The only difference I see is that carrots have a physical manifestation which limits their ability to be easily duplicated and dispersed among a large audience. Music on the other hand, especially in our digital world, can be easily duplicated.
That's exactly the difference, and it's a big one. I think it was Ben Franklin who said that an idea is set apart from a physical commodity in that you are no way impoverished when you give it away. If I give away my carrots, I have no carrots. If I give away an idea, I still have just as much access to and use of that idea as I had before it was shared. Hence the popular "Information wants to be free" meme.
I tend to be mistrustful of copyright in the vein of Jefferson; historically, copyright was implicitly joined to the idea of physical embodiments and copies, which allowed for a reasonably balanced approach. But when objects of copyright are trivially disembodied, and "to copy" is something that gets done internally 10 times over in the basic handling of a copyrighted work to begin with (server copies it off of disk into buffer cache; copies it from buffer cache to network stack; from network stack to ethernet card; copied over a series of store-and-forward routers; copied from client network stack to client application; copied and manipulated within client application to decode; copied to kernel buffer; copied from kernel buffer to audio card), we need to look for a new abstraction instead of "copying" on which to hang IP law.
The ASCII art model (2 dimensions of mass, one dimension of fanout) isn't terribly compelling... compare the open surface area of World Trade Plaza (2 dimensions of fanout) with the cross-section of the towers and the ratio is fairly significant.
Recall your original numbers: if the buildings compacted to 55 meters in the original footprint of the building, and the fanout is a factor of 2 in each axis (i.e. 4, 2x2), then (assuming no subterranean collapse) the pile would be 14 meters high. If there were five stories (20 meters) of rubble, then there has not necessarily been a large volume of matter forced underground.
I doubt the upper basements survived, but I'm not so certain about the sub-basements; if most of the inertia was redirected laterally (as per the accordian-collapse design of the towers), there is hope for at least lower levels. It would be an error to model this as 110 stories of free-falling matter; it was a progressive accordian collapse, with the core and lower levels constantly braking and diffusing accumulated inertia.
I may of course be wrong, but I wouldn't dismiss the possibility just yet.
If it's any consolation, I'm a devout Christian who is also a bearded, long-haired, sandal-wearing flag-waver. So it's far from a universal hang-up.:-)
This has been a question in the front of my mind, but I can't seem to find any coverage - are there any efforts to clear the 1-9 tube and get into the subterranean areas? What about the PATH tunnels? If there is any expectation of people being alive underground, these seem like a lot more efficient approach paths than trying to go down through the pile of material above.
I think 0.5 meters of compacted matter per story is probably an overestimate. Also consider that a significant amount of matter scattered laterally when it approached ground level; the current rescue efforts aren't at the base of the former towers, but in the substantial rubble field that now surrounds the plaza.
Personally, I was a lot more comfortable about the president making a measured (albeit dry) statement than having him break down in an emotional display, fly off the handle in rage, or begin making threats.
If there's one thing that would put me in a panic, it would be the creeping suspicion that the president is falling apart at the seams emotionally in the middle of an international crisis.
Personally, I found the quiet display of emotion after his televised phone conference far more comforting and convincing of his empathy and conviction than a sudden gushing proclamation in the early hours ever would have been.
What would the political landscape look like, I wonder, if we did a little training in logic, the correct construction of syllogisms, and the art of recognizing fallacies, to our children at the age of four. Just for a generation or two?
I think this would help "popular" political dialogue (and political talk shows particularly) tremendously, and maybe even help with the construction of better legislation. However, the political and judicial realms do play by different rules when it comes to argumentation; "whatever you can get away with" is indeed the rule of thumb in politics, but NOT in jurisprudence.
We do have ways in court of addressing a number of argumentative and evidentiary falalcies - objections for badgering (ad hominem), leading, hearsay (unverifiable and tainted), circumstantial, et al. But I believe the "fallacies" that are embraced as valid by jurists are accepted as such for good reason - the US system and its european ancestors have been working for centuries to strike the right balance between the structure of rules for logical inference and the problem that noone who testifies or speaks in court is telling the whole truth, and even if they are, it is not in full enough detail to properly construct a fallacy-free logical argument, and even if it were, the best of intentions governing a decision to stretch towards (not even into!) circumventing some protection or boundary tends to make that boundary squishier.
