When I see the Scientologists doing this *then* they can call themselves a religion
I'm not sure if Scientology runs a multitude of drug rehab type programs. In fact Scientology probably does far MORE drug addict and rehab work than Christianity does, when you take the relative size of the two Churches into account.
So there ya go, by your own standard Scientology is a religion.
until the they remain a cult that is deceptive and evil.
Oh, they're still a cult and still deceptive and still evil. But as the saying goes the definition of "cult" is "a small unpopular religion", and the definition of "religion" is "a large popular cult".
Scientology is still very young and very rough around the edges, but again they just proves how Scientology is no different than Christianity. Come now, do I really need to run down the list for you on how much uglier and VASTLY more evil Christianity has been in the past? Given the same age and time to evolve that Christianity has gone through, Scientology too will almost certainly drop some of the nastier bits and softent around the edges, exactly as Christianity has done.
And any argument based on charity work is factious anyway. If someone prays to a plastic Barbie doll *and* they give food to the homeless, that does not make paying to Barbie dolls any more or any less a religion, and that it does not make magical beliefs in Barbie dolls any more true or false.
Scientology stories about galactic emperors and alien mind-control spirits are silly, but no more silly than Christian stories about talking snakes and magic apples. The ONLY substantive difference between them is that Christianity is about 35 times older and has had about 35 times as long to smooth out the rough edges and become more socially acceptable and socially functional, and has had about 35 times as long for it's silly stories to become socially accepted fairy tales. Christians teach their children stories about talking snakes at the same age kids that believe stories about Santa Clause. If Scientology were as old and part of the social mainstream as Christianity, them people would grow up familiar with an accepting Scientology's nutty stories the same way they gloss over Christianity's nutty stories.
Imagine you met someone who grew up on a an island somewhere or something and never heard any of the Christian Bible stories growing up. Seriously now, what do you think he would say if you tried to tell him the Bible story about talking snakes and magic apples? Seriously now, are you going to deny that he consider talking snake and magic apple stories to be quote 'silly'? Are you seriously going to deny that he would consider talking snake and magic apple stories to be equally as silly as the Scientology stories?
Go ahead, tell me you think stories about talking snakes are somehow less silly than UFO stories.
On one hand that is a valid clarification, but on the other hand it's kinda like when creationists try and cite electrical engineers and such as "many scientists doubt evolution". People should specify that it's climatologists/biologists who are in effectively unanimous agreement, but people are only experts and only relevant within their own field anyway.
And really it was just that "Petroleum geologists are at 47%" struck me as particularly funny:)
Your denialism is about as misguided as that of truthers, birthers or moon landing denialists
Heay! Don't be lumping us with those wacky climate denialists! Just because Obama was born on the moon and helped take down the Twin Towers with his moon meteors doesn't mean we can't be green!
Let's hope the political debate is stifled until some meaningful consensus can be reached.
Someone did a study reviewing every single climatology-related paper in a database of published science papers. There were about 900 of them in the database. He found about 30% dealt strictly with methodology or prehistoric climate and could not possibly be interpreted as having any position on the current climate. He found about 70% of them either explicitly or implicitly accepted anthropogenic global warming. He found 0% of them - in fact exactly ZERO papers - that disputed anthropogenic global warming. Exactly zero papers out of an entire database with about 900 climatology papers. Not one single solitary paper challenging it.
Does that satisfy your standard for "meaningful consensus"? Do we now have your permission to proceed?
Science does not go hand-in-hand with majority opinion - neither does science require consensus, nor does consensus imply any connection to reality.
Yesterday I spoke to 8 different mechanics at 8 different gas stations, and the consensus was that the brakes on my car were about to fail and I needed to replace them. I told them pretty much the same thing you just said.
And earlier today I saw 12 different doctors and they all told me that I had an appendicitis and it was about to burst and that I needed surgery or I'd die, and I told them too pretty much the same thing you just said.
I don't trust people with edumacations, I especially don't trust them when they all agree.
it seems that the carbon dioxide levels increase about 40 to 50 years *after* the temperature increase.
I've got a friend on the phone right now screaming that his tire blew out and that his car is careening out of control and about to fly off a cliff, but I told him it's OK not to worry. I've seen records of other cars that have gone over cliffs and crashed where the crash caused one or more tires to blow out.
So that proves it. A car crashing over a cliff can cause a tire to blow out, which proves that his tire blowing out *CAN'T* cause his car to go over a cliff. I'm sure he's glad to know he's perfectly safe.
See, in 2000, under President Clinton, Federal Tax receipts were $2025.5 billion or 20% of the GDP. In 2008, under President Bush, they were $2524.3 billion, but only 17.7% of the GDP. See, when you cut taxes, the GDP (economy) grows
The natural state of the economy is growth due to improvements in technology and sheer population growth. Except during depression, the pie is always getting bigger.
Using the figures from your own link I get a long term average natural growth rate of over 6.7%. (Note: I deliberately excluded the freakishly high growth years 1940-1943, which would have put the figure even higher.)
