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What seems to "bother" you is that Stallman has advanced persuasive arguments in favor of an idea that conflicts with your existing world view.

No, I told you exactly what bothers me: Stallman depends more on an appeal to emotion than he does on appeal to intellect. When other people do this, they're often trying to convince their audience to believe or to do something that they might not otherwise believe or do. That give me the creeps.

As I've written elsewhere, my disagreement with Stallman exists on a plane separate from my objections to his rhetoric. In other words, in my eyes he is not only Wrong, but also Bad.

In your post and in your essay, you spend a great deal of time attacking Stallman and his ideas as "propaganda," without rebutting those ideas. This is called an argumentum ad hominem attack ("against the man") and is considered a very poor argument--I'll resist the urge to call it "propaganda."

Propaganda is a very specific term for a set of rhetorical techniques. The word does have negative connotations, but I honestly can't think of a better one to describe what RMS does. The connotations aren't always negative, anyway. In the 20's, the word "agitprop" appeared, which is a combination of the Russian word agitatsiya (or "agitating") and propaganda. The word was used by Russian Communists to describe their own efforts. So your assertion that calling it propaganda is an ad hominem attack is pretty off base. If I wanted to make an ad hom attack against RMS, I'd call him a left-wing radical Communist who dresses funny. That's an ad hom attack.

For more information on propaganda techniques in persuasive writing, look here, or here, or here. These resources are good both for creating your own propaganda, and also for recognizing the propaganda of others. I'd suggest that you read about these techniques and familiarize yourself with them, then revisit RMS's writings. See how many instances of the propaganda techniques you can find. It's fun; it's like a little game.

I suggest you read Stallman's ideas again and give them some thought.

I read Stallman's ideas incessantly. But I read them critically and dispassionately, keeping a copy of those propaganda guides open beside me as I go. It's a terribly educational experience.

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I'm getting tired of all these vaporware articles. This does not seem very newsworthy to me, especially given that their product is just another iPod wannabe. Articles like this almost make me want to quit slashdot.

I do not share the concensus that computing power equals intelligence. It would seem that todays computers have more flops than simple insects( some numbers Just assume like 10^5 neurons, 10^2 spikes per seconds, 10^3 connections per neuron. Giving you 10^10 connection updates per second. Neural network simulators are not far away from that number. Some are even faster using parallel computers.

But still instects outperform any computer system in most recognition tasks, they show intelligent (or at least useful) behavior.

We are not in need of more flops or something. We are desperately in need of the slightest hint about how this great software... that defines our brain functions.

I bet that todays computers with the right software (that is learning, imitation etc) could seem astonishingly intelligent. We need brain power ... not computer power to understand the brain.

...an old joke. I once knew a guy who worked at Ford Aerospace. This was back when anti-lock brakes were still in their research phase. I asked him when they might go on the market. His response was that he had too little faith in software to rely on it to stop his car. His exact words: "It brings a whole new meaning to the halting problem!"

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I am a team mentor (Team #824, Students Working Against Time). I'm proud to say that our robot, from chassis to firmware, is 100% built by students, both from the University of Washington, and Roosevelt High School with whom we are partnered. In fact, the most that our corporate sponsors do is mail us a check and show up at the pre-ship event to pick up a team T-Shirt.

It is *not* a cheap program. It costs $5000.00 to register, each additional competition that you go to costs another whopping $4000.00. The money from registration pays for the kit parts, which is a big collection of motors, pneumatics, and control systems (Innovation First's controller, complete with 900Mhz radio modems). Additional competitions *are* expensive to go to, expecially if it's the championship at Epcot; just flying the entire team there with a 130 lbs robot and support equipment can be very taxing.

