JaKiri

Maybe we should do a global search/replace of everything Albert Einstein said about his theory too (to make sure).

Oh please. Using terminology for the ease of understanding is not a particularly arduous task.

However

Isn't this even a little bit contradictory?

Isn't you claiming that I introduced the phrase "photons are energy" and having two examples quoted to you where you said that, prior to my posts, a little contradictory?

And the artists (or other copyright owners) are free to make the work available for free download. It's their call.

It's not though; if they want to have the ability to put records into stores, then they need to sign a deal with a publisher, who forbids this kind of behaviour. We've only seen the smallest and the largest (Radiohead being the obvious example) persuing this method of distribution for a reason.

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.

Which is why copyright law exists. "Taking away potential revenue by breaching copyright law" is a breach in copyright law, not theft - otherwise the law wouldn't need to exist.

Of course, the reality is more complicated than that - I must point out again that a neutral study (assuming the canadian government is neutral) found that people who downloaded music illegally tended to spend much more on music, and the musicians who explicitly or implictly support filesharing.

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?

The first aim of the writer, the musician, the comedian, should be to entertain. File sharing is an excellent way to get your stuff seen, heard or read by as many people as possible!

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

But the revenue doesn't necessarily exist?

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

At least he's saying stuff that's by and large true, rather than posting gibberish then running away.

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?

I'm saying it isn't theft.

The reason I'm saying it isn't theft is simple: because it isn't theft. Just as "decreasing market value" isn't theft, or even a crime. It's how you decrease market value that is important legally, and if your argument held any water this would not be the case.

And, as I have pointed out many times (and you have ignored the same number of times) there is evidence for filesharing increasing the market value rather than decreasing it. Many bands "encourage" filesharing in order to get their music heard, although of course they aren't allowed to say on record because of their contract, so I admit that it's difficult to verify in most cases.

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

You said that copyright violation was theft because it decreased the market value of the thing being stolen.

I pointed out that this was bollocks beacuse:

a. decreasing market value isn't theft.

and

b. copyright infringement doesn't necessarily decrease market value, and there is evidence that it increases it.

I notice you only quoted half of my post, by the way.

When it decreases the market value of the copyrighted work it is effectively theft...

Why haven't Intel been arrested then? The market value of AMD's recent processors has definitely been decreased by the existance of the Core2Duo.

"Taking" potential sales is not theft, especially when there's evidence that people who download music tend to spend much more on music.

I like Ron Paul because he's not a sellout.

He's in the pocket of big shrimp!

They also passed the Copyright Act of 1790. It was passed during the second session of Congress and Signed by George Washington. It was modeled after the 1710 Statute of Anne, the copyright law in effect when the founding fathers left England. Note also that this is dated before the Bill of Rights where the founding fathers stated in the 9th Amendment that there were rights other than those enumerated in the Constitution.

I should have used "rights", not "the rights". It doesn't matter what the law is, if someone thinks it's a right then they think it's a right.

Certainly the founding fathers did not believe in a right to steal.

Copyright violation isn't theft, it's copyright violation.

In 500 to 1000 years when particle physicists discover the animaton (secular version of a soul) they will finally realize that it isn't EITHER intelligent design OR evolution, it is BOTH.

Evolution assumes (and has evidence for) randomness. Intelligent design assumes design (obviously). They're not compatible.

Today, they can't even find (with any certainty) a fundamental particle with the property of mass. Imagine how difficult it will be to discover a fundamental particle which does NOT have the property of mass....

Now, I may just be coming out from a stupid argument about mass, but I think I'm on firmer ground here when I say that you're wrong, although the trouble is I don't really know how to begin.

I'll just short circuit the whole thing by saying that this sentence doesn't even make sense to people who know nothing about physics, because the first half implies that of all the fundamental particles we've found none have mass - which means that the second half has already happened.

Not believing is a belief.

I don't think you're trying to use it here as such, but this is a common argument used by anti-atheists in order to muddy the waters.

That's quite an oxymoron there since, legally speaking, it is not a "right" or it would be protected by law.....

