Slashdot Mirror

While you might be happy that your preferred liberal or conservative news hits you, you'll never get to see the converse. This is because Google, Facebook, newspaper sites and even Netflix filter what hits you before you get to see it. And since they give you what you want, you never see the opposing viewpoints or step outside your comfort zone. It amounts to a claim of censorship through personalization and now that every site does it, it's commingle a problem.

This would be a pretty avant-garde line of thinking if there hadn't been an entire book written about it nine years ago ...

My understanding was that it is not true that any of these places are "cheap" for anyone - they just strive to make their take as much as the student can be bled for. If they charge only what the applicant can "afford to pay", and the students or families are left with significant loans needing repayment after the fact than that hardly seems "cheap". OK, I guess for someone like Bill Gates, their sliding price scale doesn't reach up high enough to really make it painful, but if you cannot afford "full price" they are willing to drop the price just enough that you can pay it, but no lower.

I suppose there is nothing really unethical about setting their tuition price at whatever level they want. The 1991 "price fixing" lawsuit did not make them out to be completely above board though.
http://www.google.ca/search?q=ivy+league+price+fixing

One of the interesting things is a study a decade or so ago (find it yourself) that showed that people accepted to one of the "top tier" schools who instead when to pretty much any place else, were as "successful" as those who went to the top tier school. The conclusion was that the top tier graduates were better not because of the school, but rather the school was selecting exceptional people, who on average, would have exceptional outcomes if they went somewhere cheaper too. There are some amazing people and amazing opportunities at "Top Tier U", no doubt. There are also amazing people and opportunities at "Springfield State School" as well - and graduates of good ole SSS spend considerably less money in meeting them. The rational economic argument probably precludes attending TTU over SSS.

If you look at the various endowments per student level, it does seem a bit strange that a place like Princeton which has almost $2 million dollars for EACH STUDENT in the bank, finds that it needs to charge more than state schools which seem to get only as much as $15k per student support from the state. Surely Princeton is managing to get better than $15k from that $2million? Heck a 1% return is $20k!

http://www.higheredinfo.org/dbrowser/index.php?measure=36#

SUNY Cortland wants something like $5k in tuition, and only expects someone to spend $22k for tuition, fees, room, board, books, etc. Princeton wants $37k for just tuition, and estimates that it will be over $52k for room, board, fees, etc.

http://www2.cortland.edu/cost-aid/student-accounts-office/tuition-and-costs/
http://www.princeton.edu/admission/financialaid/cost/

People can spend a lot of time discussing the question of whether or not the extra $30,000 PER YEAR for Princeton is "worth it", but the question in my mind is why does Princeton charge the premium at all? I can see why they can charge it (people think it is worth that much) but what is their reasoning behind setting the particular price that they do? Isn't their non-profit mandate something like "making the world better by educating lots of people real good"? Are they spending that extra 30k (plus whatever their $2million investments are bringing in) on things that they think do that? Are they wasting money on things that don't really help that goal much? Too many middle managers? Too many janitors? Does SUNY just spend its money way more efficiently? Regardless of whether or not Princeton students are getting $30k more value than SUNY students, does Princeton actually spend $30k (plus endowment monies) more on each student when providing them with services?

OK since you want to pretend you are reading, yet not even clicking in the link that notes it, the link you post clearly states this:

Princeton University reported the bug to Apple, and worked with Apple to resolve the issue. Apple fixed this bug as of iOS 3.2.1 on the Apple iPad® (first generation). (Note that Apple's fix introduced a new bug, described in iOS 3.2.1 - 4.0.2 Requests a DHCP Lease Too Often.)

If you bother following the link:

Princeton University has reported the bug to Apple, and is working with Apple to resolve the issue.

We have not yet tested iOS 4.3.2 for this bug.

Right now, there is no note if it's still happening in the last build, but even if it is, the writer of that post is the some one that not only did tell apple about it (as you suggested someone should) but also actively worked with Apple to get both bugs fixed. More that can be told about a forgotten bug report in Google's database that wont get addressed unless it starts getting bad press.

