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I think PBS http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/planecrash/safer.html Nova puts it best....(modified for slashdot) "Who do you want to make the ultimate decision, a very well-trained [FBI agent] or maybe a computer programmer who's sitting home having a beer?"

I think there is no doubt that the present leadership fears relaxing control, particularly over the media and discussions of events like 1989 and a myriad of others, because it fears that once the discussions begin -- like those demonstrations in 1989 -- they will be very hard to stop. In this they may be right.

But there is another theory that says if you allowed a modicum of discussion to go in an orderly fashion, it would serve as a pressure-release valve, whereas if you don't have any discussion, at some point the pressure will build up. What the Party has relied on to prevent the pressure from building up is to allow people to exercise all of their ambitions and urges to be able to advance themselves and to have lives on the economic side of the ledger. This was Deng Xiaoping's great moment of genius. After the massacre of 1989, he in effect said we will not stop economic reform; we will in effect halt political reform.

What he basically said to people was: "Folks, you are in a room. There are two doors. One door says 'Politics'; one door says 'Economics.' You open the economic door, you are on your own. You can go the full distance to basically whatever you want: get wealthy, help your family have a bright future, move forward into a glorious future. If you open the political door, you are going to run right into one obstruction after another, and you are going to run into the state." People logically being practical -- and Chinese are very practical -- opened the economic door. They wouldn't open the political door. It was foolish to do so.

Better to maintain strict control over a nation in poverty than be in charge of a prosperous one!

Now, the standard of living in China is rising rapidly

For the upper 20%. The bottom 80% remain dirt poor with little hope of ever changing that. A great documentary regarding that issue and a number of others in China is located at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/vi ew/

It took millions of years to sequester carbon dioxide in the ground and cool our climate

Surely if the forests had sequestered all that CO2 and lowered the global temperature, then there wouldn't have been such massive rises in sea level in the past. Yet this happened time and time again over millions of years, as evidenced by layers of coal upon sedimentary rock upon layers of coal upon sedimentary rock etc etc.

If we are to believe that CO2 is responsible for global warming that melted the ice caps, then the sequestering didn't have much effect, given the repeated flooding and ice ages. And given that there was vastly more forestation millions of years ago, but there were still repeated ice ages, I suggest that there is more to global warming than just lack of CO2 sequestration. After all, the ice cores have shown that CO2 levels are highest just before the temperature drops ! And I think it's fruitless to argue that successive periods of sequestration have lowered the overall CO2 levels in the atmosphere, as all the ice cores show a gradual rise in CO2 levels over time.
This isn't a very good graph but it's the best I can find right now.

It took hundreds of millions of years for earth to develop its diversity and abundance of life forms and again in hundreds of years we will have decimated all of them.

None of what I have said above means that I deny global warming or that human CO2 could be a factor, or that we shouldn't take better care of our environment. But I'm fed up with being terrorised by the media and the government over something which, judging by the evidence, isn't entirely our fault. Not that we can do anything about it anyway. Sure, stop using fossil fuels, adopt a f*kin whale, but at the end of the day, there WILL be another ice age, and there WILL be another mass extinction. King Canute realised this a long time ago.

Here's an example of the crap I'm talking about (from the new scientist)

The tight coupling between temperatures and the greenhouse gas levels revealed by the core matches the predictions from climate models used to forecast future global warming. It also bears some good news: the warm interglacial periods between ice ages can last a long time, contrary to the view that we may already be due for the onset of the next ice age.

The data also show that half of the previous six interglacial periods each lasted nearly 30,000 years - far longer than the roughly 10,000 years of the most recent cycles. The current interglacial period has persisted for about 10,000 years so far.

bah !

"... from the idea that space has up to 11 dimensions ... "

Does this mean the movie will cover String Theory? I wasn't aware that Stephen Hawking worked in this area. Does anyone know what his position is on String Theory? I remember reading recently that some people thought it was all rubbish.