My kids learn a lot every year. Some of the HS students joined the team not having used a hacksaw before; by the end of the build period, they were operating our CNC milling machine. Others became good 3D Animators, CAD users, and web gurus. It's also about APPLYING what you learn in the class room. Kids can learn all the physics from a book, but the concept is really reinforced when you have to sit down and calculate gear reduction ratios for building a ball pickup scoop. As for mentors, we get about as much out of a program as the kids; I was a horrible manager when I first started, and slowly I've managed to hone my managerial and leadership skills. Of coures, like anything in life, you get what you put into the program. The students that learn the most are going to be the ones that always show up and volunteer to help. We were at a pre-ship competition, and the kids from the Micro$oft team (The X-Bot, insert booing here)were just sitting around playing basketball, while we were busy troubleshooting our robot. We can all guess how much of *their* robot is student-buit. :-)

Would I mentor a BattleBot IQ team if I have the chance? Why not? FIRST is a great program, but it still have miles to go as far as marketing goes, compared to Battlebots, and if it's another way to get kids interested into science and technology, who cares what banner they compete under?

Links:

FIRST's website:
F.I.R.S.T
Team #824 - Students Working Against Time

Well here goes my karma...

Ever heard of securing an IIS server properly in the first place so you don't have to install all those dammned patches in the first place (hint - remove all mappings in IIS EXCEPT the ones you need and you won't get hit by the majority of the exploits out there).

Answer this, would you stick a default install of linux live on the net without securing it first? Or any operating system for that matter? Just as with linux, you have to secure Windows before putting it live. Unfortunally, quite a few winadmins are poorly trained and do not realize this.

That and Microsoft is now making reboot-less patches now for Windows 2000 Server, and for those rare ones that require a reboot, you can qchain them together and reboot once.

About the hackers (I assume you mean crackers), ever heard of a firewall, I hear they are good for defeating most of the script kiddies out there. DoSing, in reality, no server can withstand a major one. Go read up on them, Wired has an article here, and an admin at UW has some more articles here.

Oh yea, what the hell are you doing surfing the net on a server in the first place, that's what workstations are for.

Go work in a IT department with Windows 2000 before you go shooting your mouth off. Adminning your home linux box does not make you an expert in Windows 2000 administration.

1. setup a box with default installation of an older distro
2. turn on extensive logging
3. connect to the internet
4. wait...
5. when cracked, do forensic analysis

I like Mandrake but your comments regarding them not caring about the license is just plain wrong. 8.2 no longer includes Netscape. The next version will not include pine because of license issues. Mandrake has made a large attempt to remove all software that isn't free software from the GPL CDs. The only way to get anything else is to belong to the MandrakeClub or buy the PowerPack.

The Matrix was probably the closest we'll ever get to a thinking man's movie, and I heard somewhere that even that was dumbed down a tad (IIRC, the enslaved humans were originally supposed to be part of a tremendously huge RAID via their unused brain capacity, instead of as an energy source).

Unused brain capacity? You mean that 90% of brain that we don't use? Now, that would be realistic.

True, it helps, but dropping Outlook (Express) for any other mail program of your choice will have largely the same effect.

I've heard the same phrase applied to capabilitiy-based architectures, but these are systems built around hardware enforcement, and I get the impression that SCC's scheme is software-based.

I don't know about the author of the article, but I'm pretty sure I'm using more than 10% of my brain.

I thought you were wrong, but found that this is a common misconception.

The project looks interesting, but the guy brings up the whole "we only use 10% of our brain" myth

I'll build one for you for $600.00

I built one for my own research-see the end of the PowerPoint presentation under "A Context for Assisted Cognition" on my home page" . I could have made the form factor about 50% smaller if RadioShack had a better selection of project cases, but oh well...

I can get 5m accuracy (using GPS/WAAS) and can run and record data for about 3 days on end with samples every 2 seconds. All the data recording is done with a PalmPilot and you can get it from Linux or Windows.

I seriously doubt that. When you extract the contents of a CD, each sector is 2352 bytes, 2048 of which are data. 288-bytes, of which, are used for ECC. For everything you didn't want to know about the raw format of CD-ROM data, try this page. All in all, you lose approximately 12.9% of the disc because of the format of the sectors, and the error correction/detection.

