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But I do know that the rate of inventions increased dramatically in the past couple of hundred years.

Change may well have made the patent system unnecessary today, but that doesn't necessarily invalidate its utility in the past, or the soundness of the original idea.

We have identified seventeen economic studies that have examined this issue empirically. The executive summary: these studies find weak or no evidence that strengthening patent regimes increases innovation; they find evidence that strengthening the patent regime increases ... patenting!

Please point to one study that shows the left bias of NPR News.

Humans can't help but be bias, this is due to them being human.

NPR's news is written and recited by humans.

Therefore NPR is bias.

Bias isn't always obvious and is rarely on purpose. The UCLA study on bias found that journalists often will use the WORDING of a story to slant it one way or another. For instance, they'll say that Newt Gengrich "gained notoriety for his time as house leader" instead of saying "he was the house leader." Of course, this is not word for word from the study, please read it before deciding how much you believe it.

Getting back to your request, the study states that NPR does indeed have bias but not much more-so than the average publication such as Time magazine, for instance.

I equate being a partisan to having a mental disorder, due to a study I read on how the rational thinking center of the brain of a partisan literally shuts down when exposed to a differing viewpoint. The reason partisan journalists are bias is because they think all facts point towards their viewpoint as "truth."

The brain will cut off information input at some point because if we really knew how many variables we DIDN'T know, we'd never make any decisions. That's why I don't vote :)

Copyright isn't the problem. Copyright is what allows creative people to believe thier stuff won't get pirated as soon as it is exposed to the public.

If you're interested in what I mean and/or want to debate these points, read Against Intellectual Monopoly by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine first.

But the main point isn't what Forbes says, to develop more drugs to treat Drug Resistance.

A better point would be to take A Giant Rubber Mallet and Hit Up Side The Head anyone using anti-bacterial soaps, kleenex, sprays, cleaners, etc.

Just
Use
Soap

Seriously, this fad to use anti-bacterial soaps and cleansers:

a. does not work - many studies show that soap, by itself, works as well or better, and not even fancy soap at that, just basic soap

b. builds resistance to antibiotics

c. creates havoc in our streams and rivers as we flush them down our toilets, sinks, and shower/bathtubs

Now, if you want to talk Drug Resistance, I heard a fascinating seminar yesterday at the UW from Christopher Lee, on Mapping Evolutionary Pathways of HIV-1 Drug Resistance, presented by the Center for Computational Biology. He's got a website that has links to at least one of his papers. There he uses evolutionary pathways predictions of Ka/Ks to manipulate viral evolution in ways that you can either slow the drug resistance evolution or force it to evolve into a the equivalent of low-energy traps they have a hard time evolving out of.

About CDs, it's been about 6 years, exactly the same amount of time since I have internet at home (before, it was just impossible to connect in Spain with a reasonable cost); like for most, p2p changed my musical preferences a lot; before, I listened to what I now think of as crap. Many authors of good music saw me on their concerts or buying their merchandise, which of course should have given them more money than buying zillions of those stupid CDs. Nowadays, I've heard, CDs even come with evil antiuser technology of them, what a shame.

Of course, I came to learn, with the years, that copyright and patents are bad.

Freedom for the Culture!!!

While correlation does not equal causation it is a pretty good indication. http://bayes.cs.ucla.edu/BOOK-2K/ is a really good book on the topic of causation. http://davidakenny.net/cm/cc.htm is another very good book on the topic and free to download.

"they seem to be doing the Right Thing"

Except maybe when they help China to jail pro-democracy dissidents...

the original story from last year, Room-Temperature, Small-Scale Fusion at UCLA, mentions microthrusters for space applications. I couldn't find any more mention at the ucla crystal fusion site. I hope this new work has some bearing on this application.

BBNH are a long way from the only group discrediting BB; you may notice if you read carefully that I prefaced the link with "The least subtle that I can recall is";

There aren't "a few" anomalies incompatible with BB, there are many, in many places, in many different ways;

Don't dismiss Arp's observations along with Arp. Chicken Little only needs to be right once (well, a few times) and some of the "debunkings" of his observations are insane stretches;

Look at the friggin' pictures. JPL and BU are not fly-by-nighters, and the "geometry" explanation of the BU data is, well, tenuous at best -- and doesn't touch NGC 7319 -- and there are many more where they came from;

Like I said, BBNH and crowd are simply nutcases. A few low-probability (as opposed to flat-out impossible) observations (rife with their own internal difficulties) are not enough to cast doubts on General Relativity and the correct predictions of the Hubble expansion, the cosmic microwave background, and deuterium abundance.