If you're interested in learning a little about string theory, "The Elegant Universe" by Briane Greene is a great place to start. Its more of a popular-science type book, using simple and interesting example. NOVA also made a good tv series under the same name, hosted by Briane Green. Its good stuff, you should check it out. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/ Cheers, Jim

this gives interesting insights - http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3313/02.ht ml

Interesting they were just doing a peice on US researchers trying to do this on NOVA:PBS the other night, it was quote interesting...one of the more interesting things I have seen in a while on NOVA.

You can watch the 13minute video segment here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3313/02.ht ml

118 Is supposed to be the first element of the Magic Island of Stability, doubly magic even.
Most man-made elements (Plutonium+) are incredibly short-lived and make poor paper weights.
Learn something http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3313/02.ht ml

you owe it to yourself to watch this documentary on the Abramoff scandal. It is absolutely amazing, infuriating, and disheartening.

I recently watched this Moyers special on pbs about Abramoff and DeLay. Definitely worth a viewing.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/moyersonamerica/capitol/ index.html

Agreed. The PBS show was Scientific American Frontiers (show 401: "Bionics") where they had a guy who could control his sailboat and a flight simulator with his mind. The transcript for the show is available here: http://www.pbs.org/saf/transcripts/transcript401.h tm#6 I miss Alan Alda :(

I remember messing around with voice recognition in the 90s but the CPU power wasn't there to do real time voice.

Depends on the approach. I recall circa 1980 or so a prof at Concordia U. had a speech recognizer on a VAX 11/780 (with an A/D adapter). It didn't have to be trained on the speaker, and recognized my "Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow"(*) in a mere 10 or 15 minutes.

Okay, hardly real time, but that was on a 1 MIPS machine. It was also logging all the steps it took to analyze the speech input. It ought to be real time (or better?) on current hardware.

(* a phrase of some historical significance.)

Not many Presidents can boast of being asleep at the wheel while another nuclear power was born.

Before jumping President Bush for being asleep at the wheel, view this..

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/kim/ view/

Instead of stopping things, this goes back to the agreement made by Jimmy Carter. President Bush simply got stuck with the end result of bad decisions made way prior to his holding office. View all six parts of the video. It is a little under an hour. After watching it, look where the Korean Nuke program was when George Bush took office. They already had a nuke program. Note the year they dropped out of the Non Poliferation Treaty because they didn't want to comply and we quit giving them things. Carter was giving them tons of gifts every year. It came to an end. You always expect trouble when you stop paying the mob. President Bush decided to quit paying the mob and told them to be good and they are making noise about it.

Don't believe me... Watch the video.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/kim/ view/

Not many Presidents can boast of being asleep at the wheel while another nuclear power was born.

Before jumping President Bush for being asleep at the wheel, view this..

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/kim/ view/

Instead of stopping things, this goes back to the agreement made by Jimmy Carter. President Bush simply got stuck with the end result of bad decisions made way prior to his holding office. View all six parts of the video. It is a little under an hour. After watching it, look where the Korean Nuke program was when George Bush took office. They already had a nuke program. Note the year they dropped out of the Non Poliferation Treaty because they didn't want to comply and we quit giving them things. Carter was giving them tons of gifts every year. It came to an end. You always expect trouble when you stop paying the mob. President Bush decided to quit paying the mob and told them to be good and they are making noise about it.

Don't believe me... Watch the video.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/kim/ view/

I think it is innacurate when you say "teens" look for a community of their own, corporations move in, etc. It is not really anything exclusive to teenagers. This happens to all types of subcultures, and usually age is not a factor. If anything, teenagers are usually the ones that are being sold the hacked up pieces of somebody else's culture (good example with rap, others like punk and skater culture).

However, myspace doesn't really fit into that. The idea behind myspace was to make money the entire time. They weren't minding their own business until some evil corporation swooped in and ruined it. Myspace is pretty much the same now as it was before News Corp took over. People are still free to do whatever it is they were doing before. They are and always were part of the system.

