Slashback: BlackBerry, Cloning, Smart Hotels

Slashback tonight brings some correction, clarifications, and updates to previous Slashdot stories, including more news from the BlackBerry case, a follow up on the South Korean Cloning pioneer, China promising a strong continuation in space exploration, a behined the scenes look at Smart Hotel technology, a change in direction for the Massachusetts OpenDocument war, and a slightly different approach to the intelligent design in schools question. Read on for the details.

BlackBerry closer to a shutdown. WebHostingGuy writes to tell us MSNBC is reporting that Research in Motion Ltd, the company who makes the BlackBerry is nearer now to a shutdown of their US mobile email service than ever due to the recent ruling handed down. From the article: "U.S. District Judge James Spencer Wednesday ruled invalid a $450 million settlement between RIM and NTP Inc., a small patent holding firm of McLean, Va., that maintains the technology behind the popular BlackBerry infringes on its patents."

Cloning pioneer admits to wrongdoing and resigns. moraes writes "The first research group to clone human embryos ran into some ethical difficulties concerning the source of the eggs - allegations were made indicating that the eggs were taken from junior research assistants. The South Korean pioneer, Hwang Woo Suk, has since resigned his official posts and apologized for lying about the sources of eggs used.."

China on the moon by 2020. IZ Reloaded writes "China will send its astronauts to the moon by 2020 according to the Deputy Commander in Chief of China's manned space flight program. Hu Shixiang said that the goal is subject to the government's funding and their ability to build a rocket with 25 tons capacity."

Behined the scenes with Cisco. molotov writes "Cisco installed the system described in the recent Slashdot article about Smart Hotel Rooms in New York City and has a great video about the technology used in a similar project for the Mandarin Oriental Hotel."

Massachusetts gives Microsoft a second chance. An anonymous reader writes "CNet is reporting that Massachusetts is considering adopting the MS Office XML format as a standard to be used to store the state's documents now that it is under review as an ECMA standard. From the article: 'The commonwealth is very pleased with Microsoft's progress in creating an open document format. If Microsoft follows through as planned, we are optimistic that Office Open XML will meet our new standards for acceptable open formats.' Microsoft still does not intend to support the OpenOffice standard." IBM also took the time to weigh in on the issue with a recent letter to Thomas Trimarco.

University sued for supporting evolution. Hikaru79 writes to tell us that two parents are suing the University of California-Berkeley based on the contents of a website aimed at educating teachers. From the article: "Jeanne and Larry Caldwell, the couple bringing the suit against the site, claim that the site delves improperly into religion. While most debates center around whether or not Intelligent Design is "religion in the classroom," the Caldwells are looking to spin it the other way."

Comments

Stupid NTP!!!

[the_humeister]

I don't have respect for such patent holding companies that don't produce anything but litigation. On the other hand, if RIMM loses, I hope they have the balls to pull the government services too.

space tourism will take off!

[Filthysock]

"Hu Shixiang said that the goal is subject to the government's funding and their ability to build a rocket with 25 tons capacity."
Good news then, finally something that will be able to lift american space tourists :)

Re:There goes that MS Marketing Lying again.

[MightyMartian]

It appears that politicians and bureaucrats are, after all, mental retards, because they will indeed buy into the notion that if a convicted monopolist puts the word "open" in front of some non-open "standard" (which is itself an abuse of the very notion of a standard), then everything is A-okay. I'm beginning to think that the majority of human beings are sub-standard intellects who deserve to be kicked around by the Napoleon of Redmond and his spooky, violent sidekick Steve "Stinky" Ballmer. I mean, to think that anyone could be some severely mentally challenged that they would buy into this bit of Microsoft's bullshit can only point to mental capacities hovering close to that of brain damaged squid. Such people should be put on display as examples of how retarded the average citizen is that they don't demand and physically force the removal of such an individual should they somehow find themselves in a position of responsibility, even if that position is taking a shit without some help.

You can't teach what?!

[sinsofthedove]

The more heated the debates over the teaching of creationism/evolution get, the more I worry that it's actually education itself that's being threatened. The article gave a very snarky summary of the learning process - teachers teach, and hopefully the students learn - and it's that very process that's continually being challenged. If this debate leads to a massive shift in favor of homeschooling among parents who oppose the teaching of scientific theory, there will be serious problems in this country.

