How would you know when your OS has been modified (without your approval), replaced (without your approval) or worse yet modified in a way which you were not informed.
Run an intrusion detection program from a physically remote computer. Such a program compares a snapshot of the system (stored on the remote computer) to the current system. A reinstallation will be detected and reported. In order to defeat this system, the intruder needs to physically compromise two machines at once. You can even set up intrusion detection from several remote mahines to guarantee that physical access isn't a risk. Problem solved.
Frankly, I don't see how your "source modification and reinstallation" attack is a risk specific to open source systems. There are utilities that can accomplish the sort of things you're talking about without modification of source code, and if an attacker has physical access to a machine, they'll be able to get in regardless of what OS you're running.
How the proteins produced by DNA manage to work together as catalysts to create the chemicals needed to form an organism is almost totally unknown, yet by definition it is a cellular automaton problem!
How so? I see it as more of a systems control problem. The trouble with looking at the components of a cell as cellular automata is that implementations of CA require a set of simple rules to go from one state to the next. There are no simple rules for protein interactions, however. It's complicated chemistry and complicated mechanics in a geometrically intricate container. Sure, you could argue that it would be possible to simulate all the molecular structures and interactions de novo from quantum mechanical principles, but the computing power is simply out of reach, and will be for quite some time. Plus, what insight does such a simulation give you? I just don't see how cellular automata apply.
We have not even begun to understand how cells use those instructions.
My point above was that we, in fact, understand very well how the genetic instructions encoded in DNA are used by cells. The map from gene sequence to protein sequence is understood perfectly. The most pressing outstanding problems in cellular and systems biology are simply not genetic: they center, rather, on complex interactions between the various components of cells and the cellular environment. Answering the questions you cite will require a detailed understanding of these complex interactions.
Then please tell me where the gene is that determines blue eyes versus brown ones.
Three genes for eye pigment have been identified: EYCL1 codes for the green pigment. It is located on chromosome 19 (genome data bank accession ID GDB:119269). EYCL2 and EYCL3 are both brown pigment genes. EYCL2 is on chromosome 18 (GDB:4642815). EYCL3 is on chromosome 15 (GDB:4590306). There are also diffusional control genes, which determine the pattern of pigmentation. Blue eyes occur when the pigment genes are not present.
I stand by my statement that the "genetic code" is well-understood. We know how DNA works, and we know how to interpret gene sequence to get protein primary sequence. It's going from protein primary sequence to protein function that's the hard part, as well as understanding the complex interactions between proteins, cell environment, and DNA transcriptional control.
Unravelling, understanding, decompiling, reverse engineering, or whatever you want to call it, the secrets of how the DNA code is executed could be the biggest scientific advance ever, and Wolfram may have provided the tools to do it.
Not sure what you mean by that. The genetic code is understood perfectly well: we know exactly how bases map to codons map to amino acids, and we've known for over 40 years. The mechanisms of DNA replication and transcription are also understood to exsquisite detail, as is the mechanism of translation from mRNA to protein. Protein folding is poorly understood, as is the complex cellular feedback loop between protein content, cellular environment, and DNA transcriptional control. I don't see the immediate application of Wolfram's CA ideas to these problems. CA have been around for over 20 years now, and people have certianly tried to apply them to biological processes, with no groundbreaking results.
Re:Are these the tools for decompiling DNA?
on
A New Kind of Science
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
DNA is just oodles of four-state variables that represent some kind of program. It is exactly like the cellular automata he's been working with.
I can see why DNA would remind you of the sort of CA that Wolfram is working with: it's 1D, linear, and can take on one of several states at each position. However, DNA is not a cellular automaton. With a true CA, the state of the system at iteration i is dependant on the state of the system at iteration i-1 (or earlier). You can describe it as a Markov chain, I think (please correct me if I'm wrong about that). On the other hand, if we consider an "iteration" of the DNA system to be a single round of DNA replication, then the state of the system at iteration i is identical to the state of the system at iteration i-1, with some noise thrown in. If, on the other hand, we consider an iteration to be a single generation of reproduction of the species, then the state at i is dependant on all sorts of things unrelated to i-1: mostly the choice of a mate, which is heavily determined by chance and environment.
You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
The catch is, what else resonates at around 2.45GHz? Well, DNA for one thing.
