Of course it is. It's also frequently murder. But it only really counts if you use a cutlass and wear an eye patch.
In order for something to constitute theft, somebody has to be permanently deprived of property. Not profits, not the possibility of profits. When somebody's deprived of profits, that's not theft, that's copyright infringement.
That's not necessarily true. Many, if not all, states have laws concerning theft of services. I'm not saying that copyright infringement is or is not theft, but I get really annoyed when people keep repeating the incorrect statement that theft must involve loss of physical property.
I am not trying to be a smartass here but what does theft of service actually mean? Is it signing a contract for work done and then not paying? This doesn't sound anything like illegal downloading to me.
On the other hand maybe I should become a plumber. Then I can sue all the other ones in my town for theft of services. Obviously if they didn't exist then all their customers would come to me! How dare they take my livelihood!
Having taken a class on quantum computing last semester I would really like to add in some facts here. First to say qbits are both 1 and 0 at the same time is not entirely clear. Qbits are represented by arrays of length 2. These can be either [1,0] or [0,1]. Where the confusion occurs is when these are a superposition of the two, which means basically means that there is a probability that the result would be one of the two. What results from this is knowing the result most of the times, but sometimes being uncertain. For the uncertain cases there are ways to use the probabilities where in almost all cases only the more probable case will result.
Also it is not completely correct to say we have no idea of how these will work. We have a pretty damn good idea, we just have not tested it yet. In fact, most of quantum computing is just simple linear algebra, as the qbits can be represented as arrays and the gates that control them can simply be represented by 2 by 2 matrices. Obviously this is only the basics of it, not touching on entanglement or any algorithms(which can all be represented by multiplying matrices). Anyway I did a pretty bad job of explaining all that, but the point is that this is a big deal and we are way ahead of understanding how these things should work in the future over understanding how to make a machine that will make them work.
Slashdot Mirror
"ZOMG PIRACY IS THEFT". It isn't.
Of course it is. It's also frequently murder. But it only really counts if you use a cutlass and wear an eye patch.
In order for something to constitute theft, somebody has to be permanently deprived of property. Not profits, not the possibility of profits. When somebody's deprived of profits, that's not theft, that's copyright infringement.
That's not necessarily true. Many, if not all, states have laws concerning theft of services. I'm not saying that copyright infringement is or is not theft, but I get really annoyed when people keep repeating the incorrect statement that theft must involve loss of physical property.
I am not trying to be a smartass here but what does theft of service actually mean? Is it signing a contract for work done and then not paying? This doesn't sound anything like illegal downloading to me. On the other hand maybe I should become a plumber. Then I can sue all the other ones in my town for theft of services. Obviously if they didn't exist then all their customers would come to me! How dare they take my livelihood!
I have no idea what connection issues they are tal
One step closer to being able to rationalize how Bush got re-elected.
Having taken a class on quantum computing last semester I would really like to add in some facts here. First to say qbits are both 1 and 0 at the same time is not entirely clear. Qbits are represented by arrays of length 2. These can be either [1,0] or [0,1]. Where the confusion occurs is when these are a superposition of the two, which means basically means that there is a probability that the result would be one of the two. What results from this is knowing the result most of the times, but sometimes being uncertain. For the uncertain cases there are ways to use the probabilities where in almost all cases only the more probable case will result. Also it is not completely correct to say we have no idea of how these will work. We have a pretty damn good idea, we just have not tested it yet. In fact, most of quantum computing is just simple linear algebra, as the qbits can be represented as arrays and the gates that control them can simply be represented by 2 by 2 matrices. Obviously this is only the basics of it, not touching on entanglement or any algorithms(which can all be represented by multiplying matrices). Anyway I did a pretty bad job of explaining all that, but the point is that this is a big deal and we are way ahead of understanding how these things should work in the future over understanding how to make a machine that will make them work.