Also, their argument is partially based on the fact that the site is government funded. Does this mean that eventually private institutions are going to be the only places allowed to teach without getting hassled? Schools shouldn't operate under fear of suit.

Science != Religion

[TrumpetPower!]

Oh, for crying out lo--

Look, it's simple. The only thing science and religion have in common with each other is that they're both methods people use to try to make sense of the world around us. Period, full stop, end of the matter.

Science holds most dear that which can be objectively, repeatedly, independently verified. Religion, on the other hand...religion is nothing without faith.

And a person with faith is one who makes conclusions about that which he has concluded is inconclusive, has knowledge about that which she knows is unknowable. Faith is not ``willful ignorance,'' but rather ``willful insanity'' or ``willful idiocy.'' Faith is a thing deserving not praise and respect, but pity and scorn.

To equate science with religion in this context in an attempt to force their superstitious mindfuck on people is just about the most reprehensible thing I can think of--especially when you consider that these people would be dead without modern medecine, and that modern medicine wouldn't exist without that oh-so-hated cornerstone of science, the Theory of Evolution.

</rant>

Cheers,

b&

Re:Science != Religion

[fade-in]

Kind of funny how the comments that are pro-faith ( or at least tolerant to faith ) don't get modded up like the anti-faith comments. I thought the beef was as much about people being bigots as it was about who's "theories" stand up best in a lab... but I digress

To me, the funniest thing about this whole debate is how nobody seems to see that science and religion don't need to be stepping on each other's toes. They provide answers to two completely different questions. Science asks "how" and religion asks "why"? What's the problem with that?

Being a believer myself, I can understand the need some folks feel for having faith in their life. It gives us hope, resilience, and teaches us how to find happiness and peace.

But believing doesn't mean that I can't see the value of science - I know that my life is quantifiably better because of medicine and other technologies, and I'm very thankful for those as well.

I guess the bottom line for me is that science doesn't try to tell me how I should live my life, and relgion doesn't tell me all of the nuts and bolts of how I came to be alive. They both have their own domains, and they are both very important within their own bounds.

Fundies trying to teach religion in a science class is just as shameful as a scientist saying that I'm deluding myself by believing in something that he/she hasn't experienced.

Re:Science != Religion

[TubeSteak]

The only problem is that most* people don't make a rational decision about it. They just stick to what their parents believe in.

An 8 year old child doesn't have the mental capacity to make a rational decision about what God is and whether he exists. Young minds are unable to distinguish between fact and fiction.

Teaching children relegion from a young age is no different than teaching love for Chairman Mao. It's just like any other kind of programming: garbage in, garbage out

*most != all

Re:Science != Religion

[TrumpetPower!]

eosp wrote:

As a question for thought, let's examine this situation. Imagine that 66 separate documents, which were written by 40 different authors over a period of 1500 years. Now imagine that there are no conflicts in these documents--that they have the same basic ideas. Here it is: http://www.netbible.com/

BWAHAHAHA! BAAWA!

Oh, my. Sorry 'bout that, but the ``no conflicts'' is just too much.

Don't you know that Joseph had two daddies? (Matthew 1:1-17 v Luke 3:23-38)

Perhaps you would suggest that it's Jesus's supernatural abilities that permitted him and Mary and Joseph to both flee to Egypt (Matthew 2:13-16) and to go straight home to Nazareth (Luke 2:22-40) after he was born?

Tell me, where did Jesus go after he was baptized? Did he spend forty days in the desert fighting the Devil (Matthew 4:1-11 and Mark 1:12-13), or did he go to that wedding in Cana where he did the Bacchus trick (John 2:1-11)?

Did Jesus come to abolish the law (Ephesians 2:13-15 and Hebrews 7:18-19) or not (Matthew 5:17-19 and Luke 16:17)?

Who were the Apostles (Matthew 10:2 and Mark 3:16-19 v Luke 6:13-16 v Acts 1:13,26)? You know, the twelve dudes who spent the most important period of history palling around together with Jesus? Four of whom tradition says wrote most of the New Testament? I mean, you'd think that you'd be able to remember who it was you ate the Last Supper with, fer chrissake....