Frankly, I would be a little scared of a legal system in a free nation that didn't accept "slippery slope" as a viable argument, because what it describes is so consistent with human nature and the history of public policy. I tend to think of it as a mechanism for addressing the logical messyness of the political realm - "given that where the interpretive boundary is set today will be pressed farther a decade down the road (justly or unjustly, reasonably or no), we must be extremely wary of moving the boundary today."
But he used the phrase "I believe in the slippery slope" and I could not help myself. I started typing my reply less than five seconds after I read the phrase.
I think we just both hit some pet peeves in this thread; yours with the shameless embrace of a logical fallacy in a not-very-well-argued message, mine with the implication that formal logic's criteria are adequate to govern jurisprudence.
What many people around here seem to fail to appreciate is that, while "slippery slope" is a fallacy in the eyes of logicians, it is a perfectly valid form of legal argumentation.
Why? Because law is not about the clean room of logic. It's about the messy details of a massive number of fairly screwed-up individuals trying to co-exist.
Not that slippery slope is the law's equivalent of a "sufficient" logical argument. But no argument is. What is significant, however, is that it is considered "compelling"; jurists take the image of the frog in the kettle seriously whether the abstract logicians like it or not.
The 10-day rule has some far more significant uses. For example, if the president believes a bill is good policy but for political reasons cannot publicly support it, he can allow it to pass without alienating his supporters by publicly signing it. Similarly, if a popular bill gets past during the closing days of a session, the president can "pocket veto" it, letting the bill die without the embarassment of publicly vetoing it.
It's nice when the law leaves some wiggle room for politicians to do the right thing despite politics:-)
Problem is, that's not caching - that's buffering, or batching, or write queuing. There's a significant difference.
Caching in any computer system implies attempted reuse, of which there is none in such a system.
Without reuse, all you're doing is changing the maximum queue length in a G/G/1/L/M queuing system (remember those from your intro to queuing theory class that should be mandatory for any sort of technical media major?); it improves burst tolerance, but doesn't increase steady state throughput one bit.
For most media devices, a "serious built-in cache" won't have much effect, since cache is only useful when you're re-reading/re-writing the same (relatively small) regions over and over, and that's not the standard access pattern for most digital media devices.
Well, so much for that - an e-mail went out today that HomeRuns is ceasing all operations today (day before Friday the 13th). Shame - their service ran circles around the competition.
Billions of pounds on space travel (which i do admit, does accelerate research in other fields)
or billions of pounds on _existing_ drugs to 3rd world countries.
Uh huh... setting aside how the rulers of those 3rd world countries will just turn around and resell those drugs on the black market rather than give them to their citizens, what happens when those existing drugs stop working? And when the next as yet unknown big epidemic materializes?
In the long run, it pays off to be forward-looking. And I can think of a lot of money our governments spend on a lot less forward-looking programs than space exploration.
Actually, no; Daniel Frye announced the two releases yesterday at Usenix, and he made a point of talking about "Linux" and "Open Source", and not "GNU/Linux" and "Free Software".
For better or for worse - I also watched the NetBSD people just about go ballistic when he said Linux has been ported to every platform ("that matters" was probably implied).
Active involvement in the W3C and IETF; particularly, he was an author of HTTP/1.1 (RFC2616) and several HTTP-related RFCs (e.g. 2145), in addition to which he's an all-around pretty swell guy.
IIRC, in that case they wouldn't be using the technology to gather evidence, so the ruling wouldn't really have any teeth to stop them. (It would make any previously unknown evidence gained in the process inadmissible in court.) Whether it might be grounds for a civil action against the police after the fact is a different question, but in the situation you describe I wouldn't think such a case would have any substantial legs to stand on.
The decision doesn't strike me as terribly technological; it's based upon the well-established principle of a "reasonable expectation of privacy". Informally, if a very curious neighbor or passer-by couldn't see/hear/sense it using common technologies (you expect a fair number of your neighbors to have binoculars and a few to have telescopes), then you have a reasonable expectation of privacy. I doubt many of the Supremes, or any of us, have many neighbors (except the cop who lives down the street) with access to this kind of tech.