Post under a real name if you expect a specific reply.

But perhaps you should not assume that people who dismiss the BBNH crowd as nutcases do so out of unfamiliarity with the evidence---where in the world did you get the idea that I hadn't seen the pictures? I personally suspect you are not familiar with General Relativity, meaning you can't do the math, you can't do the physics, and in particular, you can't reproduce for yourself the major predictions of BB.

That's right: some of us know what we are talking about.

I am not a cosmologist, but that book is 15 years old and there are good reasons it is not taken seriously. See here: http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/lerner_errors.ht ml

The UCLA paleobiologist in question, Dr. J. William Schopf, has already dealt directly with the ALH84001 Mars meteorite controversy:

In "Cradle of Life," Schopf recounts his involvement in evaluating the evidence for life on Mars, and the events that led to the life on Mars NASA press conference. NASA administrators asked him in January 1995 to assess what geologists at the Johnson Spacecraft Center (JSC) in Houston believed might be microfossils in a chunk of a meteorite thought to have come from Mars. The focus was on tiny, orange pancake-shaped globules of carbonate material. The scientists thought these globules might be Martian "protozoans," but Schopf's analysis showed that their guess was wrong.

"Many of the objects merged one into another in a totally nonbiologic way," Schopf says. "Their overall size range also did not fit biology, and they lacked any of the telltale features—pores, tubules, wall layers, spines, chambers, internal structures—that earmark tiny protozoan shells. In addition, the 'lifelike' traits they did possess could be explained by ordinary inorganic processes.

"I raised these points with the JSC scientists. They seemed to agree. I thought the matter was closed. But more than a year later, at the August 1996 news conference, the same little pancakes were again proffered as evidence of Martian life, this time of bacteria rather than protozoans. Evidently the scientists' minds were set—the facts hadn't changed, only the meaning attached to them."

Several weeks before the press conference, NASA again asked Schopf to evaluate the findings. He studied the evidence three times, and was not impressed.

"Crucial questions had not been asked," he writes. "Articles published earlier and critically relevant to the authors' contentions had been ignored. More plausible ways to explain the findings were given short shrift. The claim of 'evidence for primitive life on early Mars' seemed overblown, ill-conceived."

At the press conference, the JSC scientists presented their findings with the aid of "high-tech cartoon videos," says Schopf, who spoke after them.

"I was wearing my best suit—the one I got married in—looking at hundreds of reporters who wanted me to say there was life on Mars," he says. "I had no doubt my words would prove unwelcome. On a scale of one to 10, I gave each piece of their evidence a score. Some, such as the suggested Mars source of the meteorite, I ranked high. But the evidence for life was weak; I gave it a two. A number of scientists later called me to task for being too generous. One Nobel laureate said I should have ranked the evidence zero!

"This attempt failed to find life at Mars. That does not mean Mars contained no life—just that these scientists didn't find any."

How do respected scientists, from Scheuchzer and Beringer to the JSC team, Make such blunders? One answer, Schopf says, is that scientists have the same "strengths, fears and foibles as everyone" and are not so different from our neighbors. They have great successes and, sometimes, great failures. Mostly, "Cradle of Life" addresses one of science's great successes.

Perhaps Dr. Schopf's newer techniques will also be applied to ALH84001 and th

The UCLA paleobiologist in question, Dr. J. William Schopf, has already dealt directly with the ALH84001 Mars meteorite controversy:

In "Cradle of Life," Schopf recounts his involvement in evaluating the evidence for life on Mars, and the events that led to the life on Mars NASA press conference. NASA administrators asked him in January 1995 to assess what geologists at the Johnson Spacecraft Center (JSC) in Houston believed might be microfossils in a chunk of a meteorite thought to have come from Mars. The focus was on tiny, orange pancake-shaped globules of carbonate material. The scientists thought these globules might be Martian "protozoans," but Schopf's analysis showed that their guess was wrong.

"Many of the objects merged one into another in a totally nonbiologic way," Schopf says. "Their overall size range also did not fit biology, and they lacked any of the telltale features—pores, tubules, wall layers, spines, chambers, internal structures—that earmark tiny protozoan shells. In addition, the 'lifelike' traits they did possess could be explained by ordinary inorganic processes.

