Slashdot Mirror

"Re: Aspirin. You may be right"

Bayer lost Aspirin to Sterling Drug after WW1. It was owned by Sterling Drug when it became a generic term. So both are right. Aspirin was a genericized trademark, but that's not how Bayer lost it.

More examples of genericized trademarks.

According to FCC rules, all television broadcasting in the United States by current full power broadcasters on channels 2-51 will by 2006 be digital, thereby rendering reception by all current analog receivers via antenna over the air reception obsolete. Current analog TV sets would still work with cable or satellite service or with a converter box that would convert digital OTA signals to analog. The FCC ruled in August 2002 that all TV sets with screens of at least 36 inches must have digital tuners by July 2004, while the requirement for smaller sets would be phased in over the following three years.

Just in case somebody doesn't get it: http://urbanlegends.about.com/cs/historical/a/jfk_ berliner.htm and also http://www.campusprogram.com/reference/en/wikipedi a/i/ic/ich_bin_ein_berliner.html

The "recent study" (1991, Knud Lassen & Eigil Friis-Christensen of the Danish Meteorological Institute in Copenhagen) on the effects of cosmic radiation is not that recent after all .
One of the scientist who conducted that study into the effects of cosmic radiation on the earths temperature (Knud Lassen) more recently (2000) updated that study. He and another scientist that worked with him on the updated study came to the conclusion that cosmic radiation alone cannot explain the earths temperature changes in recent decades (since about 1980) ..."Something else is acting on the climate. ... It has the fingerprints of the greenhouse effect" .

Have a look.

http://www.campusprogram.com/reference/en/wikipedi a/g/gl/global_warming.html#The%20solar%20variation %20theory

All planets (and moons) have magnetic fields.

Actually, that's not true at all. Among the objects that don't generate a real, structured magnetic field, we have Venus, The Moon , Io, Europa, and Mars. Of course, *why* some planets have fields and some don't is still up in the air (rotation of the Earth's core generates our magnetic field, or so it is assumed, and yet Mercury, which almost certainly has a solid core, possesses a planetary magnetosphere).

" So they didn't need the income before the war?"
It's called taxes, those things that governments use to get money

I expect that at least one or two of the exiles from Nazi-controlled states would be classed as 'hackers' by the modern definition.

--

I expect that at least one or two of the exiles from Nazi-controlled states would be classed as 'hackers' by the modern definition.

--

The only reason our friend would have trouble addressing those arguments would be if he was undereducated in the sciences himself.

Where, unfortunately, "undereducated" means we think anything which breaches our a priori assumptions about the nature of the universe is dumb.

By that standard, most people, most scientists are "undereducated". For the longest time geology avoided anything that smelled of catastrophism, paleontology avoided anything that smelled of a flood, and astronomy avoided anything that smelled of structure.

For good scientific reasons? Not a bit of it. Because they were afraid of being labelled as one of the enemy, those insidious creationists, and ostracised like J Harlan Bretz was for 40 years.

A very highly qualified scientists have been brave enough to state outright that they are not impartial, like Richard Lewontin and his famous "cannot let a Divine Foot in the door" statement, but they are the exception.

The result in each of the above cases was that the science in question was held back by decades.

Meanwhile, one D Russell Humphreys had made some fairly specific predictions (in 1984) about the magnetic fields Voyager would find in the outer planets, which turned out to be both bang on the money and well wide of any other expectations when those fields were measured two years after publication. One of the more spectacular demonstrations that this "alien" and "impossible" perspective has predictive, scientific merit.

Anyone wondering why more such papers don't appear in the mainstream scientific press need only turn to the furor which exploded when the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington published a carefully peer-reviewed paper from well-known Intelligent Design advocate, Stephen C. Meyer. The then-editor, Dr. Richard M. v. Sternberg (a double PhD with many published articles himself), goes to great lengths on his website to explain that every positive scientific and journalistic step of the process was followed for the paper and had been independently verified and approved by highly qualified scientists before publication.

