The mouse was trained on only one vocal pattern and one instance of it saying 'one'. Everything else on the site is just simply ways to test what the trained mouse does when you pass it a sound sample. The fact that the training only had one input set is part of the challenge they are asking others to look at - exactly what is the network topology of the neural net, and what sort of 'objective function' did they use to train it... hopefully, they did not hard code 'one' into the neural net, so that this mouse could have been trained on any single syllable word and still gotten the same results.
First, this is a step in a long series of steps in the right direction for true verbal computing. Having a computer be able to recognize a word regardless of whom spoke it, how it was spoken, and the amount of background noise is much much better than what we have now, which requires usually lots of 'training' sessions with the software just to have it recognize your voice in constrained patterns. Of course, the next steps would be to have the 'mouse' respond to two or more words, but differently, ability to piece together multi-syllabic words, and then grammer parse sentences. Each taks is more difficult than the former, but this is an interesting start.
Second, what I think is cool about this is sort of an open-source idea for research; there is a large community of nerds that while they don't have the stamina for research, are interested in new cool technologies such as this, and would be willing to help if it's easy to do. One thing I'd like to see more of are distributed projects that can use our idle time to put out more cool ideas; I'd love to see the research that created the 'lifeforms' made by a computer put out into a distributed form as to help their research. Here, further studies of their 'mouse' could be done by simply asking for voice samples of various words by people across the globe as to maximum the sample size (they only used 8 in the paper for testing purposes, but the web site seems to be up to about 600). Certainly, there's important issues such as disclosure of invention, but I think projects like these that challenge the community show excellent progress in research.
There was a good article on one of the news sites about two weeks ago about how exactly software is catagorized based on security, done by the DoD and a few other organizations. The rankings go from D1 to A2 (worst to best security), and the DoD has mandated that anyone in their employement must use a system that has cleared at least a C1 rating. The only operating system that has been *tested* and cleared for this is NT. MS likes to use this claim to say that it's more secure, but the fact is, no one has taken the inititive to test the other OSes including Solaris and Linux. Therefore, most DoD systems are NT-based. As as the DoD generally gets the largest cut the budget, every other department tends to follow them.
There is a 7/9 character (many, look at the polygons on THAT one!:D), but Jeri Ryan was the only actor from the series not to voice in the game. Apparently, prior commitments were a problem (the voice recording was done while ST:V was on vacation from filming).
I bought and finished ST:EF this weekend. Yes, one day.. part of this was that the gameplay was very immersive, making you want to play it out, the other was that the challenges were on the easy side, and it was TOO SHORT in terms of number of levels. There was a recent Penny Arcade strip that reflected on this.
Now, otoh, the multiplayer looks promising. Q3A default suffers from 'poor' weapons -- you either have to by a vhpb, snipe from a distance with the rail, or have quad damage and rush ahead with nearly any other weapon. The weapons in ST:EF are sufficiently different (and with secondary modes) to make the number of ways to frag an opponent much larger, supporting a larger variety of play styles. I'm waiting eagerly to see what mods get made/ported for it, particular things like TeamFortress and Counterstrike (that is an 'if', as I'm just offering suggestions). And there's something satisfying running around as Neelix and kicking butt, as well...:D
I do agree that not hearing the case is not the same as approving or disapproving of the lower court ruling.
However, until a different case enters the SC arena, the lower court ruling stands in the lower court's region. I believe that
the original suers were from TX, meaning that the ruling that AOL and ISPs in general aren't common carriers only applies to (pretty much) TX.
It also gives some legal precident for actions in other states if it warrents it. This case, not so much so, but take the DeCSS case, ruled in the NY circuit court. ONLY in this area does the Kaplan ruling apply, but if the MPAA wanted to go after someone in Seattle, they have a good start on a prior case. Sure, the judge for that district need not follow Kaplan's ruling, either.
