Mechanically, or pharmacologically adjusting neural pathways is a dangerous thing. I wouldn't trust pharmocology companies to keep my best interests at heart.... ever! That said, the more that is known, the better we can learn to make life better....
Hey, Tom Cruise, of course it is dangerous, but the alternative is people with severe pathologies (I don't mean a 7 year old with borderline ADHD) going untreated, which is both more dangerous (psychotics) and cruel (parkinson's disease and perhaps psychotics). In theory the FDA exists to reduce this risk to socially defined accetable levels. Furthermore, pharmaceutical companies realize that creating a drug that can treat the symptoms is a billion dollar industry, so they have an eye on your best interests, if you are one with the pathology (but see their other eye, the marketing department, which is a different post altogether).
This study is complicated because it relies on two systems, 1) a molecular learning system; 2) a neural-network-based reward / social-interaction pathway system. Social anxiety appears to rely on an input that creates a state, such as the recipient of repeated agression, and then storing that state. Simply, you have to realize you are the subject of aggression, that has to elevate an internal state and then you have to remember that state.
Memory has many hallmarks, which often include genetic regulation. There term "memory" is somewhat vague in molecular terms, but with a little hand waving, we can just use the common definition. BDNF has long been associated with molecular memory. It is not surprising that BDNF could have an role in learning a behavioral response to repeated aggression that transduces the signal to lasting genetic modifications. This is not to belittle the findings, as it is a great demonstration of the in vivo need for BDNF and confirms many predictions. This was one of the major findings of the study. It seems like the system may be a great model to study learning and memory at the genetic level and perhaps molecular levels as well in vivo.
Anti-depressants similarly would be expected to have a role in the pathway since they can treat the symptoms in humans. The authors themselves state, "The observation that chronic but not acute treatments with antidepressant partly restore social approach behavior in defeated mice further validates this model," which I agree supports the model they are presenting to study a reduced form of social interaction pathologies in humans, since both respond to similar treatment strategies. It is likely that anti-depressants are acting upstream of BDNF by reducing the stress-related or aggression-recepient-related signaling that leads to memory formation, though in my cursory reading of their paper, I did not see if the two phenomena occluded, that is mutually blocked one another, an indication that they are in the same pathway.
Regarding the title of the summary article linked from Slashdot, "Mice Lacking Social Memory Molecule Take Bullying In Stride," I think it is ignorant of the larger picture because mice lacking BDNF will also be essentially retarded, having deficits in memory, learning and the visual system. I guess they will be blissfully happy, but I think paints too rosy of a picture.
This is a critical comment and should be modded up. I was about to make the same comment (so hence I may be biased for my praise of your comment).
http://www.britannica.com/nobel/micro/629_1.html
Waksman was studying soil bacteria when he discovered streptomycin. Numerous other antibiotics were identified from similiar bacteria, so it is not surprising, as you mention, that many forms of bacteria are resistent to antibiotics, since either the soil was the original source for the antibiotic, or the mechanism of action for the antibiotic for which future chemical compounds were screened. For these reasons, I don't see what all the concerns are. Sounds like just uninformed fear-mongering.
Biological processes often have temperature quotients (called Q10) that are near or greater than 2.0 (that is the reaction rate roughly doubles with every 10K or 10 oC [sorry for lack of degrees symbol] change in temperature; one example reference: http://www.rod.beavon.clara.net/Q10.htm ) Pure physical or chemical processes are usually closer to one, sometimes 1.5 or around there. From this you can see that there is a disconnect between the rates of processes when you cool down an organism. Diffusion may slow down by one rate, whereas enzyme function may slow down by another rate. Cooler temperatures could even reverse some reactions while merely slowing the majority. This can lead to a variety of effects and it depends on the tissue, etc., so it is pretty complex to model or explain. This may suggest that cooling is a better treatment option for some pathologies than others (maybe bleeding vs. stoke, but I'm just guessing). As for your example about calcium, ion channels that allow calcium to enter the cell may open significantly less well (i'm suggesting open probabiltiy, but it could simply be the result of lower conductances) at cooler temperatures. Neuronal apoptosis is usually dependent on NMDA-type glutamate receptors, and given the significant alterations in membrane fluidity with temperature, the signaling through these receptors may be reduced to subthreshold levels for excitotoxicity at cooler temperatures. Regardless of the exact mechanisms, this is an interesting approach to treating pathologies and could be significantly improved in the future.