The 2008 revenues at 17.7% should have been just over $2884 billion merely based on 8 years of average economic progress from 2000. Claiming the Bush tax cut raised revenues is wrong. After 8 years under Bush revenues were far lower than they should have been compared to doing exactly nothing and 8 years of routine economic progress.
The Laffer Curve points out that a 0% tax rate will produce zero revenues and that a 100% tax rate will as well, and that the peak is in between. The notion that we are on the right-hand declining side of the curve, the idea that cutting existing tax rates would increase revenues, is considered laughable by all but the most radical economists.
Bush spent WAY too much money. Obama is spending much much more money. So if you are upset about Bush's spending, you should be really pissed about Obama's. If not, you are blinded by your own partisanship.
I've been bitching about the debt for years, and I am really not happy about the current increase in debt. But there is an entirely NONPARTISAN difference. When there is an economic downturn government revenues are going to drop, and you need to maintain or increase government spending to prop the economy up. In fact that is the best time to take care of things like bridge and other infrastructure maintenance. Large long term debt is a bad thing, and any debt run up because of an economic slump should damn well be paid off during economically prosperous times.
Regardless of any of Reagan's social or political positions, he pulled out the credit card and ran up a massive debt just because he felt like it, not because some failing economy threw his budget out of whack. He just found it politically popular to sell the public on tax cuts while promising the public all sorts of popular spending goodies. Tax cuts and spending on various things are both popular with the voters. We bought into the Candyland Trickle Down economics and and the Laffer Curve fantasy that cutting tax rates would increase revenues because it let him promise voters tax cuts AND more government goodies. And the fact is that he was proved wrong on both economic fantasies. TrickleDown economics didn't work, WelfareForTheRich policies just made the rich get richer while the poor got poorer, and the Laffer Curve was proven wrong by the massive budget shortfalls and level of debt unprecedented since World War II.
Regardless of any of Bush-1's social or political positions, he continued Reagan's fiscally irresponsible taxcut-borrow-and-spend policies running up the debt way higher.
Regardless of any of Clinton's social or political positions, he was fiscally responsible. He raised government revenues and controlled spending to actually produce a budget surplus, and was on track to pay off the credit card bills left behind by both Reagan and Bush-1 in just a few more years.
Regardless of any of Bush-2's social or political positions, he promptly blew the budget surplus Clinton left behind, he handed out another WelfareForTheRich massive tax cut slashing government revenues, and as you so aptly put it went wild eyed "drunken sailor spending" massively running up the debt, and leaving the economy on the brink of a depression to boot.
Regardless of any of Obama's social or political positions, he's struggling to be fiscally responsible after being dumped into virtually the worst of all poss
When you impair efficient economic activity via aggression (e.g. by coercing others into reducing CO2 emissions without substantial evidence of harm)
Perhaps you missed the part where the head of the EPA did in fact find "substantial evidence of harm", after being told by the US Supreme Court that the EPA was required by law to preform exactly that review&evaluation of the available evidence?
Global warming is now a religious debate, which I actually find scary since it basically means science has become a bunch of meaningless morality (and world-view enforcing) bullshit. In these situations there can be no meaningful debate (between experts, us lay people know jack shit, and should at least have the common courtesy to admit it), which basically means there can be no science.
For what it's worth, the "religious debate" on things like evolution and global warming is merely a social/political issue. There's no problem within the scientific community and science itself is getting along just fine.
One researcher went to a database of published science papers and pulled out every single paper in the system tagged "climatology", about nine hundred. He found that about 30% dealt strictly with methodology or prehistoric climate and could not be interpreted as having any position on anthropogenic global warming. He found 70% either explicitly or implicitly accepted anthropogenic global warming. He found 0% - exactly zero climatology papers - denying anthropogenic global warming. This is a political controversy and a politically-inspired public controversy, there is no genuine scientific controversy over the general issue. The only scientific controversy is routine legitimate scientific controversy over some of the details and trying to model the future course of events.
Form a physics point of view the fundamental point is trivial. It is a trivial undisputed fact of physics that carbon dioxide and methane and various other gasses *do* trap infrared radiation (heat). It is an undisputed fact that humans have quite substantially increased the atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide and methane and various other gasses. It is a trivial result that increased levels of these gasses will increase the infrared (heat) trapping effect. The more complicated part is calculating the size of the effect, and the hard part is predicting the future, and the really really hard part is predicting how that effect will interact with earth's complicated climate system. But the basic point, the basic reality of the effect, is trivial undisputed physics.
Just because "lay people know jack shit, and should at least have the common courtesy to admit it" are having religious style debates doesn't mean there's any scientific controversy, and doesn't mean there can be no science.
I had wondered about the earth's magnetic field too, but I think get it now.
Any charge imbalance gets very very quickly evened out.
Evening out a charge imbalance means a movement of electric charge. That is an electric current, which creates a magnetic field. Magnetic fields induce electric fields. In the extreme case of light a collapsing electric field creates a magnetic field which then collapses into an electric in a self sustaining cycle. In a theoretical lossless situation any initial electric or magnetic field in a conductor with create a self sustaining cycle. A magnet will self-sustainingly levitate above a super conductor because the magnet induces a lossless electric current and lossless opposing magnetic field. So in the ideal lossless situation even the slightest initial electric or magnetic imbalance in the earth would result in a self sustaining cycle.