As you said, the ruling means not much more than nothing. It does state the lower court ruling stands, and that it is sound. But it also implies that there is nothing in the ruling or the case that trends on established US Constitional rights or laws. In cases where the answer should be obvious to techies, the SC saying nothing is a good thing, and possibly shows that they do have some understanding of technology and where it is going. It's cases where the SC refuses to hear the case, and the case itself is iffy (Sony vs Connectix is a good example), then there's questions of why the SC didn't take it, and not taking it may lead to more harm than good depending on the lower court ruling. What if, after appeals, the SC let Kaplan's ruling stand on 2600 because they didn't want to take it?
The 9th Circuit said Connectix's activities were protected under the ''fair use doctrine,'' which permits copying of software when necessary to understand the way a program works.
I think that this, plus the Betamax case, should be strong enough to make the DeCSS case go the right way on appeals. Heck, the PS case was under the shadow of the DMCA as well.
While ambious, I really hope that the DeCSS is the one that is pushed all the way to the SC to kill the DMCA bill, or at least provisions that trend on fair use. The 'success' of this case shows that the legal background is there.
I've mentions article ratings to Rob before (about 1.5 years ago, about when the current mod system was in place), as only to help guide what the/. userbase wants, but he replied, basically, that he wants to run the site his way, which is completely understandable.
but with the repeated articles and heavy emphasis on certain topics at certain times, and with the size of/. readership, such as system begs to be put in place. IMO, there's a good way to do this now, similar to kuro5hin, but accounting for the size of/..
There would be two levels of story moderators: two or three people like Rob, Katz, and Hemos, that can pull a story from the story queue and post it immediately, say on things of dire attention. Then there would be 20 to 30 secondary story moderators, which includes those that already on the list, and others selected from/. readership that are willing to help but understand the/. vision. For any given story in the queue, it needs 1/3 to 1/2 the number of moderators (say 10) "go" votes before it's posted, or the same number of "nay" votes before it's pulled. Thus, not every one of these moderators would see every story, as by the time they got to check on it, it might be toast. Special consideration can be done for duplicated stories in the queue (given the average of 300-400 stories everytime I submit, I'm sure about 25% of those are duplicated), so that by the time the duplicates are weeded out, 30 or so moderators are looking at about 200 posts that might go on/. that day.
Having a larger number of people would help
avoid duplicated stories, excessive focus on a topic, and possibly show a better reflection of the/. userbase as a whole. But again, this is Rob's site, and he's got his right to run it anyway he wants.
It's a matter of trust. Who's to say that non-encrypted ircd's haven't be hacked to log every convo? It's generally a safe bet that most ircd opers are on the up and up, but there could always be someone with less scruples to do such.
NAL myself, but reading through the article, the "Dopp Dictum" is basically a quote from a prior summary judgement, specifically stating that under certain cirumstances, when a judge's statements (not necessary a court order) includes binding actions on people not involved in the original case, then those people may step in to appeal the decision. In this case, the CPHack judgement included actions of others that posted the CPHack to the net, but no actions were taken against them. However, since they were mentioned, those people followed through on the appeal, but as this judgement ruled, there wasn't a strong enough case for that appeal to continue, only the original defendants could do so.
"buzznacking" means "irritating", or probably in this case, using minor and inconsequental details of other cases to purposed extend the original case and be annoying to the legal system; nothing illegal about doing it, but the case has no merits being based on the technicality of the Dopp Dictum.
It very well could be. While there is nothing like RIAA or MPAA yet in book publishing, the big players are trying to grab as much as they can.
IMO, the problems we are having with IP and DMCA, etc, all stem from the fact that the organizations that are 'publishers' (getting one person's IP out to millions) are no long publishers, but trying to be owners of the works as well. This weakens the contribution of the original person's work, and promotes so-called mass marketing where not-as-highly-liked-but-highly-creative IP creators are shunned over highly-liked-but-not-highly-creative ones. Stephen King sees this, Smashing Pumpkins see this, the indy movie scene sees this.
