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Here's the thing, she isn't real. This is a common BS comment, I'm really disappointed that no one recognized this for what it was, since it had no bearing on the article whatsoever. See here for more examples of this idiocy that people are, for some reason, taking as fact just because it says "From the article".

I did the calculation, after finding the details of the planet on the Kepler website. They don't have a mass value for 19b, just an upper limit at 14 earth masses. I just plugged in a value of 10 earth masses for my calculation, and I get 10^30 J, or about 200 zettatons of TNT equivalent, or enough energy to accelerate 3.6 billion pounds of bacon to the speed of the LHC beam.

i didnt 'admit' to anything. my argument has always been that games made in between 1990-2000 had defined almost EVERYthing in gaming today. moreover we are STILL running on exact same titles to the extent of probably half of the games produced every year being rehashes of them, and even more being based on what mechanics they brought.

http://www.google.com/search?q=long+running+game+franchises&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

appropriate link: http://www.google.com/search?q=woktenna

Direct link to the slides: https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fassets.en.oreilly.com%2F1%2Fevent%2F61%2FNetflix%2520Webkit-Based%2520UI%2520for%2520TV%2520Devices%2520Presentation.pptx

Yes because going to:
    http://www.google.com/privacy/ads/
and clicking on a button labelled "Opt out" is too damn hard.

Of course according to you Google wouldn't do this since it is their core business, right?

DNT is a nuclear weapon for honest companies, and a joke to be ignored for dishonest ones (it's like the famous Evil Bit). What is really needed is European-style privacy regulations (i.e. with actual teeth for bad actors), and a fine-grained permissions model on Websites (like iOS or Android has for apps).

No. iDrive is an abomination, and should never have been created. While there's something to be said for simple interfaces, I think there's a lot more to be said about using humans effectively. With an interface consisting of knob+button, muscle memory is no help at all because the whole thing requires visual queues to tell where you're at. (And while it can be argued that one doesn't necessarily need two hands on the wheel to drive safely, the same can't be said for eyeballs.)

With a small array of buttons for common functions, though, I don't have to look at or think about it before reaching my hand over and activating some widget or other.[1]

Instead, I mean one of these.

I don't really like the 7s anyway -- they're very cool machines, but they're just way too big for my taste, and their relative scarcity causes them to lack the awesome support community that surrounds the 3-series. So even if I could easily afford one, I doubt I'd buy one.

[1]: FWIW, I feel the same about professional mix consoles, and vastly prefer the limitations of an old analog board over the features and flexibility of a newfangled digital one. The former I can operate by feel without ever really looking at what I'm doing (which lets me pay attention to the stage), while the latter requires at least one hand and both eyes to get anything done.

    Yup. Well, not all that recently, it was back in 2005. http://www.snopes.com/photos/accident/gunsafety.asp. And of course, The Video.

    But a shot to the foot is far from winning a Darwin award.

You have never driven on 494 through Bloomington/Richfield in Minnesota during rush hour. I have seen people stop in their lane so that they can get over thus blocking traffic. Apparently the people who study traffic patterns have never seen people:
1. stop at the end of on ramps
2. stop in traffic so they can wait for an opening in the other lane wile the road in front of them is now open and clear now
3. cut across 3 lanes of traffic to get off on the ramp they are about to pass
4. ride the breaks
5. drive 10 to 15 mph under the speed limit when the weather is fine on a sunny summer day
6. drive 10 mph over the speed limit when the roads are covered in ice and snow
7. be unable to stay in their own damn lane (like they are drunk or need their phone shoved up their ass)
8. pass on the shoulders
9. drive the car like it has only 2 settings, speed up or slow down, my sister drives like this the car is either accelerating or slowing down even when there is not traffic around
10. weave through traffic on a motorcycle


So tell me o wise one how does your magical system correct for all of these deficient drivers. Personally I think we need German style traffic enforcement and driver training that would solve most of these problems.

I'm running Mint Debian Edition. I'd forgotten that I'd even chosen that version rather than the Ubuntu based one. It's a rolling distribution based on Debian Testing, but I've had no problems with it apart from having to get the wireless drivers working when I first installed it.