It is quite clear that the paper is being criticised on political/philosophical grounds, not because of any scientific merit or demerit.

The Origins show is based on philosophy, not on science. This is well and good except that it is presented as being purely based on science.

I need hardly point out that such misrepresentation is in itself unscientific, a meta-flaw under which to group all of the unscientific teleological statements about features "appearing" (ex nihilo, apparently) and organisms having "figured out" and "striving" to achieve "goals" without any guiding hand. Nevertheless, it will go ahead, and millions of viewers will be taught that random numbers have hidden intelligence and/or miracle-working ability which repeatedly transcends mere statistics, and introduced once more to a capricious goddess who goes by the name of Nature - all the while suffering the constantly asserted doublethink mantra that there is no supernature.

Meanwhile, back at Reasons , Hugh has had the more obvious inconsistencies and contradictions among his theories publicly pointed out to him

There has to be a cut off somewhere. Otherwise think of all the candidates that would be on the stage. Along with the Greens and Libertarians, you would also have the Constitution Party, the Natural Law Party, Reform Party, and a whole shitload of others including the Communists, Prohibitionists, Nazis (I know a certain troll who would love them), etc. In fact, anyone with a cause could start up their own party and demand a right to stand on that stage.

Why not link Windpower to something like the Ffestiniog Pumped Water Power Station in Wales. Off peak, the station pumps water back into the resevoir, then lets it flow during peak times. Now with a bunch of Wind Power stations putting power into the National Grid, you could use places like Ffestiniog to "store" that power by pumping water back into its resevoir.

Babbage had plenty of patrons in his day. If you read more about his life, you'll find he spent 12 years building the Difference engine, before scrapping it. In his mind it was too specific to the problem at hand, calculating tables for polynomials for the Royal Astronomical Society.

Just as NIST does, the RAS had high hopes for the project that ultimately went overbudget and never completed (until recently, on a whim). Ultimately, I think QC will suffer a similar fate, as its designers slowly realize how they might be able to build a general QC framework.

IIRC correctly during the Apollo 11 landing they actually passed the "no-abort" point at about 60 seconds of fuel, when they were simply too low for a successful ascent stage abort.

OI isn't really that critical timewise unless you have to hit *precisely* the orbit you want; a few seconds either way (and there often was during the lunar missions even with the computer running things) meant merely that your orbit would have a few miles or tens of miles discrepancy in perigee/apogee, correctable with a short burn.

The Saturn rockets were pretty reliable wrt to launch windows, but as I recall with the Atlas and Redstone they often couldn't predict exactly how long the rocket would fire sometimes not even to tens of seconds; but they still achieved the trajectories they wanted. So it couldn't have been *that* critical.

De-orbiting to splashdown, now, that's a different matter, a few seconds difference in retrofire and you could under or overshoot your splashdown target by tens of miles. :) But then that's because after the retros were jettisoned they had little maneuverability, which wasn't true with LM deorbit.

Given that the Polynesians didn't have clocks (or sextants) they did most of their navigating using dead reckoning and knowledge of their local environment; which shows just how much they understood the local winds and their ability to move their rafts. ( * see below)

Without a clock determining longitude accurately was extremely difficult. One could approximate the time using star set/rise times and seasonal charts, but with the distortion near the horizon causing enormous errors in the actual location of the star, and especially given the inaccuracy of the charts at the time, this was pretty much a crap shoot.

Sextants are certainly incredible! While in college I had the opportunity to learn to use a modern one (with a sun filter) and on my first few tries I located the longitude of the observatory at SCSU to within 14 minutes of arc; not especially astounding by modern standards (see the link below), but astonishing given the basic simplicity of the device and my inexperience.

I didn't know that about the MN NW Angle, do you have a ref? Fascinating!

* There is a good piece available about the Polynesians and modern navigation here

Cheers,
SB

until they realized that in some of the local languages the name means "won't go".

Sigh. Five years of lurking, and now I've got to post about this...hopefully, this will give a little context to people who aren't familar with the incident or aren't from the area or even from the US. In the final analysis, people see in it the things that they want to see, like Koresh and Waco. This posting is long and could use some editting, but if you don't like it you can ask /. for your money back.