Do you always refer to yourself as "someone"? Yes, you do need to read the links I post. The linked article clearly states it fixed one problem to create another, dumbfuck.

At this point, one has to wonder what Princeton is doing on their network that they keep uncovering such bugs.

Or one could choose not to wonder and instead read TFA, in particular point 5, which describes exactly what they are doing.

Nah, this is Slashdot. We prefer pointless wondering. Preferably followed up with unfounded assertions and wild conjecture.

as linked below, someone needs to ask apple what the hell they're doing too.

They will sue google for counterfeiting the behaviour of their DHCP client?

At this point, one has to wonder what Princeton is doing on their network that they keep uncovering such bugs.

Or one could choose not to wonder and instead read TFA, in particular point 5, which describes exactly what they are doing.

Funny, seems like the same group reported that iOS has had the same problem: http://www.net.princeton.edu/announcements/ipad-iphoneos32-stops-renewing-lease-keeps-using-IP-address.html

Wonder why only Android was mentioned for this story?

Because the iOS DHCP issue was fixed in August 2010 when iOS 4.1 came out probably. Maybe your question should be why Android fell into the same trap when iOS' problem was well publicized ?

as linked below, someone needs to ask apple what the hell they're doing too.

From the description in the bug report, it sounds like certain services (dhcp client I should think) are halted or disabled. It seems to restart when web browsing activity is initiated. This seems to indicate that it was halted when the machine was initially locked -- my guess would be to save battery. After all, DHCPing all the time would burn battery.

I wonder what the best solution would be? When locking to release the DHCP lease before suspending the DHCP client? I wonder if my Vibrant has the same issue?

Actually, the report specifically states that this bug should not be classified as a problem with DHCP when sleeping. The Princeton guy did extensive testing and found that even with active use, the device fails to renew the lease and continues using the IP after the lease has expired.

Funny, seems like the same group reported that iOS has had the same problem: http://www.net.princeton.edu/announcements/ipad-iphoneos32-stops-renewing-lease-keeps-using-IP-address.html

Wonder why only Android was mentioned for this story?

It was idiotic to use a caching or anonymising proxy in a submission link to a site like Slashdot. Like it or not a lot of us are on corporate or government networks with our own proxies that see stuff like this a attempt to bypass filtering. However, having said that, the problem is legit. Here's the link to Princeton's actual web site:

http://www.net.princeton.edu/android/android-stops-renewing-lease-keeps-using-IP-address-11236.html

I found it when iPrism wouldn't let me read the damned article.

See, this is exactly what Apple was talking about. This is why Apple had to sue Samsung... these things are copying Apple!

iPrism (my company's nanny of choice), blocks the site as an annonymiser. And what the hell kinda URL *is* net.princeton.edu.nyud.net anyway?

Here's the link to Princeton's web site: http://www.net.princeton.edu/android/android-stops-renewing-lease-keeps-using-IP-address-11236.html

And it appears the iPad has a similar problem: http://www.lockergnome.com/blade/2010/04/16/princeton-explains-network-issues-for-ipad-users-and-has-banned-the-devices/

Odd that they're both doing something so similar. Wonder if they use the same base DHCP code.

http://www.net.princeton.edu.nyud.net/android/android-stops-renewing-lease-keeps-using-IP-address-11236.html is the Coral Cache link for http://www.net.princeton.edu/android/android-stops-renewing-lease-keeps-using-IP-address-11236.html. Go ahead, click on both links, you will see that they are the same

Apple had a similar issue:

http://www.net.princeton.edu/announcements/ipad-iphoneos32-stops-renewing-lease-keeps-using-IP-address.html

At this point, one has to wonder what Princeton is doing on their network that they keep uncovering such bugs.

I did this then I clicked on this.

Unless you are a hopelessly subtle troll, this is a quality case of "did you even bother to read the links you are posting?"

First link, thesaurus.com: Notes: regret carries no explicit admission that one is responsible for an incident, while remorse implies a sense of guilty responsibility and a greater feeling of personal pain and anguish.