Where did you get this idea? And which "resonance" are you talking about? In the case of water, the microwave frequency is resonant with a vibrational mode of the molecule; hence, putting water in a microwave over increases its temperature. Exciting a vibrational mode of DNA would also increase it's temperature, but you have to keep in mind that the mass of a DNA molecule is on the order of a million times greater than that of a water molecule, so you need a proportional increase in the power to get an equivilent increase in temperature. And that has nothing whatsoever to do with mutagenesis. Damage to the chemical structure of DNA requires ionizing radiation, which radio/microwave radiation certainly is not.
As for being only a meager 1-2 watts? I played with a meager 2 watt water-cooled laser once. It was too bright to look at, even with filters.
Apples and oranges, my friend. Apples and oranges. And I guarantee you that a bandpass filter at a frequency other than that of the laser beam would have made it perfectly tolerable to "look at", as none of the light would have passed through.
Apu: Today, I am no longer an Indian living in America. I am an Indian-American. Lisa: You know, in a way, all Americans are immigrants. Except, of course Native Americans. Homer: Yeah, Native Americans like us. Lisa: No, I mean American Indians. Apu: Like me.
Really though, I serve as a virus debunker for many of my less than computer literate friends, but it would be nice if there was a public site for this sort of thing, that picked up e-mail hoaxes and displayed them for what they are, meanwhile addressing real problems and how to fix them.
And it's made by 3M. From a chem industry website:
Fluorinert liquids are a family of clear, odourless perfluorinated fluids that were developed to meet the demanding and diversified requirements of direct contact electronic applications.
Fluorinert liquids have a number of important properties:
Very high dielectric strength
Wide range of boiling points
Thermally and chemically stable
Compatible with sensitive materials
Very low toxicity
Non-flammable
Zero Ozone Depletion Potential (ODP)
It's really cool stuff, and it's starting to find applications all over the place. For example, it turns out that fluorocarbons absorb oxygen really well, so a colloid of fluorinert is used as an artificial blood. It really is the ideal solution for the problem of processor cooling, but I can't for the life of me figure out from the web how to get some and how much it would cost. There shouldn't be any problems with overclockers getting their hands on it, since with the non-toxicity and inertness, it's not particularly hazardous stuff.
I thought you guys had a constitutional safeguard against this sort of behaviour?
Barely. Don't get me started on the marginal constitutionality of drug-related seizure laws. This is a special case though; we're not talking about search and seizure of property, we're talking about customs controls. Customs has the responsibility (and power) to control what enters the country. If you're going to be importing something, you've got to be willing to let customs have a look at it. If they don't like it, they won't let it in. It's like that everywhere, I think.
ktakki said:
I'm not a constitutional lawyer, but I believe the 2nd Amendment was driven by the authors' aversion to having a permanent standing army, then regarded as a tool of tyranny.
Jelque responded with:
Thank god your not a Constitutional lawyer. Maybe you should read it sometime. Having a standing army was the last thing The Framers of the Constitution wanted.
Which made me think, at first, that Jelque must not be a native English speaker. After all, the phrase "[the framers'] aversion to having a permenent standing army" means the same thing as "Having a standing army was the last thing The Framers of the Constitution wanted. Only in times of war, are there supposed to be a standing army." Jelque, however, seems to think that he (she?) has some disagreement with ktakki on this point, indicating a lack of familiarity with the English language. Also, there's Jelque's piss-poor use of English (your vs. you're, "are there supposed to be", etc.)
However, I then noticed Jelque's reference to Americans as "we" (I know not all Americans are native English speakers, but there's a pretty strong correlation). In addition, I know few non-native speakers to be as careless with their reading and writing as Jelque clearly is. I have concluded therefore, the Jelque is a poorly educated native English speaker.
Sorry for the snarkiness. I actually have moderator access right now, so I could have just moderated Jelque down. This was more fun, though.
It will be interesting to someday compare Nasar's Nash biography with another perhaps more objective one.
I don't know about Nasar's current relationship with the Nash family, but her book is an incredible piece of detached journalism. It's highly detailed and meticulously referenced and it does not shy away from Nash's faults in the least. He is definitely portrayed warts and all. I'm not sure it would have been possible for Nasar to have been a more objective biographer.
