In all fairness, the machine translation is more accurate. The original says nothing about him being 77 years old, an induced coma, or sedation. The human translation says nothing about the ICU of the hospital or his critical state (and I think "fights for his life" really doesn't cut it.)
Here's a literal translation: ISREAL The prime minister Ariel Sharon remains in a critical state after having been the victim of a serious stroke ("brain accident") yesterday. He underwent seven hours of surgery in the intensive care unit of a hospital in Jerusalem.
Google is certainly no Jedi of the English finesse, but its translation in this case did an excellent job of passing the meaning across the language barrier. It's hardly "pretty useless."
Do you think that if Microsoft had sent the same amount of spam, they'd fine it over ten billion dollars? As much as I'd take guilty pleasure from that happening, it seems unlikely to me. So basically they gave this guy a worse judgment because he was comparatively poor. That sounds like bad law.
With the typical assumptions, part of the value of a game is the ability to resell it. A rational consumer may only be willing to buy a $60 game knowing that he can sell it back for the equivalent of $20. Otherwise his initial price point might only be $40.
Similarly the publisher might only be willing to sell a game for $40 if it knows that the game will not be resold in a way that will stifle an average of $20 of original sales. Otherwise it might only be willing to sell the game for $60.
So it's not entirely clear to me what advantage publishers think they will get from banning resales. If they think customers are willing to pay the same amount for less benefit -- that is, a game with no resale value -- why don't they just increase the price of the game instead of lobbying for legislation?
Sounds to me like this guy doesn't know what he's talking about.
Still, if I had to pick between syphilis and AIDS, I'd pick syphilis. There is something to be said for being the lesser of two evils: less evil is better than more evil.
It's true, we make tweaks to the scientific method from time to time. Double blind tests are now nearly necessary, which wasn't always the case. There are (very recently) some experiments in which the researcher artificially masks the data that he collects with random offsets (which can later be removed) so that developing trends cannot influence his lab technique. But I don't think these tweaks imply that the scientific method is "up for debate" any more than increasingly demanding standards of rigor in mathematical proof over the years suggest that mathematical certainty is "up for debate."
"People who make up definitions of science and then try to rule out rival theories because they are not 'scientific' are usually up to no good."
This is 100% wrong! The scientific method is not up for debate. The reason people at the time were wrong to condemn Newton's notions of gravity is PRECISELY BECAUSE these people were not using the scientific method, and he was!
"Part of what is at stake in scientific controversy is what the proper definition of science is."
This is just false. It is easy to define science: it is the advancement (or state of) human knowledge acquired through the scientific method. If you need a definition of the scientific method, any grade school science textbook will give it to you. Empirical falsification of theory and subsequent theorizing is uniquely responsible for the incredible state of technology today. Philosophers' ponderings in their atriums, witch doctors' reasoning from 'first principles,' priest's divine revelations: none of these have yielded any significant and sustained advance in technology EVER. These goddamn rednecks who have decided to redefine science are killing a sacred cow. Science is not whatever you want it to be, it's not a political philosophy, and it's certainly not the expression of religious beliefs in a modern world. It's a single process that has proven throughout history to GET RESULTS. By trying to force it out of the classroom, these imbeciles are doing their children just as much of a disservice as if they replaced mathematics with numerology, astronomy with astrology, or economics with finger-painting.
"Here's a simple way to judge these sorts of claims that doesn't require any scientific training: major breakthroughs in fundamental physics are not made by people developing a secret product that will solve the world's energy problems."
This is exactly it. Picking apart his "article" is really missing the point. Slashdot editors should look at the blurb and KNOW that it's garbage. I'm a law student, for heaven's sake -- my background doesn't begin to approach the most basic foundations of what it takes to evaluate the rigor of a physics paper -- and I knew it was a bunch of snake oil just from the blurb. Even if I did have the background, Slashdot isn't conducive to rigorous scientific review. That takes months; these stories are up for hours. Of course I don't expect the editors to have the background or the resources to evaluate the merit of complicated scientific claims. I just want them to look at the source and the situation for the TEN SECONDS that it takes to know that this guy is a con man.