Second link, merriam-webster: yes, remorse is a synonym and the definition is equal.

Third link, princeton.edu: they define remorse as: (a feeling of deep regret (usually for some misdeed))

Two out of three of those (your!) links actually say that remorse implies regret, but not vice-versa.

I'm sorry, you said something about "whoosh..."?

For those who didn't see the whoosh....
Remorse Remorse Remorse

I beg to differ.

You haven't heard from *all* the drop-outs, have you? And many of the people who didn't drop out, but stayed in the system a little too long, are guilty of the converse Kool-Aid.

There have been an increasingly dire series of reports that many (expensive) post-graduate degree mills are steering their studious lemmings over a career cliff.

This as it becomes increasingly unclear why a person needs to pay big money for higher education in a world where it's hard to think up anything you can't find out about in 30 seconds or half an hour.

If I had stuck it out in math class and learned how to do the Laplace transform and other manipulations of the s-domain, it would have saved me a phone call or two to other people who stuck it out in math class. And even without the training, I can fill in the blanks cook-book style, and I have a pretty good idea what the s operator is all about. I'd be hard pressed to improvise, but how many people out there would you trust to improvise on the subject of analog filter design?

I'd also like to figure out the structure of the electromagnetic field in our measurement product, but none of the people I know who stuck it out in math/physics class can do it any better than I can. If we're determined to know the answer, we're going to have to use an electromagnetic field simulator.

Here's an example of the knuckle cracking involved just to warm up to the problem:
The Velocity Factor of an Insulated Two-Wire Transmission Line

But I'm sure Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse could scribble out the answer free hand on the back of his entrance exam, because it occurred to him while proving that "circles are to each other as the squares of their radii" that he had never constructed a Sierpinski curve that carpets the unit circle, and that lead to other things.

In my initial survey of computational options, I discovered MEEP, under the GPL, from MIT. Scheme/C++/Python front ends. I can do all that. Correctly setting up temperature and frequency dependent complex permitivities in several different bulk materials, and not missing out a crucial factor of 1/2 pi somewhere, I'd really want to have someone "educated" to check my work. On that little DIY proposition, I think just opening the box is a three day exercise. With another six years of formal math education, I could maybe even contribute some patches.

Kenneth Arrow

I quote this all the time. And this is old school, already. I'm amazed at the resilience of mass pyramid schemes in the modern workforce. It works this way in pro sports. For every four kids with the talent to "make it big", three drop out due to injury, bad timing, or circumstance with little to show for it, while the kid who makes tenure with the big club reaps huge rewards; not even counting the untold hours invested by kids who dropped out far earlier in the process. The same evolution is taking place in academia these days: $30,000/year as a post-doc shifting test-tubes in some dank over-lit basement. Sign me up.

In the post-Arrow world, the relationship of education to knowledge or common sense is becoming ever more tenuous. I think Temple Grandin has been underemployed in modern curriculum design. On a bad day it feels like the fundamental economic output of the modern labour force is income disparity.

Gone are the days, it seems, that one could get by having the skills and personality to make a positive contribution to the world around us. Yet the opportunity to contribute, as gated by the availability of the core knowledge, has never been greater.

What the world needs is a way for bright kids to drop out of the overpriced educational treadmill without being suspected of having a chip on their shoulder. Or educated voters who give a damn, but the second item seems out of reach. (Is it just myth that back when education was rare, presidents spoke inte

under no definition of 'toy' is included a billion data points.

From WordNet:

(n) toy (a device regarded as providing amusement)

My project was done in my spare time, with no funding from anyone but myself, for the purpose of my own entertainment and education. I believe that's a reasonable candidate for a "toy". It was a web crawler that scanned a few thousand websites (top hits on Google for various terms) and analysed their connections to each other. My goal was to see what sort of relationship "reputable" sites (like CNN, for example) had to "disreputable" sites (4chan), in the hope that there'd be a way to gauge a site's reputation by how it interacted with others. A few thousand sites, a few hundred links scraped from each... and that quickly makes a billion values to connect.

