Slashdot Mirror

This is also quite interesting...

Light Exceeds Its Own Speed Limit, or Does It?

"At least one physicist, Dr. Guenter Nimtz of the University of Cologne, holds the opinion that a number of experiments, including those of the Italian group, have in fact sent information superluminally."

If you haven't heard of bzzagent, this is well worth reading and being aware of:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/05/magazine/05BUZZ. html?ex=1259989200&en=6dc3f3878659a642&ei=5090&par tner=rssuserland
(nytimes registration required, yadda yadda)
It too references Wm. Gibson's "Pattern Recognition" in its investigation into this insidious marketing technique.

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 22 - Hejaz Hazim, a computer engineer who could not find a job in computers and now cleans clothes, slammed his iron into a dress shirt the other day and let off a burst of steam about the coming election.

"This election is bogus," Mr. Hazim said. "There is no drinking water in this city. There is no security. Why should I vote?"

No Karma Whoring. Eat it up... NY Times Article

The linked article is interesting from a technical standpoint, but it's also pretty dry--after the lead paragraph, the author doesn't really talk about the sweat and tears behind the scenes. Fortunately, the Times Magazine ran a story (reg-free link) a couple years ago about the human side of iPod, from conception to birth. Turns out the iPod didn't spring whole from the tip of Steve Jobs' magical wang. The article's worth a read if you're into this kind of thing.

There is a similar case to this going on with a NYTimes reporter. The story is here. Interestingly, a lot of very educated journalists think the government is wrong in that case. If ThinkSecret is considered a news source, this is practically identical. That may not bode well for Nick de Plume, but he will have the journalistic community on his side.

Dear Jackass:

When the New York Times admits that they have a Liberal Bias, you'd do best to not try and refute it.

Still, I can't wait for people to start complaining about accidents that happened because they thought the car would stop, or rear end collision because the car did stop. There's so much liability that car makers are about 15 years behind where we could be.

Which is probably why this is happening in Europe, where people are less litigious.

(See the NYT story "Three things your automobile can't do, which adresses this issue)

You would hope that since Americans love their cars so much it'd inspire some tort reform, but in the long run, what we'll get is some half-assed laws restricting liability.

Also, a New York Times article (mirror) says PC games are not included in the current numbers. They will be available "in the next few days."

" The Social Security System will fail Shortly after 2031."

No. An utter lie.

The New York Times:

A Question of Numbers
By ROGER LOWENSTEIN

Published: January 16, 2005

THE CONSERVATIVE NEW DEAL

In 1938, the Social Security Act was only three years old, but its future was already very much in doubt. Conservatives claimed it would bankrupt the nation, and independent critics argued that the way it was financed amounted to ''financial hocus-pocus,'' as one editorial in The New York Times put it. President Franklin D. Roosevelt defended the program, said by a cabinet member to be his favorite, with some of his trademark oratory. ''Because it has become increasingly difficult for individuals to build their own security,'' the president told a national radio audience, ''government must now step in and help them lay the foundation stones.''

Social Security did become the cornerstone -- not only the biggest government entitlement plan but also the most universal, the most popular and the most enduring. But the debate over Social Security never ended. Barry Goldwater wanted to repeal it; Milton Friedman wrote in 1962 that it was an unjustifiable incursion on personal liberty; and David Stockman, the budget director who personified Ronald Reagan's efforts to shrink the federal government, tried to take a hatchet to Social Security, which he called a ''monster.''

But in this 70-year struggle, no other conservative has ever come as close to transforming the program as George W. Bush. He is making Social Security reform, including a partial privatization, a centerpiece of his second term. If the most ardent ideologues have their way, such a reform would be a first step toward a wholly new approach to retirement security -- one that would set aside the notion of collective insurance and guaranteed minimums for that of personal investing and responsibility.

