(Did you know the basic idea of Steamboat Willie (Mickey's origin) was stolen? Under modern copyright law, Walt Disney would have gone directly to jail,
Actually, it would have a really good shot at parody protection. It was based on Steamboat Bill, and unlike some recent illegal satires (like JibJab's "This Land"), it doesn't apparently comment on anything except the source material.
It is truely an imitation for humourous effect, which is allowed.
the large part of the population there is not of Arab origin.
Well also, the name "Libya" had no real meaning back in the Crusades either.
At any rate, while you may not find Arab unity in a political sense,
You certainly won't. They have no incentive for it. "Greater Arabia" is split into haves and have-nots according to which countries have oil wealth, and which are completely poor. Those with oil will never agree to join with non-oil areas, because then they'd need to share.
Two oil-rich nations might try to join up, but that would threaten to create a monopoly with the power to raise global prices, so the powerful non-Arab nations (mainly the USA) would prevent the merger- just as they prevented the unification of Iraq and Kuwait.
#2 The police and military don't keep guns at home
Yes they do. I've personally met police officers who later died when their own guns discharged at home (I've never known one who was killed by a criminal).
When a police officer is hit with a bullet, the shooter is statistically 9 times as likely to have been himself than another person.
If the intent is to kill, then 99% of guns made are complete failures.
Bwahaha. Nice semantics. You depend on the word "made" there, when we're talking about "designed".
Automobile airbags are designed to instantly puff out in a collision. Do you call them 99% failures because they haven't needed to be used?
The seat cushions of airliners are designed to float in the ocean. So 99.99999% of them are complete failures too.
Ability != intent.
I'm going to sell an amazing new non-killing gun. It's just like a normal gun, but with an integrated infra-red detector which jams the trigger if an object of approximately human body-temperature is in front of the barrel. This system will make it 90% less likely to kill anyone, without reducing effectiveness on paper targets or beer cans.
Do you honestly think that my gun will be much of a success? It'll compete for marketspace with BB guns and paintball markers. Police and military (the main buyers of guns) won't even consider it. Why? Because it's not designed to kill.
To have something like Star Trek where several spacefaring nations simultaneously arise and carve out competing empires is going to be even less
StarTrek doesn't really have a coherent canon timeline. But in some episodes, it was mentioned that all those galactic empires were actually the result of single "zookeeper" civilization that seeded all other planets with variations of a single life form (explaining why humans and vulcans, for example, could interbreed). That quasi-Creationist idea would give similar
If we travel 10,000 light years to find a planet who is technologically at the Bronze Age
Now the response there is a strong part of Star Trek canon: they explain very firmly that the reason Stone-Age cultures aren't molested by advanced species. It's the Prime Directive. The Federation intentionally evens the playing field.
I would be very surprised if we found something like the Klingon empire, or even just the Kzinti.
Those are completely unrealistic... but more because a warlike culture is inconsistent with FTL travel. FTL technology would improve combat lethality so much that the concept of "warrior" is obselete.
Nope, higher density wouldn't help us meet an equal civ,
That's not quite what he said. Higher density won't help US meet an equal, but it will make it more likely that multiple competing galatic civilizations exist.
Assuming that age -> experience/technology -> power, then the first & oldest civiliation is the strongest. The fewer civs there are, the more likely that just one of them is significantly older than the rest, and can thus take over the galaxy and head off any other competition. But the more civs there are, the more likely that multiple spacefaring races started at the same time to be approximately equal, with neither dominanting the others.
just like the whole arab world united when they got invaded by the cruzades in the middle ages, right?
The "cruzades" weren't invading the whole Arab world. They just wanted the "holy land". Why would a Libyan or Iranian feel threatened by what happens to Palestin?
Alas, the most recent news they could have of us would describe us as a plains-dwelling ape.
That makes no sense whatsoever. You think that the Andromedians could create interstellar spaceships, but be unable to either supply them with TV antennas, or retrothrusters to prevent crashing into earth?
Even if the visitors weren't aware of humans when they'd departed, they'd detect them well before reaching this actual solar system. The radio communication leaking from a planet will be much more detectable than the tremendously smaller and quieter incoming spaceship.