I'd recommend switching to the Testing branch of Debian, or adding in repositories for the latest builds of Firefox or Chrome's stable versions to your current setup. When you install the .deb for Chrome, the appropriate repository is added automatically to keep you up to date - not sure if it's any more awkward for Firefox.

I stopped using Firefox a couple of years ago, but I still try it out from time to time. Bog standard Firefox isn't very responsive on my wheezy little netbook, but Chrome with adblock is running great!

As much as I like competition, you can't help but look at this before and after pics and conclude that yes, Samsung is copying Apple design and this is after they had to change the first version since it was basically a clone of the iPad. Now whether or not that should be patentable in the first place is another topic: Samsung before and after Apple iPhone

They kinda have too. If Google uses that much power, their Power bill(s) is probably a major expense, finding ways to reduce it by a few percentage, can save a lot of money. Green Energy like wind and solar, needs big power users, who see energy as a major expense and has the resources and will to invest in making cheaper alternatives. Renewable energy sources tend to look good on paper you can get Cheaper Energy in theory after the initial capital expense.

Google is perhaps the only technology company with a license to buy Energy at wholesale prices. Ie their energy costs are very low, and they can buy energy from whomever they want. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Energy. Sadly, it's hard to find anything on it at Google.com, other than http://www.google.com/green/

Yes. For example, Heroku is using it (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/05/google_go/), and you can also use Google App Engine with Go - http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/go/overview.html

Excellent. So you have placed a (possibly arbitrary, possibly not) value on this information of $2.5 million. Let's say that takes one kilobyte to represent informationally. Google says one terabyte = 1 073 741 824 kilobytes. Let's round down to be conservative, to 1 000 000 000 kilobytes.

$2.5 million dollars per kilobyte for 1 000 000 000 kilobytes comes out to $2,500,000,000,000,000. That's 2.5 quadrillion dollars for a terabyte of data.

Silly, isn't it? It's not about the quantity of information. You can't just say "one terabyte can store this many songs, and so it's worth $14.99 per song" or whatever random quantification you use. Your SSN, etc., are worth $2.5 million to you. That's what counts. I may or may not agree with your valuation, but that's what you say it's worth. How can I dispute that?

I haven't really tried it myself in daily use, but Feynman used to have a watch that was missing a minute hand, and he claims it was good to about 5 minutes.

PS. I think I enjoy the Feynmanized version of Godwin's law better ;)

The main point is performance. Ryan Dahl wanted to write fast, scalable servers easily. We all know for years that threads don't scale but event loops do (see the second chart of memory consumption of apache vs nginx). Of course in order to have a highly concurrent evented server you can't use blocking system calls (which were a big mistake in my opinion to begin with - they are the only reason why you needed threads exposed at the application level for concurrency in the past). OK, so we want a portable, high performance, event-based, async-I/O, scalable, highly concurrent server. The obvious way to write such servers in a portable, OS-independent way was to write them in C using libraries like libev or libevent for event loops and libeio for non-blocking I/O. The result is great. But the problem is that it is not easy. C doesn't have lambdas, anonymous functions, closures or higher-order functions in a real sense, which all would make writing event handlers much easier. So Ryan was looking for a higher level language and found V8, the JavaScript virtual machine written by Google for Chrome. JavaScript has anonymous functions and closures. And V8 is fast. And also when you write JavaScript in the browser then you never use blocking function calls anyway, so people are already familiar with asynchronous I/O, events, callbacks, closures, futures and promises. Hell, you can even use Y combinators in JavaScript if you know your craft. Now, if only JavaScript had lazy evaluation and proper tail call optimization - maybe some day. Watch some talks by Ryan Dahl if you're interested and after 25 years in the field you should be. Oh, and Node doesn't have anything to do with the browser besides the V8 origins. It's all server-side. See the Wikipedia article on Node for more info and code examples. I'm glad that people who have been professionally programing for so many years are still willing to broaden their horizons. As I have written in the past it is not a universal property of programmers unfortunately. Have fun with new tools.

