It seems that "making available" must be based on intention, in which case it's probably at best nebulous whether any given P2P user actually intended to distribute the music they had in a shared directory, and that seems to be the way you're arguing in that case. A useful analogy might be that technically any physical work is constantly radiating at least some of its content via electromagnetic radiation. Just because a book is closed does not mean that you couldn't focus an xray on individual pages of the book and read them. In fact, that's exactly how underlying details of old paintings are determined without scraping the paint off of them. Even without using x-rays, it is conceivable that a sensitive enough device could read pages just from thermal radiation. Same thing for a laser and a CD sitting out in the open. At what point does simply "making available" the information in a work constitute willful infringement versus the physical fact that all objects are inherently open to inspection by third parties? If a book is left open on a table in a public place, does that constitute publication or public performance? What if you ship a copyrighted item (like a postcard) through the postal service without an envelope? In essence, at what point does convenience and common practice remove the appearance of granting authorization for an illegal activity?
How are those practical examples different from having music files in a directory that happens to be shared (whether via P2P or network filesystem, and the distinction between the two is blurring) to other computers? That may simply be a convenient place to store music, especially if some software has its own legal CD ripping functions and puts ripped songs in that location. Obviously if the RIAA tried to sue people for playing a CD in their car stereo in a traffic jam with the windows rolled down, they would get laughed out of court, yet the mere availability of files on a computer is a viable reason to sue people.
Are there any definitive cases that say whether it's legal to rip your CDs and movies to other compressed digital formats? I know that some movie jukebox maker was able to win their court case, but I believe that was for exact duplication and they had bought a CSS license. The RIAA has routinely switched positions on whether ripping CDs to MP3s or other formats is legal. I think the problem is that according to the letter of the law, an MP3 is a translation of the original work and thus a derivative work, but only the copyright holder has the right to produce derivative works. The problem is that if it's legal to rip a CD to an MP3, who owns the copyright on the derivative work? My guess is that the definition of what constitutes a derivative work versus a mere copy of the work will have to change. It's already been ruled that full backups of digital works are legal under fair use, but translation during the backup seems to be a pretty gray area. If the derivative work is owned by the original copyright author, it would seem that they could demand a copy of your backups or other silly things. If the derivative work is owned by the creator (e.g. the person doing the backup or translation into MP3), then it would be just as illegal for the RIAA to download the derivative work from a P2P server as anyone else, and their campaign of sniffing P2P networks would be illegal. Since the language is relatively clear, my guess is that the only consistent judgment would be that translating works into another format for any purpose is illegal. It would leave products like Tivo untouched since they make exact copies, but make iTunes and lots of other software illegal.
Yet he admits to having placed copyrighted works in public folders on a public university system, which allowed others to copy his work.
Kind of like a library that has a bunch of books that anyone could walk in and copy with the machine sitting in the corner? Everyone is responsible for their own actions, not the actions of some theoretical straw-person who might break the law.
Then he should have locked the directory with a password so only he had access to it.
Oh, but what about the system administrators? They could still get it! He has to encrypt it and audit every access to his own files and make sure no keyboard loggers or spyware is installed on every computer he uses to prevent any other individual from ever having the potential to access his music. He also has to use headphones to listen to it. That way he, too, can do the noble job of policing other people for the benefit of the RIAA!
It only makes more "sense" in the sense that this is a cheap way of solving the problem of why this particular universe exists, and why we have free will in it.
On the contrary, the a priori assumption that there is only one universe is unfounded. Right now we have two very accurate models of reality; quantum mechanics and general relativity. The two haven't been reconciled into a single theory yet, but it is probable that they will be at some point. If a complete mathematical theory exists that explains our observable universe, then the universe is fundamentally equivalent to that model, in other words there is no difference between physical existence in our universe and expressibility in a mathematical model of the universe. Mathematics exists because of the relationships formed between mathematical objects by the axioms we pick. No matter who discovers or follows the axioms, the results from the same axioms are always the same. Moreover, objects within the mathematical model possess their relationships independently of who observes those relationships. There are an infinite number of prime numbers despite the fact that we cannot enumerate all of them. Likewise, if we find a consistent model of physics then there would exist a mathematical model of the universe which describes it exactly, and even though we could not enumerate all of its history, that history would still exist with in the mathematical model. At some point in the history, the mathematics representing me posts a message to slashdot, and it happens independently of anyone outside the universe observing or making it happen. From there, it's easy to see that every mathematical model possesses just as much existence as the model of our universe, therefore all universes that can be mathematically modeled exist. This hypothesis is falsifiable; simply prove that the universe cannot be mathematically modeled.
I think free will is caused by the inability to completely predict the outcome of our actions, which makes actions appear to be causally independent of the outcome. Basically, we must choose first and then await the results. If we knew the end result of every possible action it would be obvious which action we should choose, and therefore also obvious which action we would actually choose, removing any possibility of free will except perhaps for a single first choice that would decide every future choice as well. Such a first choice could not be freely made, however, because by its nature it is the very first action, and thus fully defined by initial conditions.
Then for each possibility that I choose among, I choose absolutely every single one of them. And the universe forks at every single choice-point - at least all the considered ones (probably even the unconsidered ones). Okay, positing that, then what the hell is all this effort of choosing about? And why do we hold people responsible for their choices, when at the same time they almost infinitely choose something(s) else? And wtf is the biological advantage of conscious choosing, such that creatures like us would embody it evolutionarily speaking?
