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http://www.oeb.harvard.edu/faculty/losos/research/ "This suggests that the results observed in the field may be the result of a phenotypic plasticity in limb growth, rather than genetic differentiation."

However, another alternative is that lizards growing in different environments grow different length legs. To test this hypothesis, we raised baby anoles on two different surfaces at the St. Louis Zoo--either on 2x4's or on narrow (1/4") dowels. At the end of three months, the lizards raised on broader surfaces had longer limbs than the lizards on narrower surfaces! This suggests that the results observed in the field may be the result of a phenotypic plasticity in limb growth, rather than genetic differentiation.

As an aside, those who have emphasized random mutation as the primary basis for evolutionary change are completely off base. The whole point of sex (whoa!) is to produce adaptive variation.

When Sun sued under copyright violations, the court determined that MS did in fact have a license, the open license Sun provided, and that the proper venue was contract law, not copyright law.
In other words, the Microsoft guys tendered the best offer.

When you start with the statement that MS simply purchased a decision, there's not a lot of room for rational discussion, unless you would like to show proof of questionable financial transactions.....

It might not be what you expect, but it is a valid position from the courts point of view.
The courts are wrong.

Why, thats great, we can just come to you to get our decisions in the future - no need for this whole court thinga-ma-bobbie.
It is the courts job to decide which forms of law take precedent. There are frequently statutory civil laws regarding issues which can be overruled by specific grants of authority or contracts specifically detailing deviations from the statutory baseline. One example, which is becoming more common is pre-nuptial agreements. Statutory code indicates - in most US states - that the assets of a married couple are split 50/50. A prenuptial agreement can alter that in any way. When prenups are voided by a court, they are usually done so on the grounds that the contract itself is void do to inherant imbalances or technicalities in the contract itself - not because statutory law rules.

Contracts overwrite copyright law. If there is a contract in place, then the contract's terms govern the transactions not the copyright law.
Care to cite a statute that proves this? Or are you just going by the current whims of the judiciary?

Hmm, lets start with the fact that the ruling was issued in January of 2001. It's not a current whim of the judiciary, it's a 5.5 yr old case.
A statute that specifically indicates that contract law takes precedent over copyright law, not likely - if there were, then it wouldn't have needed a ruling.
However, if contract law does not take precedent over Copyright law, then there is no means to create a distribution channel. If a copyright holder can go to court and say I'm violating his copyright, and contract law doesn't trump copyright law, then that license I contracted for at $50M for is worthless.
Now, if instead of statutes you would like precedent, then we can go for:

• Silvers v. Sony Pictures Entertainment, Inc. shows contractual transference of cause of action overrules the Copyright statement that only the copyright holder can sue.
• This [pdf warning] has some discussion of how contracts and licenses can overrule Copyright grants of fair use etc, and is linked to a case study of iTunes with some more details.
• But in 1917, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes ruled that all uses of copyrighted work, even those for which a specific fee was not charged, required compensation. This ruling is also cited in the Sun v MS ruling, again showing that the ruling was not based on a whim, but 80+ yr old precedent.

Also don't forget, when you accept my terms for the OSS license, I get a distribution channel as a consideration.
How does a "distribution channel" count as a *benefit* to the author? Distribution channels without financial compensation to the author is precisely what copyright law was designed to prevent.

Given that distribution accounts for up to 80% of the production cost, a free distribution network can be of substantial value. In FOSS, the goal is not specifically financial compensation, if it were, free distribution with no financial renumeration would be counter productive. In the case of the Artistic license involved in this case, the goal is a widespread presence of the copyrighted work and crediting of the author. In this cas

Has anyone measured CO2 levels on mars and venus? So far the only proof we have that co2 is linked to global warming is that any time in the past when temperatures have gone up, so has CO2. How can we prove which one is the cause, and which one a symptom? And if we can't even prove that, how in the world can we possibly expect to determine exactly how much effect CO2 has on temperature?

With regards to Mars, the following pages (among many others) contain info about the exact makeup of the Mars atmosphere:

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2003AGUFM.P42A0425K
http://www.earthsci.unimelb.edu.au/mars/Carbon_Dio xide.html
http://www.solarviews.com/eng/mars.htm

This would suggest that such measurements have been made.

I'm pretty sure this is true for Venus as well.