"I raised these points with the JSC scientists. They seemed to agree. I thought the matter was closed. But more than a year later, at the August 1996 news conference, the same little pancakes were again proffered as evidence of Martian life, this time of bacteria rather than protozoans. Evidently the scientists' minds were set—the facts hadn't changed, only the meaning attached to them."

Several weeks before the press conference, NASA again asked Schopf to evaluate the findings. He studied the evidence three times, and was not impressed.

"Crucial questions had not been asked," he writes. "Articles published earlier and critically relevant to the authors' contentions had been ignored. More plausible ways to explain the findings were given short shrift. The claim of 'evidence for primitive life on early Mars' seemed overblown, ill-conceived."

At the press conference, the JSC scientists presented their findings with the aid of "high-tech cartoon videos," says Schopf, who spoke after them.

"I was wearing my best suit—the one I got married in—looking at hundreds of reporters who wanted me to say there was life on Mars," he says. "I had no doubt my words would prove unwelcome. On a scale of one to 10, I gave each piece of their evidence a score. Some, such as the suggested Mars source of the meteorite, I ranked high. But the evidence for life was weak; I gave it a two. A number of scientists later called me to task for being too generous. One Nobel laureate said I should have ranked the evidence zero!

"This attempt failed to find life at Mars. That does not mean Mars contained no life—just that these scientists didn't find any."

How do respected scientists, from Scheuchzer and Beringer to the JSC team, Make such blunders? One answer, Schopf says, is that scientists have the same "strengths, fears and foibles as everyone" and are not so different from our neighbors. They have great successes and, sometimes, great failures. Mostly, "Cradle of Life" addresses one of science's great successes.

Perhaps Dr. Schopf's newer techniques will also be applied to ALH84001 and th

The amount of REM sleep that an animal requires depends on how long it's taken care of by other animals.

"A different approach to assessing the relation between REM sleep and intelligence is to examine the enormous variation in amount of REM sleep across mammals. Contrary to what might be expected, humans do not exhibit unusually high amounts of REM sleep, calculated either in hours per 24-hour period or as a percentage of sleep time. Figure 1 presents examples of species with high and low amounts of REM sleep. In general, animals that are born relatively mature, such as the guinea pig and marine mammals, have low amounts of REM sleep, whereas animals born relatively immature, such as the platypus, ferret, and armadillo, have high amounts of REM sleep throughout their lives (36, 37). "
36. J. M. Siegel, et al., Neuroscience 91, 391 (1999) .
37. H. Zepelin, in Principles and Practice of Sleep Medicine, M. H. Kryger, T. Roth, W. C. Dement, Eds. (Saunders, Philadelphia, ed. 3. 2000), pp. 82-92.

The passage and its bibliography was found here
REM seems to be there to help build instincts and whatnot. It happens to occur more later in sleep because sleep just gets lighter as it goes. (graph here)

A new report proves what we've known all along, the lying liberal media is real.

While the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal is conservative, the newspaper's news pages are liberal, even more liberal than The New York Times. The Drudge Report may have a right-wing reputation, but it leans left. Coverage by public television and radio is conservative compared to the rest of the mainstream media. Meanwhile, almost all major media outlets tilt to the left.

[...]

Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS' "Evening News," The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal.

> Considering it's coming out of somewhere like UCLA, you can be fairly certain
> it's the latter.

Except for the fact that this is a news piece, not a direct report from the scientists. You never know what the scientists actually said after the reporters get through with it.

> In case you're interested, the related paper appears to be at
> http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~rafail/PUBLIC/Ostrovsky-Sk eith.html.

Many thanks, I'll look it over.

There is a difference between "mathematically proven" as used in colloquial speech and "a mathematical proof."

I wonder which this is?

Anyone who wants to take this example as a personal puzzle should stop reading here. The puzzle is to figure out what single food item our software is secretly recording, how it is recording it, and to identify our suspected terrorist.

Just calculating and sending the number 28430 does not keep a list of everyone and their purchases. There is no way to tell from that number that Charlie did shop that day or what he bought, and no way to tell that Adam and Bob didn't shop at all that day. All of the information we *weren't* looking for is effectively erased, lost in the random sum of all of the shoppers.

Final warning! Spoiler Alert! Spoiler Alert!