The Aztecs didn't all die- but their religion did. The surviving people enthusiastically copied the "stronger" religion of the superior invaders... a pattern that has happened worldwide.
In the same way that Europeans in the middle ages could deduce that the earth is round from seeing ships sink in the horizon, we can deduce that planets like Earth or Mars are plentiful
There's nothing at all similar between those two claims. That the earth is non-flat can be directly observed by watching a single ship sail past the horizon. Seeing Earth + Mars in one place and deciding that similar objects are common has no related justification.
to say that Columbus "Discovered" America.
The word "discovered" does not mean "discovered first". If you find something, and you had no foreknowledge of it's existence, then you've made a discovery- regardless of who else already knew.
We can detect jupiter sized planets, the problem is, every one we've seen has been way closer to the star than jupiter is to our sun,
If Jupiter were on Earth's orbit, then its moons would be fine places for life. Probably not quite as large and impressive as Earthlife, but better than any martian-microbe.
Doesn't matter to me anyway, buddhism (my religion/philosophy - your choice) does not endorse the existance of a god or gods.
That's a fact of which many Americans are ignorant: Buddhists are technically atheists.
The confusion is unsurprising, though. It's easy to think that Buddha is just another word for (another) God. But it actually translates more directly to "Saint" or somesuch.
However, many Buddhist variants actually encourage this misperception- and indeed, to increase popularity in new countries, the evolving faith took on aspects of theistic religion. Many Japanese Buddhists (other than Zen) behave just as if Buddha were the name of a singular entity.
This is similar to the way that Catholicism is technically monotheistic, but actually contains elements of paganism and idolatry.
No, it'll catch the amateur cryptographers. Who will be accused of supporting terrorists by promoting and distributing tools useful to evade law-enforcement.
Eavesdropping on voice communications was not such a convenient tool, nor should we expect such convenient tools to fall out of future technologies,
Law enforcement is addicted to the ability to wiretap. You should expect them to try to preserve this ability, by outlawing techniques that can circumvent it.
That includes outlawing the possession of steganography software. Do I think they'll suceed? I hope not. But I think they'll try.
Just go back to the same argument I just made, but with "steganography" in place of "cryptography": This news report demonstrates that the FBI/NSA wants to have wiretapping ability in the future. You have noted that steganography will make wiretapping powerless. Therefore, to preserve wiretapping, they will have to try to destroy steganography. They'll trot out the list of criminals and terrorists who've been arrested based on wiretaps, and then explain that if those evil men had known about crypto and stegano, they'd still be free to kill and abuse us.
PS. They won't bother to suppress steganography until private-encryption is already mostly destroyed. Steganography has no real value if you have crypto (and if crypto is commonly used so that it's doesn't raise suspicions on its own)
If you read anything about how the towers fell you would know that the main reason was that the ignited jet fuel weakened the structure and caused it to fall on top of itself, from the top down.
Yes, I know all about it. Do you think you're contradiction me somehow?
The collapse was caused by fuel burning through supports. That would've happened almost anyplace the plane hit, except right on the side (where the plane would've smashed a corner and fallen to the ground, rather than embedding inside)
There was no special precision needed to hit well enough to collapse the building. In fact, the attackers didn't even know it would collapse!
The other obvious point is that it's a little difficult to get an airliner much lower than they were in NYC.
Yes... and that supports my position too. It was claimed that the hijackers were skilled pilots, because they hit in the precise place to cause fast collapse. But to do that, you'd have to hit low. And because of the other buildings around, hitting low would be hard unless you're a good pilot who can "dive bomb" accurately from a steep angle. Since the terrorists didn't do that, it seems they weren't good pilots.
That's awfully broad criteria for a lowly patent clerk to be using.
Yes, true. I didn't really mean the patent examiner personally. It should be institutional.
After all, we can't just hand police officers a copy of the Constitution and send them out on patrol, without explaining how it applies to all different possible situations.
The choice about "Does it promote progress" should be made at the level of the USPTO, or even higher-up at the legislative level. It can be shown that in general software patents are non-promoters, as it's tough to profit off software without releasing it publically, but it's still very possible to profit even if competitors can copy the basic idea (since copyright prevents direct reuse).