It depends how you define "rights". Certainly the founding fathers stated that the rights existed despite the law. Although I'd use 'rights' for this kind of thing and '"rights"' for things given by law, that's an individual convention and we can't be sure it applies here.

What does this say about the equivalent mass that Einstein refers to? Answer: absolutely nothing, zip, nada, zilch.

You have just illustrated (rather clumsily) that photons have no intrinsic mass (something other people occasionally refer to as "rest mass").

OK right, now we're on the same page. Yes, there is a quantity of mass which is, in terms of energy, equivilent to the energy of a given photon.

In my defense, it's very difficult to tell when you're merely communicating badly and when you're doing things like the following:

Please stop trying to confuse things. You said it first, so explain why you said it.

 

...remember?

I remember, in my first post in the thread, quoting you saying

energy [math]E [/math] is photons [math](\hbar\nu)[/math]

which was itself a clarification of

energy is photons

Confusion abounds!

One more time, just so we're clear: Photons have a mass equivalent, as Einstein demonstrated when explaining the photoelectric effect (among other papers he wrote). Photons have no intrinsic mass, but because they are (pure) energy, they are therefore equivalent to some mass. [/me]

Yep. Stupid meandering over!

With that context, what you said earlier was still silly (energy is not photons, the speed of light is not the speed of energy [although you could use this as shorthand for something more correct], it's the inertial mass that stops it reaching c, not the inertia [mass is, in classical mechanics, the restistance to change in inertia, but this is again a problem in terminology] and whatnot. In summation: what you meant is reasonably correct, what you said is nonsensical in places which, coupled with your prose style [which is forgiveable, mine's pretty bad, especially this sentence], made it difficult to understand and therefore I called it gibberish.

Your repeated reference to that photoelectric question remains mystifying to me though.)

Life doesn't have a purpose. You could argue that the purpose is to create more life, but I'd say that's part of the definition and so you end up with a circular argument.

On a side note, a fair amount of that large quoted post is incorrect, most notably

A robot cannot learn (they only respond in a preprogrammed way)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_learning

Why would someone's ownership of a work they created be an outdated idea?

Ownership of copyright is not the same as having created the work.

Ask Christopher Tolkein how long it took him to write The Lord of the Rings, ask the Robert Iger where he got the idea for Mickey Mouse.

I'd say the exclusivity of financial benefit is fine (removing it discourages making copyrighted material with a significant R&D cost).

Then, in your last post, we see: "You can't be denying that the photon has energy, so this is consistent." which disagrees totally with your earlier post: "Energy is not photons".

All daschunds are dogs, therefore all dogs are daschunds!

Are you saying a photon "carries energy around", in some container? That a photon is "something" which can have energy?

Depends how you look at it. Sure, why not!

Einstein said (some time ago): "It followed from the special theory of relativity that mass and energy are both but different manifestations of the same thing —a somewhat unfamiliar conception for the average mind. Furthermore, the equation E = mc², in which energy is put equal to mass, multiplied by the square of the velocity of light, showed that very small amounts of mass may be converted into a very large amount of energy and vice versa."

 

You seem to understand this, but then go on to claim, apparently, that he got it all wrong.

I could point out again how this refers to a rest mass, but why bother when you're just trying to argue from authority?

Even if you hadn't grossly misrepresented what the quote was about, it doesn't mean anything because statements are meaningless without evidence to back them up (and since we're dealing with the repurcussions of theory here, mathematics is a form of evidence).

Einstein also said "God does not play dice", which is not only consistent with what he believed, as he proposed that quantum mechanics was deterministic using hidden variables, but also wrong. Bell's Theorem, and the Bell test experiments, have the random elements of quantum mechanics actually random.

[edit]

I wrote this post in a different order to that which appears here, so by the time I came back to talk about this I had forgotten you had bolded "vice versa". Lets look at the quote:

very small amounts of mass may be converted into a very large amount of energy and vice versa

Yep, certainly true. I'm not sure why this is relevent though as you appear to have misunderstood the meaning of the word "converted". Lets have a look:

a plowshare may be converted into a sword and vice versa

But a plowshare isn't a sword. And a photon does not have mass.

I'm struggling to comprehend why I have to explain what the concept of "change" is.

