No, it means that ACPI is always ON. If you read the story, you would have noticed this line:
Now FreeBSD has complications with multiple devices on the same IRQs
ACPI is what allows you to share IRQs. If ACPI were turned off then FreeBSD would have no problems. For that matter, neither would Windows--it's just that some of the features of ACPI, like soft-off, are desirable and people now expect a fancy-shmancy OS like XP to have these features. Thus, MS wants ACPI on all of the time.
And the highway system is responsible for all of those drunk driving deaths...
Sigh..
This made slashdot?
I'm confused about the meaning of your comment. Are you suggesting that the argument being used by the lawyers is a poor one because their claim seems absurd, and since they've made an obviously absurd claim there's no reason that their claim should get any press or is a sound one? Feel free to clarify yourself, but I am going to address your comment as if that is what it is implying. Indeed, I'd like to address, as others here have done, this story on the whole in as systematic a form as possible.
First, some background: lawyers argue. An argument, in the technical sense, is a connected series of statements intended to form a single proposition. These statements are known as premises and the proposition that results from the relationship between the premises is known as a conclusion. Most of you who read slashdot should hopefully be aware of this basic logical form.
Now, it would serve us well to define the difference between validity and soundness. You see, a logician doesn't care about whether or not the premises are true. She merely cares whether or not the premises, if they were true, would make the conclusion automatically true. Axiomatically, in a valid argument, if the premises are true, then the conclusion must be true.
A sound argument, on the other hand, is an argument where not only is the argument valid but, in fact, the premises are actually true. Usually a logician does not concern herself with soundess--the task of determining soundess is usually left to scientists who use experimentation to empirically verify the kinds of statements that can be verified in that manner.
But now of course you are wondering how this relates to the story here on slashdot. Well the MPAA and RIAA's argument against Morpheus et al goes something like this:
Premise One:
Morpheus et al allow individuals to download copyrighted material.
Premise Two:
Downloading copyrighted material is against the law.
Premise Three:
Things that allow people to break the law should be restricted.
Conclusion One:
Therefore, Morpheus et al should be restricted.
I think that that is a simple rendition of the plaintiff's argument, but it should serve for our purposes. If anyone thinks that I've strawpersonned the argument, please let me know. I am not a lawyer (yet).;) This argument is a valid one. Indeed, if the premises were true, the conclusion also would be true. The premises do in fact entail the conclusion.
But there is a problem here. Do you see what it is? I hope so. One of the premises is problematic. This argument is not sound. Premise three is false. Should anything that could allow someone to break the law be restricted? Probably not. There are many things that one could use to break any number of laws, in various combinations. This brick I have here could be used to build a house, but it could also be used to break Jack Valenti's nose. My car could get me from point A to point B, but it could also run Orrin Hatch's limousine off of the road. My computer could be used to write a dissertation or it could be used to exploit a flaw in IIS and get me some free credit card numbers with which to purchase some OpenBSD CDs. Clearly, the falsity of premise three makes the argument unsound, and we can employ the same structure of the argument to "prove" absurdities.
And this is what the EFF lawyers are doing. A good method for showing that an argument is poorly thought out is known as the reductio ad absurdum method, or reductio method for short. There are two ways of applying this method, with one usually being used to determine that an argument is indeed valid and another to determine that an argument is either unsound or invalid. I should take care to mention here that once you start getting into free logics and other quirks of the full first order predicate calculus that the distinction between validity and soundness start to disappear. But I digress.
In this case, what the EFF lawyers are doing is employing the reductio method in the following way: they are saying that, fine, let's assume that the argument being put forward by the plaintiffs is in fact true and valid. What follows from the argument? Clearly, many absurd claims follow, such as the one that the highway could be considered responsible for all of those drunk driving deaths. Thus, the plaintiff's claim is, frankly, bullshit. As long as the EFF lawyers keep up this kind of move and are able to state their position eloquently, I would be very surprised if the plaintiffs such as the RIAA et al were not forced to back down.
Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but one day it will be painfully clear to all involved that there is no legal way to have services such as Morpheus held responsible for the actions of the people who use the service. It's quite nonsensical.