IMO, the publishing companies should be forced (yes, forced, as this is in a sense, anti-trust) to remodel their practices; they should go back to being true publishers, where a guy can come along with a manuscript and $10,000 to make 10,000 copies of a book, telling the publisher that he keeps the right, and gets a majority of the profit, the publisher keeping the cost of book printed and a modest fee. The publisher can also act as the distributer, which would take a bit more of the profit from the sale. The publisher cannot own any copyright that it 'prints' unless it created it themselves. This type of system would allow all creative players an equal share in the market, and would remove the power of RIAA and MPAA like groups from controlling the market -- those books and CDs that are actually *liked* by people would be bought, not those that are artifically forced to the top.
Unlike software, books are physical and in most cases you can preview them in the bookstore prior to buying; you would have been aware of this before your bought the book. Of course, if the book was shrinkwrapped to prevent the thief of the CD (not common, but I've seen this with college textbooks), but if it was shrinkwrapped (in addition to the CD license), it should have indicated a license at that point as well.
The article author here appears to have bought the book over the internet, so previewing the book was not lost on him, but there are easy step to fix this: return the item, explaining exactly why you are returning it (i.e. "Don't agree to licensing terms"). Write to the book's *author* (not the publisher; authors are generally easier to get a hold of particularly) and ask why he released his book as such, and explain that it is a bad practice... it might be that the author didn't have a choice by the publisher, or was unaware of the final distribution, etc. Since the book has a limited audience (AutoCad) make sure that you post negative reviews wherever you can about the book to prevent others from making the same mistake.
Having a license on the CD, assuming that the CD has programs, is understandable. But IM(IAMAL)O,
you bought the text, you have every right to use the text (including the PDF) in a format that follows from fair use. This is definitely a scary trend, and there's no way I can see it being useful save in cases where one or two chapters of a book cover something that does need licensing agreements (say, a piece of software uniquely distributed on the CD that is explained and used throughout a given chapter). The only way to fight it, as it appears to only be useful to computer topics, would be to simply outright ban books that do such, and make sure other professionals do the same, writing the various book authors at length.
Thank goodness this doesn't sound like anything ORA would try to do...
While there's possibilities of reaction studies with this, there's several problems to consider:
Hesinburg's Principle is very much in force here -- STM has been argued to have some small affect on the surfaces it scans, and here, they are using that affect to do the chemistry. Would 2C6H5I -> C12H10 + I2 happen without the STM tip pushing the molecules along?
Time scales -- they spent time collecting the images and pushing the molecules aroung but most chemical reactions happen in microseconds. STM scanning isn't even fast enough to capture this at 20K.
Molecule sizes -- They used benzene-like structures and iodine -- both are *hugh* on the molecular scale, but most reactions of interest for study use smaller molecules (CO, NO, etc), which might be hard to detect with STM on such surfaces.
That said, there are opportunities to build molecules from scratch, but you do appear to be limited to 2 dimensions, which might pose limitations, but it should work.
I didn't see that article the first time through, but reading it now, and it's great. I wish we had more people in the media that understood that cases like deCSS can affect everyone, even though the media themselves might be owned at some upper level by the MPAA, RIAA, or the corporate despot of the week.
I've heard rumors to the point that Gore is actively considering Nader as a cabinet member if he does get elected. Which means that as the end of the election gets near, Nader may drop out and endose Gore as to strength Gore's footholds.
On the other hand, Nader is trying to get the necessary percentage of popular vote (15%?) such that the Green Party will qualify as an 'equal' with the Dem and Reps and be able to get federal campaign funding for the next election. If as October closes and he's near that number, he will probably stick it out.
In classic anti-trust cases like Big Oil and
the Baby Bell breakup, business operated at a much slower pace, largely because it would take some time in days for business related events to reach the stock market (The Black Tuesday was actually spread over 3 days, but the heaviest loses were on that Tuesday). Thus, spending years for an anti-trust trial was ok, because neither businesses nor technology were moving at a pace that would have changed the picture by the time the trail and appeals process was over.