If you don't know the code I used to create the system, it is nonobvious from looking at that software what information is *was* designed to secretly record. In this case the crypto key to unlock the system is seventeen. When you add the +1 for counting the item itself (for adding in the number of items), the code number for every item except one is a perfect multiple of the key, every code number is an "encrypted" zero when you "decode" it modulo the key. The day's total of 28430 divided by the key is 1672 with a remainder of 6. We ignore the 1672 as random noise and just look at the the "decrypted" remai

http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~rafail/PUBLIC/Ostrovsky-Sk eith.pdf
Postscript: http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~rafail/PUBLIC/Ostrovsky-Sk eith.ps

http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~rafail/PUBLIC/Ostrovsky-Sk eith.pdf
Postscript: http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~rafail/PUBLIC/Ostrovsky-Sk eith.ps

The filter cannot be broken in the same sense that one cannot crack time-tested public-key encryption functions such as those already used for Internet commerce and banking applications. In that aspect, it's essentially a bullet-proof technology.

The filter cannot be broken in the same sense that one cannot crack time-tested public-key encryption functions such as those already used for Internet commerce and banking applications. In that aspect, it's essentially a bullet-proof technology.

If you have a stomach for cryptography this is the research paper that triggered these claims.
There is nothing in there about particular software, but it is not surprising one might dream up these claims.
http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~rafail/PUBLIC/Ostrovsky-Sk eith.pdf

http://www.research.ucla.edu/tech/ucla05-487.htm

The "no profit" loophole was closed by the DMCA.

Actually, that loophole was closed by the No Electronic Theft ("NET") Act, not the DMCA.

Funnily enough, like the DMCA, the NET Act was also signed into law by the Clinton Administration. I only point that out to illustrate that selling out your rights to further rapacious corporate profits is not, and never has been, exclusively a Republican trait.

Schwab

Kellner: In my book, I explore the case for conspiracy and conclude that either the Bush administration knew the attacks were coming and exploited them to push through their rightwing domestic and foreign policy or they were utterly incompetent, failing to see all of the obvious signs of the coming Al Qaeda attack. Whether there will ever be a thorough investigation that gets to the bottom of the 9/11 attacks, or whether like the Kennedy assassination, it continues to be a source of speculation and theorizing, remains to be seen.

So, he just can't find enough evidence to dissuade him that that the Bush administration knew about the attacks and let them go through so as to impose their right wing agenda, eh? Let 3,000 Americans be killed, do $100,000,000,000 in damage to the US economy to justify policy changes he could have made anyway, huh? Wow. That is mainstream thinking. Oh yes, nothing radical there.

And further down is this gem:

Kellner: A group in Belgium instituted war crimes proceedings against the Bush administration for their military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq but under intense pressure it was dropped. One of the crimes of Bush administration unilateralism is failure to participated in the International Criminal Court and other institutions that would make possible prosecution of war criminals such as are found in the Bush administration.

Breathtaking logic and fairness there. Or maybe that is nuance in action.

It is funny that you mention "treason", since on the page you link to, the only time I find the word treason is in a quote by Kellner, describing his views of someone else's actions.

.... They have taken the short road to authority by becoming like-minded sycophants of the Regimented Order. Instead of having a truly nuanced view of human affairs and the politics of power they have attitudes based largely on pure style founded in nothing. Toughness for its own sake. Their kind of strength requires someone else to be weak, and they've chosen professors as an easy target.

Tenured professors are such easy targets, after all, there is so much you can do to them, right? And what can they do in return from their position of weakness, grading you, running departments, the University, writing letters of recommendation, or answering background checks, and all that? I suppose they could also ridicule you, but, you should have a tough hide your first year away from home, finding friends, and trying to figure out how the world and life works, right? Students are so much more powerful than professors, that no doubt explains why most universities have rules against faculty sleeping with students, to prevent the students from exploiting their position of power over the faculty member. Right...

(I like to remind such people that Jesus Christ himself preached open rebellion against autho

The "dirty thirty" professors are all liberal. The man who started the website is conservative and said in a statemeent to the "Daily Bruin" (UCLA's daily newspaper) that he does not think that the conservative professors would do somethign like this. Read all about it on the Daily Bruin Online. Many people have been making fun of the site. Although the letter is not online Friday's Daily Bruin included a letter to the editor from a professor asking to be added to the list.

