Well, I'm no biologist but right off the cuff I think there are some problems with this "theory"... it makes an assumption that in an environment without fixed nitrogen that complex life would not have evolved to either not need it or to do it itself. It also assumes that the availability of molybdenum is required to fix nitrogen. I'm no biologist either... all the more reason for us to get really nasty and get a right proper flamefest going!!;-P
So, there are certain rules to the chemistry that underly biology and (really really speculating here... in fact this whole thing is just speculation on my part, sort of a beer-guzzling approach to science discussion) maybe it's possible that one really *does* need molybdenum to fix nitrogen with any efficiency. That gives evolving life two choices (it seems I'm repeating you here)--
1. struggle weakly for a long time eeking out an existence working really hard to fix nitrogen until something "magical" happens like one of your cousins start farting out oxygen and changes the ball game, or
2. sidestep the whole issue and ignore nitrogen and come up with something else.
Based on what we know so far, the second option doesn't seem all that viable, but you're right, it's an assumption made based on a lack of knowledge of other life forms.
The fact that eukareotes did not evolve it doesn't mean they couldn't have -- it just means that their environment they evolved in didn't need that ability, likely because prokaryotes evolved it already. (Or they didn't actually originally need it -- which may make more sense because if one assumes that that evolution was necessary for eukaryotes, and they evolved from prokaryotes, then how did they *lose* that ability?) Sure, maybe they could have evolved it, or maybe they even did, in that they evolved from prokaryotes, but some prokaryotes were *way* better at it, so they just feasted on the excess and gave up their own production of it. But what I got from a light reading of TFA, the eukaryotes were hanging around for a long time doing not much of anything we know of until the molybdenum levels exceeded some threshold and bacteria started cranking out nitrogen. Given 2 billion years of eukaryote life *before* this event, it seems that maybe there isn't a great way to side-step the nitrogen/molybdenum issue, otherwise they'd have stumbled upon it. So here's an idea, maybe these bacteria were floating around fixing nitrogen the whole time, just so inefficiently that there was no extra -- it was limited by the available molybdenum. The eukaryotes were wandering around looking for something interesting to do, but since there was no source of nitrogen, most of them didn't bother with it, though some of them did. The one's who cared about nitrogen didn't get very far because their wasn't enough of it to go around. The ones who didn't care about it didn't get very far because it turns out you can't get very far without nitrogen. That gives a situation primed for rapid change once nitrogen becomes more available. And that's all rampant speculation just for the sake of speculation.
So what I was wondering about.. did the eukaryotes develop significant genetic diversity during this period such that they were ready to go when the nitrogen came on the scene? Were there lots of different chunks of genetic code floating around in the eukaryote gene pool trying to find a way to really succeed and some of them capitalized on a sudden source of nitrogen? or was nitrogen itself what caused the flourishing? was the eukaryote world boring and homogenous prior to the introduction of all this nitrogen?
Regardless, it's immensely fascinating.
Again, not a biologist but the critical reader in me gets a "I have a hammer, so everything is a nail" vibe from this theory. I prefer a sawzall myself. And I get it. I don't think molybdenum is the "wonder element" that saved life. Just speculating on the possibly amazing affects that small changes can have in the long run and how life seems to sort of hang around waiting for the next small thing to capitalize on to generate the next big thing.
I'm sure you're right. I'm speaking more about my more-or-less common man image of terraforming... at some point natural processes take over and the whole "just works". But the need for free molybdenum to support nitrogen fixing sort of throws a monkey-wrench in that idea.
This casts an interesting light on the idea of terraforming. There's often been the idea that we could just introduce plants into a CO2 rich environment and in pretty short order we'd have a breathable atmosphere. Apparently that may not be the case. Without an oxygen rich environment to free the molybdenum, there's no significant nitrogen fixation and thus those plants are going to be hurting pretty quickly.
Also, this makes me wonder what those eukaryotes were doing for the first 2 billion years. Were they undergoing all sorts of genetic mutations that primed them for takeover once the situation changed? IOW, I wonder what would have happened if this little molybdenum problem had resolved earlier. Would the eukaryotes continued to flounder (pun!) because of a lack of genetic diversity? Or would they have just as rapidly developed putting the current day well into the cockroaches-rule-the-earth epoch?