[/edit]

As to the photoelectric question (which is from a grad. Physics exam)

Hot damn. I'd be ashamed asking that at GCSE (assuming the topic was covered, or the equations were given). The only thing which isn't just "Remember equation used in the photoelectric effect, plug in numbers to equation used in the photoelectric effect" is the final part, which uses special relativity. And you just plug in the numbers.

why are you asking: "What part of that question requires that the photon has a mass (or equivilent quantity)?"

If you think back to the dark ages of the world where you originally asked me to solve the question, you quoted where I said "Energy is not photons, photons don't have a "mass equivilent""*, and I thought that perhaps as you brought it up again in the context of photons being massless it was relevent to that.

*Thank you for correcting my spelling mistake here, it was noted but I decided to not go back and edit the original post because you shouldn't change art, you dig?

where does the question ask about the mass of anything? Except you know (I hope) that electrons have mass...

Strawman. I specifically said the mass of a photon, as you yourself noted above.

Time to ante up, dude. Please explain why photons have no mass equivalent

Oh ok I'll get right on that with something new I haven't already posted in the threa...

It's trivial to demonstrate that the photon, or any particle which travels at c, is massless from the relativistic form of momentum, p = mv/SQRT(1-v²/c²).

Oh

Or we could use the way that General Relativity was experimentally verified initially (as the photon is massless, it is unaffected by gravity under Newtonian gravity), with the observation of light from distant stars being "bent" around the sun.

Or, how about this

E² = m²c⁴ + p²c²

But E = hf, p = hf/c

Hence h²f²= m²c⁴ + h²f²c²/c²

(with the final term having c² cancel)

Rearranging, h²f² - h²f² = m²c⁴

m²c⁴ = 0

c =/= 0, hence m = 0.

This is simple undergraduate stuff. Mechanics and relativity is the first topic in our physics course, which many non-physicists take.

I was going to dig up a question sheet, and quote one at you that requires the mass of the photon to be zero in order for it to work, but now I can only find my chemistry and material & mineral sciences notes from back then.

and why photons "are not energy".

This isn't what you said. You said "Energy is photons".

I'm sorry if I argue against what you actually say rather than something you don't, at least you're being morally consistent by arguing against things that I didn't write.

So that's ok then.

P.S. you did notice I used the "wrong" form of the constant -Dirac's version instead of Planck's- well done.

I'm sure to make this into a certificate of some kind, print it out and put it on my mantlepiece.

In the sense of "composed of elementary particles"?

We haven't proved that the electron (say) has any volume. We've set an upper bound on it, though!

(Not to say that we've proved that it is a point charge/mass either, but it's debateable which one you feel to be more of a reasonable working assumption)

Voted Ron Paul because I want the democrats to win.

The last part of this sentence is absolutely correct, photons (and everything else), never get to stop and have a rest.

No, just things that travel at the speed of light (or superliminal velocities, but they're not really relevent).

But why can't you say [math] E = \hbar\nu [/math], and the equivalent mass is [math] E/c^2 = \hbar\nu/c^2 [/math], which is what your objection appears to be? Notice the term 'm' does not appear...

Because it's not equivilent to the mass (and it's h, not hbar)? As has been shown previously, E = hc/lambda (or however you want to present it) can be derived from E² = m²c⁴ + p²c².

To get to E = mc², you have to take the above equation and set the momentum to zero. It is impossible to do this for the photon, and is only possible with massive particles because you can define inertial frames where they're at rest (hence E_rest and m_rest).

And why do you claim: 'Energy is not photons, photons don't have a "mass equiv[a]lent"'. This statement is clearly the opposite of Einstein's.

Oh dear lord.

So are you going to have a crack at the (exam) question I posted? Would you like a definition of "work-function of a metal"?

What part of that question requires that the photon has a mass (or equivilent quantity)?

It's trivial to demonstrate that the photon, or any particle which travels at c, is massless from the relativistic form of momentum, p = mv/SQRT(1-v²/c²).

As v=c, the denominator goes to zero and momentum goes to infinity with non-zero m. For zero m, the fact that from the above equation relating E, m and p that E² - p²c² = some constant (in this case, zero) shows that it can have non-zero momentum whilst having zero mass.

