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How about this quote http://www.president.harvard.edu/speeches/2005/nbe r.html from what he said: "So my best guess, to provoke you, of what's behind all of this is that the largest phenomenon, by far, is the general clash between people's legitimate family desires and employers' current desire for high power and high intensity, that in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude, and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination."

80. (1) Subject to subsection (2), the act of reproducing all or any substantial part of (a) a musical work embodied in a sound recording, (b) a performer's performance of a musical work embodied in a sound recording, or(br> (c) a sound recording in which a musical work, or a performer's performance of a musical work, is embodied onto an audio recording medium for the private use of the person who makes the copy does not constitute an infringement of the copyright in the musical work, the performer's performance or the sound recording.

So, any copying I do, for my own personal use, is ok. This includes downloading music. This seemingly does not include uploading music. See here for more.

The fact that ISP can't get subscriber information from ISP's for file sharers might not make it legal, but it sure does make it easy to get away with.

From the Harvard FAQ at: http://hul.harvard.edu/publications/041213faq.html ...

Will this include books still in copyright? Google will be scanning books that are in as well as out of copyright from the Harvard collections. Harvard-owned books in the public domain will be available in the search results. Google may choose to display descriptive catalog information for books that are still under copyright. We believe that Google's treatment of in-copyright works is consistent with copyright law.

If I'm reading this correctly, that Google is placing the text of copyrighted works into a freely searchable and viewable database, it's an amazingly brazen step. It's also incredibly useful, but I can't imagine book publishers lying down for this. Add to this Disney's propensity for lobbying for extending copyrights everytime Mickey Mouse comes up for entering the public domain and I think we're headed for an interesting copyright showdown.

I'm sure they're subject-shopping, but it's interesting that there are so many weird things going on out there.

It does feel like there are a few things about to tease themselves apart in cosmology...

Gravity seems to be behaving oddly, with things like the Pioneer acceleration and the anomalous in-track acceleration of the LAGEOS satellites.

The limited age of the universe is being stretched to strange proportions of late with observations of the early universe looking more developed than expected. Observations by the Spitzer may throw even more confusion on the fire.

Add to the pile interesting oddities like Quantized Redshift, originally proposed by Tifft and still observed, that would see to put us at the center of the universe (we shouldn't see the equivalent of even "shells" from our point of view). The Fingers of God is an interesting graphic interpretation.

Association of high-redshift quasars with low-redshift galaxies rounds off the plate.

Actually, a number of these controversies have been around since the mid-80's, but the power and spectrum spread of our telescopes has been getting better. It's been hard to get time to observe the controversial objects - the allocation committees tend to turn such proposals down - but there are plenty of controversies left in the skies, even when we don't go looking for them :)

Personally, I'm excited by the possibilities. It feels like there's something just around the corner, if only we can get some research time in on it.

Please note that the identical AC post in this story was me, but I accidentally posted it as AC the first time.

Here's a basic list of just a handful of abuses I came up:

• The PATRIOT act is being used in regular non-terrorism criminal cases. Anything beyond simple misdemenors is being passed off as terrorism, now.
• A webmaster was jailed under PATRIOT because someone had posted bomb making info on his server. Keep in mind that he didn't put the info there, he was basically a web host, and one of his clients was using his account this way. This is a particularly damning case of abuse where "Innocuous objects such as iced tea bottles and a toy car were described as terrorist devices by the FBI and a joint task force of police officers."
• A disturbing article about using the PATRIOT act to obtain warrants against doctors and scientists. Not because they've done anything wrong, but because they happen to do research with hazardous materials. Guilty before proven innocent.
• Story about someone killed by the PATRIOT act
• Several artists were charged with bioterrorism under PATRIOT for creating artwork meant to educate viewers in the dangers of the biotech industry.
• Story about a veteran being arrested for complaining too much due to the heightened terror alert.
• Shining a pocket laser into an airplane is terrorism falling under the PATRIOT act
• Article republished fromt the Washington post about American citizens held without trial
• A man being harrassed by a "joint terrorism task force" (the kind that has authority under the PATRIOT act) because of investigating Area 51
• Another "joint terrorism task force" investigating a 12 year old for doing a school paper on the Cesapeake Bay Bridge
• A photographer arrested and threatened with being charged under the PATRIOT act for taking pictures of Dick Cheney

And finally, maybe there haven't been as many abuses as there will be once all 2nd legal track the preparations are in place.

