This is yet another demonstration that CO2 by itself is not causing much warming. There are other factors involved, including solar output...
Yeah, all we have to do to stop the sun from shining, then it won't matter how much CO2 is in the atmosphere.
It's like arguing that it was the gravitational attraction by the Earth on the brick that killed you, not the fact that I dropped a brick on your head.
The thing is, cryptography is pretty much just simple math, especially compared to most typical user-facing software. Cryptographic algorithms don't have to deal with checking user authentication and authorization at every entry point into the system the way a web site does, they don't have to deal with the types of concurrency issues that databases need to handle, and they don't have to deal with users pressing buttons in an unexpected order that puts the software in a state that the programmers didn't think of.
Cryptography is probably the (non-trivial) software that's easiest to prove.
But every time there's a story posted to Slashdot that's about software patents, at least a dozen people start ranting about how software is just math. Are you telling me Slashdot is wrong?
And it's all because discredited former British doctor (Andrew Wakefield) published a bullshit medical paper claiming that vaccines were unsafe.
No, it's worse than that. The bullshit medical paper claimed that a specific vaccine from a specific manufacturer was unsafe. Wakefield was paid by a competing manufacturer to write the paper.
Is clicking on the wrong email, which opens up a browser, which launches a 0-day driverby vulnerability really the users fault, or is it the developer who screwed up and created the 0-day drive by vulnerability? Or is it the project manager's fault who insisted on that shiny new feature over doing code review? Or is it the corporations fault for pushing the PM for features over security? Or is it everyones fault for not insisting on security over features? I could go on, but I hope you get the point.
The thing you have to keep in mind is that users need to be able to do their jobs. Even without any security vulnerabilities in any software, a malicious script can always perform any action that the user can do themselves. If a user needs write permission to the files on some network share, then a malicious script could delete all of those files. Determining that some script is malicious, as opposed to what the user wants to do, is not always a trivial task.
And it's highly suspect in the first place that an API actually can be copyrighted. That's like copyrighting a table of contents.
Just to clarify, I don't disagree with this point. I only wanted to correct the mistaken statement that additional action is required by an author to get copyright protection for a work that is eligible for protection.
Almost right. The SCOTUS, I think, just ruled that copyrights are not enforceable until the until the Gov't paperwork is completed. The long standing practice of assuming that everything created is copyrighted and immediately enforceable, has been shot to hell.
Can you cite to the Supreme Court case? The Berne Convention says that works are automatically protected by copyright.
You don't seem to comprehend that "Public Domain" isn't a name you can call something, it is an actual legal status of the work, and you can't use words to cause that legal status to magically appear; doing so, if successful, would violate the Berne Convention.
Based on a brief search on Google, the last bit isn't true. It looks like a country can have a mechanism for releasing a work into the public domain (e.g. The Netherlands) without violating the Berne Convention. I don't know, however, how many countries have such a law; for example, I didn't find anything that says the USA does.
Here at Microsoft, we have BioWare. Apparently it's not just the name of a game, it's all the name of biodegradable "plastic" utensils, which we're told to dispose of in the compost bin. Other places are using a corn-derived plastic substitute that is biodegradable.
A few small restaurants around here use the same kind of thing. I like the goal of the legislation (assuming that the ban doesn't cover those compostable/biodegradable substitutes), but I think 2021 is a bit too aggressive of a deadline to allow those substitutes to be available widely enough.
Minor correction, can be copyrighted. Not every API that comes into existence automatically becomes copyrighted unless the author says so and even then if they only enforce it.
Your correction is incorrect, at least in the United States. Creative works are automatically protected by copyright from the time they are created; no additional action by the author is necessary. Unlike trademarks, copyright (as well as patent) protection is not lost for failure to actively defend it.
The appeals court noted that the North Carolina Legislature "requested data on the use, by race, of a number of voting practices" — then, data in hand, "enacted legislation that restricted voting and registration in five different ways, all of which disproportionately affected African Americans."
The changes to the voting process "target African Americans with almost surgical precision," the circuit court wrote, and "impose cures for problems that did not exist."
It's hard to believe one person could completely shut down a company like this.