Not all universes contain living organisms. The vast majority probably do not. Universes in which poor choices have been made by organisms in the past have significantly fewer of those organisms. While it's true that there must exist universes where life exists in seemingly impossible situations, those conditions are almost certainly much rarer than universes like ours. Therefore an average intelligent being will be more likely to find itself in a regular universe. There are many choices that I make every second, a large majority lead directly to death. In the futures of those universes, I am not around to wonder about the nature of the universe, leading my living selves to conclude (rightly) that correct choices matter for my survival. None of my conclusions contradict a single universe hypothesis, I still must make the best choices I can in order to survive, and for me part of surviving is living in a mo
If relativity is correct (and even possibly if it isn't), backwards-in-time communication really REALLY F@#)(*s up causality. Heck, Faster Than Light (FTL) communication at all F@#)(*s up causality.
Intra-universe causality, at least. If parallel universes exist (and mathematically it makes a lot more sense if they do), then causality is a moot point. When something travels back in time, it only appears in a parallel universe with the same history up to the point in the past at which it arrives, after which it is fundamentally different. This doesn't necessarily even require a violation of the laws of physics, because there is always some finite (but infinitesimal) probability of virtual particles assembling themselves into an object from a possible future or the past. If there are parallel universes, then there are almost certainly an infinite number of them, one for every possibility, and therefore some universes exist in which time travel happens as essentially an accident of random physics, but to the observers within the universe it looks just like time travel but without causality violations.
... and authors should only be paid for the time they are actually writing, researching, or otherwise working on a book, not for each copy they sell.
No, we should pay authors for personally printing, binding, and shipping each copy of the book, including the ones they posthumously create for 95 years.
People constantly use the "well artists have the gigs" defence when pirating their music, I can't think of a better (and more frequently used) example of 'convenient ignorance', your argument works only if you forget how music is actually made.
I'm pretty sure bands pay their sound engineers and stage hands when they tour. You're talking about traditional studio produced music, an artifact of the recording industry's history of making the cost of entry too high for unsigned musicians. If you want to record your music, you need a quiet room, some microphones and instrument pickups, and a computer with a good sound card. Post processing and mixing is relatively cheap if you know what you're doing and use freely available software. Even mastering CDs is easy.
It seems that you've fallen for the RIAA's line that music needs to be made by RIAA approved artists, producers, studios, directors, authoring companies, and CD pressing plants. Nothing could be further from the truth.
VAST majority of bitTorrent traffic is used for illegal file-sharing.
The vast majority of Internet traffic is probably used for illegal purposes; spamming, copyright infringement, patent infringement (everyone knows Linux/BSD/EverySoftwarePackageOutThere violates some patent somewhere), democratic propaganda in communist nations, etc.
A few months ago, someone here unwittingly made what I think is one of the strongest arguments that piracy drives music to the least common denominator: look at Asia. Artists and labels can't expect to make money from recordings, so they generate an endless stream of teen-friendly clones who can make money from mall concerts.
What is wrong with mall concerts? Do you need to listen to popular music in order to feel good, or can you just find music that you like and listen to it despite the fact that most people have never heard of it? How can piracy possibly impact live concerts? Until we get high quality VR that's not even a remote possibility, and even when it is possible there will still be a market for people who would rather go see a musician in meatspace. That is actually the only real economic model for musicians, period. Everything else is artificial and subject to change .
Are you seriously suggesting that substituting a non-caloric substance for a high-calorie substance in one's diet, without changing the diet otherwise, will not result in lower average weight?
If it fucks up the endocrine system, more calories could be converted to fat than normal, outweighing the reduction in calories from drinking diet soda. Basically, you'd get less working energy from food but more fat. Not that it necessarily does this, just that it's a possibility.
While I generally agree, I do strongly oppose home schooling. What your kid would miss out is the contact with other kids, not just their friends but actually finding a way to work together with people they didn't choose but that were "forced" onto them. Much like they'll later encounter in business life.
Just because a child is home schooled does not mean they are shut-ins. There are team sports, neighbors, extended family members, and plenty of other "forced" contacts. The best public school can offer in terms of social training is a zero sum game of how many children can be packed together before they start shooting each other or become total nitwits. I was home schooled, but I don't find that I have problems working with people. If anything, I abstract my interactions with people quite a bit more than I might have if my social skills were being fine tuned by the great unwashed masses. I definitely know that all the time I spent programming is worth way more to me than a public school education.
Rather, I'd suggest schools that actually encourage pupil creativity and that promote the use of their intellect. Those schools exist, though you'll hardly find any public schools that are run like that. There, your kids would probably rather be dumbed down so they don't mess up the class average.
I can't tell if you think public school or home school is worse. If all public school is good for is to learn how to deal with obnoxious people you see every day, couldn't they have some sort of training program you take for a month or two like they give to prison guards or mental health workers?
I think the main problem is that if you are a fundamentalist, then that neccesitates that you either try to force those beliefs onto others, or kill all nonbelievers. If you are absolutely certain that your belief system is correct, and inherent in your belief system is that all other belief systems are evil, then it follows that you want everyone to have your belief system. At that point things like secular government and religious tolerance just dissapear. How can you state that the Bible is the direct infallible word of God, and in the same breath say that we aren't going to use this in government, and we are OK with the fact others don't believe what God is saying?
The proper response is the same that science takes: Dispense with self-belief. It's all well and good to believe in an orderly, naturalistic world or a biblical fundamentalist one. The problem comes when you trust your own judgment and interpretation implicitly. If I were a fundamentalist Christian, I can only hope I would retain the sense of my own fallibility. I could not force others to do or believe anything without running the risk of accidentally enforcing my own will instead of God's. It would be foolish to think I could understand every nuance of God's will. I think the ultimate problem with hardline fundamentalism is the lack of self doubt.