I just want to second the vote for xmonad. it's a remarkable piece of work for a one year(?) old wm with about 1k LOC in the core. Of course, comparing LOC in Haskell to just about anything is sort of silly.
Hands down the best part of xmonad is the small but robust community support. And the willingness of that community to help you realize your idea of how the WM should behave.
I guess I didn't do a good enough job editing that post. If you read between the lines of the second sentence "...if we stopped increasing... and... distributed... equitably..." you'll see that I realize it's a distribution problem. But that doesn't change the fact that so long as you make more food, there will be more people.
I agree it's largely a political issue in terms of who is hungry at any given moment. And even with a perfectly balanced food supply, that would still be a problem.
A solution to world hunger. there is no such thing. as soon as you make enough food to feed all the starving people, they immediately set about making more people. Of course, if we stopped increasing food production and merely distributed existing food supplies equitably, we'd all be a little peckish, but the population would eventually stabilize at some number.
And war. And obesity. I guess that means my three picks would be a. GM plants that make money grow on trees. b. GM microbes that make violent impotent. IN whatever way is most effective. c. GM Animals that hunt and chase fat people. a. would be a problem as we'd have runaway inflation as the value of our currency plummeted. And since you can't eat money (in any useful way) I don't think it would solve the above mentioned unsolvable problem.
b. is interesting, though I'd hate to become impotent just as a by product of kicking my neighbor's ass for yelling at my kids.
fortunately for us, the invention of quantum computers will happen simultaneously throughout the time-space (dis)continuum. So we'll get them at the same time as the future does. That's the really convenient thing about this whole quantum thingy.;-P
Retribution for rules lawyering is stealthy, discrete and usually served cold... rules lawyering was good way to have all sorts of things go subtly wrong.
Yeah, it's unfortunately true. No one is willing to make it work in the mistaken belief that it helps them to squeeze others out. And it *does* help them, but only them.
I have seen the zipper work once in a freeway construction zone where someone got a clue and put cones between the lanes early to prevent any choice but the zipper once you got to the end of the line. It worked really well, neither lane stopped, they just gradually rolled through. oh well.
I agree with you somewhat, but there is another point of view on the merging problem, especially in heavy bumper-to-bumper traffic.
Merging sooner increases the load in the merged-to lane and effectively lengthens its backup. And it wastes the available space in the merged-from lane. It also causes fluctuations in the merged-from lane as people speed up and slow down to accommodate the fluctuating availability of space. It's more efficient to use the "zipper" technique where *everyone* goes to the end of the merge lane and then zippers in to the lane alternately with those already in the lane. This makes it predictable for everyone involved. Those receiving the new cars know when to allow space and those merging in know they won't get stuck waiting for a gap.
But it only takes one idiot stopping early in the merge lane and forcing their way in to cause a large open space in front of them. Then the people behind him are looking at a large open space, accelerate into it. They effectively pass a bunch of people in the merged-to lane pissing them off by zooming by on the right and the whole thing falls apart..02
I'd like to see us send a significant number of cargo laden missions first. Sure stick a couple rovers on them to get some science done, but make the mission to get a critical mass of supplies up there first. Send a whole mess of them a month or two apart with the people in the last few. That gives you many launches to fix any problems that arise. You can make a reasonable effort to land them all within a certain radius. If you lose a couple on the way, it's okay because they're just supplies. YOu can always supplement with another cargo load.
I know if *I* was sitting there on the long ride to mars, I'd be a lot happier knowing there was a good stash of stuff to live with waiting for me. I'd even be willing to sign on for the one way trip provided there were adequate supplies a head of me (especially tools and DUCT TAPE!!).
Of course there is this law that says that on the Internet every correction must contain an error... Ellipses at the end of a sentence should contain four dots indicating that although the thought continues, the sentence has ended.
I say that in full confidence that I'm somehow wrong.