Can we PLEASE have the editors do at least a cursory background check on these "scientists" before posting their pyramid scheme crackpot press releases? We've had five or more stories in the past TWO DAYS about how the rules of science were about to be rewritten by someone who can pull heat out of nothing for free, or extend wifi coverage for TEN MILLION MILES on a watch battery, or fly to the moon with a tablespoon of vinegar, or extend a battery's shelf life by nine million percent by putting a sticker on it.
Seriously, WTF? It's embarrassing. This place reads like the fucking National Enquirer when it comes to science. There are legitimate breakthroughs happening all the time in science; why do we have to cover these retard con men? Is it that pseudoscience is more FLASHY AND EXCITING than real science, or is it that our editors are too fucking brain dead to tell the difference?
This is why we need strict liability for having your customers' personal information stolen. This is not an argument for arresting/fining people with an unprotected WiFi.
there aren't many business reasons to look at an individual's browsing habits.
Unless you count lobbying -- or, perhaps in a less civilized but more honest term, blackmailing -- a "business interest." Google has enough information to blackmail pretty much anyone worth blackmailing.
There is a circle some amount north of the south pole, concentric to the axis of the earth's rotation, with a circumference of 1 mile. Starting at any point 1 mile north of any point on this ring will work too. Note that this set of points is itself a circle concentric to the axis of the earth's rotation.
Similarly, for any positive integer n, there is a ring some amount north of the south pole with a circumference of 1/n. Starting at any point 1 mile north of any point on this circle will work too. Similarly, this set of points is itself a circle concentric to the axis of the earth's rotation.
None of these rings overlap with any other, or with the north pole. Any other point near enough to the south pole will send you around the axis of the world's rotation a non-integer number of times, and you won't end up where you started.
And of course, "going a mile south" when you start at or within a mile of the south pole is an undefined operation, so presumably we exclude those points too.
That's pretty ridiculous. They also require training before you can transport fissionable materials. Are you also lobbying for a hazmat class in all public schools?
It's not just artists: society doesn't care about any individual workers. It doesn't set a maximum wage for ditch-diggers because in an efficient market there is no risk of overpayment. If a company were willing to overpay its ditch-diggers, the ditches it produces would also cost more than necessary, leaving them open for another ditch-digging company to undercut them. In this way we assure that ditch-digging is compensated only as much as it is worth. The same is true of corporate analysts, Wall Street lawyers, and almost everyone else.
Artists are only different because the marginal cost of reproducing a work is significantly lower than the cost of creating it. If we turned the free market loose on you guys, you'd make next to nothing at all, because the price for your works would equilibrate at the marginal cost of reproducing them. This would harm society, since we could all derive benefit from the fruits of your labor, and you'd probably not create if you didn't get paid. So we try to make artistry similar to other professions by prohibiting non-authorized reproduction for a certain time.
How do we decide how long that time should be? It's unfortunate that we have to decide at all, since in general the free market fine-tunes these things better than even extremely competent legislatures. But if you could ask the free market how much monopoly time to grant you, it would say what it says to ditch-diggers and corporate analysts and Wall Street lawyers: as little as you're willing to take.
So although this utilitarian view of copyright term that treats you like a dairy cow or hive of honeybees sounds harsh, it's the same principle that runs our society at large. Just as we pay ditch-diggers and corporate analysts and Wall Street lawyers as little as they're willing to take for their work, so too should we give you only as much incentive as you require to continue creating.
The other inefficiency -- besides that we have to artificially set the copyright term ourselves -- is that it has to apply to all artists. The free market can evaluate each ditch-digger's work individually, and if one ditch-digger does a much better job than another, it will support a higher wage for that one because people will be willing to pay more for his labor. But it isn't feasible to implement that kind of system legislatively, so we have to set one copyright term that applies to everyone. Is this fair? No, probably not. But it's the best we know how to do.