It also strikes me as an excellent example of a case where "slippery slope" is a valid legal argument against the alternative. (Logicians are fond of pointing out that it is a fallacy in rhetoric, but law has its own rules.) What meaning does freedom from unlawful search have if the police can, given adequately advanced technology, listen in on all your conversations (telephone and physical), scan your computer monitors, [moving more and more far-off] count the change and cash stashed in your underwear drawer (imagine a microtransmitter in the place of the security strip in your large denomination bills), inventory your pockets (between smart cards, remote controls for car locks, digital "anti-theft" chips installed in keys, etc, this is not as implausible as it seems), and lift images from your brain using its ambient EM emissions, all without ever setting foot on your property?
Ah, but true strict constructionists could care less what the authors intended; they base their decisions upon what was written in the law, verbatim. Anything beyond the direct technical denotations of statutory law and case law is irrelevant.
The law sometimes speaks in a language different from colloquial english; for example, "from time to time" is a phrase that seems vague to us, but has a specific technical legal meaning, and has for a long time.
The problem is expression has content. Jurisprudence says restriction on the basis of content is thin ice, but it's not immediately obvious to me that interacting with a video game contains any content that could be construed as speech; demonstrating a crack of the video game, maybe, but almost all interaction with such systems is within the confines of explicitly pre-defined parameters and events. And I don't think the 12 characters allowed for your name in the "hall of fame" really pass muster (the way, for example, a whiteboard or "graffitti" interface would).
The bill does not prohibit the publication or sale or purchase of computer games per se. It prohibits their public use in certain contexts, for which there exists extensive supporting law (see other threads and comments discussing the regulation of "adult" material)
Your opinion resonates in its sentiment, but itself proves incorrect - the bill did in fact pass, as stated in the article (you did read it, didn't you?), and was subsequently vetoed. At issue is whether the veto can be overridden (is that what you meant?), and if so, whether such a law would withstand even passing judicial scrutiny - neither of which I believe would happen.
I don't think Katz really understands that the problems with corporations are really problems with capitalism. It's cold, emotionless,
unhuman nature. In thoery it should work great, just like Marxist Communism. When implemented, however, the selfishness,
greed, and other human shortcomings really end up harming society.
While you make some good points, I don't believe that the tension between capitalism's ideal and implementation is of the same nature as the dissonance between communism's ideal and its implementation.
Bear in mind, Communism as Marx conceived it was a utopia by concensus, where everyone agrees a priori to play by the rule of "from each according to ability, to each according to need". As long as those who play the game are willing to cheat that rule (or take advantage of it), Marxism is unrealizable, and must be replaced with some sort of imposed rationing and distribution scheme.
Capitalism, on the other hand, is by its nature adaptable to what rules the players are and are not willing to abide by. Greed and selfishness are allowed to be part of the equation only to the extent that they are compatible with profitability - if the consumer side will not tolerate a supplier that does not act with goodwill towards community and customer, and this distaste is strong enough for said consumer to either seek alternatives or forego a product entirely (deferred or vetoed gratification is essential to making a capitalist system work, thus a "consumerist" mentality may be its achilles heel), then there is no viable position for the greedy supplier, and likewise for a supplier doing business with greedy consumers (the net includes some good examples of this - "how much stuff do we need to give away to keep a customer coming back?")
An argument could be made that regulations placed upon suppliers (or consumers) according to the will of the people (or the consent of the people in the case of a Republic) is totally consistent with this model - provided people understand that by enshrining certain requirements in law, they may destroy the ability of providers or consumers to function profitably, and they must then be willing to abide by the consequences (see, for example, the California power crisis).
The "free" market of capitalism is perhaps the most sustainable component of of a "liberal" (liberty) society, precisely because it includes at least the potential for a self-corrective force; free speech isn't truly free unless it allows for trolls, but to succeed in the marketplace you need to find people willing to pay for the wares you're peddling. (Freedom of the press falls somewhere in between; the 1st amendment does not, for example, guarantee affordable access to a printing press!)