Secondly, some signaling events have critical temperatures. For instance, protein vesicle transport out of the Golgi (Golgi export) is blocked at 20 oC. Synaptic vesicle release has another temperature (though I'm not sure what it is). I'm sure there are numerous other critical temperatures above 10 oC. Perhaps in the case of poisoning, one may want to cool the patient, while administering an antidote to increase the liklihood an antidote could reach the target before the poison, if the poison relies preferentially on biological processes to work and the antidote relies more heavily on physical processes-just an imaginary example, but it could be functionally equivilent to going back in time and pretreating with an antidote. Obviously, this can't go on indefinately, but cooling can slow down or even stop some critical processes that can give doctors more time to treat the patient. I imagine the 10% risk is better than 90-95% (perhaps) for patients who are not cooled.
There are other important applications for cheap ion traps as well, not least among them is in the field of biology / proteomics and perhaps chemistry. Ion traps are used in mass spectrometry and may be able to be adapted for desktop mass spectrometers.
Perhaps TiVo needs to kick back a little money to the networks somehow.
The problem with that is that it isn't like the whole advertising revenue goes to Tivo or other DVR device manufacturers. They may capture some of it through device sales and subsciptions, but there may be an imbalance. The system, under the current model, loses value, for the short term at least. In reality, the whole model is sorta crazy if you think about it. We get a fixed amount of content for free, provided we pay for the equipment to access it, which is relatively cheap. In exchage, a middleman (the networks) tells us about certain products to buy, sometimes indirectly or "subliminally." These products then cost more to pay the middleman for telling us about them. A subset of us have now purchased a technology to skip what the middleman is saying to get to the content, so the product companies skip the middleman and embed the message in the content. Now our products still cost more and we watch the content story revolve around the product.
Reporting that the average is 17, but that the standard deviation is 537.033803405335 (an extremely highly high value)would work in the sense that it would be accurate, but wouldn't work in the case that most people wouldn't know or understand what the hell that meant.
Maybe we could skimp on the accuracy slightly and just give 3-4 significant digits. That might help some people at least try to understand the numbers.
Can he not just use the map in some form of parody about MTA's wastefulness and lying about finances and other well-documented issues, which would then void the copyright protection? Could be win-win for him.
Actually, evolution is more complicated than just natural selection.
There are 5 conditions where Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium does not apply and thus evolution is occuring.
While natural selection is one of these, the others include non-random mating, mutations, genetic drift (small populations may be more sensitive to random events) and migration (gene flow).
Since all of these events are occuring at some degree, the short response to the article is of course evolution is occurring, as you pointed out, but not just because of natural selection. What is interesting, and I didn't read the article so bear with me, is whether there is a correlation with "intelligence" and surviving offspring. This is where natural selection would favor or disfavor intelligence. Perhaps more intelligent people have fewer children, but are able to raise them and get them access to medicine and other factors that could enhance their survival, but maybe this isn't the case as well.
In your example, gold itself is a material valued more for intangible reasons, like shine, color, status, etc. I think the difference is that the market is larger and perhaps has critical mass so that it has never fallen flat. Even governments back their cash in gold.
For tangibles, "I want to say one word to you. Just one word... Plastics."
Forgot to say one thing:
What about educated IT people who have had their job outsourced or aren't compensated that well because of a high labor supply? Maybe they are educated and poor. They might just be an anomaly, however, because as the poor, living in their parent's basements, they aren't reproducting much.