The "dirty thirty" professors are all liberal. The man who started the website is conservative and said in a statemeent to the "Daily Bruin" (UCLA's daily newspaper) that he does not think that the conservative professors would do somethign like this. Read all about it on the Daily Bruin Online. Many people have been making fun of the site. Although the letter is not online Friday's Daily Bruin included a letter to the editor from a professor asking to be added to the list.

from TFA:

The scientists said the findings could lead to a model for designing aircraft that could hover in place and carry loads for many purposes such as diaster surveillance after earthquakes and tsunamis.

Hey look... someone else at CalTech is already working on such an aircraft: http://ho.seas.ucla.edu/publications/conference/20 01/jpl10_2001.pdf
This link says that they flew the first prototype in 1998!!

I guess that kinda puts a dent in these guys claim to be the first to explain bee flight. ...And I found this link from a google search!! You'd think Michael Dickinson would have better research skills than that!

In my opinion, this horror they call intelectual property is very bad for everybody and should just not exist. For some insight on this:

http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual /intellectual.htm
http://www.cortell.net/category/english/

Media Bias Is Real, Finds UCLA Political Scientist

http://www.newsroom.ucla.edu/page.asp?RelNum=6664

While the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal is conservative, the newspaper's news pages are liberal, even more liberal than The New York Times. The Drudge Report may have a right-wing reputation, but it leans left. Coverage by public television and radio is conservative compared to the rest of the mainstream media. Meanwhile, almost all major media outlets tilt to the left.

These are just a few of the surprising findings from a UCLA-led study, which is believed to be the first successful attempt at objectively quantifying bias in a range of media outlets and ranking them accordingly.

"I suspected that many media outlets would tilt to the left because surveys have shown that reporters tend to vote more Democrat than Republican," said Tim Groseclose, a UCLA political scientist and the study's lead author. "But I was surprised at just how pronounced the distinctions are."

"Overall, the major media outlets are quite moderate compared to members of Congress, but even so, there is a quantifiable and significant bias in that nearly all of them lean to the left," said coauthor Jeffrey Milyo, University of Missouri economist and public policy scholar.

-- more at the link --

Could it be that Pioneer isn't really slowing down, but it's just the signal being blueshifted?

No discussion of polar bears is complete without mentioning Churchill, Manitoba, The Polar Bear Capital of The World. I visited at the end of October and had the chance to go out on a "Tundra Buggy" tour. It was quite exotic.. we saw 3 polar bear. There's also a guy who lives out on the tundra for a few months a year in a huge tundra buggy with satellite internet access.. He has a site: http://www.polarbearcam.com/

The buggies are amazing.. probably about 4-5 feet off the ground, HUGE tires, furnace inside to keep warm.. we ate dinner on board as well, with the bears just outside. Our tour guide was VERY professional and knowledgeable, we were quite impressed. It turned out he had also lived in Africa for many years and given tours there, etc etc..

Here's some fun facts about polar bear off the top of my head:

Their skin is actually black to absorb the sunlight (it's amazing how well adapted they are). The fur is really transparent but looks white in the same way a cloud looks white because of all of the water droplets.

They have suction cups on their paws to keep from slipping on the ice.

Churchill has had, I believe, only 2 or 3 fatalities in the past 30 years. One was a few weeks before I got there as a drunk wandered out of the town limits.

They are very careful about bear up there, for obvious reasons. Every night they fire off shotguns to keep the bears away. People living on the outskirts of town always have rifles in their houses just in case - they also put out traps.. basically boards with nails going through them.. to keep the bears away.

If a bear comes into town they will stun it and carry it away with a helicopter! We actually saw this happening! They move it further north IIRC... but if the bear comes back 2 more times, they put it into the "polar bear jail" which is in town (no tourists allowed sadly). They only water the bear in the jail, and do not feed it, otherwise the bear may view it as a rewarding experience.

I was surprised how nice everything was up there.. beautifully decorated hotels, at least on the insides. Food is expensive though and their economy is pretty much dependent on the bears, although they do export grain to Europe. The train takes 2 days from Winnipeg and is quite a slow ride, sometimes traveling at only 10 miles per hour. (They run 2 engines just in case one breaks down.)

I remember lots more about the bears and Churchill if anyone is interested.. just ask!

Oh - there was far less ice compared to previous years when I was up there. Everyone I asked said they weren't sure if it was global warming or just a temporary cycle. You can check the sea ice information for the Hudson Bay at the Canadian Ice Service site.

No where in the world do people give up their own constitutionally protected rights faster on the slightest scare than in the USA.

