I mean, who'd buy books that you could only read wearing the right glasses?
Funny you should mention that, because I made almost exactly the same point in my reply-comment to the Copyright Office. If you'd like to read the text, it's here. --
Copyright Office United States Library of Congress
In-reply-to: Time-Warner's comment on section 1201 (http://lcweb.loc.gov/copyright/1201/comments/043. pdf)
I will be brief.
First, I concur almost entirely with all the comments of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility.
Second, I would like to note that Time-Warner's claims are belied by their behavior, and that T-W's comment is filled with blatant slants and outrageous contradictions. For instance, on page 1 they write:
Time Warner is also vitally interested in the healthy maintenance of the "fair use doctrine". Time Warner's ability to rely on it makes possible Time Warner's creation and dissemination of news reports and factual and non-factual textual, audio, video and audio/visual works.
This begs a number of extremely important questions, to wit:
Why, if "fair use" is so important to Time-Warner, the access-control provisions of media such as DVD's and their licensed playback machinery make no allowance for fair use;
Why Time-Warner has acted, through the RIAA and DVD CCA, to suppress technologies which allow owners of these media to exercise their fair-use rights; and
Why, if Time-Warner depends on "fair use", they have acted to make it impossible to exercise without explicit authorization or even special machinery.
This is only a list of questions from one paragraph on the first page!
As an example of a slant, here is a sentence from page 2:
To put it in less technical terms, a fair use defense might allow a user to quote a passage from a book but it does not follow that the user is allowed to break into a bookstore and steal a book.
On the other hand, the "technological protection measures" advanced by Time-Warner are analogous to printing a book in ink which can only be read underneath an expensive type of lamp licensed only to certain producers. The actions of the DVD CCA, of which Time-Warner is a member, are analogous to attacking people who produce filters which allow such a book to be read by sunlight on one's porch; their suit to suppress the DeCSS software is not unlike filing suit against people who tell others how to create such a filter from colored plastic sheets.
If Time-Warner were just one company of many in the market, this would be one thing. However, Time-Warner is part of the DVD CCA, which represents the producers of nearly all films available on DVD. Together, they form a cartel opposed to fair use.
Here are examples of fair use which are impossible under the "technological protection measures" of authorized DVD players (and almost certainly future media formats):
Quoting. To prevent copying of the whole, they prevent the copying of any part. If I were producing a class on films, I would be in violation of the circumvention provisions if I used software to excerpt a short exchange from both an original work and its remake. Note that there are no protection measures for 35 mm film, so I could make contact prints and audio copies without fear of prosecution.
Archival copying. I cannot copy the work in such a way as to protect my investment against damage or loss.
Space-shifting. I cannot make a copy of a work, say, "The Lion King", and allow a 4-year-old to view it while keeping the original stored elsewhere. Even if I never violate copyright by transferring the copy without the original, this violates the anti-circumvention provisions of the law.
Time-Warner has done nothing to address these legitimate concerns of the average consumer. Worse, new hazards to fair use will almost certainly surface under their interpretation of this law.
In closing, I would ask the Copyright Office to give the broadest possible scope to the rights of the consumer under the provisions of this law, and give producers such as Time-Warner no power to restrict, police or prevent activities which fall under historical concepts of fair use. Thank you very much. --
One of the other ideas that caused considerable interest was "plasma sails". You generate a magnetic field around the vessel. Then release some ionised material into it ( say Xenon ). This will "pump" the field up so that it will expand like a blow-fish. The particles in the solar-wind then hit the field and accelerate the vessel.
Unfortunately, this can only get you moving as fast as the solar wind. This is not nearly fast enough for interstellar missions to be completed within one person's lifetime, let alone one researcher's scientific career. This would probably be just the thing for Kuiper belt probes, though. --
Scientist: "Mister President, these aliens sent this message to us, using photons, from a distance of 666 million light years. This means it was sent over a half-billion years ago, long before the first animals came out of the waters to live on land on Earth. They obviously have time travel!"