Re:Mental Illness and the media.
on
A Beautiful Mind
·
· Score: 2
But, there is no 'recovery'. It doesn't go away. Some illness can, but never on their own.
Not entirely true. Spontaneous remission of schizophrenia is an acknowledged medical phemonenon. This is what happened in Nash's case: he recovered without the aid of therapy or drugs and is no longer suffering from hallucinations, delusions, or altered affect (contrary to the movie's portrayal, which shows him hallucinating at the Nobel Prize ceremony). Statistics on spontaneous remission of schizophrenia are hard to come by, mostly because of the large proportion of sufferers who are either chronically institutionallized or victims of suicide. Studies have indicated that remission rates might be as high as 20-40% for sufferers who survive into old age.
As an additional note, I agree wholeheartedly with the top parent comments--the movie's depiction of mental illness is insulting and damaging. I was outraged. Imagine a movie showing a cancer patient overcoming their disease purely by the force of "love". Clearly, anyone who dies of cancer was simply incapable of "loving enough". What dreck!
Without the force of law or unbreakable encryption, it's useless.
Looks like you've answered your own question there. In the past, the entertainment industry has been able to get the force of law on its side at will...
I'm so fucking sick of this. To echo other sentiments in this thread, I say screw them all. I can be perfectly happy listing to indie music and renting indie movies. Any major studio films I see in the theater anyway, since they're playing on 5 fucking screens at each of the multiplexes. And who needs TV? Precious few shows are anything but mindless pap; the ones that aren't I'll miss, but not that much...
I don't think you're right about that. The term "digital music recording" is defined by the following section:
(5)
(A)
A ''digital musical recording'' is a material object -
(i)
in which are fixed, in a digital recording format, only sounds, and material, statements, or instructions incidental to those fixed sounds, if any, and
(ii)
from which the sounds and material can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.
(B)
A ''digital musical recording'' does not include a material object -
(i)
in which the fixed sounds consist entirely of spoken word recordings, or
(ii)
in which one or more computer programs are fixed, except that a digital musical recording may contain statements or instructions constituting the fixed sounds and incidental material, and statements or instructions to be used directly or indirectly in order to bring about the perception, reproduction, or communication of the fixed sounds and incidental material.
(C)
For purposes of this paragraph -
(i)
a ''spoken word recording'' is a sound recording in which are fixed only a series of spoken words, except that the spoken words may be accompanied by incidental musical or other sounds, and
(ii)
the term ''incidental'' means related to and relatively minor by comparison.
That's the entire definition; nothing about SCMS, and certainly nothing about copyability. The sections on SCMS and penalties have no impact on this original definition; I read them, and at no point do they attempt to further refine the definition of "digital music recording." Maybe I just don't get what you're saying--can you clarify?
So the issue here seems to be an argument that cd copy protection violates the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992. Find a breif summary of the law here, and the actual text of the law here.
The main thrusts of the law are:
-No copyright infringment suit can be brought against someone making home digital recordings.
-Retailers have the right to sell copying equipment and media, so long as they contain serial copy protection.
-The RIAA collects a royalty of 2% on copying equipment and 3% on media.
That the RIAA might be violating this law by making copy-proof cds is not immediately apparent from a quick reading. In fact, the definitions of what is and is not a "digital musical recording" do not seem to hinge in any way on the "copyability" of the recording, and the only qualification for entitlement to payments is that an entity is making and distributing recordings so defined.
The point that copy-proof cds violate the spirit of this law is a good one. I think that any argument that the letter of the law is violated is weak, however. Anyone who can determine otherwise would make me happy, though, since IANAL.
As a final point, the fact that a congressman is looking into this might make violation of the letter of the law irrelevant since congress, of course, has the power to create new law.
Honestly, I think these "scientists" would create a bomb to destroy the Universe given the opportunity, just to see if they could do it. There's no reason to mess with the designs of our Creator like this. I'm not condemning all biosciences, just the projects that endanger all of Humanity- Viral Genetic Engineering, Human Cloning, and now Sentient Virii.
So, due to the fact that Compaq is not a person, Compaq cannot appear in court. You win by default judgement! Damn, I should have thought of this years ago.
The way it works in Washington State: when you bring a small claim against a company, they can choose to either represent themselves with an employee or petition the court to allow a lawyer. You're not responsible for their legal fees if you lose, though you do sacrifice your filing fee (~$25), which you would have recovered from the defendant if you had won.