That's a ridiculous ssertion, not backed up by the fact that most democarcies have been eroding civil liberties like crazy recently. For example:

http://www.oup.co.uk/isbn/1-84-174183-3
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/southasia/History/Indep endent/anti_terr.html
http://www.quaker.org/qcea/aroundeurope/2003/255.h tm#Third
http://uninews.unimelb.edu.au/articleid_2938.html
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:l-h-3gElzYcJ: www.ihf-hr.org/viewbinary/viewdocument.php%3Fdoc_i d%3D5537+european+anti-terrorism+legislation&hl=en
http://www.forumsec.org.fj/news/2004/July/July_08. htm
http://www.statewatch.org/news/2003/apr/18funright s.html

Intelectual Property SUX, say NO to IP!

Nice book on the subject:
http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual /against.htm

Nice speech (in english, despite how the page looks):
http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20051117-p2p/

The guy himself admitted some of his posts to be "extremely racist" according to this article http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid =32352/ The two bloggers convicted last month replied harshly to a mail from a Muslim woman to taxi firms. She asked the taxi firms to stop taking dogs onboard because of hygienic reasons (from TFA). I love pets, but insulting a woman who makes such a simple request is clearly out-of-line.

Don't try to paint it as something new enabled by P2P. What IS new is the idea that sharing files without making a profit is the domain of hardened criminals. What you are witnessing is the same thing lawmakers witnessed during prohibition. Copyright law has been transformed into complete and utter bullshit and everyone knows it. These are just the same law abiding people doing the same things they always have. As much as you might like to paint a different picture, most people who download music are not the same people who casually shoplift. The law is wrong. Obviously it needs to be repealed. Read all about it:

On December 16, 1997, President Clinton signed HR 2265 -- the 'No Electronic Theft' Act -- into law. The act, sponsored by Representative Goodlatte (R-Virginia), was passed in the House on 11/4/97 and in the Senate on 11/13/97.

HR 2265 was viewed as "closing a loophole" in the criminal law. Under the old statutory scheme, people who intentionally distributed copied software over the Internet did not face criminal penalties if they did not profit from their actions.

The act was strongly backed by the software and entertainment industries but opposed by science and academic groups.

Fuck you very much President Clinton AND both houses of Congress for going with the monied interests instead of the intellectuals when dealing with "Intellectual Property" laws.

The defenders of P2P for LEGITIMATE use lose their credibility if they are not equally realistic and aggressive in condemning and thinking of ways to stop illegitimate use.

No they don't. They have issues with the DMCA and the NET Act and your definition of legitimate, along with the majority of America. "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." Obviously, we don't consent. When teenagers are being dragged into court on criminal charges for sharing songs, when Girl Scouts have a list of songs that are illegal sing around the campfire, and when I cannot legally sing Happy Birthday to my niece at McDonald's, something is terribly wrong with the law. It's time our lawmakers got tough on the corporate criminals stealing our culture from the public domain.

There is no proof for the existance of Dark Matter or Dark Energy. They were both created to explain-away the shortcomings of some popular theories.

Coincidentally, there is no proof that the universe is expanding. Most people don't know this because the 'bangers' (big-bangers, specifically) have been loudy shouting out their theory for so long..

Google 'no big bang' or 'compton effect'.

There is no proof for the existance of Dark Matter or Dark Energy. They were both created to explain-away the shortcomings of some popular theories.

Coincidentally, there is no proof that the universe is expanding. Most people don't know this because the 'bangers' (big-bangers, specifically) have been loudy shouting out their theory for so long..

Google 'no big bang' or 'compton effect'.

There is no proof for the existance of Dark Matter or Dark Energy. They were both created to explain-away the shortcomings of some popular theories.

Coincidentally, there is no proof that the universe is expanding. Most people don't know this because the 'bangers' (big-bangers, specifically) have been loudy shouting out their theory for so long..

Google 'no big bang' or 'compton effect'.

There is another paper out of UCLA that is similar to this one except with somewhat opposing results. In which, the authors show analytically that the rich-get-richer phenomenon does exist. http://oak.cs.ucla.edu/~cho/papers/cho-bias.pdf

It seems tough to reconcile these two sets of findings, and this new paper even makes mention of this:

"The connection between the popularity of a page and its acquisition of new links has led to the well-known rich-get-richer growth paradigm that explains many of the observed topological features of the Web. The present findings, however, show that several non-linear mechanisms involving search engine algorithms and user behavior regulate the popularity of pages. This calls for a new theoretical framework that considers more of the various behavioral and semantic issues that shape the evolution of the Web. How such a framework may yield coherent models that still agree with the Web's observed topological properties is a difficult and important theoretical
challenge."