Here's a basic list of just a handful of abuses I came up:

• The PATRIOT act is being used in regular non-terrorism criminal cases. Anything beyond simple misdemenors is being passed off as terrorism, now.
• A webmaster was jailed under PATRIOT because someone had posted bomb making info on his server. Keep in mind that he didn't put the info there, he was basically a web host, and one of his clients was using his account this way. This is a particularly damning case of abuse where "Innocuous objects such as iced tea bottles and a toy car were described as terrorist devices by the FBI and a joint task force of police officers."
• A disturbing article about using the PATRIOT act to obtain warrants against doctors and scientists. Not because they've done anything wrong, but because they happen to do research with hazardous materials. Guilty before proven innocent.
• Story about someone killed by the PATRIOT act
• Several artists were charged with bioterrorism under PATRIOT for creating artwork meant to educate viewers in the dangers of the biotech industry.
• Story about a veteran being arrested for complaining too much due to the heightened terror alert.
• Shining a pocket laser into an airplane is terrorism falling under the PATRIOT act
• Article republished fromt the Washington post about American citizens held without trial
• A man being harrassed by a "joint terrorism task force" (the kind that has authority under the PATRIOT act) because of investigating Area 51
• Another "joint terrorism task force" investigating a 12 year old for doing a school paper on the Cesapeake Bay Bridge
• A photographer arrested and threatened with being charged under the PATRIOT act for taking pictures of Dick Cheney

And finally, maybe there haven't been as many abuses as there will be once all 2nd legal track the preparations are in place.

While I get a kick out of most of these missions, I'm *really* waiting for the next Titan mission. I want to see a nuclear powered helicopter or cryogenic-temperature blimp (two proposals thusfar) patrolling around Titan; it'd be able to visit pretty much the entire moon. Huygens definitely was a "pose 5 new questions for every one it answered" mission. And if anything, Titan now looks even more like Primordial-Earth-In-Deep-Freeze than ever before. ::digs up one of his old posts to sci.space.tech::

There were some concept studies done of an "Aerover" blimp for Titan exploration a few years back. I suspect we'll soon seen those ideas thrown around again.

Post-Cassini Exploration of Titan: Science Rationale and Mission Concepts (compares helicopters, blimps, etc.)
Titan orbiter Aerover mission
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/features.cfm?feature= 499
http://www.nasatech.com/Briefs/Mar03/NPO20609.html
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/ titan_blimp_020212.html

Geek tends to mean white or asian male. I don't think anyone here is going to argue with that. It would be interting to see how strong this subconcious assocation is, and this is a way to do it...
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/selecta test.html

I suggest the gender-science and gender-career tests. I bet that people on /. are even more likely then adverage to have strong assocations between maleness and scientific abilty and business ability.
This is likely in part a self prepuating cycle, seeing few women leads you to think women don't belong in IT, which leads you to be suspicious of any women who are in IT, the women get tired of hostile reactions and drop out, this leads to fewer women in IT.....

I have seen talks given about the heliosphere, based upon current data from these probes, and how future data will shed light on this. This is an active area of research and the Voyagers are providing very useful data. The scientists are not suggesting indefinite funding- they want the funding to be continued because these probes are on the verge of passing out of the solar system into interstellar space. This is a very real boundary that astronomers would like to know more about and it seems absurd to end these missions right before we get there.

Terminate these Voyagers now, and in ten years you will see calls for a new probe to be launched to study these regions; only now, you will need 1/2 billion dollars for an entirely new mission. That is why this is penny wise, pound foolish. The scientific review board apparently agrees- they felt there was enough science there to continue funding.

If you would like to see what is being published, do a search for Voyager on the ADS; you will find numerous papers based upon this current data: http://adswww.harvard.edu/

Hence nearly every astronomical paper of the last century is available online free of charge, either at the NASA astrononomical data system or through the reprint/preprint archive.