However, today, trial and appeals are about as long as they were before, but business move on the cliched "internet time"; if a company memos employes about potental layoffs at 9am EST, their stock could be devalued by half by the close of the market that day. Companies merge and go bankrupt daily. MS, for example will probably release 5 new OS systems (98, NT, 2000, ME, Whistler) before this case is done, all with more and more 'intergrated' applications that can potentally harm the competition in the market.
However, MS does deserve some review; they argue that there are aspects of the way that Jackson ran the case that are more operating details as opposed to issues at large that should first be considered by an appealate court. To some extent, I agree with this. But MS also knows that any delay in the final final judgement of this case is going to allow them time to release products that might be questionable under it.
IMHO, however, they know this, and the DOJ knows this, and the Supreme Court knows this. I feel that the SC should have added a stipulation, that if the case in the appeal court was not resolved within a year, then the SC would automatically hear it, as to expitide the process. Now, MS has the oppotunity to play games with their 'friends' in the Appealate court and could extend this case out well past it's usefulness... when.net is in place by more than 90% of the PC base.
DeCSS : First Amendment/DCMA:: CueCat : UTICA/DCMA
This is an important battle over the legality of shrink-wrapped licenses that UTICA makes legal, though it seems to obviously violate past legal actions (ownership of mailed items, etc). Yes, I don't think this particular story has as much substance, but like MS/DoJ, Napster, and DeCSS, we're in the period where DC/CueCat issues are being laid down, and until either a trial or DC's backing down, we'll have to live with these short tidbits.
Besides, we're all waiting word on if the Supreme Court will take the MS case:D
I've got no proof, but based on what I know on IRC networks and the types of host-leaf connections you need to set up, I'd say that maintaining the stability of a IRC network increases with O(n^2), n being the number of servers. I've found EFNet always relatively unstable, Dal somewhat so, and smaller networks rather stable. I think some of this has to do with the ability of smaller networks to stategically plan where to plug in new servers carefully, while larger networks have to haphazardly place new servers based on the best info available to them. There's also something about "too many cooks".. Dal has fallen apart due to so many internet IRCOP conflicts, it's not funny.
The only disadvantage is that you can't have as many clients -- but save for help channels, how the heck are you supposed to have meaning conversations in an IRC channel with over 50 or 100 people in it???? I think smaller networks will make IRC a bit more 'worthwhile' in terms of it's original concept.
There's no way to monitor the traffic effectively for a web site from just server logs. As others stated, problems with proxies, robots, and whatnot make it impossible to tell if you have a live human at the other side or if it's just 1000 AOL user in a cache or if it's just google for it's monthly visit.
The only effective measurement of web traffic is by having volunteers that use a special proxy that reports what sites that the user visits back to a server, and to generate it from there. Exactly how the Neilsen boxes do it for television, which unfortunately means the same problems will crop up (Neilsen families tend to be favored around east/west coasts, thus making shows that appeal to midwest or plains state viewers less popular by appearence). Additionally getting volunteers might be a problem, as you'll most likely create a biased set by whom you select. And probably most importantly, privacy issues are more apparent for net ratings.
which is really odd, because all the national radio and television stations in the states are giving the results of the days events before NBC plays them. A good example, on Opening Day, I heard whom the final torch bearer was on NPR at 5pm CST, then watched it at 12pm CST. I felt that something about the suprise was lost then, but I don't know if I blame NPR for that or what. (NPR has done the days results at 5pmish since).
Another good example was that the results of the gymnastic tourney were reported by Tom Brokaw on the NBC Nighty News before they were shown in NBC's broadcast.
It's understandable that NBC is trying something in *american* television that hasn't been done before: broadcast something that literally happens completely opposite to prime time for 3 weeks straight, and they might make errors. But most ppl have agreed that NBC made poor choices in the games coverage this year. What they should have done is should have converted MSNBC to broadcast the live feed of the olympics (delaying the business news slightly in the early morning hours), then used a 4hr block on NBC's prime time to go over the day's highlights, with certain events in full (such as gynamistics, etc),
cutting down longer events (soccor, basketball),
and still get all the appeal that they needed.