While it is unsurprising that someone who thinks "intelligent design" is a relevant criticism of real science also thinks the Big Bang is "just a theory" (said as if it had been merely dreamt up by a drunk on his way home from the bar last night), it is a huge HUGE tipoff to nuttery when a supposed astrophysicst rejects one of the most successful theories ever devised in all of cosmology. And when respected UCLA physicists start pointing out the glaringly obvious mistakes in said anti-big bang theories, well, that's pretty much when the house of cards comes tumbling down isn't it? No your comment is not insigtful in the least. Rather, it is an appeal to ignorance. Though if you realy do require a specific refutation of this focus fusion bullshit (and that's what it is so why mince words) you need only look to this 1995 doctoral thesis by Todd Rider which effectively kills off any possiblity of nonequilibrium fusion reactions (such as Fusors and pyroelectric fusion devieces) of ever producing net energy. The Focus Fusion device even if it actually DID achieve the temperatures claimed (and no, it does not) would belong to this class of non-starters.

It's been proven my repeated indepenant studies that Fox News is so biased and mixes opinion and news so freely [intentionally] that they have engendered inaccurate knowledge in 80% of their viewers.

And, even allowing for that statistic, I'm saying that 80% of their viewers is still a tiny minority of the other networks' collective viewers. CBS still gets more people watching it, and if they had their way, a presidential election would have been altered by their anchors obviously insane clutching to a bogus story based on poorly forged MS Word documents pretending to be memos from decades ago.

Infact ABC/CBS/NBC aren't too much better than Fox - and you know all the factually inaccuracies they push off favor the administration's positions.

No, they're also very poor at journalism... but their biases absolutely do not favor the administration. Most importantly, their airtime biases tilt the most extremely during the critical few weeks before an election, which is what we're talking about (since that's when the law would most crack down on non-"journalist" rights to free speech).

For example in one quite pointed study about misconceptions and support of the Iraq war three questions were asked - and the more of them they got wrong the more likely they were to be the following A) Supporters of the war B) Fox news viewers

And? "More likely to be..." doesn't add up to "and thus we shouldn't let people write what they want on their web sites because that's the same as paid media support."

"More likely they were to be..." doesn't, by the way, indicate that one news channe's counter-balancing editorial position even comes close to countering the overt bias of organizations like NPR (which even uses your tax dollars), or the major new networks. CNN alone is so demonstrably oriented against the administration that it and Fox essentially cancel each other out. What's left are all the other broadcasters and networks, the majority of which overwhelmingly left-leaning in their personal politics and their editorial decisions.

Why not read a serious poli-sci paper on the subject. You'll see specific references to hard stats on the people involved. For every reporter that contributed to the Bush campaign, 93 contributed to Kerry... and many other such instructive tidbits. You can bitch about Fox all you want, but they're only a tiny slice of the media pie.

But you know what? I don't care if they're biased, as long as my person right to free speech isn't limited. And that's exactly what the legislation in question was designed to prevent, and which the Dems just went to a lot of trouble to shoot down. Nice.

Thats absolutely right. Since the dawn of time humans have been trading in a free competitive market economy, sharing ideas, changing (modding) their tools to better suit themselves and their needs, and overall pushing forward technology and innovation.

The US of A, became powerful, just like Britain before it, by having a competitive free market economy where ideas are shared and move everyone forward. But now the US is leading the world in restrictive laws and monopolies on ideas - i.e. restricting others from using ideas.

This trend is indeed bad for all of society. For society to improve, it must be able to freely share ideas and to change (mod) and their tools in the way the people see fit.

These restrictive practices will become evident within a generation how negative an effect it can have on society and the USs technological lead.