The earth, or a sphere of mercury, are normal conductors, and obviously have resistive losses. Any electric or magnetic field will tend to decay to zero unless you have an energy input. Thermal convection is that energy input sustaining thecycle. Now consider this - if an energy input can sustain that cycle then a larger energy input can amplify that cycle. In the ideal zero field case convection will amplify a zero field back to a zero field, but even the slightest random non-zero field influence will get amplified into a larger non-zero field. Any non-zero electric or magnetic influence from the sun or a meteor or a lightening or anything else will get amplified by that thermal convection energy input.
sphere of mercury with a heat source at the middle making the mercury convect... What's different about a planet-sized glob of stuff with an outer core of molten iron?
Scale. A one mile per hour water current in a puddle contains a minuscule amount of energy and will decay to zero in seconds due to friction losses. A one mile per hour water current in the Atlantic ocean constitutes a colossal store of inertial energy, and losses to friction are (relatively) negligible.
Resistance losses go up as the square of the rate of current. The earth is so huge that even the most minuscule rate of current flow represents an enormous quantity electrons and generates a significant magnetic field. Any laboratory-scale sphere of mercury would need a vastly larger rate of current flow to generate a measurable magnetic field, and field decay to resistance would dominate at the square of the rate of current.
Looking at it graphically, decay effects are like a U shaped curve. A laboratory scale blob of convecting mercury constitutes a fairly small gross quantity of convection energy flow, and will quickly resistance-settle to the immeasurably close to the exact bottom of that U almost immediately. Scaling things up to planet size is like taking a microscope to the virtually flat bottom at the middle of the U. The gross quantity of convection energy input is enormous, and it will feed into any variation from zero and push it pretty far off of the zero point. It will amplify it until the square-of-current resistance energy losses become large enough to balance the convection energy input.
With Google as the search provider, it goes to Google. With Bing as the provider, it goes to Bing. With Yahoo as the provider, it goes to Yahoo... Hell, with eBay as the selected provider, it searches eBay.
You get the picture. ^ Porn.com
Say an inventor comes up with a brilliant new algorithm
You're begging the question.
"Say a Brain Surgeon comes up with a brilliant new tail fin for rockets." That does not mean rocket science is brain surgery, and it certainly does not make rockets into brains.
But more to the point, the Supreme Court has explicitly and repeatedly ruled out the notion of inventing/patenting algorithms:
algorithm, or mathematical formula, is like a law of nature, which cannot be the subject of a patent
and
the Court made it clear that an improved method of calculation, even when employed as part of a physical process, is not patentable subject matter under 101. Finally, the Court explained the correct procedure for analyzing a patent claim employing a mathematical algorithm. Under this procedure, the algorithm is treated for 101 purposes as though it were a familiar part of the prior art; the claim is then examined to determine whether it discloses "some other inventive concept."
You cannot "invent" a number. You cannot "invent" math. You cannot "invent" an algorithm. You cannot "invent" software. All numbers, all math, all algorithms, all software, must be treated as a familiar part of the prior art for patent purposes.
The last several Supreme Court on the subject have consistently rejected the notion of inventing algorithms. The entire extent of the Supreme Court's position favorable towards software+patents is the consistent and trivial point that the existence of a calculation or algorithm somewhere withing an otherwise patentable physical process does magically remove that novel non-obvious physical process from patentability. The entire extent of the Supreme Court's position favorable towards software+patents is that if you come up with some new physical process for turning lead into gold, the fact that you do some math somewhere during that physical process does not prohibit it from being patented.
You've stated that this is just one example of how courts tend to think this way, but that's still too hand-wavey for me.
That's a reasonable challenge and I really should cite some more examples, but to be honest digging around for half-remembered court cases isn't an appealing prospect at the moment:/ There's a chance I'll dig something up later, but most likely I'll just leave that thought on the back burner of my brain until the next time I'm searching copyright court cases for some other reason.
Does wrapping a copyrighted work in something purely functional (i.e. not copyrightable in isolation) result in a (copyrightable?) derivative work?
I'm not sure I'm completely comfortable with the word "wrapping" there, but I see the point your making. The first thing I would like to note is that a hash is technically a purely derivative thing, and a signed hash is also technically a pure derivative of the program+key (and actually a secondhand pure derivative of the GPLed_Source+key). The reason it is not legally protected by copyright, and IMO should not be protected, is because it is too short to be protectable. In that sense, no comparably sized part of an executable is protectable in isolation.
I still see it coming back to the issue of what is and is not part of the executable. If a TiVo signature is part of the executable then it makes no sense to ask whether it would be protectable in isolation. All parts of the executable, including the signature, are derivative of the GPLed source, even if each part is too small for independent protection.
If it is part of the executable then it is part of "the work".
