Not quite. The order of mask-reveals goes Bush -> Reptilian -> Obama -> Romulan -> Alex Trebek -> Wookie -> Hitler -> Bette Midler -> The Riddler -> arsenic-using bacteria -> Bush and then the cycle repeats.
However, interesting theories (such as Hoava–Lifshitz gravity [wikipedia.org]) have sprung up that try to explain the effects we see without requiring the intervention of an exotic matter/energy mix.
What's so exotic about a new type of Lepton? We already know of particles with every required property for Dark Matter except for sufficient mass. We have theories that predict the existence of such particles for reasons that have nothing to do with dark matter. That means it is still theoretical and quite speculative, but I don't get why there's such a desire to avoid introducing a new particle that is a logical extension of the existing Standard Model.
And I thought most alternative gravity theory projects had given up on explaining Bullet Cluster and other observations without non-Baryonic matter, since in pretty much any gravitational theory it's still going to hold true that mass is attracted to other mass, not random locations in space. MOND already has, I know. Not that the theories aren't still interesting; there are more important consequences to alternative gravity theories than obviating the need for a heavier neutrino.
So ordinary matter accounts for 4.6% (1/20th) of all mass+energy in the universe - this I suppose has to do with Einstein's E=mc2 that allows for mass to be converted to energy and the other way around.
More correctly, Einstein's E=mc^2 says that mass Is energy and vice versa. It's not an equation that only applies when performing certain conversions, it is an equation that always holds true. Mass and energy are equivalent. It's why a bound molecule has less mass than the constituent particles despite every particle still being present. It's not that when oxygen and hydrogen combine in an exothermic reaction to form water that mass is converted to energy. It's that the escaping energy, by the equivalence principle, has (is) mass and always did.
It's a subtle difference that it took me a while to grasp and then accept. But E=mc^2 is about much more than just the fact that if you annihilate matter with anti-matter you get a crap-load of energy released.
You'll note I don't refute BB theory. I just point out that it is far from settled. Hilarious that you were knocked so off kilter by that,
There is a huge gulf between "not settled" and "just hand-waving", and you of course failed to note that it was the latter I was taking issue with. Of course it isn't settled, nothing in physics is, and yet it is in fact the case that the Big Bang Theory is one of the most successfully predictive theories of the last century. You're completely off base thinking cosmologists would agree with your "hand waving" characterization more than my "very successful" characterization.
I really don't think "successful" in this context means what you think it means.
I am certain you don't know what "successful" means in this context, or why the Big Bang Theory is considered extremely successful by cosmologists. You have no idea why it is the favored cosmology, and why it will take a great deal of evidence to knock it down.
For example you bring up CMBR problems without noting the phenomenal success that was the CMBR prediction in the first place -- did you recognize the graph in that XKCD comic? Or how even in the last decade observations of the polarization of the CMBR have matched predictions of the theory precisely?
You bring up Dark Matter as if it's a problem, rather than a prediction of Big Bang Theory (assuming you meant the non-Baryonic matter which is theorized to make up a greater portion of the universes mass-energy than 'normal' matter), which our other observations of Dark Matter have supported.
The BB has had tremendous success and it is utterly foolish and ignorant to pretend otherwise. It also has significant problems and unresolved issues (like all of our most advanced theories), but when weighed against the correct predictions, then yes, that's called "successful".
I guess since you can't refute the physics (specifically the fact that our physics don't allow for any of the early stages of what the big bang hypothesis describes), I'll just have to watch your hand-waving.
You can't refute the BB's tremendous success, not least because you appear to be completely unaware.
And I see no point in denying that there's a big problem with current physics and describing energy densities at the level of the first instant after the Big Bang. GR predicts singularities, too, which is a problem when combined with things like the Pauli Exclusion Principle but I don't hear you calling that or QM "hand waving". It is well known that high-energy physics is an area where we need a lot more development and that our best theories don't play nice with each other in this domain.
And yet, starting nanoseconds after the unknowable and hypothetical Singularity, the Big Bang model allows us to make extremely accurate predictions about many aspects of the development of the universe. Clearly not everything, yet clearly much more than you believe.
So, no matter what it predicts, and no matter what it gets right, something else is wrong: Either it's the theory, or its the physics. But again, you need to hear this from a cosmologist. Or perhaps read up on it a bit.
