Posts by Vincent Archer

France says 'Oui!' to three strikes for music pirates

Re: Nothing to hide, nothing to fear?

"I accuse you of murder

I accuse you of murder

I accuse you of murder.

Now, off to gaol for life, matey boy."

Execpt it's not "off to gaol". It's a lesser sentence. That's the pernicious, seductive part of the law: they downgraded the sentences (the "graduated response") in an effort to move them from the normal burden of proof that apply to the criminal offenses.

If the above was true, then you wouldn't get disconnected. You'd get 150.000€, 2 years in jail, and all of your computer equipment seized. 3 strikes, and off to jail you go. But that would really require a judge, so, instead they do a "graduated response" (read: a penalty that's low enough it "shouldn't" require a judge who would insist on the burden of proof).

(yes, the above is what you should get for piracy according to the pre-existing laws)

NASA unveils green science commune dream

Where do they recruit their sheriff?

I mean, "Eureka" needs its sheriff. Otherwise, it's not good enough.

Boffin: Earthlike worlds within 30 lightyears of here

Re: SWAG

"Any theory that proposes a significant number of 'advanced' civilisations in the galaxy must find a plausible method of dealing with Fermi's paradox:"

The plausible method is known. And simple. And depressing: 'advanced' civilisations do not last very long.

Fermi's question (it's only a paradox if you start from the totally unfounded assumption that intelligent life is common. If you admit that it's unfounded, the paradoxical part vanishes) has two basic answers: Either intelligent technic civilisations are extremely rare, or they don't last long.

An arxiv paper a few weeks ago gave an upper bound: if an advanced civilisation lasts 1000 year before vanishing (as "advanced civilisation", we're still at a bit less than a century), then there are less than 350 advanced civilisations in the galaxy.

Vatican endorses Darwin, slights intelligent design

Re: Darwing got it very wrong...

"Why are humans two legged when most animals have more!"

Actually, evolution answers this one very nicely (note that we're still "badly" two-legged and suffer from chronic spinal problems from this fact - but none of those are sufficient to further evolution that way), just like why social primates developped intelligence rather than the loner sloths.

(in case you are wondering - one of the primary reasons we developped intelligence is that smarter apes were a lot better at tracking who was whom among the social primate clans, which led the smart ones to exploit better this to do the deed. Plus a couple of other evolutionary pushes. Being smarter wouldn't help the sloth score one on saturday evenings)

Re: Yes, of course you did...

"Now thats definitely a theory to rival the years of travelling in steamy, malaria-infested jungles, collecting and writing that Darwin and Wallace did before they came up with their theories."

Note that Darwin didn't figure out the idea that selection created new species. Any farmer of the previous two or three millenia knew that already. What he figured out is that, apparently, what farmers did, Nature did also, and figured out why she would do so; hence the term Natural Selection.