This has not been the case in past antitrust break ups. You see, people are horribly greedy. The CEOs of the new, smaller companies will only cooperate if they see it as a way to make even more money. But in all likelyhood, they won't.
Why? Because currently, large portions of Microsoft are not profitable, and some parts are very profitable. Microsoft plays the money game every quarter, moving around its profits to fund the parts of the company that cannot hold their own.
Now imagine that you were the CEO of the company that got MS Office, one of MS's most successful products. You'd be raking in the dough. Why on earth would you want to pass money "under the table" to the Committee for the Advancement of Microsoft Bob Technology? It's stupid. You could just pocket the money.
Currently, MS has so much money that they can just throw it around with out worrying about whether what they throw it at will end up being profitable for them or not. Furthermore, because they control the market, they know that they can force anything down anyone's throats. Broken up, they no longer have the capital resources all in one pool; and suddenly, without their monopoly status, they can't force people to adopt immature or unwanted technologies.
The people that get the profitable parts of MS will strike it rich, big time, and will be making much more than they were making when MS was still together. These people would have to be completely stupid to use their newfound wealth to prop up the failing parts of the company.
PS, why do some many people insist on framing the debate in terms of commercial softwre versus free software?
This is largely deliberate FUD, actually. Companies like Microsoft (and other IT companies that see FOSS as competition) try their best to confuse terms like "free" and "open source", both of which are rather poor. They juxtapose "Free" vs "commercial" because they want people to think of Free software as costing no money, rather than being unencumbered by proprietary, restrictive licensing. By doing this, they are able to make their "FOSS is bad for the economy, bad for America, and bad for furry little bunnies" argument.
It holds no water, of course, but all they need to do is confuse people about what Free means and they're good to go.
Despite ESR's "open source" zealotry (he seems to be as keen to replace every instance of "Free" with "Open Source" as RMS is to replace instances of Linux with GNU/Linux), "open source" is just as FUD-worthy a term, as Microsoft has already proven. Because the term focuses on the openness of the source, rather than on its freedom, companies like Microsoft have been attempting to confuse the definition by claiming that "shared source" is the same thing as "open source".
I'm personally of the opinion that there is no way that we'll ever find a term that they can't spin to their favor. Marketers are good at this, it's their job. As such, I'd rather say "Free" than "Open Source" (though I use both interchangeably) because I prefer the emphasis on freedom to the emphasis on open code, but YMMV.
Lots of people have heard that in lots of other languages, Free (as in freedom) and free (as in, for-free) are two seperate words. This has led some people to suggest (sarcastically) that the only way to resolve the Free/free issue is to use a different language that makes the distinction (like Spanish, French or Chinese).
Even if this were possible, understand that, for example, the French word libre, which means free (as in freedom) is not usually used to describe non-living things. When someone says "Un logiciel libre" (Free Software), French people that aren't techs are confused by this unsual usage of the word free (and in Chinese, zi4you2ruan3jian4 produces equally weird looks). So in the end, you have to explain to them why your use of that word is appropriate. So while the distinction in vocabulary keeps people from confusing "for free" with "Free", it doesn't keep them from getting confused, and the whole "we need to explain what we mean problem" remains.
It's a bit sticky.
So I think the only way we can get over these semantic difficulties is through education, and we need to expect that companies who would prefer potential customers be confused about FOSS will spread FUD about our terminology.
Well, some people have a genetic predisposition to being overweight, and these people are, frankly, mostly SOL. They're just going to be huskier than average, just as some people are just always skinnier than average. The only way we can make life better for these people is if we (as a society) start redefining our rather strict (and unrealistic) standards of beauty.
But your point about a < b, while strictly true, ignores the way your body works. Your metabolic rate is like an engine, and controls how much sustenance you convert to energy. It does not change quickly. Many people seem to think that if they work out a bunch, their metabolic rate immediately goes up, and if they stop working out, it immediately goes down. This is not the case. It takes a fair amount of work to change your metabolic rate, and it typically happens over the course of several months of working out (or not working out, depending on whether the rate is increasing or decreasing).
So for example, I have a very high metabolic rate, and I burn 2500 to 3000 Calories per day. My body does this on its own. I don't need to work out to burn this much; my body simply knows that because I lead an active lifestyle, in order for me to have enough energy to do the things I like to do, I have to burn this much. Energy that gets burnt and not used is essentially wasted.
It's just like the reactor that powers your power grid. It produces a fixed flow of energy. Energy that gets used to do productive work gets used; energy that doesn't, bleeds off. Either way, the reactor produces the same amount of energy. The technicians that run it are not going to reduce its power output because there were a few days where the grid drew less power -- it will take them a long time to establish a trend.
Your body works the same way. The only way to get it consistantly burning a large number of Calories per day is to work out enough that it thinks it needs to burn that much to get by. This takes a long time. But the upshot is that whether I excersize tomorrow or not, I can consume 3000 calories and break even. That's a lot of food.
Now, it is true that changing to healthier eating habits is important when you're trying to lose weight. There are two things to keep in mind, and both are kind of simple and don't involve starving yourself.
The first is, only eat when you're hungry. Don't eat because you're bored, or you just need something in your mouth, until your metabolic rate is high enough that it doesn't much matter. We tech guys are particularly bad about this. It's nice to snack and code. Have a coke while you're admining your vax cluster. Or whatever. But resist this until you're in good shape.
The second is, drink lots of water. It doesn't matter if you have to pee all the time -- chances are, you're at the office most of the day anyway, and getting up to pee everynow and then will mean you're not always sitting around, which is an added bonus. But the most important reason to drink lots of water -- other than the fact that a well hydrated body works far better than a poorly hydrated one -- is because humans confuse hunger and thirst. I mean all humans. Physiologically. A very similar signal is sent to the brain and is often misinterpreted. If you drink a lot of water, you will not feel anywhere near as hungry, because in all likelyhood, 50% of the "hunger" signals you think you're getting are actually thirst signals, and you don't realize it. Most humans think they're thirsty when "their throat is dry". This actually means you're dehydrated.
Obviously, if your current lifestyle involves you ingesting 4000 Cals of hamburgers, chips and beer per day, and you only burn 1000 Calories sitting in your chair per day, you need to rethink your eating habits. But the point is that the amount you eat in a day, and the amount of work you actually do in a day do not need to satisfy your a < b inequality, as long as your metabolic engine is running fast enough.
And getting it to run fast enough means working out.
Yeah. The antioxident thing may be true, but the whole "people who drink a glass of red wine everyday live longer, have lower rates of heart disease, etc" study that everyone was parroting back in the early 90s in fact turned out to be a flawed experiment.
People that drink a glass of red wine everyday tend to live a much more, dare I say it, bourgeois lifestyle than those that don't. That the rich are healthier and live longer shouldn't surprise anyone.
It was actually shown to be a lifestyle difference rather than something attributable to red wine. The design of the experiment was completely flawed (think about it: how do you test the long term effects of drinking a glass of red wine everyday? How do you control that? You can really only find a bunch of people that have been regular (moderate) red wine drinkers all their lives and look at their health, versus people that haven't. But while a positive correlation exists, how on earth can you establish causality? The experiment is completely uncontrolled.)
