...generally don't care 'bout anything except making $; all other considerations are incidental. In contrast to many Gov't types, Sony doesn't care if you're a smoker. GM really doesn't want to have to approve of how you develop your property. AOL/TW has no particular interest in whether there are pink flamingos scattered on your lawn. And I sincerely doubt that Exxon executives regularly contemplate what the company could do about kiddie porn on the Internet.
Many gov't folks can, and do care, and will seek precedents that lead to the potential regulating of every little detail, such as the use of punitive taxes to control behavior... EVERY little detail, ranging from fat consumption to property development, while claiming to look out for your own interests.
They also are, to a large degree, voluntary. Many corporations produce products which are basically luxuries... and generally don't have new upstart competitors shot. Try getting your state to declare independence...
Hrm. How many kids have ever been famous (as youngsters), historically? And would worms be reduced if the actors were *never* mentioned in press, and were basically guaranteed no fame except perhaps in their local justice system?
Maybe if Napster started to require a verifiable CC#... people normally don't have that much plastic, and usually not with different names and/or billing addresses...
Hrm. Some of those criteria are definitely out. Age, race, and sex at the very least tend to be rather heavily protected, as are disabilities that are irrelevant to the job -- they can't force you to take, say, a blind stunt pilot, IIRC.
It largely depends on the EEOC, 'tho. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission once initiated an action regarding discriminatory hiring of waitresses (specifically, a 100% bias towards, er, well-endowed waitresses for waitstaff jobs) in the "Hooters" chain when some (male) plaintiffs complained about the hiring practice. Not sure how it all turned out, however.
Would you support somebody scanning every print edition of, say, Time, Newsweek, the Atlantic Monthly, Wired, and the Wall Street Journal? Preserving layout, appearance, and all other attributes?
Making this freely available downloadable in nicely printable.ps and.pdf files, without authorization, and despite explicit demands to the contrary? How about if somebody developed a network of people collectively obtained one subscription to each and every one of TW's magazines, and each uploaded a perfect electronic edition? And then added, say, every Applixware, Lokisoft, and id Games product? Would this still be fair game?
It's all bits, right? And since it's just sent over the wire, nobody loses, so...
Jon, it's possible to be both a thief and someone who uses technology "to acquire culture".
Part of it probably does have to do with something you mentioned -- "music clubs". Odds are, much of the CDs they get are bought at a lower rate than retail, but in bulk. In turn, the clubs expect people to get hooked.
Promotional costs may also go elsewhere. Any form of advertising is going to cost $. In addition, selling albums might subsidize singles... as well as albums that fail, in terms of sales.
And few are the authors who may demand generous terms, such as Stephen King, in constrast to, say, all-boy bands precisely calculated to capitalize on the particular tastes and fiscal imprudence of female preteens.
Will their contracts permit this? I don't follow the music world (with an AM/FM clock/radio being my sole source of music -- and that normally for '60s or '70s music...), but my suspicion would be that most publishing firms don't appreciate their artists breaching contracts.
Of course, if Metallica or Dr. Dre publishes independently, then they're probably free to make downloads freely available on Wednesdays with prime-number Julian-calendar dates to people who ride buses, if they choose.
Deserve? As much as people are willing to pay them.
Clearly, sufficient quantities of people are willing to pay sufficient amounts of money to encourage rather extravagant lifestyles. As long as that money is taken with the payer's consent for services and products duly (and legally) rendered, what's the problem?
Would you say it's unjust that many techies coming out of college with a B.S. in C.S. get offers of $70K+, and some can plausibly dream of retiring by 30?
Hm. Is this as beneficial for artists who are already well-known, and thus don't need the extra publicity that a recent starter could use?
A listener might become a new fan of a novice band by hearing one of their singles via a subscription service, but that may be largely because they're new. It's unclear to me that more established artists, whose styles and competencies are already widely known, benefit when their music propagates through the same channels.
You'd have to memorize an entire policy -- basically, a move for every reachable state -- not just a set of moves. I doubt any chap could pull that off....
Re:I don't understand the question.
on
Solving Chess?
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· Score: 1
Don't forget the 40-move rule. 40 moves without a pawn move or a capture == draw.
Plus, the time limits...
Re:how to determine the perfect game of chess
on
Solving Chess?
·
· Score: 1
It's theoretically possible.
Consider that there are a finite set of states in chess, based on the position of the pieces and whose move it is, whether or not a given King has moved, and how many moves there were since the last capture or Pawn move.