IANAME: I Am Not A MOVE Expert.

Quickie Personal Background:
I've lived in or near Philadelphia all of my life.

At the time, my German grandmother did recieve telephone calls from relatives in the old country asking why "the mayor of Philadelphia was bombing the city". This "bombing" is true, in a sense, but not in the way most people would imagine such a bombing.

The May 13th, 1985 incident occurred in the "West Philadelphia" district, which is only a few miles from my school (Drexel University, class of '89) in the city's "University City" district. IIRC, while driving to school that morning (while sitting in traffic on Woodhaven Road, actually) I heard news of a firefight between the police and MOVE. Later that afternoon, while at school, I saw smoke from that area of the city. In other words, this was a day long event and it was the culmination of years of antagonism between MOVE, it's neighbors and the police.

What is MOVE, exactly?
MOVE is essentially a back to nature group. For some reason, they chose to go back to nature in the middle of one of the USA's largest cities. They also had a penchant for annoying their neighbors to the point where the cops would be called in.

There seems to be a reasonable (Though I think that Mumia (yes, *that* Mumia) was convicted in the death of a different police officer, not Ramp. Perhaps I've got my murders mixed up.) synopsis of what MOVE is about here http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/Mo ve.html

So, what happened?
An earlier altercation between MOVE and the police occurred in 1978 in an area called "Powelton Village". This incident resulted in the fatal shooting of a police officer named James Ramp. (Incidentally, Powelton is near Drexel's dorms, fraternity houses and student apartments.)

After the 1978 incident, the MOVE house at Powelton Village was razed. It had been heavily damaged but it has been argued that razing the house was mere payback/revenge to/on MOVE. MOVE relocated to Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia and proceeded with the same behaviors that lead up to the first confrontation. I'm not quite old enough to remember the 1978 incident, so I'll leave it at that.

There seems to be a reasonable synopsis of the MOVE incidents here
http://www.campusprogram.com/reference/en/wikipedi a/m/mo/move.html

My recollection of the 1985 incident:
I clearly recall that the TV news had stated that firemen were kept away initially because they were fired on. I don't see why the firemen would be kept away from the fire for several hours. The fire eventually destroyed 60+ homes in the area. That section of the city is densely built, so there are many two- or three-story homes on each block. I don't think that the city government would have been so blinded by MOVE-hatred to purposefully destroy 60+ homes, the majority of which would have been owned by people who where not sympathetic of MOVE.

The "bomb" is alternatively described as designed to destroy a "bunker" or fortification on the roof of the building or as a distraction/ruse. Police today often use "flash-bang" devices to stun or disorient people in siege or hostage situations. This device was much more powerful than a flash-bang and used a military grade explosive (C4 or some similar plastic explosive, IIRC).

I recall that police were present in a building with a wall common to the MOVE house and

You are talking about NASA's older plan; I am talking about Mars Direct. I am not arguing that costs have decreased; only that better mission plans exist. What has advanced is not the technology or the financial situation, but the plan.

The reason I say your figures are out of date is that (unless I misunderstand) they come from the 90-day report of ca. 1989/90. Since then, NASA has itself considered Zubrin's Mars Direct plan and adopted based on it the "Mars Design Reference Mission," with costs about twice that of Mars Direct (so, 40 billion dollars). Reference here. I found the Design Reference Mission plan document itself in .gov but could not find the official estimates; the plan itself breaks down by percentage but not dollars.) So as you can see, costs of 400-500 billion dollars are way off.

And there is no need for a moon base before we go to Mars. This is part of the foundation of Mars Direct.

I encourage you to get ahold of the book A Case For Mars, which lays out the Mars Direct (though only at layman-level detail). Even NASA does not now believe Mars will take 400-500 billion dollars.