Did Jesus remain stoically silent at his trial (Matthew 27:11-14), or did he wow the crowd with his eloquence (John 18:33-37)?

What were Jesus's last words? (Matthew 27:46-50 and Mark 15:34-37 v Luke 23:46 v John 19:30)

Then, when you get to the resurrection and the ascension, the contradictions are laughable. No two gospels can agree on much of anything, big or small. How was the tomb guarded? Who were the women who went there? When did they go? Where was the stone? Who else was at the tomb? Where did the actual resurrection take place? And the ascension, where and when? And why wouldn't Matthew think to even mention it?

Do yourself a favor and stop drinking the kookaid. The Bible doesn't even pretend to be anything but a Paul Bunyan story. Talking snakes? Walking on water? Thousands of dead people roaming the streets--yet escaping notice until the gospels were written down a century later? Give me a break.

Shit, for that matter, the gospels themselves don't even pretend to be authoritative or eyewitness accounts. Even the first four verses of Luke make clear that the person writing this all down is getting it from the people who got it from the eyewitnesses; in modern language, that's what's called, ``hearsay.''

Still don't believe me? Then why are all the gospels written as third-person omniscient narratives? Why don't they even once say something like, ``And then I saw Jesus ascend to heaven with mine own eyes''? How could the disciples possibly know what Jesus said and did while they were asleep, or while he was fighting the devil in the desert, or anything else like that? If Jesus told them, why didn't they say, ``And then Jesus told me that, while we slept, he said such-and-such.''

You're all grown up, now. Long past time to stop believing in Jesus Claus and the Easter Christ.

Cheers,

b&

Re:Science != Religion

[Planesdragon]

You're kidding me, right?

Let's ignore for a moment anything that isn't an aspect of the extant world -- so, no "historial theories" like the discovery of Troy. And we'll let the computers count.

1. Humors - the idea that our bodies are controlled by four distinct fluids, whose proportions to each other determine our health and general character. Earlier theories about how the heart worked focused around this one. The pre-modern practice of bloodletting was tied directly to this one.
2. Eugenics - specificially, the sub-theory that pretty white folk are superior to ugly non-white folk.
3. Columbus's theory on the size of the planet. (No one else wanted to go not because they thought the world was flat, but beause Columbus undershot the estimated size of the world by about 50%)
4. Life on the Moon: "From the Earth to the Moon" was closer to Science Fiction than Science Fantasy
5. Hollow Earth: Once a rather well-respected theory, as recently as the 20th century still considered a plausible position.
6. Infinite Divisibility: There was a time when the concept of both atoms and cells was unheard of in scientific discussion. If you just kept cutting something, you would keep on getting smaller and smaller things of generally the same nature as the larger things.
7. Bad Air: A theory that disease was caused by the aroma of swamps, graves, illenss, and other forms of decay. Can be considered a variant of Humors.
8. Atomic Holocaust: Before Truman gave the OK to test the first atomic bomb, there was a scientific theory that such a detonation would ignigte the helium in the atmosphere and destroy all life on Earth.
9. Spontaneous Genesis: My favorite dead-theory (the debate over Intelligent Design is really between I.D. and S.G., if you go back far enough). Rather than having all creatures under the sun born from like creatures, scientific minds once held that life sprang naturally fron an environment -- a frog would spring from a swamp, for example. (Frogs are actually a good test for this, as if you don't realize that tadpoles are baby frogs you don't have any baby Frogs.)
10. Merchantilism: A theory about human behavior is still a scientific theory, and the idea that a nation's economic health is best measured by the gold in its coffers took a long time in dying.
11. Alchemy: The granddaddy of all debunked theories. At the time of the dawn of science, all learning was in the form of Alchemy -- its mystic and purposefully cryptic overtones hid the foundations of what became chemistry, but those foundations were wrapped up in a theory of how things worked that was fundamentally different than even early medieval chemistry.
12. Homosexuality as a mental illness: Medicine is also a science.
13. Freud's picture of the Psyche: While Freud was the pioneer of his field, his actual theories have been largely discarded. Even those that still practice Freudian psychoanalysis generally use different theories to guide in their interpretations.

