taboos-and-rules crap, they disdain the pregnancy and STD warnings as scare tactics. It gets mentally disregarded as just more unreliable preachy garbage.
Teens inherently become aware of sexuality, they feel it within themselves in addition to seeing that it exists in society around them. And when they are offered information regarding sex, when they are treated with respect and they are offered accurate informative useful information about sex, they eagerly devour that information. It is just about the only area of education where students will almost universally skip hanging with their friends for the chance to go to class and learn about a subject. When they get useful and informative information about sex, they actually value that information, and they value and respect that teacher for being straight with them. When they are taught about the likelihood of pregnancy in a non-preachy non-moralizing non-scaretactic manner, when they are taught honestly about the relatively low but very real risks of various STDs, taught that they can run to the doctor to cure most STDs, taught that herpes is relatively minor but incurable, taught that AIDs is rare but obviously very serious and incurable, they take those risks more seriously than when the taboo-and-rules approach tries to inflate them into some laughable boogiemonster scare tactic. Teens taught comprehensive sex-ed actually do delay their first sex somewhat, and when they do engage in sex they do so far more safely with less pregnancy and less STDs.
The taboo-and-rules approach to telling kinds not to have sex just backfires, and they develop disdain for everything you have to say about sex. Abstinence education causes teens to have sex earlier, causes teen pregnancy to increase, and it just fuels the spread of STDs.
Preachy moralizing abstinence crusaders are hurting kids. They make things worse, but they are on such a self-righteous crusade that they go into full blown denial. Their cause is good, their intent is good, they want to make things better and help people, and they refuse to accept the possibility that they are making things worse. They are the good-guys doing the good-thing so they ignore or reject evidence that they are actually causing harm.
Furthermore, sex offenders are disproportionately raised (created) in deeply religious taboo-and-rules sexually repressive homes. If you are looking for some sexually sick fuck raping and torturing and murdering women, and you have two suspects, one raised on a hippy free-love commune and the other raised in a deeply religious taboo-riddled sexually repressive home, police statistics say the taboo-raised suspect is almost certainly the guilty one.
Furthermore, there are abundant cases of countries that changed their laws on pornography (either criminalizing it or decriminalizing it), and the fact is that rape and other sex crimes are significantly HIGHER when a culture represses and criminalizes porn, the fact is that rape and other sex crimes are significantly LOWER when a culture accepts
No sane person would call teens sending their teenage boy/girlfriends a dirty picture of themselves pedophiles or bring them up on child porn charges.
The law does say that, but in this case the law is neither sane nor does it qualify as a person. So I guess your statement remains technically correct :)
-
The reality is that many people feel they must do whatever is necessary to please others. So many girls are raped because a guy says, "do it for me" or other pressures.
Yeah... I went to a used car lot and I asked the sales man to sell me a car for $500 below the sticker price, and he decided to go along with my request. An obvious case of theft.
Yeah... and when a man doesn't want to have sex, and a woman seduces him into changing his mind, that's obviously rape too.
Rape is a serious crime, and you're making a mockery of it.
And perhaps you recall the news story of a 17 year old guy who was sentenced to a mandatory 10 year minimum prison term for "statutory rape", for preforming consensual oral sex on his 15 year old girlfriend? Another example making a complete mockery of rape.
-
When in Texas I buy the Extra Large condoms to cover my Bibles in case it rains.
-
Abstinence only education works about as well as Prohibition did.
Bad analogy. As far as I'm aware Prohibition did not cause an increase in the drinking rate and alcohol-related diseases.
-
If you have sex and use a condom, there is a 2% chance of failure. Every time.
You are misinterpreting standard terminology. As someone else mentioned, terminology for condom failure is a per year statistic. The pregnancy rate for regular condom users is 2% per year.
If we conservatively assume a typical condom user having sex just twice per week, that would mean 104 condom uses resulting in a 2% chance of producing a single pregnancy. That means 104*50 = 5200 condom uses on average to result in a single pregnancy. That means a 99.98% success (non-pregnancy) rate per usage, and a 0.02% failure (pregnancy) rate per usage. The average usage rate with condoms is probably more like double that, especially when you factor in that people occasionally have sex / use a condom two or even three times in a single night. That would put the true statistics for condoms closer to 99.99% success vs 0.01% chance of pregnancy per use.
I didn't say you were "statistically likely" to get pregnant after fifty tries.
If we multiply what you said out over 50 times, yes, that is exactly what you said.
You said "If you have sex and use a condom, there is a 2% chance of failure. Every time.". A little basic math multiplying it 50 times works out to 36.4% non-pregnancy rate vs a 63.6% chance of (one or more) pregnancy.
If you aren't ready to accept the natural consequences of the result of an act, then maybe you shouldn't be doing that act.
Wow, that is a mind-boggling argument. I is really no different from "if man were meant to fly then God would have given us wings" suggesting that it is WRONG or BAD to build airplanes. Doh. Are you naked, living in a cave, and hunting berries and squirrels with your bare hands?