This is the theory, anyway. In practice, market failures often exist, and perhaps everyone doesn't always get paid as little as they're willing to take. But you have an enormous failure working to your benefit, and that's that Congress doesn't understand the above analysis and sets the copyright term to an absurd, laughable length of time. Forgive us if we think Congress should wake up and stop preferring you guys to everyone else, and that the term as it is currently set lacks any sort of moral authority.
I don't think this holds up to actual economic analysis.
The Big Boxes will hire locally -- you don't think they fly in cashiers from Bangladesh, do you? -- and the economy is supported by having cheaper goods. With elastic demand curves, cheaper widgets mean people buy more widgets which boosts the economy. With inelastic demand curves, cheaper widgets means a decreased cost of living in the area, which is roughly equivalent to giving everyone in town a raise. They can then spend their excess cash elsewhere or invest it, which also boosts the economy.
The only contention left is that Big Boxes won't be willing to pay as much as a smaller shop. But why is this the case? A worker will work wherever the compensation is highest. If the Big Boxes are paying him less than his market value, someone else can open up shop, offer to pay more, and steal him away. The Big Box would lose in that case. Since that isn't happening, I don't think Big Boxes under-compensate their workers.
Same analysis goes for working conditions. Poor working conditions are economically equivalent to lower wages.
Perhaps you feel that Big Boxes aren't as aesthetically appealing as mom and pop shops, or that they detract from the bourgeois feel of a town. I suppose that's fair, but it's a very different argument.
So what? If, as revealed by consumers' own choices, the big stores can better serve consumers than the small stores, why do the small stores deserve to stay in business?
"I don't fear the Eolas shareholders as much as I fear somebody else with a few hundred $million who might buy their rights and start systematically going after people for a few thousand or tens of thousands of dollars a pop. And all the while they'll be making self-righteous proclamations about protecting "their" technology."
And you know what? I say bring it on. This hypothetical millionaire intellectual property broker has the legal right to do exactly as you suggest. The problem is the system of laws that gives him that right. And there'll be no faster way to promote the change of those laws if this guy shows us just how broken they are.
I've always thought that the best way to change bad laws is to enforce them vigorously. Imagine how long the absurd 55mph freeway speed limits would last if you got pulled over for driving 56.
Well, okay, but you're always free not to enter into that contract, right? I certainly can't think of any clean way of amending the law to prevent that kind of contract without seriously harming individuals' moral autonomy.
In other words, if I, as a user, *want* to enter into such a contract because it allows the provider to give me a cheaper price, who are you to tell me that I can't?
"Also, there is some question as to whether or not the GPL is a contract or not. There is the possibility that someone could "take back' the license. As there is no apparent consideration (e.g. you didn't pay for the license, did you?), a court might say, OK, he took it back. There was no contract."
There is no confusion: the GPL is not a damn contract. It SAYS SO IN THE GPL. Your exact same legal criticism (of revocability) could be made about the MIT/Berkeley license, which you seem to support, because it's not a contract either.
"Yes, by limiting the freedom of people to use free software for purposes Stallman doesn't like. Stallman is making this change for one simple reason: he wants more control over how people use free software"
Of course. If we wanted pure freedom, we would release all of our software into the public domain. The reason we limit the freedom to distribute (and now serve) our software is that we create more freedom (by causing the pool of GPL'ed software to grow continuously) than we restrict (by forcing people to comply with the GPL's terms).
This change is no different, and follows the same principles.
Slashdot Mirror
In all fairness, the machine translation is more accurate. The original says nothing about him being 77 years old, an induced coma, or sedation. The human translation says nothing about the ICU of the hospital or his critical state (and I think "fights for his life" really doesn't cut it.)