You're not denying that the photon has energy, presumeably, so the parts of the question, in order:

1. Without bothering to convert into joules, this is trivially 4.3eV as the kinetic energy of the electron is non-negative. You can't be denying that the photon has energy, so this is consistent.

2. Use E=hc/lambda and E=hf, plug in the numbers. See above.

3. E=cp. Derived from E² = m²c⁴ + p²c², setting m to zero. This assumes that m = zero, otherwise the photon has an undefined momentum due to p = gamma mv.

4. Use p = gamma mv. This part is nothing to do with photons.

What part of the photoelectric effect was inconsistent with the photon being massless again? Please remind me, although something tells me that the very definition of a "plug in the numbers" question that relies upon the photon being massless isn't going to be overthrowing that dastardly scientific orthodoxy that the photon is massless.

I'd say that's an excellent start. But to be fair, couldn't Sept 11 be considered a piece of history we don't want to repeat either?

Given that the quotes coming out of the CIA suggest that 9/11 was facilitated by the White House's political goal of ignoring Osama Bin Laden (possibly to prove Clinton wrong, if you think back to the late 90's then when it wasn't Lewinsky it was laughing at him for taking some no-name from the middle east as a serious threat), I don't think we have sufficient evidence to demonstrate that the Patriot Act would have changed anything.

Principles of this country, constitutional rights and liberties, will of the people, yadda, yadda, yadda. I have seen it all, but the fact remains that when the gun was placed at YOUR senators' heads

I don't think Cambridgeshire has a senator. I could be wrong of course. We have some MPs though.

The only people making a big deal of it are not the people, but rather defense lawyers, conscientous judges, and the wrongfully accused, oh and yeah, candidates trying to glean a few extra votes.

And the ACLU, and other civil liberty supporting type chaps.

The internal contradiction you make here is hilarious, by the way. "People don't care about it, therefore candidates are trying to glean a few extra votes by opposing it". Does that make the slightest bit of sense to anyone?

Either way, could you point out which of those (lawyer, judge, wrongfully accused, candidate) I am, and the other people criticising it on this forum are?

Have I wandered into defenselawyerforums.net by mistake?

Otherwise, what should they be afraid of? It all comes down to the same thing.

"The innocent have nothing to hide" is bollocks, even ignoring the fact that they should be allowed to hide it. I take it learning from history isn't your greatest ability?

I'd say you should start by looking at the McCarthy witch-hunts.

Have we not already forgotten what led us to these circumstances? Is it out of cowardice? No, it's called prevention. How many terrorists has it thwarted? The numbers are there, all because of this act.

How many terrorist attacks had there been on the US before the Patriot Act that it would have stopped?

I know, it's unconstitutional. So what. If our founding fathers knew what we would face today, don't you think they would say, "By all means, fix it." Or we just do things the old way, and let half of them carry on.

Jefferson especially would be horrified at the entire US political system right now. It's all far too right wing for him (damn Taft)

Maybe Mr. Budding Einstein can work this lot out for everyone (and prove that his namesake was mistaken in claiming the opposite to the above, rather unfounded but otherwise emphatic statement)

This doesn't work as a rhetorical construct, because you introduce referring to me as "Mr Budding Einstein" and then mock me for it in the same sentence.

Unless, of course, he would rather put the photoelectric effect in the "blah blah" tray?

This doesn't work as an argument because photons have momentum without having mass, which you would know if you looked at E² = m²c⁴ + p²c². Talking about them having mass is meaningless.

You cannot use E = mc² for light because it's E_rest = m_restc², and it is impossible to get a photon at rest.

This has to be one of the most substantive physics conversations in the history of humankind. Wow... It's almost too much to grasp with all this proof and support of each differing position.

It's not exactly non-orthodox to say that there are other forms of energy than photons (the other gauge bosons, for a start) and the number of arguments recently over whether the photon has mass (it doesn't) meant that I didn't think justifying the point by referring to E² = m²c⁴ + p²c² being the correct equation (as opposed to E = mc²) again would be productive.