The belief that reality is constituted by the mind has been championed by many (Berkely for instance), but it's not really that interesting, If physical reality (and all other people) is really just a figment of our imagination, then it will only make a difference for us if there is another reality that we can perceive, or enter, to check whether our physical reality is external or internal to our mind. But in that case, we can't know whether what we consider another reality is external or internal to the mind, and whether the physical reality we examine from that reality is the same one we live in now.
To put it short: It's an idea. It's fun to play with, but it's not science - the theory can't be proven, and (worse) it can't be falsified.
If the message contains hundreds of trolls, then I'd guess the moderators are busy using up their points to get rid of the garbage, rather than to promote the good articles.
The responses to the message above may have a certain validity... But they ignore a few things:
There are other options besides the shuttle... We're talking about getting lumps of metal back to earth, not humans. Cheaper transportation should certainly be possible.
Also, it might be uneconomical to do shuttle flights with the intent of carrying gold down alone, but remember that there's already shuttle missions bringing material up, which could have some of their costs offset by carrying mined material back.
Last but not least: Gold is certainly not the most economical thing to bring back... Platinum for instance is much more rare and more precious, and there's plenty of other alternatives as well.
No, by doing it so damn much faster than most experts have been predicted. They've already hinted to the moon and to Mars. If China keeps expanding it's space program, and start putting things, or even people, on the moon or Mars, someone is going to get nervous...
Obviously you haven't read up on modern garbage collectors. Most have functions to inhibit collection during timing critical phases. Many also support restarted collection, and can have time limits imposed, to force it to never use more than a specified amount of time before giving up control.
For your game example, you are doing something wrong if you are doing allocations in the middle of timing critical code anyway, as you have no way of knowing that the allocation is done in a speedy way. In that case it's better to preallocate the memory you need, and inhibit garbage collection during the timing critical parts.
Instead of allowing anyone to license the patent freely, why not set terms for what is seen as "acceptable" patents. Then, when someone wants to license, they have to sign an agreement whereby they get a license to the patent under the condition that any "unacceptable" patents hold (such as software patents, for instance) will automatically be licensed for free to anyone.
Establishing a pool of patents for cross licensing purposes is much more useful than just giving away licenses to anyone. It could also be used to cover costs, and at the same time encourage open source, by requiring normal licensing fees for people who wish to license the patents for closed source software.
Nice troll... The issue of the poster you replied to is quite valid, but your sarcasm is misplaced.
There is a reason to be wary of potential holes in the Slash source because so many changes have been done without peer review.
This isn't a negative thing with open source - it's a negative thing with closed source development.
Had incremental changes to the Slash source been posted, and a distinction between "stable" and "development" version been made, then the risc would be much smaller, since you's have lots of people looking over the code before it would be used for production sites.
It has been verified by most large Norwegian newspapers, radio stations and online news sources. Some of them include interviews both with Jon Johansen and the lawyer responsible for representing the MPAA.
Luckily not a problem with armed police in Norway... The police here isn't allowed to arm themself unless there is reason to believe that the person they are after is armed and dangerous.
But it can still cause more than enough of trouble to try to stop the police from following up a search warrant.
Different, yes. But there is no distinction between "juvenile court" and being tried like an adult in Norway, unlike in the US. The distinction is that, at the courts discretion, any sentence may be shortened within the bounds of the law.
Actually Norways largest newspaper has (paraphrased) the following frontpage today: "16 year old computer genius arrested". The articles in their online version is pretty good too, giving him plenty of space to explain that it isn't about piracy, and making it out to be a free speech issue.
Reverse engineering is, in most cases, except when you do it with the intent of breaking copyright or other laws, legal in Norway.
However, the Norwegian police has a history of not understanding technology at all. They used to do stunts like this in the BBS days, seizing everything even remotely linked to computers, including even stereos etc. They didn't get many convictions...
The problem is that the police has to investigate all complaints, and when the complaint comes from big companies, they are usually taken seriously, whether or not they have any case or not.