I second the canon A-series. I use an A-80 which takes 4 AA's, isn't too small for a normal person's hand, uses compact flash cards, has full manual control as well as all the bells and whistles. No image stabilization though. But at 4MP, that's no big deal. I find 4MP seems to be sort of a sweet spot for decent resolution, reasonable price point, reasonable file size etc..02
My 93 Bandit 400 is a finicky little bitch. With high compression, small displacement, insane redline (13.5k) for the date, and 4 carbs in need of sync, tuning is a trick. It has to be done at least seasonally and with an eye to what altitude you'll be riding at.
I probably spend about 20 hours a year tweaking the carbs to get it perfect for the next little piece of riding. But the carbs are such dead simple technology (if a little mysterious) that it's a skill you can pick up through trial and error and a little common sense.
The results you get from a good tuning session are incredible though. I don't care how incredible FI gets, nothing beats an hour of tuning followed by hours of riding a barking howling piece of barely restrained chaos. There's something about the performance characteristics of carburetion that I don't think could be matched with FI.
But I'm kinda spoiled by this bike... she's so sweet;)
I can just about guarantee the fine print said her data might disappear. There's a big difference between her not getting her data back (had to wipe the drive, or the drive crashed and was replaced) and her data being *lost*. *lost* means they don't know where it is which means someone else may have that data which means that data is compromised and so are all of her accounts.
If my laptop went in for repairs and came back with the HD wiped (in the ridiculously stupid case of me actually giving my laptop harddrive to someone else, but that's a different issue), that would be fine. If my laptop went in for repairs and they told me they couldn't find it, I'd be pissed and they *should* pay for whatever it takes (including my time at my going rate) to make sure my record is clean.
It's a fine but important distinction between *losing* data -- it's been erased and *losing* data -- we don't know where it is.
I use debian exclusively and I generally agree. But, it's important to point out that it's all about configuration. I run my machine with 440MB (after video takes some) using xmonad, a turd-pile of urxvt clients, various cli based apps (mutt irssi etc) firefox, openoffice, mpd/mpc and gnucash all at the same time and it does just fine. The only memory problems come about when xorg or firefox leaks long enough to cause swapping, but that takes several days to accumulate enough to matter. SO that's great, but my wife's machine runs straight GNOME on 512mb (no video ram stolen) and it can get to be a bit of a hog after a while. There's just too much overhead.
My point is that the benefits here in terms of memory are *choice*. A linux based OS configured *for the available resources* will be really responsive, memory efficient and generally a pleasure to use. The windows alternative seems to be cram as much in as possible and if it doesn't work then you don't have enough hardware. That's definitely the tail wagging the dog in my opinion.
Re:Not yet at the scheming robotic overlord point
on
Robots Learn To Lie
·
· Score: 1
The markets are based on the idea of perfect information. If the market somehow perfectly reflects the state of the entire system, then even your very small purchase will have some effect. What if, for argument's sake you purchased enough to reduce the supply just enough to raise prices by 1 penny. Then you'd effectively be shorting everyone else 1 penny per share. I don't know what the resolution of the market is, but to say you have no effect is wrong. To say you produce an effect which is undetectable at the level of detail expressed in the price of a share is correct. If the effect of your action is undetectable, then yes, it is reasonable to assume that no one has been harmed by it. But that doesn't mean there is no effect. Perhaps the effect could manifest itself somewhere else at some point in the future? SOrt of the butterfly effect? I don't know. I don't understand the markets enough to speculate beyond what I've already done, really.
As to whether it's really stealing or not? well, that's a rather philosophical question that I have no desire to get involved in.
Oh, this just occurred to me as well -- another angle on how your purchase could take money out of other's pockets. Perhaps your purchase, small though it is, is the one, combined with the regular daily trading activity, that pushes someone's holdings over the magic number and causes a sale. This could be someone's seat-of-the-pants decision, or someone's standing sell at price+$0.01 order. EIther way, you trigger a sale that might not have otherwise happened. That shareholder no longer holds shares in the company and, upon reading the morning announcement, has no recourse to stop the standing sell order, or to decide to sit on it for a bit to see what happens. Of course there's lots of speculation involved in this, but the point is, to claim there is no effect is wrong. You can argue all day as to whether that effect has any real results in terms of whether other people lose money or not, but it could certainly happen.
