I think the general program of categorical logic, the work of Lambek and Scott, and J. Bell on topos theory and local set theory really make clear the relationship between category theory and logic, as well as lambda calculus.
A topos is essentially a cartesian closed category with a subject classifier. In Set this is the two element set of 1/0 which is a Boolean algebra and thus the internal logic of the category Set is classical.
In general though the subobject classifier is a heyting algebra which expresses the semantics of intuitionistic logic.
There is also a very good, but introductory, book by Goldblatt on Topoi that covers this logical aspect
So in terms of logics the category of Sets is the exception.
By internal logic I mean that for every topos one builds up a theory using it's objects and function between them. An equivalence theorem (see J. Bell) states that a given topos is essentially equal to the category generated by this internal theory.
This program began with Lawvere who noticed that conjunction and implication were really adjoints, the same one as between the product and hom functors in a cartesian closed category.
> Of course a problem was that in 1984 the modern importance of free software wasn't really apparent.
Perhaps it wasn't apparent widely, but it was certainly clear to MSFT and IBM. IBM lawyers at the time refused to allow RMS to come speak at the Watson lab where I worked, because of his ideas about free software.
Thanks for the link - that puts quite a different perspective on those events. I had the luck to get to know Dan Weinreb during the International Lisp Conference 2009 in Boston - great guy.
It should be too surprising as it took place at the MIT, but many of the founders of Lisp were present. Dan, Guy Steele, Richard Gabriel, JonL White, and so many more. It was really inspiring.
Interestingly, though the ILC is a conference about all flavous of Lisp and its applications, RMS wasn't attending the conference.
According to Bloomberg, margin requirements are going to be quite high in order to keep bitcoin trading from creating issues.
If you can trade bitcoin futures in Chicago, to me that says regulation is coming, and even central bank involvement. Seems to go against the grain of what bitcoin pretends to be about.
Yes and no. The (delightfully named) bitdiddle may have a point.
Although the CME futures will be cash settled so Bitcoin will not be directly involved, it's not clear what would happen if there was evidence of price manipulation.
For example, if there is an anomalous spike on a stock exchange around the time of the futures mark, this is always investigated.
If a similar thing occurred on, say, GDAX (which will be included in the benchmark), it's not clear what that would trigger. It's possible that the answer is nothing (there are futures on Libor after all) but it doesn't require much tinfoil to see this as a possible point of attack.
My point is that, just because the futures are not directly linked to Bitcoin, they can still have a direct effect.
And I'm not suggesting that they're listing futures in order to attack Bitcoin. I have no reason to believe that.
However, it is notoriously hard to prove general price manipulation. It is much easier, and more common, to prove specific price manipulation. In practice this usually means an extraordinary anomaly e.g. a flash crash or a targeted anomaly. The latter is almost always due to a specific event such as a rate setting or a close price.
#2. Exactly, seems to me an academic kind of thing, he helped them a lot, a little attribution would not have hurt, and the lawyers could have easily been told to pipe down.
#3. It does offer the maximum freedom to some potential users, but no responsibilities to extend those freedoms to others. In my opinion this is why the GPL truly extends the maximum amount of freedom to everyone, users, lusers, abusers, and just plain old hackers.
>
#2. Exactly, seems to me an academic kind of thing, he helped them a lot, a little attribution would not have hurt, and the lawyers could have easily been told to pipe down.
The BSD license used by MINIX 3 requires attribution:
"The MINIX 3 license is a clone of the Berkeley (BSD) license. In plain English, it says you can do whatever you like with the system provided that (1) you agree not to sue us under any conditions, and (2) you keep the credit lines in the source, documentation, and publicity unless other arrangements have been made. Specifically, you are free to modify the source code, redistribute it, incorporate it into commercial products with only the above restrictions."
Hackers have problems understanding this kind of "vanity issues" (I also openly admit that I have difficulties).
I am not aware that Intel gave any credit that is visible to the end-users of their processors (otherwise I would surely have seen it, since my laptop has a Skylake processor - so it uses MINIX 3). I am also not aware that my laptop included a leaflet that mentioned MINIX 3 somewhere.
So my assumption rather is that Intel's lawyers reached an agreement with the license holders of MINIX 3 that they don't have to give credit (which is perfectly fine - even the quote in my parent post mentions this possibility). But if they did such an agreement they said that it is perfectly fine to them (in particular for Andrew S. Tanenbaum) that Intel does not credit them publicly. I thus consider it as rather unfair to complain when such an agreement exists, because one typically does not demand such an agreement if one plans to credit them nevertheless.
So I rather believe what happened is this: Intel came to the MINIX 3 developers to get them to sign such an agreement, which allows Intel not to give attribution. Andrew S. Tanenbaum signed it, because it sounded too good to be true and gave MINIX 3 some very renowned key customer. But he did not consider that this might put MINIX 3 into very common use without any users being aware of it. So he "suddenly" realized the loophole of this agreement and now considers himself treated unfairly.