President: "Is that so? And they're afraid of us. This means we can use the threat of coming to visit them as a way to get their secret of time-travel. And since they're looking into our present, which was their future at the time, all we have to do is wait for them to tell us."
<weeks pass>
Scientist: "Mister President, we have the secret of time-travel reduced to practice."
President: "I'll take that, thanks. There are a few things I want to clean up. As Freud should have said, sometimes a cigar should only be a cigar..." --
So arguably, on the basis of this proposition, Ceres should be classified as "a minor planet" rather than an asteroid.
They already are called "minor planets". The term "asteroid" refers to their visual appearance from Earth; they are unresolvable points of light like stars (aster - star), not showing discs like the other planets do.
Likewise with some of the larger moons...
No. All the planets of Sol, major and minor, orbit Sol. Any body orbiting a planet is by definition a moon of that planet. --
No. It takes very different techniques to detect small bodies very far from a star and a planet orbiting within a few AU, and we just happen to be improving the technology for detecting planets around other stars faster than the technology for finding iceballs in the Kuiper belt. --
I don't think Weird Al would buy it, but I bet you'll have people willing to perform it at filksings. It's just the kind of geeky thing that filkers love. --
Liberty does not mean I can walk into a temple and start throwing around Nazi salutes while shouting, "Heil Hitler."
Of course not... unless the temple was rented out for such an event. Most, if not all, temples are private property. What goes on in them is the business of the owners. (I could just see some Jews renting a temple to neo-Nazis just to make a point... with a HEFTY damage deposit.)
Liberty does not mean I can burn a flag in protests.
The First Amendment says it does mean that. If you have a problem with Constitutional rights, may I suggest another country of residence?
If your political position is so weak that you have desecrate my national symbol to bring yourself attention, perhaps you should rethink your stance.
It's not my position or my protest (but it is my national symbol... though I prefer the bald eagle). It's not my business at all... and most importantly, it's not my government's business either. And it's certainly not the business of a secular government to designate a symbol as sacred to itself, such that the term "desecration" could be even remotely applicable. It's thinking like that which threatens to turn political debate into religious war. Haven't we seen enough of this in the third world?
I think ends are best met with means that are intellectual, methodical, and respectful.
Something you need to keep in mind: freedom of speech includes the liberty to shoot your cause in the foot. Respect cannot be legislated, and I can guarantee that you wouldn't like the results of any attempt to do so. --
You should have taken the offer.
on
Protesting DMCA
·
· Score: 1
In reality, the First Amendment can be and is curtailed for modes of expression held to be inappropriate.
Nope, it's curtailed when it starts becoming conduct which the government has some legitimate interest in curtailing. Non-obscene speech does not fall into this category.
burning selective service registration cards is not protected speech.
Thanks for citing the example which proves my point. The physical draft card is government property. You can make and burn as many replicas of draft cards as you want, and no government busybody has the right to say boo about it.
Stealing a government flag is theft. Burning that flag is arson. Buying your own flag and burning it is what, exactly (besides the loss of whatever you spent)?
The proposed amendment, by more closely specifying which modes of speech (not opinions!) are allowed, would merely begin to bring the US in line with Canada and other civilised nations.
<snort> You have the nerve to call that civilization? The USA imprisons more of its population than any other nation, Amnesty International is already up in arms over draconian punishments meted out in the USA, and you want to make yet another crime out of an act that harms nobody.
Canada has confiscated imports of lesbian literature on the grounds that it is "degrading to women". "Civilization", in the sense you're using it, is just another term for oppression, regimentation and intolerance.
Yup, I was born in the USA and lived here all my life. I love my country. My government needs to be told to stick it in its ear a heck of a lot, but the freedom to do that in creative ways is one of the things I love about this place. --
The First Amendment does not apply to hate speech.
First thing you say, and it's dead wrong. It ABSOLUTELY applies to hate speech. It applies to the Nazi's right to march through Skokie, Illinois, and it applies to everything else with the sole exception of obscenity. Check your Supreme Court precedents for information on this... that is, if you care about facts. (You really do make it too easy, you know.)