High carb and sugar diets cause the release of Insulin in the body, which is a signal to the body that more than adequate nutrition is available as a result of which, the survival mechanism kicks in and stores any fat consumed thereafter as body fat, with the carbs being used for energy. When carb consumption is lowered, however, Insulin is absent from the bloodstream, and fat is burnt instead for energy.
While this may be strictly true, the body's "store as fat" mechanism only happens if your body isn't burning all the Calories it ingests. This is a result of having a low metabolic rate. A low metabolic rate is caused by lack of exercise, surprise.
This is why starving yourself will also lead to losing weight, and why the minute you stop doing it, you'll gain it all back (as is the case with low carb diets, and any diet in fact, which is not accompanied by exercise.) Your body goes into survival "I'm starving quick store everything I eat who knows when I'll eat again" mode.
Americans (and I say this as an American) are hopelessly overweight, and we have a very weight conscious society. As a result, we spend a tremendous amount of time trying to lose weight. But very few people (especially fat people, sadly) want to do the actual work required to lose it. This is why stuff like the Atkins diet, anorexic self-starvation, and diet pills are so popular. People don't want to actually get off their butts and work out. They want to continue leading their sedentary lifestyles and lose weight.
When you think about it, it really isn't surprising. Americans work harder (longer hours, etc) than essentially anyone else in the world, on average. It stands to reason, then, that we have very little free time, and many of us have office jobs where we sit around all day. So those of us who don't much like exercise to begin with are unlikely to use what little free time we have working out. It's a problem.
But recognize that any diet without exersise will, at best, give you temporary results, which will force you to diet basically forever.
The way you describe the Atkins diet is the same way that people suffering from anorexia describe the celery diet. Celery has negative Calories -- it requires more energy to break it down than you get from it, it being mostly cellulose. Anorexics discovered that they could just eat celery and lose weight extremely fast. They were essentially starving themselves (hello, negative Cals) but it didn't feel that way, because they always had a full stomach.
Low carb diets are the same. Eat only food which is more difficult to burn than fat, and your body will preferentially burn fat. But this is just as stupid as the celery diet, for exactly the same reasons.
If you want to lose weight, exercise. Play a sport. Do something. Get off your ass. And eat what you want.
Security is like an erection: it can always be harder and longer lasting. That doesn't necessarily imply impotence (unless it comes from the aptly named Microsoft, haha).
It seems Quantum Mechanics disagrees with you. Thank goodness, too. If every effect needed a cause, we'd be in a funny conundrum when considering the origins of the Universe, wouldn't we?
It rather reminds me of St. Thomas Aquinas' proof of the existance of God using the logic of the unmoved mover (that as all things have cause, there must exist one seed without cause to begin the chain, and that seed is God). This mostly seems like bunk, today, what with the fact that cause can follow effect, Quantum Mechanics exhibits truly random behaviour, etc, etc.
Kylow, I think you've made some good points. In the interest of civil debate I would like to retract some of the more juvenile things I may have said in this thread. Having said that...
In my earlier post, I contended that payment to the government (in the form of taxes) is analogous to payment of rent to a landlord for the privilege of living on his property. I then further pointed out that in a society, the government sometimes opts to spend its tax revenue on causes which individuals in the society disagree with, but which (ideally) most of society deems acceptable. You responded that this was the "Tyranny of the Majority". I agree, but I would like to explore the point further.
Let us first be frank and admit that there exist essentially two types of government. One makes decisions via broad consensus; the other reserves its decision making powers to a select few (or one). The first is subject to tyranny of the majority; the second is subject to tyranny of the minority. In both cases there exist situations in which the decision of the government is not in line with the views of certain citizens. But is this truly surprising, or avoidable? A society, after all, is made up of many people, with different and opposing views on how to handle any particular situation. It follows logically that when the government adopts a particular policy, said policy will be in line with the views of some, and contrary to the views of others. Whether this "tyranny" is perpetrated by the majority or the minority is somewhat irrelevant, wouldn't you say? At least with tyranny of the majority, most people are satisfied.
I understand that this solution is imperfect: witness the prosecution of African Americans during slavery, before the civil rights movement, and even today; witness the decision to intern Japanese Americans during the second world war; witness too the Salem Witch Trials, or Sentator Joe McCarthy's anti-communist witch hunt -- and even more recently, the War on Terror. Lamentable decisions are sometimes made to appease the majority view, and these are not always right. I do not claim that the Tyranny of the Majority is fair or just -- tyranny is so called for a reason.
But the fact remains that when many, many people must come to a decision, some will not be satisfied with its outcome. This cannot be avoided. Consider too that despite the fact that the Libertarian Party's views are not widely held, it seems that you would gladly impose them on America, if only you had the power to do so. How would this tyranny be any better than the one you despise?
Moving along to Amendment X. This Amendment is often used by conservatives as a catch all "most of the federal government is unconstitutional" provision. Unfortunately, legally speaking, this is not the correct interpretation. It surprises me that you would think that the Judicial branch of the United States government, which has the right and duty to interpret the United States constitution, would simply "be unaware" of the 10th Amendment.
As it happens, the 10th Amendment was an attempt by anti-federalists to do exactly what you describe: greatly limit the scope and power of the Federal Government. Unfortunately, their attempt was hamstrung by the Federalists and as a result this Amendment is widely regarded as tautological but meaningless. Some relevant excerpts from findlaw.com, which conveniently has references to back up everything it says:
That this provision was not conceived to be a yardstick for measuring the powers granted to the Federal Government or reserved to the States was firmly settled by the refusal of both Houses of Congress to insert the word "expressly" before the word "delegated"...
This is the problem with legalese; these little details are important. Here's the 10th amendment, for reference, with "expressly" inserted in brack
Newsflash, jackass: If you refuse to pay your rent, you will be cast out on the street, and the REPO man will come and forcibly take your property. If you resist, you will in all likelyhood face a prison term as well. Why is this? Because living in a place costs money.
The US cannot, however, just throw you out on the street, because any place out of the US is some other country's turf, and most of them aren't going to want to take people that the US is casting out because they refuse to pay taxes.
Is Bill Gates putting a gun to your head, telling to buy Windows? No. Nor is he doing it to anyone else.
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and assume that you mean this in a figurative, rather than literal sense -- as in, "No one is forcing you to buy Windows."
Unfortunately, this plays into the illusion of consumer choice. In a very real way, most people are forced to buy Windows.
For example, despite the fact that I don't use Windows at all, anytime I buy a computer, it comes with Windows. This copy of Windows is bought and paid for, by me, and I don't want it. But I don't have a choice, not if I want to buy a computer prebuilt.
Yes, I could buy a computer from Apple, or Sun, or IBM, that doesn't run Windows. But that brings me to my next point:
More than 95% of the Desktop Computer market runs Windows. So in actuality, if I want to interoperate with most software, I need Windows. Not using Windows anywhere (a choice I've made) has been extremely difficult to maintain. My coworkers don't understand why my system is different, why reading Word documents on my machine never works quite right, why the IE-only intranet website isn't easily accesible, etc, etc. I would say that for most non-technical people, not using Windows is simply impossible.
So yes, proverbially speaking, he is holding a gun to our heads. That's what being a monopoly is about.
It's a good idea, and sound, but it does have one major problem: Free Software development is mostly community driven, rather than financially driven. Patents cost an inordinant amount of money. FOSS essentially doesn't have the money.
We don't function in the same sort of economy as they do; ours is more accurately a gift-economy. We 're awash in "gift currency", as it were, but unfortunately, patents still live in the old economy, and require acutal money to secure.