Then, there are a finite number of possible moves per state. Ergo, there are a finite number of possible policies -- each being an assignment of moves to states. Assignments may be partial because with most possible policies, many states will be completely unreachable and thus irrelevant. For instance, if a policy insists on sacrificing the Queen within the first 8 ply, then no states involving that Queen need be considered afterwards.
An optimal minimax policy is one such that versus an optimal opponent, your outcome is the best possible. For instance, in 3x3 Tic-Tac-Toe, any play but the center will allow an optimal opponent to force a win, IIRC. The value of a center play is "draw", simply because against an optimal opponent that is what will happen. That the opponent could hand you a win via a suboptimal policy is irrelevant to minimax.
It is theoretically possible that there is an optimal policy for Black such that no matter what White plays for the first move, that Black can force a victory. This seems unlikely, but possible until it has been mathematically evaluated.
See 3x3 Hexapawn for a simple game in which the first player is guaranteed a defeat against an optimal player.
Napster differs in an interesting respect -- since it's a go-between service, the Napster designers themselves don't need to archive the music, themselves. At least from the NYT article, it was implied that the judge in this ruling found issue with the database itself. Having a vast quantity of MP3'd CDs for commercial purposes is... interesting, in terms of legality.
Napster's weakness is whether or not aiding and abetting a crime is illegal based upon intent -- are they doing enough to prevent piracy, etc.
But... does my.mp3.com have rights to the MP3s in its database? To run it that way, they need to have those mp3's on their own systems.
Which, if they're unlicensed, could perhaps be the world's largest collection of unlicensed music... I can see why this might make lawyers *very* twitchy, even if the CD ownership check were 100% foolproof.
No legal authority besides a search warrant specifically mentioning seizure, IIRC, and the fact that INS had already revoked temporary custody more than a week before?
That's a distinctly interesting comment that the judge made. If that is her *intent* -- namely, that it is a specific goal that he be restricted to minimum-wage jobs -- this seems to be a fairly backhanded method, especially if this was not specified in the plea agreement.
Does anybody have the actual plea agreement text? I'd be curious to know whether adding additional conditions is allowed...
Completely, utterly incorrect. Educators and libraries get explicit and very specific exemptions under copyright law, which is the only reason they are permitted to redistribute. Fair use also does not permit redistribution.
Profit is irrelevant. Check the law.
And artists made their choice as to whether to sell or not.
Hardly. People don't start equal in ability, as they are not identical. They only option is to have equal *rights*, which is pretty much what we have except for the legal biases towards certain minorities (in particular, minority-owned businesses). THAT is what is meant by "created equal": in the eyes of the law.
Can you pitch a no-hitter against a MLB team? Research theoretical physics and derive new consequences of particle-wave equivalency? Climb Mt. Everest? Lead a community through calamity?
Face it. People have different levels of ability. There is minimal probablity that an individual with Down's syndrome will ever deservedly become the leader of the free world, nor would paraplegics make good paratroopers.
Happiness, actually, does not equal justice, either.
What's at issue is the ability of a creative artist to possess rights related to the control of his work, and his ability to transfer those rights to others (publishing companies) as desired.
There exists no right to gratification.
If the artist(s) wish for their audience to freely access their music, most are presumably capable of eventually producing works unencumbered by contracts and distributing it themselves, for as low or no cost as they desire. Most, clearly, have not taken that route, and that position should be honored.
Transactions should be cooperative and voluntary.
That means that there is no right to compel the transfer of rights of others, barring a compelling public interest -- such as where the execution of those rights would interfere with the fundamental rights of others. Playing with shaped charges and uranium hemispheres, for instance, may suddenly infringe upon the right of your neighbors to not be slain without due cause -- in this case, via instant disintegration. Consequently, the normal doctrine of property rights would be inhibited slightly.
Creative works, however, did not exist until creation. Consequently, others can hardly claim to be deprived if they lack access to such, unless the creator implements unusual discriminatory terms such as refusing to sell to those above 30...
Ask them whether they'll perform for free. You'll have your answer as to whether they prefer making money or not.
Poverty's not really a valid excuse, given that music is hardly necessary for a meaningful existence, and the default state is that you do *not* start with the music...
How would a recording of each song on "Jagged Little Pill" or, say, "The 1812 Overture" constitute *knowledge* ?
Pleasure, perhaps.
But knowledge? It's not like every duplicate contains a new scientific revelation that some evil company is trying to suppress.
Re:Wright could be in trouble
on
Sim Plague
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· Score: 1
Harm to what? It's a game. This is no more damaging than an AI player in _Starcraft_ suddenly making an unanticipated raid with 6 fully-loaded Protoss Carriers.
