I'm not sure I agree. There's a role for the "merely descriptive" in science. If string theory gives identical results to relativity + quantum mechanics over all the ranges that we have power to test, but adds the benefit of unifying them into a common framework, then why not accept it?
We already have that common framework. It's called mathematics.
If string theory holds up as being mathematically correct, then there's no reason not to accept it. Just as calculus helps physicists handle nasty division by zero errors, perhaps string theory can help us handle such problems as QM and relativity are unified. But unless a theory makes disprovable statments, it's not science. Call it math, call it philosophy, call it whatever. It won't be the theory of everything, because it's not a theory in the first place.
I didn't expect much because I generally don't agree with the string theorists, but what I got was two hours of repetative drivel on unification being great and nothing on unification. I could have found out as much about sting theory by watching Eric Clapton play guitar.
Heh, that's what I thought after reading The Elegant Universe. Of course, with the ease of playing it in the background (part three is behind this window right now), I'm giving it another try.
I mean, I exaggerate a bit. So far the PBS program has had much less content than the book. But I attribute it to string theory being a bunch of mathematical masturbation. But of course I don't know anywhere near enough of about physics for that to be anything but a vague notion.
Vote buying is completely different in that the voter receives a cash payment upon proof of the *correct* vote, which would lead to the rich winning any election they wanted to pay for.
No, I couldn't. And I don't think people would sell out that easily. At least not if the candidate was really that bad.
Let's try one with a white background for more contrast. Now go to your browser's search dialog, type in "buying votes", and click the button. There is text above and below concerning the topic.
For the first 50 years or so after independence, campaign costs were relatively low. In part, this was because the population was small and only white males who owned property (and, in some states, who belonged to the proper religious denomination) were allowed to vote. Of the four million people considered U.S. citizens just after independence, only 800,000 -- or one out of every five adults -- could cast a ballot.[3] In addition, candidates didn't have much to spend money on. If they campaigned at all, they did so via public meetings and rallies, the distribution of handbills (usually copies of their own speeches), and, to a limited extent, newspaper advertisements. Thus, the costs of campaigning could be covered by the candidates themselves or by their friends. Fundraising was unnecessary.
Nothing there about it.
As the population grew, and property and religious requirements were abolished, this situation began to change, especially for presidential and gubernatorial elections. A candidate for governor of Kentucky in 1828, for example, was soliciting donations of $5,000 and $10,000 -- enormous sums in those days.[4] That same year saw the first appearance of professional campaign managers. The practice of buying votes also entered the picture about this time (in an 1838 mayoral race in New York City, as much as $22 was being paid for an uncommitted vote), further increasing the costs of campaigning.[5]
OK. The practice of buying votes...increases the costs of campaigning. Hmm, let me think about that. No, I'd have to say the practice of buying votes would decrease the costs of campaigning. If it's cheaper to advertise than to pay people off, then you do that. If it's cheaper to pay people off, then you do that. Either way, your cost goes down, not up.
By the 1840s and 1850s, the mutual dependence so familiar today between candidates and monied interests had begun to take hold. The reasons were simple. Candidates needed more and more money in order to campaign, and the men who ran America's burgeoning businesses and industries increasingly sought favors and protection from a government that was becoming more and more involved in taxation, tariffs, and other economic matters.
Back to off topic issues.
Consider if a couple of thugs invite you to the polling place and tell you that if you vote for their guy, you get to keep all your fingers and they won't rape your wife. That's "other consideration".
And that's illegal, and you have no argument with me there. My question was what is wrong with buying votes, not what is wrong with extorting votes.
Besides, if thugs have the power to rape your wife and cut off your fingers and get away with it, it doesn't matter who you vote for anyway. Now granted, that's a completely different argument, so let's get back to the vote buying one.
First, one should not be allowed to *buy* an elected position or a referendum vote.
If the plurality of people agree to it, I don't see how it's any worse than any other pluralilty vote. Other than the fact that people have more money in their pockets, anyway.
Second the potential abuses of vote buying/selling/trading have already been proven.
What do you mean by "potential" abuses? Voting has the potential for abuse. Driving has the potential for abuse. Drinking water has the potential for abuse. We can't take away people's freedoms just because some people might use that freedom inappropriately. It's my vote, and I should be able to do whatever I want with it.
I'd find anything other than direct control over my SMTP server difficult as I use it as part of an anti-spam procedure that's one of the few that's absolutely fool proof (ie no false positives, no permanent false negatives) - my journal explains what I'm doing.