Humans, being social creatures, have historically come together to form societies for protection. They understood (as we do now) that, the greater their numbers, the less vulnerable to the warlord of the day they were. There was a time when strong societies were few and far between, and the world was very much "every man for himself"; these are commonly called the dark ages.
Now, at a tribal level, there is (unsurprisingly) a great deal of social compassion for the weaker and less fortunate. When a society is sufficiently small, people look after each other in a much more personal way. But this doesn't scale; once you know longer know the misfortunate personally, once you have isolated yourself enough not to have them among you, it is easy to leave them to the wolves.
The government funds welfare programs to allow microsocieties to scale. Essentially, they say this: we, as a society, will protect your property and your belongings. We will not do this for free. In order to be a member of our society, you must respect our laws, and contribute financially to the "pool" which allows us to protect you. Everyone must give something they can afford to give. If you dislike this arrangement, you are free to live outside of society; but expect no protection, and know that there is no one stopping a stronger man from taking what it yours.
Societies are created because people that have tried to live without them quickly realize the folly of such a decision. American Libertarians are overwhelmingly middle class non-immigrants, usually white, who have benefited from the protection of the state all their lives -- and who have inherited wealth (if not monetary wealth then certainly cultural and educational wealth, which are no less relevant) from people protected by that same system.
They do not realize that in being Americans, or indeed, the citizens of any state, they have entered into a contract with its government; they agree to abide by certain rules. This includes paying taxes, even when the government uses that money for causes they disagree with. Because society is not about individuals -- society is about individuals together for their mutual protection.
The US Government, as governments go, is quite good about balancing the needs of the individual with the needs of the society.
Now, when decisions are made as a society, that means that your personal viewpoint on how things should be is sometimes overruled by the majority, who thinks differently than you do. This is always hard. But the truth is, most Americans feel that the protection of the weak and needy is necessary, even if they believe it less than much of the rest of the world. And so they have decided that it is the government's job to step in and help those that require it.
You disagree, and it bothers you that the government should spend your taxes on something you disagree with. But that money is no longer yours. The government did not steal it; you paid that money, to the government -- and in our country, that would be the people -- for the right to be a part of the society. Just as you when you pay rent, you may disagree with what your landlord uses your rent money for -- but he is not stealing it. If you would rather not live there, don't.
As they say, America -- love it or leave it. Ironically, it is usually the conservatives that say this. But now, I am saying it to you.
The Axiom of Choice makes me nervous for the same reason that Euclid wrote most of the Elements without using his fifth postulate. If you use the Axiom of Choice, you are necessarily restricting yourself to an AC-universe. Not that there's anything wrong with that (just as there's nothing wrong with the Euclidean plane) but a proof which does not need AC is more general because it applies to both worlds. You know this, of course:)
Maybe saying "AC makes me nervous" is the wrong way to say what I mean. Perhaps a better way to say it would be, I'd rather not use AC if I can avoid it.
I know the rule is, never get involved in a religious discussion. First off let me say that I am not an atheist. However, your arguments are, logically speaking, rather weak.
First, non-religious fundamentalist types generally believe in the evolutionary origin of man (and indeed, all living things). Which means that your argument that "If that is true, 'morality' is a farce and pointless. With no reason to be 'good', everybody alive may as well 'Do whatever they want to whomever they want whenever they want.'" doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Here's why:
Let us first assume that what you say is true, and that without morality, the world would quickly disentegrate into a horrible, unliveable hellhole. I personally think this is quite a reasonable assumption. It is therefore clear that any social species without some sort of "moral" code would not be able to maintain much of a society. Since social species become social to protect themselves, this would not be in their best interest. So without attributing basic human morality to divine planning, it is quite possible for someone skeptical of religion to see your argument as a non-starter. Their response would simply be, well, being that it is in the best interest of the human race not to allow their world to disintegrate into an unliveable hellhole, and, being as we exist to reproduce and evolve (remember that many non-religious types believe this, as they don't attribute the meaning of life to a god they don't believe in) it makes sense that we would have "evolved" natural moral tendencies, to ensure the survival of our race.
They would then further argue that moral codes appear to exist across the board, even in cultures that have had little or no contact with Christianity, both now and in the past. While you may see this as evidence of a far reaching plan on the part of God's, they may not. In fact, they may ask (and you would have a hard time answering this question in a way that would satisfy them), "If the far reaching plan is a product of divine intervention, how do you know that it is divine intervention on the part of the God of Abraham, and not some other widely worshipped deity? Or one not widely worshipped? Or one unknown to Humans? Or not one, but many?"
One thing that religious types bent on communicating their perspectives on God to non-religious types always forget is, non-religious types don't believe in God. Because they don't believe in God, any argument for the existance of God which presupposes the existance of God (even in indirect ways), quotes the bible, or can be explained easily using scientific principles, will not do much good. Until you have successfully converted someone, don't quote the bible. At least, don't quote the bible to prove or demonstrate something to someone -- you may accept it as God's word but they don't, and so you're not going to get anywhere. When should you quote the bible? When you've established (by some other means) that the religious answer is the right one, and you want to show the skeptic that the Bible has the right answer. But in order for them to believe that the Bible's answer is right, they must believe the answer is right before you tell them it comes from the Bible; in order for an appeal to authority to work (e.g, Homosexuality is wrong, because it says so in Leviticus) the listener must already accept the authority in question. If he or she already does, you don't need to do any converting; they're already a Christian.
Regarding the Atheism is stupid suggestion: I have a better way for you to demonstrate that Atheism is just another belief system that isn't any more logical or scientific than any other faith. Your argument is very weak logically, because you try to juxtapose to possibilities that are not at all reasonable. Your argument essentially says, "There are no absolutes. You believe you have a brain, but it's possible you don't; you don't believe in God, but it's possible He exists." The problem here is that any non-r
First off, let me say that I generally agree with your statement that US Constitution's second amendment exists to ensure that its citizens will be able to revolt if it ever should become necessary. It is consistent with the writings of the founding fathers, their general philosophies, and makes a lot of sense given that the birth of our nation was essentially a revolt against an oppressive government.
However, I think that it's a good thing that lots of weapons -- particularly the large, military kind, like nukes and aircraft carriers -- are not available to people that can afford them. Because, given the extreme cost of these items, the only people that could possibly afford them are massive corporations. We already have problems with guerilla tactics used by corporations in South America (Coca-Cola, for example, is being tried in US court for allegedly using just such tactics against Colombian citizens) and I really don't think we want to create a situation where the rich are able to "buy" military-grade equipment and possibly end up with their own private armies. We citizens may want our weapons for armed revolt, but those that have the money to buy WMDs and the like, well, that's not what they'd be using them for.
And anyway, to ensure armed revolt is successful, simple guns and resolve on the part of citizens is truly all that's required. Your Iraqi example is a great one: these guys don't have extreme weaponry, and their numbers are not that great. You say we're "winning" but I'm not even sure that's true.
All it takes is enough people actively taking up arms and enough people in the populace supporting their cause (not acting as informants, etc, even if they themselves don't fight the good fight) and you have a successful revolution. The US's nuclear arsenal is useless against a revolution. They want to control the US; they don't want to nuke it, that would be nuking their own country. I hate to say it, but if it weren't for international concern, I doubt we'd care less about nuking countries like Iraq/Afghanistan -- after all, we don't live there. But the US? Not a chance. Ultimately, it would be ground warfare. The odds are heavily stacked against the government when it comes to revolution, because their intention is to govern, and a people that doesn't want to be governed and is willing to fight to the death to prevent it is not being governed, it's being occupied.