I have a feeling that because of these olypmics however, you're not going to see another olypmics that doesn't occur within 10hrs of LA (eg limiting it to the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Western Asia.)
Which suddenly reminds, what *did* they do with the Winter Olympics in 1998 in Japan? As the WO get much less coverage, I can't remember if they tape delayed or what, and yet they have the same problem as Aussie.
I know it's too late to help in a situation like
this, but it might be prudent to take steps in the future to avoid this, one way being to charge your connectivity to your credit card.
Yes, he was paying by check, which he implies he wants to stay away from credit cards. The option then becomes to get a checking/debit card (the default option at most banks now), and have the
ISP charge to this. However, this advice comes with many cavaets:
Watch your account carefully. Most ISPs have enough ethics to only charge your account for what it needs and no more. But I would not be surprised if some ISP with few scruples would add a dollar or two here or there to increase their revenues. With either credit or debit cards, I do review my monthly statement; many people don't and this is where they fall into trouble. I've *heard* but not confirmed that smaller banks (the ones that issue debit cards, not those that do credit cards) give more of a hassle to cancel or reimbursed disputed expenditures, so watch these and catch any errors early.
Use your debit card number in voice only. I'm not scared of online shopping with credit cards, as I do review my statements, and I did catch one scam at least once. Additionally, if someone did get your CC # and tried to outspend it, they would hit your credit limit ceiling, and you wouldn't have to worry about any extra fees after that point. However, with a debit card, if it did get out, someone could easily outspend your bank balance (and the cards I've seen don't have protection against this), making you incure overdraft penalities, which might not be refunded after disputed claims are dealt with. You could also not have money on time for rent payments or such. Thus, you need to take a bit more security with this number, and only give it to the ISP operators via voice; don't try to send it over the net, unless the site is secured, and even then, the phone call is easier and you know it's done.
Watch your balance. Obviously enough, make sure you have plenty in your account to cover that expenditure so that you don't overdraw when the isp takes out it's share. Know when the ISP withdraws (they will usually provide this info, and you can get it from account statements from either the ISP or your bank) so that you know when the money has to be there.
Unless there's a beef with ICANN that you refuse to use their arbitration services, this sounds like an ideal case of cybersquatting (I've seen ICANN rulings where typo sites have lost on trademarks). Unfortunately, there's a somewhat signifigent fee involved ($500) to start arbitration, but particularly for the site that frames you, there's the cybersquatting (and making money issue), and that framing other sites intentionally has been considered somewhat iffy by the courts in the past. IANAL, of course.
There is no indication in the documentation, either the readme with the patch or at sites like FilePlanet that this is a beta release. The readme even says this is a "point release" which means it's a must-have.
I, personally, I'm not too concerned; in two weeks, likely, this will have all been cleared up, and mods will be happily running with protocol 45. Q3A mods are not my sole form of gaming at the moment. However, I do fault ID for the sudden release (and I do read PQ so I didn't see anything indicating it was to be out soon) when all other major mod'ed FPSs have given fair warning to mod authors prior to a patch.
When HalfLife was updated with new netcode at some point (I forget which version), Valve seeded the new netcode and other details to the bigger mod authors prior to the patch release such that most mods had updated versions shortly after the patch was released.
It looks like ID here didn't seed the changes, and didn't indicate that most mods wouldn't work with the change (omitted accidently). This indicates lots of poor planning on Id's part, as more people play the mods than the standard Q3 modes. You'd think that with similar problems encounters by UT and HL, they would learn as well, but...
Slashdot Mirror
Second, what I think is cool about this is sort of an open-source idea for research; there is a large community of nerds that while they don't have the stamina for research, are interested in new cool technologies such as this, and would be willing to help if it's easy to do. One thing I'd like to see more of are distributed projects that can use our idle time to put out more cool ideas; I'd love to see the research that created the 'lifeforms' made by a computer put out into a distributed form as to help their research. Here, further studies of their 'mouse' could be done by simply asking for voice samples of various words by people across the globe as to maximum the sample size (they only used 8 in the paper for testing purposes, but the web site seems to be up to about 600). Certainly, there's important issues such as disclosure of invention, but I think projects like these that challenge the community show excellent progress in research.