I thought I would have the same problem, but I don't. All the information the SMTP server gets is right there in the header files. You just reinsert the email into your SMTP server, and it can't tell the difference.
It's unclear to me what exactly you're trying to do. I run Mydomain, and forward my accounts from there to a pop server. My computer then goes to the pop server and downloads the mail. A perl script then looks at the "for" in the first "Received" header, and forwards the message to sendmail. This is good enough for me, because I don't use the incoming IP address information. If you do, you might have to adjust your scripts accordingly.
OK. So lets summarize. For practical purposes (limited bugets and such), lower frequencies mean lower speeds. And for theoretical purposes (Shannon's law), lower frequencies mean lower speeds. Add the two together, and you find that lower frequencies mean lower speeds!
... unless you invest in more expensive receiver technology.
More expensive receiver technology can't compensate for noise. It's like trying to get a perfectly clear picture of the stars through an expensive telescope. Once you reach a certain point, you can't do any better. The atmosphere gets in your way.
At one to one comparisons, you are correct. I am not talking about one to one comparisons for equipment used in different bands.
I'm not either. I am talking about a theoretical limit.
Mind you, it still requires a significant threshold (>$1000 retail value distributed over 180 days).
You showed yourself in the example you gave how easy it is for the RIAA to show $1000 retail value. Just about anyone who has opened up Kazaa for sharing is going to apply.
But anyway, the whole point of this law was to eliminate those requirements for internet sharing programs.
No, shannon's law is most commonly used to talk about the limits of modulation schemes. Your theoretical maximum assumes a noiseless channel. When there is noise on the channel, overly tight modulation schemes wind up with too many errors and retransmissions to compensate for the increased data rate.
Lower frequencies will require more complicated modulaction schemes to get the same data rates, but it is still possible.
What about shannon's law? At least with phone lines we can theoretically cut down the noise by creating a better medium. I don't think we'll be replacing the air with a lower-noise version any time soon.
Also, we should be careful when using the word "bandwidth" when talking wireless Internet. In the quote above, I think that it is supposed to mean datarates. However, bandwidth from an RF perspective can also mean frequency range.
Increasing RF bandwidth used is another way to get around the lower frequency issues with datarates.
That's true, though. And with point-to-point you don't have to worry as much about interference. Still, wired is the way to go for almost any non-mobile application. Unless you're so far away you need to use satellite. Or maybe if you're going over really treacherous terrain. Otherwise just the tranmission costs are going to be too high in the long run.
Security is a binray condition, you are either secure or you're not.
Then you're not. If you're connected to a network, someone could get in. If FBI agents could be outside your home logging your every keystroke through a Tempest attack, you have to assume they are logging every keystroke and account for it.
If all the hacker does is destroy some data, then you probably won't be able to catch em. Restore from backup, and move on.
If on the other hand the hacker hacked into your bank account and transferred money into his, that might leave a record that's going to point to someone.
If you're not concerned with criminal prosecution, you might even be able to get a verdict in your favor without proof that the person's computer wasn't hacked. Where was the person at the time of the hacking? At home on the computer? What motive does the person have against you?
Of course, all of this assumes that the person left evidence on the computer of a hack attack in the first place. Lack of such evidence would be pretty damning, if the computer can be confiscated soon after the incident.
See my earlier comment just above in the thread, "hot shot".
I must be blind as well as dumb, because I don't see anything in the thread which explains what's wrong with vote selling.
I'm now guessing you never took a history class and never read about the evils of ward bosses, vote buying, poll taxes, or why we have our current (secret ballot) system - flawed as it is.
I don't remember reading anything about the evils of vote buying in my history class. If I did, I wouldn't be asking this question, now would I?
You need content? Here's a dribble, but a history book focusing on national politics would be better.
Still don't see anything about vote buying/selling. I'm not talking about charging people to vote. I'm talking about allowing people to trade their vote for money or some other consideration. It's of utmost importance that we give everyone the *opportunity* to vote. But that doesn't mean we can't allow consenting adults to trade that opportunity for something they consider more valuable.
The article says that if the movie has not been released, having it on a network even if no copyright infringement occurs makes you eligible for the 3 years in prison.
Articles, unlike actual laws, don't have to be specific. In fact, they generally are hyped up by intentionally leaving out details.
true, but even if no one downloads it, access it or anything, if the RIAA see it on your server, FTP, webpage or HDD then they will ASSUME 10 people have taken it, image that, not are you guilty of 1 offence, but by THIER assumtion, you are instantly a winner of 10!! counts of breaking the law..