And some links:

1.1 Free Matter Economy, Part 1:
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/free_issues/is sue_07/free_matter_economy/
1.2 Free Matter Economy, Part 2:
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/free_issues/is sue_08/free_matter_economy_2/

2.
A Groklaw article complete with discussion:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200510251 65105685

3.
An Economist article:
http://www.economist.com/printedition/displaystory .cfm?story_id=5014990

4.
Slashdot discussion on Economist article:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/23/17 37218&tid=187&tid=155

5.
The GNU Organisation for the development of software, its official stance on the negative effect of IP on software development:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.xhtml

6.
A longish non-academic article, but starts getting to the point eventualy:
http://www.reason.com/0303/fe.dc.creation.shtml

7.
A pdf:
http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/papers/pci23.pdf
( http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/papers/pci23.htm )

8.
Discussion on the above pdf:
http://activeclub.homeip.net/forums/view.php?bn=ac discussions_activeclubreflections&key=1046014645

Thats absolutely right. Since the dawn of time humans have been trading in a free competitive market economy, sharing ideas, changing (modding) their tools to better suit themselves and their needs, and overall pushing forward technology and innovation.

The US of A, became powerful, just like Britain before it, by having a competitive free market economy where ideas are shared and move everyone forward. But now the US is leading the world in restrictive laws and monopolies on ideas - i.e. restricting others from using ideas.

This trend is indeed bad for all of society. For society to improve, it must be able to freely share ideas and to change (mod) and their tools in the way the people see fit.

These restrictive practices will become evident within a generation how negative an effect it can have on society and the USs technological lead.

And some links:

1.1 Free Matter Economy, Part 1:
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/free_issues/is sue_07/free_matter_economy/
1.2 Free Matter Economy, Part 2:
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/free_issues/is sue_08/free_matter_economy_2/

2.
A Groklaw article complete with discussion:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200510251 65105685

3.
An Economist article:
http://www.economist.com/printedition/displaystory .cfm?story_id=5014990

4.
Slashdot discussion on Economist article:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/23/17 37218&tid=187&tid=155

5.
The GNU Organisation for the development of software, its official stance on the negative effect of IP on software development:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.xhtml

6.
A longish non-academic article, but starts getting to the point eventualy:
http://www.reason.com/0303/fe.dc.creation.shtml

7.
A pdf:
http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/papers/pci23.pdf
( http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/papers/pci23.htm )

8.
Discussion on the above pdf:
http://activeclub.homeip.net/forums/view.php?bn=ac discussions_activeclubreflections&key=1046014645

He had a copy (or bootleg) discs and seeded them to BT. See this story from the South China Morning Post (it's a mirror, the Post site is subscription only).

Photo images of the labels of the compact discs were also found on the computer.... Senior Inspector Kwan said the originating "seeder" computer was most responsible for the distribution of the copyrighted work... Mr Francis argued that the process of downloading was initiated by the downloading computer and not by the seeder computer. But Senior Inspector Kwan said the seeder computer had to be turned on and connected to a BitTorrent-user website first.

The government prosecutor Hayson Tse Ka-sze said it would be "absurd" to argue that the tracker server and not the uploader was responsible for distribution. He defined distribution as "sharing" and said the court would have to look at the intent of the legislation

Copyright-infringing copies of three films - Daredevil, Red Planet and Miss Congeniality -- were found on the defendant's computer during a customs raid on his home on January 12. Photo images of the labels of the compact discs were also found on the computer. A digital camera consistent with the make and model used to take the photos was found at the defendant's home, government prosecutor Hayson Tse Ka-sze told the court.

The government prosecutor Hayson Tse Ka-sze said it would be "absurd" to argue that the tracker server and not the uploader was responsible for distribution. He defined distribution as "sharing" and said the court would have to look at the intent of the legislation

Copyright-infringing copies of three films - Daredevil, Red Planet and Miss Congeniality -- were found on the defendant's computer during a customs raid on his home on January 12. Photo images of the labels of the compact discs were also found on the computer. A digital camera consistent with the make and model used to take the photos was found at the defendant's home, government prosecutor Hayson Tse Ka-sze told the court.

Speaking of bias and distortion...

This is not a "study by Stanford and UCLA". This is a paper written by two guys who got their PhDs at Stanford, Tim Groseclose and Jeff Milyo. Groseclose is now an associate professor at UCLA and Milyo is one at the University of Missouri.

Neither Stanford nor UCLA have put their imprimatur on this paper, nor endorsed it in any way.

If you actually read the paper you will find that it is a conclusion in search of evidence. Two conservative buddies decided to prove something they already believed and manufactured some relatively weak statistics to back up their beliefs.

And you got modded up. I swear, include a link to anything boring and factual looking, regardless of who wrote it, and Slashdotters will mod you up rather than reading it.

When did UMich go to 100k users?
Last I heard they had about 27,000 on 27 servers(!) and UI was going to be the scalability test with 90k.