doG

But I think it has been found that the expansion is accelerating, not slowing down....

Hold out until Service Pack 5 or 6 is available before moving to Vista...

I don't. Because our understanding of physics shows that matter is neither created or destroyed I presume that the matter of our universe has always existed. I concede that the evidence indicates some type of event occurred approximately 14 billion years ago and acknowledge that such an event may have distributed existing matter into the universe as we know it. If the universe is expanding I also believe that it must exist in a space larger than the universe itself in order for such expansion to occur. This means that there is space beyond the horizon which is the limit of our observation. This space may in fact be infinite with many universes like our own but I don't presume that. It does make me wonder, "Are there intersections of expanding universes that give birth to contracting universes which then go through big crunches, resulting in big bangs, giving birth to new expanding universes?" What I do presume is that we do not have the necessary data to conclude anything about the matter, space or time beyond the limits of our observation. We can toss out theories like God or the Big Crunch theory but they are really just meaningless exercises in speculation since they have no foundational evidence to support them and cannot be used to make testable predictions and in the end are not really valid theories at all.

The math he needed didn't exist 100 years earlier. Einstein tensors, on which Einstein's Field Equations are based, were born from the tensor calculus developed by Gregorio Ricci around 1890...

What you really find is that we just don't know, nothing more, nothing less. That's the truth of where everything came from. According to our observations and current understanding of nature, matter is neither created or destroyed. This could imply that matter has always existed. We'll never be able to know for sure if there was matter before our universe came into existence or not. All we can really do is speculate for the fun of it because we can't prove it either way. I personally tend to think that matter has always existed. I think the BB event simply redistributed existing matter. Like all other theories it's just another unprovable opinion.

What else? Should we ignore the definition given by the law and just make one up? What the point in the law beginning with the definitions it intends to be used? Do you really think you can just make a silly word game out of the law?

Sure. I think whomever creates the work, or whomever they transfer ownership to, owns the work. Happy now?

I particularly like Jeff Hawkins idea in defining intelligence...

Michael Shermer gave a good lecture on this at TED....

While I am atheist I am not necessarily areligious. Many atheists do have a belief system like secular humanism, myself included, so I see that side of it. IMO it is one of the more significant variables in many societies. I think Dan Dennett makes a good case for studying religion in this video. What went wrong last time? Was the member participation limited to those that could engage in rational discussion and only those that consistently kept it that way? Was the infraction system used against those that insisted on preaching and/or proselytizing?

I'd first limit the membership that has access and remove those that can't behave. I also believe posts there should be omitted from the "Recent Threads" list on the portal. Additionally a sticky in the religion forum should state something like: Other ideas?

See Copyright Ownership and Transfer. For the purposes of copyright law it's spelled out in the law itself.

I think the defenders of some perceived "right" to copy need to do two things: Try your arguments in a court of law and see what a judge thinks about copyright law. Do you think your arguments will hold up there? Put yourself in an artist's shoes and imagine that you have created some song, picture, sculpture, etc. that turns out to be desired by millions, has tremendous value, and yet you get jack-diddly-squat because someone, someone that thinks like you, copies it and gives it to the world for free. Is that what "your" rights under copyright law mean to you? Copyright law is plain and clear so I'll not try to help you understand it any further! If you really don't understand it then I'm simply a failure at trying to explain it. If you really do understand it, and you're just pretending not to, then you're just trolling and there's no point in discussing it with you.

Why? Copyright gives me exclusive rights to my work, not anyone else. It does not grant anyone else the right to copy my work without my authorization.

And there's no reason it needs to be hard to moderate. Limit the participants to those that can discuss it like grown ups and let those that can't go elsewhere to discuss it. They don't deserve to participate in a mature discussion if they can't behave.

It's their work, their creation. If I paint a picture it should be mine, all mine. No one else has any right to expect any "entitlement" to the fruits of my creativity or my labor in producing it.

If the idea of labeling the loss of potential revenue as "effective" theft is something you can't understand there's not much point in trying to explain it. The end result of taking away someone's potential revenue is the same as simply taking their revenue, hence "effectively" theft. Who do you think you are declaring that someone else's goal should be entertainment over income? Do you think the author of a math book should write to entertain people instead of educating them? They should write simply for the fun of it? That any expectation of revenue for their time and effort should come in second to your expectation? That a musician's goal should be the entertainment of others over any other personal goals they may harbor? File sharing maybe a way to get your stuff seen but it's still the copyright owner's RIGHT to make that decision. Anyone else that makes that decision for them is violating that right. I wonder how many artists fell a 100,000 sales short of earning a Platinum Record while 100s of 1000s of illegal copies of their work was being circulated. How did file sharing help them to earn that achievement?

So referring to any scientific discussion of societies or cultures is not scientific subject? Would you call social science an oxymoron? Can science analyze society and their culture while ignoring the impact of religion on those societies? IMO religion is a valid part of both social and political science.

That's irrelevant. The copyright owner is legally and rightfully entitled to any potential market revenue his/her works might bring without having to compete with illegal copies of their own works. Why would an author not have exclusive rights to their own creation? If you sat down and spent your time writing a book why would anyone else have any rights at all to "your" creation?

All I said was that it is "effectively" theft. It deprives the copyright owner of revenue they are rightfully entitled to...

Yet another hit and run thread by BSG CORP, from one science forum to the next.

Literally ... http://atomikpsycho.justgotowned.com/

I would say that is partly true when religions are based of the actions of deities but not all religions are based on deities and some that are can have beliefs that are not founded on their deity. I think there are cultural beliefs arising from religion that are predictable and testable, i.e. if I predict that children which are taught religious intolerance will grow up to hate believers of other faiths then that is a belief that can very well be tested. The analysis of religion or belief systems is an important part in the scientific study of societies and their cultures, far from pointless.

So you're saying if you write a paper that's worth $5 a copy on the open market and someone copies it in violation of your copyright and gives away millions of copies for free that it hasn't decreased the value of your work? That they haven't robbed you of the market value of your work? Do you really want us to believe that this is your understanding of what copyright is all about?

Are you saying Intel "copied" AMD's original works?