Sure, it could have been a million-dollar project from a big corporation, but it wasn't. It was just my hobby, run under a grad student's minimal budget.

taxi drivers should be familiar with passenger cars and the ... Space Shuttle Crawler

While I do love a good car analogy, the hyperbole ruins this one. A better example would be to suggest that taxi drivers (and especially those who may be getting a new car soon) understand what a "hybrid" car is, their advantages and disadvantages, and when they're a practical car to purchase. As emerging technologies, both hybrid cars and NoSQL databases provide additional options to be considered, and a competent driver or developer should have a basic understanding of both. To dismiss a new (or old) technology merely because of its age is a dangerous mistake.

Sprawl allowing more exercise? I wondered WTF you were on about but then I saw "Portland" in your address. If you're in Portland, OR, you certainly see the positive walking experience afforded by decent city planning. I've been there, and plan to move there permanently. I currently live in Memphis, in the "Midtown" area, our most walkable area, which is kinda like Portland in terms of mixing business and residential. Outside of Midtown, the scene is nothing like the non-downtown parts of Portland though... miles of residential with *nothing* else mixed in... not a couple extra blocks to walk to something... think nothing to walk to within an hour or more besides more McMansions. And maybe sidewalk connecting the McMansions in a subdivision, but no sidewalks outside of it leading to the nearest stores or restaurants. Sprawl so far beyond infrastructure that it's rural-style ditches on either side of the road, and lots of narrows that are unsafe to walk or even bike. Our Cordova and Collierville make Gresham and Beaverton look like active-walking-person-paradise. Cordova was farmland in the '90s. Now it's miles of one central road with businesses, and a miles of depth of residential to either side, with hardly any safe walking or biking routes between. The places locals lived before at least had some mixed zones, and things on parallel streets. This has happened all over the US... Portland did some rare forward thinking to stop that crap there, so its worst cases of "sprawl" look like central areas of the cities that grew through the 80's 90's and 00's. Also, scientific studies here and here.

As for what High Fructose Corn Syrup does to appetite: John Hopkins and Iberaki study discussed and linked here. Princeton study here. HFCS also has the business benefits you mentioned... but increasing appetite in your consumer audience is one hell of a business incentive to include it too.

I'd love to see better caloric information, awareness, and data spread... that may help quite a bit. Meanwhile, some things changed in the US a few decades ago and there was an obesity explosion. Some pre-existing, high awareness of caloric intake didn't disappear, but other things certainly happened. If and when there's a serious effort to solve this problem on a wide scale (ahem), that effort needs to include these and/or other well-linked causal factors.

With respect to adjusting the cost of unhealthy food a tax isn't really necessary. If you examine the ingredients of healthy food vs. unhealthy food you will find that they are generally not the same. With a bit more examination you will realize that the US government is providing a tax subsidy for the production of those ingredients constituting unhealthy food but not for those ingredients of healthy food. Chief among those is the corn subsidy, a nutritionally vacant crop whose primary use is in the production of corn syrup (people feed), as well cattle feed. No one subsidizes spinach, oranges, carrots, flax, mushrooms, etc. certainly not at comparable levels. It's a token gesture at best. Get rid of the subsidies and you'll see production levels and supermarket prices self-correct.

I think he was saying the /. editors' members were thin fuzzy lines.

As I believe the /. editors are in no way resembling the The FSM (Blessed be His Noodly Appendages), I think the correct expression should be
he was saying the /. editors' limbs were thin fuzzy lines.
But anyway, this is quite OT.

For fuck's sake, can we all please stop insisting that a particular arbitrary way to represent dates is better? It's pretty asinine how this gets brought up so much.

It gets brought up so much because a certain country is still living in the past. You know, the one that threw off the yoke of British dominance, but still insists on using pounds and feet and miles.

More relevant, we haven't put *on* the yoke of dominance by Brussels bureaucrats.