But no one has a right to pervert expression, with the sole purpose to degrade, insult, and abuse. That is what flag burning is about.
Okay, even assuming that it wasn't protected... who's being degraded and abused by someone burning a piece of cloth? And if degrading, insulting and abusing people is not protected speech, why the hell is Al Sharpton walking around free? Why the hell is Pat Robertson occupying a mansion instead of a prison cell? Hardly a day goes by that both of those two don't insult, degrade and abuse me by implication. Guess what? I deal with it quite nicely, thank you.
Flag burning is about expressing contempt for some part of what it represents. I think it is worthwhile to express contempt for people whose view of America is inseparable from their view of the sitting government, and especially for politicians who try to pull the same stunt that these veterans are pulling. Thus the new.sig. --
Suppose that Harris and Klebold could have called into W.A.V.E. to report the people who were antagonizing them. Voila, several positive things happen:
The database gets rendered less trustworthy.
Harris and Klebold get their yucks harmlessly.
Most importantly, the official bullies of the administration turn their attentions to the bullies-in-training. These are the ones who need to be counselled, not some geek who only wants to be left alone.
Geeks aren't violent as a rule, but social engineering is another matter. Using a fink system such as this to stigmatize and constrain jocks who slam people into lockers and other sorts of bullies would be one of the first uses, and probably one of the most successful.
Which doesn't make it a good thing (I think it sucks), just a good tool for that particular job. --
Yeah, I wanna talk about irony.
on
Protesting DMCA
·
· Score: 2
Yeah, let's criticize the people who have risked their lives to uphold our freedom.
Just because they are veterans, it makes their opinions more enlightened, more true and more worthy of being law than the First Amendment? Since that particular dispute is about a certain pattern on a piece of cloth, let me quote part of the Pledge of Allegiance to you:
... and to
the Republic, for which it stands, one nation... with liberty and justice for all.
So the people who risked their lives (for exactly what is debatable) are now trying to deny liberty and justice to others... over a symbol? Freedom doesn't seem to be part of their agenda. Either they were no different from people risking their lives for The Fatherland, or they have forgotten what freedom means. And that, my friend, is ironic. --
Almost never will the politician read email themselves. Snail mail is different; while most snail mail won't get read by the politician, some will; and, statistics compiled from snail mail are generally considered more than from email.
The weight is adjusted according to the amount of effort required, which has a positive relationship to how deeply the correspondent cares about the issue. For instance, a letter carries more weight than a post-card, a pre-printed "stamp and mail" postcard is weighted at about zero, and a letter in a hand-addressed envelope carries more weight than one with a machine-printed label the last I heard.
I find this a shame, as it weighs the opinions of the computer illiterate more than those of the computer literate...
The computer-literate can create millions of e-mails with next to zero effort. Would you want legislation driven by the group which could generate the most spam? Me neither. --
I had initially lumped the ion drive (Nasa DS1) in the same catagory of likelihood though.
Researchers have been running ion drives in test chambers since the 60's, if I recall correctly. They operate by principles understandable by anyone who's been through high-school physics. Lumping them in with fringe stuff is an error of ignorance.
I think he's refering to the theory that antiparticles are simply normal particles going backwards in time.
Then you have to explain why charge and parity are negated, but mass isn't. A positive mass and a negative mass, created equal in magnitude and simultaneously, would not have any energy-time product restrictions; they could exist forever. This isn't consistent with the behavior of virutal particles. This is why the time-reversal theory leaves a lot to be desired. --
Main Entry: ullage Pronunciation: '&-lij Function: noun Etymology: Middle English ulage, from Middle French eullage act of filling a cask, from eullier to fill a cask, from Old French ouil eye, bunghole, from Latin oculus eye -- more at EYE Date: 15th century : the amount that a container (as a tank or cask) lacks of being full
This isn't terribly informative. In rocket-speak, an "ullage burn" is what you do to get all your propellants down to the BOTTOM of the tank, where the outlet is. Trying to run a turbopump on oxygen gas doesn't work very well. If you can put the liquid where you want it using a magnet, you may save some complexity. --
I really love Bob Park - "One can only conclude that at the higher levels of these organisations there are people who don't have a very sound grounding in fundamental physics."