Yes, of course something is wrong. We know something is wrong. We know something is wrong with GR and QM and the Standard Model. Yet no cosmologist would call those, or BB, anything but what they are: Extremely successful predictive theories. Even cosmologists who are coming with alternative theories must acknowledge that. So while BB Theory is wrong, far more wrong is your belief that cosmologists, or scientists for that matter, would agree that because it's known to be wrong, the BB Theory is "just hand waving" and not "one of the most successfully predictive theories of the last century".
Because, as any cosmologist or astrophysicist can tell you, wrong is relative. Maybe try talking to one.
-cannot be explained from our vantage point with our current understanding of the universe.
Heh, very true. And our understanding is certainly limited, and what we do understand could be wrong. And it would have to be in order for these explanations to be explained with Baryonic matter. It'd have to be very wrong. Like, gravity isn't just off by some small factor only noticeable at galactic scales, but somehow pointing in directions that have nothing to do with the mass. Possible, but I'm not holding my breath.
So I guess my point is that it's very unlikely that non-Baryonic Dark Matter will be discarded as an explanation based solely on further observations of normal matter.
Though I'm not sure why that is so important to some people. We already know that non-Baryonic matter exists. Dark Matter could be explained by the discovery of something that is essentially a Neutrino, only more massive.
BUT, educated guesses usually and typically lead to almost certainty given enough time, enough observers, and enough thinkers.
scientific community, please keep guessing and getting it wrong, one day you will get it right im sure of it.
Pretty much. And since they know they're making educated guesses, and know they are probably getting it wrong, I'm going to go with their current best theories as being more plausible than someone who just dismisses all the evidence as "hubris".:)
The big bang is just hand-waving at this point in time.
Hand-waving, one of the most successfully predictive theories of the last century, these are both the same. I'll make them seem like they're both the same by... wait for it... waving my hands.
Before Van Dokkum wrote his paper, the DM/DE proponents thought they'd found all the matter there is to find.
No astronomer thought they had found all the normal matter there is to find. In fact the search for dim red dwarfs in specific was part of trying to answer the Dark Matter mystery -- which originally only meant matter we had not seen yet, and only came to mostly refer to non-Baryonic Dark Matter when observations suggested that most of it was.
In fact, would you believe that when "DM Proporents" estimated the amount of non-Baryonic matter and added it to the known visible matter in galaxies, they still saw a discrepancy in observed gravity in elliptical galaxies? And that finding more normal matter was one prediction to explain it, and in fact this new observation may end up explaining the difference, solidifying our calculations of dark matter.
Suddenly there's 3x more. Which is a slight reduction in the need for DM.
3x the stars is not 3x the mass (particularly when the discovered stars are red dwarfs), but regardless...
Who's to say that in 1-20 years other heretics find 10x more baryonic matter, thus reducing even more the necessity for DM.
Indeed, who's to say? But as long as there are observations that cannot be explained by baryonic matter, it will be necessary.
I really like the characterization of this researcher as a "heretic", btw. I like it because this "heretic" was given access to the Keck Interferometer -- the combination of two of the largest telescopes in the world and thus a highly sought-after instrument -- in order to conduct his research. And then said research was published in Nature.
Because that's how we do things in science: we invite the "heretics" to make observations and disprove our current theories and hypothesis so we can create even better ones. They are not shunned, they are not shut out from access to the tools they would need to prove themselves,. Quite the opposite. Indeed, quite the opposite of a "Church" and "heretic" relationship. Which is why it's funny.
Postulating Dark {Matter, Energy} is the height of hubris, since it implies that Astronomy Has Seen All There Is To See from our tiny little glasses on our tiny little rock in a backwater arm of the Galaxy.
Thank The FSM that there are still a few rational scientists out there actually *looking* for stuff.
There are observations that have been made which cannot be explained by any quantity of unseen "regular" aka Baryonic matter. This is the result of people actually looking for stuff, and not in their hubris assuming that we have Seen All There Is To See. Indeed it is very much a case of realizing that we have not seen it all.
Hubris is dismissing (the non-Baryonic subset of) Dark Matter because it's not the same as the "regular" matter we are familiar with in a much more extreme case of assuming we have Seen All There Is To See. Red dwarfs are nothing new; and you're strongly implying you think such examples of normal objects will explain away the need for Dark Matter, as in we won't find anything new. We Have Seen It All.
Even though what astronomers have seen strongly suggests that is not true, and there is stuff out there completely different than what you are comfortable with.