Meanwhile ad or subscription supported journals tend to charge fairly steep fees for electronic access to "their" articles.

Its tough for an author supported journal to say "We're going to charge you in order to publish this, but we're not going to let you distribute it in other ways." Hence, "pay to publish" journals foster free access to journal articles.

From what I can understand, the models that has worked best is to have a blackout period. Turns out that pros are really interested in papers about a year old. Older stuff gets dated. Therefore to keep up your research library still needs to subscribe but it's free for everyone if it's old enough.

This way the journals still make their money on subcriptions and the information is freely available at some point. It's not clear that this is the final model that has been settled on but it's on out there for the moment.

The "hack" was typing in a URL, presumably without even possessing a login username/password/cookie. The article doesn't say, but knowing how a lot of colleges work, the identifier in the URL was probably just your SSN or something equally as pseudo-secret.

1. Just type in a URL.

The only "ethically challenged" group we can assert and assume with any certainty is the company providing the Apply Yourself services.

Its ethically criminal to provide a confidential service on the internet with virtually no security.

From (almost) the horses mouth: Noted web application developer and MIT professor Phillip Greenspun notes on his Harvard weblog:

• The ApplyYourself code had a bug such that editing the URL in the "Address" or "Location" field of a Web browser window would result in an applicant being able to find out his admissions status several weeks before the official notification date. This would be equivalent to a 7-year-old being offered a URL of the form http://philip.greenspun.com/images/20030817-utah-a ir-to-air/and editing it down to http://philip.greenspun.com/images/ to see what else of interest might be on the server.
• Someone figured this out and posted the URL editing idea on the BusinessWeek discussion forum, where all B-school hopefuls hang out and a bunch of curious applicants tried it out.

Liable and culpable? Apply Yourself and the B-Schools who outsourced to a cheesy service provider without, apparently, commissioning even a basic security audit.

Its of no consequence - no doubt there is at least one bright former-B-school student wannabe now contracting the services of a lawyer to sue Haavard - not for denying them access, but for allowing confidential information to be exposed to the internet. Seems to me such a suit is likely to return more than the cost of tuition to any other school in the world...

What should we expect from a school who said girls were naturally bad at math?

What should we expect from a poster who misquotes and takes something out of context and posts off topic because it's political correct to do so? For some reason it's okay to jump on the hate/intolerance bandwagon if public perception is that the other side is intolerant or bigoted, even if that's not the case. Remember this? Enough PC witch-hunting. It's oppressive.

All the man was talking about was looking at the situation objectively. He explains some of that in his letter and even apologizes for stuff he had no control over, specifically, other peoples' misinterpretations and feelings.

http://www.president.harvard.edu/speeches/2005/wom ensci.html

You know Microsoft would never violate any US Law. They are pure and good after all, as are all corporations.

Not just anybody can be a journalist, you need the right hat. http://www.mgh.harvard.edu/pubaffairs/Graphics/259 9hat.jpg

How about a grain of salt the size of a white dwarf?

Matt Welsh, one of the great figures of the early Linux days, has implemented this type of system already as part of his systems research at Harvard:

Code blue

I've had a chance to play with it, and it's a great system with huge promise in triage situations. Welsh is a brilliant guy - if you're interested in this kind of stuff, keep an eye on his work.

> No, no institute which recieves federal funding FOR ANYTHING can conduct such research. There are not many research facilities that aren't recieving federal funding for at least ONE project. This is effectively a ban.

WRONG! The funding is determined on a per facility basis.

Or are you asserting that Harvard as an institution doesn't receive a penny of federal funds? (merely one example)

If you don't see the CNN is left leaning you it's only because you yourself are left leaning and therefore see it as centrist. This topic has been studied several times in several different ways and been proven that the news media is liberal baised

http://post.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/barro/bw /bw04_0614.pdf

http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?PageI D=829

http://www.mediaresearch.org/SpecialReports/2004/r eport063004_p1.asp

a few searches on google will bring up more.