A government's power comes from popular mandate, not force of arms. Force of arms can only be used to put down insurgents that do not have popular support. Once insurgents do, well, as a government, you're fucked.
Police states like North Korea, Iraq under Saddam (and probably, Iraq under Bush) spend much of their time trying to convince the populace (through propaganda) that they don't want to revolt. If they get it in their heads to (as Iraqis have), you are screwed.
You don't need to be able to decrypt it in real time. When DVDs first came out, they were massive -- a person could not possibly fit that much data onto his or her harddrive. Nowadays, though, people can, and they do. Furthermore, the SVP capable hardware will have to be able to play old-school DVDs without the encryption, or consumers will never buy into it -- buying a new DVD player to play discs you want to buy is one thing, but if that new DVD player can't play all your old discs, well, that's a much harder sell -- which means that all you need to do is rip the DVD once, and then burn it again.
Any computation done on hardware can be done on a CPU. It may be slower, but who cares? You only need to do it once.
You're focusing on points in his post that are rather minor. The main thrust of what he said is rather insightful (and I would mod it as such, if I had modpoints) -- simply, that in today's "Information Age", corporations can't fuck the consumer and assume that there's nothing he's going to be able to do about it, simply because he (in all likelyhood) isn't technologically adept enough to fix it.
For example, in the old days, copying from one tape to another was restricted and there were silly copy protection schemes for VHS, which were trivial to circumvent if you knew what you were doing. In this case, the "good enough" mantra was key: the corps knew that only 1% of the population "knew what they were doing", but 99% of their consumer base would be powerless to circumvent the system.
But in today's world, the technically adept %1 can distribute their rips, information on how to rip, etc, etc, to the average consumer.
Stuff like the broadcast flag, DRM, etc, these things annoy the hell out of even the non-technically adept. Whereas before they would grin and bear it, now they look up how to get around it on the web (where people like us post easy, step by step instructions), or they go to Kazaa or Grokster or whatever, and download a copy the technically adept have conveniently made for them.
The world isn't the same as it used to be. Security through obscurity is not even remotely "good enough", even in the short term, anymore. Because we live in a world of distributed information. And the average joe who may not have the skills to hack hardware will obtain what he wants from those that can. For free.
Well, if you care about the number that comes out at the end (most mathematicians don't, hehe), technically at some point you have to compute everything numerically. Even basic stuff like addition needs to be done numerically, right? It just so happens that we can do some addition in our heads. Computers think of addition as being an analytical composition of binary operations, likewise with subtraction; multiplication is repeated addition, division definable using a long division algorithm; exponentiation repeated multiplication, etc, etc. We use numerical approximations for virtually everything we need to compute. Most numbers cannot be conveniently expressed as finite decimals.
So, for example, there are known solutions to high order polynomial functions that are analytical in terms of elleptic fuctions, which are typically defined in terms of integrals. Those integrals cannot themselves be solved using addition and subtraction, but they can be approximated -- and that isn't so bad, because you have to approximate everything that isn't a non-repeating decimal when you use computers. And you can rigorously bound how much error you have, too, so you even know how accurate it is.
I mean, when you type 1/3 into your calculator, you get an approximation. Think about that.
As for solving integrals analytically using other integrals, you could use substitution or integration by parts or whatever identities you want from calculus to turn the integral you're trying to solve into another, equivalent integral; and if that's all you want, you can say that you've "solved" the integral in terms of another integral, but is that useful? Sometimes it is, because numerical methods on some kinds of integrals converge very fast, whereas others don't. If your goal is a number, a value, or whatever, then this could have genuine use.
We mathematicians generally dislike numbers because they make everything messy. That's for engineers and physicists. We'd rather keep things clean and exact, and as abstract as possible:)
You know, when I was first thinking of how to respond to miskatonic alumnus, I was thinking of a very similar ordering to the one you described; but then I kept thinking that it couldn't be that simple. Of course the key here is that we aren't dealing with a polynomial of infinite order, and so by the FTA we know that the number of roots is finite. So a total ordering like the one you're describing is perfect, and we can throw out much of the BS in my original post. Thank goodness, the AC makes me nervous:) Not to mention that your definition of Omega is thus constructive, and so we can actually compute it.
You wrote: That would be like suggesting that someone is a customer of GM after stealing a Buick.
Actually, no. The problem with this is that you are confusing copyright infringement and theft. I know that lots of people want you to believe that the two are the same, but they aren't, not legally speaking. From a passionate emotional perspective they may feel the same, but lawyers make the distinction for a very good reason: copyright infringement does not deprive the original owner of the infringed goods, whereas theft means that the original owner no longer has access to what was stolen.
So in your Buick example, GM actually loses because if you steal a Buick from them, that's one less Buick they can sell, and they are forced to simply absorb the losses.
But with the RIAA, they don't actually lose the work, per se, when their copyright is infringed. Understand that I am not saying that this makes copyright infringement ok -- the entire point of copyright is to secure the copyright holder's distribution rights, and so when I infringe copyright, I am acting like the distributor when I have no right to take that role.
So, why do people say that the RIAA is suing its customers? Because there are two kinds of people that download illegal music, roughly speaking. There are the hardcore pirates, the freeloaders. These folks aren't going to spend a dime on anything. They will never buy anything from the RIAA; if file sharing were illegal, the RIAA probably still wouldn't get money from these cheapos. But folks like this are few and far between.
The other folks are potential customers. They aren't opposed to buying music, but they want to buy good music, music that they like. There are a lot of people like this. Back in the Napster days, I bought more music than I ever had before or since, and I was a poor student at the time. MP3s just aren't superbly good quality and you don't get the liner notes or anything else; it's nice to own your own copy.
Now, I don't buy anything from the RIAA anymore. I've drifted from the occasional infringer of copyright who is a potential customer, to one that won't buy anything from the RIAA on principle anymore. Of course it's moot because I don't live in the States anymore, but the point is that the RIAA is suing people like me -- people that may have downloaded some tunes (this in itself does not effect the RIAA's bottom line) but still was into buying CDs by the artists I really liked.
If I download 500 songs and buy 7 CDs, they lose nothing from the 500 songs I downloaded, but make money from the 7 CDs (this is why copright infringement is not theft). I used to buy tunes I heard on the radio; then I started buying stuff I found on-line, because I didn't like what was on the radio anymore; now I don't buy anything, for political reasons.
Do you see what I'm saying? A better analogy, really, would be book publishers suing people that go to the library. People that go to the library read books and enjoy them; these are the people most likely to someday buy a book, and in the meantime, them going to the library doesn't cost the publisher anything -- "lost sales" is an unquantifiable thing, because there's no way to guarantee that they would choose to buy the books they check out at the library.
Two things: Eunuchs in harems were castrated before puberty, and as such never developed fully -- therefore most were unable to get an erection (although some were, apparently, much to the chagrin of the Sultans whose wives they were guarding). Secondly, rape is not a sexual crime, but rather a power crime, or so criminal psychologists always say. Which would imply that even if you were able to remove the actual sexual desire, if the rapist were still able to get an erection, the power motive would be enough.
