Re: good news for my PhD

[Graham Percival]

On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 04:24:30PM +0100, Valentin Villenave wrote:
> 2009/3/18 Graham Percival <address@hidden>:
> 
> > I've been offered a scholarship to do my PhD at the University of
> > Glasgow, which I'm of course eagerly accepting.  I'll be starting
> > in Sep or Oct.
> 
> Oh dear, I take it you didn't fall for Singapore :)

The temperature is 20 degrees (Celcius) too high, and the sun is
present about 400% too much.  I figure that Glasgow weather is
just about perfect for the amount of cold rain I like.  :)

> > If I don't produce any copyrightable source code, then its
> > ownership can't be in question, right?)
> 
> Josh is right, this sentence doesn't really make sense.

Nonsense.  "If I do not produce any copyrightable source code" is
true if I produce source code which is not copyrightable, OR if I
do not produce any source code.

I believe that source code is only un-copyrightable if it's done
for a certain kinds of US government contract.  (there's some law
about government materials being public domain, although that
obviously doesn't apply to everything that the government funds
indirectly)
Granted, this case is confusing.

But in this case of me not produce any source code at all?  I
think it's pretty obvious that the resulting source code isn't
copyrightable.  Of course, given the way that logical implication
works, the resulting source code *is* copyrightable.  And the
resulting source code is made of blue cheese.  And not-blue
cheese.  And it also means that the present King of France is bald.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_descriptions


That's the fun thing about logical implication.  A false premise
logically implies any conclusion, even impossible ones.

> > I thought it would be neat to argue with
> > Valentin face-to-face.  :)
> 
> Three words:
> 
> Bring
> 
> it
> 
> on.

Yeah?  Well INSERT HIGH-BROW INTELLECTUAL TRASH TALK HERE.


Mao, my five years of philosophy courses were well-spent.  :)

Cheers,
- Graham