(Just joking about the last part, but I am serious about you taking it for granted that poor people must be less educated. I do agree with most of the other points you presented and I certainly don't think you were trying to denigrate financially strapped people.)
Don't fall into the trap of assuming that just because these people are poor they are somehow less intelligent or in some way inferior. Less educated certainly. But less intelligent?
Obviously, this argument doesn't factor in rising education costs. Many graduate students are employed only a little above the poverty level. As for med students, I imagine by the time most finish med school and start their residencies, they are over $100,000 in debt and making less than $40,000 a year.
(Maybe this theory is just proof med and grad students aren't that smart.)
I'm not sure you know exactly what you are speaking about and your argument seems to have contradictions. I mean this in a constructive way and I apologize if it seems to be harsh.
For example, you say that you and your wife are heterozygous for a gene, that is, you express one phenotype, but also carry the gene for the other. If your child has the recessive allele from both you and your wife, by definition, that child will have a phenotype that neither you nor your wife have (imcomplete dominance and other caveats not withstanding).
Second, using the term "information" is vague. I think you mean genetic diversity, but I'm not sure. Evolution is a change in allele frequency, or the realtive proportion of a certain genetic form in a population thus evolution occurs with populations. I think the parent poster was using evolution correctly in that sense. The definintion of adaptation (according to https://notes.utk.edu/bio/greenberg.nsf/0/3ee9cccd 7c64bffd85256cff0061f4d7?OpenDocument/)
requires that "traits persist because they contribute to fitness" and I fail to see how your example of the dogs is adaptation, because there is no gain in fitness, only "look" and I don't understand how genetic information is lost. Only 50% of each parent's genome is passed on, but sometimes there are new combinations of genes. By your definitions, I don't know how to interprit this.
Also, why do you think that evolution requires "information" to be added. There are incredible pressures for efficiency (in the long term and overall, within populations). Vestigal structures and genes are often lost, and this is one example of evolution. For example, bacteria probably used to have introns (non-coding dna within genes), but these were lost. The evidence for this is that both eukaryotes and Archebacteria (spelling?), which are prokaryotes, have introns, but the bulk of prokaryotes (non-Archebacteria and I forget the name... Eubacteria maybe?) do not have introns. By most definitions, this is evolution.
There are numerous theories in evolution as to what is the cause of natural selection, that is whether most mutations are fixed in populations randomly or they actually have measurable fitness differences. I like to think it is determinisitic, but this isn't necessarily true and many intelligent people put forth arguments too complicated for a layman like me to understand, but you should consider both possibilities. Regardless, changing the proportions is evolution, and it can go one way and come back (as the peppercorn moth or peppermoth example shows). Using terms like gain or loss of information is complicated and leads to thought problems like, "well is it gain of information if you lose vestigal or non-functional genes?" What about inheriting 2 recessive genes as you allude to? Ok you lose 2 dominant genes, but now you gain a phenotype that was not present in the parents and perhaps had never been expressed!
I will grant you that loss of function mutations are both more common and, in a certain sense, "easier" than gain of funtion mutations. However, both are evolution. Anyway, I think the parent poster's main point was that evolution did not require isolation. This is a critcal point. Secondly, the parent poster hinted at what evolutionary biologists call "punctuated equilibria." This means that evolution is slow, but goes through rapid phases when the environment changes quickly. This could be resistance to disease or any number of examples. It seems as though the environment is changing more rapidly currently than 2000-5000 years ago, but maybe i'm biased or a timest. If I'm neither, it may suggest that evolution is occuring more rapidly now.
IANAL, but what are the exemptions to copyright for educational purposes? If an academic publication is purely for educational purposes, as many of these scientific articles are, can't they be widely redistributed for education? Perhaps, the context is important, but it seems as though it could be suited for free educational redistribution.
Secondly, what is the need for peer-review only? Why can't papers be published with peer comments like slashdot?