I read a research paper that compared ebay's auction system to others like yahoo, etc. The conclusion was that ebay's system heavily favored bid sniping and that the mechanism for ending a bid has a large effect on the bid distribution. I think this is it:

http://kuznets.fas.harvard.edu/~aroth/papers/eBay. veryshortaer.pdf

I believe x-rays of these energies (a couple of hundred keV) can go through many meters of air (tens to hundreds) -- at least enough of them to register on the detector. Some luck involved, of course, but they looked long enough to get it.

Second thing, although you are absolutely right that bremsstrahlung gets more efficient with higher Z (and with higher energy), it will never be more than about 10 to 20% of the energy loss for electrons of these energies (about an MeV, give or take a factor of a few). Most of the loss will still be by ionization and excitation of air. So bremsstrahlung won't suddenly take over and start dominating the physics, I think, for this reason and because there will be just a lot more air around than evaporated wire. If I were a real lightning physicist I could address your idea that there is heating due to pinching by the magnetic field, but I won't try.

As for the x-ray intensity, I get the impression that it's much less than a chest x-ray, and lasts much less time as well.

One more cool thing in closing: there are groups trying to trigger lightning with a laser (of a suitable wavelength to cause ionization, I presume), and apparently the Japanese have already done so a couple of times: http://www.spie.org/app/publications/magazines/oer archive/july/jul99/laserlight.html

Cheers,

--David

This is absolute nonsense. In the U.S., you do not need to register a trademark to be the owner of it - just use the mark. Perhaps the MAME folks ought to register the name to prevent another clown from trying to steal their name. I've posted a trademark notice on my own site to keep away at least some of the predators. I did that after learning of the problems of problems of Katie Jones, owner of the katie.com domain. Linus Torvalds eventually had to register "Linux" everywhere because of a similar set of thefts.

I know that intergalactic disasters are a hard sell for primetime news, but is it really necessary to endanger Earth every f-ing time something in the universe blows up?

Actually there are a lot of things blowing up in the Universe that I doubt you've ever heard about. This one just happened to get more media attention for one reason or another. If the media publish something like this, they'll want to make it sound interesting for as many people as possible, even when it isn't.

I have a lot of sympathy for the astronomers being quoted. I've had enough experience dealing with journalists to know that it doesn't really matter what you say to them -- they'll often twist it whatever way is most useful to them for the story they want to write.

Is it the news outlets adding the "If X was close to Earth we'd be dead" or is it the scientists seeking to justify their work?

It looks like the news wire to me. Gaensler (who was quoted) clearly states that there aren't any stars like that within 10 light years, making it obvious that he was really just making a comparison to demonstrate how powerful it was, and that there's no actual danger. It's the journalist who made the decision to include the comment in the story, and at the very least I think it's to his credit that the entire quote was included in what appears to be a reasonable context.... unlike the slashdot summary for this story, which is pointlessly sensationalist by taking the first half of the quote without the last half.

The BBC story (linked from the slashdot dupe) is the worst rendition that I've seen, though. BBC published the quote at the end of the article, but copied the "10 light year" comment to the top in an unclear context, emphasising it and making it appear as if it actually was a danger. As far as I'm concerned, that's just irresponsible reporting. It's trying to make out that there's a potential disaster in the works when there clearly isn't one.

[...]is currently available only to manufacturers for evaluation and integration.

IANL, but hopefully they are being sued under DMCA for reverse engineering so that they could skin a game:

... a person who has lawfully obtained the right to use a copy of a computer program may circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a particular portion of that program for the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing those elements of the program that are necessary to achieve interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs ...

If you got a problem with it, take it up with the researchers who performed the study, not me.

And unless you have information your not telling, looks something up before outright disputing what I say. I at least bothered to google on the subject before I posted my response.

Please read the second paragraph of the following http://neuro-www.mgh.harvard.edu/research/caplan.h tml

I'm actually taking a class right now at that University with a lecturer who was a senior during Gates sojourn.

Leitner mentioned a number of weeks ago that Gates had written an altair emulator that ran in 3k of ram and left 1k for the users environment. He wrote this on a PDP-10 with only the Altair specs for a reference. The true programming feat is that his subsequently developed code ran flawlessly on an actual altair machine.

