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many killer applications are written in them (like Blender, for example!).

I think, not really sure, that Blender is written in C and only the scripting part uses python.

You are correct. I stand corrected. http://urlbit.us/ihd

Indeed - by setting up a transmitter of significant wattage, you're depriving everybody else in the public the use of that particular frequency. You're only one member of the public, and the rest of us get to have consideration too. Try looking up the 'tragedy of the commons' sometime.

You get to use the frequency exclusively by paying the licence fee, thus compensating the rest of the public for their loss. That money goes back to the government, and ultimately (at least in principle) benefits all the public - including yourself. Yes, you get back much less than you put in as an individual; but with exclusive use of the frequency, the benefit you get is that much higher also.

Am I depriving the community? Or providing a service? If no one was using that frequency anyway, who cares?

Thank goodness we don't have to license our websites. I can reach a far greater number of people with my websites than I ever could with a transmitter. And yeah, I am "depriving" others the use of the domain names I've acquired.

I would do with the airwaves what I do with my websites -- provide free information, free commentary, and the like. The "benefit" to me is not described in terms of money, but in being able to make a tiny difference in the world I live in, which, in theory at least, should benefit all.

The stuff you have said is what they teach us in civics class. As usual, what the government teaches you about how the government "operates" fails to reflect the reality of what actually goes on. Today, our "airwaves" are filled with torrents of mediocrity, paid for and pumped by those who licensed those frequencies. I fail to see the benefit to the public. Oh, but the civics lesson sounds "good" and "right". It is also a fantasy. In reality, something else is afoot.

Funny thing is, no one cared diddly about "the spectrum" until someone invented radio. Where was all the concern about "rights" over "airwaves" before then?

And why the frell is it called "airwaves", anyway? It's got nothing to do with air. "Sound" is "airwaves". Electromagnetic energy, as you know, does not need air to propagate. Basic physics. So perhaps I really should build a high-wattage "airwaves" transmitter -- except my neighbors may get annoyed at not being able to get a good night's sleep! And the FCC wouldn't bother me either, though the local cops may. :-)

http://urlbit.us/e4v

Card is certainly entitled to his opinions. However, this ex-fan of his will never be able to read another word of his until he has a change of heart.

Why is it that such great minds like Orson Scott Card, William Shockley, and even Charles Darwin have to have a nasty bigoted side that sullies up what would otherwise be great accomplishments?

The world will never know.

Just because it's infrared doesn't mean it can't be foiled.

And aside from that, there is still the grave danger that the government may try to use this technology to finger people it doesn't like.

Currently developed technology requires the target to be within a few meters of the iris reader, and also to be "cooperative", but technologies always improve.

The algorithms being used to classify the iris has an impressively low false positive rate. I'll give it that.

Security considerations Like with most other biometric identification technology, a still not satisfactorily solved problem with iris recognition is the problem of "live tissue verification". The reliability of any biometric identification depends on ensuring that the signal acquired and compared has actually been recorded from a live body part of the person to be identified, and is not a manufactured template. Many commercially available iris recognition systems are easily fooled by presenting a high-quality photograph of a face instead of a real face, which makes such devices unsuitable for unsupervised applications, such as door access-control systems. The problem of live tissue verification is less of a concern in supervised applications (e.g., immigration control), where a human operator supervises the process of taking the picture. Methods that have been suggested to provide some defence against the use of fake eyes and irises include: * Changing ambient lighting during the identification (switching on a bright lamp), such that the pupillary reflex can be verified and the iris image be recorded at several different pupil diameters * Analysing the 2D spatial frequency spectrum of the iris image for the peaks caused by the printer dither patterns found on commercially available fake-iris contact lenses * Analysing the temporal frequency spectrum of the image for the peaks caused by computer displays * Using spectral analysis instead of merely monochromatic cameras to distinguish iris tissue from other material * Observing the characteristic natural movement of an eyeball (measuring nystagmus, tracking eye while text is read, etc.) * Testing for retinal retroreflection (red-eye effect) * Testing for reflections from the eye's four optical surfaces (front and back of both cornea and lens) to verify their presence, position and shape * Using 3D imaging (e.g., stereo cameras) to verify the position and shape of the iris relative to other eye features A 2004 report by the German Federal Office for Information Security noted that none of the iris-recognition systems commercially available at the time implemented any live-tissue verification technology. Like any pattern-recognition technology, live-tissue verifiers will have their own false-reject probability and will therefore further reduce the overall probability that a legitimate user is accepted by the sensor.