Hmm... you're right, my bad. This is case (2), in which case Ford has a technological solution available to them ("400 Bad Request" or similar all requests with "fuckgeneralmotors.com" in the Host field), but their own technology prevents it being a "persistent misrepresentation" since they doa redirect on requests for the "/" document.
As we all know, there are a number of types of "pointing" you can do with a domain, and I'm wondering how the eyes of the law would view the differences.
A hyperlink. At issue in the DeCSS case. Not the case here. Strong free-speech arguments.
Setting a DNS A or CNAME record to point to their server. The intent of this would be for people to be able to browse Ford.com in its entirety with the name "www.fsckgeneralmotors.com" in their "Location" box. This could be dangerous legal ground (misrepresentation, impersonation), however it is technologically trivial (and is in fact the correct behavior, should be the default) for Ford to prevent this on its own servers (who should NOT recognize that Host: field). But again, this is not the case.
A redirect. This is in fact the case here - a 302 Object Moved message (served by IIS/5.0). This falls in the squishy middle ground - a link can be explicitly connected with a comment and a speaker (which "substantiates" the speech), and DNS aliasing has the effect of providing for a persistent comment and misrepresentation while using another's resources, but redirection does neither.
Like I said, I'll be curious to see if the courts have the savvy to differentiate, and what their interpretation of the differences is.
Slashdot Mirror
That's exactly the difference, and it's a big one. I think it was Ben Franklin who said that an idea is set apart from a physical commodity in that you are no way impoverished when you give it away. If I give away my carrots, I have no carrots. If I give away an idea, I still have just as much access to and use of that idea as I had before it was shared. Hence the popular "Information wants to be free" meme.
I tend to be mistrustful of copyright in the vein of Jefferson; historically, copyright was implicitly joined to the idea of physical embodiments and copies, which allowed for a reasonably balanced approach. But when objects of copyright are trivially disembodied, and "to copy" is something that gets done internally 10 times over in the basic handling of a copyrighted work to begin with (server copies it off of disk into buffer cache; copies it from buffer cache to network stack; from network stack to ethernet card; copied over a series of store-and-forward routers; copied from client network stack to client application; copied and manipulated within client application to decode; copied to kernel buffer; copied from kernel buffer to audio card), we need to look for a new abstraction instead of "copying" on which to hang IP law.
The ASCII art model (2 dimensions of mass, one dimension of fanout) isn't terribly compelling... compare the open surface area of World Trade Plaza (2 dimensions of fanout) with the cross-section of the towers and the ratio is fairly significant.
Recall your original numbers: if the buildings compacted to 55 meters in the original footprint of the building, and the fanout is a factor of 2 in each axis (i.e. 4, 2x2), then (assuming no subterranean collapse) the pile would be 14 meters high. If there were five stories (20 meters) of rubble, then there has not necessarily been a large volume of matter forced underground.
I doubt the upper basements survived, but I'm not so certain about the sub-basements; if most of the inertia was redirected laterally (as per the accordian-collapse design of the towers), there is hope for at least lower levels. It would be an error to model this as 110 stories of free-falling matter; it was a progressive accordian collapse, with the core and lower levels constantly braking and diffusing accumulated inertia.
I may of course be wrong, but I wouldn't dismiss the possibility just yet.
If it's any consolation, I'm a devout Christian who is also a bearded, long-haired, sandal-wearing flag-waver. So it's far from a universal hang-up. :-)
This has been a question in the front of my mind, but I can't seem to find any coverage - are there any efforts to clear the 1-9 tube and get into the subterranean areas? What about the PATH tunnels? If there is any expectation of people being alive underground, these seem like a lot more efficient approach paths than trying to go down through the pile of material above.
I think 0.5 meters of compacted matter per story is probably an overestimate. Also consider that a significant amount of matter scattered laterally when it approached ground level; the current rescue efforts aren't at the base of the former towers, but in the substantial rubble field that now surrounds the plaza.
Personally, I was a lot more comfortable about the president making a measured (albeit dry) statement than having him break down in an emotional display, fly off the handle in rage, or begin making threats.
If there's one thing that would put me in a panic, it would be the creeping suspicion that the president is falling apart at the seams emotionally in the middle of an international crisis.
Personally, I found the quiet display of emotion after his televised phone conference far more comforting and convincing of his empathy and conviction than a sudden gushing proclamation in the early hours ever would have been.