I'm actually taking a class right now at that University with a lecturer who was a senior during Gates sojourn.

Leitner mentioned a number of weeks ago that Gates had written an altair emulator that ran in 3k of ram and left 1k for the users environment. He wrote this on a PDP-10 with only the Altair specs for a reference. The true programming feat is that his subsequently developed code ran flawlessly on an actual altair machine.

I'm actually taking a class right now at that University with a lecturer who was a senior during Gates sojourn.

Leitner mentioned a number of weeks ago that Gates had written an altair emulator that ran in 3k of ram and left 1k for the users environment. He wrote this on a PDP-10 with only the Altair specs for a reference. The true programming feat is that his subsequently developed code ran flawlessly on an actual altair machine.

with the advantages of (some) gravity

*what* advantages?

Gravity sucks for telescopes: mirror sag, need for heavy structural support, inability to point a spinning liquid mirror 'scope anywhere other than straight up, and that idiotic ball of rock beneath you blocks half the sky, not to mention the line of sight for long baseline interferometry. If any instrument was meant to free-float in space, optical 'scopes are it.

It would be an excellent complement to a moonbase that will be very handy when building a ship for mars.

My USB stick would be an excellent complement to a Toyota Corolla that will be very handy when boarding my plane for Europe. These three things have nothing to do with each other, except that two happen to involve transportation (manned space flight).

The moonbase would also be excellent to learn to create a selfsupporting environment for a marsbase.

How so? Anything serious goes wrong on the Mars base, astronauts die. Anything serious goes wrong on the Moon base: ditto. You can't afford much slack with humans in space. A mock base in Arizona or Antarctica may afford learning opportunities, but by the time you head for the Moon you better have *everything* well sorted out.

I call sloppy thinking.

Of course, he's theoretically wrong; the C standard actually does not exclude the possibility of preventing programs from doing bad things

• CCured
• Cyclone

One of the studies mentioned in the book was done by Harvard. They created an online version of these tests that show whether or not you subconsciously associate certain things together. You can take the tests yourself and find out things you may not even be aware of.

The tests are all based on the same idea but are targeted for different prejudices. The black/white test is interesting because many Americans (and less so, other Westerners) will exhibit some form of bias against African-Americans on it. The test said that Malcolm Gladwell, the author of the book, also shows this bias even though his mother is black.

I don't know how accurate these things can be, but it's kind of disturbing to take these and realize how your mind may subconsciously influence your decisions/interactions with other people in such a way.

Ask Harvard University President Lawrence Summers

My view is based on the scientific data that exists. I therefore want laws enacted to ban driving while using a cel phone. The more data that supports my view, the better.

http://www.psych.utah.edu/AppliedCognitionLab/Stra yerHFES04.pdf
http://www.hcra.harvard.edu/cellphones.html
http://www.utah.edu/unews/releases/03/jan/cellphon e.html
http://www.nsc.org/library/shelf/inincell.htm
http://www.ur.ku.edu/News/01N/JulyNews/July12/cell ular.html
http://www.icbc.com/Inside_ICBC/january2001news.ht ml

You sir, should be modded to the floor for your trollish ways.

My area code is 666 and I just looked outside. It's completely frozen too. Yup.

Well then I guess heck has gone cold; Gosh bless us all.

It seems like a genuine effort on Microsoft's part, but then it seems one needs a law degree to enjoy any real freedom these days.

Besides, it's not like the schemas are the whole programs (though it would greatly help implementors). They're not exactly MIT/GPL-compatible from what I've read...

Microsoft may have patents and/or patent applications that are necessary for you to license in order to make, sell, or distribute software programs that read or write files that comply with the Microsoft specifications for the Office Schemas (second link below)

...and they appear to indemnify teh MS from patent lawsuits...

Microsoft reserves the right to terminate this license grant if you sue Microsoft or any of Microsoft's affiliates for patent infringement over claims relating to reading or writing of files that comply with the Office Schemas. This license is perpetual subject to this reservation. (second link, again)

...but I'm no lawyer on these licenses. Have fun:

This is Ig Noble Prize material! Last years Psychology Ig Nobel Prize winner won for "Gorilla's In Our Midst", showing that "when people pay close attention to something, it's all too easy to overlook anything else -- even a woman in a gorilla suit." Clearly, monkey butts is important follow-up research that also deserves a prize.