IMO there is no such thing as "Responsible Gun Ownership" for most people. Thats just an utopia, at the same level of "we should ban all arms in the whole world". For each people capable of that, you've got 100 short fused, highly temperamental guys who would put a bullet in the head of a guy they happend to have a traffic accident with. I think that more guns mean more deaths by accidental discharges, more "criminal takes citizen gun, kills citizen with it". Most people who have/want to have a gun are not willing to go through the extensive training that should be done to make sure they guy really comprehends the responsibility of having a tool capable of killing a human being with just moving a finger. Heck! There are tons of cases of police officers killing/injuring people by mistake. And those guys are trained in the use of firearms!! Don't want to know what the untrained would do! And if everyone and her mother was carrying a 45, police officers would be scared shitless (with a reason) and shoot every civie that makes a sudden move after being stopped for speeding. But thats my opinion, of course.

I would point out the success of Swiss Gun Ownership as a fine example of how Responsible Gun Ownership can be done and why it's not a utopian ideal.

Many liberals will disagree with me, but I have yet to see a sound counter-argument.

Well if you're the one suggesting that gun ownership correlates with crime rates shouldn't you provide some proof? The truth is there is no connection between gun ownership and crime. Crime is a much more complex phenomenon than your description. Personally I think gun ownership should be allowed because there is little harm in individuals owning guns. The real truth is that high emissions automobiles are much worse than handguns.

I thought I dropped a hint by the title.

Check out More Guns, Less Crime by John Lott, where he presents the proof.

Not that LED Art (and advertisements, if you recall the other idiot overreaction to the LED ads in Boston) is "illegal", but...

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a BOMB to Mass Holes!

Well, now I've said it.

I don't find it surprising at all that evolving autonomous agents would find a way to maximize its use of resources through deception.

Well, now the cops can really make sure you understand them before they shoot you! Never forget Amadou Diallo!!!!

I personally don't see what is so wrong with URL biting services. Sure, some may exploit them to no good end, but really, the benefits outweigh any possible detriments as I see it.

If your site is vunerable, it's going to be vunerable no matter what. Anyone with access to a configurable Apache server can create all kinds of crazy redirects to your site, and sophisticated ones too. I don't think anyone looking to do such a major exploit would think of relying on urlbit.us or tinyurl.com.

So, it seems to me that this particular concern is quite a wash, at the very least.

The processed foods that many of us eat appears to be the culprit for many of our current ills, including obesity and diabetes. And overloading our bodies with too much protein is simply doing all kinds of damage in the long run. We simply do not need that much protein, and we get an adequate amount of it from plant-based foods.

Dairy is bad news as well, and should be avoided.

As a father of a vegetarian household, where we've been vegetarian for over 12 years, I must say my kids are healthy as oxes. And it just amazes me how misinformed most people are about diet and nutrition. One of my daughters keeps getting weird questions like, "so where do you get your protein?" Well, duh, every living thing has protein in it!!!!!

All I can say is read the book. This is not a fad book, but a serious scientific study. It does touch on the politics of meat as well, and I happen to agree with some of Campbell's conclusions. But seriously folks! The science is hard to deny.

1. I think that speaking of "information" in the DNA is a bit misleading. It is not "information" in the sense we normally think of information. The DNA sequence is the result of millions of years of evolution. One might even say that the DNA sequence is a "phenotype of evolution". It is as much a phenotype of evolution as the organism is a phenotype of the DNA itself.
2. The relationship between arbitrary base pairs is multidimensional and will not really be elucidated by mapping them on a 2-dimensional grid. It is a curio, but not likely to yield much of anything useful.
3. I would think it would be much better to do this with codons than with base pairs. Since it is codons that code for amino acids, we might actually see some really cool patterns that way. Some of the codons are polymorphic and that can be taken into account with the color assignments.
4. I wish the site were a bit more interactive. Basically, I want to be able to dynamically manipulate the data in real-time, in 3 or 4 dimensions, and be able to fly through it. OK, this would call for much more than just a mere website. Perhaps I am trying to inspire someone to crate an OpenGL project that would do this!!!

Overall, I think this is wicked cool, but amateurish from the standpoint of science. Actually, I'd like to see a Gerald Edelelman approach to handling and analyzing the DNA -- which would be wicked cool! See From Brain Dynamics to Consciousness to see what I mean. Applying his neural darwinistic approaches to DNA would not only reveal many surprises, but would be referentially cool, applying neural evolution to what was the result of biological (and memetic) evolution!

OK, so you think I am mad as a hatter. Perhaps. Perhaps not.