If I knew my company was going to make a major transaction before it became public, then bought a number of shares before the announcement and made money on the resul, how exactly am I stealing money from anyone? The shares purchased before the announcement reduce the available number of shares *after* the announcement introducing an artificial scarcity in the market which drives prices higher than they would be if you hadn't purchased those shares. That means those who purchased shares after the announcement paid more than the shares we worth because you leveraged your insider information.
The shares you sell at the new high price will increase the supply of available shares. Your gain is potentially so much higher than the general market's gain that you are more likely to sell at some high price than the average shareholder who paid more than you and thus hasn't made enough gains yet to warrant the sale. The increase in the supply will lower the market price for those shares and thus further lower the gains of those who bought without your insider knowledge and the correspondingly higher gains attained as a result.
So basically you're shaving money off the bottom and possibly, if the timing is right, shaving money off the top, squeezing other shareholders form both ends and though you aren't directly taking money from them, you are gaining more money at the expense of them gaining less money. That nets out to look a lot like stealing.
The fact that the law is open to interpretation is part of why this guys shouldn't have said what he said and he knows it.
You seem to be implying that he is trying to sway the court with that wording, and I think you're right. While it is one thing to word a phrase such that doubt is cast upon a legal concept, it is quite another to outright contradict what is known -- namely that the rights of fair use, whether legally established or not, are subject to interpretation. A statement other than that, such as claiming that fair use copies are illegal, is directly contrary to the facts. Those facts are that fair use rights fall somewhere between fully legal and undecided. This attorney had to know that. For him to claim that these fair use copies were illegal is perjury, plain and simple. Any attorney working intellectual property has to know the state of fair use, so any statement contrary to the known state of fair use is a lie.
All that said, I don't actually *know* the legal state of fair use. I'm pretty sure it is as I described, either fully legal, or if not, then it remains undecided. I don't think anyone with authority (like a judge or a body of legislature, supported by a president) has outright said fair use is not legal, so that would pretty firmly place it in that uncertain state. The bounds of that state though don't extend into the realm of illegal at this point, so again, he's a liar and probably a perjurer.
It is a scary thought that he may get away with this and that it may be used in the future to further increase uncertainty about fair use to the point where it finally becomes illegal. That's the day they put a coin-slot on your forehead. Please deposit $0.25 to allow your eyes to open.
Slashdot Mirror
So, there are certain rules to the chemistry that underly biology and (really really speculating here... in fact this whole thing is just speculation on my part, sort of a beer-guzzling approach to science discussion) maybe it's possible that one really *does* need molybdenum to fix nitrogen with any efficiency. That gives evolving life two choices (it seems I'm repeating you here)--
1. struggle weakly for a long time eeking out an existence working really hard to fix nitrogen until something "magical" happens like one of your cousins start farting out oxygen and changes the ball game, or
2. sidestep the whole issue and ignore nitrogen and come up with something else.
Based on what we know so far, the second option doesn't seem all that viable, but you're right, it's an assumption made based on a lack of knowledge of other life forms. The fact that eukareotes did not evolve it doesn't mean they couldn't have -- it just means that their environment they evolved in didn't need that ability, likely because prokaryotes evolved it already. (Or they didn't actually originally need it -- which may make more sense because if one assumes that that evolution was necessary for eukaryotes, and they evolved from prokaryotes, then how did they *lose* that ability?) Sure, maybe they could have evolved it, or maybe they even did, in that they evolved from prokaryotes, but some prokaryotes were *way* better at it, so they just feasted on the excess and gave up their own production of it. But what I got from a light reading of TFA, the eukaryotes were hanging around for a long time doing not much of anything we know of until the molybdenum levels exceeded some threshold and bacteria started cranking out nitrogen. Given 2 billion years of eukaryote life *before* this event, it seems that maybe there isn't a great way to side-step the nitrogen/molybdenum issue, otherwise they'd have stumbled upon it. So here's an idea, maybe these bacteria were floating around fixing nitrogen the whole time, just so inefficiently that there was no extra -- it was limited by the available molybdenum. The eukaryotes were wandering around looking for something interesting to do, but since there was no source of nitrogen, most of them didn't bother with it, though some of them did. The one's who cared about nitrogen didn't get very far because their wasn't enough of it to go around. The ones who didn't care about it didn't get very far because it turns out you can't get very far without nitrogen. That gives a situation primed for rapid change once nitrogen becomes more available. And that's all rampant speculation just for the sake of speculation.
