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Slashback: New E3, Archimedes Webcast, Dell Wildfires
A Victory for Evolution in Kansas. SatanicPuppy writes "Yesterday, elections in Kansas saw four of six pro-Creationism school board members replaced by pro-Evolution candidates in a one issue election. Interestingly, it didn't go by party lines; at least one of the conservative Republicans who supported Creationism failed to make it past their party primary. Ken Willard and John Bacon are the two remaining pro-Creationism incumbents."
Stardust Program Launched. lee1 writes "Anyone with an internet connection now has the the chance to find microscopic grains of dust from beyond the solar system. The project, called Stardust@home, is patterned on projects like SETI@home. But rather than exploiting idle processor time, it will ask volunteers to search through millions of microscope images on their computer screens, exploiting spare time in general as well as ego: 'People get very competitive,' explains the project director. The first volunteer to spot an actual interstellar dust grain will get to name it and will be listed as a co-author on any resulting research papers. The images come from a NASA project called Stardust, whose primary mission was to collect samples of dust from the tail of Comet Wild 2, but might also have captured some interstellar dust that could reveal the physics of the stars that produced it. To minimize false positives and to ensure that all the grains are found, each participant will go through an online training and testing process before starting their search. They will be scored on how well they distinguish real dust grain impacts from fakes."
Lego Mindstorms goes live. MicroBerto writes "As of August 1, 2006, the next generation of Lego Mindstorms is now available for sale in North America. Mindstorms NXT is a robotics toolset that allows you to build and program robots for various purposes. It combines the power of the Lego technic building system and an all new intuitive software environment powered by National Instruments LabVIEW."
Continued backlash on the new E3. Anonymous Howard writes "Angry Gamer reacts badly to the news of the Electronic Entertainment Expo's demise. They see it as a major blow for small game developers who are having enough of a hard time getting noticed by press and retailers as it is. From the article: 'This is a win only for the EAs, Sonys and IGNs of the world. Everyone else has to fend for themselves.' It seems like the days of smaller developers getting noticed by 'drive by traffic' at E3 are over." Relatedly The Escapist Lounge has an interview with the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences president, Joseph Olin, on what is actually happening to E3. As Joseph Olin responds: 'So it's going to take a couple of months until the world knows what the scope of E3 2007 will be, and how it will be structured. The opportunity to make material changes to improve it shouldn't be snap judgments. The rhetorical question I might pose is: "You know you have a problem. You know you need to make changes. How do you make changes and convey it and announce it, and to whom, and when?" There's never a good time. Whenever you make significant change, there's no way to introduce that change without detractors. The challenge is that without being able to announce the exact implementation of change it leaves that gray area for ignorance to fill the void.'"
Archimedes gets a webcast. jd writes "Some time ago, Slashdot covered the story of the rediscovery of several lost writings of Archimedes by means of X-Ray fluorescence. Well, they're still scanning the book and at 11pm GMT (4pm PDT) on August 4th will be putting on a live webcast as they scan and interpret pages not seen by human eyes for over a thousand years."
Another Dell bursts into flame. starwindsurfer writes "A Dell laptop's battery caught on fire in a company's IT department this week, burning a hole right through the casing. Nearby techs used fire extinguishers to put out the blaze. Employee Henrik took pictures to document the affair and uploaded them to the Toms Hardware message boards. From the writeup: 'The police department showed up. The entire lower floor was allowed to leave early and as we stood there in front of the building we simply couldn't resist... we jokingly called the engineer a terrorist as he was being asked a few questions by the friendly officer.'"
An RIAA silver bullet? Chris Fairman writes "TechDirt is running a story about how the RIAA seems to be dropping cases where the defense includes (or hinges on) an IP address as the means to identify the source of criminal activity. Essentially the defense argues that all an IP address can prove is who was paying for the net access at a particular time. Having a wide open WiFi router on your network seems to be currently the most effective means of getting the RIAA to drop all charges. Essentially the activity originating from one IP, only proves that illegal file sharing behavior is coming from one network, and not necessarily from any one specific computer or user. More importantly, it seems that the legal system is beginning to catch on to more complex technology concepts. Such concepts play a large part in how future legal cases are argued, and contribute ultimately to the foundation of complex technology legal precedents."