No, they invented a device that's very much like the Wii-mote, a year and a half before the Wii came out. Try clicking on the link to the patent in TFS for a nice picture.

They filed July 2005. Wii came out November 2006. Yes, almost a year and a half, but many people knew the next console would use IR to determine screen position. Also light guns have been using IR to determine screen position for many years.

Also the summary is horribly vague:
"SUMMARY
An item of electronic equipment is described that includes a machine and executable program code. The executable program code is stored on a non volatile memory. The executable program code is to be executed by the machine. The executable program code is to perform a method. The method is in relation to a location on a display, or proximate to the display, that is pointed to by a handheld device. The method includes executing at least one of the following methods:
(i) displaying a cursor on said display at said location, said location on said display;
(ii) highlighting a menu option on said display at said location, said location on said display;
(iii) triggering action taken by said electronic equipment in response to said handheld device's sending of a signal to indicate said action is desired."

And a quick google search shows that China is not really even a good good example. That seems to paint a different picture then your describing.

FYI, I don't generally favor Google as a research tool (beyond troubleshooting computers) but by following your link one of the first results that came up seems to validate my "picture:" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterfeit_consumer_goods#Apparel_and_accessories

I'm not saying that they don't toss a few counterfeiters in jail occasionally to fill a PR quota (not to mention the fact that it's just one of several convient excuses Beijing has to draw upon if they want to jail dissidents), but my point is that it's so prevalent in Asia that when you factor in the fact that the majority of the world's population is there, a few arrests means very little in the grand scheme of things.

actually, the decision to go with their own operating system was made largely in part to show they were doing something about copyright to gain entrance in the WTO. For many years, the same was true of China. But today China's principal reason for adopting Linux is membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO). As a condition of being admitted to the WTO in 2001, and in return for the trading and tariff advantages that WTO membership offers, China agreed to consistently crack down on software piracy and comply with international agreements protecting intellectual property. Again, a simple google search paints a different picture then you are describing.

Not really, my point was that national security was the driving concern regarding the adoption of Linux, however as I stated earlier:

Microsoft made some back door concessions to Beijing regarding source code inspection but it became pretty clear to both parties that it was never going to be to the extent the Chinese government wanted, so the fact that Beijing could trumpet it as a local national brand while diplomatically leveraging it as a major conciliatory effort regarding piracy without having to actively crack down on the local Windows users who were (and are) pretty much all pirated versions was just icing on the cake as far as they were concerned.

Again, they were able to kill three birds with one stone but since to date Beijing has never made any effort to seriously enact copyright reform (or curtail their sponsoring of crackers and counterfeiting organizations) or enact any kind of legislation banning non-Red Linux operating systems from being used in China, I'm not sure why you would view this whole issue as anything more than a political gesture that they used (in addition to other diplomatic mesures) to pressure the WTO into giving them membership status?

Well, lets stick with what I said and the context of what it was said in.

Countries take copyright seriously enough that they have made international agreements over it. Local enforcement is meaningless in that context as countries do not make treaties pertaining to right turns on red or rolling stops at traffic devices. But they do make treaties on things important enough to effect trade and copyright is seen as one of them.

I'm not disputing that. I'm just saying that the treaties are for the most part meaningless because the actual laws that are made and enforced are done so by each country so the treaty is in

If government is not capable of adequately managing the risks of nuclear power and ensuring plants do not end up spewing their contents into the atmosphere before being decommissioned, then I really do not think it matters where anyone lives, as long as it is on this Earth. And yes, I do expect the government to protect nuclear plants from terrorists, or decide not to build them all together.

There are ways to invest in Japan real estate without the red tape or illiquidity (J-REITS), and, for instance, Orix is below its 3/11 dip. If the situation has been overblown, then why does the market not agree?

If you can trust a CA-signed certificate for https://addons.mozilla.org/ why not one for https://citibank.com/ or https://mail.google.com?

Ultimately, if all the browsers start supporting notaries directly and ship with a list of major trusted notaries this won't be a problem. But bootstrapping a trust network to replace a presumably untrusted PKI while using that same PKI to validate the code you're using to replace it... It's sort of unfounded.