I do not see how an informative signature would be part of an executable, and I don't see how it makes sense to say a program would be "wrapped" by an informative signature. That sort of signature is a functionally independent entity. It's more like publishing the name and size of a program, independent information not intended to be part of the work itself.
The fact that it is capable of accessing DRM-restricted media doesn't make the device inherently evil.
Yes it does, because they expect to put innocent people in PRISON if you unscrew the case of the product you bought and touch the hardware or software.
So NO, the fact that someone never touches DRM-restricted media does not make any difference. They still expect to put you in prison even if you never touch a single piece of DRM content.
Your interpretation was pretty well correct. I was just tossing off a joke at the expense of my own gender, so I'm not sure I should even continue, but I guess I'll reply anyway.
free will. I can hear the eyes rolling about this being a cop out
Actually I'd say it's not even a cop out. I think it actually fails to answer the problem.
I can't numerically measure "respectfulness", but I would say in my rough estimation opinion that women are about equally respectful of men as men are of women. If God designed men to be respectful, then one would presume that that "designing" would have some noticeable effect. You can point to men and women having free will to justify exceptions, but if "designing men to respect women" has no effect at all then what, if any, meaning is there in claiming such designing?
I had trouble following the intent of your last paragraph. One phrase I focused on was "He created them with that inclination" which says to me that you are still talking about some sort of designing that should still have a significant noticeable effect. I'm not sure, but I don't think your last paragraph affects my question above.
Of course it was noticed, because Tivo was doing it
Your sentence contains the word "it" twice, but they refer to two different things.
Of course people noticed what TiVo was doing. That is the second "it" in your sentence. However the first "it" properly refers to my comment "no one has noticed or pursued this particular legal angle". That legal angle being that the executable TiVo was distributing was not merely the naked unsigned executable. I'm saying no one considered the point that the signature is actually part of the file format and integral startup code for executables on that platform.
Further, the stated goals of the GPLv3 include not limiting the use of digital signatures for other purposes (e.g. authenticity). Your argument would seem to apply to those as well.
Then you did not understand what I was trying to explain. To put it most simply:
If something is intended to function as part of the executable then it *is* part of the executable.
Let's say you compile a normal PC executable and create a purely informative authenticity signature. The signature is not part of the executable because it is not intended to function as part of the executable. You know the unsigned executable is "the executable" because you could just as well have distributed it without the signature. The presence or absence of the signature does not alter the program itself.
But as I said before, this definition is meaningless in the context of the GPL, because the GPL does not use it.
And and I said before, the GPL uses "program" and it uses "executable", and unless I've missed something you have not given any argument that an iPhone signature isn't in fact an operational part of an iPhone executable, and unless I've missed something I don't think you've refuted my statement that courts *do* define "program" and "executable" to encompass platform-specific checks when executing a program. You commented on how courts tend to rule in ambiguous contracts, and I agree with what you said. However I don't really think that's very relevant here. You can't go into court and claim the term "program" is ambiguous just because you don't like the terms of some contract or license. I think the courts are pretty un-ambiguous on the point that the software initialization process (and specifically including platform-specific checks) are a part of the program itself. Just because TiVo doesn't want to call it part of the program is not enough to invalidate the factual functional makeup of a program, nor enough to invalidate the legal definition of a program.
The FSF's own lawyers disagree with you
If they do dissagree, I would really like to see what they've said. Can you point me to anyplace where they discuss the idea of TiVo-type signatures being part of the distributed executable itself?
But don't claim they *disagree* if they merely never discussed it and they possibly never considered it.
your interpretation is in opposition to the stated goals of the GPL.
If you mean the authenticity signature thing, then no. Unless I missed something, the only think conflicting with GPL goals was your misunderstanding of what I was trying to say. This does not affect signatures unless they are a functional part of the executable.
Either you are brilliant, and have outsmarted the FSF's lawyers
Actually I am brilliant (grin), but the FSF does have some extremely smart lawyers. The issue I am raising is is a very subtle point and very easy to miss. The unsigned executable is *an* executable, and it is extremely natural to think it's the executable being distributed, without giving it a second thought. I think it is at least possible they never considered that the apparent executable might not be the actual executable.
or there are problems with your assumptions or reasoning that are leading you to a faulty conclusion.
That is possible. I may be brilliant, but I am definitely fallible, and my kno
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When I see the Scientologists doing this *then* they can call themselves a religion
I'm not sure if Scientology runs a multitude of drug rehab type programs. In fact Scientology probably does far MORE drug addict and rehab work than Christianity does, when you take the relative size of the two Churches into account.
So there ya go, by your own standard Scientology is a religion.
until the they remain a cult that is deceptive and evil.
Oh, they're still a cult and still deceptive and still evil. But as the saying goes the definition of "cult" is "a small unpopular religion", and the definition of "religion" is "a large popular cult".
Scientology is still very young and very rough around the edges, but again they just proves how Scientology is no different than Christianity. Come now, do I really need to run down the list for you on how much uglier and VASTLY more evil Christianity has been in the past? Given the same age and time to evolve that Christianity has gone through, Scientology too will almost certainly drop some of the nastier bits and softent around the edges, exactly as Christianity has done.