I view Evolution as God's tool. The days in the Genesis account were days of God, and not days of man. It's said in other places in the bible that a day of God is longer than a day of man. Besides what is a day when the sun isn't even in existance? I envision God sculpting the species over billions of years by using Evolution as a tool. God gave a small account of how he created the universe, but its also eloquent. Science will change in the next 1000 years shattering our notion of the universe, but the Genesis account will never change.
God spoke to me.
If they were SCO they'd claim that, by having an open WiFi router, the defendant was negligent and somehow owed double damages. I guess that, unlike SCO, they actually care if they continue to exist after they lose a case.
...for the ability to reason! Go Kansas! (Until the next election that is...they've flipped their so-called standards virtually every 2 years).
I hope they translate it before the webcast (at least provisionally), or it's going to be rather limited interest to most people...
If this really is as big a solution as they are making it sound, then work should be done to ensure that the information gets distributed to the mainstream college students and high school students who are the main people at risk and who are the least prepared for legal problems both in knowledge and in ability to weather the results.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Its even more common then most, since most every laptop ( and many desktops ) come with wifi built in.
At least the courts are starting to come to their senses ( I hope ). But how does one prove you had open wifi during the time they think you did something wrong? I know personally i have mine wide open for my neighbors, but that still doesnt PROVE it.... ( i sit here now with my macmini with internet sharing going on the airport )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
this comment on the page about the RIAA is a must read for those with a sense of humor. I would just copy the text, but that might be copyright infringment.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
PeerGuardian
New King James Bible
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep, And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day.
New International Version
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, Let there be light, and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And there was evening, and there was morning-- the first day.
And thats just from two versions in english. Fairly similar, but changing.
I reserve the write to mangle english.
> on August 4th will be putting on a live webcast as
> they scan and interpret pages not seen by human
> eyes for over a thousand years."
And putting up a _real video_ webcast they intend to do what exactly? keep it away from human eyes for some more time?
I mentioned it a couple times since last year so I don't need to repeat myself, but I agree with that view about the small developers and media receiving a big blow out of this new E3.
A more intimate event will weed out most of the people that didn't have any business there, but it will also pull out of the radar all those really innovative games that don't come from the big players, and the media interested in them.
It certainly looks bad, but now look at Hollywood, there's no place for small indie films in the big events, theme parks and whatnot, but there are independent film events and the media covers them because there are GOOD MOVIES to be seen there.
What's needed is to fortify and separate the indie game development and let them have their own events. The market for indie gaming will not disappear as long as there are people interested in innovation or are not willing to buy crapware just because it's licensed by the NFL/NBA/FIFA/etc.
Let's face it. We, the people interested in real games represent a very small percentage of the market, but I hope things like the Xbox Live Arcade and the Wii Virtual Console will become a place to showcase those games without having small developers spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to go to E3 just to be "the leftovers".
What I feel the most about is the small media outlets. No more bloggers or small time writers to keep the big guys from becoming even worse than they are today.
- Otaku no naka no otaku, otaking da!!!
I guess there's always the Penny Arcade Expo...
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
Reading the article doesn't help that much. It's a bunch of nothing and it resumes to a PR stunt. Did he said anything relevant? I don't think so. He's rather trying to say "cool down, we're under control" whereas many are just unhappy about how E3 turns out.
Besides, how can we trust companies to gather together and have a consensus to everyone's advantage? What benefits big corporations such as EA games will gain to let small developer in? There are so many questions and ignorance may fill the void but stupidity will let other bad guys fill the void in their way too.
actually a good pastor will reference the original Greek|Hebrew|Latin text (and besides quite a few pastors will use only the King James|New King James for this very reason
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
But without the great taste. Think about it: the Slashdot editors get paid (more ad exposures) for reposting comments (which were sorted out of hundreds by moderators in the viewing public for free) with some useless commentary tacked on. All in the same of extending the conversation on a few silly topics beyond the original submission. Ultimately, it means more income. It also appears to be a substitute for a steadily decreasing volume of worthwhile news. Yes, Blackslash sucks!
Join Tor today!
it's total crap!! :(
No, that's one version in 1611 English and one in 20th century English. You'll notice that they say the same thing, just in the vernacular of the times.
My other sig is funny.