Oh, it's much worse than that. 10 counts of breaking the law qualifies you for criminal penalties.
There are at least two sites out there which legally offer major hollywood movies for download over the internet (for a fee). I can't remember the urls.
Slashdot Mirror
Just because someone sues someone over something, doesn't mean it is illegal.
It's just you. OK, maybe not just you, but most people don't participate in useless boycotts.
This law is getting just a shade ridiculous.
I wasn't aware that the law had changed at all.
I'm not sure I agree. There's a role for the "merely descriptive" in science. If string theory gives identical results to relativity + quantum mechanics over all the ranges that we have power to test, but adds the benefit of unifying them into a common framework, then why not accept it?
We already have that common framework. It's called mathematics.
If string theory holds up as being mathematically correct, then there's no reason not to accept it. Just as calculus helps physicists handle nasty division by zero errors, perhaps string theory can help us handle such problems as QM and relativity are unified. But unless a theory makes disprovable statments, it's not science. Call it math, call it philosophy, call it whatever. It won't be the theory of everything, because it's not a theory in the first place.
Actually, the ascii version will be available here
I didn't expect much because I generally don't agree with the string theorists, but what I got was two hours of repetative drivel on unification being great and nothing on unification. I could have found out as much about sting theory by watching Eric Clapton play guitar.
Heh, that's what I thought after reading The Elegant Universe. Of course, with the ease of playing it in the background (part three is behind this window right now), I'm giving it another try.
I mean, I exaggerate a bit. So far the PBS program has had much less content than the book. But I attribute it to string theory being a bunch of mathematical masturbation. But of course I don't know anywhere near enough of about physics for that to be anything but a vague notion.
You couldn't find this just above your complaint?
No, I couldn't. And I don't think people would sell out that easily. At least not if the candidate was really that bad.
Let's try one with a white background for more contrast. Now go to your browser's search dialog, type in "buying votes", and click the button. There is text above and below concerning the topic.
Nothing there about it.
OK. The practice of buying votes...increases the costs of campaigning. Hmm, let me think about that. No, I'd have to say the practice of buying votes would decrease the costs of campaigning. If it's cheaper to advertise than to pay people off, then you do that. If it's cheaper to pay people off, then you do that. Either way, your cost goes down, not up.
Back to off topic issues.
Consider if a couple of thugs invite you to the polling place and tell you that if you vote for their guy, you get to keep all your fingers and they won't rape your wife. That's "other consideration".
And that's illegal, and you have no argument with me there. My question was what is wrong with buying votes, not what is wrong with extorting votes.
Besides, if thugs have the power to rape your wife and cut off your fingers and get away with it, it doesn't matter who you vote for anyway. Now granted, that's a completely different argument, so let's get back to the vote buying one.
First, one should not be allowed to *buy* an elected position or a referendum vote.
If the plurality of people agree to it, I don't see how it's any worse than any other pluralilty vote. Other than the fact that people have more money in their pockets, anyway.
Second the potential abuses of vote buying/selling/trading have already been proven.
What do you mean by "potential" abuses? Voting has the potential for abuse. Driving has the potential for abuse. Drinking water has the potential for abuse. We can't take away people's freedoms just because some people might use that freedom inappropriately. It's my vote, and I should be able to do whatever I want with it.
I'd find anything other than direct control over my SMTP server difficult as I use it as part of an anti-spam procedure that's one of the few that's absolutely fool proof (ie no false positives, no permanent false negatives) - my journal explains what I'm doing.
I thought I would have the same problem, but I don't. All the information the SMTP server gets is right there in the header files. You just reinsert the email into your SMTP server, and it can't tell the difference.
Once he's done I'll be able to map the internet in 10 minutes by simply downloading his data.
It's unclear to me what exactly you're trying to do. I run Mydomain, and forward my accounts from there to a pop server. My computer then goes to the pop server and downloads the mail. A perl script then looks at the "for" in the first "Received" header, and forwards the message to sendmail. This is good enough for me, because I don't use the incoming IP address information. If you do, you might have to adjust your scripts accordingly.
OK. So lets summarize. For practical purposes (limited bugets and such), lower frequencies mean lower speeds. And for theoretical purposes (Shannon's law), lower frequencies mean lower speeds. Add the two together, and you find that lower frequencies mean lower speeds!