As for other states, I have no idea. I just wanted to provide an example of one possible workaround to the problem of suing corporations in a forum that doesn't allow lawyers.
I've got the same thing on my @Home modem--constant blinken lights, whether or not the computer is on. Still, the only DENYs in my firewall log (I've got port 80 closed off completely) are SYN packets to port 80. Not sure why this results in the contant blinking.... I'm almost certain that it can be attributed exclusively to code red, though.
if I make a physical substance out of an informational atomic pattern, does the copyright no longer protect the substance?
That's right: the copyright no longer protects the substance. The chemical industry has existed for over 100 years. For at least the past 50 of these years, during which chemical quantum mechanics has been well understood, scientists in these companies could specify, to the angstrom, the location of each atom in the product. Does that mean that the chemical products are copyrighted? Of course not. And regardless of how transparently a nanotechnological assembler works, there is some process between the information and the final product.
It's a strech to argue that copyright would even protect the information specifying the atomic positions. Something does not become copyrightable simply due to the fact that it somehow contains "information". Information needs an author in order to gain the privelege of copyright. Current law limits the concept of authorship to written/electronic/spoken communication. It would require a radical change of law to extend the concept of authorship to creation of an object. That's what patent is currently for.
Of course, in a world ruled by shady nanotechnological cartels, such law may become fact. But the argument of the original post was that upon the advent of nanotechnology, material goods automatically become copyrightable. This is simply not so.
I don't follow this argument at all. Are you claiming that e.g. gasoline would be copyrightable because the assembly process for gasoline could be described in a document? Or that there is some copyrightable code that would control the assembler? In either of these cases, the copyright still does not apply to the gasoline itself.
To offer a contemporary analogy, I can design a new process for refining gasoline. My design documents are (automatically) protected by copyright, which means that only I have the right to authorize copying of said documents. Copyright does not, however, prevent someone from studying my documents and building their own refinery based on my design. I need a patent to protect against that. And the copyright certainly has nothing to do with the finished product.
I fail to see how nanotechnology changes this situation. It's just a new means of manufacturing.
Slashdot Mirror
How would you know when your OS has been modified (without your approval), replaced (without your approval) or worse yet modified in a way which you were not informed.
Run an intrusion detection program from a physically remote computer. Such a program compares a snapshot of the system (stored on the remote computer) to the current system. A reinstallation will be detected and reported. In order to defeat this system, the intruder needs to physically compromise two machines at once. You can even set up intrusion detection from several remote mahines to guarantee that physical access isn't a risk. Problem solved.
Frankly, I don't see how your "source modification and reinstallation" attack is a risk specific to open source systems. There are utilities that can accomplish the sort of things you're talking about without modification of source code, and if an attacker has physical access to a machine, they'll be able to get in regardless of what OS you're running.
How the proteins produced by DNA manage to work together as catalysts to create the chemicals needed to form an organism is almost totally unknown, yet by definition it is a cellular automaton problem!
How so? I see it as more of a systems control problem. The trouble with looking at the components of a cell as cellular automata is that implementations of CA require a set of simple rules to go from one state to the next. There are no simple rules for protein interactions, however. It's complicated chemistry and complicated mechanics in a geometrically intricate container. Sure, you could argue that it would be possible to simulate all the molecular structures and interactions de novo from quantum mechanical principles, but the computing power is simply out of reach, and will be for quite some time. Plus, what insight does such a simulation give you? I just don't see how cellular automata apply.
We have not even begun to understand how cells use those instructions.
My point above was that we, in fact, understand very well how the genetic instructions encoded in DNA are used by cells. The map from gene sequence to protein sequence is understood perfectly. The most pressing outstanding problems in cellular and systems biology are simply not genetic: they center, rather, on complex interactions between the various components of cells and the cellular environment. Answering the questions you cite will require a detailed understanding of these complex interactions.
Then please tell me where the gene is that determines blue eyes versus brown ones.
Three genes for eye pigment have been identified: EYCL1 codes for the green pigment. It is located on chromosome 19 (genome data bank accession ID GDB:119269). EYCL2 and EYCL3 are both brown pigment genes. EYCL2 is on chromosome 18 (GDB:4642815). EYCL3 is on chromosome 15 (GDB:4590306). There are also diffusional control genes, which determine the pattern of pigmentation. Blue eyes occur when the pigment genes are not present.