Last year, Richard Dawkins, of The Selfish Gene fame, made a documentary about religion called "Root of All Evil?", where he defines faith as "the process of non-thinking" that can lead to even the worst human condition, like murderous thinking when the fundamentalism make people hate and kill each other. Just like what's happening in Israel right now.
One of the most interesting things about it is that he tries to talk with several religious leaders about evolution, and they sistematically avoid any rational discussion and undeniable evidence with the same stupid arguments, equivalent to "my book says this and therefore, it must be true".
He brings forth the question "why can't schools just teach science in SCIENCE class?"
Quite controversial, I recommend it very much.
- Otaku no naka no otaku, otaking da!!!
Could they use similar laws to traffic infringement ? They know your car went through a red light (by camera) but not who was driving. Either you pay the fine or tell them who did.
Unfortunately, the photos aren't visible any longer, although one gets a good idea of the extent of the damage from the description.
Also interesting was a link posted in the comments to the letters section of the inquirer regarding why Li-on batteries might catastrophically fail.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Slashback is dry and kinda pointless IMO. They would do better to let users submit Slashback stories. Good luck with this... I know you're gonna get modded into hell. (Hence my cowardice.)
Actually, that is incorrect also, because the older king james version did NOT use the term *water* - they used "firmament" whose meaning has been changed to indicate water. The firmament was not actually water as we see it in a pool or out of our faucet, it was water in the form of frozen ice particulates surrounding the earth, helping to isolate the earth from the rest of the universe. Light, could only come through at the poles, due to the magnetic poles and radiation belts helping to form natural holes in this firmament. This is where a lot of people have gone in thinking that the Garden of Eden was actually under the icecap of Antarctica.
The stories of the flood, however they came about could also indicate that God caused the *firmament* to be pulled from the heavens, melting as it came to the Earth, causing the rains and the floods, changing forever the face of the Earth and the peoples who had lived, sheltered from the Suns radiation, much longer lifespans than we do today.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
There may be something of a backlash against the new direction of conservative politics in this country. Is this a sign of things to come? Is there hope that the near future will hold less politicization of religion? The optimist in me hopes that people are fed up with politicians exploiting their religious beliefs in these nonsensical confrontations with science. The fact that a pro-evolution Republican is even possible in Kansas gives me hope.
On the topic of unsecured WiFi in the "RIAA silver bullet" article if you ever frequent the CBD in Perth, Western Australia, be sure to check out the coffee shop called Gelare on William Street near the train station. They have an un-secured AP there with an SSID of "gdfw". It sure beats going to the net cafe Netcomm around the corner where the wireless costs about $15AUD for five minutes or some other absurd amount.
-1 Off-Topic here I come! And to think I finally got my karma from bad to positive.
Am I the only one that this is going insanely slow for? Pages take somewhere around 1 minute to load, and I have 1.5 mbps DSL and no load on the network. Is this an isolated incident? Regardless, I must say that this excites me. It's fun when I see a track then have to wait to see if it was a calibration test or not, secretly praying that I actually find a particle and get published.
1611 version
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
And the version I used....
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep, And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day.
Same version, different times, still differences. Note the second one has been modernised. You could say that I shouldn't just copy and paste off the internet, but that would prove my point as well. Things change.
I reserve the write to mangle english.
Today the voters here in Kansas showed the world that they aren't a bunch of redneck idiots. What people should find most impressive is that Western (read: very rural) Kansas voters elected a moderate, pro-science candidate. As someone who has lived in Kansas for five years, I was shocked to hear that. If I'm not mistaken, that Bacon guy represents the district including Johnson County, which is populated mostly by nouveau riche neocons that honestly think they are upper class.
I think the people of this state are tired of being laughed at and are finally starting to move for change.
Kansas is a great place for innovations in science and engineering, it needs to stay that way.
I thought Archimedes Plutonium was getting a webcast. :(
From watching Ken Miller's recent lecture at Case Western University (whole 2hour talk can be seen here), one point really stands out for me, that for 'Intelligent Design' a supposedly non-religious packaging of creationism to be accepted, it must go through a simple process that evolution also went through;
Novel Scientific Claim > Research > Peer Review > Scientific Concensus > Classroom & Textbook
Intelligent Design proponents are doing the follow;
Intelligent Design "Theory" > Classroom & Textbook
If Intelligent Design supporters are so confident in their research and findings which supposedly vindicate the literal truth of the Bible, why do they skip the most important process in getting their theory accepted?