Re:Can't Intelligent Design and Evolution co-exist

[CyricZ]

It's wrong because you're just making up fantasy to try to appease religious fanatics.

Scientists shouldn't try to appease. They should do nothing more than try to understand nature via the devising of theories, and then using observation and experimentation to back up said theories.

Sure, you can concoct some story about some intelligent designer designing evolution. But that doesn't change the fact that there's no basis to such claims.

Re:Can't Intelligent Design and Evolution co-exist

[Silver222]

Bullshit. Show a biologist new evidence, and if the prevailing theory doesn't fit, it changes.

Show a religious person evidence of any kind that contradicts their faith, and the faith doesn't change. After all, virtue from a religious standpoint is believing the unbelievable.

1+1=2

[fermion]

Most teach that 1+1=2, that phenomem require a cause, and that even if the cause is unknown, the cause is natural origin, not the arbitrary whim of supernatural being. There is a matter of faith in all this. We have faith that the laws of physics have been in effect since the t=0 that some would call the big bang, and will be in effect until such a time the universe might disintegrate. We also have faith that the laws of physics work uniformly throughout the universe. The articles of faiths are called assumptions, and are as often ubiquitous as 1+1=2.

Science may someday become a religion. Science may sometimes hunker down behind it assumptions, basking in the booty that it's greed and prejudice has gained, arguing that others are profiting immorally while it'w own priests are sitting in palaces, wearing funny hats, eating scrumptious meals, handing down edicts, while the rest of world starves and die becuase protective devices and medicines are prohibited due to vague holy sciprt, but that has not happened yet.

What has happened is that science has the metacognition to understand that the dangers lie in the assumptions. Scientists dare each other to prove that the constants are constant. They dare each other to come up with wilder hypothosis, and then destroy each other in the process of proving it.The holy wars are bloodless fueds posited through the journals, not barbaric spats on involving noose, or fire, or rape. The vested interests can be unseated with a simple allegation of impropriety. All work is open to public, not hidden behind doors that never see an opposing opinion.

Now, i am not implying that all is perfect, but sciences subversion of religion is deeper than religion. if one believes in natural cause and effect, then one cannot believe that god destroyed new orleans for being a city of sin. One cannot believe that god sent AIDS to kill the infidels of sub saharan africa. One cannot believe that one or two or a few people have a holy authority to dominate the rest of the world. One cannot believe that killing people who look different of believe different from you will result in your ascent to the promised land.

So, all this is not about evolution. Evolution is applied science, biololgy. Useful, and part of cause and effect, but only important as a stepping stone. This is about various groups of people ability to say I am better because I believe in this piece of writing or this creed. This is about someone saying I have the right to impose my will on other people and damage other people, or discriminate against other people, because I believe that god has given me that right. And if I have to kill people, then god has given me that right as well.

Church, unfortuntaly in many cases, has become the last holdout to a civilized society. Nowhere else can one legally hire on the basis of color or belief, caste out on the basis of belief, and get away with hate speech. The evolution debate is one of the last gasps in a long war perpetuated by those who profit off discrimination and hate. Many more will be hurt because those who are willing to kill for profit are vanquished.

Re:1+1=2

[the_humeister]

I thought 1+1=10

Re:1+1=2

[benjamindees]

if one believes in natural cause and effect, then one cannot believe that god destroyed new orleans for being a city of sin. One cannot believe that god sent AIDS to kill the infidels of sub saharan africa. One cannot believe that one or two or a few people have a holy authority to dominate the rest of the world. One cannot believe that killing people who look different of believe different from you will result in your ascent to the promised land.

Sure you can. Just depends on what you believe the original "cause" is. Somehow I don't think there is even yet a theory of an ultimate "natural" cause.

Church, unfortuntaly in many cases, has become the last holdout to a civilized society. Nowhere else can one legally hire on the basis of color or belief, caste out on the basis of belief, and get away with hate speech. The evolution debate is one of the last gasps in a long war perpetuated by those who profit off discrimination and hate. Many more will be hurt because those who are willing to kill for profit are vanquished.