It is kinda funny how often people give "arrogance" as the reason why scientists put forward certain hypothesis when they are completely unaware of the actual scientific reasoning behind the hypothesis. By attributing arrogance to others as a consequence of their own ignorance, they demonstrate tremendous hubris.
Kid: Mom, are you stupid enough to think that buying a poster and jumping off a bridge are equivalent activities, or do you think I am?
WHACK!
Okay, the kid does have a good point, and sure the argument her Mom was using was lame to the point of insulting, but roundhouse kicking her mother in the head was going too far!
Unless I'm misunderstanding the sequence of events (on purpose).
And theft, so far, has never been a super or subset of copyright infringement in any sense - affirmed, for example, by Dowling v. U.S [1985] and the Grokster case, unless you call Judge Noonan a liar.
The Judge only found it to not be a subset in a legal sense, and I'm not disputing that, so no.
In the non-legal practical and ethical sense of what is actually lost here, it is in fact a superset.
Are you really going to sit there and suggest that hundreds of millions of kids downloading pirated music and movies aren't, in some portion, doing it to avoid having to pay for their entertainment? Really?
It doesn't matter if they are doing it to avoid paying; what matters is whether or not they would have paid were they not able to pirate. That's the only case where there is lost income. But having to ask what would have happened were circumstances different, regardless of what you think the answer would be, is the definition of "hypothetical".
So no, I'm not saying that none of these kids would payed for their music if that was their only choice. I believe many would have. I think it would be much less than what was pirated in nearly all cases, though. A huge downloader with 50,000 songs was not going to spend $50,000 at the Apple store. A teenager who copies half a dozen albums, but who has $15, would not have bought half a dozen albums, they would have bought at most one. They may not have bought any and spent that $15 on something else. It's hypothetical either way.
Theft on the other hand causes real losses, as in actual in the reality in which the theft occurs, not hypothetical at all. There's also the hypothetical question of what the thief would have done if they couldn't steal. But the point is you don't have to try to divine whether or not they would have paid retail for the items stolen to calculate the losses. You can simply look at what was actually lost.
Except we're not talking about the quaint practice of copying a track from an LP onto a cassette for a friend, are we? We're talking about using a massive distribution network to deliberately make works available to millions of anonymous people, in perfect copies.
Actually we're talking about one teenage girl who downloaded 37 songs, equivalent to a lazy afternoon of cassette duping while chatting on the phone. But because it's not "quaint", we're going to treat her like a criminal mastermind and penalize her dozens of times worse than if she had ripped off a record store.
I agree, though, that perhaps the penalties for theft should be stiffer.
I'm okay with making them stiffer, as long as they are still proportional to the actual harm done, as long as it is also true that the penalty is significantly greater than cases of only hypothetical harm.
Since the announcement of the press conference says that the finding will impact the "search for evidence of extraterrestrial life," chances are they've found some potential signature of a metabolic process.
Hmmm... taking what you said about the lack of the Cassini project lead to heart, and noting a lack of anyone attached to any particular observatory project in that list... Is it possible that the announcement won't actually be about a particular astronomical observation at all?
Could it be that these scientists have discovered a plausible biological reaction which could take place in different extraterrestrial environments that simply gives them something new to look for in the future? That would count as an astrobiological finding, and would certainly impact the search for evidence of life.
But would be liable to be even more disappointing to many people.:)
The cool story here is that the idea that you could have a triple-redundant system fail seemed so far off that it was almost thought impossible.
Heh, well it would be, if the estimated probability of failure for each was truly an independent random variable. The excrement usually hits the fan when it isn't. Like, say, a hard drive with an unknown defect where a certain access pattern can make it fail. 3 machines doing the same work means they could all fail for the same reason at about the same time.
Or an old example that was basically just doing "redundancy" wrong, the telco that laid two fiber optic cables -- you know, cus the CTO read that redundancy was important! -- directly side by side. So when the inevitable backhoe came along and accidentally cut one, it cut both.
All is fine now. I believe they have replaced the hard drives with space hardened solid state drives...
Huh... Do you have any idea what the failure mode was? If it was a solar storm or other such event, then it would make perfect sense that all 3 systems conked out at the same time in defiance of all probability.
Anyway, that is pretty cool. And it shows the kind of folks who work at NASA that they decided that triple redundancy just wasn't enough and they needed a last-ditch recovery mechanism.