Conversely, it appears that patents on drugs do promote progress. Drugs also would be difficult to make a profit on without distributing them publically, but as drugs enjoy no copyright protection, they need patents to stop immediate competitive duplication.
That sounds reasonable, but you provide no evidence whatsoever beyond your say-so.
Do you know how enormously more likely a person is to get in a harmful accident during his first 4 years of driving?
Can you imagine how much worse it would be if they were allowed to start driving as soon as they can buy/borrow a car, without even demonstrating a minimal level of ability? Without even having proven that they can vaguely remember 50% of the traffic laws?
So the possession of a printed piece of plastic makes me a safer driver automagically?
No, obviously. The fact that you drove around with a traffic cop in your backseat for 30 minutes and he didn't get angry at you makes you safer.
Virtually everybody wants to drive. Almost everyone assumes they know how. But many 18-year-olds imagine themselves immortal, and don't exercise as much caution as they should. Requiring a practical test before public driving is the real benefit of licensing.
. I think it *should* be illegal to drive when you're under 18,
You feel that the 18th birthday magically imparts skills and responsibilities that were totally absent the previous day?
A firm cutoff date like that is both wrong and unfair. Some 30 year olds can't drive safely, while some 16 yearolds can. Out of fairness for them, and for our own safety, we must have a cop look at each individually before allowing him to drive.
And is she going to kill someone just for the hell of it? God, no.
Statistics have shown that natural-sounding claim to be, in fact, wrong. Anytime a firearm in the USA hits a person, it is more than 8 times as likely to have been an innocent victim (of accident or crime) than a menacing criminal.
You shoot him in the back while he's running away, you're going to jail.
Wrong. Especially if the shooter is a cop. They get away with it all the time. You also seem to be ignoring the famous Texan rules-of-engagement.
Asian girl friend of mine (Not girlfriend) is at LEAST evenly matched against some asshole trying to rape her, no matter how big he is, as long as she has a gun.
No. The aggressor has the element of surprise and initiative, which almost always trumps weapons. Especially since in a place where many people carry concealed guns, the badguys will be certain to have them too...
The majority of cars are used for an illegal purpose, so lets use the same logic and outlaw cars.
This alludes to the same legal response to P2P that I've advocated for years: make it a misdemenor.
Nonprofit copyright infringement is quite similar to breaking automobile speed limits. One creates a small chance that a big corporation will fail to make some profit... the other creates a much smaller chance that an innocent person will die violently.
Even though speeding in a car is a form of indifference to risking human life, the risk is so small that we don't treat it very harshly. All we do is make it illegal enough to prevent rampant speeding everywhere. Penalties of $100, not prison terms.
Casual copyright infringement should be treated similarly. The cops should just troll suprnova.org for obviously unauthorized file sharers, and send each a ticket for $40 (first offense, increasing with more offenses). If the infringer even bothers to challenge the accusation ("I thought it was public domain", "I collecting backup copies for CDs I own"), then he can probably get off- the same as when you challenge a traffic ticket.
The natural consequence of this campaign will be a big drop in anonymous file trading. Close friends will still share, but few people will give out Doom3 to thousands of strangers.
Of course, the end result might not be the end of P2P- it could also be to force the actual use of cryptographically anonymized file trading (which will happen someday, regardless of which legal avenue the authorities go down). And it's hard to imagine a legal way to prevent that, except for Trusted Computing or criminalized cryptography.
Slashdot Mirror
(Did you know the basic idea of Steamboat Willie (Mickey's origin) was stolen? Under modern copyright law, Walt Disney would have gone directly to jail,
Actually, it would have a really good shot at parody protection. It was based on Steamboat Bill, and unlike some recent illegal satires (like JibJab's "This Land"), it doesn't apparently comment on anything except the source material.
It is truely an imitation for humourous effect, which is allowed.
the large part of the population there is not of Arab origin.
Well also, the name "Libya" had no real meaning back in the Crusades either.