A good explanation of the difference between acceleration and gravity can be found on the Eot-Wash webpage. This is the good part:

"All objects fall the same way under the influence of gravity; therefore, locally, one cannot tell the difference between an accelerated frame and an unaccelerated frame. Consider the famous example of a person in a falling elevator. The person floats in the middle of an elevator that is falling down a shaft. Locally, that is during any sufficiently small amount of time or over a sufficiently small space, the person falling in the elevator can make no distinction between being in the falling elevator or being in completely empty space, where there is no gravity.

We could imagine two apples floating on either side of the person; as the elevator approached the earth, the apples would approach eachother. This happens because their paths, both toward the center of the earth, eventually converge. But this is not an effect that can be detected in a local experiment.

This statement of the equivalence principle makes an important suggestion. In special relativity--and all classical mechanics--we are used to the idea that objects travel at constant velocity unless a force acts on them. Now, if we can't locally tell the difference between falling in a gravitational field and travelling at constant velocity, then, locally, they must be the same thing. The paths of free bodies define what we mean by "straight" and if we observe an object deviate from constant velocity, it must be because spacetime itself is curved.

Formally, we state the equivalence principle this way: in any and every locally Lorentz (inertial) frame, the laws of special relativity must hold. From this, we conclude that the only things which can define the geometric structure of spacetime are the paths of free bodies."

Again this is a silly statement. Not knowing EXACTLY how it came to be is not the same as not knowing ANYTHING about it. The fact is we know a shitload but not everything.

Hmmm... lets look at all the parent posts to see where I said "we don't know ANYTHING about oil"...

I did say "The fact is there's still a lot *not* known about petroleum (how its made, how to find it, how to extract it), even by the experts.

... and of course the one you quoted:

The fact is we don't know *exactly* how petroleum came to be.

But no "We don't know ANYTHING about it." So "weazel" [sic] words are bad, but outright fabrication is ok?

And as for knowing a shitload (isn't that a "weasel" word), when did I imply that we didn't know a lot about petroleum? What I did say was there was still a lot we don't know, including how it was created. There are theories, but the book isn't closed on those issues (damn that scientific method, coming up with discoveries that don't fit the established model... how inconsiderate). Even petroleum engineering classes will tell you "Caution: specific models of the origin of fossil fuels should not be taken as absolutely established." Silly academics, what do they know?

Why further the problem.

Check out this link to begin learning about denial-of-service attacks. Here's another if your appetite for self-education has been whet.

The University of Washington has transmitted 1.5Gbps of HDTV across the country. I guess the new thing here is the intercontinental aspect. Here for the UW press release.

They may hold the patents, but who does the standard belong to? The website http://www.ee.washington.edu/conselec/CE/kuhn/cdro m/95x8.htm may prove of interest to readers, which contains the CD-Audio Standard. Since these Copy Protected CDs do not conform to these standards, It would seem that to discribe them as Audio CD's would be misleading, and, certainly, in the UK, Illegal.

Network hotsync is slow, but adequate. PalmVNC and Top Gun ssh both work, but they're not usable enough to be more than curiosities on that tiny screen. The only browser I've found that works at all is the one that comes with AvantGo's mobile Internet service. I've never managed to get a static IP address to work, but that's a minor problem; the DHCP client works fine. More serious: the MultiMail email client built into the 802.11b module won't talk to a recent UW IMAP server; it doesn't grok the server's CAPABILITY response.

Coming from someone who lived in California, and lived through the "Big One" (Or at least my "I survived the Big One" mug says so), I'd say you're whining too much sissy man. I slept through a 4.8 in San Martin, I was in a hammock, I probably had a good time! Anyway, what I'm getting at, is no one bothered to post anything about *our* earthquake. It was 6.8. And we sure felt it. It didn't shake my stereo a little and get posted on slashdot, it got made fun of on Leno for good reason! We're still repairing damages, I want my bridge back. Yeah ...

Bah! Anonymous cowards suck. What's so scary about using a pseudonym, anyway?

*sigh*

Anyway, you're wrong.

Not about the FCC rules, but about the fact that broadcasting an FM-10 (or an AM-1, which would be even more well-suited to the task) is illegal. It's not. An FM-10, when assembled according to instructions, puts out about 8 mw of power (see "FM-10 Myths") making it perfectly legal under Part 15 rules.