I stand by my statement that the "genetic code" is well-understood. We know how DNA works, and we know how to interpret gene sequence to get protein primary sequence. It's going from protein primary sequence to protein function that's the hard part, as well as understanding the complex interactions between proteins, cell environment, and DNA transcriptional control.
Unravelling, understanding, decompiling, reverse engineering, or whatever you want to call it, the secrets of how the DNA code is executed could be the biggest scientific advance ever, and Wolfram may have provided the tools to do it.
Not sure what you mean by that. The genetic code is understood perfectly well: we know exactly how bases map to codons map to amino acids, and we've known for over 40 years. The mechanisms of DNA replication and transcription are also understood to exsquisite detail, as is the mechanism of translation from mRNA to protein. Protein folding is poorly understood, as is the complex cellular feedback loop between protein content, cellular environment, and DNA transcriptional control. I don't see the immediate application of Wolfram's CA ideas to these problems. CA have been around for over 20 years now, and people have certianly tried to apply them to biological processes, with no groundbreaking results.
DNA is just oodles of four-state variables that represent some kind of program. It is exactly like the cellular automata he's been working with.
I can see why DNA would remind you of the sort of CA that Wolfram is working with: it's 1D, linear, and can take on one of several states at each position. However, DNA is not a cellular automaton. With a true CA, the state of the system at iteration i is dependant on the state of the system at iteration i-1 (or earlier). You can describe it as a Markov chain, I think (please correct me if I'm wrong about that). On the other hand, if we consider an "iteration" of the DNA system to be a single round of DNA replication, then the state of the system at iteration i is identical to the state of the system at iteration i-1, with some noise thrown in. If, on the other hand, we consider an iteration to be a single generation of reproduction of the species, then the state at i is dependant on all sorts of things unrelated to i-1: mostly the choice of a mate, which is heavily determined by chance and environment.
You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
The catch is, what else resonates at around 2.45GHz? Well, DNA for one thing.
Where did you get this idea? And which "resonance" are you talking about? In the case of water, the microwave frequency is resonant with a vibrational mode of the molecule; hence, putting water in a microwave over increases its temperature. Exciting a vibrational mode of DNA would also increase it's temperature, but you have to keep in mind that the mass of a DNA molecule is on the order of a million times greater than that of a water molecule, so you need a proportional increase in the power to get an equivilent increase in temperature. And that has nothing whatsoever to do with mutagenesis. Damage to the chemical structure of DNA requires ionizing radiation, which radio/microwave radiation certainly is not.
As for being only a meager 1-2 watts? I played with a meager 2 watt water-cooled laser once. It was too bright to look at, even with filters.
Apples and oranges, my friend. Apples and oranges. And I guarantee you that a bandpass filter at a frequency other than that of the laser beam would have made it perfectly tolerable to "look at", as none of the light would have passed through.
Apu: Today, I am no longer an Indian living in America. I am an Indian-American.
Lisa: You know, in a way, all Americans are immigrants. Except, of course Native Americans.
Homer: Yeah, Native Americans like us.
Lisa: No, I mean American Indians.
Apu: Like me.
Really though, I serve as a virus debunker for many of my less than computer literate friends, but it would be nice if there was a public site for this sort of thing, that picked up e-mail hoaxes and displayed them for what they are, meanwhile addressing real problems and how to fix them.
There you go.
Fluorinert liquids are a family of clear, odourless perfluorinated fluids that were developed to meet the demanding and diversified requirements of direct contact electronic applications.
Fluorinert liquids have a number of important properties:
Very high dielectric strength
Wide range of boiling points
Thermally and chemically stable
Compatible with sensitive materials
Very low toxicity
Non-flammable
Zero Ozone Depletion Potential (ODP)
It's really cool stuff, and it's starting to find applications all over the place. For example, it turns out that fluorocarbons absorb oxygen really well, so a colloid of fluorinert is used as an artificial blood. It really is the ideal solution for the problem of processor cooling, but I can't for the life of me figure out from the web how to get some and how much it would cost. There shouldn't be any problems with overclockers getting their hands on it, since with the non-toxicity and inertness, it's not particularly hazardous stuff.
I thought you guys had a constitutional safeguard against this sort of behaviour?