ANSI X3-30-1985 specifies the yyyymmdd format. Last I heard, the "A" in ANSI stood for "American". It's been referenced in subsequent standards

ANSI.X3.30-1985

Date conforms to the date formats described in ANSI X3.30-1985. For the A.D. era to December 31, 9999, YYYYMMDD is used; for example 19960831 (the same as FGDC?). It also defines other formats for B.C. dates and A.D. after 9999

Actually, String Theory isn't a theory - it is a hypothesis. It becomes theory once we have evidence for it.

theory: (a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world; an organized system of accepted knowledge that applies in a variety of circumstances to explain a specific set of phenomena) "theories can incorporate facts and laws and tested hypotheses"; "true in fact and theory"

Unfortunately, in common use a theory is something not yet proven. But in science, a hypothesis is something that has not been proven while a theory is something that has been proven (or at least, has significant evidence in favor of it.)

(posted AC since I moderated this thread)

I seriously doubt the vast majority of customers check their merchant's political donations (or perhaps they do as I do and just assume they support anti-regulation Conservative candidates). Market forces would only work insofar as the candidates supported by mega-corporations allowed the market to work on their supporters. Much like the oil market in the U.S. today. I doubt anyone will suggest the free market is at work in the US Oil Market, and I believe it's laughable to suggest that a lack of free market pressure has in some way been detrimental to it.

As far as forming a corp gives up rights: First, I disagree with the premise. I do not see how investing in a corporation and setting it up with a board of directors somehow infringes upon your rights. Which rights are you referring to? Secondly, you voluntarily gave up those rights, and while the metaphor may be heavy-handed, just like criminals give up their right to vote when they commit a felony.

The Declaration of Independence mentions "inalienable human rights", and inalienable is defined as "incapable of being repudiated or given to another" (emphasis mine). Where exactly they get the idea that Corporations are equal to humans is absolutely foreign to me. And if they do in fact believe this, they what does the ruling discussed in the article mean for personal, individual right to privacy?

I was having trouble imagining the 8:6:4:3 resonance pattern, so I dug out this very cool visualisation: http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb/WebGL/KOI-730.html (needs a WebGL-capable browser, for some reason FF 4 doesn't work though).

Wrong again:

Source:
http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=zionism

Definitions of zionism on the Web:

        * a policy for establishing and developing a national homeland for Jews in Palestine
        * a movement of world Jewry that arose late in the 19th century with the aim of creating a Jewish state in Palestine

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism

Zionism (Hebrew: , Tsiyonut) is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland.[1] Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state and address threats to its continued existence and security. In a less common usage, the term may also refer to 1) non-political, Cultural Zionism, founded and represented most prominently by Ahad Ha'am; and 2) political support for the State of Israel by non-Jews, as in Christian Zionism.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Zionism

Zionism (zanzm) [Click for IPA pronunciation guide]

—n
1. a political movement for the establishment and support of a national homeland for Jews in Palestine, now concerned chiefly with the development of the modern state of Israel
2. a policy or movement for Jews to return to Palestine from the Diaspora

Are you enquiring of the dictionary definition, or making a joke about fellatio in prison?

I think originally the prefix cyber- was related to the sci-fi notion of a cyborg, basically a human fused with a machine, until it was hijacked by a certain cyberpunk writer and converted into cyberspace, an emptiness vaster than interstellar space. For "most people", cyber- is synonymous with anything that can be done with an Internet connection. Ergo, cyber-sex, cyber-war, cyber-bullying, cyber-stalking, etc (with or without the hyphen). Sadly, a cybernaut is someone who explores cyberspace rather than a bionic astronaut.

I believe what you're looking for are The Fly Papers; research by Bill Bialek and various co-authors which date back almost a decade. For a great overview, check his book, Spikes.

What we need is a long, continuously updated list of every time our concerns have been assuaged by a promise that "the new powers will only be used in these specific and necessary circumstances". Then we add to the list documentary evidence of those promises being broken. Start reading it out every time a politician tries to make a new promise to that effect, and see how long it is before people get the point.