I don't think anyone is going to disagree with you. There would a great deal of demand. But what if Apple couldn't supply enough machines? I'm sure most people remember their past supply problems. Be it because of poor chip yields or some other reason, Apple has to consider that having high demand is not beneficial if they can't supply.
--Ed
I agree with you. Not necessarily for the same reasons though. Quite simply, I think the arguments put forth by Lessig et al are weak. They don't carry enough punch. As another commenter to this story has said, Mickey Mouse isn't the issue, books published 50 years ago that are no longer in print are the issue.
But what follows from the fact that the Supremes will side with big businesses? That is where the lawyers should be going. Again, not in terms of mickey mouse, but in terms of human knowledge and the spreading of it.
You know that old hex: may you live in interesting times? Well we really do live in interesting times, insofar as, once this challenge is over, copyright law in the United States is going to be set for some time. Sometimes, I have difficuly in wrapping my head around the impact of this kind of legislation on my children and on their children.
Just to drift offtopic, I feel powerless to do anything about the things like these legal battles that seem to have so much import. Come October, when the Supreme Court hands down its decision on this case, I have a bad feeling that I'm going to be reading another/. article about how fucked up the world is and how money and politics and just plain stupidity rule the world.
... If you write lots of SQL it might do you some good to check out a data modelling language like Xplain. You can even get software that will take your modelling scripts and convert them to various SQL dialects.
is that UWB has been talked about for a while now. But all of the really amazing, useful technology is used and controlled by the U.S. military. UWB will only be available once the Powers That Be allow it to be. I don't know when that will be but I don't like the fact that the sector of our society that specializes in killing people gets to control the fate of the things that are really useful.
my understanding of the missing socks phenomenon was that, in the dryer, static electricity builds up and can sometimes make socks cling to the inside of clothes. then, upon putting on said clothes and going outside, the socks can fall off.
... On the one hand, I hate to sleep. It is an inconvenient break in time that prevents you from getting work/play/things done. On the other hand, when actually sleeping and waking up after a good sleep, I appreciate it. With regards to how much sleep is needed, it obviously varies from person to person. The post in this thread covers the empirically determined nature of sleep well. Like many others here, my biggest problem is getting a pattern and sticking to it. Right now, I am going to sleep between 8pm-12pm and waking up between 5am-7am. This is obviously weird. The sad and scary part, though, of my sleeping patterns is that less than a week ago I was going to sleep at 5am-ish and sleeping until 5pm-ish. With my complete lack of regimen I'm sure that within another few weeks I'll be on some other ridiculous pattern. Not having a genuinely stable pattern of sleep is what seems to hurt me the most. So if my own personal experience counts for anything when applied to other individuals arbitrarily (it doesn't, so let's just say that my experience is actually not my experience but just some arbitrary examplar of some possible experience) I would suggest that people just stick with a pattern. Reliability and stability, just like with operating systems, is really damn important with people too. So once you find a pattern that matches the activities that you need to do to live your life, stick with it.
Slashdot Mirror
actually, that's false.
Now FreeBSD has complications with multiple devices on the same IRQs
ACPI is what allows you to share IRQs. If ACPI were turned off then FreeBSD would have no problems. For that matter, neither would Windows--it's just that some of the features of ACPI, like soft-off, are desirable and people now expect a fancy-shmancy OS like XP to have these features. Thus, MS wants ACPI on all of the time.
I'm confused about the meaning of your comment. Are you suggesting that the argument being used by the lawyers is a poor one because their claim seems absurd, and since they've made an obviously absurd claim there's no reason that their claim should get any press or is a sound one? Feel free to clarify yourself, but I am going to address your comment as if that is what it is implying. Indeed, I'd like to address, as others here have done, this story on the whole in as systematic a form as possible.
First, some background: lawyers argue. An argument, in the technical sense, is a connected series of statements intended to form a single proposition. These statements are known as premises and the proposition that results from the relationship between the premises is known as a conclusion. Most of you who read slashdot should hopefully be aware of this basic logical form.
Now, it would serve us well to define the difference between validity and soundness. You see, a logician doesn't care about whether or not the premises are true. She merely cares whether or not the premises, if they were true, would make the conclusion automatically true. Axiomatically, in a valid argument, if the premises are true, then the conclusion must be true.