PS, there was a really good Frontline episode that dug into the "cool hunting" business a couple years back: The Merchants Of Cool

RNAi explained in a very clear way.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3210/02.ht ml
Left-under is the video

NOVA had a cool show on TV explaining this to the more dense (like me). Here's an animation that show explaining RNAi:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3210/02-ex pl-flash.html

Lung cancer kills more women than breast cancer. Lung cancer has killed more women than breast cancer every year since 1987. And the gap is widening: lung cancer deaths in women are increasing. CDC TFK

Lung Cancer kills more women every year than breast, uterine, and ovarian cancers combined. Joan's Legacy

"There are four major cancers that account for over 50 percent of cancer deaths. Far and away, the most important in both men and women is lung cancer." PBS online focus

Yet women's magazines and other media pass out gobs and slathers of information on breast cancer. They hardly ever even mention lung cancer. By an amazing coincidence, they run a lot of tobacco product advertising. ACSH

Oh wait, it's not a coincidence: NIH

Maybe there is some other reason to choose SIP. It's openness (as in OPEN).
You can choose you favouite service provider (even more than one) and your favourite software (even more than one).
Yet, if you dare enough, you can run your own service or write your own SIP client.
Nothing of this can be done with Skype (and similar initiatives).
Some more interesting considerations about Skype can be found at here, written some time ago by Bob Cringely.
And if you find these latter things interesting, you'd give a look to this project.

Maybe there is some other reason to choose SIP. It's openness (as in OPEN).
You can choose you favouite service provider (even more than one) and your favourite software (even more than one).
Yet, if you dare enough, you can run your own service or write your own SIP client.
Nothing of this can be done with Skype (and similar initiatives).
Some more interesting considerations about Skype can be found at here, written some time ago by Bob Cringely.
And if you find these latter things interesting, you'd give a look to this project.

Back in July, Bob Cringely at PBS had a column in which he talked about Skype and its use of super-nodes.

I'm not an Apple apologist but I'll give it a try...

"According to Cringley - Apple has to keep video quality POOPY to please Walmart."

Just because Cringely offers an opinion for sale doesn't mean it's true. Furthermore, he never described the video quality as "POOPY". What he said was:

"Apple deliberately repositioned its movie offerings to be better than broadcast quality but less than DVD quality and quite a bit less than HD-quality."

- http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20060914. html

Better than broadcast quality isn't poopy. DVD rips that are recompressed are less than DVD quality too and that's what you typically see on P2P networks. In fact, they are typically less than 640x480.

"According to Streaming.com 2006 video transcoding study, Apple's video is POOPY to begin with - in comparison to Real."

Perhaps "in comparison to Real" but that doesn't make it POOPY. Here is the announcement:

http://www.streamingmedia.com/press/view.asp?id=43 36

The reports themselves are for sale. You may buy them if you like.

No matter, since this was a streaming video codec study, not a downloadable one. The results of these tests say nothing about the quality you can get from video purchased from the iTunes store.

"So we get POOPY on top of POOPY. Quite a dog pile!"

That wouldn't be true in any case. Neither of your claims are actually true, but even if they were, you could only claim that the result was "POOPY" not "POOPY on top of POOPY". Apple could have achieved "POOPY" by using their "POOPY" codec. They wouldn't need to make it "POOPIER" still.

"The Streaming.com study mentioned above - stated that Micro$oft's WindowsMedia video sucked even more than Apple's H.264 and that folks interested in video needed to forget about Micro$oft."

It didn't say that either. It said "Companies using or considering Windows Media really need to evaluate other technologies." and it never said that any other the tested products "sucked". As I said before, this was a streaming video test and doesn't represent what is achievable in different formats.

Don't you love science?
Especially when the discovery is accidental?

I'm sure this won't be the first one, nor will it be the last one.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/cancer/discoveries.ht ml