Barely. Don't get me started on the marginal constitutionality of drug-related seizure laws. This is a special case though; we're not talking about search and seizure of property, we're talking about customs controls. Customs has the responsibility (and power) to control what enters the country. If you're going to be importing something, you've got to be willing to let customs have a look at it. If they don't like it, they won't let it in. It's like that everywhere, I think.
ktakki said:
I'm not a constitutional lawyer, but I believe the 2nd Amendment was driven by the authors' aversion to having a permanent standing army, then regarded as a tool of tyranny.
Jelque responded with:
Thank god your not a Constitutional lawyer. Maybe you should read it sometime. Having a standing army was the last thing The Framers of the Constitution wanted.
Which made me think, at first, that Jelque must not be a native English speaker. After all, the phrase "[the framers'] aversion to having a permenent standing army" means the same thing as "Having a standing army was the last thing The Framers of the Constitution wanted. Only in times of war, are there supposed to be a standing army." Jelque, however, seems to think that he (she?) has some disagreement with ktakki on this point, indicating a lack of familiarity with the English language. Also, there's Jelque's piss-poor use of English (your vs. you're, "are there supposed to be", etc.)
However, I then noticed Jelque's reference to Americans as "we" (I know not all Americans are native English speakers, but there's a pretty strong correlation). In addition, I know few non-native speakers to be as careless with their reading and writing as Jelque clearly is. I have concluded therefore, the Jelque is a poorly educated native English speaker.
Sorry for the snarkiness. I actually have moderator access right now, so I could have just moderated Jelque down. This was more fun, though.
I don't know about Nasar's current relationship with the Nash family, but her book is an incredible piece of detached journalism. It's highly detailed and meticulously referenced and it does not shy away from Nash's faults in the least. He is definitely portrayed warts and all. I'm not sure it would have been possible for Nasar to have been a more objective biographer.
Not entirely true. Spontaneous remission of schizophrenia is an acknowledged medical phemonenon. This is what happened in Nash's case: he recovered without the aid of therapy or drugs and is no longer suffering from hallucinations, delusions, or altered affect (contrary to the movie's portrayal, which shows him hallucinating at the Nobel Prize ceremony). Statistics on spontaneous remission of schizophrenia are hard to come by, mostly because of the large proportion of sufferers who are either chronically institutionallized or victims of suicide. Studies have indicated that remission rates might be as high as 20-40% for sufferers who survive into old age.
As an additional note, I agree wholeheartedly with the top parent comments--the movie's depiction of mental illness is insulting and damaging. I was outraged. Imagine a movie showing a cancer patient overcoming their disease purely by the force of "love". Clearly, anyone who dies of cancer was simply incapable of "loving enough". What dreck!
Looks like you've answered your own question there. In the past, the entertainment industry has been able to get the force of law on its side at will...
I'm so fucking sick of this. To echo other sentiments in this thread, I say screw them all. I can be perfectly happy listing to indie music and renting indie movies. Any major studio films I see in the theater anyway, since they're playing on 5 fucking screens at each of the multiplexes. And who needs TV? Precious few shows are anything but mindless pap; the ones that aren't I'll miss, but not that much...
Does that mean that the record companys can't do anything about someone making the copy for personal fair use of they break the DCMA?
No. The DMCA and AHRA are separate laws. The AHRA protects you from copyright violation suits, but not from liability from violation of the DMCA.
(5)
(A)
A ''digital musical recording'' is a material object -
(i)
in which are fixed, in a digital recording format, only sounds, and material, statements, or instructions incidental to those fixed sounds, if any, and
(ii)
from which the sounds and material can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.
(B)
A ''digital musical recording'' does not include a material object -
(i)
in which the fixed sounds consist entirely of spoken word recordings, or
(ii)
in which one or more computer programs are fixed, except that a digital musical recording may contain statements or instructions constituting the fixed sounds and incidental material, and statements or instructions to be used directly or indirectly in order to bring about the perception, reproduction, or communication of the fixed sounds and incidental material.
(C)
For purposes of this paragraph -
(i)
a ''spoken word recording'' is a sound recording in which are fixed only a series of spoken words, except that the spoken words may be accompanied by incidental musical or other sounds, and
(ii)
the term ''incidental'' means related to and relatively minor by comparison.