Yes, but you have to compare three years to the seriousness of the offence, and sentences for other offences.
Do people who steal actual property which causes a real, measurable loss, and real upset to the victims get significantly higher sentences?
I think your point is valid, but it was muddied by your distinction between "actual" property and the implied "virtual" property. Maybe the point could be rescued by comparing the sentences of violent crimes, where people are or could be physically hurt, vs. intellectual property infringements.
But they wouldn't destory the mechanism for downloading a complete file from only one provider and could simply listen to the file. They could even automate it by somehow digitally comparing the audio output with the master original, uncorrupted file.
i think the mechanism mentioned here makes it difficult for users to search and find the file from the plethora of files and sources on the p2p system, but one could iteratively search all the sources of a particular song and check against the master. i don't see how this would be prevented with malformed files.
I don't think this is the case as at no time did they relinquish copyright. They have an interfering file with the same name, but this in no way invalidates their copyright the same as if they offer the legitimate song for sale.
Secondly, I'm not sure how far you can stretch the advertising metaphor as they are technically being polled by clients, rather than advertising, at least as far as I understand it.
There may be other issues with the ethics and legality with which they are operating, but i'm not sure that advertising is one of them. Perhaps it could be argued that way, thought it might be a tough sell, especially since they are not selling a product so many of the rules may not apply if it is advertising.
I wonder if there is any way to apply the DMCA against this type of attack, so either they have to argue against the DMCA or they have to argue for P2P and against the DMCA. Though unlikely, that would be a great catch-22 for RIAA to get into.
(great for people who appreciate freedom, but not necessarily great for RIAA, though many might argue that it is in the long run)
As I read this, they only have to "treat its customers as guilty" to the extent required to block access to or otherwise remove the content in question.
(C) upon notification of claimed infringement as described in paragraph (3), responds expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity.
I don't see how safeharbor is voided by refusing to give the information outside of the court as listed in 17 USC 512(c).
I'm surprised no one has complained about this; it seems crazy:
" Important Note: Comcast may revise this Acceptable Use Policy (the "Policy") from time to time without notice by posting a new version of this document on the Comcast Web site at http://www.comcast.net (or any successor URL(s)). All revised copies of the Policy are effective immediately upon posting. Accordingly, customers and users of the Comcast High-Speed Internet Service should regularly visit our web site and review this Policy to ensure that their activities conform to the most recent version.
Basically, they can bury some document anywhere on the comcast.net (or "successor UrL") and change the terms at any time without notice and they are effective immediately. IANAL, but haven't we discussed EULAs before and their enforceability. Could these terms really be enforced if they are changed and violated?
Slashdot Mirror
There term "memory"... should read The term "memory"...
and
Read more about this in my study, "Coffee helps writing in pseudosocial contexts."
Hey, Tom Cruise, of course it is dangerous, but the alternative is people with severe pathologies (I don't mean a 7 year old with borderline ADHD) going untreated, which is both more dangerous (psychotics) and cruel (parkinson's disease and perhaps psychotics). In theory the FDA exists to reduce this risk to socially defined accetable levels. Furthermore, pharmaceutical companies realize that creating a drug that can treat the symptoms is a billion dollar industry, so they have an eye on your best interests, if you are one with the pathology (but see their other eye, the marketing department, which is a different post altogether).
This news article is in reference to a Science magazine article: (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/sci;31 1/5762/864 "Essential Role of BDNF in the Mesolimbic Dopamine Pathway in Social Defeat Stress").
This study is complicated because it relies on two systems, 1) a molecular learning system; 2) a neural-network-based reward / social-interaction pathway system. Social anxiety appears to rely on an input that creates a state, such as the recipient of repeated agression, and then storing that state. Simply, you have to realize you are the subject of aggression, that has to elevate an internal state and then you have to remember that state.