Actually, recording from the radio and making mix tapes has always been illegal for the same reasons as today.
Er, no, recording radio is not illegal for the same reason as recording TV isn't. It's called "time shifting". You can record a segment of radio and replay it yourself as many times as you want, so long as you don't use your copy to conduct a public performance.
Theft of a copy of a copyrighted work deprives another person of their property and deprives them of the right to control who receives copies of said work in one instance. Downloading a song illegally deprives them of the right to control who receives copies of said work in one instance.
In terms of who is deprived of what, theft is a strict superset of downloading.
Well don't start thinking now and ruin your record!
All they do is re-arrange some bits, right?
I can tell you've never actually created anything.
I can tell that your record is safe, since I wasn't even trying to suggest that creating these bit sequences is meaningless, because yes I have created them.
I'm talking about duplicating versus stealing. As the word "duplicating" suggests, when you do it, the original remains intact. Nobody is deprived of it. The only loss is a hypothetical loss of income. When you steal something, someone is physically deprived of what was stolen.
It's quite Kafkaesque that the penalty for duplication would be vastly higher than the penalty for outright theft.
The "area" of a three dimensional donut doesn't make any sense to me unless you're talking about surface area. Or I guess cross-sectional area, but that'd be an even weirder thing to call "area" with no qualification since it depends what cross section you're taking what happens.
There's a huge difference between "space" and "outer space". But way to try to slip that one past people.
Outer space is often simply referred to as "space", and that's the context I'm using it in. Not to mean "space-time" or anything else, so I'm not trying to bamboozle anyone.
You can ignore me and ignore the links that prove you wrong all you want, they won't go away. Which you know, which is why you're mad. But maybe once the hurt has passed, you'll realize you've learned something in spite of yourself.
So... is that your way of avoiding clicking on the link and realizing that you're wrong, by definition? Or is it that you've already had to admit it to yourself, so now you're mad at me?
Slashdot Mirror
Not quite. The order of mask-reveals goes Bush -> Reptilian -> Obama -> Romulan -> Alex Trebek -> Wookie -> Hitler -> Bette Midler -> The Riddler -> arsenic-using bacteria -> Bush and then the cycle repeats.
However, interesting theories (such as Hoava–Lifshitz gravity [wikipedia.org]) have sprung up that try to explain the effects we see without requiring the intervention of an exotic matter/energy mix.
What's so exotic about a new type of Lepton? We already know of particles with every required property for Dark Matter except for sufficient mass. We have theories that predict the existence of such particles for reasons that have nothing to do with dark matter. That means it is still theoretical and quite speculative, but I don't get why there's such a desire to avoid introducing a new particle that is a logical extension of the existing Standard Model.
And I thought most alternative gravity theory projects had given up on explaining Bullet Cluster and other observations without non-Baryonic matter, since in pretty much any gravitational theory it's still going to hold true that mass is attracted to other mass, not random locations in space. MOND already has, I know. Not that the theories aren't still interesting; there are more important consequences to alternative gravity theories than obviating the need for a heavier neutrino.
So ordinary matter accounts for 4.6% (1/20th) of all mass+energy in the universe - this I suppose has to do with Einstein's E=mc2 that allows for mass to be converted to energy and the other way around.
More correctly, Einstein's E=mc^2 says that mass Is energy and vice versa. It's not an equation that only applies when performing certain conversions, it is an equation that always holds true. Mass and energy are equivalent. It's why a bound molecule has less mass than the constituent particles despite every particle still being present. It's not that when oxygen and hydrogen combine in an exothermic reaction to form water that mass is converted to energy. It's that the escaping energy, by the equivalence principle, has (is) mass and always did.
It's a subtle difference that it took me a while to grasp and then accept. But E=mc^2 is about much more than just the fact that if you annihilate matter with anti-matter you get a crap-load of energy released.
You'll note I don't refute BB theory. I just point out that it is far from settled. Hilarious that you were knocked so off kilter by that,
There is a huge gulf between "not settled" and "just hand-waving", and you of course failed to note that it was the latter I was taking issue with. Of course it isn't settled, nothing in physics is, and yet it is in fact the case that the Big Bang Theory is one of the most successfully predictive theories of the last century. You're completely off base thinking cosmologists would agree with your "hand waving" characterization more than my "very successful" characterization.
I really don't think "successful" in this context means what you think it means.