This could do more to reverse the New Deal, and even the Great Society, than Goldwater, Stockman and Reagan ever dreamed of. ''We call it a conservative New Deal,'' says Stephen Moore, author of ''Bullish on Bush: How George W. Bush's Ownership Society Will Make America Stronger.'' In Moore's words, it will be a fundamental shift ''from an entitlement society to an ownership society.'' The key to this transformation, according to a generation of conservative thinkers and crusaders, is reducing the size and changing the nature of Social Security, which now pays benefits of half a trillion a year, and which will only grow bigger as America grows older.

The campaign to privatize has not only been about ideology; it has also focused on Social Security's supposed insolvency. Moore's book calls Social Security a ''Titanic . . . headed toward the iceberg'' and a program ''on the verge of collapse.'' A stream of other conservatives have bombarded the public, over years and decades, with prophecies of trillion-dollar liabilities and with metaphors intended to frighten -- ''train wreck,'' ''bankruptcy,'' ''cancer'' and so forth. Recently, a White House political deputy wrote a strategy note in which he said that Social Security is ''on an unsustainable course. That reality needs to be seared into the public consciousness.''

The campaign is potentially self-fulfilling: persuade enough people that Social Security is going bankrupt, and it will lose public support. Then Congress will be forced to act. And thanks to such unceasing alarums, many, and perhaps most, people today think the program is in serious financial trouble.

But is it? After Bush's re-election, I carefully read the 225-page annual report of the Social Security trustees. I also talked to actuaries and economists, inside and outside the agency, who are expert in the peculiar science of long-term Social Security forecasting. The actuarial view is that the system is probably i

About 50 academics from across the nation, many of them economists, participated in the conference, "Diversifying the Science and Engineering Workforce: Women, Underrepresented Minorities, and their S. & E. Careers." Dr. Summers arrived after a morning session and addressed a working lunch, speaking without notes. No transcript was made because the conference was designed to be off-the-record so that participants could speak candidly without fear of public misunderstanding or disclosure later.

I recognize that nobody signed an NDA to go to the conference, but it seems unfair to me to leak word of what happened in a forum whose intent was to be free from "public misunderstanding" and whose very design precludes Summers being able to defend himself.

Next, Summers went on to discuss the various hypotheses:
The first factor, he said, according to several participants, was that top positions on university math and engineering faculties require extraordinary commitments of time and energy, with many professors working 80-hour weeks in the same punishing schedules pursued by top lawyers, bankers and business executives. Few married women with children are willing to accept such sacrifices, he said.

Sounds reasonable to me. But the response he got wasn't:
Dr. Hopkins said, "I didn't disagree, but didn't like the way he presented that point because I like to work 80 hours a week, and I know a lot of women who work that hard."

In other words, what Summers said was *completely correct*, *not bigoted*, *agreed upon by his critic*, and STILL she was offended. I simply don't see what there was to not like about this point. This passage pretty much shows you what sort of mindset Summers is up against.

Next, Summers discussed another potential theory:
In citing a second factor, Dr. Summers cited research showing that more high school boys than girls tend to score at very high and very low levels on standardized math tests, and that it was important to consider the possibility that such differences may stem from biological differences between the sexes.

Possible... he's not suggesting it's necessarily true, only potentially true. Perhaps it needs more research? Not mentioned in the NYT article was the fact that Summers said that he hoped he would be found wrong on this hypothesis, or that another alternative (which he discounted) was discrimination.

To summarize: Summers delivered a speech on a problematic yet touchy subject in a conference designed to allow people to speak freely on touchy subjects. He then got burned by someone who wasn't really interested in understanding the nuances of what he had to say but instead immidiately assumed he was a bigot. He's trying to find the answer to a question that has no obvious answer: either it's discrimination (discounted), women don't want academic success as badly (reasonable), or women just aren't the math-science types (a bit out there but not insane).

That's not to say that my university's president is a great guy, but these accusations that he seems women as genetically inferior are absurd.

Click here. Used NYT Link Generator.

no-reg link: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/16/magazine/16SOCIA L.html

Just because it's politically incorrect, why do we constantly have to beat around the bush or avoid making a direct connection from the data. If these people are rational economists, then they should realize that the statistics point to an innate gender difference, not just social factors, as some ultra-liberals would have you believe.