In conclusion: Don't spread FUD. Thank you.

If you really want a big gun then you want a Ram Accelerator. It will subject a projectile to about 25,000 G's of acceleration.

The beauty of it is its efficiency. The fuel (gas) is stored in the barrel. The projectile is fired to have it travel fast enough to cause its shock wave to ignite the gas in the tube and therefore propel it even more. Basically, it is just ahead of the detonation wave it creates.

The University of Washington has a good bit of info about them.

Cool stuff.

Unless you count bacteriorhodopsin, a photosynthetic protein in certain bacteria. Light energy is used to change the physical shape of the protein and move hydrogen atoms from one side of a membrane to the other. This is direct conversion of light to mechanical energy (although it is not usually used that way), and since the 70's there has been a lot of work with this protein making different sensor arrays and so forth.

Microkernels like Mach, L4, Spin, and QNX run as much of the operating system as possible in user space (the processors unprivildged execution mode). Device drivers, virtual memory managers (pagers), all run in user space, as normal applications. Alternate resource allocation policies (processor scheduling) can often be implemented on top of the microkernel. This allows a lot of flexibility, as parts of the os can be stopped, started, replaced, and debugged just like any other user applications.

You can even run entrie alternate operating systems on top of a microkernel. MkLinux (Linux on Mach) and L4Linux (Linux on L4) are examples of this. Traditionally microkernels have been slower than conventional kernels, but that's chaning. Linux in user space on top of L4 (L4Linux) runs only 5% to 10% slower than native linux.

Linux does have loadable modules, which can be loaded and unloaded at run time. However, the the loaded code run as part of the kernel, in the prividged execution mode.

Nathan Wiebe

one word, PC-Pine . I haven't see anything else more user-friendly than that. No viruses to be afraid of. Remote/secure access via IMAP/SSL. You are able to navigate with your keyboard. Handles attachments. Here's Why Some People Think Pine is for Wimps (and Why They're Wrong) . Now, if only PC-pine had threaded view of messages (like mutt). Note, the Unix version of pine has a patch which lets you view threaded view of mail, but PC-pine being closed source, we cannot benefit from that patch.

I know you by "windows-based, user friendly" probably mean some form of the standard windows GUI, but I personally find Pine easier to use than anything else. Probably because that's what I'm used to, but then again that's why people like the windows GUI too.

However, I am still wondering (1) whether you read the interview with Mead about his book, or are just taking the first part of Elby's quote (about imprecise equipment) at face value; and (2) whether you are accusing Mead of being an intellectual fraud.

I did read the article, and looked at the sample pages from the book, and read another interesting speech of Mead's, and think that it might be possible that there is a lot of merit in wanting to consider some particles - particularly electrons - as manifolds with boundary in stead of as singular points.

To deal with the first question, I think that Mead's main intent was to say that the Copenhagen Interpretation went wrong in insisting upon dogmatic adherence to the point particle model. He says that they understandably did not have access to the kind of data we do now, such as being able to see a single electron, but even more importantly, they had no experimental experience with coherent systems. Since their only experience was of incoherent systems, then of necessity, statistical models were all they could talk about. Mead is saying that with mounting evidence of coherent systems such as Lasers, Masers, Bose-Einstein condensates, etc. (he lists 10 in his book), that it appears to him that this is an even more important litmus test for understanding properties of "pure particles" (my paltry words here) than something like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Criterion.

The other thing I think Mead is addressing are logical paradoxes, which like you also mention, we all know must be created by lesser minds misapplying theoretical concepts. But like you, I feel unqualified to talk about these in physics at present. My gut feeling, however, is that dogmatism has been poisoning academic physics for decades.

Finally, our thread root poster, Elby, mentioned a "growing school" of thought. The article quotes Mead as follows:

John Cramer at the University of Washington was one of the first to describe it as a transaction between two atoms. At the end of his book, Schrodinger's Kittens and the Search for Reality, John Gribbin gives a nice overview of Cramer's interpretation and says that "with any luck at all it will supercede the Copenhagen interpretation as the standard way of thinking about quantum physics for the next generation of scientists."