I know that he feels it's a long shot, but how many things have been discovered in the last 100 years that were solidly felt to be impossible. Progress is made by stepping away from your blinders and trying new things, looking in directions that you didn't even comprehend existed.
Ask yourself: who discovered all these miracles, and by what methods? Face it, the modern equivalent of the alchemist, trying to create the philosopher's stone, has been in the backwaters for more than a century. All the recent interesting stuff has been uncovered by people who know the Standard Model of the day well enough to know where it's incomplete; that's where they go poking at it. Michelson and Morely went poking at Earth's velocity through the "luminiferous ether" (a problematic concept, meaning a "soft spot") and found that it was zero. From this we got relativity and e=mc^2. Some people started prying into unexplained but reproducible phenomena like fogging of photographic plates next to certain minerals, and discovered radioactivity. A little more research found neutrons, and from this we got nuclear weapons and atomic power.
All of these secrets were pried out of nature by people willing to study the knowledge of the day until they knew it forwards, backwards and sideways, and then push it where it was either suspected or proven to be breakable. The goofball intent on proving that UFO's are real and that vibrating machines can move themselves through space without propellant (the Dean Drive) can beat their heads against their walls for a lifetime; their chances of actually uncovering something new (as opposed to experimental error) are comparable to a fart in a hurricane. --
For example, a vacuum is actually a continually fluctuating mass of particles and anti-particles
that travel backwards in time and annhilate themselves before they were created.
Sorry, but thanks for playing. There is no time-travel involved. Quantum mechanics has led to a model which states that the vacuum is full of virtual particle pairs which spontaneously come into being, exist briefly (with their energy-time product always being smaller than Planck's Constant) and annihilating each other. So long as the energy-time product (the physical equivalent of a kited check) does not exceed the limit of h, Mother Nature turns a blind eye to it.
You actually described Special Relativity (which also includes "things going fast look slow"); General Relativity is about funny stuff like non-Euclidean space and unaccelerated objects following geodesics in a warped space-time. It's highly counter-intuitive, mostly because our intuition is shaped by experience with a world where velocities are 0.00001% of c, the radius of curvature of space-time is on the order of a light-year, and other conditions where the deviations from a Newtonian model are so small as to be extremely difficult to measure. If we lived on a neutron star (read Dragon's Egg), our physics would have been more sophisticated from the outset. --
I recall that in Britan a while back someone actually got a frog to float by using a powerful magnetic field.."
Yup. They did it using the well-known property of oxygen, namely that it is paramagnetic (very weakly magnetic). It takes a much more powerful field to lift something full of water than something full of iron, but it can be done. It isn't terribly useful, though. The only use I saw for it before this was a demo of liquid oxygen adhering to the poles of a magnet. I take that back, you could use it to guarantee ullage of your oxidizer in a zero-G environment.
What I think all this research amounts to is something along the lines of "If we use enough power and a big enough magnetic field, gravity won't like us anymore."
It could amount to a bunch of different things:
Someone providing some money to tinker at the margins, making sure that the "fringe" stuff is experimental error. (This is likely if the people at the top have a clue.)
Someone convinced that the "fringe" stuff is real, and throwing money at studies to prove as much. (This is likely if the people at the top watch "X Files".)
It'll probably take time for the news media to sort out exactly who's behind this and why, assuming they're interested in actually going in-depth as opposed to a "gosh-wow" news item to play to the UFO cultists. What would be really interesting would be some studies of electron-beam repulsion of incoming supersonic airstreams; anything which can propagate a pressure wave faster than sound (as an electron beam could do) could reduce shockwaves and their consequent drag. I saw something about this once, with a note that the research had been suppressed. Well, it's time to unwrap it. --
... you go down to Circuit City, and buy one cash-and-carry. If you give a flying fsck about your privacy, you buy most everything that you have to pick up yourself with cash anyway. --
f) (City Unknown) Michigan, 1997: A 14 yr. old white girl is pistol whipped and shot in the face by a gang of six adult black males. One of her friends, a white teenage male, is murdered by a shot to the head. Another teenage white male is shot in the head and survives. The teenage white girl is forced to fellate the adult black males. None of the adult black male perpetrators are given the death penalty.