Men (and women) were made in God's image. Mankind was created with knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. And a free will, even as God Himself. All creation was good, as God had said. Mankind was also perfectly good. So, God presented the choice, which was not a malicious one. One tree, the "Knowledge of Good and Evil", was where Adam and Eve could (as the tree is self-described) know about evil as well as good. They had perfectly good trees throughout that garden to eat from, and thus the choice was not difficult really. Should they listen to the God they walked with every day? Or trust someone or something else...
Here's the problem. If humans were created perfect, that implies that there could be no imperfections in them. As such, every decision they made must also be perfect. There is no way to introduce imperfection into a perfect system, unless you want to fiddle with the definition of perfection. Therefore, the decision to disobey God can be seen only as a consequence of the way people were created. If you want to push the blame onto Satan, then who created Satan with the possibility of going bad, apparently with omniscient foreknowledge of the whole thing?
I have no problem with a God who creates a universe, sticks two trees in it, and tells the people he creates to only eat from the Good Tree. I can identify with such a God, because it is precisely the method scientists use with rats when they give them two bowls of water, one laced with Morphine or some other drug and the other pure. They introduce the plain water first as a way of saying "Here you go little Rat, drink the Good Water", and then they drop the drugged water in and see what happens. I have no problem with God as Scientist, because it's probably what I would do given infinite power. The problem is that Christianity paints no such picture. Instead it's Love this, or Hell that, with absolutely no scientific value whatsoever. If it were clearly laid out in a "Do X, Y, and Z and you shall suffer consequences A and B with a 97% likelihood as demonstrated with the following experiment..." I would have no problem with it. It would be logical, helpful, and accurate.
God has chosen to have creatures made in His image (mankind) serve Him freely and willingly and perfectly. It was done before the fall, and can be done only in heaven for those who return to His loving arms and embrace His son Jesus Christ.
So do we get brainwashed to forget the whole Knowledge of Good and Evil thing too? If not, why do we have to wait for heaven to be happy? Or maybe it's just the laws of thermodynamics in this universe that make it fallen? I'd love to see the physics of how eating a fruit could fundamentally alter the structure of the entire universe...
I guess if you've ever been a parent, and believe you should have some authority in molding your child in a moral and right way, you will understand a little what God the Father is like. If you have been a parent, and see the seeds of rebellion being sown and your good counsel being openly flaunted, you will realize in a very small way what it felt like to God. Some may wish their children to turn into little robots who always say "Yes sir" and "No sir" to their demands, and are never given the freedom to choose any wrong thing, and never are harmed or experience any negative consequences for anything. But then, to expect a spontaneous and free declaration of love from those children is impossible...
I have *never* sent my children to hell for disobeying me.
I don't think there is any law specifically about wireless access points, at least not any state or federal law. City ordinances are already horribly convoluted and useless.
As far as I know, every prosecution of wireless Internet "theft" has been based on the Federal computer abuse acts that say it's illegal to access a computer system unless authorized to do so. The problem is that they don't see a broadcasted SSID and DHCP responses as sufficient authorization, apparently.
If you look closely, there's a large curb in front of the toll booth. The car can be seen leaving the ground as its front end hits the curb, so it's very likely that the gas tank (which is almost always mounted below the trunk) hit the curb also. At 80 or 90 MPH (given the speed of the other cars), I don't think many gas tanks would hold up to a direct impact like that. With the forward momentum, all the gasoline ends up in the engine compartment next to the exhaust system which is more than hot enough to ignite it.
I'd call it a public service, not a nuisance. For whom is it a nuisance? What business is it of the state to tell me whom I am allowed to be friends with. If I consider anyone who knocks on my door a friend, why should anyone be allowed to tell me otherwise?
It becomes an attractive nuisance when cops start arresting people for accessing them without provocation from the owner of the access point. They're effectively facilitating a crime because people can't differentiate between a "legitimate" access point and an "illegal" one. Obviously the distinction is only in the heads of the stupid police officers and district attorneys who actually prosecute these cases, but as soon as they make that decision they have caused all public access points to become attractive nuisances. By turning on an unsecured private wireless router, you are inviting criminal behavior from any passerby who might accidentally or intentionally connect to it. The solution is obvious; get rid of the stupid cops and idiot lawyers who think unsecured access points can be considered private, and the attractive nuisance goes away.
And using the term "configured to give public access" is framing. The correct term is "unconfigured" in the vast majority of gateways. It's no more "configured to give public access" than a door that's been left unlocked is likewise.
Putting an unconfigured neon "Open" and "Free Internet Here!" sign on your house in no way allows someone to claim that people are trespassing when they walk in looking for free Internet access. Remember, the access point tells everyone within range that it's open every second. That's like standing in your front yard next to your free Internet sign and shouting that everyone is welcome to use the Internet, and then calling the police when people come in. The problem is that people are buying "Free Internet Here!" and "Open" signs and plastering them to their house without a second thought.
Web servers are intended for the dissemination of information to third parties. Wi-fi gateways are basic infrastructure, and can be reasonably be considered intended for the use of authorized parties only, given most people are unlikely to want anonymous third parties using their network without permission.
The problem is, there is absolutely no precedent for assuming that wireless access points are a private network resource. There are far too many free and open access points whose purpose is explicitly that they be free and open that such a distinction would be foolish to make in general. Much better to define private networks as those with encryption or MAC filtering turned on. Remember, wireless networks operate in the *public* 2.4GHz spectrum which is free for all public use within some transmission power limits. Note that there are absolutely *no* laws against snooping or injecting audio into portable phones operating in the public spectrum. It would be silly to arrest someone for accidentally owning the same model of phone as their neighbor and breaking into their calls by mistake occasionally. This routinely happened before phones were built smart enough to do frequency hopping and basic authentication with their base station.