At any rate, while you may not find Arab unity in a political sense,
You certainly won't. They have no incentive for it. "Greater Arabia" is split into haves and have-nots according to which countries have oil wealth, and which are completely poor. Those with oil will never agree to join with non-oil areas, because then they'd need to share.
Two oil-rich nations might try to join up, but that would threaten to create a monopoly with the power to raise global prices, so the powerful non-Arab nations (mainly the USA) would prevent the merger- just as they prevented the unification of Iraq and Kuwait.
you are NEVER to point a gun at someone unless you intend to shoot them.
Ok, marking you down as (X) Against the proposition that guns are designed to intimidate...
#2 The police and military don't keep guns at home
Yes they do. I've personally met police officers who later died when their own guns discharged at home (I've never known one who was killed by a criminal).
When a police officer is hit with a bullet, the shooter is statistically 9 times as likely to have been himself than another person.
If the intent is to kill, then 99% of guns made are complete failures.
Bwahaha. Nice semantics. You depend on the word "made" there, when we're talking about "designed".
Automobile airbags are designed to instantly puff out in a collision. Do you call them 99% failures because they haven't needed to be used?
The seat cushions of airliners are designed to float in the ocean. So 99.99999% of them are complete failures too.
Ability != intent.
I'm going to sell an amazing new non-killing gun. It's just like a normal gun, but with an integrated infra-red detector which jams the trigger if an object of approximately human body-temperature is in front of the barrel. This system will make it 90% less likely to kill anyone, without reducing effectiveness on paper targets or beer cans.
Do you honestly think that my gun will be much of a success? It'll compete for marketspace with BB guns and paintball markers. Police and military (the main buyers of guns) won't even consider it. Why? Because it's not designed to kill.
because God created the universe to do nothing but declare his glory.
If humans on earth help declare glory, then wouldn't human-looking aliens on other planets ("in his own image") be even more glorious?
Otherwise, He's wasting a whole lot of stars that could be packed with glorious planets!
To have something like Star Trek where several spacefaring nations simultaneously arise and carve out competing empires is going to be even less
StarTrek doesn't really have a coherent canon timeline. But in some episodes, it was mentioned that all those galactic empires were actually the result of single "zookeeper" civilization that seeded all other planets with variations of a single life form (explaining why humans and vulcans, for example, could interbreed). That quasi-Creationist idea would give similar
If we travel 10,000 light years to find a planet who is technologically at the Bronze Age
Now the response there is a strong part of Star Trek canon: they explain very firmly that the reason Stone-Age cultures aren't molested by advanced species. It's the Prime Directive. The Federation intentionally evens the playing field.
I would be very surprised if we found something like the Klingon empire, or even just the Kzinti.
Those are completely unrealistic... but more because a warlike culture is inconsistent with FTL travel. FTL technology would improve combat lethality so much that the concept of "warrior" is obselete.
Nope, higher density wouldn't help us meet an equal civ,
That's not quite what he said. Higher density won't help US meet an equal, but it will make it more likely that multiple competing galatic civilizations exist.
Assuming that age -> experience/technology -> power, then the first & oldest civiliation is the strongest. The fewer civs there are, the more likely that just one of them is significantly older than the rest, and can thus take over the galaxy and head off any other competition. But the more civs there are, the more likely that multiple spacefaring races started at the same time to be approximately equal, with neither dominanting the others.
just like the whole arab world united when they got invaded by the cruzades in the middle ages, right?
The "cruzades" weren't invading the whole Arab world. They just wanted the "holy land". Why would a Libyan or Iranian feel threatened by what happens to Palestin?
Exactly. You can't prove that something doesn't exist,
Warning! There is a gorilla behind you- and he's armed with a laser rifle!
Oops, maybe I'm wrong. Care to try proving that it doesn't exist?
Alas, the most recent news they could have of us would describe us as a plains-dwelling ape.
That makes no sense whatsoever. You think that the Andromedians could create interstellar spaceships, but be unable to either supply them with TV antennas, or retrothrusters to prevent crashing into earth?
Even if the visitors weren't aware of humans when they'd departed, they'd detect them well before reaching this actual solar system. The radio communication leaking from a planet will be much more detectable than the tremendously smaller and quieter incoming spaceship.
this did not prevent their demise.