Meanwhile we have Ken Ham already building a 25 million dollar creation science museum.
1:1 | Daq the tagh joH'a' { Note: After "
joH'a'," the Hebrew ghajtaH the cha'
letters "Aleph Tav" (the wa'Dich je
last letters vo' the
1:1 Hebrew alphabet) as a grammatical marker. }
created the chal je the tera'.
1:2 | DaH the tera' ghaHta' formless
je empty. HurghtaHghach ghaHta'
Daq the surface vo' the deep. joH'a'
qa' ghaHta' hovering Dung the surface
vo' the
1:2 bIQmey.
1:3 | joH'a' ja'ta', " chaw' pa' taH
wov," je pa' ghaHta' wov.
1:4 | joH'a' leghta' the wov, je leghta'
vetlh 'oH ghaHta' QaQ. joH'a' divided
the wov vo' the HurghtaHghach.
1:5 | joH'a' ja' the wov " jaj," je
the HurghtaHghach ghaH ja' " ram."
pa' ghaHta' evening je pa' ghaHta'
po, wa' jaj.
A college student doesn't have a whole lot to loose (a few thousand dollars of debt is just another semester of classes). A professional who has a reputation to worry about and likely has dollars in the bank has a bit more on the line. Not trying to knock down the poster of the parent, but one has to wonder: even though a lot of posters spout similar lines to the parent, what kind of habits would they have now if the RIAA never started taking action? After all, free beer is free beer.
science is a religion
A site that has a lot of embedded videos of material which are in the public domain happens to have the first episode of Root of All Evil? . (Thouch, since it is recent, I do wonder the copyright status of this.)
1) There's such a thing as "civil seizure" and there are also ways they can do "surprise discovery" via Federal Marshals in an ex parte process if a judge is willing to sign off on that. So far, I think it's usually the BSA, not the RIAA, that employs those tactics.
:D And even if they trace this, all they'll find is a wide open wireless system. Who am I? I'm Anonymous Coward, that's who :P
2) Their sources of IPs are, at best, "electronic hearsay" -- that is, in many cases, they have *NO* way to prove that:
* They weren't lied to by some random computer on the internet.
* They know who was actually sharing some file.
The first of those two points is particularly poigniant. It would be quite easy to frame someone if you put your mind to it. Especially when they're getting their data on who is sharing what from random file sharing computers on the internet. It's also quite easy to fake their reports by changing a few IPs, so you could just as easily generate a report saying that, say, whitehouse.gov was really the one pirating that. While part of this can, SFAIK, be solved by an affadavit saying that "I personally ran this program to find pirates and I swear that it really did give me this report of this IP as being one of the sharers." if you subpoena all the information on the programming of the computer they got this information from, you might very well uncover a fatal flaw in their evidence gathering process.
Of course, IANAL, this is not legal advice, and you should have a lawyer and an expert review the evidence against you. Hopefully, they'll be able to point out the flaws and scare away their goons. Honestly, though, I'm guessing that they're dropping the cases based on which lawyers seem to understand technology, because they don't want any long or expensive legal fights... after all, what if they weren't able to recoup attourney's fees, and ended up losing money prosecuting the case?
As for boycotts, I'm boycotting Sony still, and there are a host of reasons for that. In fact, it makes me smile every time I see a mention of Sony on something I've pirated
What religion was responsible for Mao and Stalin's crimes? Was it not, in part, atheistic "murderous thinking"? Why is it not atheism which promotes such thoughts, given that those two have killed more than any religious person ever, especially when many of the deaths resulted from their suppression of religion. Especially when they used some of Dawkins' rationale to justify their suppression of religion?
And what of the religious people who have no problem with evolution, science, and teaching both in the classroom? Is it not easy to vilify any group if you ignore any good they've done while magnifying all the evil others have done in the name of that group? But if you don't believe that, why was it so easy for me to vilify atheists just now, when a great many of them are decent, peaceful folks?
Dawkins is nothing more than the atheist's Ann Coulter, IMHO, and I disagree with both of them.