And any argument based on charity work is factious anyway. If someone prays to a plastic Barbie doll *and* they give food to the homeless, that does not make paying to Barbie dolls any more or any less a religion, and that it does not make magical beliefs in Barbie dolls any more true or false.
Scientology stories about galactic emperors and alien mind-control spirits are silly, but no more silly than Christian stories about talking snakes and magic apples. The ONLY substantive difference between them is that Christianity is about 35 times older and has had about 35 times as long to smooth out the rough edges and become more socially acceptable and socially functional, and has had about 35 times as long for it's silly stories to become socially accepted fairy tales. Christians teach their children stories about talking snakes at the same age kids that believe stories about Santa Clause. If Scientology were as old and part of the social mainstream as Christianity, them people would grow up familiar with an accepting Scientology's nutty stories the same way they gloss over Christianity's nutty stories.
Imagine you met someone who grew up on a an island somewhere or something and never heard any of the Christian Bible stories growing up. Seriously now, what do you think he would say if you tried to tell him the Bible story about talking snakes and magic apples? Seriously now, are you going to deny that he consider talking snake and magic apple stories to be quote 'silly'? Are you seriously going to deny that he would consider talking snake and magic apple stories to be equally as silly as the Scientology stories?
Go ahead, tell me you think stories about talking snakes are somehow less silly than UFO stories.
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You are hereby ordered to cease and desist using our trademarked phrase: "We're dicks so the good-guys can one-up us".
-- The SCO legal team
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On one hand that is a valid clarification, but on the other hand it's kinda like when creationists try and cite electrical engineers and such as "many scientists doubt evolution". People should specify that it's climatologists/biologists who are in effectively unanimous agreement, but people are only experts and only relevant within their own field anyway.
And really it was just that "Petroleum geologists are at 47%" struck me as particularly funny :)
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Your denialism is about as misguided as that of truthers, birthers or moon landing denialists
Heay! Don't be lumping us with those wacky climate denialists! Just because Obama was born on the moon and helped take down the Twin Towers with his moon meteors doesn't mean we can't be green!
Fox Rocks!
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Let's hope the political debate is stifled until some meaningful consensus can be reached.
Someone did a study reviewing every single climatology-related paper in a database of published science papers. There were about 900 of them in the database. He found about 30% dealt strictly with methodology or prehistoric climate and could not possibly be interpreted as having any position on the current climate. He found about 70% of them either explicitly or implicitly accepted anthropogenic global warming. He found 0% of them - in fact exactly ZERO papers - that disputed anthropogenic global warming. Exactly zero papers out of an entire database with about 900 climatology papers. Not one single solitary paper challenging it.
Does that satisfy your standard for "meaningful consensus"? Do we now have your permission to proceed?
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Science does not go hand-in-hand with majority opinion - neither does science require consensus, nor does consensus imply any connection to reality.
Yesterday I spoke to 8 different mechanics at 8 different gas stations, and the consensus was that the brakes on my car were about to fail and I needed to replace them. I told them pretty much the same thing you just said.
And earlier today I saw 12 different doctors and they all told me that I had an appendicitis and it was about to burst and that I needed surgery or I'd die, and I told them too pretty much the same thing you just said.
I don't trust people with edumacations, I especially don't trust them when they all agree.
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it seems that the carbon dioxide levels increase about 40 to 50 years *after* the temperature increase.
I've got a friend on the phone right now screaming that his tire blew out and that his car is careening out of control and about to fly off a cliff, but I told him it's OK not to worry. I've seen records of other cars that have gone over cliffs and crashed where the crash caused one or more tires to blow out.
So that proves it. A car crashing over a cliff can cause a tire to blow out, which proves that his tire blowing out *CAN'T* cause his car to go over a cliff. I'm sure he's glad to know he's perfectly safe.
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See, in 2000, under President Clinton, Federal Tax receipts were $2025.5 billion or 20% of the GDP. In 2008, under President Bush, they were $2524.3 billion, but only 17.7% of the GDP. See, when you cut taxes, the GDP (economy) grows
The natural state of the economy is growth due to improvements in technology and sheer population growth. Except during depression, the pie is always getting bigger.
Using the figures from your own link I get a long term average natural growth rate of over 6.7%. (Note: I deliberately excluded the freakishly high growth years 1940-1943, which would have put the figure even higher.)
The 2008 revenues at 17.7% should have been just over $2884 billion merely based on 8 years of average economic progress from 2000. Claiming the Bush tax cut raised revenues is wrong. After 8 years under Bush revenues were far lower than they should have been compared to doing exactly nothing and 8 years of routine economic progress.
The Laffer Curve points out that a 0% tax rate will produce zero revenues and that a 100% tax rate will as well, and that the peak is in between. The notion that we are on the right-hand declining side of the curve, the idea that cutting existing tax rates would increase revenues, is considered laughable by all but the most radical economists.
Bush spent WAY too much money. Obama is spending much much more money. So if you are upset about Bush's spending, you should be really pissed about Obama's. If not, you are blinded by your own partisanship.