That's the entire definition; nothing about SCMS, and certainly nothing about copyability. The sections on SCMS and penalties have no impact on this original definition; I read them, and at no point do they attempt to further refine the definition of "digital music recording." Maybe I just don't get what you're saying--can you clarify?
The main thrusts of the law are:
-No copyright infringment suit can be brought against someone making home digital recordings.
-Retailers have the right to sell copying equipment and media, so long as they contain serial copy protection.
-The RIAA collects a royalty of 2% on copying equipment and 3% on media.
That the RIAA might be violating this law by making copy-proof cds is not immediately apparent from a quick reading. In fact, the definitions of what is and is not a "digital musical recording" do not seem to hinge in any way on the "copyability" of the recording, and the only qualification for entitlement to payments is that an entity is making and distributing recordings so defined.
The point that copy-proof cds violate the spirit of this law is a good one. I think that any argument that the letter of the law is violated is weak, however. Anyone who can determine otherwise would make me happy, though, since IANAL.
As a final point, the fact that a congressman is looking into this might make violation of the letter of the law irrelevant since congress, of course, has the power to create new law.
Honestly, I think these "scientists" would create a bomb to destroy the Universe given the opportunity, just to see if they could do it. There's no reason to mess with the designs of our Creator like this. I'm not condemning all biosciences, just the projects that endanger all of Humanity- Viral Genetic Engineering, Human Cloning, and now Sentient Virii.
You, sir, are a "moron".
Now I'll have to buy anti-biotics for my computer when it gets a virus! I wonder if it will be covered by an HMO?
Antibiotics are, of course, useless against viral infections, as they are anti-bacterial agents.
Of course, as with many, many things in American law, this depends on the state. Washington state: no lawyers allowed.
If you want to sue dell, you could probably choose to do it either in Texas or in the state in which you resided when you bought the computer.
So, due to the fact that Compaq is not a person, Compaq cannot appear in court. You win by default judgement! Damn, I should have thought of this years ago.
The way it works in Washington State: when you bring a small claim against a company, they can choose to either represent themselves with an employee or petition the court to allow a lawyer. You're not responsible for their legal fees if you lose, though you do sacrifice your filing fee (~$25), which you would have recovered from the defendant if you had won.
As for other states, I have no idea. I just wanted to provide an example of one possible workaround to the problem of suing corporations in a forum that doesn't allow lawyers.
I've got the same thing on my @Home modem--constant blinken lights, whether or not the computer is on. Still, the only DENYs in my firewall log (I've got port 80 closed off completely) are SYN packets to port 80. Not sure why this results in the contant blinking.... I'm almost certain that it can be attributed exclusively to code red, though.
if I make a physical substance out of an informational atomic pattern, does the copyright no longer protect the substance?
That's right: the copyright no longer protects the substance. The chemical industry has existed for over 100 years. For at least the past 50 of these years, during which chemical quantum mechanics has been well understood, scientists in these companies could specify, to the angstrom, the location of each atom in the product. Does that mean that the chemical products are copyrighted? Of course not. And regardless of how transparently a nanotechnological assembler works, there is some process between the information and the final product.
It's a strech to argue that copyright would even protect the information specifying the atomic positions. Something does not become copyrightable simply due to the fact that it somehow contains "information". Information needs an author in order to gain the privelege of copyright. Current law limits the concept of authorship to written/electronic/spoken communication. It would require a radical change of law to extend the concept of authorship to creation of an object. That's what patent is currently for.
Of course, in a world ruled by shady nanotechnological cartels, such law may become fact. But the argument of the original post was that upon the advent of nanotechnology, material goods automatically become copyrightable. This is simply not so.
I don't follow this argument at all. Are you claiming that e.g. gasoline would be copyrightable because the assembly process for gasoline could be described in a document? Or that there is some copyrightable code that would control the assembler? In either of these cases, the copyright still does not apply to the gasoline itself.
To offer a contemporary analogy, I can design a new process for refining gasoline. My design documents are (automatically) protected by copyright, which means that only I have the right to authorize copying of said documents. Copyright does not, however, prevent someone from studying my documents and building their own refinery based on my design. I need a patent to protect against that. And the copyright certainly has nothing to do with the finished product.
I fail to see how nanotechnology changes this situation. It's just a new means of manufacturing.