An ITC Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) can't "shut down a company", but, because they are part of the ITC, they can determine that it is illegal to import certain products. If a company can only survive by importing a small number of products that infringe someone's patents, that's the company's problem.
The difficulty of going after individuals is why the music labels are now suing ISPs instead. Obviously, the ISPs also have far more money.
For 2, you have to remember that in civil litigation, the burden of proof is "preponderance of the evidence", not "beyond a reasonable doubt". If they find a 4 TB hard drive full of songs that they've identified as being shared by you, and you have no way of explaining how you legally acquired that much music, then it is legally valid for the jury to believe the music label instead of you; simply saying that you lost all of the CDs and receipts for that much music probably won't be believable. If it's only 10 albums that were all released 20 years ago, though, it would be much more believable that you don't have receipts anymore.
For 3, if you make a work available via BitTorrent, you are granting permission for anyone to connect to your computer and download the data. If by accessing your computer you meant cracking a login or exploiting some other security vulnerability, that I don't recall offhand if such evidence would be admissible or not.
What studies are you basing that on? Yes, combustion increases cancer in everything from cooking meat to petrol, but talking about levels to singularly cause cancer...I haven't seen the evidence regarding cannabis. I don't use cannaboid anything, but I'm interested.
My semi-educated guess is that smoking marijuana increases cancer risk by about the same amount that smoking regular cigarettes does. The difference is that most marijuana users aren't smoking 10 full joints every day for a couple decades. And for people that smoke one regular cigarette per week, the increase in risk is probably too small to be measurable.
Slashdot Mirror
Really? Who is trying to deplatform those they don't agree with? It isn't the right.
I imagine that people who aren't Christian, are gay or lesbian, or smoke marijuana wish that "deplatform" was the worst thing that happened to them.
Yeah, the word "adequately" is important.
This is yet another demonstration that CO2 by itself is not causing much warming. There are other factors involved, including solar output...
Yeah, all we have to do to stop the sun from shining, then it won't matter how much CO2 is in the atmosphere.
It's like arguing that it was the gravitational attraction by the Earth on the brick that killed you, not the fact that I dropped a brick on your head.
That article doesn't mention the Sahara Desert at all.
There's this thing that says "Cockup before Consipiracy"
Hanlon's Razor - "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity"
The thing is, cryptography is pretty much just simple math, especially compared to most typical user-facing software. Cryptographic algorithms don't have to deal with checking user authentication and authorization at every entry point into the system the way a web site does, they don't have to deal with the types of concurrency issues that databases need to handle, and they don't have to deal with users pressing buttons in an unexpected order that puts the software in a state that the programmers didn't think of.
Cryptography is probably the (non-trivial) software that's easiest to prove.
But every time there's a story posted to Slashdot that's about software patents, at least a dozen people start ranting about how software is just math. Are you telling me Slashdot is wrong?
And it's all because discredited former British doctor (Andrew Wakefield) published a bullshit medical paper claiming that vaccines were unsafe.
No, it's worse than that. The bullshit medical paper claimed that a specific vaccine from a specific manufacturer was unsafe. Wakefield was paid by a competing manufacturer to write the paper.
Is clicking on the wrong email, which opens up a browser, which launches a 0-day driverby vulnerability really the users fault, or is it the developer who screwed up and created the 0-day drive by vulnerability? Or is it the project manager's fault who insisted on that shiny new feature over doing code review? Or is it the corporations fault for pushing the PM for features over security? Or is it everyones fault for not insisting on security over features? I could go on, but I hope you get the point.
The thing you have to keep in mind is that users need to be able to do their jobs. Even without any security vulnerabilities in any software, a malicious script can always perform any action that the user can do themselves. If a user needs write permission to the files on some network share, then a malicious script could delete all of those files. Determining that some script is malicious, as opposed to what the user wants to do, is not always a trivial task.
No one on either side can TRUTHFULLY prove their point!
Climate change is science. Proof is for mathematicians.
Thanks for clarifying that. Yes, everything I said certainly only applies to works that are eligible for copyright protection in the first place.
Interesting. Thanks for answering that.
And it's highly suspect in the first place that an API actually can be copyrighted. That's like copyrighting a table of contents.
Just to clarify, I don't disagree with this point. I only wanted to correct the mistaken statement that additional action is required by an author to get copyright protection for a work that is eligible for protection.