Now listen to you. Who's "imposing their will on other people" now? Who's casting their arguments in terms of good versus evil? You want the freedom to propagate your speech, on the public dime no less, yet you would deny the same right to others based on your arbitrary determination of what is "hateful"?

You believe taking money from the public in order to fund an agenda with which you happen to agree is "civilized". And those who are in opposition to your agenda, in fact, who are being targeted by it, disagree. Why should my government support either of you via my taxes?

Re:Can't Intelligent Design and Evolution co-exist

[Lifewish]

Apologies for the angry tone of the following post, it just got my goat somewhat.

There has been no concrete explanation for the forming of the universe by evolutionists

Firstly, there's no such word as "evolutionist". The correct term, if you're talking about someone who studies the scientific discipline in question, is "evolutionary biologist". If you're talking about someone who accepts evolution as the most likely explanation for our being here, the term is atheist or agnostic (depending on details).

And thus to my second point. The theory of evolution and associated bioscience have nothing to do with how the universe started. None. Nada. Zip. They have nothing to do with stellar evolution, despite the name. They have nothing to do with how the Earth was formed. They don't even have anything to do with how life began - the correct term for that is abiogenesis and it's closer to chemistry than biology. The only reason anyone bothers to conflate the scientific discipline of evolutionary biology with this vast range of related subjects is so they can bundle them all together, slap a label saying "ATHEIST" (or, more likely, "ATHIEST") on them and then whine loudly about people teaching this pile of "dogma" in schools. Wonderful straw man there.

Similarly, there is no such thing as Darwinism. The only people who advocate "Darwin: right or wrong?" as a valid ideological choice are those who wish to set up a false dichotomy. Which historically has been proponents of creationism or intelligent design.

Extreme evolutionism is more fanatical than based on science, with many varied beliefs and varied "scientific" explanations for the same things.

On the whole, these "beliefs" are falsifiable. When a conjecture as to how things work/worked is falsifiable (and preferably meets a couple of other standards), we call it a scientific hypothesis. You may have heard the term? It's that thing that Intelligent Design isn't until it demonstrates a method by which it can be falsified. In the same vein, "God did it" can never be a hypothesis if God is assumed to be infinitely powerful, as such a God can do whatever the heck he wants. Now, this may even be the way the universe works. There may be an all-powerful God who takes great pleasure in planting random dinosaur skeletons and tinkering with bacterial flagella. But that conjecture sure as hell isn't scientific and hence shouldn't be taught in a science class.

Incidentally, there's nothing wrong with there being several different explanations for the same data. But until they're falsifiable they're called conjectures, and until we have sufficient examples of them dramatically failing to be falsified they're called hypotheses. Only once they've been through the white-hot flame of detailed scientific enquiry are they referred to as theories.

The teachers could present, say, the top 3 worldwide views on the subject, and allow the students to choose.

I have no problem with that. As long as they do it in a Religious Studies class. If they try to do it in a science class, they've completely misunderstood the nature of science and need to be sacked for the children's sake - it'd be like getting a Holocaust denyer to teach 20th century history. Science isn't about "choosing" what's right. It's about suggesting what might be right, then scrutinising it, poking holes in it, looking high and low for contradictory data (and there must be the potential for contradictory data, otherwise your conjecture is scientifically nihilistic) and then, when you've given up in despair of ever disproving the damn thing, accepting that it might conceivably be an accurate reflection of reality.

Is there a single religion in the world willing to go through that baptism of fire? If it did, and passed, wouldn't that rather destroy the idea of "having faith", anyway? Answers of "No" or "Yes" respectively indicate that religions have no place in the science classroom.

Re:China on the Moon, people dying on Earth!

[JanneM]

China is full of amazing scientists that have been making huge advancements. Why are they pushing so hard for the space race and not for eliminating AIDS and opening their *real* numbers of infection to the world

Um, because the research knowledge, skills and interest do not transfer well between things like celestial mechanics and materials engineering on one hand, and biomedicine and disease control on the other?

