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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."
Science will change in the next 1000 years shattering our notion of the universe, but the Genesis account will never change.
And that, in one sentence, summarizes the fatal flaw in using religion as a means of understanding the world.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
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!
no, it doesn't. it summarizes the fatal flaw in using religion to replace science. religion's a very useful tool for understanding some aspects of the world, including human nature and psychology, even if you don't believe it's a useful or true description of the metaphysical. it's just not a replacement for science, nor a good means for understanding, say, physical phenomenon. don't confuse arguments against using religion to teach science with arguments against religion in general.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
"religion's a very useful tool for understanding some aspects of the world, including human nature and psychology,"
no.
religion is a very useful tool for observing some aspects of the world, including human nature and psychology.
it offers no understanding at all.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Religion isn't intended to be a means of understanding the world - it's a means of understanding yourself and in turn, understanding God.
It's a shame most religions (or their followers) have lost sight of that point.
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?
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!!!
But there's no re-encoding necessary. The biblical account of creation only has a few crucial claims, IMO:
So far, I've never learned any science that contradicts these fundamentals. Society at large used to think God created each variety of animal ex-nihilo; now the evolutionary process is commonly accepted, even by quite a lot of Christians. This "change" doesn't affect the above tenets.
This is my viewpoint, anyway, and based on what the OP said, it's his, too. I hate to add to the offtopic-ness, but I felt like clarifying.
Graham "Teach" Mitchell, computer science teacher, Leander HS
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.