But can you prove that there has been no prior art for a patent with the same logic?
Actually, in theory you can prove it. This world is finite, and (to all of our knowledge) mankind only exists for a finite time. So, the universe is closed and you can prove by using "negation as failure".
Whether this all is possible in reasonable time is a different matter.:-)
BTW: Here is something that you cannot prove: "Ravens are black", or paraphrased: "There exist no white ravens". Unless you did in fact see a white raven, you would have to count all raven-animals, on earth and all other planets, and this number is infinite.
Logic does not care whether something is absurd or not, "absurd" is just a name for "highly unlikely" and (classical) logic does not deal with probabilities.
An unelected group of beaureacrats draft a 'directive' which the elected representatives of, for instance, Finland reject - and then it's enforced on the Finnish people anyway, against their wishes?
The other elected representatives apparently accepted it, or otherwise it wouldn't have passed. That's probably called majority vote, isn't it?
The major issue is IMHO that the people are not properly informed about the consequences of this law. I'd suspect that, given a large enough number of voters that publicly state that they are against that law, the representatives would have voted against it.
ESA and NASA do in fact work together very closely. For example, radio messages from Mars Express will be received by US receiver stations when the EU receivers are not in range.
I wish some higher level languages would force the use of comments in code, make it part of the declaration for a class or function.
Haskell does, sort of, using its strict type system. In very many cases, you can guess the meaning of a function simply by looking at the types of its arguments.
... If pot is legal in Canada, then we (the US; I'm American) are going to have to radically overhaul the way we monitor US-Canada border crossings. It would be an absolute nightmare (even more than it already is) for the US to have pot illegal and for Canada to have it legal.
Why do you believe it would be a nightmare? The Netherlands have a very liberal drug law for several years and there are no border controls at all between Germany and The Netherlands or Belgium and the Netherlands, both of which have much stricter drug laws. I wouldn't say that there are BO problems, but actually the problems have not increased much since The Netherlands liberated their drug policy.
What you tell us is IMHO very symptomatic for USians as of lately. Spread panic (or "FUD") in order to restrict civil rights.
Since when does any script on a normal website need to run more than a few seconds without halting?
Can you guarantee that? I had a student who was using JavaScript in an editor written in dynamic HTML to traverse the HTML DOM tree in Mozilla and reconstruct information out of it to form an XML document. The program takes several seconds even on relatively small documents. Where would you put a reasonable timeout?
Since SuSE is a German company you pronounce the letters like in German, which in turn is very close to Latin. "e" like in "the", but a little longer. "u" like in "true" or "school". Don't know how to pronounce "suh" properly.:-)
Most of the people who brought the Third Reich are already long deceased, so in one way or the other, this problem has been solved. On the other hand, most of the people who currently are bringing neo-colonialism and war to the world are currently IN CHARGE in your country.
BTW: This law has actually been brought to Germany from your country.
Re:time to tax artists, typists and other humans t
on
DMCA, Auf Deutsch
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· Score: 1
Actually, the current law is meant as an intermediate until means for DRM are technically possible. The German government realised that they were not - and so decided to temporarily put a higher tax on the devices used for copying.
Not that I like this idea (or - for that matter - the other idea), I am just repeating what has been discussed in German media.
Not necessarily. The new law states that the copyright protection mechanism should be "reasonably effective". It is unclear whether this means that it is considered effective by experts or by the normal consumers. It is also unclear whether a protection mechanism is effective if it has been circumvented...
In any case, the law will soon be debated again in the lower house, this has also been one of the reasons why it passed so easily. The rationale behind this was that there is a EU directive that forces all EU member states to pass such laws.
Sebastian
Re:+5 insightful. For shame, moderators, for shame
on
Are Programmers Engineers?
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· Score: 1, Insightful
1. No mathematics in engineering? I'm speechless. Flabbergasted... Stunned. What do you think engineers use, iambic pentameter?
Engineering applies Mathematics while Computer Science (and to some extent programming) is (the science of) mathematics.
2. Science. Right, no science in engineering, and a whole lot of science in programming. Why, engineers never use physics, say, or chemistry. Alot less than that guy over there working on opitimizing that printer driver.
Again, engineering applies science, whereas Computer Science is science. Arguably, programming is often not science in this definition, but often it is.
Many engineers I have known have decades of programming experience, on bare metal, Fortran, and C++. Who do you think developed the field in the first place?
My wife and I have two little daughters, so we went through the prcoess of name-giving recently. I will not post the names we chose, but here are our selection criteria:
the name should exist or at least be pronouncible in as many languages as possible since you can never know where your children will live in this ever-shrinking world
the name should not be in the top 10 of the last years
It looked sensible to us to use names of the Old Testament, as it is the foundation of three of the major religions.
A very comprehensive list. The only thing missing from my point of view:
Williams, Tad Memory, Sorrow & Thorn and Otherland series.