Now, otoh, the multiplayer looks promising. Q3A default suffers from 'poor' weapons -- you either have to by a vhpb, snipe from a distance with the rail, or have quad damage and rush ahead with nearly any other weapon. The weapons in ST:EF are sufficiently different (and with secondary modes) to make the number of ways to frag an opponent much larger, supporting a larger variety of play styles. I'm waiting eagerly to see what mods get made/ported for it, particular things like TeamFortress and Counterstrike (that is an 'if', as I'm just offering suggestions). And there's something satisfying running around as Neelix and kicking butt, as well... :D
I mean, everyone know never to use x.0 unless they want to be literally bleeding edge?
However, until a different case enters the SC arena, the lower court ruling stands in the lower court's region. I believe that the original suers were from TX, meaning that the ruling that AOL and ISPs in general aren't common carriers only applies to (pretty much) TX.
It also gives some legal precident for actions in other states if it warrents it. This case, not so much so, but take the DeCSS case, ruled in the NY circuit court. ONLY in this area does the Kaplan ruling apply, but if the MPAA wanted to go after someone in Seattle, they have a good start on a prior case. Sure, the judge for that district need not follow Kaplan's ruling, either.
As you said, the ruling means not much more than nothing. It does state the lower court ruling stands, and that it is sound. But it also implies that there is nothing in the ruling or the case that trends on established US Constitional rights or laws. In cases where the answer should be obvious to techies, the SC saying nothing is a good thing, and possibly shows that they do have some understanding of technology and where it is going. It's cases where the SC refuses to hear the case, and the case itself is iffy (Sony vs Connectix is a good example), then there's questions of why the SC didn't take it, and not taking it may lead to more harm than good depending on the lower court ruling. What if, after appeals, the SC let Kaplan's ruling stand on 2600 because they didn't want to take it?
I think that this, plus the Betamax case, should be strong enough to make the DeCSS case go the right way on appeals. Heck, the PS case was under the shadow of the DMCA as well.
While ambious, I really hope that the DeCSS is the one that is pushed all the way to the SC to kill the DMCA bill, or at least provisions that trend on fair use. The 'success' of this case shows that the legal background is there.
but with the repeated articles and heavy emphasis on certain topics at certain times, and with the size of /. readership, such as system begs to be put in place. IMO, there's a good way to do this now, similar to kuro5hin, but accounting for the size of /..
There would be two levels of story moderators: two or three people like Rob, Katz, and Hemos, that can pull a story from the story queue and post it immediately, say on things of dire attention. Then there would be 20 to 30 secondary story moderators, which includes those that already on the list, and others selected from /. readership that are willing to help but understand the /. vision. For any given story in the queue, it needs 1/3 to 1/2 the number of moderators (say 10) "go" votes before it's posted, or the same number of "nay" votes before it's pulled. Thus, not every one of these moderators would see every story, as by the time they got to check on it, it might be toast. Special consideration can be done for duplicated stories in the queue (given the average of 300-400 stories everytime I submit, I'm sure about 25% of those are duplicated), so that by the time the duplicates are weeded out, 30 or so moderators are looking at about 200 posts that might go on /. that day.
Having a larger number of people would help avoid duplicated stories, excessive focus on a topic, and possibly show a better reflection of the /. userbase as a whole. But again, this is Rob's site, and he's got his right to run it anyway he wants.
"buzznacking" means "irritating", or probably in this case, using minor and inconsequental details of other cases to purposed extend the original case and be annoying to the legal system; nothing illegal about doing it, but the case has no merits being based on the technicality of the Dopp Dictum.