So what I was wondering about.. did the eukaryotes develop significant genetic diversity during this period such that they were ready to go when the nitrogen came on the scene? Were there lots of different chunks of genetic code floating around in the eukaryote gene pool trying to find a way to really succeed and some of them capitalized on a sudden source of nitrogen? or was nitrogen itself what caused the flourishing? was the eukaryote world boring and homogenous prior to the introduction of all this nitrogen?
Regardless, it's immensely fascinating. Again, not a biologist but the critical reader in me gets a "I have a hammer, so everything is a nail" vibe from this theory. I prefer a sawzall myself. And I get it. I don't think molybdenum is the "wonder element" that saved life. Just speculating on the possibly amazing affects that small changes can have in the long run and how life seems to sort of hang around waiting for the next small thing to capitalize on to generate the next big thing.
I shouldn't post when drinking...
I'm sure you're right. I'm speaking more about my more-or-less common man image of terraforming... at some point natural processes take over and the whole "just works". But the need for free molybdenum to support nitrogen fixing sort of throws a monkey-wrench in that idea.
This casts an interesting light on the idea of terraforming. There's often been the idea that we could just introduce plants into a CO2 rich environment and in pretty short order we'd have a breathable atmosphere. Apparently that may not be the case. Without an oxygen rich environment to free the molybdenum, there's no significant nitrogen fixation and thus those plants are going to be hurting pretty quickly.
Also, this makes me wonder what those eukaryotes were doing for the first 2 billion years. Were they undergoing all sorts of genetic mutations that primed them for takeover once the situation changed? IOW, I wonder what would have happened if this little molybdenum problem had resolved earlier. Would the eukaryotes continued to flounder (pun!) because of a lack of genetic diversity? Or would they have just as rapidly developed putting the current day well into the cockroaches-rule-the-earth epoch?
I just want to second the vote for xmonad. it's a remarkable piece of work for a one year(?) old wm with about 1k LOC in the core. Of course, comparing LOC in Haskell to just about anything is sort of silly.
Hands down the best part of xmonad is the small but robust community support. And the willingness of that community to help you realize your idea of how the WM should behave.
I have mod points, but have to point this out so that people aren't confused.
.Bruce Perens.
Parent is not Bruce Perens. its
note the period at the beginning of the name...
Not the real guy!!
I guess I didn't do a good enough job editing that post. If you read between the lines of the second sentence "...if we stopped increasing... and ... distributed ... equitably..." you'll see that I realize it's a distribution problem. But that doesn't change the fact that so long as you make more food, there will be more people.
I agree it's largely a political issue in terms of who is hungry at any given moment. And even with a perfectly balanced food supply, that would still be a problem.
a. GM plants that make money grow on trees.
b. GM microbes that make violent impotent. IN whatever way is most effective.
c. GM Animals that hunt and chase fat people. a. would be a problem as we'd have runaway inflation as the value of our currency plummeted. And since you can't eat money (in any useful way) I don't think it would solve the above mentioned unsolvable problem.
b. is interesting, though I'd hate to become impotent just as a by product of kicking my neighbor's ass for yelling at my kids.
c. now that's entertainment!
fortunately for us, the invention of quantum computers will happen simultaneously throughout the time-space (dis)continuum. So we'll get them at the same time as the future does. That's the really convenient thing about this whole quantum thingy. ;-P
Retribution for rules lawyering is stealthy, discrete and usually served cold... rules lawyering was good way to have all sorts of things go subtly wrong.
Yeah, it's unfortunately true. No one is willing to make it work in the mistaken belief that it helps them to squeeze others out. And it *does* help them, but only them.