The New York Times has a good report on this at http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/18/national/18harva rd.html

The article mentions that males stastically score in the extremes on standardized math tests-i.e. do the best and the worst. In order to succeed at academia, they have to be the best of the best, and the distribution of those few achievers would logically be towards the males.

Plus, how many women with a family could seriously commit 80 hours of work a week? You'd have to be crazy and obsessed about your job in order to sacrifice that much of a personal life. If that's what it often takes to achieve greatness, I'm surprised there are any professors, male or female, willing to take on the commitment.

So you mean they both have above avarage IQ?

young George W. Bush probably had a higher I.Q. than did the young John Kerry

The NYTimes has been running this story on their main page for the past day. Story is here.

Apparently, he made these remarks in an effort to provoke discussion more than to express his beliefs. Or at least that's the spin on it.

Why does the NYT story's Atlas have a fig-leaf whereas the poster's picture have none? Is this the same Atlas or is there soem photoshop censorship going on?

Video preservation not enough?

There are plenty of robots in music, like these, admittedly for a different purpose. This article in the New York Times talks robots in art, and about this all-robot concert at Juilliard.

What is the world coming to?

I should also have included some relevant links to Internet based news sources bookmarked in Safari:

Slashdot of course.
CNN of course.
NYTimes for the writing and quality of reporting.
BBC for the big mainstream non American news perspective.
Kevin Sites for on the ground reporting in Iraq.
Dan Gillmor for news grassroots news.
CBS for financial info.
CNET for tech news.
Global Security for political defense news.
Google for a good news accumulator.
Cryptome because John manages to pull some pretty damned interesting articles out.
NPR of course. Don't forget to donate.
Reuters because they have the news.
Washington Post for beltway news.
Wall St. Journal for more financial news.
NPR Marketplace for more financial news.
CBS for mainstream US news.
Technocrat for real science oriented geek news, like Slashdot only with less noise.
Oh, yeah and
Macsurfer for a Macintosh community oriented news accumulator.

* Voice recording capability.
* FM radio / recorder.
* Removable lithium-ion battery.
* More space (5GB vs 4GB for Mini)
* More colors (10 vs 5 for Mini)

* Crappy touch-sensitive vertical strip.
* Crappy non-audio file mgmt capabilities.
* Crappy recorded sound quality.
* A bit heavier (3.8oz vs 3.6oz for Mini)

* MuVo TX 512MB @ $119.00
* MuVo NX 256MB @ $89.99
* MuVo 128MB @ $49.99

* Better price-per-MB ratio.
* Smaller form factor
* Lighter in weight
* Supports AAC, Audible v2-4
* Add'l hardware available (e.g. FM radio)
* Compatible with iTunes
* 12-mo limited warranty (vs 3-12 for MuVo's)
* Extended warranty available ($60)

* No display
* No way to lock controls
* Does not support WMA
* Not compatible with other online music
stores

* Voice recording capability.
* FM radio / recorder.
* Removable lithium-ion battery.
* More space (5GB vs 4GB for Mini)
* More colors (10 vs 5 for Mini)

* Crappy touch-sensitive vertical strip.
* Crappy non-audio file mgmt capabilities.
* Crappy recorded sound quality.
* A bit heavier (3.8oz vs 3.6oz for Mini)

* MuVo TX 512MB @ $119.00
* MuVo NX 256MB @ $89.99
* MuVo 128MB @ $49.99

* Better price-per-MB ratio.
* Smaller form factor
* Lighter in weight
* Supports AAC, Audible v2-4
* Add'l hardware available (e.g. FM radio)
* Compatible with iTunes
* 12-mo limited warranty (vs 3-12 for MuVo's)
* Extended warranty available ($60)

* No display
* No way to lock controls
* Does not support WMA
* Not compatible with other online music
stores

according to this NYTimes article (registration required unless you try via Google search). Not a trend that bodes well.

a good idea to include some info about who the heck this guy is?
I had to do a search. May I suggest that the editors/posters re-read their submission instructions?
In related news, Wilbert Rideau has been released.