I've been bitching about the debt for years, and I am really not happy about the current increase in debt. But there is an entirely NONPARTISAN difference. When there is an economic downturn government revenues are going to drop, and you need to maintain or increase government spending to prop the economy up. In fact that is the best time to take care of things like bridge and other infrastructure maintenance. Large long term debt is a bad thing, and any debt run up because of an economic slump should damn well be paid off during economically prosperous times.
Regardless of any of Reagan's social or political positions, he pulled out the credit card and ran up a massive debt just because he felt like it, not because some failing economy threw his budget out of whack. He just found it politically popular to sell the public on tax cuts while promising the public all sorts of popular spending goodies. Tax cuts and spending on various things are both popular with the voters. We bought into the Candyland Trickle Down economics and and the Laffer Curve fantasy that cutting tax rates would increase revenues because it let him promise voters tax cuts AND more government goodies. And the fact is that he was proved wrong on both economic fantasies. TrickleDown economics didn't work, WelfareForTheRich policies just made the rich get richer while the poor got poorer, and the Laffer Curve was proven wrong by the massive budget shortfalls and level of debt unprecedented since World War II.
Regardless of any of Bush-1's social or political positions, he continued Reagan's fiscally irresponsible taxcut-borrow-and-spend policies running up the debt way higher.
Regardless of any of Clinton's social or political positions, he was fiscally responsible. He raised government revenues and controlled spending to actually produce a budget surplus, and was on track to pay off the credit card bills left behind by both Reagan and Bush-1 in just a few more years.
Regardless of any of Bush-2's social or political positions, he promptly blew the budget surplus Clinton left behind, he handed out another WelfareForTheRich massive tax cut slashing government revenues, and as you so aptly put it went wild eyed "drunken sailor spending" massively running up the debt, and leaving the economy on the brink of a depression to boot.
Regardless of any of Obama's social or political positions, he's struggling to be fiscally responsible after being dumped into virtually the worst of all poss
When you impair efficient economic activity via aggression (e.g. by coercing others into reducing CO2 emissions without substantial evidence of harm)
Perhaps you missed the part where the head of the EPA did in fact find " substantial evidence of harm ", after being told by the US Supreme Court that the EPA was required by law to preform exactly that review&evaluation of the available evidence?
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Climatologists are 97% agreed that humans are causing it, Petroleum geologists are at 47%
Doctors are 97% agreed that cigarettes cause cancer, Tobacco agriculturists are at 47%.
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Global warming is now a religious debate, which I actually find scary since it basically means science has become a bunch of meaningless morality (and world-view enforcing) bullshit. In these situations there can be no meaningful debate (between experts, us lay people know jack shit, and should at least have the common courtesy to admit it), which basically means there can be no science.
For what it's worth, the "religious debate" on things like evolution and global warming is merely a social/political issue. There's no problem within the scientific community and science itself is getting along just fine.
One researcher went to a database of published science papers and pulled out every single paper in the system tagged "climatology", about nine hundred. He found that about 30% dealt strictly with methodology or prehistoric climate and could not be interpreted as having any position on anthropogenic global warming. He found 70% either explicitly or implicitly accepted anthropogenic global warming. He found 0% - exactly zero climatology papers - denying anthropogenic global warming. This is a political controversy and a politically-inspired public controversy, there is no genuine scientific controversy over the general issue. The only scientific controversy is routine legitimate scientific controversy over some of the details and trying to model the future course of events.
Form a physics point of view the fundamental point is trivial. It is a trivial undisputed fact of physics that carbon dioxide and methane and various other gasses *do* trap infrared radiation (heat). It is an undisputed fact that humans have quite substantially increased the atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide and methane and various other gasses. It is a trivial result that increased levels of these gasses will increase the infrared (heat) trapping effect. The more complicated part is calculating the size of the effect, and the hard part is predicting the future, and the really really hard part is predicting how that effect will interact with earth's complicated climate system. But the basic point, the basic reality of the effect, is trivial undisputed physics.
Just because "lay people know jack shit, and should at least have the common courtesy to admit it" are having religious style debates doesn't mean there's any scientific controversy, and doesn't mean there can be no science.
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I had wondered about the earth's magnetic field too, but I think get it now.
Any charge imbalance gets very very quickly evened out.
Evening out a charge imbalance means a movement of electric charge. That is an electric current, which creates a magnetic field. Magnetic fields induce electric fields. In the extreme case of light a collapsing electric field creates a magnetic field which then collapses into an electric in a self sustaining cycle. In a theoretical lossless situation any initial electric or magnetic field in a conductor with create a self sustaining cycle. A magnet will self-sustainingly levitate above a super conductor because the magnet induces a lossless electric current and lossless opposing magnetic field. So in the ideal lossless situation even the slightest initial electric or magnetic imbalance in the earth would result in a self sustaining cycle.