That's because Michigan doesn't allow the death penalty. Duh. --
Slashdot Mirror
--
Copyright Office
United States Library of Congress
In-reply-to: Time-Warner's comment on section 1201 (http://lcweb.loc.gov/copyright/1201/comments/043. pdf)
I will be brief.
First, I concur almost entirely with all the comments of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility.
Second, I would like to note that Time-Warner's claims are belied by their behavior, and that T-W's comment is filled with blatant slants and outrageous contradictions. For instance, on page 1 they write:
This begs a number of extremely important questions, to wit:- Why, if "fair use" is so important to Time-Warner, the access-control provisions of media such as DVD's and their licensed playback machinery make no allowance for fair use;
- Why Time-Warner has acted, through the RIAA and DVD CCA, to suppress technologies which allow owners of these media to exercise their fair-use rights; and
- Why, if Time-Warner depends on "fair use", they have acted to make it impossible to exercise without explicit authorization or even special machinery.
This is only a list of questions from one paragraph on the first page!As an example of a slant, here is a sentence from page 2:
On the other hand, the "technological protection measures" advanced by Time-Warner are analogous to printing a book in ink which can only be read underneath an expensive type of lamp licensed only to certain producers. The actions of the DVD CCA, of which Time-Warner is a member, are analogous to attacking people who produce filters which allow such a book to be read by sunlight on one's porch; their suit to suppress the DeCSS software is not unlike filing suit against people who tell others how to create such a filter from colored plastic sheets.If Time-Warner were just one company of many in the market, this would be one thing. However, Time-Warner is part of the DVD CCA, which represents the producers of nearly all films available on DVD. Together, they form a cartel opposed to fair use.
Here are examples of fair use which are impossible under the "technological protection measures" of authorized DVD players (and almost certainly future media formats):
- Quoting. To prevent copying of the whole, they prevent the copying of any part. If I were producing a class on films, I would be in violation of the circumvention provisions if I used software to excerpt a short exchange from both an original work and its remake. Note that there are no protection measures for 35 mm film, so I could make contact prints and audio copies without fear of prosecution.
- Archival copying. I cannot copy the work in such a way as to protect my investment against damage or loss.
- Space-shifting. I cannot make a copy of a work, say, "The Lion King", and allow a 4-year-old to view it while keeping the original stored elsewhere. Even if I never violate copyright by transferring the copy without the original, this violates the anti-circumvention provisions of the law.
Time-Warner has done nothing to address these legitimate concerns of the average consumer. Worse, new hazards to fair use will almost certainly surface under their interpretation of this law.In closing, I would ask the Copyright Office to give the broadest possible scope to the rights of the consumer under the provisions of this law, and give producers such as Time-Warner no power to restrict, police or prevent activities which fall under historical concepts of fair use. Thank you very much.
--
--
President: "Is that so? And they're afraid of us. This means we can use the threat of coming to visit them as a way to get their secret of time-travel. And since they're looking into our present, which was their future at the time, all we have to do is wait for them to tell us."
<weeks pass>
Scientist: "Mister President, we have the secret of time-travel reduced to practice."
President: "I'll take that, thanks. There are a few things I want to clean up. As Freud should have said, sometimes a cigar should only be a cigar..."
--
--
No. It takes very different techniques to detect small bodies very far from a star and a planet orbiting within a few AU, and we just happen to be improving the technology for detecting planets around other stars faster than the technology for finding iceballs in the Kuiper belt.
--
I don't think Weird Al would buy it, but I bet you'll have people willing to perform it at filksings. It's just the kind of geeky thing that filkers love.
--
--
Stealing a government flag is theft. Burning that flag is arson. Buying your own flag and burning it is what, exactly (besides the loss of whatever you spent)?