The Aztecs didn't all die- but their religion did. The surviving people enthusiastically copied the "stronger" religion of the superior invaders... a pattern that has happened worldwide.
In the same way that Europeans in the middle ages could deduce that the earth is round from seeing ships sink in the horizon, we can deduce that planets like Earth or Mars are plentiful
There's nothing at all similar between those two claims. That the earth is non-flat can be directly observed by watching a single ship sail past the horizon. Seeing Earth + Mars in one place and deciding that similar objects are common has no related justification.
to say that Columbus "Discovered" America.
The word "discovered" does not mean "discovered first". If you find something, and you had no foreknowledge of it's existence, then you've made a discovery- regardless of who else already knew.
we'd be a fatty food source, or slave labor to our alien masters.
Really what would happen is that neither planet can manage to travel to the other, so we'll just share entertaining CD rips on interstellar P2P.
We can detect jupiter sized planets, the problem is, every one we've seen has been way closer to the star than jupiter is to our sun,
If Jupiter were on Earth's orbit, then its moons would be fine places for life. Probably not quite as large and impressive as Earthlife, but better than any martian-microbe.
Doesn't matter to me anyway, buddhism (my religion/philosophy - your choice) does not endorse the existance of a god or gods.
That's a fact of which many Americans are ignorant: Buddhists are technically atheists.
The confusion is unsurprising, though. It's easy to think that Buddha is just another word for (another) God. But it actually translates more directly to "Saint" or somesuch.
However, many Buddhist variants actually encourage this misperception- and indeed, to increase popularity in new countries, the evolving faith took on aspects of theistic religion. Many Japanese Buddhists (other than Zen) behave just as if Buddha were the name of a singular entity.
This is similar to the way that Catholicism is technically monotheistic, but actually contains elements of paganism and idolatry.
That'll catch the stupid terrorists, anyway.
No, it'll catch the amateur cryptographers. Who will be accused of supporting terrorists by promoting and distributing tools useful to evade law-enforcement.
Eavesdropping on voice communications was not such a convenient tool, nor should we expect such convenient tools to fall out of future technologies,
Law enforcement is addicted to the ability to wiretap. You should expect them to try to preserve this ability, by outlawing techniques that can circumvent it.
That includes outlawing the possession of steganography software. Do I think they'll suceed? I hope not. But I think they'll try.
Just go back to the same argument I just made, but with "steganography" in place of "cryptography": This news report demonstrates that the FBI/NSA wants to have wiretapping ability in the future. You have noted that steganography will make wiretapping powerless. Therefore, to preserve wiretapping, they will have to try to destroy steganography. They'll trot out the list of criminals and terrorists who've been arrested based on wiretaps, and then explain that if those evil men had known about crypto and stegano, they'd still be free to kill and abuse us.
PS. They won't bother to suppress steganography until private-encryption is already mostly destroyed. Steganography has no real value if you have crypto (and if crypto is commonly used so that it's doesn't raise suspicions on its own)
If you read anything about how the towers fell you would know that the main reason was that the ignited jet fuel weakened the structure and caused it to fall on top of itself, from the top down.
Yes, I know all about it. Do you think you're contradiction me somehow?
The collapse was caused by fuel burning through supports. That would've happened almost anyplace the plane hit, except right on the side (where the plane would've smashed a corner and fallen to the ground, rather than embedding inside)
There was no special precision needed to hit well enough to collapse the building. In fact, the attackers didn't even know it would collapse!
The other obvious point is that it's a little difficult to get an airliner much lower than they were in NYC.
Yes... and that supports my position too. It was claimed that the hijackers were skilled pilots, because they hit in the precise place to cause fast collapse. But to do that, you'd have to hit low. And because of the other buildings around, hitting low would be hard unless you're a good pilot who can "dive bomb" accurately from a steep angle. Since the terrorists didn't do that, it seems they weren't good pilots.
That's awfully broad criteria for a lowly patent clerk to be using.
Yes, true. I didn't really mean the patent examiner personally. It should be institutional.