I think I saw that list. It's in the dictionary.

http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=unity

Venus is well outside the habitable zone, for obvious reasons. It's not near habitability. If you moved the Earth inward from 1 AU to 0.95 AU, the stratosphere would moisten and you'd gradually lose all the planet's water to photodissociation followed by hydrogen escape. This is arguably the inner edge of the habitable zone. If you moved the Earth in to 0.85 AU, you'd boil the oceans and produce a runaway greenhouse. Venus is at about 0.72 AU.

See chapter 6 of this book, partly based on this paper (PDF).

Let's see what "pretty shitty" looks like in context.

"pretty shitty" in the US: The Great Depression of the 1930s with its unusually high unemployment rates might well have become a demographic disaster with rising infant mortality and non-infant death rates and declining fertility throughout the decade. The national aggregates show, however, that the infant mortality rate stopped falling only temporarily in the mid 1930s before continuing on a downward trend. The non-infant death rate stayed on trend through the early 1930s and then rose above trend in the late 1930s Source

"pretty shitty" in the USSR: Encyclopædia Britannica estimates that 6 to 8 million people died from hunger in the Soviet Union during [the 1932-1933 famine] Source

To elaborate a bit more, the US non-infant death rate during the Depression ranged from roughly 10 to 11 per 1000 people. Assuming that the Depression is wholly responsible for the upper rate and given the US resident population of approximately 123 million as of 1930, that's approximately 123,000 deaths per year. Multiply that by 10 years (say 1929 to 1939, somewhat arbitrary, I know) and you have a generous estimate of approximately 1,230,000 deaths for the decade. According to Wikipedia, deaths in the 1932-33 Soviet famine alone are estimated at anywhere between 3 and 8 million. (For reference the 1926 Soviet census lists total population at 131.3 million.)

Here's the actual study which describes this phenomenon.

I'm now switching my browser defaults to Arial so I can forget everything I read on Slashdot faster.

Sorry, but no. While in theory it's a valid point, it would still be Google's decision as to whether a handset should receive an upgrade. Nothing in Google's contracts with the carriers or the manufacturers would prevent Google from holding back an upgrade.

While you may be right when assessing the situation from the moral/ethical point of view, trying to blame Google from a legal/contractual point of view has no basis, really. Google has no legally binding contract with you (to protect you or your interest), so it is free to do as it chooses (and support the consequences the free market brings on them as the result of their choices).

If you think that, legally, what Samsung or AT&T do to you is a breach of contract, it is NOT Google to arbitrate or impose something on OEM or telco: methinks there still are "Consumer protection" agencies and courts of justice dealing with these matters in your country, are they not?
Put up a class-suit and OEM/telcos will be very careful next time (even if you setlle or loose). In a competitive free market, bad publicity is still bad publicity.

Why do you feel the need of Google to "act as God"? Isn't one Steve Jobs enough on the market already? Why would we need a pathoen of Gods?

And this is exactly what I mean by conceited play on words: "they're not applications... they're apps, right?". No, wrong, they are applications that run on iOS. The definition of application doesn't say that it has to be not silly, or do more than one thing. As I said, I understand why Jobs would say that, but that doesn't make it true.

It's still under investigation, ultimately the case rests on information...

I wouldn't raise the question if the wording would allow me. Let me quote again the TFA, with a bit of emphasis.

“We are looking to penalize whoever ordered and developed the program, ...” said a police official.

Hmmmm... the police... to penalize more than 1 person... So, what's going on with the police in SK: investigates, judges and inflicts penalties all together?

Study: Couples who delay having sex get benefits later

A new study in the American Psychological Association's Journal of Family Psychology sides with a delayed approach.

The study involves 2,035 married individuals who participated in a popular online marital assessment called "RELATE." From the assessment's database, researchers selected a sample designed to match the demographics of the married American population. The extensive questionnaire includes the question "When did you become sexual in this relationship?"

A statistical analysis showed the following benefits enjoyed by couples who waited until marriage compared to those who started having sex in the early part of their relationship:

* Relationship stability was rated 22 percent higher

* Relationship satisfaction was rated 20 percent higher

* Sexual quality of the relationship was rated 15 percent better

* Communication was rated 12 percent better

Single and Multiple Cohabitors’ Risks of Divorce

...contrary to the early hypotheses, research has consistently shown that those who cohabit prior to marriage have a greater chance of divorce than those who do not cohabit. (Bennett, Blanc, and Bloom, 1988; Bramlett and Mosher, 2002; Dush, Cohan and Amato, 2003; Lillard, Brien, and Waite, 1995).