Well, that's my quick summary. I'd be curious to know what a "Real" scientist thought about Mead's perspective; I found it very interesting. [Disclaimer: I am not a scientist although I have a fair background in graduate mathematics and a bit as well in undergrad physics. But,] In fact, I have enough experience with math to have a certain skepticism about the wisdom of unthinkingly applying things as basic as the real number field, with its Archimedean property, or the idea of a mathematical point, with unqualified enthusiasm to great unknowns such as the elementary particles of nature. And for criticizing such an unthinking approach to matter, I would like to know if I am truly justified in applauding Mead (i.e. in the name of Real science).

In any case, I would be grateful to be educated out of any of my own misconceptions. Best of luck to you in producing Real science - I hope I get to read about the results some day!

Oh... 'bout the same time that the hardware vendors come up with a perfect CPU.

A perfect CPU; I used to have one of those!!!

I would wonder if the frogs would set up rehab centers, or would they just take it cold turkey.

Seriously Caffeine withdrawal in frogs could be quite a interesting phenomena,
The website Neuroscience for Kids - Frogs and Caffeine mentions that a overdose of caffeine is lethal to frogs.

As with most topics, a cursory search of Google popped up this link. The relevant part:

Caffeine is a central nervous system stimulant that interferes with a neurotransmitter in the brain called adenosine. Caffeine also acts at other places in the body to increase heart rate, constrict blood vessels, relax air passages, and affect muscles. An overdose of caffeine is lethal to the coqui frog.

There is a link there to another page with examples of what they sound like. Though I'm rather against killing anything just to kill it, these ARE an alien species...so...erg. It's still a tough call. Damn conscience!

i`ve been looking at this project ever since it was founded, and dave dittrich and the other people on there are mostly noteworthy security scene researchers, and none of them is likely to abuse the research project for banalities like making money of it. did you know that a _lot_ of these people are working in the academic sector (=university admins, students etc) ?

if you want to look up stuff on e.g. dave, check out his work on trinoo, tng, tribe flood network and stacheldraht.

during my work for sun microsystems at the time stacheldraht appeared at a customers site, i never had the idea dave would do anything he did for consultancy fees. he`s a very talented and interested person, and spent above average time of his own on these topics.

http://www.washington.edu/People/dad/ note that the link that refers to consultancy means the university of washington client services consultancy. he is no money-rabid freelancer or dotcom.

*tips the white hat with that $$$ sign*

because cd's already have a 'copy bit'
From: All about subcode

The third bit is used for a sort of copy protection. If the bit is set, it tells a digital recorder listening to the data not to record. This is why a DAT wont record all of your CD's so you can take them back and not have to pay for them. Record companies thought about this in advance...

Here is the research group's web site. No update since 2000...

UW Staff Bios. Read the very last one. Robert Winglee. He has been developing M2P2, a technology similar to Solar Sails, but much easier and efficient. I don't have a link to his essay on it [pdf], but it is very lengthy, and describes all the needs of such a system.
Basically it takes gas, heats it to a very high temperature, strips away everything but the plasma, and shoots the plasma into a magnetic field which then catches the solar wind. Rather ingenious. Speed are incredible (twice current technology), and it has massive fuel economy.
I was at a speech of his, in which he explained the technology, and it's competitors in the field. Basically, a solar sail is extremely inefficient, because it has to weigh nil, be thinner than paper, and not tear easily.

* g o a t s e x * g o a t s e x * g o a t s e x *
g g
o / \ \ / \ o
a \ a
t `. : t
s` \ s
e \ / / \\\ -- \\ : e
x \ \/ --~~ ~-- \ x
* \ \-~ ~-\ *
g \ \ .--------.___\ g
o \ \// ((> \ o
a \ . C ) ((> / a
t /\ C )/ \ (> / t
s / /\ C) (> / \ s
e ( C__)\___/ // _/ / \ e
x \ \\// (/ x
* \ \) `---- --' *
g \ \ / / g
o / \ o
a / \ \ a
t / / \ t
s / / \/\/ s
e / e
x x
* g o a t s e x * g o a t s e x * g o a t s e x *


Only when you lose your karma are you free to do anything.