Even to the President of another country, right?

This was an Associated Press article, which is hardly an obscure bastion of IndyMedia. It's carried in such obscure media as, gosh, the "New York Times" -- perhaps you've heard of them?

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Biotech -Pirates.html?oref=login

Perhaps you've blinded yourself to the continued existence of quality newspapers and listen solely to AlterNet and friends.

You guys are up now to episode 11 of BSG? It's rather sad seeing them up on the usenet when they still haven't even aired here yet... I wonder if SciFi's delay in broadcasting them could be considered inducement to commit copyright infringement. No doubt many not sick of waiting to be able to watch legitimately and decided to go the less than legal route of DLing them.

* @PaulR considers trolling
<@JK> PaulR, wtf
* @JK considers looking at link
<@JK> Uh
* @adam_merav starts IE for the first and only time
<@adam_merav> (to obtain firefox)
<@JK> inducement to to commit copyright fraud???? wtf???? you mean,, what the rest of the FUCKING WHOLE WORLD experiences EVERY DAY????
<@PaulR> :-)
<@Frantic> yep :)

They say it like it is on "I.R.C."...

If you're going to compare to the EU, let's go all the way. The EU has a declining birthrate and a large number of people on the verge of retirement. Their socialist systems will implode under their own weight.

The same is being said about our Social Security system, which btw, is the largest socialist program that is not identified as a socialist program. Socialism in the US?! Never!!

Let's also mention military might. The EU spends about $0.35/year on their military budget, and that's why when some asshole in Absurdistan starts massacring people, the EU sends a platoon of potato peelers and the US sends 20 battallions of armed and trained Marines.

I'd rather we followed the prime directive. We don't. But despite spending almost as much as the rest of the world does on military, we don't have a stellar record of policing the world.

I don't remember any of our marines showing up when Pol Pot butchered a million (give or take a few hundred thousand) Cambodians. Or when Idi Amin "Dada" wiped out half a million of his subjects. Where exactly where our marines when Juvénal Habyarimana was waging a genocidal war against the Tutsis? (Of course, after his death another 800,000 were slaughtered, so can't directly credit him with every death.) BTW, it was the French who stepped in to bring a fragile "peace" (a little too late for all the dead), but our marines were quite conspicuous by their absence during all this turmoil. Did our marines show up when Augusto Pinochet was busy imprisoning, torturing and executing 30,000 Chileans?

So yes, we send our Marines only to the Absurdistans that happen to have oil. See how our marines took care of the "Butcher of Baghdad"; but let us not dampen our euphoria by also mentioning the 17,500 to 100,000 we have managed to wipe out in the process of deposing Saddam Hussein.

BTW, it is not as if the EU is stingy when it comes to spending money on their military. France, Germany, the UK, and Italy are 4 of the top 7 countries when it comes to the military expenditures. France, Norway, Greece, UK, Sweden, Germany, Denmark, Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland, Finland, all make it to the top 25 Military Expenditures per capita.

The EU socialist-lite system works because it depends on the charity of the American military.

For all the money we are pouring into the military complex, we'd better believe that we are doing it for charity, or we'll have to start asking some really disturbing questions. The EU may or may not collapse under the weight of their socialist systems. But one thing is certain - if current levels of military expenditures continue and 'boomers start to retire in 2010, then by 2015 the US budget will have little else to spend on other than the Defence, Soc. Sec, and medicare. No wriggle room.

By 2025 the proverbial shit will hit the fan. Don't take my or anyone else's word for it (such as the NYTimes, WashingtonPost or for that matter

...a misconception that a lot of people have, which is that there's somehow a shortage of scientists. Sorry, just not true.

I truly wonder why you think it is a misconception. It's not some urban legend or "rumors on the internets." The National Science Board is worried about it (NYTimes article here). It's a serious problem that a lot of people (e.g., the US government) are working on.