Please. You specifically said:

"[AIPAC is] the reason why you never hear criticism of Israel in the United States of America, because they actively and tirelessly lobby government, academia, and the media to suppress our freedom to speak honestly about and discuss openly the situation there"

You think there's no open honest discussions about the situation? Look in any US newspaper and you'll see a wide variety of opinions from every walk of life, including a LARGE degree of criticism of Israel. Look on any college campus. Academia is riddled with pro-Palestinian anti-Israeli liberals spewing off their compassionate pleas to stop the violence and showing (often manipulated [1]) photos of wounded Palestinians and bombed out cities. Yasser Arafat spoke openly at Harvard University in 1995 [2] with barely any protest. Look anywhere other than the box you're in and you would see that the country (people) and world is pretty openly anti-Israel. Including many Jews in America. Get real.

And as for calling you an anti-semite, if you want to be pedantic about it, then obviously it's not an accurate term. Neither is "caucasian" for white people, "asian" for oriental people, "african-american" for black people, or any of a dozen other commonly used terms. But you know what I meant, didn't you?

I didn't use the term because I apply it to "anyone [I] disagree with" as you declare, but because I can see through your veil of "facts" to your underlying beliefs. You and people like you would happily tear down any Jewish groups or organizations that would stand up for themselves or their country in the same way the world wants Israel to sit on its hands while their hostile neighbors refuse to acknowledge their existence, openly declare intentions to "wipe them off the map", and launch military strikes into dense civilian areas.

Your anti-semitism (you know what I mean) is the most dangerous kind, because you would use it in the same way you accuse AIPAC of manipulating truths: You attack organizations with power while covering yourself (perhaps even believing it) with things like "but I have lots of Jewish friends" as if this would hide the fact that ultimately you hate Jews and would be quite happy to see them wiped off the map so we could stop sending money to greedy Israel and getting into wars to defend them, or whatever twisted Jewless ideals you envision.

Perhaps I'm wrong about you (and Mel Gibson too), but I've met and read enough people like you to think otherwise. I do give you credit for replying to an AC, though. At least you stand by your opinion.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Israel-Lebanon_c onflict_photographs_controversies
[2] http://ksgaccman.harvard.edu/iop/events_forum_list view.asp?ID=5215&Type=P

Perhaps it would be helpful to include an answer to the paper by Mearsheimer and Walt to provide some balance. They take a very strong (and rather conspiratorial approach) and thus perhaps those who read it should see a published response also posted on Harvard's site: http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/research/working_papers /dershowitzreply.pdf

Perhaps it would be helpful to include an answer to the paper by Mearsheimer and Walt to provide some balance. They take a very strong (and rather conspiratorial approach) and thus perhaps those who read it should see a published response also posted on Harvard's site: http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/research/working_papers /dershowitzreply.pdf

Sorry, typo killed the link: http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/r wp/RWP06-011/$File/rwp_06_011_walt.pdf

Sure, I agree. I want Congress to:

-repeal the Patriot Act
-put a stop to govt. spying on Americans
-restore habeus corpus
-repeal the tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy
-close Guantanamo
-stop "extraordinary rendition"
-end torture
-get the US out of Iraq
-fund alternative energy and public transportation so we can stop funding terrorism through oil
-implement national health care
-disband and dismantle the Dept. of Homeland Security, which is the creepiest title since 'Ministry of Truth.'
-crack down on corporate aka white-collar crime
-stop outsourcing our jobs
-restore environmental protections
-shut NK and Iran's nuclear programs down
-stop invading other countries at the orders of AIPAC (http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/ rwp/RWP06-011/$File/rwp_06_011_walt.pdf)
-seriously fund medical research to cure cancer and heart disease, etc.
-catch Osama bin Laden, for pete's sake
-repair our alliances
-start addressing the very scary and very imminent threat of China

Basically, I want them to undo everything Bush has done, and then take the country in a positive direction domestically and abroad.

But I will be seriously pissed if I don't see investigations and impeachment, because the neo-cons, the war profiteers like Bechtel and Halliburton, and all their co-conspirators must be brought to justice. 'Cause like it or not folks, if they don't then our last means to get justice is with our guns.

Mankiw was the guy who said that for the justice department to hold up the release of Windows 98 (or Windows ME or something) was like "throwing sands into the gears of progress". His argument was that because Windows is so economically successful, it is self-evident that it is technically superior and highly advanced, and that it was really not necessary for him to know anything about technology to make that determination. Obviously, his position and area of expertise (economics) had gone to his head.