Sebastian
Re:Wrong country
on
239 MPG Car
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Comparing fuel costs in the US to those in Europe is just short-sighted. I agree that the US has interests in keeping oil petroleum prices down, just as every other country in the world, but Europe has chosen to tax their fuel very heavily, making non-gasoline options more attractive.
Europe has chosen to tax fuel very heavily IN ORDER TO making non-gasoline options more attractive. Many European countries are -- contrary to your statement -- interested in keeping the fuel prices up. To protect the environment and to force the car manufacturers to invent motors with more reasonable fuel consumption.
It's not really an apples-to-apples comparison, as those taxes subsidize all kinds of other efforts and don't really reflect the true cost of driving on the consumer.
They are intended to reflect at least part of the true costs -- also counting damages to environment and health, building of new roads, traffic management. Unfortunately, some means of transportation like trucks or planes are not taxed as heavily as others, which is IMO the wrong way.
No, Hitler at first didn't "hijack" the power. He was elected in a democratic process. He had three main arguments: 1. Germany only lost WWI because its army was "stabbed in the back" by the democrats (in fact, Germany had won the war against Russia and there was no German soldier on German ground, but OTOH, Germany would not have stood another week). 2. The jews are the main cause for the economic decline. 3. The arian race is superior to all other "people" and thus it has to take the leadership in the world.
Although all of the three arguments are ridiculous and stupid, he nonetheless managed to be elected by about 60% of the people (if I remember correctly) in 1933. Assuming that the people then were not really stupid (perhaps a little naive), it is probably the power and rhetoric of his hate speech that "convinced" people to elect him. Of course, after that he did hijack the power, eliminating opposition in the parliament and putting democratic institutions under his control.
What would happen to you in the US if you said that Al Quaida is doing the right thing. If you would give a talk on how to turn over the government using terrorist attacks....
What happens to you, if you publish an article on how to build a "circumvention device". Or if you published how the security system of the Pentagon works?
I think that sooner or later you would get a visit by some governmental organisation. So where is the free speech?
In fact, I would be more afraid of saying what I think in the US than I am in the EU...
One of the reasons that hate speech is censored in Europe is that we realised that words can be a dangerous weapon, even more than a very limited and democratically controlled censorship. In fact, it was Hitler's main skill to give vivid and charming speeches that convinced so many people to do things that are completely ridiculous.
In contrast to you Americans, we don't see free speech as the ultimate right. Instead it might be limited by the rights of other people. You are for example (in general) not allowed to insult people, because it might hurt them.
OTOH, in Europe you have the right to have a lawyer even if you are a foreigner...:-)
So to sum it up, while the US is probably more liberal, the European laws are IMHO more social.
Slashdot Mirror
But can you prove that there has been no prior art for a patent with the same logic?
Actually, in theory you can prove it. This world is finite, and (to all of our knowledge) mankind only exists for a finite time. So, the universe is closed and you can prove by using "negation as failure".
Whether this all is possible in reasonable time is a different matter.:-)
BTW: Here is something that you cannot prove: "Ravens are black", or paraphrased: "There exist no white ravens". Unless you did in fact see a white raven, you would have to count all raven-animals, on earth and all other planets, and this number is infinite.
Logic does not care whether something is absurd or not, "absurd" is just a name for "highly unlikely" and (classical) logic does not deal with probabilities.
SebastianAnd if you add something like the following in /etc/make.conf, you also get "make update" in /usr/src. :-)
SebastianAn unelected group of beaureacrats draft a 'directive' which the elected representatives of, for instance, Finland reject - and then it's enforced on the Finnish people anyway, against their wishes?
The other elected representatives apparently accepted it, or otherwise it wouldn't have passed. That's probably called majority vote, isn't it?
The major issue is IMHO that the people are not properly informed about the consequences of this law. I'd suspect that, given a large enough number of voters that publicly state that they are against that law, the representatives would have voted against it.
Sebastian
the world trade organization's trade-related intellectual property rights (trips) schedule [wto.org]
What is really funny is that the World Trade Organization apparently considers itself as a "not for profit organization", with it's
Sebastian
Just checked. Not censored.:-)
ESA and NASA do in fact work together very closely. For example, radio messages from Mars Express will be received by US receiver stations when the EU receivers are not in range.
Haskell does, sort of, using its strict type system. In very many cases, you can guess the meaning of a function simply by looking at the types of its arguments.
Sebastian
Why do you believe it would be a nightmare? The Netherlands have a very liberal drug law for several years and there are no border controls at all between Germany and The Netherlands or Belgium and the Netherlands, both of which have much stricter drug laws. I wouldn't say that there are BO problems, but actually the problems have not increased much since The Netherlands liberated their drug policy.