After all, we can't just hand police officers a copy of the Constitution and send them out on patrol, without explaining how it applies to all different possible situations.
The choice about "Does it promote progress" should be made at the level of the USPTO, or even higher-up at the legislative level. It can be shown that in general software patents are non-promoters, as it's tough to profit off software without releasing it publically, but it's still very possible to profit even if competitors can copy the basic idea (since copyright prevents direct reuse).
Conversely, it appears that patents on drugs do promote progress. Drugs also would be difficult to make a profit on without distributing them publically, but as drugs enjoy no copyright protection, they need patents to stop immediate competitive duplication.
That sounds reasonable, but you provide no evidence whatsoever beyond your say-so.
Do you know how enormously more likely a person is to get in a harmful accident during his first 4 years of driving?
Can you imagine how much worse it would be if they were allowed to start driving as soon as they can buy/borrow a car, without even demonstrating a minimal level of ability? Without even having proven that they can vaguely remember 50% of the traffic laws?
So the possession of a printed piece of plastic makes me a safer driver automagically?
No, obviously. The fact that you drove around with a traffic cop in your backseat for 30 minutes and he didn't get angry at you makes you safer.
Virtually everybody wants to drive. Almost everyone assumes they know how. But many 18-year-olds imagine themselves immortal, and don't exercise as much caution as they should. Requiring a practical test before public driving is the real benefit of licensing.
. I think it *should* be illegal to drive when you're under 18,
You feel that the 18th birthday magically imparts skills and responsibilities that were totally absent the previous day?
A firm cutoff date like that is both wrong and unfair. Some 30 year olds can't drive safely, while some 16 yearolds can. Out of fairness for them, and for our own safety, we must have a cop look at each individually before allowing him to drive.
And is she going to kill someone just for the hell of it? God, no.
Statistics have shown that natural-sounding claim to be, in fact, wrong. Anytime a firearm in the USA hits a person, it is more than 8 times as likely to have been an innocent victim (of accident or crime) than a menacing criminal.
You shoot him in the back while he's running away, you're going to jail.
Wrong. Especially if the shooter is a cop. They get away with it all the time. You also seem to be ignoring the famous Texan rules-of-engagement.
Asian girl friend of mine (Not girlfriend) is at LEAST evenly matched against some asshole trying to rape her, no matter how big he is, as long as she has a gun.
No. The aggressor has the element of surprise and initiative, which almost always trumps weapons. Especially since in a place where many people carry concealed guns, the badguys will be certain to have them too...
It could be said that guns are designed to intimidate.
You cannot intimidate without being able to kill.
"Designing to threaten XYZ" and "Designing to XYZ easier" are both really still "Designed to XYZ".
They're actually designed to fire a projectile. Very fast
And cars are designed to spin wheels. Very fast. No more and no less.
They're not designed to go places, though! It's all just about spinning the wheels.
The majority of cars are used for an illegal purpose, so lets use the same logic and outlaw cars.
This alludes to the same legal response to P2P that I've advocated for years: make it a misdemenor.
Nonprofit copyright infringement is quite similar to breaking automobile speed limits. One creates a small chance that a big corporation will fail to make some profit... the other creates a much smaller chance that an innocent person will die violently.
Even though speeding in a car is a form of indifference to risking human life, the risk is so small that we don't treat it very harshly. All we do is make it illegal enough to prevent rampant speeding everywhere. Penalties of $100, not prison terms.
Casual copyright infringement should be treated similarly. The cops should just troll suprnova.org for obviously unauthorized file sharers, and send each a ticket for $40 (first offense, increasing with more offenses). If the infringer even bothers to challenge the accusation ("I thought it was public domain", "I collecting backup copies for CDs I own"), then he can probably get off- the same as when you challenge a traffic ticket.
The natural consequence of this campaign will be a big drop in anonymous file trading. Close friends will still share, but few people will give out Doom3 to thousands of strangers.
Of course, the end result might not be the end of P2P- it could also be to force the actual use of cryptographically anonymized file trading (which will happen someday, regardless of which legal avenue the authorities go down). And it's hard to imagine a legal way to prevent that, except for Trusted Computing or criminalized cryptography.