Personally I believe there are 2 sides to almost any story, including this one.

There is some evidence to suggest that any monopoly privilege grant, such as patents, will be expanded with time. The benefits to owning monopoly privileges are concentrated amongst the few owners, while the costs of being excluded are diffuse amongst the population at large. Under those conditions, the political incentive will be to expand monopoly rights, regardless of the current state of those rights. The reason is that it pays the benefactors to lobby congress, whereas it's a net loss to individuals to do so, even when they win.

Although it's in a different area, copyrights instead of patents, no doubt this explains why the copyright expiration has been repeatedly extended.

~Loyal

Godel's theories on undecidable propositions only hold within the formal systems within which they are created.

That's not correct. As I tell DMUTPeregrine above, Gödel's First Incompleteness Theorem applies to any sufficiently strong logical system. I go on to tell him that "sufficiently strong" turns out not to be very strong at all. If you're curious, then you can read what I posted to him to get more information.

There exist perfectly valid ways to decide these kinds of propositions outside the formal system.

Quite true. Unfortunately those other logic systems are also either incomplete or inconsistent. It seems hardly worth saying that proving one incomplete or inconsistent logic system using another incomplete or inconsistent logic system is a mighty thin reed to place your faith in.

Do you actually understand why what you are asserting is false, or is it OK to mock you for your ignorance?

No, I don't. I suppose it's OK to mock me for my ignorance. While you're doing that, would you care to explain why what I'm asserting is false? I'm eager to get rid of my ignorance.

~Loyal

There are true statements that can't be proved ("I love you") and false statements that can't be disproved ("there is an invisible massless flying teapot orbiting the Earth").

So, if I understand correctly, you are going to a great deal of effort to convince me that you believe things that have no proof?

~Loyal

Yes, you may mock me for the indescribable truths that exist that I don't believe in.

Well, I wasn't really discussing indescribable truths. Is your offer also open for describable truths?

Please enumerate them explicitly that I may learn from your wisdom as you taunt me.

Strangely, there are an infinite number of them, making them non-enumerable. That's beside the point, really, though. You stated that you didn't believe in anything that was without proof. I showed that there exists a thing that's true, but that cannot be proven, and gave you a link where you could find more information. The ineluctable conclusion is that there exists something that's true, and in which you don't believe it's true. Now, if I have made a logical error, I would invite you to show me where it is.

Proving the existence of god is not a matter of untangling the limitations of some arbitrary linguistic system,

Wow! That's an extraordinary claim! Do you have some proof that it's true? What am I saying! Of course you have proof that it's true. You already told me that you don't believe in anything without proof. Would you be willing to share that proof with me?

~Loyal

The first incompleteness theorem applies only to formal systems. There are accepted methods of proof outside of such formal systems.

Actually, no. Gödel's First Incompleteness Theorem applies to any "sufficiently strong system." As it turns out, "sufficiently strong" isn't very strong at all. Your logic system merely has to have the ability to describe the natural numbers, it has to have addition, it has to be able to associate numbers (for example, to have the pair (2,-1)), and that's about all. If your logic system has those abilities, then it has true statements in it that can never be proven within the system.

~Loyal

It is OK to mock Christians, and anyone else who believes in things they cannot prove.

Perhaps you are unaware of the fact that Gödel's First Incompleteness theorem proved that there exist true statements that may never be proven. So that suggests a question: Do you disbelieve true things, or is it OK to mock you?

~Loyal

actual meatspace storefront .... Please.

actually using the word "meatspace" and you're *not* a character in a bad 90's era cyberpunk novel? ...Please.

The Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment renders all of your hypotheticals moot. The point - which you got just fine but skipped over - is that federal treaties and law trump state laws. Not that the feds can do whatever they want by signing a treaty.

How very strange. So, you're saying that the constitution (in this case the 14th amendment to it) trumps treaties. And since Article 1 Section 4 gives the manner of elections to the States, that treaties cannot override that? So the attorney general was still right?

~Loyal

Yes, his state's laws mean jack and shit in comparison to agreement made by the US with the OCSE. It's this thing called the "Supremacy Clause". Abbott is waving his dick around to grandstand and nothing more.

How very strange. So, you're saying that if the Federal Government made an agreement with the OCSE that people who register Republican cannot vote, then they couldn't? Or if they made one that said that only Christians could vote, then no one else could? Of if they made one that said that only opponents of abortion could vote, then that's the way it would be? How very strange.

~Loyal

They therefore invite observers from any other CSCE participating States and any appropriate private institutions and organizations who may wish to do so to observe the course of their national election proceedings, to the extent permitted by law.

Let me see if I understand what you're saying. By treaty, the CSCE can observe the election to the extent permitted by law. By law, observers cannot maintain a presence within 100 feet of a polling place. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has warned the CSCE not to maintain a presence within 100 feet of a polling place. So...The AG is right?

~Loyal

No you cannot prove a negative assertion.

Why should I believe that you cannot prove a negative assertion?

~Loyal

If you don't believe in abortion, don't have one.

Substitute "a slave" for "abortion" and you have some insight into how Pro-Life voters feel.

The idea that a black African was a "person" with rights equal to his white owner was as crazy to half the country a few hundred years ago as the notion that an unborn child has rights equal to her mother is to half the country today.

Who knows? Maybe in a few hundred years someone who survived a third-trimester abortion will grow up to be President and vindicate the millions who were killed in utero, the way Obama vindicated his slave ancestors? Wouldn't that be lovely?

D00d, you wrote a 2000+ word essay -- on a Slashdot Blog! -- complaining about how the practical applications of Transporter Beams weren't effectively realized on Star Trek (Which is fictional, by the way. FYI)

You're, like, The Uber-Geek. The ur-Nerd.

I got the same weird mixed feelings of respect and mockery reading that essay that is usually reserved for when I see pictures of some Steampunk Cosplay Guy who's built a working jetpack. Over nights and weekends for the past three years.

Well done, Sir! I think...

The Black Geary Books, as fans often refer to them, are "officially" known as the "Lost Fleet" books by Jack Campbell.

The first one is "The Lost Fleet: Dauntless." I believe there is a total of six in the series. He followed that series up with further Black Jack adventures in the now-ongoing series "The Lost Fleet: Beyond The Frontier."

The Amazon Link: http://amzn.to/R2vhfI

The neatest thing I found about the series (other than all the geometry), is that Black Jack -- a war hero revived after 100 years in stasis -- is the reverse-type to the trope of Ancient Badass Warrior Travels to Future and Kicks Soft Pasty-White Butts Living in Luxury Too Long. In Geary's "relative future," he is the Enlightened Man, using sophisticated naval tactics no longer taught at Academy because the peeps of that relative future are so angry and beaten down by a century of war that all they want to do is just ram their ships into the enemy and rip out their opponents' lungs with their teeth.

But I also enjoy reading pure Mathematics texts.

The Black Jack books are the first ones I've ever read since the "Choose Your Own Adventure" series where I felt the need to keep a pen and paper nearby. Half the time it seems that Black Jack wins his engagements because he knows how to use a protractor and his opponents don't...