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This has not been the case in past antitrust break ups. You see, people are horribly greedy. The CEOs of the new, smaller companies will only cooperate if they see it as a way to make even more money. But in all likelyhood, they won't.
Why? Because currently, large portions of Microsoft are not profitable, and some parts are very profitable. Microsoft plays the money game every quarter, moving around its profits to fund the parts of the company that cannot hold their own.
Now imagine that you were the CEO of the company that got MS Office, one of MS's most successful products. You'd be raking in the dough. Why on earth would you want to pass money "under the table" to the Committee for the Advancement of Microsoft Bob Technology? It's stupid. You could just pocket the money.
Currently, MS has so much money that they can just throw it around with out worrying about whether what they throw it at will end up being profitable for them or not. Furthermore, because they control the market, they know that they can force anything down anyone's throats. Broken up, they no longer have the capital resources all in one pool; and suddenly, without their monopoly status, they can't force people to adopt immature or unwanted technologies.
The people that get the profitable parts of MS will strike it rich, big time, and will be making much more than they were making when MS was still together. These people would have to be completely stupid to use their newfound wealth to prop up the failing parts of the company.
This is largely deliberate FUD, actually. Companies like Microsoft (and other IT companies that see FOSS as competition) try their best to confuse terms like "free" and "open source", both of which are rather poor. They juxtapose "Free" vs "commercial" because they want people to think of Free software as costing no money, rather than being unencumbered by proprietary, restrictive licensing. By doing this, they are able to make their "FOSS is bad for the economy, bad for America, and bad for furry little bunnies" argument.
It holds no water, of course, but all they need to do is confuse people about what Free means and they're good to go.
Despite ESR's "open source" zealotry (he seems to be as keen to replace every instance of "Free" with "Open Source" as RMS is to replace instances of Linux with GNU/Linux), "open source" is just as FUD-worthy a term, as Microsoft has already proven. Because the term focuses on the openness of the source, rather than on its freedom, companies like Microsoft have been attempting to confuse the definition by claiming that "shared source" is the same thing as "open source".
I'm personally of the opinion that there is no way that we'll ever find a term that they can't spin to their favor. Marketers are good at this, it's their job. As such, I'd rather say "Free" than "Open Source" (though I use both interchangeably) because I prefer the emphasis on freedom to the emphasis on open code, but YMMV.
Lots of people have heard that in lots of other languages, Free (as in freedom) and free (as in, for-free) are two seperate words. This has led some people to suggest (sarcastically) that the only way to resolve the Free/free issue is to use a different language that makes the distinction (like Spanish, French or Chinese).
Even if this were possible, understand that, for example, the French word libre, which means free (as in freedom) is not usually used to describe non-living things. When someone says "Un logiciel libre" (Free Software), French people that aren't techs are confused by this unsual usage of the word free (and in Chinese, zi4you2ruan3jian4 produces equally weird looks). So in the end, you have to explain to them why your use of that word is appropriate. So while the distinction in vocabulary keeps people from confusing "for free" with "Free", it doesn't keep them from getting confused, and the whole "we need to explain what we mean problem" remains.
It's a bit sticky.
So I think the only way we can get over these semantic difficulties is through education, and we need to expect that companies who would prefer potential customers be confused about FOSS will spread FUD about our terminology.
Shouldn't it be "Incontinent Bowel Movement"?
Well, some people have a genetic predisposition to being overweight, and these people are, frankly, mostly SOL. They're just going to be huskier than average, just as some people are just always skinnier than average. The only way we can make life better for these people is if we (as a society) start redefining our rather strict (and unrealistic) standards of beauty.
But your point about a < b, while strictly true, ignores the way your body works. Your metabolic rate is like an engine, and controls how much sustenance you convert to energy. It does not change quickly. Many people seem to think that if they work out a bunch, their metabolic rate immediately goes up, and if they stop working out, it immediately goes down. This is not the case. It takes a fair amount of work to change your metabolic rate, and it typically happens over the course of several months of working out (or not working out, depending on whether the rate is increasing or decreasing).
So for example, I have a very high metabolic rate, and I burn 2500 to 3000 Calories per day. My body does this on its own. I don't need to work out to burn this much; my body simply knows that because I lead an active lifestyle, in order for me to have enough energy to do the things I like to do, I have to burn this much. Energy that gets burnt and not used is essentially wasted.
It's just like the reactor that powers your power grid. It produces a fixed flow of energy. Energy that gets used to do productive work gets used; energy that doesn't, bleeds off. Either way, the reactor produces the same amount of energy. The technicians that run it are not going to reduce its power output because there were a few days where the grid drew less power -- it will take them a long time to establish a trend.
Your body works the same way. The only way to get it consistantly burning a large number of Calories per day is to work out enough that it thinks it needs to burn that much to get by. This takes a long time. But the upshot is that whether I excersize tomorrow or not, I can consume 3000 calories and break even. That's a lot of food.
Now, it is true that changing to healthier eating habits is important when you're trying to lose weight. There are two things to keep in mind, and both are kind of simple and don't involve starving yourself.
The first is, only eat when you're hungry. Don't eat because you're bored, or you just need something in your mouth, until your metabolic rate is high enough that it doesn't much matter. We tech guys are particularly bad about this. It's nice to snack and code. Have a coke while you're admining your vax cluster. Or whatever. But resist this until you're in good shape.
The second is, drink lots of water. It doesn't matter if you have to pee all the time -- chances are, you're at the office most of the day anyway, and getting up to pee everynow and then will mean you're not always sitting around, which is an added bonus. But the most important reason to drink lots of water -- other than the fact that a well hydrated body works far better than a poorly hydrated one -- is because humans confuse hunger and thirst. I mean all humans. Physiologically. A very similar signal is sent to the brain and is often misinterpreted. If you drink a lot of water, you will not feel anywhere near as hungry, because in all likelyhood, 50% of the "hunger" signals you think you're getting are actually thirst signals, and you don't realize it. Most humans think they're thirsty when "their throat is dry". This actually means you're dehydrated.
Obviously, if your current lifestyle involves you ingesting 4000 Cals of hamburgers, chips and beer per day, and you only burn 1000 Calories sitting in your chair per day, you need to rethink your eating habits. But the point is that the amount you eat in a day, and the amount of work you actually do in a day do not need to satisfy your a < b inequality, as long as your metabolic engine is running fast enough.
And getting it to run fast enough means working out.
Yeah. The antioxident thing may be true, but the whole "people who drink a glass of red wine everyday live longer, have lower rates of heart disease, etc" study that everyone was parroting back in the early 90s in fact turned out to be a flawed experiment.
People that drink a glass of red wine everyday tend to live a much more, dare I say it, bourgeois lifestyle than those that don't. That the rich are healthier and live longer shouldn't surprise anyone.
It was actually shown to be a lifestyle difference rather than something attributable to red wine. The design of the experiment was completely flawed (think about it: how do you test the long term effects of drinking a glass of red wine everyday? How do you control that? You can really only find a bunch of people that have been regular (moderate) red wine drinkers all their lives and look at their health, versus people that haven't. But while a positive correlation exists, how on earth can you establish causality? The experiment is completely uncontrolled.)
While this may be strictly true, the body's "store as fat" mechanism only happens if your body isn't burning all the Calories it ingests. This is a result of having a low metabolic rate. A low metabolic rate is caused by lack of exercise, surprise.