In fact, as a science teacher, I see a lot of the opposite phenomenon: kids who really care about jazz, or photography, but whose parents are pushing them to do science or computers, because they think it'll be more likely to lead to a good job.

While I agree that pushing kids to do things they don't want to do is foolish, your observation is not evidence for or against any shortage of scientists.

Personally, I don't think pressure from parents or lame gimmicks will make for more scientists and engineers. It seems to be more of a cultural attitude, which requires some deeper, more long-term changes. Honestly, I think that you, as a science teacher, play a relatively large role in that. If you really think the need for more scientists and engineers is just a misconception, I urge you to read more about it, especially the National Science Board's latest report.

At my university, students' SSNs were just posted on the web for all the world to see. On more than one occassion. NYTimes article on the original incident; of course, you need to log in. Second incident was a month later. It all kickstarted the move to the non-SSN university IDs, but not before the university paid for credit checks for any affected student who requested it.

here

No, his column isn't about icebergs per se, but about the administration's attempts to paint the social security situation like it's on a collision course w/ an iceberg.

So anyway, offtopic yada yada (except for the title).

I.B.M. to Give Free Access to 500 Patents

There was an excellent article in the NY Times magazine on this very topic - and why it's in the Chinese government's best interest not to stop it. Although it's cute (and popular) to whine about Johnny down the street serving 5-10 for downloading an MP3, that's not even remotely what this is about. It's not about taking down the little guy. It's not about bowing down to evil American corporations. It's about the Chinese klepto-industrial complex, which steals EVERYTHING.

This goes beyond just the US and CDs and DVDs. For example, the Chinese were considering building a maglev train system. So the German companies ThyssenKrupp and Siemens build a prototype. Workers for the German companies videotaped Chinese engineers poking around at 3am. Shortly after, the Chinese said they would use their own newly development maglev technology for the trains instead of the buying the German tains. They may even be able to export maglev trains at half the price of the German or Japanese trains.

To add to that, we built our own supercomputer, Param, when we were denied access to Crays by the US govt.

Check out this report from a newspaper on how stingy the US is in giving aid. For those who won't bother to read the article, I will quote a few lines here:

"The newspaper highlighted in an editorial that the 15 million dollars initially offered by Washington was less than the figure the ruling Republican Party would spend on President George W. Bush's inauguration in January.The administration has since increased its aid to 35 million dollars."

And before you start trolling that this is from an Indian newspaper, read properly, it is excerpted from guess what - "The NY Times". So you aren't financing our economy or anything.

The original NYTimes article can be found here. Use Bugmenot to login.

Here's the entire article from the NYTimes (this article was published on December 30)

"President Bush finally roused himself yesterday from his vacation in Crawford, Tex., to telephone his sympathy to the leaders of India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia, and to speak publicly about the devastation of Sunday's tsunamis in Asia. He also hurried to put as much distance as possible between himself and America's initial measly aid offer of $15 million, and he took issue with an earlier statement by the United Nations' emergency relief coordinator, Jan Egeland, who had called the overall aid efforts by rich Western nations "stingy." "The person who made that statement was very misguided and ill informed," the president said.

We beg to differ. Mr. Egeland was right on target. We hope Secretary of State Colin Powell was privately embarrassed when, two days into a catastrophic disaster that hit 12 of the world's poorer countries and will cost billions of dollars to meliorate, he held a press conference to say that America, the world's richest nation, would contribute $15 million. That's less than half of what Republicans plan to spend on the Bush inaugural festivities.

The American aid figure for the current disaster is now $35 million, and we applaud Mr. Bush's turnaround. But $35 million remains a miserly drop in the bucket, and is in keeping with the pitiful amount of the United States budget that we allocate for nonmilitary foreign aid. According to a poll, most Americans believe the United States spends 24 percent of its budget on aid to poor countries; it actually spends well under a quarter of 1 percent.