Here's a literal translation:
ISREAL The prime minister Ariel Sharon remains in a critical state after having been the victim of a serious stroke ("brain accident") yesterday. He underwent seven hours of surgery in the intensive care unit of a hospital in Jerusalem.
Google is certainly no Jedi of the English finesse, but its translation in this case did an excellent job of passing the meaning across the language barrier. It's hardly "pretty useless."
Do you think that if Microsoft had sent the same amount of spam, they'd fine it over ten billion dollars? As much as I'd take guilty pleasure from that happening, it seems unlikely to me. So basically they gave this guy a worse judgment because he was comparatively poor. That sounds like bad law.
What if he had said something simpler but equivalent: "We have nothing to fear from Google." Would you believe that?
In other news, the Information Minister of Iraq claims that there are no Americans in Bagdad...
With the typical assumptions, part of the value of a game is the ability to resell it. A rational consumer may only be willing to buy a $60 game knowing that he can sell it back for the equivalent of $20. Otherwise his initial price point might only be $40.
Similarly the publisher might only be willing to sell a game for $40 if it knows that the game will not be resold in a way that will stifle an average of $20 of original sales. Otherwise it might only be willing to sell the game for $60.
So it's not entirely clear to me what advantage publishers think they will get from banning resales. If they think customers are willing to pay the same amount for less benefit -- that is, a game with no resale value -- why don't they just increase the price of the game instead of lobbying for legislation?
Sounds to me like this guy doesn't know what he's talking about.
Psh, no it's not. We call it a settlement.
I highly recommend taking a look at www.physicssongs.org . It's full of fantastic songs about physics.
Still, if I had to pick between syphilis and AIDS, I'd pick syphilis. There is something to be said for being the lesser of two evils: less evil is better than more evil.
It's true, we make tweaks to the scientific method from time to time. Double blind tests are now nearly necessary, which wasn't always the case. There are (very recently) some experiments in which the researcher artificially masks the data that he collects with random offsets (which can later be removed) so that developing trends cannot influence his lab technique. But I don't think these tweaks imply that the scientific method is "up for debate" any more than increasingly demanding standards of rigor in mathematical proof over the years suggest that mathematical certainty is "up for debate."
"People who make up definitions of science and then try to rule out rival theories because they are not 'scientific' are usually up to no good."
This is 100% wrong! The scientific method is not up for debate. The reason people at the time were wrong to condemn Newton's notions of gravity is PRECISELY BECAUSE these people were not using the scientific method, and he was!
"Part of what is at stake in scientific controversy is what the proper definition of science is."
This is just false. It is easy to define science: it is the advancement (or state of) human knowledge acquired through the scientific method. If you need a definition of the scientific method, any grade school science textbook will give it to you. Empirical falsification of theory and subsequent theorizing is uniquely responsible for the incredible state of technology today. Philosophers' ponderings in their atriums, witch doctors' reasoning from 'first principles,' priest's divine revelations: none of these have yielded any significant and sustained advance in technology EVER. These goddamn rednecks who have decided to redefine science are killing a sacred cow. Science is not whatever you want it to be, it's not a political philosophy, and it's certainly not the expression of religious beliefs in a modern world. It's a single process that has proven throughout history to GET RESULTS. By trying to force it out of the classroom, these imbeciles are doing their children just as much of a disservice as if they replaced mathematics with numerology, astronomy with astrology, or economics with finger-painting.
"Here's a simple way to judge these sorts of claims that doesn't require any scientific training: major breakthroughs in fundamental physics are not made by people developing a secret product that will solve the world's energy problems."
This is exactly it. Picking apart his "article" is really missing the point. Slashdot editors should look at the blurb and KNOW that it's garbage. I'm a law student, for heaven's sake -- my background doesn't begin to approach the most basic foundations of what it takes to evaluate the rigor of a physics paper -- and I knew it was a bunch of snake oil just from the blurb. Even if I did have the background, Slashdot isn't conducive to rigorous scientific review. That takes months; these stories are up for hours. Of course I don't expect the editors to have the background or the resources to evaluate the merit of complicated scientific claims. I just want them to look at the source and the situation for the TEN SECONDS that it takes to know that this guy is a con man.