It's not like it's eating your _Quicken_ database.
You can use va_args foo in C to handle variable numbers of arguments. It's documented in K&R, so it's not just a C++ thing; it's how glibc implements printf, for instance.
I ain't sayin' it's pretty or as transparent as, say, Perl's methods. But it's there.
OSS.: Are the VB languages specs published? If so, does MS actually forbid people from implementing VB? I don't do VB (my dev work pretty much all on Solaris or Linux), so I wouldn't know 'bout this.
Au contraire. It raises the stakes significantly, and that's not such a bad thing.
With, say, a 3-on-1,
a) No weapons, or perhaps only things like suitcases, purses, etc. Odds are, the 3 can easily beat the 1 arbitrarily, with no lasting injuries on their part. The 1 may not die, but only because it's not mandatory. The expected payoff for the 3 (be it via robbery, rape, or simply sadistic thrill) is quite positive as long as cops aren't around.
b) Firearms. Possibly on all sides. Each of the 3 *knows* that he or she might be killed or crippled, with fairly high probability depending on local preponderance of gun ownership. They expected payoff is rather negative, since normally dying has a pretty poor utility value. They're less likely to even *try*. In some sense, it's all about probability; after a point, it's not that relevant whether any given individual carries a firearms, if almost everybody does. In general, fewer violent crimes take place in areas with non-discretionary CCW laws, to be replaced with slightly higher property crime rates (see Lott's study), as criminals substitute low-risk crimes where the owner is absent vs. high-risk confrontations.
These are particularly true if the 1 happens to be young, elderly, or female, all of which tend to have significantly greater problems defending themselves in terms of hand-to-hand ability. Women, in particular, get a substantial boost in survival probability when resisting *with* a firearm, while unarmed, *not* resisting is their better choice.
On a more global scale, it's analogous to the model of MAD. You'll note that local, low-intensity guerilla / small-scale conventional conflicts have been a LOT more common than large-scale conventional or NBC warfare, even when the participants HAVE nukes... and the only two instances an atomic device was ever exploded against an enemy was against an enemy who lacked the capability to respond in kind.
Slashdot Mirror
There's at least a few differences.
Corporations...
...generally don't care 'bout anything except making $; all other considerations are incidental. In contrast to many Gov't types, Sony doesn't care if you're a smoker. GM really doesn't want to have to approve of how you develop your property. AOL/TW has no particular interest in whether there are pink flamingos scattered on your lawn. And I sincerely doubt that Exxon executives regularly contemplate what the company could do about kiddie porn on the Internet.
Many gov't folks can, and do care, and will seek precedents that lead to the potential regulating of every little detail, such as the use of punitive taxes to control behavior... EVERY little detail, ranging from fat consumption to property development, while claiming to look out for your own interests.
They also are, to a large degree, voluntary. Many corporations produce products which are basically luxuries... and generally don't have new upstart competitors shot. Try getting your state to declare independence...
"Who needs Outlook, when Outlook can be broken?"
{ducks}
Hrm. How many kids have ever been famous (as youngsters), historically? And would worms be reduced if the actors were *never* mentioned in press, and were basically guaranteed no fame except perhaps in their local justice system?
Maybe if Napster started to require a verifiable CC#... people normally don't have that much plastic, and usually not with different names and/or billing addresses...
Hrm. Some of those criteria are definitely out. Age, race, and sex at the very least tend to be rather heavily protected, as are disabilities that are irrelevant to the job -- they can't force you to take, say, a blind stunt pilot, IIRC.
It largely depends on the EEOC, 'tho. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission once initiated an action regarding discriminatory hiring of waitresses (specifically, a 100% bias towards, er, well-endowed waitresses for waitstaff jobs) in the "Hooters" chain when some (male) plaintiffs complained about the hiring practice. Not sure how it all turned out, however.
The USA. I believe it's a statewide thing, 'tho, not federal; the Feds don't have jurisdiction on many of those cases.
Would you support somebody scanning every print edition of, say, Time, Newsweek, the Atlantic Monthly, Wired, and the Wall Street Journal? Preserving layout, appearance, and all other attributes?
.ps and .pdf files, without authorization, and despite explicit demands to the contrary? How about if somebody developed a network of people collectively obtained one subscription to each and every one of TW's magazines, and each uploaded a perfect electronic edition? And then added, say, every Applixware, Lokisoft, and id Games product? Would this still be fair game?