What you tell us is IMHO very symptomatic for USians as of lately. Spread panic (or "FUD") in order to restrict civil rights.
SebastianCan you guarantee that? I had a student who was using JavaScript in an editor written in dynamic HTML to traverse the HTML DOM tree in Mozilla and reconstruct information out of it to form an XML document. The program takes several seconds even on relatively small documents. Where would you put a reasonable timeout?
Sebastian
Since SuSE is a German company you pronounce the letters like in German, which in turn is very close to Latin. "e" like in "the", but a little longer. "u" like in "true" or "school". Don't know how to pronounce "suh" properly.:-)
Sebastian
You pronounce the "u" like in "true" and the "e" like in "the" (before a consonant). S like s.
Sebastian
Most of the people who brought the Third Reich are already long deceased, so in one way or the other, this problem has been solved. On the other hand, most of the people who currently are bringing neo-colonialism and war to the world are currently IN CHARGE in your country.
BTW: This law has actually been brought to Germany from your country.
Sebastian
You obviously didn't buy ink lately.
Sebastian
Sebastian
In any case, the law will soon be debated again in the lower house, this has also been one of the reasons why it passed so easily. The rationale behind this was that there is a EU directive that forces all EU member states to pass such laws.
Sebastian
Engineering applies Mathematics while Computer Science (and to some extent programming) is (the science of) mathematics.
2. Science. Right, no science in engineering, and a whole lot of science in programming. Why, engineers never use physics, say, or chemistry. Alot less than that guy over there working on opitimizing that printer driver.
Again, engineering applies science, whereas Computer Science is science. Arguably, programming is often not science in this definition, but often it is.
Many engineers I have known have decades of programming experience, on bare metal, Fortran, and C++. Who do you think developed the field in the first place?
Mathematicians, mainly.
- the name should exist or at least be pronouncible in as many languages as possible since you can never know where your children will live in this ever-shrinking world
- the name should not be in the top 10 of the last years
It looked sensible to us to use names of the Old Testament, as it is the foundation of three of the major religions.Sebastian
Williams, Tad
Memory, Sorrow & Thorn and Otherland series.
Sebastian
Europe has chosen to tax fuel very heavily IN ORDER TO making non-gasoline options more attractive. Many European countries are -- contrary to your statement -- interested in keeping the fuel prices up. To protect the environment and to force the car manufacturers to invent motors with more reasonable fuel consumption.
It's not really an apples-to-apples comparison, as those taxes subsidize all kinds of other efforts and don't really reflect the true cost of driving on the consumer.They are intended to reflect at least part of the true costs -- also counting damages to environment and health, building of new roads, traffic management. Unfortunately, some means of transportation like trucks or planes are not taxed as heavily as others, which is IMO the wrong way.
SebastianBut they won't get a story on Slashdot with actual reasearch.:-)
Sebastian
Only that the IMAPS support in Pine is restricted to US/Canadian citizens only, where Mutt can use encryption in any country.
Sebastian
No, Hitler at first didn't "hijack" the power. He was elected in a democratic process. He had three main arguments: 1. Germany only lost WWI because its army was "stabbed in the back" by the democrats (in fact, Germany had won the war against Russia and there was no German soldier on German ground, but OTOH, Germany would not have stood another week). 2. The jews are the main cause for the economic decline. 3. The arian race is superior to all other "people" and thus it has to take the leadership in the world.
Although all of the three arguments are ridiculous and stupid, he nonetheless managed to be elected by about 60% of the people (if I remember correctly) in 1933. Assuming that the people then were not really stupid (perhaps a little naive), it is probably the power and rhetoric of his hate speech that "convinced" people to elect him. Of course, after that he did hijack the power, eliminating opposition in the parliament and putting democratic institutions under his control.
Sebastian
What would happen to you in the US if you said that Al Quaida is doing the right thing. If you would give a talk on how to turn over the government using terrorist attacks....
What happens to you, if you publish an article on how to build a "circumvention device". Or if you published how the security system of the Pentagon works?
I think that sooner or later you would get a visit by some governmental organisation. So where is the free speech?
In fact, I would be more afraid of saying what I think in the US than I am in the EU...
Sebastian
I am living in Europe and nobody has yet tried to stop me from saying anything. So what?
Sebastian
One of the reasons that hate speech is censored in Europe is that we realised that words can be a dangerous weapon, even more than a very limited and democratically controlled censorship. In fact, it was Hitler's main skill to give vivid and charming speeches that convinced so many people to do things that are completely ridiculous.
In contrast to you Americans, we don't see free speech as the ultimate right. Instead it might be limited by the rights of other people. You are for example (in general) not allowed to insult people, because it might hurt them.
OTOH, in Europe you have the right to have a lawyer even if you are a foreigner...:-)
So to sum it up, while the US is probably more liberal, the European laws are IMHO more social.
Sebastian