Whether you should vote or not, and what the consequences of that are, is actually something people have studied. But, based on his publications, I think it's pretty evident that this is also not Mankiw's area of expertise.

The guy likes to talk a lot and use his academic credentials to lend credence to statements about subjects he should probably be considered little more than a smart layman in (kind of like your average Slashdot participant). Don't take his word for more than it's worth.

The DMCA does have that nasty 1201 section which makes tools of circumvention illegal.

No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that - (A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;

But that's just for the US. Everyone else, enjoy.

The National Summit on Video Games, Youth, and Public Policy is hosted by The National Institute on Media and the Family and Iowa State University.

First session was an overview presented by Douglas Gentile. You can buy his book here. Next, they had a session on "Violent Video Games: Effects and Public Policy" from Craig Anderson. Then they had a panel discussion with Joanne Cantor, Kim Thompson, Douglas Gentile, and one person from the ESRB.

I can go on, but it looked like a mutual masterbation get-together from the names I saw in attendance. So I can see why the games press didn't want to go.

The interoperability clause of the DMCA, which DVD Jon uses as his basis for the legality of his system, allows you to break the CSS encryption on DVDs in order to play them on your Linux box.

creating an implimentation of CSS without paying the licensing fee violates patent law,

Maybe you should actually read science instead of press releases from the pro-embryonic stell cell lobby. They keep saying there is much promise, but the actual effective treatments have been based on adult stem cells. This may not always be the case, but it certainly is today

The only proven effective Type-1 diabetes cure, in mice was based on adult-stems cells -- just like what several other posters have been saying. This article refers to lab results where they reversed Type in mice, using ADULT not EMBRYONIC stems cells. This is not Christian pro-life lobby rantings.

You are right in saying it is not a Type I cure for humans (yet), but it is certainly promising.

BTW, No Type II cures based on stem cells have published to my knowledge.

In many ways, I could care less about adult vs. embryonic cell research in the U.S. (there are other countries you know). But as a U.S. Taxpayer, I would prefer not to have my tax dollars wasted on research that has to date proved useless when there is similar alternative that has been proved quite fruitful to date. Gov. Arnie bought the b.s. re: embryonic stem cells -- I would bet that California taxpayers see nothing useful coming out of it when the money is all spent.

Geezer Wrote:
CFCs are not found in the stratosphere any where on the planet, they're simply too heavy

That's flat-out wrong. For measurements of CFC (NOT Cl) in the statosphere see:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1987P&SS...35..657B
http://umpgal.gsfc.nasa.gov/www_root/homepage/uars -science/CFC.html
for two easy examples.

Also see
http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/~cairns/teaching/le cture16/node2.html
http://www.thespacerace.com/glossary/index.php?ter m=290
http://amsglossary.allenpress.com/glossary/search? id=homosphere1
where we read that the atmosphere is well-mixd below 100 km. (Stratosphere starts around 12 km).

The Big Bang also created lithium. In fact, many question whether stellar fusion can create lithium at all.

Earth without humans... yes, but could it run GNU/Linux?

er...

Sounds funny but some physicists really investigate the possibility of universe being a big computer (and we are the bits, right? and it looks like we are just a bunch of six billion noise bits, so I wouldn't be surprised if a noise filter wipes us out of existence)

Copying for personal use is exempt from copyright infringement within Canada, this is true, but this exemption does not apply if one is sharing it with others

This is not new. In the 1970's, Offshore Power Systems (OPS) of Jacksonville, FL began building several nuclear power plants for off-shore use. Circa 1975, I dated a girl whose father worked for OPS. They were very excited and thought they had an excellent product (plenty of coolant, well removed from centers of population unlike most nukes, like Turkey Point, FL, etc.).

However, after Three Mile Island, it all fell apart.

See: Operation of Offshore Power Systems floating nuclear plants (1-8) docket number STN 50-437

2. obviously fake names such as dr. IchiNose
Mr Fumito (Fume Ito) Ichi Nose. Sounds fake, but here it is:
http://hms.harvard.edu/WhitePagesPublic.asp?task=s howperson&id=172271374177274371178272&a=hms&r=1&kw =/

The last refuge of modern sexists is the claim that even if men and women have the same average scores, men have a greater variance and therefore are more likely to produce the very top level mathematicians and scientists. For an example of the debate see Pinker vs. Spelke, or one could also read Dr. Elizabeth Spelke's papers including Sex differences in intrinsic aptitude for mathematics and science: A critical review.