This is why starving yourself will also lead to losing weight, and why the minute you stop doing it, you'll gain it all back (as is the case with low carb diets, and any diet in fact, which is not accompanied by exercise.) Your body goes into survival "I'm starving quick store everything I eat who knows when I'll eat again" mode.
Americans (and I say this as an American) are hopelessly overweight, and we have a very weight conscious society. As a result, we spend a tremendous amount of time trying to lose weight. But very few people (especially fat people, sadly) want to do the actual work required to lose it. This is why stuff like the Atkins diet, anorexic self-starvation, and diet pills are so popular. People don't want to actually get off their butts and work out. They want to continue leading their sedentary lifestyles and lose weight.
When you think about it, it really isn't surprising. Americans work harder (longer hours, etc) than essentially anyone else in the world, on average. It stands to reason, then, that we have very little free time, and many of us have office jobs where we sit around all day. So those of us who don't much like exercise to begin with are unlikely to use what little free time we have working out. It's a problem.
But recognize that any diet without exersise will, at best, give you temporary results, which will force you to diet basically forever.
The way you describe the Atkins diet is the same way that people suffering from anorexia describe the celery diet. Celery has negative Calories -- it requires more energy to break it down than you get from it, it being mostly cellulose. Anorexics discovered that they could just eat celery and lose weight extremely fast. They were essentially starving themselves (hello, negative Cals) but it didn't feel that way, because they always had a full stomach.
Low carb diets are the same. Eat only food which is more difficult to burn than fat, and your body will preferentially burn fat. But this is just as stupid as the celery diet, for exactly the same reasons.
If you want to lose weight, exercise. Play a sport. Do something. Get off your ass. And eat what you want.
This is off-topic, but in html, a link is made by Free gmail invites!. Clicking on "Free gmail invites" would then take you to http://www.goatse.cx.
The 'a' I believe stands for 'anchor', and 'href' for HTTP Reference. Note the '/' before the 'a' in the closing tag, it's important.
Security is like an erection: it can always be harder and longer lasting. That doesn't necessarily imply impotence (unless it comes from the aptly named Microsoft, haha).
It seems Quantum Mechanics disagrees with you. Thank goodness, too. If every effect needed a cause, we'd be in a funny conundrum when considering the origins of the Universe, wouldn't we?
It rather reminds me of St. Thomas Aquinas' proof of the existance of God using the logic of the unmoved mover (that as all things have cause, there must exist one seed without cause to begin the chain, and that seed is God). This mostly seems like bunk, today, what with the fact that cause can follow effect, Quantum Mechanics exhibits truly random behaviour, etc, etc.
Kylow, I think you've made some good points. In the interest of civil debate I would like to retract some of the more juvenile things I may have said in this thread. Having said that...
In my earlier post, I contended that payment to the government (in the form of taxes) is analogous to payment of rent to a landlord for the privilege of living on his property. I then further pointed out that in a society, the government sometimes opts to spend its tax revenue on causes which individuals in the society disagree with, but which (ideally) most of society deems acceptable. You responded that this was the "Tyranny of the Majority". I agree, but I would like to explore the point further.
Let us first be frank and admit that there exist essentially two types of government. One makes decisions via broad consensus; the other reserves its decision making powers to a select few (or one). The first is subject to tyranny of the majority; the second is subject to tyranny of the minority. In both cases there exist situations in which the decision of the government is not in line with the views of certain citizens. But is this truly surprising, or avoidable? A society, after all, is made up of many people, with different and opposing views on how to handle any particular situation. It follows logically that when the government adopts a particular policy, said policy will be in line with the views of some, and contrary to the views of others. Whether this "tyranny" is perpetrated by the majority or the minority is somewhat irrelevant, wouldn't you say? At least with tyranny of the majority, most people are satisfied.
I understand that this solution is imperfect: witness the prosecution of African Americans during slavery, before the civil rights movement, and even today; witness the decision to intern Japanese Americans during the second world war; witness too the Salem Witch Trials, or Sentator Joe McCarthy's anti-communist witch hunt -- and even more recently, the War on Terror. Lamentable decisions are sometimes made to appease the majority view, and these are not always right. I do not claim that the Tyranny of the Majority is fair or just -- tyranny is so called for a reason.
But the fact remains that when many, many people must come to a decision, some will not be satisfied with its outcome. This cannot be avoided. Consider too that despite the fact that the Libertarian Party's views are not widely held, it seems that you would gladly impose them on America, if only you had the power to do so. How would this tyranny be any better than the one you despise?
Moving along to Amendment X. This Amendment is often used by conservatives as a catch all "most of the federal government is unconstitutional" provision. Unfortunately, legally speaking, this is not the correct interpretation. It surprises me that you would think that the Judicial branch of the United States government, which has the right and duty to interpret the United States constitution, would simply "be unaware" of the 10th Amendment.
As it happens, the 10th Amendment was an attempt by anti-federalists to do exactly what you describe: greatly limit the scope and power of the Federal Government. Unfortunately, their attempt was hamstrung by the Federalists and as a result this Amendment is widely regarded as tautological but meaningless. Some relevant excerpts from findlaw.com, which conveniently has references to back up everything it says:
This is the problem with legalese; these little details are important. Here's the 10th amendment, for reference, with "expressly" inserted in brack
Newsflash, jackass: If you refuse to pay your rent, you will be cast out on the street, and the REPO man will come and forcibly take your property. If you resist, you will in all likelyhood face a prison term as well. Why is this? Because living in a place costs money.
The US cannot, however, just throw you out on the street, because any place out of the US is some other country's turf, and most of them aren't going to want to take people that the US is casting out because they refuse to pay taxes.
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and assume that you mean this in a figurative, rather than literal sense -- as in, "No one is forcing you to buy Windows."
Unfortunately, this plays into the illusion of consumer choice. In a very real way, most people are forced to buy Windows.
For example, despite the fact that I don't use Windows at all, anytime I buy a computer, it comes with Windows. This copy of Windows is bought and paid for, by me, and I don't want it. But I don't have a choice, not if I want to buy a computer prebuilt.
Yes, I could buy a computer from Apple, or Sun, or IBM, that doesn't run Windows. But that brings me to my next point:
More than 95% of the Desktop Computer market runs Windows. So in actuality, if I want to interoperate with most software, I need Windows. Not using Windows anywhere (a choice I've made) has been extremely difficult to maintain. My coworkers don't understand why my system is different, why reading Word documents on my machine never works quite right, why the IE-only intranet website isn't easily accesible, etc, etc. I would say that for most non-technical people, not using Windows is simply impossible.
So yes, proverbially speaking, he is holding a gun to our heads. That's what being a monopoly is about.
It's a good idea, and sound, but it does have one major problem: Free Software development is mostly community driven, rather than financially driven. Patents cost an inordinant amount of money. FOSS essentially doesn't have the money.
We don't function in the same sort of economy as they do; ours is more accurately a gift-economy. We 're awash in "gift currency", as it were, but unfortunately, patents still live in the old economy, and require acutal money to secure.
Humans, being social creatures, have historically come together to form societies for protection. They understood (as we do now) that, the greater their numbers, the less vulnerable to the warlord of the day they were. There was a time when strong societies were few and far between, and the world was very much "every man for himself"; these are commonly called the dark ages.