The "natural consequences" of jumping out of an airplane is falling to your death.
Therefore you argue there is something wrong with using parachutes??
The "natural consequences" of going deep under water is drowning.
Therefore you argue there is something wrong with using scuba gear??
What sort of wacky logic is that?
Some people consider jumping out of airplanes to be fun. Well, if someone finds that fun, we've invented these neat things call parachutes exactly to prevent the "natural consequences" of jumping out of an airplane.
And just to follow through on that analogy, if someone jumps out of an airplane and their parachute fails and they crash into some trees or something and they are bleeding to death, then you suggest there is something wrong with calling in a doctor to treat that condition and prevent the bleeding from continuing on to its "natural consequence" of death? If your scuba gear fails and you inhale some water then you suggest there is something wrong with you having a doctor intervene to prevent your drowning condition from proceeding to your "natural consequence" death?
-
I'd do it, but I'm already too busy reviewing the evidence.
-
I completely agree with all the problems you cite for a .kids type domain, and I completely agree the correct thing to do would be for people to use second level walledgarden.org type domains. However the world sucks, stupid people routinely demand idiotic and destructive things, and politicians all too often give it to them.
So while I agree with everything you say, I support a .kids type domain to the extent that it can be used to siphon off these people and their bad ideas. It provides an outlet where these people can satisfy their crusade-compulsion and they can play out their bad ideas. A place where they can fight with each other over all of the problems you list, a place they can do all the dumb things they like and cause all the damage they wish, all within a contained area. All without causing any harm or damage outside their pointless harmless .kids domain.
You're right the correct thing for them to do is just apply for a routine second level domain where they can do whatever they like, but obviously they already can do that, and obviously they are not going to be satisfied with that. These activists don't actually want to set up some kid-safe area, they don't actually want to do anything themselves, they are fighting to make the do something. They don't want to solve their problem, they want the government to solve it for them. And their "problem" isn't that they don't like what they are accessing on the internet, their problem is that they don't like what other people can find on the internet. They don't want something fixed for themselves, they are crusaders who want to forcibly impose their "help" upon everyone else. They are fanatically "helpful" people who want to run around forcibly applying leaches to everyone in order to prevent fictional diseases.
I say a bad idea such as a .kids domain might be a useful idea if it gives these destructively-helpful people the illusion that they are successfully helping their intended victims.... err I mean helping their intended beneficiaries.
Now I admit that it may lead to a problem with these people making demands that schools and libraries have some sort of mandatory filter restricted to the .kids domain. And yes, I acknowledge that some children (and adults) may become victims of that sort of idiocy. However I believe that attempting to impose that sort of filter would be completely unworkable and it would be an almost instantaneous blatant failure. I believe it would result in far less harm than their current efforts to impose upon students some ideological-candyland version of the full internet.
Hell, in an ideal world I would fully support a .xxx domain. In theory it's a great idea. Let porn sites or anyone else grab a .xxx domain if they like, cool. The only reason I don't support it is because in the real world idiots view .xxx as some sort of "fix" for their "problem", and then they obviously expect that "fix" to actually work for solving their problem. They expect "bad" stuff is supposed to be in the .xxx domain, and only within the .xxx domain. So they expect laws to make that true, they expect laws to force things to actually work the way they want and expect them to work. They start demanding stupid destructive and unworkable laws to imprison anyone who puts "objectionable" material on a normal general website. And then all of the problems you list in your post become a catastrophic plague upon the internet itself.
The only problem with your post is that you offered a reasonable rational solution. You often can't fix an unreasonable irrational fanatical people-problem with a reasonable rational fix.
-
Firstly, you shouldn't have been modded troll. I guess the moderator couldn't find the -1 Mistaken mod option ;)
The things I've heard about
A perfect example of what we are talking about - how how cultural groups can selectively ignore overwhelming data when it has "unappealing" implications for their beliefs, and who cultural groups can selectively accept and selectively reinforce anything to support what they would prefer to be true. More than 99 percent of the general public knows squat about climatology and the evidence. They know nothing about it, and they know they know nothing about it. So what people routinely do is turn to "trusted authorities" to learn what the main important points are and what the correct final position is. Those "trusted authorities" tend to be the icons of cultural groups. For example people who culturally identify with some group will tend to receive (and trust) information and arguments from a small number of famous and influential individuals. A significant point here is that individuals often become icons for some group exactly because they are highly motivated to hold and defend certain beliefs. These icons study some subject for any scrap of information to support their position. They take a big complex issue and boil it down to a small number of key points to support that position. The general public cannot become experts in every subject and on every issue. The general public hears cherry-picked information, potentially misleading cherry-picked points to make a case. And from there it turns into public relations war of opinion. Instead of looking objectively at all of the information, it becomes a matter of trusting the judgment and opinions of their own group and their own cultural icons, and it becomes a matter of reflexively rejecting conflicting data on the basis that it is cannot be trusted. No rational consideration of information - just the simple mental shortcut of dismissing other sources source as biased and untrustworthy.