Just an opinion.
I think this would help "popular" political dialogue (and political talk shows particularly) tremendously, and maybe even help with the construction of better legislation. However, the political and judicial realms do play by different rules when it comes to argumentation; "whatever you can get away with" is indeed the rule of thumb in politics, but NOT in jurisprudence.
We do have ways in court of addressing a number of argumentative and evidentiary falalcies - objections for badgering (ad hominem), leading, hearsay (unverifiable and tainted), circumstantial, et al. But I believe the "fallacies" that are embraced as valid by jurists are accepted as such for good reason - the US system and its european ancestors have been working for centuries to strike the right balance between the structure of rules for logical inference and the problem that noone who testifies or speaks in court is telling the whole truth, and even if they are, it is not in full enough detail to properly construct a fallacy-free logical argument, and even if it were, the best of intentions governing a decision to stretch towards (not even into!) circumventing some protection or boundary tends to make that boundary squishier.
Frankly, I would be a little scared of a legal system in a free nation that didn't accept "slippery slope" as a viable argument, because what it describes is so consistent with human nature and the history of public policy. I tend to think of it as a mechanism for addressing the logical messyness of the political realm - "given that where the interpretive boundary is set today will be pressed farther a decade down the road (justly or unjustly, reasonably or no), we must be extremely wary of moving the boundary today."
I think we just both hit some pet peeves in this thread; yours with the shameless embrace of a logical fallacy in a not-very-well-argued message, mine with the implication that formal logic's criteria are adequate to govern jurisprudence.
Why? Because law is not about the clean room of logic. It's about the messy details of a massive number of fairly screwed-up individuals trying to co-exist.
Not that slippery slope is the law's equivalent of a "sufficient" logical argument. But no argument is. What is significant, however, is that it is considered "compelling"; jurists take the image of the frog in the kettle seriously whether the abstract logicians like it or not.
It's nice when the law leaves some wiggle room for politicians to do the right thing despite politics :-)
The arrest of Avi Rubin would get a lot more attention and reaction from the serious research/tech community than the Skylarov case is producing.
Caching in any computer system implies attempted reuse, of which there is none in such a system.
Without reuse, all you're doing is changing the maximum queue length in a G/G/1/L/M queuing system (remember those from your intro to queuing theory class that should be mandatory for any sort of technical media major?); it improves burst tolerance, but doesn't increase steady state throughput one bit.
Repeat after me: caching is not a panacea.
Well, so much for that - an e-mail went out today that HomeRuns is ceasing all operations today (day before Friday the 13th). Shame - their service ran circles around the competition.
In the long run, it pays off to be forward-looking. And I can think of a lot of money our governments spend on a lot less forward-looking programs than space exploration.
For better or for worse - I also watched the NetBSD people just about go ballistic when he said Linux has been ported to every platform ("that matters" was probably implied).
Active involvement in the W3C and IETF; particularly, he was an author of HTTP/1.1 (RFC2616) and several HTTP-related RFCs (e.g. 2145), in addition to which he's an all-around pretty swell guy.
IIRC the legal term for this is "bootstrapping" and judges dismiss evidence and cases when it is shown to have happened.
IIRC, in that case they wouldn't be using the technology to gather evidence, so the ruling wouldn't really have any teeth to stop them. (It would make any previously unknown evidence gained in the process inadmissible in court.) Whether it might be grounds for a civil action against the police after the fact is a different question, but in the situation you describe I wouldn't think such a case would have any substantial legs to stand on.
It also strikes me as an excellent example of a case where "slippery slope" is a valid legal argument against the alternative. (Logicians are fond of pointing out that it is a fallacy in rhetoric, but law has its own rules.) What meaning does freedom from unlawful search have if the police can, given adequately advanced technology, listen in on all your conversations (telephone and physical), scan your computer monitors, [moving more and more far-off] count the change and cash stashed in your underwear drawer (imagine a microtransmitter in the place of the security strip in your large denomination bills), inventory your pockets (between smart cards, remote controls for car locks, digital "anti-theft" chips installed in keys, etc, this is not as implausible as it seems), and lift images from your brain using its ambient EM emissions, all without ever setting foot on your property?