Now, at a tribal level, there is (unsurprisingly) a great deal of social compassion for the weaker and less fortunate. When a society is sufficiently small, people look after each other in a much more personal way. But this doesn't scale; once you know longer know the misfortunate personally, once you have isolated yourself enough not to have them among you, it is easy to leave them to the wolves.
The government funds welfare programs to allow microsocieties to scale. Essentially, they say this: we, as a society, will protect your property and your belongings. We will not do this for free. In order to be a member of our society, you must respect our laws, and contribute financially to the "pool" which allows us to protect you. Everyone must give something they can afford to give. If you dislike this arrangement, you are free to live outside of society; but expect no protection, and know that there is no one stopping a stronger man from taking what it yours.
Societies are created because people that have tried to live without them quickly realize the folly of such a decision. American Libertarians are overwhelmingly middle class non-immigrants, usually white, who have benefited from the protection of the state all their lives -- and who have inherited wealth (if not monetary wealth then certainly cultural and educational wealth, which are no less relevant) from people protected by that same system.
They do not realize that in being Americans, or indeed, the citizens of any state, they have entered into a contract with its government; they agree to abide by certain rules. This includes paying taxes, even when the government uses that money for causes they disagree with. Because society is not about individuals -- society is about individuals together for their mutual protection.
The US Government, as governments go, is quite good about balancing the needs of the individual with the needs of the society.
Now, when decisions are made as a society, that means that your personal viewpoint on how things should be is sometimes overruled by the majority, who thinks differently than you do. This is always hard. But the truth is, most Americans feel that the protection of the weak and needy is necessary, even if they believe it less than much of the rest of the world. And so they have decided that it is the government's job to step in and help those that require it.
You disagree, and it bothers you that the government should spend your taxes on something you disagree with. But that money is no longer yours. The government did not steal it; you paid that money, to the government -- and in our country, that would be the people -- for the right to be a part of the society. Just as you when you pay rent, you may disagree with what your landlord uses your rent money for -- but he is not stealing it. If you would rather not live there, don't.
As they say, America -- love it or leave it. Ironically, it is usually the conservatives that say this. But now, I am saying it to you.
No, I think it's meant to be to the tune of "Duke of Earl", which is much funnier, imho.
The Axiom of Choice makes me nervous for the same reason that Euclid wrote most of the Elements without using his fifth postulate. If you use the Axiom of Choice, you are necessarily restricting yourself to an AC-universe. Not that there's anything wrong with that (just as there's nothing wrong with the Euclidean plane) but a proof which does not need AC is more general because it applies to both worlds. You know this, of course :)
Maybe saying "AC makes me nervous" is the wrong way to say what I mean. Perhaps a better way to say it would be, I'd rather not use AC if I can avoid it.
I know the rule is, never get involved in a religious discussion. First off let me say that I am not an atheist. However, your arguments are, logically speaking, rather weak.
First, non-religious fundamentalist types generally believe in the evolutionary origin of man (and indeed, all living things). Which means that your argument that "If that is true, 'morality' is a farce and pointless. With no reason to be 'good', everybody alive may as well 'Do whatever they want to whomever they want whenever they want.'" doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Here's why:
Let us first assume that what you say is true, and that without morality, the world would quickly disentegrate into a horrible, unliveable hellhole. I personally think this is quite a reasonable assumption. It is therefore clear that any social species without some sort of "moral" code would not be able to maintain much of a society. Since social species become social to protect themselves, this would not be in their best interest. So without attributing basic human morality to divine planning, it is quite possible for someone skeptical of religion to see your argument as a non-starter. Their response would simply be, well, being that it is in the best interest of the human race not to allow their world to disintegrate into an unliveable hellhole, and, being as we exist to reproduce and evolve (remember that many non-religious types believe this, as they don't attribute the meaning of life to a god they don't believe in) it makes sense that we would have "evolved" natural moral tendencies, to ensure the survival of our race.
They would then further argue that moral codes appear to exist across the board, even in cultures that have had little or no contact with Christianity, both now and in the past. While you may see this as evidence of a far reaching plan on the part of God's, they may not. In fact, they may ask (and you would have a hard time answering this question in a way that would satisfy them), "If the far reaching plan is a product of divine intervention, how do you know that it is divine intervention on the part of the God of Abraham, and not some other widely worshipped deity? Or one not widely worshipped? Or one unknown to Humans? Or not one, but many?"
One thing that religious types bent on communicating their perspectives on God to non-religious types always forget is, non-religious types don't believe in God. Because they don't believe in God, any argument for the existance of God which presupposes the existance of God (even in indirect ways), quotes the bible, or can be explained easily using scientific principles, will not do much good. Until you have successfully converted someone, don't quote the bible. At least, don't quote the bible to prove or demonstrate something to someone -- you may accept it as God's word but they don't, and so you're not going to get anywhere. When should you quote the bible? When you've established (by some other means) that the religious answer is the right one, and you want to show the skeptic that the Bible has the right answer. But in order for them to believe that the Bible's answer is right, they must believe the answer is right before you tell them it comes from the Bible; in order for an appeal to authority to work (e.g, Homosexuality is wrong, because it says so in Leviticus) the listener must already accept the authority in question. If he or she already does, you don't need to do any converting; they're already a Christian.
Regarding the Atheism is stupid suggestion: I have a better way for you to demonstrate that Atheism is just another belief system that isn't any more logical or scientific than any other faith. Your argument is very weak logically, because you try to juxtapose to possibilities that are not at all reasonable. Your argument essentially says, "There are no absolutes. You believe you have a brain, but it's possible you don't; you don't believe in God, but it's possible He exists." The problem here is that any non-r
First off, let me say that I generally agree with your statement that US Constitution's second amendment exists to ensure that its citizens will be able to revolt if it ever should become necessary. It is consistent with the writings of the founding fathers, their general philosophies, and makes a lot of sense given that the birth of our nation was essentially a revolt against an oppressive government.
However, I think that it's a good thing that lots of weapons -- particularly the large, military kind, like nukes and aircraft carriers -- are not available to people that can afford them. Because, given the extreme cost of these items, the only people that could possibly afford them are massive corporations. We already have problems with guerilla tactics used by corporations in South America (Coca-Cola, for example, is being tried in US court for allegedly using just such tactics against Colombian citizens) and I really don't think we want to create a situation where the rich are able to "buy" military-grade equipment and possibly end up with their own private armies. We citizens may want our weapons for armed revolt, but those that have the money to buy WMDs and the like, well, that's not what they'd be using them for.
And anyway, to ensure armed revolt is successful, simple guns and resolve on the part of citizens is truly all that's required. Your Iraqi example is a great one: these guys don't have extreme weaponry, and their numbers are not that great. You say we're "winning" but I'm not even sure that's true.
All it takes is enough people actively taking up arms and enough people in the populace supporting their cause (not acting as informants, etc, even if they themselves don't fight the good fight) and you have a successful revolution. The US's nuclear arsenal is useless against a revolution. They want to control the US; they don't want to nuke it, that would be nuking their own country. I hate to say it, but if it weren't for international concern, I doubt we'd care less about nuking countries like Iraq/Afghanistan -- after all, we don't live there. But the US? Not a chance. Ultimately, it would be ground warfare. The odds are heavily stacked against the government when it comes to revolution, because their intention is to govern, and a people that doesn't want to be governed and is willing to fight to the death to prevent it is not being governed, it's being occupied.