A sound argument, on the other hand, is an argument where not only is the argument valid but, in fact, the premises are actually true. Usually a logician does not concern herself with soundess--the task of determining soundess is usually left to scientists who use experimentation to empirically verify the kinds of statements that can be verified in that manner.
But now of course you are wondering how this relates to the story here on slashdot. Well the MPAA and RIAA's argument against Morpheus et al goes something like this:
Premise One:
Premise Two:
Premise Three:
Conclusion One:
I think that that is a simple rendition of the plaintiff's argument, but it should serve for our purposes. If anyone thinks that I've strawpersonned the argument, please let me know. I am not a lawyer (yet). ;) This argument is a valid one. Indeed, if the premises were true, the conclusion also would be true. The premises do in fact entail the conclusion.
But there is a problem here. Do you see what it is? I hope so. One of the premises is problematic. This argument is not sound. Premise three is false. Should anything that could allow someone to break the law be restricted? Probably not. There are many things that one could use to break any number of laws, in various combinations. This brick I have here could be used to build a house, but it could also be used to break Jack Valenti's nose. My car could get me from point A to point B, but it could also run Orrin Hatch's limousine off of the road. My computer could be used to write a dissertation or it could be used to exploit a flaw in IIS and get me some free credit card numbers with which to purchase some OpenBSD CDs. Clearly, the falsity of premise three makes the argument unsound, and we can employ the same structure of the argument to "prove" absurdities.
And this is what the EFF lawyers are doing. A good method for showing that an argument is poorly thought out is known as the reductio ad absurdum method, or reductio method for short. There are two ways of applying this method, with one usually being used to determine that an argument is indeed valid and another to determine that an argument is either unsound or invalid. I should take care to mention here that once you start getting into free logics and other quirks of the full first order predicate calculus that the distinction between validity and soundness start to disappear. But I digress.
In this case, what the EFF lawyers are doing is employing the reductio method in the following way: they are saying that, fine, let's assume that the argument being put forward by the plaintiffs is in fact true and valid. What follows from the argument? Clearly, many absurd claims follow, such as the one that the highway could be considered responsible for all of those drunk driving deaths. Thus, the plaintiff's claim is, frankly, bullshit. As long as the EFF lawyers keep up this kind of move and are able to state their position eloquently, I would be very surprised if the plaintiffs such as the RIAA et al were not forced to back down.
Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but one day it will be painfully clear to all involved that there is no legal way to have services such as Morpheus held responsible for the actions of the people who use the service. It's quite nonsensical.
--Ed
I don't think anyone is going to disagree with you. There would a great deal of demand. But what if Apple couldn't supply enough machines? I'm sure most people remember their past supply problems. Be it because of poor chip yields or some other reason, Apple has to consider that having high demand is not beneficial if they can't supply. --Ed
But what follows from the fact that the Supremes will side with big businesses? That is where the lawyers should be going. Again, not in terms of mickey mouse, but in terms of human knowledge and the spreading of it.
You know that old hex: may you live in interesting times? Well we really do live in interesting times, insofar as, once this challenge is over, copyright law in the United States is going to be set for some time. Sometimes, I have difficuly in wrapping my head around the impact of this kind of legislation on my children and on their children.
Just to drift offtopic, I feel powerless to do anything about the things like these legal battles that seem to have so much import. Come October, when the Supreme Court hands down its decision on this case, I have a bad feeling that I'm going to be reading another /. article about how fucked up the world is and how money and politics and just plain stupidity rule the world.
... If you write lots of SQL it might do you some good to check out a data modelling language like Xplain. You can even get software that will take your modelling scripts and convert them to various SQL dialects.
is that UWB has been talked about for a while now. But all of the really amazing, useful technology is used and controlled by the U.S. military. UWB will only be available once the Powers That Be allow it to be. I don't know when that will be but I don't like the fact that the sector of our society that specializes in killing people gets to control the fate of the things that are really useful.
my understanding of the missing socks phenomenon was that, in the dryer, static electricity builds up and can sometimes make socks cling to the inside of clothes. then, upon putting on said clothes and going outside, the socks can fall off.
Thank you and goodnight