This kind of thing always seem to crop up, and implicitly assumes that "science" is one monolithic activity within which people are essentially interchangeable. They aren't. Specific skills and talents - and personal interest, which is hugely important in develop the other two - are very different across disciplines. A really, really good physicist could perhaps become a middling plod of a physician, though their heart wouldn't be in it. More likely, they'd become a really good engineer, designing new DVD player models or Hello Kitty merchandice instead.

Besides, there is no nation on earth without poverty, AIDS or [insert favourite physical ailment here]. What are you doing posting on slashdot when you should be working on your medical degree?

Be careful with that term "design"

[Lifewish]

It's true that the theory of evolution assumes that things will look undesigned (that's methodological naturalism for you). On the other hand, it does not assume that things will look undirected (the difference being that directedness does not imply a designer). The ToE in no way states that life is going to be structurally similar to the results of a hurricane passing through a junkyard, or similar bad metaphor of your choice.

Most reasonably efficient structures, taken without context, are consistent with directedness - the structure is "directed" towards high efficiency by dint of the fact that organisms containing the inefficient versions tend to have fewer surviving offspring. About the only thing I can think of that would be consistent with design but not directedness is a message buried deep in DNA saying "God was here". So far no such signature has been found.

Fortunately for the ToE's scientific status, there are a large number of other ways it could be falsified, and it has repeatedly failed to be disproven by any of them. Compare and contrast with the conjecture of "intelligent design".

Re:Blackberries?

[Zro Point Two]

Ok, let's go off on a tangent here...

First, common, be original. Last time there was an article about NTP and RIM I'm pretty sure there was the same comment about the BlackBerry just being something for your boss to email from while speeding down the road. And as you can see by the vast number of different sigs here on /., you don't have to have a BlackBerry to have your sig say "Sent from my BlackBerry".

That aside, if you are referring to the fact that only execs can afford it, let's take a quick peek at prices here. I can get the newest BlackBerry (8700r) for $499 or I can get the Treo650 from the same provider for $899...hmmmm

I use a BlackBerry 7290 for my cell phone, and it's pretty decent, I can hear the other person, they can hear me (even in noisy environments) and that's good enough for me. Have you happened to have noticed that the BlackBerry is an EMAIL device, not a phone? You cannot tell me that the Treo can do a better job at email. But the new BlackBerry sure does an amazing job at being a phone as well as an email device.

I get an attached doc, xls, pdf, ppt, jpg, gif, txt, etc on my BlackBerry and I have no trouble opening it up and viewing it...so that can't really be considered a death spike.

Obviously your company doesn't take security too seriously if it would rather have every employee using POP to check their email that is sent plain text over the wireless network....as apposed to having a single port open for outbound initiated connections only and full 3DES or AES encryption of messages on the wireless network.

And "technically" you don't even need special software to use a BlackBerry for email (before you pounce, yes it is email only, not attachments or wireless synchronization) because you can use the desktop redirector.

This brings up another point. I'm sitting on the bus, I schedule a meeting with someone, and automagically that meeting is in my calendar at work....or how about being out at a conference and getting someones email address...that contact is now synchronized wirelessly to my contacts at the office.

So, let's see what else people will fire back with....It can't do music. Well, no, but that's what my MP3 player is for, and it sounds a hell of a lot better than ANY pda does.

It doesn't have a camera. No, but then again it also doesn't have a crappy camera. If I need to take pictures I'm going to bring my digital camera instead of the crappy ones I can get from a cell phone or pda...have you seen the quality of most of them?

It doesn't do video playback. That's ok, I don't like watching video on a 2.2" screen anyway....hurts my eyes.

It doesn't have an SD slot. I'm actually up in the air on this one. Given what the BlackBerry actually does, I don't see a need for an SD card. If it did multimedia, then maybe, but then you get into SD or miniSD? What about security? etc.

The point is that not everyone WANTS or NEEDS all the functionality that the Treo offers, and the core components that most people want/need are offered in both.

Why the parent was modded to +4 Interesting is beyond me. Is it because one company switched from BlackBerry to Treo? Was it because of their opinion that the phone calls sounded better on the Treo? or was it the rehashed comment about Execs only using it for the Sig?