IMO, the problems we are having with IP and DMCA, etc, all stem from the fact that the organizations that are 'publishers' (getting one person's IP out to millions) are no long publishers, but trying to be owners of the works as well. This weakens the contribution of the original person's work, and promotes so-called mass marketing where not-as-highly-liked-but-highly-creative IP creators are shunned over highly-liked-but-not-highly-creative ones. Stephen King sees this, Smashing Pumpkins see this, the indy movie scene sees this.
IMO, the publishing companies should be forced (yes, forced, as this is in a sense, anti-trust) to remodel their practices; they should go back to being true publishers, where a guy can come along with a manuscript and $10,000 to make 10,000 copies of a book, telling the publisher that he keeps the right, and gets a majority of the profit, the publisher keeping the cost of book printed and a modest fee. The publisher can also act as the distributer, which would take a bit more of the profit from the sale. The publisher cannot own any copyright that it 'prints' unless it created it themselves. This type of system would allow all creative players an equal share in the market, and would remove the power of RIAA and MPAA like groups from controlling the market -- those books and CDs that are actually *liked* by people would be bought, not those that are artifically forced to the top.
The article author here appears to have bought the book over the internet, so previewing the book was not lost on him, but there are easy step to fix this: return the item, explaining exactly why you are returning it (i.e. "Don't agree to licensing terms"). Write to the book's *author* (not the publisher; authors are generally easier to get a hold of particularly) and ask why he released his book as such, and explain that it is a bad practice... it might be that the author didn't have a choice by the publisher, or was unaware of the final distribution, etc. Since the book has a limited audience (AutoCad) make sure that you post negative reviews wherever you can about the book to prevent others from making the same mistake.
Having a license on the CD, assuming that the CD has programs, is understandable. But IM(IAMAL)O, you bought the text, you have every right to use the text (including the PDF) in a format that follows from fair use. This is definitely a scary trend, and there's no way I can see it being useful save in cases where one or two chapters of a book cover something that does need licensing agreements (say, a piece of software uniquely distributed on the CD that is explained and used throughout a given chapter). The only way to fight it, as it appears to only be useful to computer topics, would be to simply outright ban books that do such, and make sure other professionals do the same, writing the various book authors at length.
Thank goodness this doesn't sound like anything ORA would try to do...
Hesinburg's Principle is very much in force here -- STM has been argued to have some small affect on the surfaces it scans, and here, they are using that affect to do the chemistry. Would 2C6H5I -> C12H10 + I2 happen without the STM tip pushing the molecules along?
Time scales -- they spent time collecting the images and pushing the molecules aroung but most chemical reactions happen in microseconds. STM scanning isn't even fast enough to capture this at 20K.
Molecule sizes -- They used benzene-like structures and iodine -- both are *hugh* on the molecular scale, but most reactions of interest for study use smaller molecules (CO, NO, etc), which might be hard to detect with STM on such surfaces.
That said, there are opportunities to build molecules from scratch, but you do appear to be limited to 2 dimensions, which might pose limitations, but it should work.
On the other hand, Nader is trying to get the necessary percentage of popular vote (15%?) such that the Green Party will qualify as an 'equal' with the Dem and Reps and be able to get federal campaign funding for the next election. If as October closes and he's near that number, he will probably stick it out.
However, today, trial and appeals are about as long as they were before, but business move on the cliched "internet time"; if a company memos employes about potental layoffs at 9am EST, their stock could be devalued by half by the close of the market that day. Companies merge and go bankrupt daily. MS, for example will probably release 5 new OS systems (98, NT, 2000, ME, Whistler) before this case is done, all with more and more 'intergrated' applications that can potentally harm the competition in the market.
However, MS does deserve some review; they argue that there are aspects of the way that Jackson ran the case that are more operating details as opposed to issues at large that should first be considered by an appealate court. To some extent, I agree with this. But MS also knows that any delay in the final final judgement of this case is going to allow them time to release products that might be questionable under it.
IMHO, however, they know this, and the DOJ knows this, and the Supreme Court knows this. I feel that the SC should have added a stipulation, that if the case in the appeal court was not resolved within a year, then the SC would automatically hear it, as to expitide the process. Now, MS has the oppotunity to play games with their 'friends' in the Appealate court and could extend this case out well past it's usefulness ... when .net is in place by more than 90% of the PC base.