The law sometimes speaks in a language different from colloquial english; for example, "from time to time" is a phrase that seems vague to us, but has a specific technical legal meaning, and has for a long time.
- The problem is expression has content. Jurisprudence says restriction on the basis of content is thin ice, but it's not immediately obvious to me that interacting with a video game contains any content that could be construed as speech; demonstrating a crack of the video game, maybe, but almost all interaction with such systems is within the confines of explicitly pre-defined parameters and events. And I don't think the 12 characters allowed for your name in the "hall of fame" really pass muster (the way, for example, a whiteboard or "graffitti" interface would).
- The bill does not prohibit the publication or sale or purchase of computer games per se. It prohibits their public use in certain contexts, for which there exists extensive supporting law (see other threads and comments discussing the regulation of "adult" material)
Your opinion resonates in its sentiment, but itself proves incorrect - the bill did in fact pass, as stated in the article (you did read it, didn't you?), and was subsequently vetoed. At issue is whether the veto can be overridden (is that what you meant?), and if so, whether such a law would withstand even passing judicial scrutiny - neither of which I believe would happen.IANAL, UAYOR, IMVHO, YMMV, etc...
While you make some good points, I don't believe that the tension between capitalism's ideal and implementation is of the same nature as the dissonance between communism's ideal and its implementation.
Bear in mind, Communism as Marx conceived it was a utopia by concensus, where everyone agrees a priori to play by the rule of "from each according to ability, to each according to need". As long as those who play the game are willing to cheat that rule (or take advantage of it), Marxism is unrealizable, and must be replaced with some sort of imposed rationing and distribution scheme.
Capitalism, on the other hand, is by its nature adaptable to what rules the players are and are not willing to abide by. Greed and selfishness are allowed to be part of the equation only to the extent that they are compatible with profitability - if the consumer side will not tolerate a supplier that does not act with goodwill towards community and customer, and this distaste is strong enough for said consumer to either seek alternatives or forego a product entirely (deferred or vetoed gratification is essential to making a capitalist system work, thus a "consumerist" mentality may be its achilles heel), then there is no viable position for the greedy supplier, and likewise for a supplier doing business with greedy consumers (the net includes some good examples of this - "how much stuff do we need to give away to keep a customer coming back?")
An argument could be made that regulations placed upon suppliers (or consumers) according to the will of the people (or the consent of the people in the case of a Republic) is totally consistent with this model - provided people understand that by enshrining certain requirements in law, they may destroy the ability of providers or consumers to function profitably, and they must then be willing to abide by the consequences (see, for example, the California power crisis).
The "free" market of capitalism is perhaps the most sustainable component of of a "liberal" (liberty) society, precisely because it includes at least the potential for a self-corrective force; free speech isn't truly free unless it allows for trolls, but to succeed in the marketplace you need to find people willing to pay for the wares you're peddling. (Freedom of the press falls somewhere in between; the 1st amendment does not, for example, guarantee affordable access to a printing press!)
Curious... the plot thickens :-)
Applications that are at least conditionally compliant with this specification SHOULD use an HTTP-Version of "HTTP/1.1" in their messages
- A hyperlink. At issue in the DeCSS case. Not the case here. Strong free-speech arguments.
- Setting a DNS A or CNAME record to point to their server. The intent of this would be for people to be able to browse Ford.com in its entirety with the name "www.fsckgeneralmotors.com" in their "Location" box. This could be dangerous legal ground (misrepresentation, impersonation), however it is technologically trivial (and is in fact the correct behavior, should be the default) for Ford to prevent this on its own servers (who should NOT recognize that Host: field). But again, this is not the case.
- A redirect. This is in fact the case here - a 302 Object Moved message (served by IIS/5.0). This falls in the squishy middle ground - a link can be explicitly connected with a comment and a speaker (which "substantiates" the speech), and DNS aliasing has the effect of providing for a persistent comment and misrepresentation while using another's resources, but redirection does neither.
Like I said, I'll be curious to see if the courts have the savvy to differentiate, and what their interpretation of the differences is.Oh yeah, IANAL, UAYOR, IMHO, TINSTAAFL, etc.