The US bombed 24 countries since WWII. It is responsible for violence in a lot more countries. GI's are scattered around the globe in some 140 countries. Afghanistan and Iraq are just the latest examples http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/mili tary/etc/cron.html
Ben Laden is not the only threat that faces the US (after 5 years of hiding, even if he's alive it's safe to assume he's got more pressing issues than destroy America on his agenda). A worldwide left movement is rising in power around the world and will resist the crazy journey America has embark on with all its power. Chances are we'll be seeing (if not already) suicide attacks against US interests not in the name of Allah but in the name of Humanity.
Back on topic. Supposing Ben Laden is a hypocritical SOB and that he doesn't give a rats ass about the genocide taking place in Palestine, he sure benefits from the Arabs/Muslims anger towards the US support for Israel. But that you knew already. Let's face it, a nuclear power can survive based on deterrence only without the need for the US to interfer. Note that no Arab country's got the bomb.
I empathize with the wish of Ben Laden to establish whatever form of government in his country that gives Saudis sovereignty over their land, distributes the riches and stop acting as a bitch for the US. Heck, the whole Arab world is in the same situation and holding a free election anywhere from Morocco to Jordan would bring anti-Americans to power. But American backing of those dictatorships makes change almost impossible.
Look at history and you'll quickly realise the fundamental differences between the crusaders and jihadis. One was bloody, merciless and didn't allow religious freedom while the other welcomed monotheists of all horizons.

Just as the good old cringley said at September 14:
The success of Apple's movie download business right now depends mainly on not alienating Wal-Mart.
So for the moment Apple tells Wal-Mart that movies sold through the iTunes Store won't be a threat because of their lower than DVD
resolution. When that fails, Apple will point out that HD-DVD and Blu-ray are coming and Wal-Mart should stop worrying. But
eventually Apple will succumb to its need to sell yet more iPods and will point out that its little gizmo is a fine substitute
for an optical disc. Take your iPod to Target and fill it with movies. Or, better still, buy an iPod at Target and THEN fill it
with movies. Remember that in the end this is all about selling more razors, not more blades, so movie sales don't really matter much to Apple as long as iPods are flying off the shelves.

Many may have forgotten that less than four months in office, Bush responded to a US Navy spy plane that was forced down in China... five months before the 9-11-01 hubbub would make the blunders seem irrelevant.

At the time, April 1st 2001, the plane and some 22 (?) US personnel were forced down and detained by China. On April 2nd, Bush issued a unilateral saber-rattling, demanding the return of the personnel, the plane, at the threat of a diplomacy breakdown. China found this "arrogant," and it took 11 days of detention before the US could carefully phrase an apology that satisfied their release.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/jan-jun e01/china_plane.html

I remember the news of it all too well... it coincided with the rioting in Cincinnati's Over-the-Rhine (at the place of my work) which began my daily panic attacks.

The incident five years ago cost the life of one of the two Chinese escort pilots. Their new "solution" is agruably less deadly.
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/east/04 /06/pilot.interview/

Wal-Mart's not crying; they're competing. Predatory? Perhaps. Legal? I have no idea. Imagine debatably so.

Want more? Frontline has a pretty good episode on how they treat their suppliers. Almost reassuring to know Disney doesn't get special treatment.

Wal-Mart's not crying wolf, they're playing the game like one.

Dude,

You are shockingly naive about Walmart. Peep PBS sometime...

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/walm art/view/

Walmart is total crap and they know it. Inherantly in their business model, they *must* eventually sell an inferior product. When you compete on price and nothing else there is nowhere else to go. Oonce the cost cannot be lowered by any other means quality must be lowered.

Clinton seems to have had sex with Argonne Labs Integral Fast Reactor... and next we'll be hearing he didn't have sex with the energy fund. He just created the problem.

It was the Clinton Administration that shut down the Argonne Lab's IFR development program in 1994. This reactor design will do more to solve the coming world energy crisis than anything else...and Clinton did have sex with it!

Read the congressional report: Nov. 6, 1997 (Senate) Page S11890-S11891 here: http://www.anl.gov/Media_Center/Argonne_News/news9 7/crtill.html

Quote:

Unfortunately, this program was canceled just 2 short years before the proof of concept. I assure my colleagues someday our Nation will regret and reverse this shortsighted decision.


If anyone wants to read the PBS interview with Dr. Charles Till - look here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reac tion/interviews/till.html

Quote from the PBS interview:

The Clinton administration, I think, firmed up quite an anti-nuclear power position....

Q: What will be our energy source, then?