Memory has many hallmarks, which often include genetic regulation. There term "memory" is somewhat vague in molecular terms, but with a little hand waving, we can just use the common definition. BDNF has long been associated with molecular memory. It is not surprising that BDNF could have an role in learning a behavioral response to repeated aggression that transduces the signal to lasting genetic modifications. This is not to belittle the findings, as it is a great demonstration of the in vivo need for BDNF and confirms many predictions. This was one of the major findings of the study. It seems like the system may be a great model to study learning and memory at the genetic level and perhaps molecular levels as well in vivo.
Anti-depressants similarly would be expected to have a role in the pathway since they can treat the symptoms in humans. The authors themselves state, "The observation that chronic but not acute treatments with antidepressant partly restore social approach behavior in defeated mice further validates this model," which I agree supports the model they are presenting to study a reduced form of social interaction pathologies in humans, since both respond to similar treatment strategies. It is likely that anti-depressants are acting upstream of BDNF by reducing the stress-related or aggression-recepient-related signaling that leads to memory formation, though in my cursory reading of their paper, I did not see if the two phenomena occluded, that is mutually blocked one another, an indication that they are in the same pathway.
Regarding the title of the summary article linked from Slashdot, "Mice Lacking Social Memory Molecule Take Bullying In Stride," I think it is ignorant of the larger picture because mice lacking BDNF will also be essentially retarded, having deficits in memory, learning and the visual system. I guess they will be blissfully happy, but I think paints too rosy of a picture.
Seems like we can paraphrase him as saying that!
This is a critical comment and should be modded up. I was about to make the same comment (so hence I may be biased for my praise of your comment).
http://www.britannica.com/nobel/micro/629_1.html
Waksman was studying soil bacteria when he discovered streptomycin. Numerous other antibiotics were identified from similiar bacteria, so it is not surprising, as you mention, that many forms of bacteria are resistent to antibiotics, since either the soil was the original source for the antibiotic, or the mechanism of action for the antibiotic for which future chemical compounds were screened. For these reasons, I don't see what all the concerns are. Sounds like just uninformed fear-mongering.
Biological processes often have temperature quotients (called Q10) that are near or greater than 2.0 (that is the reaction rate roughly doubles with every 10K or 10 oC [sorry for lack of degrees symbol] change in temperature; one example reference: http://www.rod.beavon.clara.net/Q10.htm ) Pure physical or chemical processes are usually closer to one, sometimes 1.5 or around there. From this you can see that there is a disconnect between the rates of processes when you cool down an organism. Diffusion may slow down by one rate, whereas enzyme function may slow down by another rate. Cooler temperatures could even reverse some reactions while merely slowing the majority. This can lead to a variety of effects and it depends on the tissue, etc., so it is pretty complex to model or explain. This may suggest that cooling is a better treatment option for some pathologies than others (maybe bleeding vs. stoke, but I'm just guessing). As for your example about calcium, ion channels that allow calcium to enter the cell may open significantly less well (i'm suggesting open probabiltiy, but it could simply be the result of lower conductances) at cooler temperatures. Neuronal apoptosis is usually dependent on NMDA-type glutamate receptors, and given the significant alterations in membrane fluidity with temperature, the signaling through these receptors may be reduced to subthreshold levels for excitotoxicity at cooler temperatures. Regardless of the exact mechanisms, this is an interesting approach to treating pathologies and could be significantly improved in the future.
Secondly, some signaling events have critical temperatures. For instance, protein vesicle transport out of the Golgi (Golgi export) is blocked at 20 oC. Synaptic vesicle release has another temperature (though I'm not sure what it is). I'm sure there are numerous other critical temperatures above 10 oC. Perhaps in the case of poisoning, one may want to cool the patient, while administering an antidote to increase the liklihood an antidote could reach the target before the poison, if the poison relies preferentially on biological processes to work and the antidote relies more heavily on physical processes-just an imaginary example, but it could be functionally equivilent to going back in time and pretreating with an antidote. Obviously, this can't go on indefinately, but cooling can slow down or even stop some critical processes that can give doctors more time to treat the patient. I imagine the 10% risk is better than 90-95% (perhaps) for patients who are not cooled.