Premarital Sex and the Risk of Divorce

Examined relationship between premarital sexual activity and risk of divorce among women married between 1965 and 1985. Found that nonvirgin brides faced considerably higher risk of marital disruption than did virgin brides.

Marriage & Relationships

http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S26/91/22K07/

Here you go:
http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S26/91/22K07/
If you have a supposition about why the human studies will turn out differently, that would be interesting to hear.

A book I wrote: http://www.pdfernhout.net/reading-between-the-lines.html
"Post-Scarcity Princeton, or, Reading between the lines of PAW for prospective Princeton students, or, the Health Risks of Heart Disease"

From there:

The fundamental issue considered in this essay is how an emerging post-scarcity society affects the mythology by which Princeton University defines its "brand", both as an educational institution and as an alumni community. ...

Consider a prospective Princeton student evaluating whether an elite education at Princeton is a good investment of four years of her or his youth -- as well as a the direct expenses and indirect opportunity cost of lost wages. How should such a person evaluate the Princeton University "brand" these days, given, say, Donald Rumsfeld '54 as a PU poster boy?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poster_child
"Children Pay Cost of Iraq's Chaos"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A809-2004Nov20.html
And also, how should a bright student interested in a future of independent intellectual effort see a PU investment in relation to perhaps a future PhD and professorship if they stay on the academic track all the way? Is it worth it? Should they really sacrifice, say, creating their own personalized "brand" on their own in the internet age from day one, as opposed to trying to build a life under the Princeton "brand" and so perhaps follow in Donald Rumsfeld's footsteps?

Here is an analogous example of someone choosing to pass up working at Apple to continue developing their own personal brand:
"Why I passed up the chance to work at Apple"
http://www.cameronmoll.com/archives/000809.html
A visitor comment from that web site:

Apple has nothing on Cameron Moll. Sure, Apple is a wonderful brand. But where Apple is in the business of design, Cameron strikes me as one in the business of the art of design, and that may appear to be a subtle difference at first glance. But it isn't. ... You have built a brand for and of yourself, and I personally admire your accomplishment. I believe you describe an important self-discovery: you value the Cameron Moll brand more than you value the mighty Apple brand.

By coincidence (if such really exist? :-), such a prospective student need look no further that the current (May 14, 2008) issue of the Princeton Alumni Weekly (Cover story: "The new rules of financial aid"):
http://www.princeton.edu/paw/archive_new/PAW07-08/13-0514/table_of_contents.html
to understand how the "Princeton University" brand may need to be rethought in a collaborative GNU/Linux & Wikipedia internet age. Is it still advisable to align oneself with the historic Princeton University brand in an emerging post-scarcity society? Or, to be fair, to align one's personal brand with how that historic PU brand is now seen by the public, acknowledging there is always a lot going on at Princeton in different directions? I'd also suggest there are more alumni than just me who have stopped buying PU-related automobile window stickers (see below for more on that).

That choice of self-branding versus main-stream branding in the internet age is related to the idea of "post-scarcity". I will define that better later, but for now, let's just imagine a future where beer everywhere in t

I should have taken the time to read your posts before posting. You have used the phrase "public domain" 3 times in 3 different posts, and I cite them:

1. Just because a document is leaked into the public domain does not automatically declassify it.

2. Simply because a document is leaked does not mean it is declassified, and viewing leaked classified documents, even though it is on the public domain, on an unclassified DoD computer results in a security violation

3. As to the comments about documents being de-classified automatically whenever they are on the public domain, it doesn't work that way in any service.

Here is a definition of "public domain" from Princeton WordNet ( http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=public%20domain )

S: (n) public domain (property rights that are held by the public at large)

Now, taking your comments into consideration, and instead replacing where you use "public domain" with the Princeton definition of "public domain" we get this:

1. Just because a document is leaked into the property rights that are held by the public at large does not automatically declassify it.