Your forgetting the blue canary in the outlet by the lightswitch.
well the way i see it, the mp3 is about 1/10 or 1/15 the size of the uncompressed audio file. Im pretty sure distributing about 10% of a song is fair use :-)
Have you noticed this neat thing about the lifespans the bible attributes to pre-flood times? If you call the time periods "months" instead of "years", they all turn out to be about the same as current normal lifespans?
Interesting, isn't it?
An fact often overlooked by both pro and anti evolution parties is that the Bible itself contradicts the assertion of six-day creationist-type people that the whole universe and the earth and everything in it arose in six days. It's opening sentence states that =first= God created the heavens and the earth. Only =after= that event do these six days occur, therefore there is the opportunity for billions of years to pass in the intervening time. These six (not necessarily literal 24 hour) days that follow *after* this long time period have nothing to do with the creation of the earth as such, but rather were the period where the raw earth was subsequently prepared in stages for habitation by various forms of life. The abovementioned biblical long time period as far as I can tell supports current science and, paradoxically, shoots creationists down in flames.
are getting old and bordering on FUD and trolling. Dell has issued recalls for batteries that might cause this problem (and power supplies but those haven't been the problems in the reported cases). Remember, keep your laptops cool by not blocking the ventilation holes, the things are already hot enough...if you haven't checked your Dell battery then please do so here and avoid a disaster like this.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
Uhg, Labview. For the sake of current and future programmers, I hope they are not going to use the Labview 7 style of programming. Ridiculously complicated flowcharts should not be programs.
No, it's not true at all. Do the math yourself; some people still live too long and others not long enough.
"Errrr..." those are translations from the original Hebrew. All Bible translations come from the original language texts. In addition, if you'll note, both of those say EXACTLY THE SAME THING.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
PeerGuardian is a useful tool, but it is not infallible. Yes, you're somewhat safer by using it, but don't think you're secure. At best, its only as good as the people keeping the IP listings up to date.
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
That might well be the Justice Departments' position, but it is quite questionable and as far as I know hasn't held up in Court.
The same arguments could be applied to the TOR network, of which the EFF lawyers are quite confident that TOR is legal. See their website for their views on TOR.
So, the bottom line is that the legality of the defense is still up in the air. The Justice Departments' views are just opinions; the final arbitrar is the U.S. Supreme Court, and nothing has made it that far.
jokingly called the engineer a terrorist
A 'friend' of mine at work decided to jokingly say to my girlfriend as she was going out the door of Target and showing the girl on watch her bag: "are you stealing stuff again?". Guess what the girl did. Right, what her job is: Called management. Who called the cops. Of course, the 'friend' from work was 'not available', but I have taken a different path with dealing with this: I told management at work. He had a meeting with his team leader and section manager who asked him SPECIFICALLY about lying to people. He's not fired. We have to work with this asshole.
So, to you, the above 'jokingly' doesn't cut it. Be thankful you didn't get a new one ripped for your trouble. Asshole.
One of the things is that gets my goat is Dell seems to be lacking in the control over the quality of the manufactures of it components. If I had these kinds of issues I would be seriously checking the manufactures QA measures and rethink of where I am getting my parts from and take more interest into the quality and the way they are manufactured. I am not sure how Dell follows tends in its defective components but it is imperative that companies now provide quality along side quantity. Money just does not go as far as it use to.
I work for a company that supports devices that use LION batteries in every product we ship. We take things like overheating, bulging batteries and other battery problems very seriously. Theses multiple incidents could result in a major lawsuit by those who have had similar and even small amounts of trouble regardless of damage or injury. I don't think Dell has a problem paying of one person but if it continues the reputation could suffer far more damaging results than a lawsuit or payoff ever could.
The Chemistry behind LION batteries is in itself an accident waiting to happen and I have found a few amazing videos demonstrating what batteries can do...
(wmv only, Sorry)
http://www.utahflyers.org/movies/Lipofires.wmv
http://www.utahflyers.org/movies/Lipo2.wmv
http://www.utahflyers.org/movies/lipo3.wmv
You can find more videos like the above on Google.
I was going to buy two laptops at the end of this month via an employee purchase plan and this news has me seriously thinking twice about Dells.
...of believers accusing the critics of "group think".
sudo ergo sum