I'm pretty confident that Jon Johansen will win the case, though - the courts are usually quite reasonable in cases like this.
But the key to getting the police off his back is PR. The Norwegian police will probably realize very soon that they've got a very thin case, and if they get bad publicity for it too, they might end up just dropping the case.
Huh? Interesting. I've lived in Norway all my life, and has never seen any of this "heavy handedness" you mention. Sure, they're stupid and ignorant, but it's not often something like this happen.
As for reverse engineering, it is legal in Norway and in almost all other countries in Europe too.
Actually there's not normally any distinction like that in Norway. His age will likely mean that he will get a shorter sentence if he's found guilty, but that is at the courts discretion. Anyone above the age of 15 can be tried, and normally on the same terms as anyone else...
However, sentencing in Norway is usually a LOT milder than in the US. In Norway, the maximum sentence, usually limited to murderers with a risc of repeat offense, or to spies, is 20 years inprisonment and 10 years "sikring" (having to report regularly to the police, etc.).
Also, usually a lot of the sentence is suspended, and even if imprisoned, you would usually get a third of the non-suspended part of the sentence cut off for good behaviour.
I don't know about the limits specified in the copyright law, but I'd figure a maximum limit of 2-3 years, and it would be very unlikely that they'd give the maximum sentence.. Maybe a few months, most of it suspended, if he were to be convicted.
However, I don't believe they'll ever make this case stick...
This is typical of Norwegian police in cases like this. I remember in the old BBS days... It wasn't uncommon for them to seize stereos and phones and printers, and even power chords and alarm clocks... Luckily the courts are a lot more cluefull than the police (I've yet to encounter a Norwegian policeman/woman that could even write passable Norwegian...)
Huh? What do you mean? You must have a rather funny definition of "socially liberal"... Compared to the UK and especially the US we're very liberal... Not that that says much in the grand scheme of things;)
On another note: It's important to realized that the police may decide to go after people like this, but the courts rarely tolerate it. I'd be really surprised if the governments case stick up in court.
AFAIK that's a combination of XML + CSS + DOM + Javascript. Basically you use Javascript to access the DOM (document object model) version of the XML parse tree and either rewrite it, or change it's CSS representation on the fly.
No, they are not. According to Wired even the original story about them banning Win 2000 for government agencies is untrue (they're citing a high ranking Chinese official).
I don't expect Coca Cola to give me their recipe, but I do expect them not to try to conceal or obfuscate the process needed to open the bottle and drink the contents...:-)
Hardware companies usually don't make money on the drivers - the drivers are necessary evils required to let their product work with the customers software.
We aren't asking for schematics for their boards or synthesizable VHDL for their ASICS to clone their hardware, only information on how to use and program for their products...
Slashdot Mirror
To put it short: It's an idea. It's fun to play with, but it's not science - the theory can't be proven, and (worse) it can't be falsified.
If the message contains hundreds of trolls, then I'd guess the moderators are busy using up their points to get rid of the garbage, rather than to promote the good articles.
Reread the article yourself. The broadcasting part is concerning iCraveTV etc., not regarding DeCSS.
There are other options besides the shuttle... We're talking about getting lumps of metal back to earth, not humans. Cheaper transportation should certainly be possible.
Also, it might be uneconomical to do shuttle flights with the intent of carrying gold down alone, but remember that there's already shuttle missions bringing material up, which could have some of their costs offset by carrying mined material back.
Last but not least: Gold is certainly not the most economical thing to bring back... Platinum for instance is much more rare and more precious, and there's plenty of other alternatives as well.
It still doesn't make HTML into source code for the engine, though. The Zdnet article is incredibly misleading.
For your game example, you are doing something wrong if you are doing allocations in the middle of timing critical code anyway, as you have no way of knowing that the allocation is done in a speedy way. In that case it's better to preallocate the memory you need, and inhibit garbage collection during the timing critical parts.