Bush administration officials help create that perception gap. Fuming at the charge of stinginess, Mr. Powell pointed to disaster relief and said the United States "has given more aid in the last four years than any other nation or combination of nations in the world." But for development aid, America gave $16.2 billion in 2003; the European Union gave $37.1 billion. In 2002, those numbers were $13.2 billion for America, and $29.9 billion for Europe.

Making things worse, we often pledge more money than we actually deliver. Victims of the earthquake in Bam, Iran, a year ago are still living in tents because aid, including ours, has not materialized in the amounts pledged. And back in 2002, Mr. Bush announced his Millennium Challenge account to give African countries development assistance of up to $5 billion a year, but the account has yet to disburse a single dollar.

Mr. Bush said yesterday that the $35 million we've now pledged "is only the beginning" of the United States' recovery effort. Let's hope that is true, and that this time, our actions will match our promises."

Also, I don't agree with what the parent says about our voting system. Touch-screen machines have a much lower cost as compared to counting by hand in the long run.

Anybody who says that we shouldn't spend on the space program or o

Here's a Registration Free Link for those who want to read the article selling their soul.

They'll have to push that DirecTiVo pretty hard now, since DirecTV has their own ideas.

Sorry, fixed link:

NY Times Link

Click here. Thanks to NY Times Link Generator. :)

Out of the blue, he heard from Gabe Newell, the managing director of Valve Software, based in nearby Bellevue, Wash. Valve is developing what gaming experts anticipate will be a blockbuster video game, Half-Life 2, but it is also creating an online distribution network that it calls Steam. Because of Mr. Cohen's expertise in just that area, Valve offered him a job. He moved to Seattle and started work in October (2003 !).

The 1000 miles per watt award is fairly easy to get. I exceeded it twice recently, when I worked ES5MC in Estonia from California with 4.5 watts with my Elecraft KX1 and a pack of AA batteries and a 28ft wire in a tree in central California, and OH9SCL in Santa Claus Land (Rovaniemi Finland, news, news) with the same radio from a parking lot by the San Francisco Bay.

NYTimes: God (or not), Physics and, of Course, Love: Scientists Take A Leap

You do realize this is a "News for Nerds" site right? If they "Bring it down to earth" it would be http://www.nytimes.com/ (Genome map required).

97% of NY Times employees use this to log into the NY Times website

What do you use for the remote control with MythTV? Is it as nice and elegant as TiVo's remote?

So let me ask you... would you rather have the total dollars or nothing?

Do what you like. But at least stop calling yourselves a Christian country if you think it's the absolute amount, rather than the relative amount that matters most.

I stopped considering myself a Christian a long time ago, but that doesn't stop me being offended by hypocrisy.

Oh, and by the way, the US pledges lots, but frequently doesn't deliver.

"However, the researchers said they had now gathered further evidence showing that in addition to its impact on television viewing, Internet use has lowered the amount of time people spend socializing with friends and even sleeping [my emphasis]. According to the study, an hour of time spent using the Internet reduces face-to-face contact with friends, co-workers and family by 23.5 minutes, lowers the amount of time spent watching television by 10 minutes and shortens sleep by 8.5 minutes."

Yep.

Taking a reference from the New York Times

Enron was a substantial pipeline company long before the frauds appear to have begun there. But it now appears that Parmalat, like CUC International, was able to grow so large only because its longtime auditors failed to discover a fraud that went on for over a decade. That gave the company the ability to use stock for acquisitions.

The CUC fraud, which involved the creation of $500 million in phony profits in the three years before it was discovered in 1998, cost investors $19 billion.

A fraudulently run business can ruin the whole company. I doubt the same can be said for a slacking driver.

Watch any paper towel commercial, they will never give the name of their competitor, because that would imply their competitor is a worthy adversary. Instead all advertising compares it to "leading brand" or some other ambiguous label.

Actually, there was a sizable article in the 'Advertising' column of yesterday's New York Times about this very topic... in fact, companies often don't make direct comparisons because that opens them up to 'truth in advertising' legal challenges/lawsuits and countercharges - not only in in important things like beer and cola and potato chips, but even in basic boring products such as as dish soap and dental adhesive... or paper towels.