Lets look at the list you gave:
The things I've heard about include miscalibrated sensors
Yes, scientists is every field inevitably have to deal with miscalibrated sensors. They inevitably happen, they inevitably exist. And someone who wants to look for them they will find them. If someone wants to make a list of them, to publish, they can do so. However a rather obvious point is that when miscalibrations happen the error can go in either direction, and that the two possibilities are generally statistically equal. And we get to the problem of people cherry picking misleading "data" to support a position. If you you cherry pick and publish examples that all go in the same direction then you can manufacture a fiction pointing in a desired direction.
And a further point, most common reason people can point to known miscalibrations is exactly because the scientists involved identified that miscalibration, corrected for that miscalibration, and communicated that information exactly for the purpose of ensuring everyone else involved corrected for that error.
There are dozens of satellites, thousands of aerial instruments, and tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of ground instruments. If someone wants to cherry-pick a few specific cases in order to paint a misleading picture, it not hard to do so.
The things I've heard about include ... locations that got hotter due to the urban heat island effect
Yeah. Scientists figured that out almost exactly two hundred. The effect was first published in 1810.
Yes, the urban heat island effect does present a real challenge to analyzing the data from some locations. Scientists already KNOW that. They already account for that. Just to illustrate, the urban heat effect is very large at night but very small during the day. So to a first approximation, you can compare day-vs-night temperatures for each location to identify where it is happening and how big the effect is. That is obviously an oversim
Denialists have eternally been trying to claim evolution is impossible, and that a scientific explanation for the origin of the first life is impossible. You've doubtless hear the tired old denialist line comparing it to having a tornado blow through a junk yard and having it RANDOMLY assemble a 747. Denialists saying that it requires hundreds of protiens in a complex cell, and coming up with wild probability calculations for it.
This experiment proves for the twelve-billionth time that evolution does work and does actually happen, and it proves yet again how clueless the denialist claims and calculations are. Evolution doesn't start with the first complex cell - evolution starts from the simplest replicator. We still don't know what the first simplest replicator was, but this experiment demonstrates that all it takes is a single molecule. This is merely one proof-of-principle example of a single molecule replicator. It is merely one example out of countless possible molecules capable of self replication. And as I indicated earlier, this is hardly going to be the simplest replicator, we still haven't discovered the simplest replicator.
Quoting from your other post:
it's just like a mechanic taking parts from a bunch of different cars, slapping them together, getting something that turns over, and then expressing surprise that a car was able to arise from all of the jumbled parts.
No, it's more like they stuck three sticks of wood together in a triangle, stuck a wheel on each corner to make a primitive tricycle. And the huge point is that they witnessed it replicate and EVOLVE and IMPROVE. This is not about some idiotic tornado blowing trough a junk yard and RANDOMLY assembling a 747. This is about three sticks and three wheels making a replicating tricycle, and then you look back later and start finding working bicycles, and then you look back later you start seeing go-carts. And those go-carts will eventually evolve into model-T Fords, and those model T-Fords will eventually evolve into Rolls Royces and Formula 1 race cars. And they will evolve into Wright-brothers-style almost-sorta-kinda-flying contraptions, which will evolve into biplanes, which eventually evolve into simple jets, which eventually evolve into 747s.
No idiotic tornados randomly making 747s in a junk yard. Evolution is real, evolution works, and evolution does automatically produce a continuing line of successive improvements. Once evolution gets started it can and *will* assemble 747s. And it can get started with 3 sticks and three wheels that kinda-sorta form a primitive tricycle. And no one believes that three-sticks-and-three-wheels tricycle is the actual first and simplest that go things started. We still don't know the simplest replicator that can get things started. But we do know it can be just a single molecule, and we know we had an entire planet covered in almost limitless constantly changing random complex molecules, and there are an almost limitless number of molecule forms that can replicate, and there were hundreds of millions of years for any one of those molecules to come across any one of the possible replicators.
And this is also just one experiment, and it obviously only demonstrates the few limited things it was designed to test, just like you don't demonstrate all of Relativity in one particular experiment. For example another interesting experiment I'm aware of has demonstrated that basic lipids - the stuff that makes up the skin of actual cells - can self-assemble into hollow cells, that those empty "cells" can grow my naturally sucking up any additional free lipids they bump into, and that those empty "cells" can can naturally divide into a pair of child "cells" merely from physical agitation such as waves or splashing. Whatever chemicals are inside those natural non-living lipid cells would obviously be split to the insides of the split cells. And other experiments have been working with simple metabolism-style chemical reactions that can grow and evolve while multiplying acros
I made a typo. Now I'm going to hell.
Oh jeez. They're letting everybody in these days.
-