Establishing a pool of patents for cross licensing purposes is much more useful than just giving away licenses to anyone. It could also be used to cover costs, and at the same time encourage open source, by requiring normal licensing fees for people who wish to license the patents for closed source software.
Or maybe you like brute forcing MD5 hashed data :-)
There is a reason to be wary of potential holes in the Slash source because so many changes have been done without peer review.
This isn't a negative thing with open source - it's a negative thing with closed source development.
Had incremental changes to the Slash source been posted, and a distinction between "stable" and "development" version been made, then the risc would be much smaller, since you's have lots of people looking over the code before it would be used for production sites.
You're right... As for lumping economic and environmental crimes together: Most environmental crimes have economic motives.
It has been verified by most large Norwegian newspapers, radio stations and online news sources. Some of them include interviews both with Jon Johansen and the lawyer responsible for representing the MPAA.
But it can still cause more than enough of trouble to try to stop the police from following up a search warrant.
Different, yes. But there is no distinction between "juvenile court" and being tried like an adult in Norway, unlike in the US. The distinction is that, at the courts discretion, any sentence may be shortened within the bounds of the law.
Actually Norways largest newspaper has (paraphrased) the following frontpage today: "16 year old computer genius arrested". The articles in their online version is pretty good too, giving him plenty of space to explain that it isn't about piracy, and making it out to be a free speech issue.
However, the Norwegian police has a history of not understanding technology at all. They used to do stunts like this in the BBS days, seizing everything even remotely linked to computers, including even stereos etc. They didn't get many convictions...
The problem is that the police has to investigate all complaints, and when the complaint comes from big companies, they are usually taken seriously, whether or not they have any case or not.
I'm pretty confident that Jon Johansen will win the case, though - the courts are usually quite reasonable in cases like this.
But the key to getting the police off his back is PR. The Norwegian police will probably realize very soon that they've got a very thin case, and if they get bad publicity for it too, they might end up just dropping the case.
Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer...
As for reverse engineering, it is legal in Norway and in almost all other countries in Europe too.
Btw., the story has been confirmed by nearly all of the large newspapers and radio stations in Norway, so it likely is for real.
However, sentencing in Norway is usually a LOT milder than in the US. In Norway, the maximum sentence, usually limited to murderers with a risc of repeat offense, or to spies, is 20 years inprisonment and 10 years "sikring" (having to report regularly to the police, etc.).
Also, usually a lot of the sentence is suspended, and even if imprisoned, you would usually get a third of the non-suspended part of the sentence cut off for good behaviour.
I don't know about the limits specified in the copyright law, but I'd figure a maximum limit of 2-3 years, and it would be very unlikely that they'd give the maximum sentence.. Maybe a few months, most of it suspended, if he were to be convicted.
However, I don't believe they'll ever make this case stick...
This is typical of Norwegian police in cases like this. I remember in the old BBS days... It wasn't uncommon for them to seize stereos and phones and printers, and even power chords and alarm clocks... Luckily the courts are a lot more cluefull than the police (I've yet to encounter a Norwegian policeman/woman that could even write passable Norwegian...)
On another note: It's important to realized that the police may decide to go after people like this, but the courts rarely tolerate it. I'd be really surprised if the governments case stick up in court.
AFAIK that's a combination of XML + CSS + DOM + Javascript. Basically you use Javascript to access the DOM (document object model) version of the XML parse tree and either rewrite it, or change it's CSS representation on the fly.
No, they are not. According to Wired even the original story about them banning Win 2000 for government agencies is untrue (they're citing a high ranking Chinese official).
Most (all?) of this is for the tech. preview only. The features are certainly coming in futurue previews and in the finished version.
Hardware companies usually don't make money on the drivers - the drivers are necessary evils required to let their product work with the customers software.
We aren't asking for schematics for their boards or synthesizable VHDL for their ASICS to clone their hardware, only information on how to use and program for their products...