Well, sheesh, if you don't use a search engine you deserve to be stuck with /. -- see Quit SlashDot.org Today for some alternatives.

Ah! Well that explains why it sucks so bad at its attempt at doing email.

What else can run on multiple platforms?

Uh, wha? You call Windoze and OS/2 "multiple platforms"? Uh, ok...oh, and pine and mutt are multi-platform (i.e. most UNIXes and Windoze).

If you get to know it, understand it and use it, you never know, you might like it

I am forced to use it by my employer (guess who) and no, I don't like it. No technical person I have ever talked to likes it. Are you management?

Too bad they are thinking "big 1960's style public transportation". A monorail system like Personal Rapid Transit would have been so much nicer. See also here.

Or is she trying to deliberately give a shoddy analogy in the hopes it gets by people?

Ding! I'll bet 10 to 1 odds that you've hit the nail on the head. That's PR for you! Contrary to the geek ethic where one attempts to be as correct as possible in whatever one says (even if it pisses people off), Hillary and every other spokespuppet use speech as a real rhetorician would, to persuade people that whatever cause they're backing is 'right'.

That's something really useful that should be taught in school: the skill of identifying flawed reasoning and propagandistic logic.

In fact the American Institute of Propaganda Analysis attempted to do just that in 1937 when the Nazis' PR department was churning the stuff out and innocent US minds needed to be protected. Now that the Pentagon is the world leader in 'public relations', it's a lot more convenient for Americans to believe whatever they're told.

Do I sound cynical? :-) Check out the University of Kent's Centre for the Study of Propaganda

You want to see what Gabe Luther and and William Towler,current "holders" of Big G, used to measure it ? Here's a great shot of the torsion balance device from this short summary .

Here's a link to the press room at LANL Look for "17) Measuring the Gravitational Constant ("Big G") -- In the Lab of Gabe Luther, Los Alamos scientist. Sound bite on methodology." - no link but an interesting page of resources.

You want to see what Gabe Luther and and William Towler,current "holders" of Big G, used to measure it ? Here's a great shot of the torsion balance device from this short summary .

Here's a link to the press room at LANL Look for "17) Measuring the Gravitational Constant ("Big G") -- In the Lab of Gabe Luther, Los Alamos scientist. Sound bite on methodology." - no link but an interesting page of resources.

• The experiment is open air and very sensitive to any movement in air flow and also sound. When closing the door to the room, you can consider you're experiment invalid.
  
  
• A camera is nice for measuring position, but it can also be measured directly by passing the metal balls through capacitor like setup creating much more accurate direct measurements.
  
  
• Typical measurements yield numbers off by a factor of two. Making it very hard to get a good result. The current constant was measure very far underground where the mass of the Earth is more accurate. A laser has been typically used in this case, but doesn't use a computer.
  

• As far as the spam stuff goes there is a feature I have been thinking about that I have never seen. I would like a program that has the ability to send the e-mail back with forged headers to make it appear that the e-mail addres does not exist.

I admit I never used Debian, but I'm entirely confused as to what the problem is here. I see no purpose of duplicating the source in a so-called "deb" file, when all users of every Unix including Mac OS X can get the Pine source in it's raw, unaldultered form from the official site. If Debian and Red Hat keep their monopolistic packaging formats up, what does this mean for official distribution sites? Will they fade into obscurity?

I agree. Slashdot has gone way overboard today.

Here is a list of reasons to boycott slashdot. It includes a list of alternatives, including my favorite, BottomQuark. That site hasn't had one April Fools joke all day. Slashdot has had, what, 6 so far?

I wonder if this will change how many people are participating in The (Hopefully) Great Slashdot Blackout?

Now the more important question is: Will this post be deleted or simply moderated down?