I am certain you don't know what "successful" means in this context, or why the Big Bang Theory is considered extremely successful by cosmologists. You have no idea why it is the favored cosmology, and why it will take a great deal of evidence to knock it down.
For example you bring up CMBR problems without noting the phenomenal success that was the CMBR prediction in the first place -- did you recognize the graph in that XKCD comic? Or how even in the last decade observations of the polarization of the CMBR have matched predictions of the theory precisely?
You bring up Dark Matter as if it's a problem, rather than a prediction of Big Bang Theory (assuming you meant the non-Baryonic matter which is theorized to make up a greater portion of the universes mass-energy than 'normal' matter), which our other observations of Dark Matter have supported.
The BB has had tremendous success and it is utterly foolish and ignorant to pretend otherwise. It also has significant problems and unresolved issues (like all of our most advanced theories), but when weighed against the correct predictions, then yes, that's called "successful".
I guess since you can't refute the physics (specifically the fact that our physics don't allow for any of the early stages of what the big bang hypothesis describes), I'll just have to watch your hand-waving.
You can't refute the BB's tremendous success, not least because you appear to be completely unaware.
And I see no point in denying that there's a big problem with current physics and describing energy densities at the level of the first instant after the Big Bang. GR predicts singularities, too, which is a problem when combined with things like the Pauli Exclusion Principle but I don't hear you calling that or QM "hand waving". It is well known that high-energy physics is an area where we need a lot more development and that our best theories don't play nice with each other in this domain.
And yet, starting nanoseconds after the unknowable and hypothetical Singularity, the Big Bang model allows us to make extremely accurate predictions about many aspects of the development of the universe. Clearly not everything, yet clearly much more than you believe.
So, no matter what it predicts, and no matter what it gets right, something else is wrong: Either it's the theory, or its the physics. But again, you need to hear this from a cosmologist. Or perhaps read up on it a bit.
Yes, of course something is wrong. We know something is wrong. We know something is wrong with GR and QM and the Standard Model. Yet no cosmologist would call those, or BB, anything but what they are: Extremely successful predictive theories. Even cosmologists who are coming with alternative theories must acknowledge that. So while BB Theory is wrong, far more wrong is your belief that cosmologists, or scientists for that matter, would agree that because it's known to be wrong, the BB Theory is "just hand waving" and not "one of the most successfully predictive theories of the last century".
Because, as any cosmologist or astrophysicist can tell you, wrong is relative. Maybe try talking to one.
-cannot be explained from our vantage point with our current understanding of the universe.
Heh, very true. And our understanding is certainly limited, and what we do understand could be wrong. And it would have to be in order for these explanations to be explained with Baryonic matter. It'd have to be very wrong. Like, gravity isn't just off by some small factor only noticeable at galactic scales, but somehow pointing in directions that have nothing to do with the mass. Possible, but I'm not holding my breath.
So I guess my point is that it's very unlikely that non-Baryonic Dark Matter will be discarded as an explanation based solely on further observations of normal matter.
Though I'm not sure why that is so important to some people. We already know that non-Baryonic matter exists. Dark Matter could be explained by the discovery of something that is essentially a Neutrino, only more massive.
BUT, educated guesses usually and typically lead to almost certainty given enough time, enough observers, and enough thinkers.
scientific community, please keep guessing and getting it wrong, one day you will get it right im sure of it.
Pretty much. And since they know they're making educated guesses, and know they are probably getting it wrong, I'm going to go with their current best theories as being more plausible than someone who just dismisses all the evidence as "hubris". :)
The big bang is just hand-waving at this point in time.
Hand-waving, one of the most successfully predictive theories of the last century, these are both the same. I'll make them seem like they're both the same by... wait for it... waving my hands.
Before Van Dokkum wrote his paper, the DM/DE proponents thought they'd found all the matter there is to find.
No astronomer thought they had found all the normal matter there is to find. In fact the search for dim red dwarfs in specific was part of trying to answer the Dark Matter mystery -- which originally only meant matter we had not seen yet, and only came to mostly refer to non-Baryonic Dark Matter when observations suggested that most of it was.
In fact, would you believe that when "DM Proporents" estimated the amount of non-Baryonic matter and added it to the known visible matter in galaxies, they still saw a discrepancy in observed gravity in elliptical galaxies? And that finding more normal matter was one prediction to explain it, and in fact this new observation may end up explaining the difference, solidifying our calculations of dark matter.