Christina Sormani has a web page explaining why Penny Smith is likely to have solved the Millenium Problem on the Navier-Stokes equation. Smith's paper is the culmination of a lifetime of research similar to how Wiles' proof of Fermat's Last Theorem was a logical outcome of his previous research. This is not someone coming from out of nowhere providing a proof that has nothing to do with his or her prior specialty.

The debate is now over. Penny Smith has shown that there is in fact no variance between men and women that predisposes men to have the very top mathematicians. In fact the proof that environment trumps genetics has been demonstrated in the United States over the past decades: males born in the United States have been judged by government and industry to not be good enough in top-level mathematics which is why so much talent has to be imported from other countries. The United States is probably going to follow the path of the United Kingdom where cultural factors are causing boys mathematical achievement in school to collapse relative to that of girls.

The last refuge of modern sexists is the claim that even if men and women have the same average scores, men have a greater variance and therefore are more likely to produce the very top level mathematicians and scientists. For an example of the debate see Pinker vs. Spelke, or one could also read Dr. Elizabeth Spelke's papers including Sex differences in intrinsic aptitude for mathematics and science: A critical review.

Christina Sormani has a web page explaining why Penny Smith is likely to have solved the Millenium Problem on the Navier-Stokes equation. Smith's paper is the culmination of a lifetime of research similar to how Wiles' proof of Fermat's Last Theorem was a logical outcome of his previous research. This is not someone coming from out of nowhere providing a proof that has nothing to do with his or her prior specialty.

The debate is now over. Penny Smith has shown that there is in fact no variance between men and women that predisposes men to have the very top mathematicians. In fact the proof that environment trumps genetics has been demonstrated in the United States over the past decades: males born in the United States have been judged by government and industry to not be good enough in top-level mathematics which is why so much talent has to be imported from other countries. The United States is probably going to follow the path of the United Kingdom where cultural factors are causing boys mathematical achievement in school to collapse relative to that of girls.

So that leaves us with four choices for their school nights. We can drug them into a stupor. We can have them sit quietly in a corner for the entire night. We can nuke them from orbit. Or we can STOP IT WITH THIS OVERPROTECTIVE BULLSHIT AND LET THEM BE KIDS, FOR CHRIST'S SAKE!

-Eric

It looks like some groups are already working on accelerating protons using this wakefield process:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1999APS..DPP.KP122I
We can expect acceleration of protons to be tougher (the rest mass mp = about 1836*me), but from the abstract it seems that they were working on combining laser acceleration with traditional (big external E- and B- fields) acceleration techniques.

Gravitational heating left over from the formation of the planets and radioactive decay both provide for heat in the cores of the planets in our solar system. For alot of detail on this subject you can look here

This is a decades old concept.

Direct launch using the electric rail gun
In APL The 1983 JANNAF Propulsion Meeting

A better implementation than the artist's conception that I've previously heard of, was to build the rail gun into a tall mountain.

The primary reason was to help get above the bulk of the atmosphere, but it also has the added benefit of being extremely secure.

this is nothing new: it started before the WWI and now there are dozens of companies, universities or hobbyist doing it. It is called: "content analysis", "data mining", "discourse analysis" etc. There is a legend that sais that British intelligence managed to predict quite acurately airstrikes on England based on content analysis of Goebels' radio speeches. Take a look at this links if you are interested. Bibliography of Content Analysis Listings from Communication Abstracts, 1990-1997 Content Analysis Resources web site Text Analysis Info Page - all on text analysis and related topics The discourse analysis page of AI Topics Centre d'analyse des politiques publiques (CAPP) Département de science politique, Université Laval The Center for Social Research Methods: not necesarily content analysis, but it's good to take a look at Research Methods Knowledge Base The Annenberg School for Communication Web Concordances at the English Department of the University of Dundee Companion Website for the book Word Frequencies in Written and Spoken English: based on the British National Corpus Journal: Language Awareness; has some free issues/articles. The General Inquirer Home Page Journal of Second Language Writing Writing Guides: Conducting Content Analysis at Colorado State University; with a nice adnotated bibliography The Content Analysis Guidebook Online, An Accompaniament to The Content Analysis Guidebook by Kimberley A. Neuendorf. The Association for Computers and the Humanities and the Literary and Linguistic Computing eximancer - Practical Text Mining and Concept Mapping Journal Practical Assessment, Research and Evaluation: some online articles Content Analysis News and Discussion mailing list archives some Resources related to content analysis and text analysis; updated quite recently: June 30, 2005;

That doesn't make any sense, though, since photons always travel at the speed of light and can never rest.