I wish I had 2 pence everytime I heard an insightful reply (to someone who didn't RTFA), which enlightened them to the ideas covered by TFA.
There are other important applications for cheap ion traps as well, not least among them is in the field of biology / proteomics and perhaps chemistry. Ion traps are used in mass spectrometry and may be able to be adapted for desktop mass spectrometers.
Perhaps TiVo needs to kick back a little money to the networks somehow.
The problem with that is that it isn't like the whole advertising revenue goes to Tivo or other DVR device manufacturers. They may capture some of it through device sales and subsciptions, but there may be an imbalance. The system, under the current model, loses value, for the short term at least. In reality, the whole model is sorta crazy if you think about it. We get a fixed amount of content for free, provided we pay for the equipment to access it, which is relatively cheap. In exchage, a middleman (the networks) tells us about certain products to buy, sometimes indirectly or "subliminally." These products then cost more to pay the middleman for telling us about them. A subset of us have now purchased a technology to skip what the middleman is saying to get to the content, so the product companies skip the middleman and embed the message in the content. Now our products still cost more and we watch the content story revolve around the product.
Maybe we could skimp on the accuracy slightly and just give 3-4 significant digits. That might help some people at least try to understand the numbers.
The first post in 2004 over this topic was that this was old news then.
I guess we can discuss it further next year when it is re-duped again, for a second time.
Can he not just use the map in some form of parody about MTA's wastefulness and lying about finances and other well-documented issues, which would then void the copyright protection? Could be win-win for him.
Actually, evolution is more complicated than just natural selection.
There are 5 conditions where Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium does not apply and thus evolution is occuring.
While natural selection is one of these, the others include non-random mating, mutations, genetic drift (small populations may be more sensitive to random events) and migration (gene flow).
Since all of these events are occuring at some degree, the short response to the article is of course evolution is occurring, as you pointed out, but not just because of natural selection. What is interesting, and I didn't read the article so bear with me, is whether there is a correlation with "intelligence" and surviving offspring. This is where natural selection would favor or disfavor intelligence. Perhaps more intelligent people have fewer children, but are able to raise them and get them access to medicine and other factors that could enhance their survival, but maybe this isn't the case as well.
I said "governments" not the "US government." Perhaps this was still in error, however.
In your example, gold itself is a material valued more for intangible reasons, like shine, color, status, etc. I think the difference is that the market is larger and perhaps has critical mass so that it has never fallen flat. Even governments back their cash in gold. For tangibles, "I want to say one word to you. Just one word... Plastics."
Forgot to say one thing: What about educated IT people who have had their job outsourced or aren't compensated that well because of a high labor supply? Maybe they are educated and poor. They might just be an anomaly, however, because as the poor, living in their parent's basements, they aren't reproducting much. (Just joking about the last part, but I am serious about you taking it for granted that poor people must be less educated. I do agree with most of the other points you presented and I certainly don't think you were trying to denigrate financially strapped people.)
I'm not sure you know exactly what you are speaking about and your argument seems to have contradictions. I mean this in a constructive way and I apologize if it seems to be harsh.
d 7c64bffd85256cff0061f4d7?OpenDocument/)
For example, you say that you and your wife are heterozygous for a gene, that is, you express one phenotype, but also carry the gene for the other. If your child has the recessive allele from both you and your wife, by definition, that child will have a phenotype that neither you nor your wife have (imcomplete dominance and other caveats not withstanding).
Second, using the term "information" is vague. I think you mean genetic diversity, but I'm not sure. Evolution is a change in allele frequency, or the realtive proportion of a certain genetic form in a population thus evolution occurs with populations. I think the parent poster was using evolution correctly in that sense. The definintion of adaptation (according to https://notes.utk.edu/bio/greenberg.nsf/0/3ee9ccc
requires that "traits persist because they contribute to fitness" and I fail to see how your example of the dogs is adaptation, because there is no gain in fitness, only "look" and I don't understand how genetic information is lost. Only 50% of each parent's genome is passed on, but sometimes there are new combinations of genes. By your definitions, I don't know how to interprit this.