The earth, or a sphere of mercury, are normal conductors, and obviously have resistive losses. Any electric or magnetic field will tend to decay to zero unless you have an energy input. Thermal convection is that energy input sustaining thecycle. Now consider this - if an energy input can sustain that cycle then a larger energy input can amplify that cycle. In the ideal zero field case convection will amplify a zero field back to a zero field, but even the slightest random non-zero field influence will get amplified into a larger non-zero field. Any non-zero electric or magnetic influence from the sun or a meteor or a lightening or anything else will get amplified by that thermal convection energy input.
sphere of mercury with a heat source at the middle making the mercury convect... What's different about a planet-sized glob of stuff with an outer core of molten iron?
Scale. A one mile per hour water current in a puddle contains a minuscule amount of energy and will decay to zero in seconds due to friction losses. A one mile per hour water current in the Atlantic ocean constitutes a colossal store of inertial energy, and losses to friction are (relatively) negligible.
Resistance losses go up as the square of the rate of current. The earth is so huge that even the most minuscule rate of current flow represents an enormous quantity electrons and generates a significant magnetic field. Any laboratory-scale sphere of mercury would need a vastly larger rate of current flow to generate a measurable magnetic field, and field decay to resistance would dominate at the square of the rate of current.
Looking at it graphically, decay effects are like a U shaped curve. A laboratory scale blob of convecting mercury constitutes a fairly small gross quantity of convection energy flow, and will quickly resistance-settle to the immeasurably close to the exact bottom of that U almost immediately. Scaling things up to planet size is like taking a microscope to the virtually flat bottom at the middle of the U. The gross quantity of convection energy input is enormous, and it will feed into any variation from zero and push it pretty far off of the zero point. It will amplify it until the square-of-current resistance energy losses become large enough to balance the convection energy input.
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How did you miss Clinton?
When you come back after 15 minutes, Bill Clinton tells you he did not have sexual relations with that marshmallow.
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They've made Sony a laughing stock this generation.
I don't think Sony needed much help on that point.
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With Google as the search provider, it goes to Google.
With Bing as the provider, it goes to Bing.
With Yahoo as the provider, it goes to Yahoo...
Hell, with eBay as the selected provider, it searches eBay.
You get the picture.
^
Porn.com
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the Bar has been very creative in the past few years in claiming what is essentially software only claims.
Apparently the Constitution's copyright&patent clause has once again been successful in promoting creativity.
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Say an inventor comes up with a brilliant new algorithm
You're begging the question.
"Say a Brain Surgeon comes up with a brilliant new tail fin for rockets."
That does not mean rocket science is brain surgery, and it certainly does not make rockets into brains.
But more to the point, the Supreme Court has explicitly and repeatedly ruled out the notion of inventing/patenting algorithms:
algorithm, or mathematical formula, is like a law of nature, which cannot be the subject of a patent
and
the Court made it clear that an improved method of calculation, even when employed as part of a physical process, is not patentable subject matter under 101. Finally, the Court explained the correct procedure for analyzing a patent claim employing a mathematical algorithm. Under this procedure, the algorithm is treated for 101 purposes as though it were a familiar part of the prior art; the claim is then examined to determine whether it discloses "some other inventive concept."
You cannot "invent" a number. You cannot "invent" math. You cannot "invent" an algorithm. You cannot "invent" software. All numbers, all math, all algorithms, all software, must be treated as a familiar part of the prior art for patent purposes.
The last several Supreme Court on the subject have consistently rejected the notion of inventing algorithms. The entire extent of the Supreme Court's position favorable towards software+patents is the consistent and trivial point that the existence of a calculation or algorithm somewhere withing an otherwise patentable physical process does magically remove that novel non-obvious physical process from patentability. The entire extent of the Supreme Court's position favorable towards software+patents is that if you come up with some new physical process for turning lead into gold, the fact that you do some math somewhere during that physical process does not prohibit it from being patented.
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You've stated that this is just one example of how courts tend to think this way, but that's still too hand-wavey for me.
That's a reasonable challenge and I really should cite some more examples, but to be honest digging around for half-remembered court cases isn't an appealing prospect at the moment :/ There's a chance I'll dig something up later, but most likely I'll just leave that thought on the back burner of my brain until the next time I'm searching copyright court cases for some other reason.
Does wrapping a copyrighted work in something purely functional (i.e. not copyrightable in isolation) result in a (copyrightable?) derivative work?
I'm not sure I'm completely comfortable with the word "wrapping" there, but I see the point your making. The first thing I would like to note is that a hash is technically a purely derivative thing, and a signed hash is also technically a pure derivative of the program+key (and actually a secondhand pure derivative of the GPLed_Source+key). The reason it is not legally protected by copyright, and IMO should not be protected, is because it is too short to be protectable. In that sense, no comparably sized part of an executable is protectable in isolation.
I still see it coming back to the issue of what is and is not part of the executable. If a TiVo signature is part of the executable then it makes no sense to ask whether it would be protectable in isolation. All parts of the executable, including the signature, are derivative of the GPLed source, even if each part is too small for independent protection.
If it is part of the executable then it is part of "the work".