Have you ever tried to hold a conscious squirrel even using two hands?

You have to actually catch them first.

I submitted this article last night and it was soundly rejected.

Thing is that link http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/special/08747.pdf was in my original submission.

Actually, the United States is not a member to any international, multilateral, or bilateral treaties on the recognition of foreign judgments (it is on recognition of arbitral awards - the Geneva Convention). That isn't to say you can't enforce foreign awards, but it will be based upon domestic law and not treaty law. See http://travel.state.gov/law/info/judicial/judicial _691.html/ [state.gov]. What the domestic law is, I am not sure and don't have time to research.

It may not be the law you're thinking of but foreign entities can use the Alien Tort Claims Act of 1789 to sue US companies in US courts for actions taken in other countries. There are now or were recently lawsuits filed in the US based on the act against Chevron, Coca Cola, and Exxon amoung others.

the guy whos wiki is exploitable even posts about slashdot stories on his (interesting!) blog at http://hcs.harvard.edu/freeculture/blog/ ... so should know wtf he is doing.

Following direction on the site, it was a wiki at Harvard with the remote vunerability:
http://hcs.harvard.edu/~freeculture/wiki/index.php /Special:Version

They may rock in the workplace, but I personally won't use one in a more confined space (like, say, a home office) due to the toxic emissions they create. Especially with small children in the house. I'd rather pay for the difference with money, rather than my health!

Raw data and graphs of activity are available here: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/stockspam/

We defined violence as acts in which the aggressor causes or attempts to cause physical injury or death to another character. We did not include damage to objects, accidental actions that unintentionally harmed another character, the effects of natural disasters, or the presence of dangerous obstacles that could not be attributed to the actions of a particular character. We also did not count as violence any intentional acts of physical force that represented normal play in a sports game (e.g., tacking in football or checking in hockey), because the intention of the player is technically to stop the other player without causing injury. We did count excessive physical contact in sports games, such as punching or otherwise attacking another player (e.g., after the football play was over).

We defined violence as acts in which the aggressor causes or attempts to cause physical injury or death to another character. We did not include damage to objects, accidental actions that unintentionally harmed another character, the effects of natural disasters, or the presence of dangerous obstacles that could not be attributed to the actions of a particular character. We also did not count as violence any intentional acts of physical force that represented normal play in a sports game (e.g., tacking in football or checking in hockey), because the intention of the player is technically to stop the other player without causing injury. We did count excessive physical contact in sports games, such as punching or otherwise attacking another player (e.g., after the football play was over).

This is a problem from the start. So unintentional harm is not violence? This instantly brings up the question of what the player's "intention" is. Is your intention to kill someone or to win? Is winning accomplished by killing?

They then continue: "We also did not count as violence any intentional acts of physical force that represented normal play in a sports game" which immediately sets up a binary division between sports and videogames. I've long argued that if we are worried about violence, we should be a lot more worried about the kids who hit each other so hard they have to wear padding and helmets than we should be about the kids sitting on the couch with controllers in their hands. Such a division also indicates that in the minds of the researchers that, seemingly without examination, sports are ok, but videogames aren't. If they didn't assume that sports were ok, then they would examine them for violence. If they didn't assume that videogames weren't ok, then they would not examine them for violence.

In the joystiq interview, when asked, "Do you feel that the violence portrayed in games like Pac-Man and Mario Bros. is harmful to minors? In what way does it affect their growth to warrant a rating exceeding that of the pre-designated E?"

Her response was,

If you are interested in the body of literature that indicates harmful effects, then you should contact Dr. Joanne Cantor, Dr. Craig Anderson (Iowa State), or Dr. Vic Strasbuger (author of Kids and Media)

Funny that when asked about the impacts of media violence she pretends not to be qualified to make a statement about it, but somehow refernces three people who have consistently been crying that the sky is falling when it comes to media violence for years. Were one to actually be objective, it would seem that one would suggest contacting people who have been less convinced that media violence is bad.