Suddenly there's 3x more. Which is a slight reduction in the need for DM.
3x the stars is not 3x the mass (particularly when the discovered stars are red dwarfs), but regardless...
Who's to say that in 1-20 years other heretics find 10x more baryonic matter, thus reducing even more the necessity for DM.
Indeed, who's to say? But as long as there are observations that cannot be explained by baryonic matter, it will be necessary.
I really like the characterization of this researcher as a "heretic", btw. I like it because this "heretic" was given access to the Keck Interferometer -- the combination of two of the largest telescopes in the world and thus a highly sought-after instrument -- in order to conduct his research. And then said research was published in Nature.
Because that's how we do things in science: we invite the "heretics" to make observations and disprove our current theories and hypothesis so we can create even better ones. They are not shunned, they are not shut out from access to the tools they would need to prove themselves,. Quite the opposite. Indeed, quite the opposite of a "Church" and "heretic" relationship. Which is why it's funny.
Postulating Dark {Matter, Energy} is the height of hubris, since it implies that Astronomy Has Seen All There Is To See from our tiny little glasses on our tiny little rock in a backwater arm of the Galaxy.
Thank The FSM that there are still a few rational scientists out there actually *looking* for stuff.
There are observations that have been made which cannot be explained by any quantity of unseen "regular" aka Baryonic matter. This is the result of people actually looking for stuff, and not in their hubris assuming that we have Seen All There Is To See. Indeed it is very much a case of realizing that we have not seen it all.
Hubris is dismissing (the non-Baryonic subset of) Dark Matter because it's not the same as the "regular" matter we are familiar with in a much more extreme case of assuming we have Seen All There Is To See. Red dwarfs are nothing new; and you're strongly implying you think such examples of normal objects will explain away the need for Dark Matter, as in we won't find anything new. We Have Seen It All.
Even though what astronomers have seen strongly suggests that is not true, and there is stuff out there completely different than what you are comfortable with.
It is kinda funny how often people give "arrogance" as the reason why scientists put forward certain hypothesis when they are completely unaware of the actual scientific reasoning behind the hypothesis. By attributing arrogance to others as a consequence of their own ignorance, they demonstrate tremendous hubris.
Emphasis on speculation. :)
Oh well I guess we'll find out.
Okay, the kid does have a good point, and sure the argument her Mom was using was lame to the point of insulting, but roundhouse kicking her mother in the head was going too far!
Unless I'm misunderstanding the sequence of events (on purpose).
They're just mad because they can't find the continent on the globe called "America".
And theft, so far, has never been a super or subset of copyright infringement in any sense - affirmed, for example, by Dowling v. U.S [1985] and the Grokster case, unless you call Judge Noonan a liar.
The Judge only found it to not be a subset in a legal sense, and I'm not disputing that, so no.
In the non-legal practical and ethical sense of what is actually lost here, it is in fact a superset.
Are you really going to sit there and suggest that hundreds of millions of kids downloading pirated music and movies aren't, in some portion, doing it to avoid having to pay for their entertainment? Really?
It doesn't matter if they are doing it to avoid paying; what matters is whether or not they would have paid were they not able to pirate. That's the only case where there is lost income. But having to ask what would have happened were circumstances different, regardless of what you think the answer would be, is the definition of "hypothetical".
So no, I'm not saying that none of these kids would payed for their music if that was their only choice. I believe many would have. I think it would be much less than what was pirated in nearly all cases, though. A huge downloader with 50,000 songs was not going to spend $50,000 at the Apple store. A teenager who copies half a dozen albums, but who has $15, would not have bought half a dozen albums, they would have bought at most one. They may not have bought any and spent that $15 on something else. It's hypothetical either way.
Theft on the other hand causes real losses, as in actual in the reality in which the theft occurs, not hypothetical at all. There's also the hypothetical question of what the thief would have done if they couldn't steal. But the point is you don't have to try to divine whether or not they would have paid retail for the items stolen to calculate the losses. You can simply look at what was actually lost.
Except we're not talking about the quaint practice of copying a track from an LP onto a cassette for a friend, are we? We're talking about using a massive distribution network to deliberately make works available to millions of anonymous people, in perfect copies.
Actually we're talking about one teenage girl who downloaded 37 songs, equivalent to a lazy afternoon of cassette duping while chatting on the phone. But because it's not "quaint", we're going to treat her like a criminal mastermind and penalize her dozens of times worse than if she had ripped off a record store.