More references:

A design reference mission based on Zubrin's proposal, but considerably scaled up in personnel and equipment landed on Mars, was costed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who estimated the cost at around $50 billion for three missions. (emphasis added)

It was essentially a compromise between Mars Direct and the Ninety Day Report, and became known as the Reference Mission. A cost estimate even emerged from the Reference Mission design: $55 billion.

They then produced a cost estimate for what a Mars exploration program based upon this expanded Mars Direct would cost. Their result; $50 billion, with the estimate produced by the same costing group that assigned a $400 billion price tag to the traditional cumbersome approach to human Mars exploration embodied in NASA's 1989 "90 Day Report."

Mars Direct homepage

My rant Friday on the subject (I was hot about this issue at the time; still am, though I've cooled off somewhat)

given that the Cygwin project was founded by Red Hat

No, Cygwin was written by Cygnus Solutions which was purchased by Red Hat.

given that the Cygwin project was founded by Red Hat

No, Cygwin was written by Cygnus Solutions which was purchased by Red Hat.

I noticed this too, but after a bit of googling I found out probably why it's not on that list:

Source
An electronic musical instrument is a musical instrument that produces its sounds using electronics. In contrast, the term electric instrument is used to mean instruments whose sound is produced mechanically, and only amplified electronically - for example an electric guitar.

Can anyone point to a single free software worm that auto propagated?

Depending upon how loose you are with the term free, The Great Worm might qualify: it attacked BSD, which while not "free" at the time WAS shared source and is an ancestor to one of the titans of Free Software. Yes, MS is more exploitable than FOSS; but that's not an absolute.

Physiological only. You do not actually get true yellow mixing red and green.

Here's a quick link for reference.

You know what always cracks me up about these assertions that people "aren't allowed to talk" about certain things? It's this: if these assertions were true, then people would be put in jail for making them. Whenever you hear someone spout off about how freedom of speech is being suppressed, or how it's a fascist state, or how Bush = Hitler, ask yourself why that person isn't rotting behind bars or in an unmarked mass grave... and then ask yourself if it's just possible that that person might be full of shit and not worth your time and attention.

They won a Peabody award.

I don't think Cocoa can be called a new API. Cocoa is OpenStep (with a few extensions) which was developed many years ago by NeXT and Sun, based on the NeXTStep APIs.

Cocoa uses reference counting which is simpler and faster than true garbage collection

I don't think Cocoa can be called a new API. Cocoa is OpenStep (with a few extensions) which was developed many years ago by NeXT and Sun, based on the NeXTStep APIs.

Cocoa uses reference counting which is simpler and faster than true garbage collection

Can you elaborate? The only information I find regarding this "large island" only "300-500 feet" below the surface is The depth of water over the ridge is less than 2,700 m (8,900 ft) in most places, and several mountain peaks rise above the water, forming islands..

link

if we are not the primary reservoir of the disease, then it probably doesn't spread that easily among humans

We are not the primary reservoir of influenza. Or bubonic plague. Contrary to your statement, ebola is highly contagious. An antibiotic-resistant strain of bubonic plague would also be quite nasty. Mortality from bubonic plague is 50-90%

In any case, there is currently no known natural disease that would be capable of eradicating the majority of the population around the globe. Smallpox probably comes closest, but even it is "only" 30% fatal and we have known preventative measures.

I don't get your point. Are you saying that this makes natural diseases such as ebola, anthrax, and bubonic plague not a concern as bioterror weapons? From all accounts, previous pandemics of these diseases were pretty terrifying. Are or you suggesting that transgenic diseases are likely to have this property? This is far less likely than the accidental evolution of an epidemic disease. Expecting some protein from a different species to create a disease capable of wiping out the majority of the population is a bit like imagining that taking the carburetor of a Toyota and bolting it under the hood of a Ford will create a car capable of winning the Le Mans. The real threat of natural diseases is their genetic diversity. Even though the chances of any one mutant or hybrid having properties of high infectivity and mortality, natural diseases will have millions of variants, and the most infectious will propagate. A transgenic variant created by man would not have this property. People have been incorporating foreign genes into bacteria for decades. It is not a high containment activity. There is not a single known case of accidental creation of a dangerous disease.