A:I think that many engineers would agree that there is limited, additional gain to be had from conservation. After all, what does one mean by "conservation?" One simply means using less and using less more efficiently. And there have been considerable gains wrung out of the energy supply and energy usage over the past couple of decades. We can probably go somewhat further. But you're talking, you know, 10% or 20%. Whereas over the next 50 years, it can be confidently predicted that with the energy growth in this country alone, and much more so around the world, it would be 100%, 200%, or some very large number.

And so what energy source steps in? There is only one. It's fossil fuel. It's coal. It's oil. It's natural gas. Some limited additional use of the more exotic forms of things, like solar and wind. But they are, after all, very limited in what they can do. So it will be fossil.

Now the question, of course, immediately becomes, well, how long can that last? And everyone has a different opinion on that. One thing that is certain, and that is that the increase in the use of fossil fuels will sharply increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Another thing is certain. You will put a lot more pollutants into the atmosphere as well, in addition to carbon dioxide, which one could argue the greenhouse effect exists or doesn't exist. ...


So it is very clear that the consequences of short sighted anti-nuclear policies of the Clinton Adminitration were well understood in the early 90's. The lack of solutions to the problems we face now are a direct result of Clinton's administration.

----------

Note the Integral Fast Reactor burns nuclear wastes and will extend the existing uranium fuel stockpile (called Depleated Uranium, spent fuel, and nuclear waste) to over 60,000 years for the existing fleet of over 100 reactors in the Gigawatt range.... and this without mining any more uranium.

The IFR burns all actinides and hense there are no long term wastes... only light isotopes with 1/2 lives of a few decades at most, and which are used industrially for things like pipe line xrays.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_Fast_Reactor

When we are in the throws of the worst energy crisis mankind has ever seen, then I want everyone to look and Clinton's contribution to the problem. I think the quote from the congressional report (above) sums it up nicely.

The short of it is that its prefectly clear we need alternatives to fossil fuels and the issue is that we needed to start developing these alternatives 15 and 20 years ago. It

from the article:

" It comes less than a month after California lawmakers adopted the nation's first global warming law mandating a cut in greenhouse gas emissions.

California has also targeted the auto industry with first-in-the-nation rules adopted in 2004 requiring carmakers to force cuts in tailpipe emissions from cars and trucks.

Automakers, however, have so far blocked those rules with their own legal action -- prompting one analyst to say California's lawsuit represents a way for California to pressure car manufacturers to accept the rules.

"That's the objective," said David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research, a nonprofit organization that provides public research and forecasts about the industry. "They want to get the automakers basically to bow down and pay homage to the (emissions) law."

All this is well and good, of course, if it weren't for the following: "In a series of recent cases, California's regulations have been challenged in court, not just by the auto industry, but by the federal government." So yes, CA needs to sue (technically, countersue, but who's counting?). The federal government has consistently hampered CA's attempts to clean up the air. Something needs to be done.

But of course, you're the phal^H^H^H^H environmentalist, so you probably knew all this already.

This concept is also known as Global dimming, and has already been occurring for a while now. In fact, it's one of the reasons we haven't noticed global warming as much. A very unsurprising downside to global dimming is that it totally mucks with rain fall, casting some areas into complete drought.

I recommend anyone that's interested in this concept check out the NOVA on this issue.

A friend was marveling over the weekend about how unbelievably fast the downloads from the iTunes Store were. He said he was getting TV shows at a much higher rate than data (not just video) from most other servers. And you can start watching while the download is taking place (streaming). So Apple's already got a lot of the pieces in place, at both the server and the client. I wonder if they're using the Google shipping containers Cringely talked about...

While this item is pure speculation it is at least interesting. I'm unclear why Apple needs Google to stream video though. I don't see the win-win scenario for either. A more interesting idea is presented by Bob Cringley (http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20060914 .html). And yes an Apple TV with iTV built in is a great idea and will happen.

The Apple/Jobs Monopolist Machine thought that they could Brand anyone who bought an Ipod - just like they branded people who bought Mac computer hardware. Well it turns out that ipod buyers are not lemmings. (Three Cheers 8^0, 8^0, 8^0)

And it looks like Apple's Quicktime lemmings are revolting and refuse to be lemmings anymore. Apparently Quicktime 7.1.3 retooling stops the average user from seeing Flash/Quicktime stuff

Seems like Apple/Jobs focus is on selling video online using iTune/low level H.264 .