As a "military action," are we including the slaughter of 65 million of your own citizens?

- Alaska Jack

I somehow didn't expect slashdotters to give up their slashdot that easily. I'd think there are a lot of you who aren't following their own laws to the letter. Copyright laws, for example, and do you all stop for a red traffic light? I'm afraid I've broken quite a few laws. Some because it was more convenient to, others because I simply disagree.

The analogy is flawed though, the risk of being caught for the laws I break is zero. The risks in china seem to be unpredictable , which isn't very promising. But I cannot find any information on how they treat non-chinese. I would expect them to be mild, especially if you're not involved in political activities but reading slashdot. Maybe it's an idea not to encrypt your traffic but use a plain proxyserver. That way they can see you're just accessing slashdot and not organising a coup.

Of course it's nice of you to worry about him doing illigal stuff in a country like China. But I don't understand that there're are no practical answers being modded up. Only the warnings that say he should adapt to the situation there. Everyone here probably objects strongly to the Chinese censorship, but nobody seems to we willing to take the risk to 'protest' against it. The risk might be very real indeed, but then again, I'd bet laws like these aren't quite the same for foreigners. Maybe someone could enlighten us about the risks involved? Are there any example cases?

More important to realize is that this list shows slashdot.org being blocked three years ago and that actually doing a little reading on the page there clearly states that that's not intended to be a definitive list and that many sites were to be unblocked. The list is simply outdated, not an attempt to mislead. Honestly, referencing a two year old dataset like that was shoddy work on the part of the original poster, not Harvard.

File sharing results in MORE SALES. The RIAA/MPAA refuse to acknowledge this. Thank god somebody isn't afraid to research this and then say so.

Here is a comprehensive list of sites banned in China: http://asp-cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/list.ht ml

By the way, RS-232 isn't the hardware port, it's a signaling protocol. The connector on those machines is probably a DE-9.

I posted the wrong page.Correction.

Did you read the page? Do you understand what the hell is going on there?

Scroll down to the targeted host apple.com and click on it (link provided for you).

Now read the WHOLE PAGE. Those are advertisers that Gator pops up WHEN YOU ARE BROWSING APPLE.COM.

Key distinction there. It's not that APPLE is advertising. It's that gator is DISPLAYING OTHER ADS when you are on Apple.com.

Living proof that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

As for the suing thing, Apple is actually suing to find out who the employees are that are leaking details. I'm not that happy about them suing they guy but I have to say that whoever leaked these details has probably crossed the line because they have seriously broken a contract a NDA they signed. Previous rumors have been close but this last wave was just too exacting in detail.

If you want to be angry at someone how about wondering why these employees do not come forward and give themselves up instead of letting this kid twist in the wind.

Except that, if you actually click on your link, and look at the detail page for apple.com, it doesn't actually show any advertisements that Apple would plausibly run. Instead, it shows things like Time-Life elvis books and Netflix subscriptions. I think your evidence may be a little wanting.

They sued a 19 year old kid for because he found out that Apple was releasing a $500 computer. Apple is also planning to go after some other fan sites aswell.

Seriously if this was any other company, we scream for their heads. It is time we finally hold apple accountable for their actions. I've stopped buying microsoft products long time ago, and now apple has made my list of companies i will not support.

http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/cfa/ps/special/rocknrol l/RockAndRoll.html gives a list of other interplanetary tributes to popular culture heroes - some deceased (Frank Zappa, John Lennon), some aparently still alive (Enya)

Anyone here who's a scientist ever try to use "google scholar"? Unfortunately, it's not very good. What I'd like to see (as an Astrophysicist) is some way to do a search that combined results from difficult-to-navigate scientific sites, such as NASA's ADS abstract service, the Spires HEP database, and the arXiv.org preprint database. Finding what you need on these individual sites is often a pain, and to be able to search a compilation of them would sure be nice for me...