You might find this handy regarding electronic signatures:

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=esign+act

At least according to this AP release:

The sneaker maker on Thursday said it has created a limited-edition shoe based on a glowing pair that appeared in the popular 1989 movie "Back to the Future II." The 2011 Nike Mag is designed to be an exact replica of the fictional sneaker, including a glowing Nike name on the strap. But unlike the movie version, these shoes won't lace themselves.

I mean really, Nike...WTF?

And my own shameless plug: http://code.google.com/p/ifreebudget-android/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/ifreebudget/

Yeah, but China is just one example amongst many that I chose to bring up regarding how blatantly widespread piracy is overlooked by other countries if they have resources that other countries (but mostly the US) need.

And a quick google search shows that China is not really even a good good example. That seems to paint a different picture then your describing.

Hmm, given that China was eventually given a WTO membership, despite the fact that besides making a bunch of noise over tossing a few of the usual politically dissident suspects in prison for infringement they've never undertaken any serious efforts to crack down and reform on this issue, I kinda tend to think that history actually proves me right here. ;)

In regards to Microsoft, sanctions had pretty much nothing to do with China's decision to endorse Red Linux. The reason the Chinese government was pushing Red Linux to become so prevalent (nationalist attitudes aside ;) was that Beijing wanted an open source OS that they could see every line of code in, as they were very concerned about potential back doors being built in that could be accessible by foreign governments.

actually, the decision to go with their own operating system was made largely in part to show they were doing something about copyright to gain entrance in the WTO. For many years, the same was true of China. But today China's principal reason for adopting Linux is membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO). As a condition of being admitted to the WTO in 2001, and in return for the trading and tariff advantages that WTO membership offers, China agreed to consistently crack down on software piracy and comply with international agreements protecting intellectual property. Again, a simple google search paints a different picture then you are describing.

Yes, because even in the context of theory rather than how these treaties are applied in practice, individual countries shape their legislation and enforcement efforts on the framework of treaties that they are signatories of.

Another country has no power (basically) to prosecute a person for violating a treaty through the person's country justice system. They can extradite that person for trial and they can put pressure on the government to prosecute him for violating local laws that may have been enacted so as a result ultimately a treaty is secondary to local laws of each country.

Hence my reason for focusing on local law is that it's far more paramount to how copyright legislation and enforcement efforts are enacted and implemented then treaties are.

Well, lets stick with what I said and the context of what it was said in. Countries take copyright seriously enough that they have made international agreements over it. Local enforcement is meaningless in that context as countries do not make treaties pertaining to right turns on red or rolling stops at traffic devices. But they do make treaties on things important enough to effect trade and copyright is seen as one of them.

Incorrect, you need only look for YRO stories to find numerous examples of MPAA industry reps being present and active participants in efforts to draft treaties and (more scarily) aiding in enforcement of already existing laws during arrests.

Why don't you point them out? It's

What business is Google in?

The advertising business. Or at least that's where they make all their money.

Indexing content or providing content?

Google's stated mission is to "organize the world‘s information and make it universally accessible and useful". So indexing existing content that's already available or finding information that isn't currently available and making it available could both plausibly fit.

You get a little 'Lock++' icon in the right corner (by default) that will tell you the verification status. For instance going to https://mail.google.com/ gets you a list of the current notaries and how they're 'voting'. You can add, edit, remove, or enable/disable notaries at will by providing host:port and a cert. It comes with 'notary.thoughtcrime.org' and 'notary2.thoughtcrime.org' by default, which gives you two entries to play with to start with.

The advanced options are the interesting ones - whether you want to anonymize your authentication requests, whether non-responsive notaries count as pass or fail, and the verification threshold: 'Require consensus', 'Require majority', or 'Require only one'.

There's also a separate download link for you to run as a notary yourself.

We'll see how this works out - this distributed trust thing isn't new, but the key bit is making it this easy, so people can choose who to trust or delegate that authority. And this seems pretty easy.