2. Simply because a document is leaked does not mean it is declassified, and viewing leaked classified documents, even though it is property rights that are held by the public at large, on an unclassified DoD computer results in a security violation

3. As to the comments about documents being de-classified automatically whenever they are property rights that are held by the public at large, it doesn't work that way in any service.

I agree, who can argue with you?

This is in interesting article: http://www.alternet.org/media/149197/are_right-wing_libertarian_internet_trolls_getting_paid_to_dumb_down_online_conversations/

Commercial outfits still offer it but it's a pain to license outside of the polar regions. Hams (Amateur Radio) have picked it up to great effect: http://www.physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/K1JT/

Feb 25th is my birthday, I was watching the television here in the UK before going out with friends. I remember well the footage of 'incoming' as they were broadcast live on the BBC. I've always been curious about this tale though. What I saw was not a Scud coming down (pretty unlikely) but a number of Patriots launching and one of them suddenly veering off-course and smashing into the adjoining part of the base. It was in the air for approximately 1/2 a second before it turned left (on my screen) and walloped into the middle-distance, behind some low-level buildings I took for barracks.

Nothing to corroborate this apart from my memory, but was surprised to find out later about the 'Scud'.

There were quite a number of Patriot diving intercepts (tracking SCUD debris from SCUDs that were breaking up) and several of them did dive into the ground. Theodore Postol of MIT has video of five such occurrences and there were surely many more.

You are probably remembering one of these occurrences, but it was not the cause of the Dhahran barracks fatalities. Television is often pretty bad about showing only vaguely related videos to illustrate a story (so is the History Channel) and it is not impossible that one of the diving intercepts was used when covering the Dhahran barracks disaster.

Would this be a bunch of "pedantic douchebags"? Definition 1 is "well-substantiated."

How about Wikipedia? "It is supported by many strands of evidence, rather than a single foundation, ensuring it is probably a good approximation, if not totally correct."

There's nothing political about it -- words have different definitions in different contexts. In particular, "work" has a massively different context in physics than it does in everyday life. Why would I expect the word "theory", no matter how "well-established" it might be in the common sense, to have the same meaning in the context of science?

As far as politics, it seems to me that the scientists who actually use the term are less likely to be political than the Creationists who want to redefine or deliberately misunderstand it so they can dismiss Evolution as "just a theory."

Anyway, your turn: Citation needed.

"alright" is nonstandard usage of "all right".

"alight" means ablaze when used as an adjective.

This post courtesy of Mr. Pedantic Overly Helpful Language Person.

"alright" is nonstandard usage of "all right".

"alight" means ablaze when used as an adjective.

This post courtesy of Mr. Pedantic Overly Helpful Language Person.

This isn't Steve Jobs, this is Thom Mayne!

To be fair, there are a lot of fudges in ekpyrosis. They just might be more acceptable than are in inflationary cosmology, depending on your point of view. (My view is that both are just phenomenology.) In inflation you have to postulate the existence of one or more inflationary fields (typically scalar fields, as yet unobserved in nature which is a problem since the Higg's is a scalar field) and a specific form of potential. In ekpyrosis you have to postulate two *perfectly parallel* 5D branes, and a very specific form of potential governing their interaction.

I've been a follower of the Ekpyrotic Universe Hypothesis since the late 90's, because it elegantly sidesteps the massive inflation needed at the beginning of a singularity universe. More recently, however, I've been looking into Laura Mersini-Houghton's hypothesis of a pair of entangled universes. Since there has been some observational "evidence" that supports her theory (Dark Flow; Sigma8; and the Supervoids), it's something to watch closely. Although, to be fair, she postulates a 12 degree cold spot, whereas the Eridanus Supervoid is only 5 degrees and it's unclear whether the void has to be contiguous or if they're cumulative. If the hypothesis has merit, it would easily side-step the need for "perfectly parallel" higher-dimensional branes.

Some of her papers are relatively light reading and are worth a look, IMO.