And what's the harm of being careful? It doesn't take a lot of effort to destroy waste from biologial research.

There is no harm in being careful. But an exaggerated notion of risk is an impediment to progress. There is certainly some risk that the green stuff in the back of your refrigerator could create a global epidemic, but we don't call out the CDC to clean out refrigerators.

While creating antibiotics resistant bacteria is not nice, it is not a huge threat--even if we didn't have antibiotics at all, we'd be back in the 19th century; medically unpleasant, but not incompatible with civilized life.

I suggest that you read up on the Black Death. I'd say that "unpleasant" is a bit of an understatement.

you implicitly assume that the old techniques, selection, breeding, mutagenesis, etc., are "OK" and proven harmless because people have been using them for so long.

On the contrary, my point is as far as bioterror/biowarfare are concerned, these techniques are the greatest threat: they are easy, low tech, and have been proved to work.

Furthermore, we already know that the association with domesticated animals and the creation of new kinds of plants has had serious medical and environmental consequences.

However these are breeds that have experienced many generations of selection for health and survival, taking advantage of the genetic variability of natural populations. The ecological hazards of laboratory created species--genetically identical, not optimized for the presence of a foreign gene--are certain to be much less than the hazards posed by domesticated or geographically transposed natural species.

Yes, quite right: transgenic technology is a shortcut. It's a shortcut to let humans make things happen within a span of a few years that might otherwise take millions or even hundreds of millions of years to happen in the normal course of evolution, or even through directed breeding.

Or, when talking about short generation microorganisms, a few months.

This is some weird combination of revisionist history (the ancient Greeks knew about irrational numbers) and just plain making shit up (irrational means it can't be expressed as a ratio of integers). See Mathworld's definition of irrational number for one more credible, and more researched, version.

Imaginary numbers under a variety of names were discussed at least as early the 16th and 17th centuries and credible sources claim references back to the ancient Egyptians; this reference also says the term "imaginary" was in common use at the time of Descartes (though makes no reference in the online material as to who coined the term). Many less credible online sources place the name as coming from Descartes and claim it to be dergatory, but many of those sites appear to be copying from some common source of unknown origin. So, the guess that imaginary was derogatory may be correct.

I suppose one of four (calling the fact of the name and date of discovery each as guesses at the truth)possibly correct speculations isn't bad for just spewing stuff that sounds credible

Strange. I thought Mechanical Computing was in the past

Try again. Windows and GUIs existed since 1968. Next I suppose you'll try to tell us that Microsoft was the first to use the term "Word".

Now, if they are speaking figuratelly as the original creator of the kernel, that is one of the most documented things in history, or at least, in internet. Of course, maybe some of its components were created before, but is like saying that the father of the car in fact is someone from centuries ago with the invention of the wheel.

Here in the Netherlands PhD students are paid a net salary between 1500 and 2000 EUR net per month. Also, everybody speaks (some form of) english; it is the lingua franca of research here. For a list of universities see this list

Actually, several clues tend to prove a meteor isn't the cause of permian extinction. For instance, there should be a thin layer of irridium (or any other stuff) coming from the meteor or its explosion/impact, and laying on the ground after the blast... Also their proof about having found the meteor impact site doesn't seem very convincing.
Now, they need to explain why we don't find such clues, and they haven't done it yet.

For now, the only convincing scenario involves volcanism and oceanic methan tanks (methan is stored inside ocean, both dissolved and inside seabed).
Big volcanism activity in what is today Siberia (and there are proofs of it) increases mean temperature for about 5-10 C by producing greenhouse effect. Then with such increase, methan starts to evaporate from ocean, induces more greenhouse effect, and mean temperature goes up 5-10C more. At the same time, it kills life in the ocean.
That 10-20C increase in mean temperature is enough to kill 80% of species on the surface of the ground.
So that scenario explains everything better than the meteor theory.

Forgive my bad English... I think that this explanation could be found on some american scientific website, so feel free to post the link.
Oh, and you can find more info there