Trusts and LLCs out the ass. Legal entities within legal entities within legal entities, held offshore in some cases, and so on. Personally, I literally don't hold a single titled property in my own name, and never will.
Talk to a lawyer and don't follow this blindly. In most cases, this is a bad idea and Family LLCs, entities within entities, offshore trusts or corporations, and other such things in estate planning often border on scams themselves. A very simple living trust that holds assets, with instructions on what happens if you become disabled is probably most of the protection that the vast majority of people need (disclaimer: this is not legal advice, I am not a lawyer).
disclaimer: this is not legal advice, I am not a lawyer
Just curious since this keeps coming up. Why would people add these IANAL disclaimers, especially on an anonymous forum?
I would assume that if you wanted to stand out as a lawyer in a discussion you would have to explicitly announce yourself to be one and because this is internet most people still wouldn't believe you (even if you really were a lawyer). I cannot fathom how would that go the other way around.
Disclaiming that "I'm not a lawyer" sounds a bit like an introduction to a string of other disclaimers, as in me not being a medical doctor, CS professor, airline pilot, or law enforcement official either.
Is there a court case where someone took, out of thin air, someone else's word as if he was a lawyer while he wasn't and never said he was, suffered some losses because of it, and actually won in court? Or what's the reason for adding the IANAs?
> Why would people add these IANAL disclaimers, especially on an anonymous forum
I would imagine it's partly a courtesy ("You should take this with a grain of salt") and partly a CYA ("Under no circumstance should you take this as legal advice, nor sue me for giving bad legal advice, etc").
I think it's a reaction to lawyers posting "I am a lawyer; I am not your lawyer; this in not legal advice", presumably as some part of explicit or implicit professional ethical or legal obligation, plus the typical "IANAL" disclaimer that frees the poster from a bunch of wasteful hedging and qualification in the rest of their post by setting expectations at the beginning. It's the reasonable "IANAL" merging with negation of the maybe-also-reasonable disclaimer actual lawyers use, to form a less-reasonable mix of the two.
[EDIT] probably also part of a US thing about constant over-disclaiming and posting rules/regulations everywhere, which I gather is really weird and makes us come off as kinda repressed from the perspective of people from other countries, even those from the more repressive variety. I don't know, I'm American and going on the reactions I've read of foreign world travelers to Americans' love of basically-useless posted quasi-legal language on seemingly every flat surface, and poles where flat surfaces aren't available.
It's shorthand for "you should be consulting a real lawyer about this, instead of taking a layperson's uninformed and unprofessional advice on the Internet, but here's my opinion on it anyway."
I am not a lawyer, but I think the amount of corporate shell games and fictitious entities should be proportional to the amount of money at stake in the estate.
If grandma has $300k left to her name, and can still fry her own eggs every morning, then a boilerplate last will, durable power of attorney, and medical plan from a strip mall estate planning lawyer is probably enough to keep the wolves and vultures at bay long enough to sound the alarums.
If grandma still owns a profitable business in her own name, you're going to need to burn some billable hours from a pressed-suit type, and maybe register some new corporations or LLCs.
Most people can get it done with the strip mall lawyer, without trying anything fancy. The HN crowd has more money to protect than most people, so they're going to want the downtown high-rise lawyer. And if that person recommends anything that does not sound incredibly boring, commonplace, and tedious, you probably got the wrong guy, and need to walk to a different firm.
But since I am not a lawyer, I'd recommend re-titling everything worth cataloguing to a handful of New Mexico LLCs, as they do not require annual reports or disclosure of the principals, and get EINs for them via a nominee, so they won't show up in the cursory asset searches for your elder. The valuable assets would be divided up into separate legal baskets, so no one can come in and take everything in one swoop. Then you lease the property back to the former owner, from the LLC, with a "peppercorn rent"--essentially a gestural payment that can be easily made, so long as the lessee remains competent. So if anyone ever gets your elder declared incompetent, or if they die, anything worth stealing immediately reverts to a predetermined person's legal control. You have to assume that someone is watching your loved one circle the drain, with the intent of searching their pockets once they stop moving.
A topos is essentially a cartesian closed category with a subject classifier. In Set this is the two element set of 1/0 which is a Boolean algebra and thus the internal logic of the category Set is classical.
In general though the subobject classifier is a heyting algebra which expresses the semantics of intuitionistic logic.
There is also a very good, but introductory, book by Goldblatt on Topoi that covers this logical aspect
So in terms of logics the category of Sets is the exception.
By internal logic I mean that for every topos one builds up a theory using it's objects and function between them. An equivalence theorem (see J. Bell) states that a given topos is essentially equal to the category generated by this internal theory.
This program began with Lawvere who noticed that conjunction and implication were really adjoints, the same one as between the product and hom functors in a cartesian closed category.