A front door, however, can be reasonably assumed whether locked or unlocked to be a boundary over which a visitor cannot cross without explicit permission. The mistake of many on the "Unlocked WAP means I'm allowed in" argument is to assume such a state of affairs does not exist, and that you can reasonably make assumptions about whether you're allowed to do something on the basis of whether it's easy or not.
Again, your argument discounts the fact that a fair number of wireless access points are intended for public use. There is no physically distinguishing factor to determine whether an access point is like the door to a private residence, the door to a private club (which is still a public place) or the door to a public business establishment. No way, that is, except the utterly trivial ability to set encryption, MAC filtering, or even a "PRIVATE xxxx" SSID. Basically, it's like posting a "Free Internet Access - Open for business!" sign on the front door of your house and complaining when people walk in looking for a computer terminal to use.
As always, there's a solution: just ask. If you're afraid to ask someone if they'd mind if you used their Internet connection via their WAP, you might want to ask yourself whether you really have their consent.
Who do you ask? It's not like wireless routers broadcast GPS coordinates and the owner's name and telephone number or anything. Even if you know approximately where the access point is, how do you find out who owns it so you can ask them? How do you know that the person you ask isn't just lying and saying you can use it? Without a physical presence, it is essentially impossible to establish actual ownership of a wireless router signal, or request permission to use it. That said, how are people supposed to use the real free wireless connections if they're threatened with going to jail if they accidentally connect to the wrong one? Soun
However, piggybacking is different and philosophically wrong for two reasons. First, Wi-fi use DOES impact other users, as bandwidth is finite and allowed users may theoretically wind up having diminished use of the service due to piggybacking. But more importantly, you CANNOT just sit in a parking lot and use Wi-fi without deciding to ACTIVELY log on to the access point. While you may have a right to sit in the parking lot and use your computer, you are actively deciding to use someone else's resources when you log on, and doing so certainly is not unavoidable while using your laptop in that parking lot.
I'm thinking of the "This device must accept all harmful interference" FCC label on the bottom of all wireless routers. How exactly does that fit into your reasoning? If I run my microwave with the door open, or use my powerful 2.4 GHz phone it's perfectly legal, but when a wireless card uses the same free for public use 2.4 GHz spectrum, a bunch of nebulous laws suddenly spring into place? How can *anyone* trespass on the 2.4GHz wireless spectrum unless they're broadcasting too many watts? Wireless security is *entirely* up to the owner of the access point.
Your assertion that you must actively log into an access point is similarly false. All operating systems can be set to automatically connect to the nearest available base station, a setting which is quite useful in office or school settings where there are multiple unsecured access points available. Turning a laptop on in the proximity of an unsecured access point automatically connects to it. In fact, if you want to log onto a Windows domain, the laptop MUST be configured to automatically connect to a wireless network. If everyone and their brother names their access point "linksys" or "default", it's also impossible to distinguish which access point is which. Finally, unsecured access points in coffee shops are specifically open access points, unless they say otherwise somewhere. It's the only reasonable interpretation of a broadcasting wireless device that will happily give out IP addresses via DHCP and route packets to the Internet with no questions asked.
Pro tip: in those situations, the only thing you should do is "Yes, officer" lest you get tazered.
It's funny that some people still think the U.S. isn't a police state...
Anti-snitch campaigns are really the only way to fight ineffective/abusive law enforcement; when their conviction rates plummet they'll get a nasty message from the police commissioner. When they keep dropping, the city will replace the lot of them.
If anything china is the one country on this planet that in general has no respect for any copyright laws of any other nation. Hell, they will pirate anything. You invent and patent invention a (NOT SOFTWARE), the chinese will steal it, remake it out of the cheapest and crappiest components possible and try their hardest to undersell you, effectively causing you, the inventor/artist/producer major damages. What legal repercussions do you have? Don't look at me, I have no clue.
I find it amusing that anyone could complain about China's lack of respect for "intellectual property" when most of the manufacturing there is barely better than slave labor. Without respect for human rights, can anyone imagine they would respect copyright or patents? Perhaps the greedy businesses whining about losing their dear precious ideas to the communists shouldn't have supported modern slavery in the first place.
What DVDs have *you* bought lately? Mine have all come with 10 freakin' minutes of advertisements at the front that can't be skipped!
It's better than the 15 minutes of ads the theater plays, often going well past the show's starting time in order to sell us more stuff (There are (overly priced and smaller portioned) snacks available in the lobby!), while one's feet slowly glue themselves to the floor with old soda and candy.
7,219,352 has some likely prior art (to the date of filing at least) in xine's video_out abstraction and I wouldn't doubt if mplayer had deinterlacing support abstracted to "device driver"-esque libraries before this patent. The patent itself seems to only cover hardware or driver based deinterlacing anyway (no description of what a device driver actually is in this context, whether it includes extensions to window manager interfaces or not, etc.), which means it is probably narrowly limited to drivers where all graphics card functionality must be tied to a single video driver, e.g. not things like Xv or shader applications. I can't imagine the idea being innovative either, because it's just a method for deciding what the best way to display interlaced video on a progressive scan device is, something that is a natural extension of playing any made-for-tv video on any computer made after CRTs became common.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems that "making available" must be based on intention, in which case it's probably at best nebulous whether any given P2P user actually intended to distribute the music they had in a shared directory, and that seems to be the way you're arguing in that case. A useful analogy might be that technically any physical work is constantly radiating at least some of its content via electromagnetic radiation. Just because a book is closed does not mean that you couldn't focus an xray on individual pages of the book and read them. In fact, that's exactly how underlying details of old paintings are determined without scraping the paint off of them. Even without using x-rays, it is conceivable that a sensitive enough device could read pages just from thermal radiation. Same thing for a laser and a CD sitting out in the open. At what point does simply "making available" the information in a work constitute willful infringement versus the physical fact that all objects are inherently open to inspection by third parties? If a book is left open on a table in a public place, does that constitute publication or public performance? What if you ship a copyrighted item (like a postcard) through the postal service without an envelope? In essence, at what point does convenience and common practice remove the appearance of granting authorization for an illegal activity?