Also, why do you think that evolution requires "information" to be added. There are incredible pressures for efficiency (in the long term and overall, within populations). Vestigal structures and genes are often lost, and this is one example of evolution. For example, bacteria probably used to have introns (non-coding dna within genes), but these were lost. The evidence for this is that both eukaryotes and Archebacteria (spelling?), which are prokaryotes, have introns, but the bulk of prokaryotes (non-Archebacteria and I forget the name... Eubacteria maybe?) do not have introns. By most definitions, this is evolution.
There are numerous theories in evolution as to what is the cause of natural selection, that is whether most mutations are fixed in populations randomly or they actually have measurable fitness differences. I like to think it is determinisitic, but this isn't necessarily true and many intelligent people put forth arguments too complicated for a layman like me to understand, but you should consider both possibilities. Regardless, changing the proportions is evolution, and it can go one way and come back (as the peppercorn moth or peppermoth example shows). Using terms like gain or loss of information is complicated and leads to thought problems like, "well is it gain of information if you lose vestigal or non-functional genes?" What about inheriting 2 recessive genes as you allude to? Ok you lose 2 dominant genes, but now you gain a phenotype that was not present in the parents and perhaps had never been expressed!
I will grant you that loss of function mutations are both more common and, in a certain sense, "easier" than gain of funtion mutations. However, both are evolution. Anyway, I think the parent poster's main point was that evolution did not require isolation. This is a critcal point. Secondly, the parent poster hinted at what evolutionary biologists call "punctuated equilibria." This means that evolution is slow, but goes through rapid phases when the environment changes quickly. This could be resistance to disease or any number of examples. It seems as though the environment is changing more rapidly currently than 2000-5000 years ago, but maybe i'm biased or a timest. If I'm neither, it may suggest that evolution is occuring more rapidly now.
IANAL, but what are the exemptions to copyright for educational purposes? If an academic publication is purely for educational purposes, as many of these scientific articles are, can't they be widely redistributed for education? Perhaps, the context is important, but it seems as though it could be suited for free educational redistribution.
Secondly, what is the need for peer-review only? Why can't papers be published with peer comments like slashdot?
I think your point is valid, but it was muddied by your distinction between "actual" property and the implied "virtual" property. Maybe the point could be rescued by comparing the sentences of violent crimes, where people are or could be physically hurt, vs. intellectual property infringements.
But they wouldn't destory the mechanism for downloading a complete file from only one provider and could simply listen to the file. They could even automate it by somehow digitally comparing the audio output with the master original, uncorrupted file. i think the mechanism mentioned here makes it difficult for users to search and find the file from the plethora of files and sources on the p2p system, but one could iteratively search all the sources of a particular song and check against the master. i don't see how this would be prevented with malformed files.
I don't think this is the case as at no time did they relinquish copyright. They have an interfering file with the same name, but this in no way invalidates their copyright the same as if they offer the legitimate song for sale. Secondly, I'm not sure how far you can stretch the advertising metaphor as they are technically being polled by clients, rather than advertising, at least as far as I understand it. There may be other issues with the ethics and legality with which they are operating, but i'm not sure that advertising is one of them. Perhaps it could be argued that way, thought it might be a tough sell, especially since they are not selling a product so many of the rules may not apply if it is advertising.
(great for people who appreciate freedom, but not necessarily great for RIAA, though many might argue that it is in the long run)
I'm surprised no one has complained about this; it seems crazy:
Basically, they can bury some document anywhere on the comcast.net (or "successor UrL") and change the terms at any time without notice and they are effective immediately. IANAL, but haven't we discussed EULAs before and their enforceability. Could these terms really be enforced if they are changed and violated?