"Growing" is an assumption, not fact. Where is that sea ice coming from? Freezing new ice, or existing ice slipping off the continent, lubricated by melt waters? Which is more likely?

The IETF MMUSIC (Multiparty Multimedia Session Control) Working Group started working on Session Protocols in 1993.

Initial Internet drafts for a Session Invitation Protocol and a Simple Conference Invitation Protocol were prepared in 1996, and merged to a single first draft of SIP by December 1996 (slide 10), with further drafts (2-12) leading up to the publication of RFC 2543 in March of 1999 (slides 11-13, ibid.).

I don't see anything that says BT had a hand in anything to do with SIP up to 1996. More than half the patents BT claims (Exhibit C) were filed after RFC 2543 was published.

I hope this information is a useful starting point for some SIP vendor.

By coincidence I went to Stephen Hawking's lecture at Caltech last night, and one of the concepts he discussed was Feynman's "sum over histories" idea.

If the evolution of a stable universe requires the Higgs field to start out at a metastable point, and if variations in those initial conditions lead to universes which collapse rather than inflating, then "the amplitude" (i.e. the probability that they are the outcome that we turn up in) for those other states is zero. Why? Because those universes all collapse long before we could show up.

On the other hand, if Steinhardt is correct, then his result shows there is a path to here-and-now through the metastable point, and if that's what it takes to get here, then that's enough: that's what it takes. The amplitude of the entire wave function for the Steinhardt path is non-zero, unlike the functions for the ones that collapsed.

Thanks.

MBE stands for Member of the British Empire. It's the lowest of 5 ranks in the Order of the British Empire.

Why on earth do you think the banks were regulated in the first place? The 1933 Banking Act, aka Glass-Stegall, which separated retail banking and merchant banking, was introduced to stop the banks from runnig amok. What happened when that act was repealed? The banks ran amok again.

You know, you seem to be under the impression that recorded history began when you were born. The fact is it goes back considerably earlier. Where Regulation exists, it exists for a purpose, unrelated to your birth.

Next time you rhyme 'Neanderthalensis'
Leave that task to an amanuensis,
Or someone who doesn't sit on fences:
They'd just still need to know what your sense is.

"Brutal" is perhaps a little extreme: "Authoritarian" may be more appropriate.

I also have an anecdote. I moved to the US in 1994, and at one time, maybe I overstayed my visa-waiver, or maybe the I-94 was lost, either by me or the airline or US Immigration. In 1995 I got an H1-B and I've had a Green Card now for over 10 years. Every time since 9/11 it's a toss-up when I go through Immigration to enter the US whether the the DHS will Select me for Secondary Screening, even though I am a legal, documented immigrant, my papers are in order, and the only flag raised has to be a tiny one, at least 16 years old. And yes, it takes the goons an hour.

Do you think that corporations should be free to aggregate as much power over individuals as they possibly can, as they will if unregulated? Because that's an excellent way to maximise shareholder return on investment. Or is it possible that the problems of corporate tyranny would be just as bad as the problems of tyranny by the state?

You may be right: for example, the extremely wealthy backers of the MPAA and RIAA would simply pay top dollar to a platoon of mercenaries, who would level the data centers and murder everyone that provided the services. If there were still a DoJ and Court system, they would already have bought off all the prosecutors and judges. Case closed.
Or do you think this wouldn't happen under a Libertarian administration either? If so, what do you understand to be the Libertarian proposal for a system of justice?

Statistically, there is a good chance -- 99 to 1, in fact - that you are part of the 99%, like me. If we had gone to the General Assemblies, we could have set the direction: for decisions were arrived at by consensus, which means it takes no more than one "no" to stop the group from moving in a particular direction.

So if you object to the outcomes of the Occupy movement's meetings, then next time, show up. We're all invited.

plugh.

You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike.
There is Microsoft here.

Thank you so much for pointing out that it's the tail that wags the dog. Seriously, I thought it was the other way round, that the banks first lobbied for deregulation and then, when their irresponsible betting threatened to collapse the entire system, they effectively held the fate of the financial system to ransom until the government agreed to bail them out. And no, you can't nationalize the banks: that would interfere with the sacred operation of the Free Market!

Now I know I got it completely wrong. How naive of me. How short sighted. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

One of the things a fully developed police state needs to be able to do is control the flow of all information. You need a mechanism that can be used to identify who has been producing physical copies of banned works - say, a play by Vaclav Havel, or a copy of The Master and Margarita - so that you can lock them up.

What these printer companies have done, by collaborating with the US in this way, is to make it easier for police states to monitor and control the physical flow of information.

The invisible wizard of Islam is, historically, the invisible wizard of Abraham: the invisible wizards of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity are, as a matter of fact, one and the same.