I agree, though, that perhaps the penalties for theft should be stiffer.
I'm okay with making them stiffer, as long as they are still proportional to the actual harm done, as long as it is also true that the penalty is significantly greater than cases of only hypothetical harm.
Since the announcement of the press conference says that the finding will impact the "search for evidence of extraterrestrial life," chances are they've found some potential signature of a metabolic process.
Hmmm... taking what you said about the lack of the Cassini project lead to heart, and noting a lack of anyone attached to any particular observatory project in that list... Is it possible that the announcement won't actually be about a particular astronomical observation at all?
Could it be that these scientists have discovered a plausible biological reaction which could take place in different extraterrestrial environments that simply gives them something new to look for in the future? That would count as an astrobiological finding, and would certainly impact the search for evidence of life.
But would be liable to be even more disappointing to many people. :)
The cool story here is that the idea that you could have a triple-redundant system fail seemed so far off that it was almost thought impossible.
Heh, well it would be, if the estimated probability of failure for each was truly an independent random variable. The excrement usually hits the fan when it isn't. Like, say, a hard drive with an unknown defect where a certain access pattern can make it fail. 3 machines doing the same work means they could all fail for the same reason at about the same time.
Or an old example that was basically just doing "redundancy" wrong, the telco that laid two fiber optic cables -- you know, cus the CTO read that redundancy was important! -- directly side by side. So when the inevitable backhoe came along and accidentally cut one, it cut both.
All is fine now. I believe they have replaced the hard drives with space hardened solid state drives...
Huh... Do you have any idea what the failure mode was? If it was a solar storm or other such event, then it would make perfect sense that all 3 systems conked out at the same time in defiance of all probability.
Anyway, that is pretty cool. And it shows the kind of folks who work at NASA that they decided that triple redundancy just wasn't enough and they needed a last-ditch recovery mechanism.
Actually, recording from the radio and making mix tapes has always been illegal for the same reasons as today.
Er, no, recording radio is not illegal for the same reason as recording TV isn't. It's called "time shifting". You can record a segment of radio and replay it yourself as many times as you want, so long as you don't use your copy to conduct a public performance.
Theft of a copy of a copyrighted work deprives another person of their property and deprives them of the right to control who receives copies of said work in one instance. Downloading a song illegally deprives them of the right to control who receives copies of said work in one instance.
In terms of who is deprived of what, theft is a strict superset of downloading.
Huh. Never thought of it that way.
Well don't start thinking now and ruin your record!
All they do is re-arrange some bits, right?
I can tell you've never actually created anything.
I can tell that your record is safe, since I wasn't even trying to suggest that creating these bit sequences is meaningless, because yes I have created them.
I'm talking about duplicating versus stealing. As the word "duplicating" suggests, when you do it, the original remains intact. Nobody is deprived of it. The only loss is a hypothetical loss of income. When you steal something, someone is physically deprived of what was stolen.
It's quite Kafkaesque that the penalty for duplication would be vastly higher than the penalty for outright theft.
The "area" of a three dimensional donut doesn't make any sense to me unless you're talking about surface area. Or I guess cross-sectional area, but that'd be an even weirder thing to call "area" with no qualification since it depends what cross section you're taking what happens.
They did not equate the two things, they compared them.
And it's a relevant and revealing comparison: Actual theft would be more acceptable and have a lesser penalty than duplicating bits.
Yes, because I thought people being that stupidly pedantic would want to actually read something contrary to their stupidity. A big mistake I admit.
There's a huge difference between "space" and "outer space". But way to try to slip that one past people.
Outer space is often simply referred to as "space", and that's the context I'm using it in. Not to mean "space-time" or anything else, so I'm not trying to bamboozle anyone.
Regardless, the earth is in outer space.
"Chris_Burke in an ass." Does that mean Chris_Burke is an ass?
Of course not. Which is exactly the distinction being made. Glad you understand it.
Wow, how did that end up a triple post? Me fail.
You can ignore me and ignore the links that prove you wrong all you want, they won't go away. Which you know, which is why you're mad. But maybe once the hurt has passed, you'll realize you've learned something in spite of yourself.
So... is that your way of avoiding clicking on the link and realizing that you're wrong, by definition? Or is it that you've already had to admit it to yourself, so now you're mad at me?