I do not see how an informative signature would be part of an executable, and I don't see how it makes sense to say a program would be "wrapped" by an informative signature. That sort of signature is a functionally independent entity. It's more like publishing the name and size of a program, independent information not intended to be part of the work itself.
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The fact that it is capable of accessing DRM-restricted media doesn't make the device inherently evil.
Yes it does, because they expect to put innocent people in PRISON if you unscrew the case of the product you bought and touch the hardware or software.
So NO, the fact that someone never touches DRM-restricted media does not make any difference. They still expect to put you in prison even if you never touch a single piece of DRM content.
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Your interpretation was pretty well correct. I was just tossing off a joke at the expense of my own gender, so I'm not sure I should even continue, but I guess I'll reply anyway.
free will. I can hear the eyes rolling about this being a cop out
Actually I'd say it's not even a cop out. I think it actually fails to answer the problem.
I can't numerically measure "respectfulness", but I would say in my rough estimation opinion that women are about equally respectful of men as men are of women. If God designed men to be respectful, then one would presume that that "designing" would have some noticeable effect. You can point to men and women having free will to justify exceptions, but if "designing men to respect women" has no effect at all then what, if any, meaning is there in claiming such designing?
I had trouble following the intent of your last paragraph. One phrase I focused on was "He created them with that inclination" which says to me that you are still talking about some sort of designing that should still have a significant noticeable effect. I'm not sure, but I don't think your last paragraph affects my question above.
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No, his grandfather was a character in a Heinlein novel. And obviously he is too.
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God *designed* men to respect naturally, so having to explicitly tell them to respect their wives is unnecessary.
It's funny how Intelligent Designers constantly accuse God of being an incompetent buffoon.
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Of course it was noticed, because Tivo was doing it
Your sentence contains the word "it" twice, but they refer to two different things.
Of course people noticed what TiVo was doing. That is the second "it" in your sentence. However the first "it" properly refers to my comment "no one has noticed or pursued this particular legal angle". That legal angle being that the executable TiVo was distributing was not merely the naked unsigned executable. I'm saying no one considered the point that the signature is actually part of the file format and integral startup code for executables on that platform.
Further, the stated goals of the GPLv3 include not limiting the use of digital signatures for other purposes (e.g. authenticity). Your argument would seem to apply to those as well.
Then you did not understand what I was trying to explain. To put it most simply:
If something is intended to function as part of the executable then it *is* part of the executable.
Let's say you compile a normal PC executable and create a purely informative authenticity signature. The signature is not part of the executable because it is not intended to function as part of the executable. You know the unsigned executable is "the executable" because you could just as well have distributed it without the signature. The presence or absence of the signature does not alter the program itself.
But as I said before, this definition is meaningless in the context of the GPL, because the GPL does not use it.
And and I said before, the GPL uses "program" and it uses "executable", and unless I've missed something you have not given any argument that an iPhone signature isn't in fact an operational part of an iPhone executable, and unless I've missed something I don't think you've refuted my statement that courts *do* define "program" and "executable" to encompass platform-specific checks when executing a program. You commented on how courts tend to rule in ambiguous contracts, and I agree with what you said. However I don't really think that's very relevant here. You can't go into court and claim the term "program" is ambiguous just because you don't like the terms of some contract or license. I think the courts are pretty un-ambiguous on the point that the software initialization process (and specifically including platform-specific checks) are a part of the program itself. Just because TiVo doesn't want to call it part of the program is not enough to invalidate the factual functional makeup of a program, nor enough to invalidate the legal definition of a program.
The FSF's own lawyers disagree with you
If they do dissagree, I would really like to see what they've said. Can you point me to anyplace where they discuss the idea of TiVo-type signatures being part of the distributed executable itself?
But don't claim they *disagree* if they merely never discussed it and they possibly never considered it.
your interpretation is in opposition to the stated goals of the GPL.
If you mean the authenticity signature thing, then no. Unless I missed something, the only think conflicting with GPL goals was your misunderstanding of what I was trying to say. This does not affect signatures unless they are a functional part of the executable.
Either you are brilliant, and have outsmarted the FSF's lawyers
Actually I am brilliant (grin), but the FSF does have some extremely smart lawyers. The issue I am raising is is a very subtle point and very easy to miss. The unsigned executable is *an* executable, and it is extremely natural to think it's the executable being distributed, without giving it a second thought. I think it is at least possible they never considered that the apparent executable might not be the actual executable.
or there are problems with your assumptions or reasoning that are leading you to a faulty conclusion.
That is possible. I may be brilliant, but I am definitely fallible, and my kno
"Help me with the chores" -> Bug closed - DUPLICATE of bug #345729
"Please wear respectable clothes sometimes" -> Bug closed - DUPLICATE of bug #129045
"I can't figure out that Linux crap, get Windows!" -> Bug closed - DUPLICATE of bug #239394
"You ignore my bug reports" -> Bug closed - DUPLICATE of bug #3
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married geeks with more XP
Rule #1: the DM is always right.
Rule #2: If the DM is wrong, see rule 1.
P.S.
Rule #3: Your wife is the DM.
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