I have seen the zipper work once in a freeway construction zone where someone got a clue and put cones between the lanes early to prevent any choice but the zipper once you got to the end of the line. It worked really well, neither lane stopped, they just gradually rolled through. oh well.
I agree with you somewhat, but there is another point of view on the merging problem, especially in heavy bumper-to-bumper traffic.
.02
Merging sooner increases the load in the merged-to lane and effectively lengthens its backup. And it wastes the available space in the merged-from lane. It also causes fluctuations in the merged-from lane as people speed up and slow down to accommodate the fluctuating availability of space. It's more efficient to use the "zipper" technique where *everyone* goes to the end of the merge lane and then zippers in to the lane alternately with those already in the lane. This makes it predictable for everyone involved. Those receiving the new cars know when to allow space and those merging in know they won't get stuck waiting for a gap.
But it only takes one idiot stopping early in the merge lane and forcing their way in to cause a large open space in front of them. Then the people behind him are looking at a large open space, accelerate into it. They effectively pass a bunch of people in the merged-to lane pissing them off by zooming by on the right and the whole thing falls apart.
I'm with you but unfortunately it may be a simple matter of these sheep looking less sheep like to our aging eyes.
Somewhere in there is a good joke, but I'll leave that to those whippersnappers messin' around on my lawn.
I'd like to see us send a significant number of cargo laden missions first. Sure stick a couple rovers on them to get some science done, but make the mission to get a critical mass of supplies up there first. Send a whole mess of them a month or two apart with the people in the last few. That gives you many launches to fix any problems that arise. You can make a reasonable effort to land them all within a certain radius. If you lose a couple on the way, it's okay because they're just supplies. YOu can always supplement with another cargo load.
I know if *I* was sitting there on the long ride to mars, I'd be a lot happier knowing there was a good stash of stuff to live with waiting for me. I'd even be willing to sign on for the one way trip provided there were adequate supplies a head of me (especially tools and DUCT TAPE!!).
Don't forget the butter.... mmm... butter....
It's that thing they make in Debuke.
I say that in full confidence that I'm somehow wrong.
I second the canon A-series. I use an A-80 which takes 4 AA's, isn't too small for a normal person's hand, uses compact flash cards, has full manual control as well as all the bells and whistles. No image stabilization though. But at 4MP, that's no big deal. I find 4MP seems to be sort of a sweet spot for decent resolution, reasonable price point, reasonable file size etc. .02
Actually, Chuck Norris would only have to kick one terrorist's ass, all the rest would spontaneously keel-over. Yeah, he kicks ass that hard.
My 93 Bandit 400 is a finicky little bitch. With high compression, small displacement, insane redline (13.5k) for the date, and 4 carbs in need of sync, tuning is a trick. It has to be done at least seasonally and with an eye to what altitude you'll be riding at.
;)
I probably spend about 20 hours a year tweaking the carbs to get it perfect for the next little piece of riding. But the carbs are such dead simple technology (if a little mysterious) that it's a skill you can pick up through trial and error and a little common sense.
The results you get from a good tuning session are incredible though. I don't care how incredible FI gets, nothing beats an hour of tuning followed by hours of riding a barking howling piece of barely restrained chaos. There's something about the performance characteristics of carburetion that I don't think could be matched with FI.
But I'm kinda spoiled by this bike... she's so sweet
If my laptop went in for repairs and came back with the HD wiped (in the ridiculously stupid case of me actually giving my laptop harddrive to someone else, but that's a different issue), that would be fine. If my laptop went in for repairs and they told me they couldn't find it, I'd be pissed and they *should* pay for whatever it takes (including my time at my going rate) to make sure my record is clean.
It's a fine but important distinction between *losing* data -- it's been erased and *losing* data -- we don't know where it is.
