Slashdot Mirror
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.
Well that's actually a great question for the legal types (you know them they preface everything with IANAL).
If it were a criminal case (as I understand US law) you SHOULDN'T have to prove it was someone else, just introduce the reasonable doubt that it was actually you. A dynamically assigned address and an open wifi introduce a lot of doubt.
It's up to them to prove you did it.
This unfortunately isn't a criminal case (yet!).
The truth about Led Zep should never be told on
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.
"Likely" is not the precise standard of proof that the RIAA would be required to show. Actually, a preponderance of evidence requires the plaintiff to prove that it was more probable that not that the defendant is liable. By pointing to a wide-open network IP address, the RIAA will face difficulty in proving by a preponderence that a particular user of that network was the infringer. As the plaintiff, the RIAA has both the burden of production and persuasion. Only after both of those are met is the defendant required to offer evidence to counter the RIAA's burden. I think the significance of this "silver bullet" is that courts will decreasingly recognize an IP address as meeting these burdens. An IP address, without more, is merely a piece to the evidentiary inquiry. Therefore, defendants in RIAA cases would be able to successfully move for summary judgments if the RIAA has nothing more to offer as identifying evidence.
One bit of FUD being spread around is the whole "They'll be able to prove it was you when they seize your computer" crap. I haven't seen it hit /. but I've certainly seen it around the place.
This isn't a criminal matter. The police aren't going to be getting search warrants and raiding your place for MP3 sharing. If the RIAA turn up at your place and try to take your laptop, call the police and have them arrested for Unauthorised Entry and Attempted Theft. The best the RIAA can do is subpoena your stuff, at which point you are required by law to provide them with copies (or possibly access to the real thing) at an actual court hearing. They can also demand copies of records you have during disclosure, if it makes it to a hearing. At the end of the day, they are going to have to be satisfied with the access YOU give them, under the terms of a court order.
While I'm not suggesting you should falsify evidence (which would be a serious crime), hard drives crash all the time. Who makes regular backups, really? Do you save and keep all the logs from your wireless router? The data doesn't need to be missing. If they subpoenaed me for a list of all the MP3s on my desktop, I would happily give it to them. I keep all my MP3s on my MP3 player, not my desktop. What about all the P2P software which has ever been installed on my laptop? I have an old laptop sitting downstairs running as a router. That's the laptop they mean, right?
Ultimately, the infringement they're chasing you about, and the potential gain to them, is not worth the cost of a serious investigation. Especially not when it's weighed against the potential loss of actually losing a case and setting a precedent. I say: Fight the good fight. I never used to buy music; it was burned CDs for me. I was a poor high school student. Now that I work as an engineer, I buy CDs all the time (not from Sony anymore, though). If the RIAA had bent me over and spanked me as a student, though, I'd have to wonder why I should go legit now that I can.
Ultimately, the RIAA is alienating today's P2Pers who would have been tomorrow's customers. They would have ended up buying their own music, CDs as gifts, gift vouchers, iPods... But once they've been grounded for a month and banned from the internet for three because their parents had to pay a settlement to the RIAA, FORGET IT.
On that note, wouldn't it be nice if America could stage a large-scale music boycott over this issue?
If you don't like the food, then don't eat it. Very simple fix.
There are some of us that weren't available in the original discussion and have something to say. So, if you already posted or read something about these topics before, then it's very simple for you not to click in the story and not to produce more ad impressions to the oh-so-greedy editors.
Just ignore them, that works quite better than complaining.
- Otaku no naka no otaku, otaking da!!!
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.
Ah, the non-thinking goes both ways.
For example, taking the definitions of both science and evolution I found in text books such as "Life, and introduction to biology" by Drs. George Gaylord Simpson and William S. Beck (I've been told they were somewhat important evolutionists) I not only found that it is impossible for evolution to be scientific at all, but in over thirty years of asking, I have yet to hear a defense of evolution as science that is logically defensible.
It is the same definition of science that makes creationism not science.
Further, Richard Dawkins' claim that religion leads to murder (true, for some religions, but for all?) is just as applicable to some followers of evolution (Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, to give a few). It is for good reason that such an argument is called a logical fallacy.
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.
Dawkins also describes the Christian god Yahweh as "the most evil fictional character ever."
Think about it. This creature will ultimately resurrect, then heave into Hell almost every person who ever lived, where they will lie in unending agony. Very few get into Heaven, after all. The Bible tells us so.
Now torturing almost everyone who ever lived, for ever and ever, isn't the definition of worst possible being, I don't know what is.
No need to argue or debate whether God is real or not -- just conclude that, either way, it is evil beyond Hitler and Stalin and Ghengis Kahn and John Wayne Gacy put together. Anthropologists estimate 75 billion people have lived, more or less, so far. All but 144,000 of them are going to be excruciatingly tortured for ever and ever. Or a few million. Or even a few billion. Googol to the googolplex years, and the remaining scores of billions are still just getting started.
That's a perfect and omnibenevolent god for ya!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
In any group, whether religous or not, you will find nutjobs trying to usurp the group for their own purposes.
The issues with Jews and Arabs would exist even if both groups were the same religon. Anti-arab and anti-semetic feelings exist among just as many non-religous groups.
Groups like the KKK didn't claim Blacks and other non-whites followed the wrong God. They made-up their own secular reasons to justify what they already wanted to do.
Religon is just another scapegoat for bad people that want to do bad things.
The Catholic Church recognizes and supports "The Theory of Evolution", and has repeated condemed "The Hypothesis of Intelligent Design".
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Slashdot, where arm chair scientists get shouted down and arm chair theologians get modded up.
Try reading the books of the bible and then study the thoughts of some of the great Christian Apologists over the ages. Perhaps then you can stop repeating the group think of everyone that dislikes Christianity because Pat Robertson and his ilk are assholes. For example only a few small groups (and no main stream denomination) believe in the whole 'only 144000' make it into Heaven thing, even a simple search of google will find that for you.
... or even all 75+ billion.
Yup.Seraphim
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
Exactly. When commodores came out we got a generation of kids who could program in BASIC. And then we all got criticized for not using "good programming techniques". But the point is we did learn the fundamentals of programming and logical thinking and problem solving. C was much easier for me to pick up than if I had no concept of "for loops", or "subroutines". I agree with what your saying - that Labview should not be considered for serious development work, but it can get the kids used to thinking logically, and using available tools to solve real problems.