More expensive receiver technology can't compensate for noise. It's like trying to get a perfectly clear picture of the stars through an expensive telescope. Once you reach a certain point, you can't do any better. The atmosphere gets in your way.
At one to one comparisons, you are correct. I am not talking about one to one comparisons for equipment used in different bands.
I'm not either. I am talking about a theoretical limit.
Mind you, it still requires a significant threshold (>$1000 retail value distributed over 180 days).
You showed yourself in the example you gave how easy it is for the RIAA to show $1000 retail value. Just about anyone who has opened up Kazaa for sharing is going to apply.
But anyway, the whole point of this law was to eliminate those requirements for internet sharing programs.
No, shannon's law is most commonly used to talk about the limits of modulation schemes. Your theoretical maximum assumes a noiseless channel. When there is noise on the channel, overly tight modulation schemes wind up with too many errors and retransmissions to compensate for the increased data rate.
Damn. What's your name so I can make sure I don't work for a fascist ass like you?
Lower frequencies will require more complicated modulaction schemes to get the same data rates, but it is still possible.
What about shannon's law? At least with phone lines we can theoretically cut down the noise by creating a better medium. I don't think we'll be replacing the air with a lower-noise version any time soon.
Also, we should be careful when using the word "bandwidth" when talking wireless Internet. In the quote above, I think that it is supposed to mean datarates. However, bandwidth from an RF perspective can also mean frequency range.
And the two are directly related by Shannon's law.
Increasing RF bandwidth used is another way to get around the lower frequency issues with datarates.
That's true, though. And with point-to-point you don't have to worry as much about interference. Still, wired is the way to go for almost any non-mobile application. Unless you're so far away you need to use satellite. Or maybe if you're going over really treacherous terrain. Otherwise just the tranmission costs are going to be too high in the long run.
Security is a binray condition, you are either secure or you're not.
Then you're not. If you're connected to a network, someone could get in. If FBI agents could be outside your home logging your every keystroke through a Tempest attack, you have to assume they are logging every keystroke and account for it.
What city? Have you check Verizon Express Network?
Exactly. You want a low frequency that's available today. Try MURS. Hope you're happy with 9600 bps.
If all the hacker does is destroy some data, then you probably won't be able to catch em. Restore from backup, and move on.
If on the other hand the hacker hacked into your bank account and transferred money into his, that might leave a record that's going to point to someone.
If you're not concerned with criminal prosecution, you might even be able to get a verdict in your favor without proof that the person's computer wasn't hacked. Where was the person at the time of the hacking? At home on the computer? What motive does the person have against you?
Of course, all of this assumes that the person left evidence on the computer of a hack attack in the first place. Lack of such evidence would be pretty damning, if the computer can be confiscated soon after the incident.
See my earlier comment just above in the thread, "hot shot".
I must be blind as well as dumb, because I don't see anything in the thread which explains what's wrong with vote selling.
I'm now guessing you never took a history class and never read about the evils of ward bosses, vote buying, poll taxes, or why we have our current (secret ballot) system - flawed as it is.
I don't remember reading anything about the evils of vote buying in my history class. If I did, I wouldn't be asking this question, now would I?
You need content? Here's a dribble, but a history book focusing on national politics would be better.
Still don't see anything about vote buying/selling. I'm not talking about charging people to vote. I'm talking about allowing people to trade their vote for money or some other consideration. It's of utmost importance that we give everyone the *opportunity* to vote. But that doesn't mean we can't allow consenting adults to trade that opportunity for something they consider more valuable.
Now is the time to contact your representative
Umm, shouldn't we read the actual bill, first? Last I checked senate.gov was slashdotted (OK, it probably had nothing to do with slashdot).
The article says that if the movie has not been released, having it on a network even if no copyright infringement occurs makes you eligible for the 3 years in prison.
Articles, unlike actual laws, don't have to be specific. In fact, they generally are hyped up by intentionally leaving out details.
true, but even if no one downloads it, access it or anything, if the RIAA see it on your server, FTP, webpage or HDD then they will ASSUME 10 people have taken it, image that, not are you guilty of 1 offence, but by THIER assumtion, you are instantly a winner of 10!! counts of breaking the law..
Oh, it's much worse than that. 10 counts of breaking the law qualifies you for criminal penalties.
There are at least two sites out there which legally offer major hollywood movies for download over the internet (for a fee). I can't remember the urls.