Almost right. The SCOTUS, I think, just ruled that copyrights are not enforceable until the until the Gov't paperwork is completed. The long standing practice of assuming that everything created is copyrighted and immediately enforceable, has been shot to hell.
Can you cite to the Supreme Court case? The Berne Convention says that works are automatically protected by copyright.
You don't seem to comprehend that "Public Domain" isn't a name you can call something, it is an actual legal status of the work, and you can't use words to cause that legal status to magically appear; doing so, if successful, would violate the Berne Convention.
Based on a brief search on Google, the last bit isn't true. It looks like a country can have a mechanism for releasing a work into the public domain (e.g. The Netherlands) without violating the Berne Convention. I don't know, however, how many countries have such a law; for example, I didn't find anything that says the USA does.
Here at Microsoft, we have BioWare. Apparently it's not just the name of a game, it's all the name of biodegradable "plastic" utensils, which we're told to dispose of in the compost bin. Other places are using a corn-derived plastic substitute that is biodegradable.
A few small restaurants around here use the same kind of thing. I like the goal of the legislation (assuming that the ban doesn't cover those compostable/biodegradable substitutes), but I think 2021 is a bit too aggressive of a deadline to allow those substitutes to be available widely enough.
remember that time when everybody said intel x86 would never make it in the data center...
Ooh, I member!
Minor correction, can be copyrighted. Not every API that comes into existence automatically becomes copyrighted unless the author says so and even then if they only enforce it.
Your correction is incorrect, at least in the United States. Creative works are automatically protected by copyright from the time they are created; no additional action by the author is necessary. Unlike trademarks, copyright (as well as patent) protection is not lost for failure to actively defend it.
Whenever the Republicans are concerned and want to do something as simple as require an ID to vote, people call them racist.
Well, yes, when the voter ID laws are carefully crafted to make it harder for minorities to vote.
The appeals court noted that the North Carolina Legislature "requested data on the use, by race, of a number of voting practices" — then, data in hand, "enacted legislation that restricted voting and registration in five different ways, all of which disproportionately affected African Americans."
The changes to the voting process "target African Americans with almost surgical precision," the circuit court wrote, and "impose cures for problems that did not exist."
So it's devolved to the level where Oracle is little more than a gigantic patent troll so Larry can have a bigger sailboat.
Did you fall asleep in 2005 and just wake up?
It's hard to believe one person could completely shut down a company like this.
An ITC Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) can't "shut down a company", but, because they are part of the ITC, they can determine that it is illegal to import certain products. If a company can only survive by importing a small number of products that infringe someone's patents, that's the company's problem.
The music labels have sued other ISPs (e.g. Cox) for the same thing before, so what makes this article not believable?
The difficulty of going after individuals is why the music labels are now suing ISPs instead. Obviously, the ISPs also have far more money.
For 2, you have to remember that in civil litigation, the burden of proof is "preponderance of the evidence", not "beyond a reasonable doubt". If they find a 4 TB hard drive full of songs that they've identified as being shared by you, and you have no way of explaining how you legally acquired that much music, then it is legally valid for the jury to believe the music label instead of you; simply saying that you lost all of the CDs and receipts for that much music probably won't be believable. If it's only 10 albums that were all released 20 years ago, though, it would be much more believable that you don't have receipts anymore.
For 3, if you make a work available via BitTorrent, you are granting permission for anyone to connect to your computer and download the data. If by accessing your computer you meant cracking a login or exploiting some other security vulnerability, that I don't recall offhand if such evidence would be admissible or not.
God is an imaginary being that only your clergy can communicate with...
That part depends on the religion. Not all of them require clergy as an intermediary.
> And smoking cannabis does cause cancer
What studies are you basing that on? Yes, combustion increases cancer in everything from cooking meat to petrol, but talking about levels to singularly cause cancer...I haven't seen the evidence regarding cannabis. I don't use cannaboid anything, but I'm interested.
My semi-educated guess is that smoking marijuana increases cancer risk by about the same amount that smoking regular cigarettes does. The difference is that most marijuana users aren't smoking 10 full joints every day for a couple decades. And for people that smoke one regular cigarette per week, the increase in risk is probably too small to be measurable.