Making this freely available downloadable in nicely printable
It's all bits, right? And since it's just sent over the wire, nobody loses, so...
Jon, it's possible to be both a thief and someone who uses technology "to acquire culture".
Part of it probably does have to do with something you mentioned -- "music clubs". Odds are, much of the CDs they get are bought at a lower rate than retail, but in bulk. In turn, the clubs expect people to get hooked.
Promotional costs may also go elsewhere. Any form of advertising is going to cost $. In addition, selling albums might subsidize singles... as well as albums that fail, in terms of sales.
And few are the authors who may demand generous terms, such as Stephen King, in constrast to, say, all-boy bands precisely calculated to capitalize on the particular tastes and fiscal imprudence of female preteens.
Will their contracts permit this? I don't follow the music world (with an AM/FM clock/radio being my sole source of music -- and that normally for '60s or '70s music...), but my suspicion would be that most publishing firms don't appreciate their artists breaching contracts.
Of course, if Metallica or Dr. Dre publishes independently, then they're probably free to make downloads freely available on Wednesdays with prime-number Julian-calendar dates to people who ride buses, if they choose.
Deserve? As much as people are willing to pay them.
Clearly, sufficient quantities of people are willing to pay sufficient amounts of money to encourage rather extravagant lifestyles. As long as that money is taken with the payer's consent for services and products duly (and legally) rendered, what's the problem?
Would you say it's unjust that many techies coming out of college with a B.S. in C.S. get offers of $70K+, and some can plausibly dream of retiring by 30?
Hm. Is this as beneficial for artists who are already well-known, and thus don't need the extra publicity that a recent starter could use?
A listener might become a new fan of a novice band by hearing one of their singles via a subscription service, but that may be largely because they're new. It's unclear to me that more established artists, whose styles and competencies are already widely known, benefit when their music propagates through the same channels.
You'd have to memorize an entire policy -- basically, a move for every reachable state -- not just a set of moves. I doubt any chap could pull that off....
Don't forget the 40-move rule. 40 moves without a pawn move or a capture == draw.
Plus, the time limits...
It's theoretically possible.
Consider that there are a finite set of states in chess, based on the position of the pieces and whose move it is, whether or not a given King has moved, and how many moves there were since the last capture or Pawn move.
Then, there are a finite number of possible moves per state. Ergo, there are a finite number of possible policies -- each being an assignment of moves to states. Assignments may be partial because with most possible policies, many states will be completely unreachable and thus irrelevant. For instance, if a policy insists on sacrificing the Queen within the first 8 ply, then no states involving that Queen need be considered afterwards.
An optimal minimax policy is one such that versus an optimal opponent, your outcome is the best possible. For instance, in 3x3 Tic-Tac-Toe, any play but the center will allow an optimal opponent to force a win, IIRC. The value of a center play is "draw", simply because against an optimal opponent that is what will happen. That the opponent could hand you a win via a suboptimal policy is irrelevant to minimax.
It is theoretically possible that there is an optimal policy for Black such that no matter what White plays for the first move, that Black can force a victory. This seems unlikely, but possible until it has been mathematically evaluated.
See 3x3 Hexapawn for a simple game in which the first player is guaranteed a defeat against an optimal player.
Napster differs in an interesting respect -- since it's a go-between service, the Napster designers themselves don't need to archive the music, themselves. At least from the NYT article, it was implied that the judge in this ruling found issue with the database itself. Having a vast quantity of MP3'd CDs for commercial purposes is... interesting, in terms of legality.
Napster's weakness is whether or not aiding and abetting a crime is illegal based upon intent -- are they doing enough to prevent piracy, etc.
MP3.com's weakness appears to be their archive.
But... does my.mp3.com have rights to the MP3s in its database? To run it that way, they need to have those mp3's on their own systems.
Which, if they're unlicensed, could perhaps be the world's largest collection of unlicensed music... I can see why this might make lawyers *very* twitchy, even if the CD ownership check were 100% foolproof.
No legal authority besides a search warrant specifically mentioning seizure, IIRC, and the fact that INS had already revoked temporary custody more than a week before?
That's a distinctly interesting comment that the judge made. If that is her *intent* -- namely, that it is a specific goal that he be restricted to minimum-wage jobs -- this seems to be a fairly backhanded method, especially if this was not specified in the plea agreement.
Does anybody have the actual plea agreement text? I'd be curious to know whether adding additional conditions is allowed...
Completely, utterly incorrect. Educators and libraries get explicit and very specific exemptions under copyright law, which is the only reason they are permitted to redistribute. Fair use also does not permit redistribution.