How are those practical examples different from having music files in a directory that happens to be shared (whether via P2P or network filesystem, and the distinction between the two is blurring) to other computers? That may simply be a convenient place to store music, especially if some software has its own legal CD ripping functions and puts ripped songs in that location. Obviously if the RIAA tried to sue people for playing a CD in their car stereo in a traffic jam with the windows rolled down, they would get laughed out of court, yet the mere availability of files on a computer is a viable reason to sue people.
Are there any definitive cases that say whether it's legal to rip your CDs and movies to other compressed digital formats? I know that some movie jukebox maker was able to win their court case, but I believe that was for exact duplication and they had bought a CSS license. The RIAA has routinely switched positions on whether ripping CDs to MP3s or other formats is legal. I think the problem is that according to the letter of the law, an MP3 is a translation of the original work and thus a derivative work, but only the copyright holder has the right to produce derivative works. The problem is that if it's legal to rip a CD to an MP3, who owns the copyright on the derivative work? My guess is that the definition of what constitutes a derivative work versus a mere copy of the work will have to change. It's already been ruled that full backups of digital works are legal under fair use, but translation during the backup seems to be a pretty gray area. If the derivative work is owned by the original copyright author, it would seem that they could demand a copy of your backups or other silly things. If the derivative work is owned by the creator (e.g. the person doing the backup or translation into MP3), then it would be just as illegal for the RIAA to download the derivative work from a P2P server as anyone else, and their campaign of sniffing P2P networks would be illegal. Since the language is relatively clear, my guess is that the only consistent judgment would be that translating works into another format for any purpose is illegal. It would leave products like Tivo untouched since they make exact copies, but make iTunes and lots of other software illegal.
Yet he admits to having placed copyrighted works in public folders on a public university system, which allowed others to copy his work.
Kind of like a library that has a bunch of books that anyone could walk in and copy with the machine sitting in the corner? Everyone is responsible for their own actions, not the actions of some theoretical straw-person who might break the law.
Then he should have locked the directory with a password so only he had access to it.
Oh, but what about the system administrators? They could still get it! He has to encrypt it and audit every access to his own files and make sure no keyboard loggers or spyware is installed on every computer he uses to prevent any other individual from ever having the potential to access his music. He also has to use headphones to listen to it. That way he, too, can do the noble job of policing other people for the benefit of the RIAA!
If a star 100LY away goes supernova and launches this much matter our way, how much warning would we have before the planet was destroyed?
1-.99999 * (100Y) = about 8.76 hours or 525 minutes.
It only makes more "sense" in the sense that this is a cheap way of solving the problem of why this particular universe exists, and why we have free will in it.
On the contrary, the a priori assumption that there is only one universe is unfounded. Right now we have two very accurate models of reality; quantum mechanics and general relativity. The two haven't been reconciled into a single theory yet, but it is probable that they will be at some point. If a complete mathematical theory exists that explains our observable universe, then the universe is fundamentally equivalent to that model, in other words there is no difference between physical existence in our universe and expressibility in a mathematical model of the universe. Mathematics exists because of the relationships formed between mathematical objects by the axioms we pick. No matter who discovers or follows the axioms, the results from the same axioms are always the same. Moreover, objects within the mathematical model possess their relationships independently of who observes those relationships. There are an infinite number of prime numbers despite the fact that we cannot enumerate all of them. Likewise, if we find a consistent model of physics then there would exist a mathematical model of the universe which describes it exactly, and even though we could not enumerate all of its history, that history would still exist with in the mathematical model. At some point in the history, the mathematics representing me posts a message to slashdot, and it happens independently of anyone outside the universe observing or making it happen. From there, it's easy to see that every mathematical model possesses just as much existence as the model of our universe, therefore all universes that can be mathematically modeled exist. This hypothesis is falsifiable; simply prove that the universe cannot be mathematically modeled.
I think free will is caused by the inability to completely predict the outcome of our actions, which makes actions appear to be causally independent of the outcome. Basically, we must choose first and then await the results. If we knew the end result of every possible action it would be obvious which action we should choose, and therefore also obvious which action we would actually choose, removing any possibility of free will except perhaps for a single first choice that would decide every future choice as well. Such a first choice could not be freely made, however, because by its nature it is the very first action, and thus fully defined by initial conditions.
Then for each possibility that I choose among, I choose absolutely every single one of them. And the universe forks at every single choice-point - at least all the considered ones (probably even the unconsidered ones). Okay, positing that, then what the hell is all this effort of choosing about? And why do we hold people responsible for their choices, when at the same time they almost infinitely choose something(s) else? And wtf is the biological advantage of conscious choosing, such that creatures like us would embody it evolutionarily speaking?