When asked, "To what extent are video games used as a scapegoat for politicians and activists?" she responds, "This is not a question that I have researched so I'm not sure how to answer it. My impression is that every industry thinks that it is the scapegoat for politicians and activists. This is America." So basically she is saying that the videogame industry is a bunch of crybabies and that it is common to whine about things that you have no reason to whine about. Sure, just like when the Comic Book industry was complaining that they were being scapegoated...

Finally, she concludes by stating, "We developed and consistently applied definitions for violence and other content." That is nice and all. However, being

According to this: http://www.kidsrisk.harvard.edu/images/kmtCV.pdf she's got a ScD in Environmental Health, a MS in Chemical Engineering Practice, and a BS in Chemical Engineering

She's not even a PhD to begin with. I can tell you whose assertions I never believe...

There is a subtle issue with this paper which I notice the authors walked right around, whistling. That is, how do we know the majority of the mass of the clusters really *wasn't* in the gas clouds and condensed out during the collision?

As an example, this abstract talks about star formation initiated by ionization and shock fronts. The bullet part of the Bullet Cluster is a shock front thousands of parsecs long. As this shock travelled through the clouds, maybe the gas condensed into stars or proto-stars. These stars might not be completely formed yet nor strongly clustered and might be invisible to us. Maybe that matter remained with the clusters and didn't get swept along with the clouds.

The only thing the paper has to say about this is "...in the course of a cluster collision, galaxies spatially decouple from the plasma." I expect this will have to be looked at further.

In other words, maybe the observed clusters aren't represenative of typical intergalactic space. The hubristic use of the word "PROOF" in the title and closing sentence is unfortunate.

They did lose it in the courts but congress passed an act giving it back to them. How many companies want to stake their future on congress passing legislation just for them? If you want a more recent example there is considerable speculation that Google is in danger of losing its trademark because "google" has become a verb listed in the OED. Levi lost a seagull trademark. I am sure there are many less prominent examples that only trademark lawyers could site.

The law requires that trademark holders actively defend their trademarks. How does one actively defend a trademark? Simple, you sue anyone whose names might possibly constitute infringement even if it requires extremely exaggerated interpretation. That way, when a real case of infringement comes up, you can go into to court and say, "look we defend our trademark. We have filed X number of suits every year for the past Y years". This produces insane behavior. From an article by Cory Doctrow:

There aren't many areas of business wisdom more fraught with superstition and dread than trademark lore. Trademarks exist, mainly, to prevent consumer confusion, but for many business people, they're important competitive assets. They're the company's good name, upon which it trades, and companies have a duty to their shareholders to defend those good names. And defend it they do, even if the defense is so odious that it makes the company synonymous with litigious bullying. Ask a lawyer for a 100 percent assurance of trademark protection and he'll give you plain advice: pay me to send a nasty letter to everyone who utters your name without due care and specificity, or I can't guarantee you that your mark won't slip out of your fingers and into the public domain. He won't be lying: 100 percent certainty is the kind of unrealistic objective that requires extraordinary, self-defeating measures to achieve.

Corporate officers face a "damned if they do, sued if they don't" situation. Trademark lawyers will advise them defend their trademarks out on the hinterlands of reasonableness even it makes the company look like an irrational bully. If they don't follow this advise, which constitutes a standard business practice, their stockholders can sue them if the company does lose the trademark years down the road. Put yourself in their shoes. Would your opinion of Apple's action change if you personally would face significant lawsuits 10 years down the road if "iPod" becomes a generic term?

I am curious. What is your model of why companies like Apple spend the money and take the PR hit of seemingly trivial trademark lawsuits? What is more likely: Corporate executives in many companies acting like loons or computer geeks with the same grasp of trademark law as trademark lawyers have of operating systems?

That's a good question - this is termed the "cooling flow problem". We expect to see lots of gas cooling in relaxed clusters (not the colliding one discussed here) as the gas is dense in the central regions. However there's a lack of evidence of cool gas, so most people think something is heating it (although there are many solutions possible http://uk.arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0010509). The ideal candidate is the central supermassive black hole (AGN), however it is difficult to understand how this process works. One idea is that sound waves can transport the energy from the black hole into the cluster, heating it (see e.g. http://chandra.harvard.edu/press/05_releases/press _120105.html)

The great accomplishment of late-twentieth-century cosmology was putting together a complete inventory of the universe. We can tell a story that fits all the known data, in which ordinary matter (every particle ever detected in any experiment) constitutes only about 5% of the energy of the universe, with 25% being dark matter and 70% being dark energy. The challenge for early-twentyfirst-century cosmology will actually be to understand the nature of these mysterious dark components. A beautiful new result illuminating (if you will) the dark matter in galaxy cluster 1E 0657-56 is an important step in this direction. (Heres the press release, and an article in the Chandra Chronicles.)