A government's power comes from popular mandate, not force of arms. Force of arms can only be used to put down insurgents that do not have popular support. Once insurgents do, well, as a government, you're fucked.
Police states like North Korea, Iraq under Saddam (and probably, Iraq under Bush) spend much of their time trying to convince the populace (through propaganda) that they don't want to revolt. If they get it in their heads to (as Iraqis have), you are screwed.
You don't need to be able to decrypt it in real time. When DVDs first came out, they were massive -- a person could not possibly fit that much data onto his or her harddrive. Nowadays, though, people can, and they do. Furthermore, the SVP capable hardware will have to be able to play old-school DVDs without the encryption, or consumers will never buy into it -- buying a new DVD player to play discs you want to buy is one thing, but if that new DVD player can't play all your old discs, well, that's a much harder sell -- which means that all you need to do is rip the DVD once, and then burn it again.
Any computation done on hardware can be done on a CPU. It may be slower, but who cares? You only need to do it once.
You're focusing on points in his post that are rather minor. The main thrust of what he said is rather insightful (and I would mod it as such, if I had modpoints) -- simply, that in today's "Information Age", corporations can't fuck the consumer and assume that there's nothing he's going to be able to do about it, simply because he (in all likelyhood) isn't technologically adept enough to fix it.
For example, in the old days, copying from one tape to another was restricted and there were silly copy protection schemes for VHS, which were trivial to circumvent if you knew what you were doing. In this case, the "good enough" mantra was key: the corps knew that only 1% of the population "knew what they were doing", but 99% of their consumer base would be powerless to circumvent the system.
But in today's world, the technically adept %1 can distribute their rips, information on how to rip, etc, etc, to the average consumer.
Stuff like the broadcast flag, DRM, etc, these things annoy the hell out of even the non-technically adept. Whereas before they would grin and bear it, now they look up how to get around it on the web (where people like us post easy, step by step instructions), or they go to Kazaa or Grokster or whatever, and download a copy the technically adept have conveniently made for them.
The world isn't the same as it used to be. Security through obscurity is not even remotely "good enough", even in the short term, anymore. Because we live in a world of distributed information. And the average joe who may not have the skills to hack hardware will obtain what he wants from those that can. For free.
And just to further confuse matters, while you write 'kelvin', the SI unit is K (capital), as lowercase k is the kilo prefix (kK anyone?)
Well, if you care about the number that comes out at the end (most mathematicians don't, hehe), technically at some point you have to compute everything numerically. Even basic stuff like addition needs to be done numerically, right? It just so happens that we can do some addition in our heads. Computers think of addition as being an analytical composition of binary operations, likewise with subtraction; multiplication is repeated addition, division definable using a long division algorithm; exponentiation repeated multiplication, etc, etc. We use numerical approximations for virtually everything we need to compute. Most numbers cannot be conveniently expressed as finite decimals.
:)
So, for example, there are known solutions to high order polynomial functions that are analytical in terms of elleptic fuctions, which are typically defined in terms of integrals. Those integrals cannot themselves be solved using addition and subtraction, but they can be approximated -- and that isn't so bad, because you have to approximate everything that isn't a non-repeating decimal when you use computers. And you can rigorously bound how much error you have, too, so you even know how accurate it is.
I mean, when you type 1/3 into your calculator, you get an approximation. Think about that.
As for solving integrals analytically using other integrals, you could use substitution or integration by parts or whatever identities you want from calculus to turn the integral you're trying to solve into another, equivalent integral; and if that's all you want, you can say that you've "solved" the integral in terms of another integral, but is that useful? Sometimes it is, because numerical methods on some kinds of integrals converge very fast, whereas others don't. If your goal is a number, a value, or whatever, then this could have genuine use.
We mathematicians generally dislike numbers because they make everything messy. That's for engineers and physicists. We'd rather keep things clean and exact, and as abstract as possible
You know, when I was first thinking of how to respond to miskatonic alumnus, I was thinking of a very similar ordering to the one you described; but then I kept thinking that it couldn't be that simple. Of course the key here is that we aren't dealing with a polynomial of infinite order, and so by the FTA we know that the number of roots is finite. So a total ordering like the one you're describing is perfect, and we can throw out much of the BS in my original post. Thank goodness, the AC makes me nervous :) Not to mention that your definition of Omega is thus constructive, and so we can actually compute it.
:)
Math rules
You wrote:
That would be like suggesting that someone is a customer of GM after stealing a Buick.
Actually, no. The problem with this is that you are confusing copyright infringement and theft. I know that lots of people want you to believe that the two are the same, but they aren't, not legally speaking. From a passionate emotional perspective they may feel the same, but lawyers make the distinction for a very good reason: copyright infringement does not deprive the original owner of the infringed goods, whereas theft means that the original owner no longer has access to what was stolen.
So in your Buick example, GM actually loses because if you steal a Buick from them, that's one less Buick they can sell, and they are forced to simply absorb the losses.
But with the RIAA, they don't actually lose the work, per se, when their copyright is infringed. Understand that I am not saying that this makes copyright infringement ok -- the entire point of copyright is to secure the copyright holder's distribution rights, and so when I infringe copyright, I am acting like the distributor when I have no right to take that role.
So, why do people say that the RIAA is suing its customers? Because there are two kinds of people that download illegal music, roughly speaking. There are the hardcore pirates, the freeloaders. These folks aren't going to spend a dime on anything. They will never buy anything from the RIAA; if file sharing were illegal, the RIAA probably still wouldn't get money from these cheapos. But folks like this are few and far between.
The other folks are potential customers. They aren't opposed to buying music, but they want to buy good music, music that they like. There are a lot of people like this. Back in the Napster days, I bought more music than I ever had before or since, and I was a poor student at the time. MP3s just aren't superbly good quality and you don't get the liner notes or anything else; it's nice to own your own copy.
Now, I don't buy anything from the RIAA anymore. I've drifted from the occasional infringer of copyright who is a potential customer, to one that won't buy anything from the RIAA on principle anymore. Of course it's moot because I don't live in the States anymore, but the point is that the RIAA is suing people like me -- people that may have downloaded some tunes (this in itself does not effect the RIAA's bottom line) but still was into buying CDs by the artists I really liked.
If I download 500 songs and buy 7 CDs, they lose nothing from the 500 songs I downloaded, but make money from the 7 CDs (this is why copright infringement is not theft). I used to buy tunes I heard on the radio; then I started buying stuff I found on-line, because I didn't like what was on the radio anymore; now I don't buy anything, for political reasons.
Do you see what I'm saying? A better analogy, really, would be book publishers suing people that go to the library. People that go to the library read books and enjoy them; these are the people most likely to someday buy a book, and in the meantime, them going to the library doesn't cost the publisher anything -- "lost sales" is an unquantifiable thing, because there's no way to guarantee that they would choose to buy the books they check out at the library.
Two things: Eunuchs in harems were castrated before puberty, and as such never developed fully -- therefore most were unable to get an erection (although some were, apparently, much to the chagrin of the Sultans whose wives they were guarding). Secondly, rape is not a sexual crime, but rather a power crime, or so criminal psychologists always say. Which would imply that even if you were able to remove the actual sexual desire, if the rapist were still able to get an erection, the power motive would be enough.