According to Cringley Apple/Jobs is all about "hustling razor blades to sell razors". In other words Apple/Jobs is reaaly just all about selling Ipods (not music video). Apparantly WalMart dictates as to what Apple/Jobs does or doesn't do.

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20060914. html

Here and there Cringely predicted Apple branded LCD TVs. He got the other details right. The TVs don't fit with the photog theme, so if it happens, I think that it will be the next special event between now and Xmas.

Here and there Cringely predicted Apple branded LCD TVs. He got the other details right. The TVs don't fit with the photog theme, so if it happens, I think that it will be the next special event between now and Xmas.

If you liked "Beyond 2000" you might try watching "Nova scienceNOW" on PBS which will air again starting October 3. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/

As a Canadian who has read Slashdot for many years, will someone please explain to me what is so hard about voting?

1. Take a piece of paper.
2. Mark an X in a big box CLEARLY beside the candidate you want.
3. Put it in the ballot box.

Can it really be that simple? Yes!

As a software developer, I have to ask:

WHY IS ANYONE IN THEIR RIGHT MINDS USING A BLOODY COMPUTER TO DO THIS? I don't care if it's open source or closed source software on it, running on Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, whatever. All of these are harder to verify (if not impossible) that no tampering was done than SIMPLE PIECES OF PAPER.

Here, I'll link to Cringely, that way you'll know it's true ;-) http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20031211. html

In a rational society, either the people's law enforcement system would take care of the problem of crack users, prostitutes, and polluteres ruining woody ravines near their homes, or the people would be empowered to take care of the problem themselves using whatever force is necessary.

No, in a rational society the government wouldn't have created the crack problem in the first place by introducing the drug and starting a war on drugs to pump the price up, and a healthcare system would take care of the problem by providing drug treatment to addicts.

I have hunch (art dudes have hunches :)) that the people arguing art is completely relative are techies, and that you aren't relativists in your own field so let me give you some examples that may ring true in your field so you'll get it. Programming has certain canonical texts like "The Mythical Man Month," and "The Cathedral and the Bazaar," and "The Art of Computer Programming" by Knuth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Mont h
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar /
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Computer_P rogramming

I think you will grant me that these texts are more important and insightful than the latest J random "dummies" guide to writing AJAX or whatever the latest programming fad is. WHY are they more important? Because they offer deep insights into the very nature of coding that transcends any particular coding language or time or place. They are books that give you many ah-ha type insights. Well art works the same way, the way artists train themselves is by looking at works that contain deep insights into the human experience like Guernica:

http://www.pbs.org/treasuresoftheworld/guernica/gm ain.html

If the artist has a VERY RARE combination of creative insight, and skill, they may produce another work as insightful as Guernica but it's about as likely as J Random programmer being as insightful about coding as Turing or Knuth.

Back to the original subject I believe it will be obvious when video games produce their Guernica because it will produce a powerful reaction and will be discussed everywhere even by ordinary people on the street like Guernica and Citizen Kane were as soon as they were released.

http://www.filmsite.org/citi.html

These are works of genius which in themselves have the power to move people unlike subjective interpretations of clouds. Again this is not to say that video games aren't capable of producing good art with this level of insight but I sincerely suspect it hasn't happened YET or I would have heard about it, in fact everyone will hear about it, it will rock the world in the same way the Beatles, Bob Dylan, or Jimi Hendrix, or Patti Smith, or Public Enemy did by bringing true artistic insight into the pop culture of rock and roll.

Where is video games Knuth, Turing, Picasso, Hendrix? Hint it's not going to be obscure when it happens, it will likely start an entire movement in video games when it happens just like surrealism was a movement in the arts, and the hippies, punk, and hip hop were movements in music and the entire culture. Has ANY video game transformed the culture in this way? I don't think so.