A prerequisite to understanding the dark sector is to make sure we are on the right track. Can we be sure that we havent been fooled into believing in dark matter and dark energy? After all, we only infer their existence from detecting their gravitational fields; stronger-than-expected gravity in galaxies and clusters leads us to posit dark matter, while the acceleration of the universe (and the overall geometry of space) leads us to posit dark energy. Could it perhaps be that gravity is modified on the enormous distance scales characteristic of these phenomena? Einsteins general theory of relativity does a great job of accounting for the behavior of gravity in the Solar System and astrophysical systems like the binary pulsar, but might it be breaking down over larger distances?

A departure from general relativity on very large scales isnt what one would expect on general principles. In most physical theories that we know and love, modifications are expected to arise on small scales (higher energies), while larger scales should behave themselves. But, we have to keep an open mind in principle, its absolutely possible that gravity could be modified, and its worth taking seriously.

Furthermore, it would be really cool. Personally, I would prefer to explain cosmological dynamics using modified gravity instead of dark matter and dark energy, just because it would tell us something qualitatively different about how physics works. (And Vera Rubin agrees.) We would all love to out-Einstein Einstein by coming up with a better theory of gravity. But our job isnt to express preferences, its to suggest hypotheses and then go out and test them.

The problem is, how do you test an idea as vague as modifying general relativity? You can imagine testing specific proposals for how gravity should be modified, like Milgroms MOND, but in more general terms we might worry that any observations could be explained by some modification of gravity.

But its not quite so bad there are reasonable features that any respectable modification of general relativity ought to have. Specifically, we expect that the gravitational force should point in the direction of its source, not off at some bizarrely skewed angle. So if we imagine doing away with dark matter, we can safely predict that gravity always be pointing in the direction of the ordinary matter. Thats interesting but not immediately helpful, since its natural to expect that the ordinary matter and dark matter cluster in the same locations; even if there is dark matter, its no surprise to find the gravitational field pointing toward the visible matter as well.

What we really want is to ta

The great accomplishment of late-twentieth-century cosmology was putting together a complete inventory of the universe. We can tell a story that fits all the known data, in which ordinary matter (every particle ever detected in any experiment) constitutes only about 5% of the energy of the universe, with 25% being dark matter and 70% being dark energy. The challenge for early-twentyfirst-century cosmology will actually be to understand the nature of these mysterious dark components. A beautiful new result illuminating (if you will) the dark matter in galaxy cluster 1E 0657-56 is an important step in this direction. (Heres the press release, and an article in the Chandra Chronicles.)

A prerequisite to understanding the dark sector is to make sure we are on the right track. Can we be sure that we havent been fooled into believing in dark matter and dark energy? After all, we only infer their existence from detecting their gravitational fields; stronger-than-expected gravity in galaxies and clusters leads us to posit dark matter, while the acceleration of the universe (and the overall geometry of space) leads us to posit dark energy. Could it perhaps be that gravity is modified on the enormous distance scales characteristic of these phenomena? Einsteins general theory of relativity does a great job of accounting for the behavior of gravity in the Solar System and astrophysical systems like the binary pulsar, but might it be breaking down over larger distances?

A departure from general relativity on very large scales isnt what one would expect on general principles. In most physical theories that we know and love, modifications are expected to arise on small scales (higher energies), while larger scales should behave themselves. But, we have to keep an open mind in principle, its absolutely possible that gravity could be modified, and its worth taking seriously.

Furthermore, it would be really cool. Personally, I would prefer to explain cosmological dynamics using modified gravity instead of dark matter and dark energy, just because it would tell us something qualitatively different about how physics works. (And Vera Rubin agrees.) We would all love to out-Einstein Einstein by coming up with a better theory of gravity. But our job isnt to express preferences, its to suggest hypotheses and then go out and test them.

The problem is, how do you test an idea as vague as modifying general relativity? You can imagine testing specific proposals for how gravity should be modified, like Milgroms MOND, but in more general terms we might worry that any observations could be explained by some modification of gravity.