Trust me, Yelp is going nowhere. Zagat is a nice legacy brand, and there was a time when their ratings were good and relevant, but that time has passed. The biggest strength of Yelp is the community. People who review on Yelp are not going to switch to Google unless there is some compelling reason. As we've seen with the failure of Google Plus, its very hard to build community from nothing.

No, they invented a device that's very much like the Wii-mote, a year and a half before the Wii came out. Try clicking on the link to the patent in TFS for a nice picture.

The word is titbit. Tit

The internet says that both are acceptable.

Titbit's a lot funnier though, unless you're one of those people who says UR-a-nus instead of Ur-A-nus

The word is titbit. Tit

The internet says that both are acceptable.

Titbit's a lot funnier though, unless you're one of those people who says UR-a-nus instead of Ur-A-nus

Is Google Patents a new service from Google; similar to Google Earth or Google Toolbar?

Apparently, yes...

If we can get the Adult Industry to sell their .COMs and go to .XXX it would make an easier to manage Internet. Especially if you are searching for name of an old XWindows software you were looking for.

Not just old software, I have this problem constantly:

• Keep ass
• Clam ass, ass in
• Ball view
• The L.A. Stripper

The word is titbit. Tit

The internet says that both are acceptable.

The word is titbit. Tit

The internet says that both are acceptable.

In reality, people as a whole aren't very smart, and tend to act in their own self interest rather than for the good of the economy. Communism is great on paper. Better than capitalism, actually. But paper never seems to account for the greedy bastard factor.

It's the other way around. Paper accounts for the greedy bastard factor quite well actually.
It's the altruistic, fair, socially responsible, nice and kind bastards that fuck the things up for everyone.

Both the ideal communism and the ideal capitalism make the same basic mistake - replacing the actual "people" with their own version of a "perfect man" multiplied so that the entire population is made out of perfect copies of the said "perfect man".
And then jumping to the logical conclusion of such an imagined system.

Anyway, any comparison between capitalism and communism is as logical as comparing apples and bears.
One being an economic system and the other being a political system. Or one being a plant and other being an animal.
You'd think that people would catch on already, being that there is no Capitalism as a system of government in Civilization.
Then again, there is no Fascism either.

Unless one argues that all games where one churns out military units in order to gain and maintain the control of the land and/or resources are actually fascist dictatorship simulators.
Search your feelings. You know it to be true.

have they found a dildo bomb yet?

You mean - a snuke?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruguayan_Air_Force_Flight_571
Hearing of a crash in Chile brings up memories of the Andes flight accident in 1972, or better known to some people as the movie, "Alive". Ok, so this time the crash was nowhere near the Andes, but an island.

But I've always wondered what would've happened if in 1972, they had GPS and mapping technology the way we do today. They could've easily seen where they were without the guesswork and literally strolled off the mountain to the east in less than a day, perhaps. A 20km walk to the east would've gotten them to the highway at least... and at least they would've been off the mountain into thicker and a warmer atmosphere. Not to mention they may have been able to forage for food quickly. ( http://maps.google.com/maps/place?q=Uruguayan+Air+Force+Flight+571+-+Mendoza+Province,+Argentina&hl=en )

I hope technology will improve our chances of survival with accidents like this in the future.

You can see it here. They even have an airfield, and the GMaps image captures a plane in the process of taxiing or landing. I wouldn't have guessed that many hippies owned aircraft.

A few observations:

The only animal life presented in the few photos returned from a Google image search for TSA employee "Theldala Magee" is captioned "Slug on Cabbage."

Is being a rapist a disability? Will the EEOC protect Ms. Magee's right to rape airline passengers as it protects the rights of alcoholic commercial truck drivers to drive trucks?

A few observations:

The only animal life presented in the few photos returned from a Google image search for TSA employee "Theldala Magee" is captioned "Slug on Cabbage."

Is being a rapist a disability? Will the EEOC protect Ms. Magee's right to rape airline passengers as it protects the rights of alcoholic commercial truck drivers to drive trucks?