Not all universes contain living organisms. The vast majority probably do not. Universes in which poor choices have been made by organisms in the past have significantly fewer of those organisms. While it's true that there must exist universes where life exists in seemingly impossible situations, those conditions are almost certainly much rarer than universes like ours. Therefore an average intelligent being will be more likely to find itself in a regular universe. There are many choices that I make every second, a large majority lead directly to death. In the futures of those universes, I am not around to wonder about the nature of the universe, leading my living selves to conclude (rightly) that correct choices matter for my survival. None of my conclusions contradict a single universe hypothesis, I still must make the best choices I can in order to survive, and for me part of surviving is living in a mo
If relativity is correct (and even possibly if it isn't), backwards-in-time communication really REALLY F@#)(*s up causality. Heck, Faster Than Light (FTL) communication at all F@#)(*s up causality.
Intra-universe causality, at least. If parallel universes exist (and mathematically it makes a lot more sense if they do), then causality is a moot point. When something travels back in time, it only appears in a parallel universe with the same history up to the point in the past at which it arrives, after which it is fundamentally different. This doesn't necessarily even require a violation of the laws of physics, because there is always some finite (but infinitesimal) probability of virtual particles assembling themselves into an object from a possible future or the past. If there are parallel universes, then there are almost certainly an infinite number of them, one for every possibility, and therefore some universes exist in which time travel happens as essentially an accident of random physics, but to the observers within the universe it looks just like time travel but without causality violations.
... and authors should only be paid for the time they are actually writing, researching, or otherwise working on a book, not for each copy they sell.
No, we should pay authors for personally printing, binding, and shipping each copy of the book, including the ones they posthumously create for 95 years.
People constantly use the "well artists have the gigs" defence when pirating their music, I can't think of a better (and more frequently used) example of 'convenient ignorance', your argument works only if you forget how music is actually made.
I'm pretty sure bands pay their sound engineers and stage hands when they tour. You're talking about traditional studio produced music, an artifact of the recording industry's history of making the cost of entry too high for unsigned musicians. If you want to record your music, you need a quiet room, some microphones and instrument pickups, and a computer with a good sound card. Post processing and mixing is relatively cheap if you know what you're doing and use freely available software. Even mastering CDs is easy.
It seems that you've fallen for the RIAA's line that music needs to be made by RIAA approved artists, producers, studios, directors, authoring companies, and CD pressing plants. Nothing could be further from the truth.
VAST majority of bitTorrent traffic is used for illegal file-sharing.
The vast majority of Internet traffic is probably used for illegal purposes; spamming, copyright infringement, patent infringement (everyone knows Linux/BSD/EverySoftwarePackageOutThere violates some patent somewhere), democratic propaganda in communist nations, etc.
A few months ago, someone here unwittingly made what I think is one of the strongest arguments that piracy drives music to the least common denominator: look at Asia. Artists and labels can't expect to make money from recordings, so they generate an endless stream of teen-friendly clones who can make money from mall concerts.
What is wrong with mall concerts? Do you need to listen to popular music in order to feel good, or can you just find music that you like and listen to it despite the fact that most people have never heard of it? How can piracy possibly impact live concerts? Until we get high quality VR that's not even a remote possibility, and even when it is possible there will still be a market for people who would rather go see a musician in meatspace. That is actually the only real economic model for musicians, period. Everything else is artificial and subject to change .
Are you seriously suggesting that substituting a non-caloric substance for a high-calorie substance in one's diet, without changing the diet otherwise, will not result in lower average weight?
If it fucks up the endocrine system, more calories could be converted to fat than normal, outweighing the reduction in calories from drinking diet soda. Basically, you'd get less working energy from food but more fat. Not that it necessarily does this, just that it's a possibility.
While I generally agree, I do strongly oppose home schooling. What your kid would miss out is the contact with other kids, not just their friends but actually finding a way to work together with people they didn't choose but that were "forced" onto them. Much like they'll later encounter in business life.
Just because a child is home schooled does not mean they are shut-ins. There are team sports, neighbors, extended family members, and plenty of other "forced" contacts. The best public school can offer in terms of social training is a zero sum game of how many children can be packed together before they start shooting each other or become total nitwits. I was home schooled, but I don't find that I have problems working with people. If anything, I abstract my interactions with people quite a bit more than I might have if my social skills were being fine tuned by the great unwashed masses. I definitely know that all the time I spent programming is worth way more to me than a public school education.
Rather, I'd suggest schools that actually encourage pupil creativity and that promote the use of their intellect. Those schools exist, though you'll hardly find any public schools that are run like that. There, your kids would probably rather be dumbed down so they don't mess up the class average.
I can't tell if you think public school or home school is worse. If all public school is good for is to learn how to deal with obnoxious people you see every day, couldn't they have some sort of training program you take for a month or two like they give to prison guards or mental health workers?
I think the main problem is that if you are a fundamentalist, then that neccesitates that you either try to force those beliefs onto others, or kill all nonbelievers. If you are absolutely certain that your belief system is correct, and inherent in your belief system is that all other belief systems are evil, then it follows that you want everyone to have your belief system. At that point things like secular government and religious tolerance just dissapear. How can you state that the Bible is the direct infallible word of God, and in the same breath say that we aren't going to use this in government, and we are OK with the fact others don't believe what God is saying?
The proper response is the same that science takes: Dispense with self-belief. It's all well and good to believe in an orderly, naturalistic world or a biblical fundamentalist one. The problem comes when you trust your own judgment and interpretation implicitly. If I were a fundamentalist Christian, I can only hope I would retain the sense of my own fallibility. I could not force others to do or believe anything without running the risk of accidentally enforcing my own will instead of God's. It would be foolish to think I could understand every nuance of God's will. I think the ultimate problem with hardline fundamentalism is the lack of self doubt.