I use debian exclusively and I generally agree. But, it's important to point out that it's all about configuration. I run my machine with 440MB (after video takes some) using xmonad, a turd-pile of urxvt clients, various cli based apps (mutt irssi etc) firefox, openoffice, mpd/mpc and gnucash all at the same time and it does just fine. The only memory problems come about when xorg or firefox leaks long enough to cause swapping, but that takes several days to accumulate enough to matter. SO that's great, but my wife's machine runs straight GNOME on 512mb (no video ram stolen) and it can get to be a bit of a hog after a while. There's just too much overhead.
My point is that the benefits here in terms of memory are *choice*. A linux based OS configured *for the available resources* will be really responsive, memory efficient and generally a pleasure to use. The windows alternative seems to be cram as much in as possible and if it doesn't work then you don't have enough hardware. That's definitely the tail wagging the dog in my opinion.
plus they'd need way more parens.
The markets are based on the idea of perfect information. If the market somehow perfectly reflects the state of the entire system, then even your very small purchase will have some effect. What if, for argument's sake you purchased enough to reduce the supply just enough to raise prices by 1 penny. Then you'd effectively be shorting everyone else 1 penny per share. I don't know what the resolution of the market is, but to say you have no effect is wrong. To say you produce an effect which is undetectable at the level of detail expressed in the price of a share is correct. If the effect of your action is undetectable, then yes, it is reasonable to assume that no one has been harmed by it. But that doesn't mean there is no effect. Perhaps the effect could manifest itself somewhere else at some point in the future? SOrt of the butterfly effect? I don't know. I don't understand the markets enough to speculate beyond what I've already done, really.
As to whether it's really stealing or not? well, that's a rather philosophical question that I have no desire to get involved in.
Oh, this just occurred to me as well -- another angle on how your purchase could take money out of other's pockets. Perhaps your purchase, small though it is, is the one, combined with the regular daily trading activity, that pushes someone's holdings over the magic number and causes a sale. This could be someone's seat-of-the-pants decision, or someone's standing sell at price+$0.01 order. EIther way, you trigger a sale that might not have otherwise happened. That shareholder no longer holds shares in the company and, upon reading the morning announcement, has no recourse to stop the standing sell order, or to decide to sit on it for a bit to see what happens. Of course there's lots of speculation involved in this, but the point is, to claim there is no effect is wrong. You can argue all day as to whether that effect has any real results in terms of whether other people lose money or not, but it could certainly happen.
The shares you sell at the new high price will increase the supply of available shares. Your gain is potentially so much higher than the general market's gain that you are more likely to sell at some high price than the average shareholder who paid more than you and thus hasn't made enough gains yet to warrant the sale. The increase in the supply will lower the market price for those shares and thus further lower the gains of those who bought without your insider knowledge and the correspondingly higher gains attained as a result.
So basically you're shaving money off the bottom and possibly, if the timing is right, shaving money off the top, squeezing other shareholders form both ends and though you aren't directly taking money from them, you are gaining more money at the expense of them gaining less money. That nets out to look a lot like stealing.
The fact that the law is open to interpretation is part of why this guys shouldn't have said what he said and he knows it.
You seem to be implying that he is trying to sway the court with that wording, and I think you're right. While it is one thing to word a phrase such that doubt is cast upon a legal concept, it is quite another to outright contradict what is known -- namely that the rights of fair use, whether legally established or not, are subject to interpretation. A statement other than that, such as claiming that fair use copies are illegal, is directly contrary to the facts. Those facts are that fair use rights fall somewhere between fully legal and undecided. This attorney had to know that. For him to claim that these fair use copies were illegal is perjury, plain and simple. Any attorney working intellectual property has to know the state of fair use, so any statement contrary to the known state of fair use is a lie.
All that said, I don't actually *know* the legal state of fair use. I'm pretty sure it is as I described, either fully legal, or if not, then it remains undecided. I don't think anyone with authority (like a judge or a body of legislature, supported by a president) has outright said fair use is not legal, so that would pretty firmly place it in that uncertain state. The bounds of that state though don't extend into the realm of illegal at this point, so again, he's a liar and probably a perjurer.
It is a scary thought that he may get away with this and that it may be used in the future to further increase uncertainty about fair use to the point where it finally becomes illegal. That's the day they put a coin-slot on your forehead. Please deposit $0.25 to allow your eyes to open.