Can we PLEASE have the editors do at least a cursory background check on these "scientists" before posting their pyramid scheme crackpot press releases? We've had five or more stories in the past TWO DAYS about how the rules of science were about to be rewritten by someone who can pull heat out of nothing for free, or extend wifi coverage for TEN MILLION MILES on a watch battery, or fly to the moon with a tablespoon of vinegar, or extend a battery's shelf life by nine million percent by putting a sticker on it.
Seriously, WTF? It's embarrassing. This place reads like the fucking National Enquirer when it comes to science. There are legitimate breakthroughs happening all the time in science; why do we have to cover these retard con men? Is it that pseudoscience is more FLASHY AND EXCITING than real science, or is it that our editors are too fucking brain dead to tell the difference?
This is why we need strict liability for having your customers' personal information stolen. This is not an argument for arresting/fining people with an unprotected WiFi.
Unless you count lobbying -- or, perhaps in a less civilized but more honest term, blackmailing -- a "business interest." Google has enough information to blackmail pretty much anyone worth blackmailing.
Remove all the ones, twos, fours, and sixes, add up the remaining dice, and subtract the number of dice that remain. :)
Starting at the north pole certainly works.
There is a circle some amount north of the south pole, concentric to the axis of the earth's rotation, with a circumference of 1 mile. Starting at any point 1 mile north of any point on this ring will work too. Note that this set of points is itself a circle concentric to the axis of the earth's rotation.
Similarly, for any positive integer n, there is a ring some amount north of the south pole with a circumference of 1/n. Starting at any point 1 mile north of any point on this circle will work too. Similarly, this set of points is itself a circle concentric to the axis of the earth's rotation.
None of these rings overlap with any other, or with the north pole. Any other point near enough to the south pole will send you around the axis of the world's rotation a non-integer number of times, and you won't end up where you started.
And of course, "going a mile south" when you start at or within a mile of the south pole is an undefined operation, so presumably we exclude those points too.
Agreed. I feel kind of cheated after thinking about it for a few minutes and reading the solution.
That's pretty ridiculous. They also require training before you can transport fissionable materials. Are you also lobbying for a hazmat class in all public schools?
It's not just artists: society doesn't care about any individual workers. It doesn't set a maximum wage for ditch-diggers because in an efficient market there is no risk of overpayment. If a company were willing to overpay its ditch-diggers, the ditches it produces would also cost more than necessary, leaving them open for another ditch-digging company to undercut them. In this way we assure that ditch-digging is compensated only as much as it is worth. The same is true of corporate analysts, Wall Street lawyers, and almost everyone else.
Artists are only different because the marginal cost of reproducing a work is significantly lower than the cost of creating it. If we turned the free market loose on you guys, you'd make next to nothing at all, because the price for your works would equilibrate at the marginal cost of reproducing them. This would harm society, since we could all derive benefit from the fruits of your labor, and you'd probably not create if you didn't get paid. So we try to make artistry similar to other professions by prohibiting non-authorized reproduction for a certain time.
How do we decide how long that time should be? It's unfortunate that we have to decide at all, since in general the free market fine-tunes these things better than even extremely competent legislatures. But if you could ask the free market how much monopoly time to grant you, it would say what it says to ditch-diggers and corporate analysts and Wall Street lawyers: as little as you're willing to take.
So although this utilitarian view of copyright term that treats you like a dairy cow or hive of honeybees sounds harsh, it's the same principle that runs our society at large. Just as we pay ditch-diggers and corporate analysts and Wall Street lawyers as little as they're willing to take for their work, so too should we give you only as much incentive as you require to continue creating.