Men (and women) were made in God's image. Mankind was created with knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. And a free will, even as God Himself. All creation was good, as God had said. Mankind was also perfectly good. So, God presented the choice, which was not a malicious one. One tree, the "Knowledge of Good and Evil", was where Adam and Eve could (as the tree is self-described) know about evil as well as good. They had perfectly good trees throughout that garden to eat from, and thus the choice was not difficult really. Should they listen to the God they walked with every day? Or trust someone or something else...
Here's the problem. If humans were created perfect, that implies that there could be no imperfections in them. As such, every decision they made must also be perfect. There is no way to introduce imperfection into a perfect system, unless you want to fiddle with the definition of perfection. Therefore, the decision to disobey God can be seen only as a consequence of the way people were created. If you want to push the blame onto Satan, then who created Satan with the possibility of going bad, apparently with omniscient foreknowledge of the whole thing?
I have no problem with a God who creates a universe, sticks two trees in it, and tells the people he creates to only eat from the Good Tree. I can identify with such a God, because it is precisely the method scientists use with rats when they give them two bowls of water, one laced with Morphine or some other drug and the other pure. They introduce the plain water first as a way of saying "Here you go little Rat, drink the Good Water", and then they drop the drugged water in and see what happens. I have no problem with God as Scientist, because it's probably what I would do given infinite power. The problem is that Christianity paints no such picture. Instead it's Love this, or Hell that, with absolutely no scientific value whatsoever. If it were clearly laid out in a "Do X, Y, and Z and you shall suffer consequences A and B with a 97% likelihood as demonstrated with the following experiment..." I would have no problem with it. It would be logical, helpful, and accurate.
God has chosen to have creatures made in His image (mankind) serve Him freely and willingly and perfectly. It was done before the fall, and can be done only in heaven for those who return to His loving arms and embrace His son Jesus Christ.
So do we get brainwashed to forget the whole Knowledge of Good and Evil thing too? If not, why do we have to wait for heaven to be happy? Or maybe it's just the laws of thermodynamics in this universe that make it fallen? I'd love to see the physics of how eating a fruit could fundamentally alter the structure of the entire universe...
I guess if you've ever been a parent, and believe you should have some authority in molding your child in a moral and right way, you will understand a little what God the Father is like. If you have been a parent, and see the seeds of rebellion being sown and your good counsel being openly flaunted, you will realize in a very small way what it felt like to God. Some may wish their children to turn into little robots who always say "Yes sir" and "No sir" to their demands, and are never given the freedom to choose any wrong thing, and never are harmed or experience any negative consequences for anything. But then, to expect a spontaneous and free declaration of love from those children is impossible...
I have *never* sent my children to hell for disobeying me.
I don't think there is any law specifically about wireless access points, at least not any state or federal law. City ordinances are already horribly convoluted and useless.
As far as I know, every prosecution of wireless Internet "theft" has been based on the Federal computer abuse acts that say it's illegal to access a computer system unless authorized to do so. The problem is that they don't see a broadcasted SSID and DHCP responses as sufficient authorization, apparently.
You will probably die within ONE HUNDRED YEARS!
If you look closely, there's a large curb in front of the toll booth. The car can be seen leaving the ground as its front end hits the curb, so it's very likely that the gas tank (which is almost always mounted below the trunk) hit the curb also. At 80 or 90 MPH (given the speed of the other cars), I don't think many gas tanks would hold up to a direct impact like that. With the forward momentum, all the gasoline ends up in the engine compartment next to the exhaust system which is more than hot enough to ignite it.
I'd call it a public service, not a nuisance. For whom is it a nuisance? What business is it of the state to tell me whom I am allowed to be friends with. If I consider anyone who knocks on my door a friend, why should anyone be allowed to tell me otherwise?
It becomes an attractive nuisance when cops start arresting people for accessing them without provocation from the owner of the access point. They're effectively facilitating a crime because people can't differentiate between a "legitimate" access point and an "illegal" one. Obviously the distinction is only in the heads of the stupid police officers and district attorneys who actually prosecute these cases, but as soon as they make that decision they have caused all public access points to become attractive nuisances. By turning on an unsecured private wireless router, you are inviting criminal behavior from any passerby who might accidentally or intentionally connect to it. The solution is obvious; get rid of the stupid cops and idiot lawyers who think unsecured access points can be considered private, and the attractive nuisance goes away.
And using the term "configured to give public access" is framing. The correct term is "unconfigured" in the vast majority of gateways. It's no more "configured to give public access" than a door that's been left unlocked is likewise.
Putting an unconfigured neon "Open" and "Free Internet Here!" sign on your house in no way allows someone to claim that people are trespassing when they walk in looking for free Internet access. Remember, the access point tells everyone within range that it's open every second. That's like standing in your front yard next to your free Internet sign and shouting that everyone is welcome to use the Internet, and then calling the police when people come in. The problem is that people are buying "Free Internet Here!" and "Open" signs and plastering them to their house without a second thought.
Web servers are intended for the dissemination of information to third parties. Wi-fi gateways are basic infrastructure, and can be reasonably be considered intended for the use of authorized parties only, given most people are unlikely to want anonymous third parties using their network without permission.
The problem is, there is absolutely no precedent for assuming that wireless access points are a private network resource. There are far too many free and open access points whose purpose is explicitly that they be free and open that such a distinction would be foolish to make in general. Much better to define private networks as those with encryption or MAC filtering turned on. Remember, wireless networks operate in the *public* 2.4GHz spectrum which is free for all public use within some transmission power limits. Note that there are absolutely *no* laws against snooping or injecting audio into portable phones operating in the public spectrum. It would be silly to arrest someone for accidentally owning the same model of phone as their neighbor and breaking into their calls by mistake occasionally. This routinely happened before phones were built smart enough to do frequency hopping and basic authentication with their base station.