I think Richard Serra (the noted sculptor) gave the best definition I've heard on Charlie Rose a few years ago. Charlie asked him if he would ever collaborate with Frank Ghery. Serra said no, that the difference between art and architecture is that art is necessarily useless and therefore architecture is out of his domain of expertise. Richard Stalman utilizes a similar definition with regards to what he considers can constitute intellectual property. He maintains that it is ethically valid to charge for things that are only meant to be appreciated (e.g., music, literature) and invalid to charge for things that have a practical use. (e.g., productivity software, compilers, etc...) These definitions seem to lend themselves to the idea that video games can, in fact, be art, as long as they exist only for pleasure. However, when one considers competitive aspects of certain games, they become more like sporting events than literature. I think that we can all agree that the game of football or golf isn't art. This leads me to think that video games are a new type of applied art, like architecture. Architecture is art applied to engineering-- that is, it not only involves making a building stand up, but making a building that stands up and meets certain aesthetic criteria. Video games could be art applied to sports-- creating an artistic venue that responds to a unique game. Therefore, I'd have to say that the answer is strictly no. However, it's a semantic distinction, and it does not mean that video games, like architecture, should be excluded from the contemporary art community.

In case you missed it, the PBS weekly newsmagazine, NOW, had a great story on electronic voting last night...

http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/236/index.html
you can get the free podcast of the show as well...

"... if the mission is scrubbed again, the space agency must abandon for a few weeks its efforts to send the shuttle off on a construction mission to the International Space Station."

Making decisions under some kind of desperation is a recipe for disaster. For pilots, it's called get-home-itis. It results in pushing one's luck just a little too hard. http://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/directline_issues/dl2_leg .htm
IIRC it's what killed JFK Jr. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/transportation/july -dec99/kennedy_7-19.html

> logging off /.

The networks existed before Internet. Learn facts. And Internet at large is privately owned - as communication channels concerned. As well as standards used to back it are collective effort - not affiliated with any gov't. (Though it's true that DARPA sponsored protocol is the Internet Protocol)

> getting rid of your computer

Computers and algorithms were invented about 150 years ago - when science was still considered mostly private matter and not supported by gov'ts.

Also transistor was invented again by non-gov't related companies. Check here - http://www.pbs.org/transistor/album1/index.html

> X-rays

X-rays? Check your facts - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray - before posting.

> applications were not immediately obvious

Well, yes. I do not understand how existence of black/dark/light/whatever mater would help anyone. As well as all the theories about Universe origin: in the beginning there was nothing and then it exploded. I really do not understand.

P.S. What was first - nuclear reactor or nuclear bomb? Bombs were first - and sponsored by government.

Totally by accident, I attended a major Physics conference (in preparation for the CERN LHC/Large Hadron Collider coming online next year, very exciting!) & did some tests with New Mediums : video-podcast, Sony PSP, LiveWebCast over a mobile-blog. This was done with the approval of the Program Chair, who's a young UC Irvine physics professor who understands the value of Technology.

Through a major Physics blog, a USC physics prof (string theorist) mentioned the SUSY '06 conference (4th International Conference on Supersymmetry and the Unification of Fundamental Interactions). I contacted the Program Chair, & he invited me down to do some "New Medium" tests:

http://www.jumplive.com/susy06/index.html

[ incidentally, that USC prof had a meeting last year with other profs to discuss the new "blogging technologies". There is the USC Annenberg Center, which addresses technology & communication. So, USC is "with it" ]

I recorded lectures, plenary-sessions on HD (high definition) video & other video devices (digital cameras w/video capability). I put them up on a video-blog (& its corresponding video-podcast over iTunes Music Store, just do a search on "SUSY")

http://susy06.blogspot.com/

Some of these videos are really LONG, like 240mb. I also delivered them over a Sony PSP (another big-market portable video-player, 12 million out there). Some of the videos were delivered on site, within 15 minutes of taping..near-live as iTunes video-clips. There are some QTVR panoramas of some conference events. There was a LIVE delivery of pics/videos at a Textamerica.com mobile-blog:

http://susy06.textamerica.com/

[ there are some video interviews, & some hi-res pics of talk presenters ]