I think this is perhaps the second most quintissential example of the patent office gone wrong. The best example was when someone patented the tire swing

My personal favorite is the patent on the wheel. There is an austalian one and an american one.

Is 'for the benefit of the people' part of the definition of socialism?

yes.

I have tried faxing via Google Voice over a POTS connection. I can connect to the remote fax machine, but it fails to send even one page. GV states in its FAQs that it cannot be used as a fax number. Either they are explicitly blocking it or (more likely) they are using an LPC/model-based speech codec like speex that simply eats the analog modulation for lunch. With the death of Gizmo5, it is now impossible to connect via SIP except via services that give you a PSTN connection and a phone number—and at that point, why use GV at all, since you're already paying someone else for a phone number? sipgate claims the ability to send faxes, but this is a function of sipgate and not Google, and I have not tried them at all.

Have you actually gotten fax over Google Voice to work?

I am profoundly disappointed by Google's profound lack of commitment to open standards (i.e. SIP).

I have tried faxing via Google Voice over a POTS connection. I can connect to the remote fax machine, but it fails to send even one page. GV states in its FAQs that it cannot be used as a fax number. Either they are explicitly blocking it or (more likely) they are using an LPC/model-based speech codec like speex that simply eats the analog modulation for lunch. With the death of Gizmo5, it is now impossible to connect via SIP except via services that give you a PSTN connection and a phone number—and at that point, why use GV at all, since you're already paying someone else for a phone number? sipgate claims the ability to send faxes, but this is a function of sipgate and not Google, and I have not tried them at all.

Have you actually gotten fax over Google Voice to work?

I am profoundly disappointed by Google's profound lack of commitment to open standards (i.e. SIP).

The current state of implantable neurotechnology is far more advanced than this story. The good stuff is not in the public sphere at all. Total remote control of the human mind and body via wireless link is where the real neurotechnology is at now. It's being deployed against unwitting subjects without their knowledge or consent. For more information check out this research material: http://www.google.com/search?q=%22covert+implantation+of+radiotelepathy%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Even though the article said "Google Gadgets", it actually links to Google Desktop Gadgets, not actually Google Gadgets.

One is web-like type apps running on your desktop. The other is desktop-like apps running on your webpage. A bit of confusion here is to be expected.

Even though the article said "Google Gadgets", it actually links to Google Desktop Gadgets, not actually Google Gadgets.

One is web-like type apps running on your desktop. The other is desktop-like apps running on your webpage. A bit of confusion here is to be expected.

7 BILLION PEOPLE. That's an insane amount of people putting an extreme burden on our delicate ecosystem. Earth is already at the brink of death, it's been estimated that when we hit 10 billion, there's no turning back.

While Dr. Bob is clearly a troll, it's amazing to me the number of non-trolls that accept this part as absolutely true without need for proof. High population isn't killing the environment, inefficient consumption of resources is killing the environment. Per capita, US citizens use far more energy, and put out far more CO2 than the average for the world. We have 4.5% of the world's population, but contribute 18.5% of the CO2 emissions.

The only way more people = environmental destruction is if we refuse to tighten our belts and the rest of the world decides they want to live as wastefully as we do. We need to stop feeling entitled to use and abuse resources however we feel like at the moment simply because previous generations could get away with it.

7 BILLION PEOPLE. That's an insane amount of people putting an extreme burden on our delicate ecosystem. Earth is already at the brink of death, it's been estimated that when we hit 10 billion, there's no turning back.

While Dr. Bob is clearly a troll, it's amazing to me the number of non-trolls that accept this part as absolutely true without need for proof. High population isn't killing the environment, inefficient consumption of resources is killing the environment. Per capita, US citizens use far more energy, and put out far more CO2 than the average for the world. We have 4.5% of the world's population, but contribute 18.5% of the CO2 emissions.

The only way more people = environmental destruction is if we refuse to tighten our belts and the rest of the world decides they want to live as wastefully as we do. We need to stop feeling entitled to use and abuse resources however we feel like at the moment simply because previous generations could get away with it.

Nope. As you can see in this chart (taken from a previous post here of someone else), the population is actually growing linearly.