A front door, however, can be reasonably assumed whether locked or unlocked to be a boundary over which a visitor cannot cross without explicit permission. The mistake of many on the "Unlocked WAP means I'm allowed in" argument is to assume such a state of affairs does not exist, and that you can reasonably make assumptions about whether you're allowed to do something on the basis of whether it's easy or not.
Again, your argument discounts the fact that a fair number of wireless access points are intended for public use. There is no physically distinguishing factor to determine whether an access point is like the door to a private residence, the door to a private club (which is still a public place) or the door to a public business establishment. No way, that is, except the utterly trivial ability to set encryption, MAC filtering, or even a "PRIVATE xxxx" SSID. Basically, it's like posting a "Free Internet Access - Open for business!" sign on the front door of your house and complaining when people walk in looking for a computer terminal to use.
As always, there's a solution: just ask. If you're afraid to ask someone if they'd mind if you used their Internet connection via their WAP, you might want to ask yourself whether you really have their consent.
Who do you ask? It's not like wireless routers broadcast GPS coordinates and the owner's name and telephone number or anything. Even if you know approximately where the access point is, how do you find out who owns it so you can ask them? How do you know that the person you ask isn't just lying and saying you can use it? Without a physical presence, it is essentially impossible to establish actual ownership of a wireless router signal, or request permission to use it. That said, how are people supposed to use the real free wireless connections if they're threatened with going to jail if they accidentally connect to the wrong one? Soun
However, piggybacking is different and philosophically wrong for two reasons. First, Wi-fi use DOES impact other users, as bandwidth is finite and allowed users may theoretically wind up having diminished use of the service due to piggybacking. But more importantly, you CANNOT just sit in a parking lot and use Wi-fi without deciding to ACTIVELY log on to the access point. While you may have a right to sit in the parking lot and use your computer, you are actively deciding to use someone else's resources when you log on, and doing so certainly is not unavoidable while using your laptop in that parking lot.
I'm thinking of the "This device must accept all harmful interference" FCC label on the bottom of all wireless routers. How exactly does that fit into your reasoning? If I run my microwave with the door open, or use my powerful 2.4 GHz phone it's perfectly legal, but when a wireless card uses the same free for public use 2.4 GHz spectrum, a bunch of nebulous laws suddenly spring into place? How can *anyone* trespass on the 2.4GHz wireless spectrum unless they're broadcasting too many watts? Wireless security is *entirely* up to the owner of the access point.
Your assertion that you must actively log into an access point is similarly false. All operating systems can be set to automatically connect to the nearest available base station, a setting which is quite useful in office or school settings where there are multiple unsecured access points available. Turning a laptop on in the proximity of an unsecured access point automatically connects to it. In fact, if you want to log onto a Windows domain, the laptop MUST be configured to automatically connect to a wireless network. If everyone and their brother names their access point "linksys" or "default", it's also impossible to distinguish which access point is which. Finally, unsecured access points in coffee shops are specifically open access points, unless they say otherwise somewhere. It's the only reasonable interpretation of a broadcasting wireless device that will happily give out IP addresses via DHCP and route packets to the Internet with no questions asked.
Pro tip: in those situations, the only thing you should do is "Yes, officer" lest you get tazered.
It's funny that some people still think the U.S. isn't a police state...
Anti-snitch campaigns are really the only way to fight ineffective/abusive law enforcement; when their conviction rates plummet they'll get a nasty message from the police commissioner. When they keep dropping, the city will replace the lot of them.
If anything china is the one country on this planet that in general has no respect for any copyright laws of any other nation. Hell, they will pirate anything. You invent and patent invention a (NOT SOFTWARE), the chinese will steal it, remake it out of the cheapest and crappiest components possible and try their hardest to undersell you, effectively causing you, the inventor/artist/producer major damages. What legal repercussions do you have? Don't look at me, I have no clue.
I find it amusing that anyone could complain about China's lack of respect for "intellectual property" when most of the manufacturing there is barely better than slave labor. Without respect for human rights, can anyone imagine they would respect copyright or patents? Perhaps the greedy businesses whining about losing their dear precious ideas to the communists shouldn't have supported modern slavery in the first place.
What DVDs have *you* bought lately? Mine have all come with 10 freakin' minutes of advertisements at the front that can't be skipped!
It's better than the 15 minutes of ads the theater plays, often going well past the show's starting time in order to sell us more stuff (There are (overly priced and smaller portioned) snacks available in the lobby!), while one's feet slowly glue themselves to the floor with old soda and candy.
7,219,352 has some likely prior art (to the date of filing at least) in xine's video_out abstraction and I wouldn't doubt if mplayer had deinterlacing support abstracted to "device driver"-esque libraries before this patent. The patent itself seems to only cover hardware or driver based deinterlacing anyway (no description of what a device driver actually is in this context, whether it includes extensions to window manager interfaces or not, etc.), which means it is probably narrowly limited to drivers where all graphics card functionality must be tied to a single video driver, e.g. not things like Xv or shader applications. I can't imagine the idea being innovative either, because it's just a method for deciding what the best way to display interlaced video on a progressive scan device is, something that is a natural extension of playing any made-for-tv video on any computer made after CRTs became common.
Every single one ... of half of them?
I think he just meant half of them were single and also stuck using Microsoft. Kind of a pity piece.