But its not quite so bad there are reasonable features that any respectable modification of general relativity ought to have. Specifically, we expect that the gravitational force should point in the direction of its source, not off at some bizarrely skewed angle. So if we imagine doing away with dark matter, we can safely predict that gravity always be pointing in the direction of the ordinary matter. Thats interesting but not immediately helpful, since its natural to expect that the ordinary matter and dark matter cluster in the same locations; even if there is dark matter, its no surprise to find the gravitational field pointing toward the visible matter as well.

What we really want is to ta

The great accomplishment of late-twentieth-century cosmology was putting together a complete inventory of the universe. We can tell a story that fits all the known data, in which ordinary matter (every particle ever detected in any experiment) constitutes only about 5% of the energy of the universe, with 25% being dark matter and 70% being dark energy. The challenge for early-twentyfirst-century cosmology will actually be to understand the nature of these mysterious dark components. A beautiful new result illuminating (if you will) the dark matter in galaxy cluster 1E 0657-56 is an important step in this direction. (Heres the press release, and an article in the Chandra Chronicles.)

A prerequisite to understanding the dark sector is to make sure we are on the right track. Can we be sure that we havent been fooled into believing in dark matter and dark energy? After all, we only infer their existence from detecting their gravitational fields; stronger-than-expected gravity in galaxies and clusters leads us to posit dark matter, while the acceleration of the universe (and the overall geometry of space) leads us to posit dark energy. Could it perhaps be that gravity is modified on the enormous distance scales characteristic of these phenomena? Einsteins general theory of relativity does a great job of accounting for the behavior of gravity in the Solar System and astrophysical systems like the binary pulsar, but might it be breaking down over larger distances?

A departure from general relativity on very large scales isnt what one would expect on general principles. In most physical theories that we know and love, modifications are expected to arise on small scales (higher energies), while larger scales should behave themselves. But, we have to keep an open mind in principle, its absolutely possible that gravity could be modified, and its worth taking seriously.

Furthermore, it would be really cool. Personally, I would prefer to explain cosmological dynamics using modified gravity instead of dark matter and dark energy, just because it would tell us something qualitatively different about how physics works. (And Vera Rubin agrees.) We would all love to out-Einstein Einstein by coming up with a better theory of gravity. But our job isnt to express preferences, its to suggest hypotheses and then go out and test them.

The problem is, how do you test an idea as vague as modifying general relativity? You can imagine testing specific proposals for how gravity should be modified, like Milgroms MOND, but in more general terms we might worry that any observations could be explained by some modification of gravity.

But its not quite so bad there are reasonable features that any respectable modification of general relativity ought to have. Specifically, we expect that the gravitational force should point in the direction of its source, not off at some bizarrely skewed angle. So if we imagine doing away with dark matter, we can safely predict that gravity always be pointing in the direction of the ordinary matter. Thats interesting but not immediately helpful, since its natural to expect that the ordinary matter and dark matter cluster in the same locations; even if there is dark matter, its no surprise to find the gravitational field pointing toward the visible matter as well.

What we really want is to ta

I can't speak for the others, but Mark Trodden and Sean Carroll are theoretical cosmologists. I majored in astrophysics as an undergrad and read some of their papers. Also, Sean Carroll is quoted in the press release on NASA's web site.

So these aren't just random guys talking, but professionals in the field. Also, as Sean states in his post, the result was embargoed, which means it was being kept under wraps before publication in a journal. This article and the one I mentioned above are just talking about the results that are published elsewhere. If you really want to read the journal article, it's available here.

I can't speak for the others, but Mark Trodden and Sean Carroll are theoretical cosmologists. I majored in astrophysics as an undergrad and read some of their papers. Also, Sean Carroll is quoted in the press release on NASA's web site.

So these aren't just random guys talking, but professionals in the field. Also, as Sean states in his post, the result was embargoed, which means it was being kept under wraps before publication in a journal. This article and the one I mentioned above are just talking about the results that are published elsewhere. If you really want to read the journal article, it's available here.

http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2006/1e0657/

For those who prefer here are the salient links which TF"A" (it's a blog entry) is referencing: http://chandra.harvard.edu/chronicle/0306/devil/ http://chandra.harvard.edu/press/06_releases/press _082106.html

For those who prefer here are the salient links which TF"A" (it's a blog entry) is referencing: http://chandra.harvard.edu/chronicle/0306/devil/ http://chandra.harvard.edu/press/06_releases/press _082106.html