The other inefficiency -- besides that we have to artificially set the copyright term ourselves -- is that it has to apply to all artists. The free market can evaluate each ditch-digger's work individually, and if one ditch-digger does a much better job than another, it will support a higher wage for that one because people will be willing to pay more for his labor. But it isn't feasible to implement that kind of system legislatively, so we have to set one copyright term that applies to everyone. Is this fair? No, probably not. But it's the best we know how to do.
This is the theory, anyway. In practice, market failures often exist, and perhaps everyone doesn't always get paid as little as they're willing to take. But you have an enormous failure working to your benefit, and that's that Congress doesn't understand the above analysis and sets the copyright term to an absurd, laughable length of time. Forgive us if we think Congress should wake up and stop preferring you guys to everyone else, and that the term as it is currently set lacks any sort of moral authority.
maybe if they were worth more, the Big Boxes would pay them more. Apparently you either didn't read or didn't understand my post.
"To support the economy and local employment"
I don't think this holds up to actual economic analysis.
The Big Boxes will hire locally -- you don't think they fly in cashiers from Bangladesh, do you? -- and the economy is supported by having cheaper goods. With elastic demand curves, cheaper widgets mean people buy more widgets which boosts the economy. With inelastic demand curves, cheaper widgets means a decreased cost of living in the area, which is roughly equivalent to giving everyone in town a raise. They can then spend their excess cash elsewhere or invest it, which also boosts the economy.
The only contention left is that Big Boxes won't be willing to pay as much as a smaller shop. But why is this the case? A worker will work wherever the compensation is highest. If the Big Boxes are paying him less than his market value, someone else can open up shop, offer to pay more, and steal him away. The Big Box would lose in that case. Since that isn't happening, I don't think Big Boxes under-compensate their workers.
Same analysis goes for working conditions. Poor working conditions are economically equivalent to lower wages.
Perhaps you feel that Big Boxes aren't as aesthetically appealing as mom and pop shops, or that they detract from the bourgeois feel of a town. I suppose that's fair, but it's a very different argument.
So what? If, as revealed by consumers' own choices, the big stores can better serve consumers than the small stores, why do the small stores deserve to stay in business?
"I don't fear the Eolas shareholders as much as I fear somebody else with a few hundred $million who might buy their rights and start systematically going after people for a few thousand or tens of thousands of dollars a pop. And all the while they'll be making self-righteous proclamations about protecting "their" technology."
And you know what? I say bring it on. This hypothetical millionaire intellectual property broker has the legal right to do exactly as you suggest. The problem is the system of laws that gives him that right. And there'll be no faster way to promote the change of those laws if this guy shows us just how broken they are.
I've always thought that the best way to change bad laws is to enforce them vigorously. Imagine how long the absurd 55mph freeway speed limits would last if you got pulled over for driving 56.
Well, okay, but you're always free not to enter into that contract, right? I certainly can't think of any clean way of amending the law to prevent that kind of contract without seriously harming individuals' moral autonomy.
In other words, if I, as a user, *want* to enter into such a contract because it allows the provider to give me a cheaper price, who are you to tell me that I can't?
"Also, there is some question as to whether or not the GPL is a contract or not. There is the possibility that someone could "take back' the license. As there is no apparent consideration (e.g. you didn't pay for the license, did you?), a court might say, OK, he took it back. There was no contract."
There is no confusion: the GPL is not a damn contract. It SAYS SO IN THE GPL. Your exact same legal criticism (of revocability) could be made about the MIT/Berkeley license, which you seem to support, because it's not a contract either.
"Yes, by limiting the freedom of people to use free software for purposes Stallman doesn't like. Stallman is making this change for one simple reason: he wants more control over how people use free software"
Of course. If we wanted pure freedom, we would release all of our software into the public domain. The reason we limit the freedom to distribute (and now serve) our software is that we create more freedom (by causing the pool of GPL'ed software to grow continuously) than we restrict (by forcing people to comply with the GPL's terms).
This change is no different, and follows the same principles.