There were 2 Nobel Laureates in attendance (Burton Richter/Stanford & F. Wilczek/MIT), & many big names from the world of theoretical/experimental particle-physics. Some of them were on that NOVA episode on String Theory (Brian Greene/Columbia host). Being an Elec Eng PhD, it was exciting to experience a technical conference in another field. I was given recognition at the conference, & links from their website here

[ I am currently looking for a business-entity to take my "Proof of Concept", & deliver this to next year's SUSY '07 Conference in Karlsruhe/Germany. And, to ALL technical engineering/science conferences. Please contact me ]

The purpose was like that of my target Market ("Offroad Racing", see http://www.jumplive.com/

"A better informed Public is more likely to appreciate/understand, & therefore publicly fund Science"

Physics (& Science in general), like Offroad Racing, suffers from an image problem. It's a niche-market, & the general public just isn't aware of their "activity/events". As the result, they both suffer from Funding issues (in racing, it's known as "Sponsorship"). Offroad Racing has been termed "Our Little Wonder in the Desert". Similary, Science could be termed "Our Little Wonder in a World of Idiots". You may recall the SSC (Superconducting Super Collider) that was cancelled in the 80's, which was a major blow to US program in particle-physics. There was NOT a public outcry, like you see now of the HST (Hubble Space Telescope) being de-commissioned. If the Public really understood/appreciated particle-physics, perhaps the SSC could have been resurrected. Science really is getting the "shaft" in USA, & I think the Slashdot crowd is concerned about this.

I realized halfway thru my project, that these lectures over video-iPod could have value as a Research Tool. The conference attendees could re-view the lectures, especially the Plenary sessions. I even talked to a Harva

No, there is no cause for concern.

I did a Ph.D. on the use of preattentive perception (read "subliminal") on just-in-time memory support. This was the "Memory Glasses" project that got a bunch of media attention a few years ago -- you may have even seen me pitching it to Alan Alada on PBS's Scientific American Frontiers "you can make it on your own" episode.

The long and short of it is that, yes -- properly encoded, "subliminal messages" can jog your memory, but no, they don't otherwise work as sug,gestions or influence your behavior. If you're curious, you can actually read my dissertation on the Memory Glasses and find out more.

There was a lot of hype in the 70's and 80's about the evils of subliminal marketing, but it was all based on junk science with forged data.

I think Jobs saw Smalltalk running on the Star which was introduced in 1981.

Well, you think wrong: From the transcript of "Triumph Of The Nerds Part III":

"Steve Jobs had co-founded Apple Computer in 1976. The first popular personal computer, the Apple 2, was a hit - and made Steve Jobs one of the biggest names of a brand-new industry. At the height of Apple's early success in December 1979, Jobs, then all of 24, had a privileged invitation to visit Xerox Parc.

Steve Jobs

And they showed me really three things. But I was so blinded by the first one I didn't even really see the other two. One of the things they showed me was object orienting programming they showed me that but I didn't even see that. The other one they showed me was a networked computer system...they had over a hundred Alto computers all networked using email etc., etc., I didn't even see that. I was so blinded by the first thing they showed me which was the graphical user interface. I thought it was the best thing I'd ever seen in my life. Now remember it was very flawed, what we saw was incomplete, they'd done a bunch of things wrong. But we didn't know that at the time but still though they had the germ of the idea was there and they'd done it very well and within you know ten minutes it was obvious to me that all computers would work like this some day.

It was a turning-point. Jobs decided that this was the way forward for Apple.

Adele Goldberg

Founder, PARC Place Systems

He came back and I almost said asked, but the truth is, demanded that his entire programming team get a demo of the Smalltalk System and the then head of the science centre asked me to give the demo because Steve specifically asked for me to give the demo and I said no way. I had a big argument with these Xerox executives telling them that they were about to give away the kitchen sink and I said that I would only do it if I were ordered to do it cause then of course it would be their responsibility, and that's what they did."

What Steve and his folks saw looked like this.

WHen I saw the headline, I was afrad that someone had stumbled on Henry Jenkins "Video Game Myths Debunked" had been rediscovered once again and posted. (Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against the article, but it just gets discovered every once in a while as if it were a new article).

Do not originate in Iran? Please site your source. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2314secr. html Iran has motive and opportunity.