<snort> You have the nerve to call that civilization? The USA imprisons more of its population than any other nation, Amnesty International is already up in arms over draconian punishments meted out in the USA, and you want to make yet another crime out of an act that harms nobody.Canada has confiscated imports of lesbian literature on the grounds that it is "degrading to women". "Civilization", in the sense you're using it, is just another term for oppression, regimentation and intolerance.
Yup, I was born in the USA and lived here all my life. I love my country. My government needs to be told to stick it in its ear a heck of a lot, but the freedom to do that in creative ways is one of the things I love about this place.
--
Everyone else seems to be griping that this is KatzDot. ;-)
--
--
Flag burning is about expressing contempt for some part of what it represents. I think it is worthwhile to express contempt for people whose view of America is inseparable from their view of the sitting government, and especially for politicians who try to pull the same stunt that these veterans are pulling. Thus the new .sig.
--
That's great! I love it!
--
Suppose that Harris and Klebold could have called into W.A.V.E. to report the people who were antagonizing them. Voila, several positive things happen:
- The database gets rendered less trustworthy.
- Harris and Klebold get their yucks harmlessly.
- Most importantly, the official bullies of the administration turn their attentions to the bullies-in-training. These are the ones who need to be counselled, not some geek who only wants to be left alone.
Geeks aren't violent as a rule, but social engineering is another matter. Using a fink system such as this to stigmatize and constrain jocks who slam people into lockers and other sorts of bullies would be one of the first uses, and probably one of the most successful.Which doesn't make it a good thing (I think it sucks), just a good tool for that particular job.
--
--
--
When you come down to it, there is no substitute for knowing the standard model.
--
--
--
Main Entry: ullage
: the amount that a container (as a tank or cask) lacks of being full
Pronunciation: '&-lij
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English ulage, from Middle French eullage act of filling a cask, from eullier to fill a cask, from Old French ouil eye, bunghole, from Latin oculus eye -- more at EYE
Date: 15th century
This isn't terribly informative. In rocket-speak, an "ullage burn" is what you do to get all your propellants down to the BOTTOM of the tank, where the outlet is. Trying to run a turbopump on oxygen gas doesn't work very well. If you can put the liquid where you want it using a magnet, you may save some complexity.
--
All of these secrets were pried out of nature by people willing to study the knowledge of the day until they knew it forwards, backwards and sideways, and then push it where it was either suspected or proven to be breakable. The goofball intent on proving that UFO's are real and that vibrating machines can move themselves through space without propellant (the Dean Drive) can beat their heads against their walls for a lifetime; their chances of actually uncovering something new (as opposed to experimental error) are comparable to a fart in a hurricane.
--
You actually described Special Relativity (which also includes "things going fast look slow"); General Relativity is about funny stuff like non-Euclidean space and unaccelerated objects following geodesics in a warped space-time. It's highly counter-intuitive, mostly because our intuition is shaped by experience with a world where velocities are 0.00001% of c, the radius of curvature of space-time is on the order of a light-year, and other conditions where the deviations from a Newtonian model are so small as to be extremely difficult to measure. If we lived on a neutron star (read Dragon's Egg), our physics would have been more sophisticated from the outset.
--
- Someone providing some money to tinker at the margins, making sure that the "fringe" stuff is experimental error. (This is likely if the people at the top have a clue.)
- Someone convinced that the "fringe" stuff is real, and throwing money at studies to prove as much. (This is likely if the people at the top watch "X Files".)
It'll probably take time for the news media to sort out exactly who's behind this and why, assuming they're interested in actually going in-depth as opposed to a "gosh-wow" news item to play to the UFO cultists. What would be really interesting would be some studies of electron-beam repulsion of incoming supersonic airstreams; anything which can propagate a pressure wave faster than sound (as an electron beam could do) could reduce shockwaves and their consequent drag. I saw something about this once, with a note that the research had been suppressed. Well, it's time to unwrap it.--
... you go down to Circuit City, and buy one cash-and-carry. If you give a flying fsck about your privacy, you buy most everything that you have to pick up yourself with cash anyway.
--
--