Profit is irrelevant. Check the law.
And artists made their choice as to whether to sell or not.
Hardly. People don't start equal in ability, as they are not identical. They only option is to have equal *rights*, which is pretty much what we have except for the legal biases towards certain minorities (in particular, minority-owned businesses). THAT is what is meant by "created equal": in the eyes of the law.
Can you pitch a no-hitter against a MLB team?
Research theoretical physics and derive new consequences of particle-wave equivalency?
Climb Mt. Everest?
Lead a community through calamity?
Face it. People have different levels of ability. There is minimal probablity that an individual with Down's syndrome will ever deservedly become the leader of the free world, nor would paraplegics make good paratroopers.
Irrelevant. Convenience does not equal justice.
Happiness, actually, does not equal justice, either.
What's at issue is the ability of a creative artist to possess rights related to the control of his work, and his ability to transfer those rights to others (publishing companies) as desired.
There exists no right to gratification.
If the artist(s) wish for their audience to freely access their music, most are presumably capable of eventually producing works unencumbered by contracts and distributing it themselves, for as low or no cost as they desire. Most, clearly, have not taken that route, and that position should be honored.
Transactions should be cooperative and voluntary.
That means that there is no right to compel the transfer of rights of others, barring a compelling public interest -- such as where the execution of those rights would interfere with the fundamental rights of others. Playing with shaped charges and uranium hemispheres, for instance, may suddenly infringe upon the right of your neighbors to not be slain without due cause -- in this case, via instant disintegration. Consequently, the normal doctrine of property rights would be inhibited slightly.
Creative works, however, did not exist until creation. Consequently, others can hardly claim to be deprived if they lack access to such, unless the creator implements unusual discriminatory terms such as refusing to sell to those above 30...
Ask them whether they'll perform for free. You'll have your answer as to whether they prefer making money or not.
Poverty's not really a valid excuse, given that music is hardly necessary for a meaningful existence, and the default state is that you do *not* start with the music...
How would a recording of each song on "Jagged Little Pill" or, say, "The 1812 Overture" constitute *knowledge* ?
Pleasure, perhaps.
But knowledge? It's not like every duplicate contains a new scientific revelation that some evil company is trying to suppress.
Harm to what? It's a game. This is no more damaging than an AI player in _Starcraft_ suddenly making an unanticipated raid with 6 fully-loaded Protoss Carriers.
It's not like it's eating your _Quicken_ database.
You can use va_args foo in C to handle variable numbers of arguments. It's documented in K&R, so it's not just a C++ thing; it's how glibc implements printf, for instance.
I ain't sayin' it's pretty or as transparent as, say, Perl's methods. But it's there.
OSS.:
Are the VB languages specs published? If so, does MS actually forbid people from implementing VB? I don't do VB (my dev work pretty much all on Solaris or Linux), so I wouldn't know 'bout this.
Au contraire. It raises the stakes significantly, and that's not such a bad thing.
With, say, a 3-on-1,
a) No weapons, or perhaps only things like suitcases, purses, etc. Odds are, the 3 can easily beat the 1 arbitrarily, with no lasting injuries on their part. The 1 may not die, but only because it's not mandatory. The expected payoff for the 3 (be it via robbery, rape, or simply sadistic thrill) is quite positive as long as cops aren't around.
b) Firearms. Possibly on all sides. Each of the 3 *knows* that he or she might be killed or crippled, with fairly high probability depending on local preponderance of gun ownership. They expected payoff is rather negative, since normally dying has a pretty poor utility value. They're less likely to even *try*. In some sense, it's all about probability; after a point, it's not that relevant whether any given individual carries a firearms, if almost everybody does. In general, fewer violent crimes take place in areas with non-discretionary CCW laws, to be replaced with slightly higher property crime rates (see Lott's study), as criminals substitute low-risk crimes where the owner is absent vs. high-risk confrontations.
These are particularly true if the 1 happens to be young, elderly, or female, all of which tend to have significantly greater problems defending themselves in terms of hand-to-hand ability. Women, in particular, get a substantial boost in survival probability when resisting *with* a firearm, while unarmed, *not* resisting is their better choice.
On a more global scale, it's analogous to the model of MAD. You'll note that local, low-intensity guerilla / small-scale conventional conflicts have been a LOT more common than large-scale conventional or NBC warfare, even when the participants HAVE nukes... and the only two instances an atomic device was ever exploded against an enemy was against an enemy who lacked the capability to respond in kind.