This is an important battle over the legality of shrink-wrapped licenses that UTICA makes legal, though it seems to obviously violate past legal actions (ownership of mailed items, etc). Yes, I don't think this particular story has as much substance, but like MS/DoJ, Napster, and DeCSS, we're in the period where DC/CueCat issues are being laid down, and until either a trial or DC's backing down, we'll have to live with these short tidbits.
Besides, we're all waiting word on if the Supreme Court will take the MS case :D
The only disadvantage is that you can't have as many clients -- but save for help channels, how the heck are you supposed to have meaning conversations in an IRC channel with over 50 or 100 people in it???? I think smaller networks will make IRC a bit more 'worthwhile' in terms of it's original concept.
The only effective measurement of web traffic is by having volunteers that use a special proxy that reports what sites that the user visits back to a server, and to generate it from there. Exactly how the Neilsen boxes do it for television, which unfortunately means the same problems will crop up (Neilsen families tend to be favored around east/west coasts, thus making shows that appeal to midwest or plains state viewers less popular by appearence). Additionally getting volunteers might be a problem, as you'll most likely create a biased set by whom you select. And probably most importantly, privacy issues are more apparent for net ratings.
It's understandable that NBC is trying something in *american* television that hasn't been done before: broadcast something that literally happens completely opposite to prime time for 3 weeks straight, and they might make errors. But most ppl have agreed that NBC made poor choices in the games coverage this year. What they should have done is should have converted MSNBC to broadcast the live feed of the olympics (delaying the business news slightly in the early morning hours), then used a 4hr block on NBC's prime time to go over the day's highlights, with certain events in full (such as gynamistics, etc), cutting down longer events (soccor, basketball), and still get all the appeal that they needed.
I have a feeling that because of these olypmics however, you're not going to see another olypmics that doesn't occur within 10hrs of LA (eg limiting it to the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Western Asia.)
Which suddenly reminds, what *did* they do with the Winter Olympics in 1998 in Japan? As the WO get much less coverage, I can't remember if they tape delayed or what, and yet they have the same problem as Aussie.
Yes, he was paying by check, which he implies he wants to stay away from credit cards. The option then becomes to get a checking/debit card (the default option at most banks now), and have the ISP charge to this. However, this advice comes with many cavaets:
Watch your account carefully. Most ISPs have enough ethics to only charge your account for what it needs and no more. But I would not be surprised if some ISP with few scruples would add a dollar or two here or there to increase their revenues. With either credit or debit cards, I do review my monthly statement; many people don't and this is where they fall into trouble. I've *heard* but not confirmed that smaller banks (the ones that issue debit cards, not those that do credit cards) give more of a hassle to cancel or reimbursed disputed expenditures, so watch these and catch any errors early.
Use your debit card number in voice only. I'm not scared of online shopping with credit cards, as I do review my statements, and I did catch one scam at least once. Additionally, if someone did get your CC # and tried to outspend it, they would hit your credit limit ceiling, and you wouldn't have to worry about any extra fees after that point. However, with a debit card, if it did get out, someone could easily outspend your bank balance (and the cards I've seen don't have protection against this), making you incure overdraft penalities, which might not be refunded after disputed claims are dealt with. You could also not have money on time for rent payments or such. Thus, you need to take a bit more security with this number, and only give it to the ISP operators via voice; don't try to send it over the net, unless the site is secured, and even then, the phone call is easier and you know it's done.
Watch your balance. Obviously enough, make sure you have plenty in your account to cover that expenditure so that you don't overdraw when the isp takes out it's share. Know when the ISP withdraws (they will usually provide this info, and you can get it from account statements from either the ISP or your bank) so that you know when the money has to be there.
I, personally, I'm not too concerned; in two weeks, likely, this will have all been cleared up, and mods will be happily running with protocol 45. Q3A mods are not my sole form of gaming at the moment. However, I do fault ID for the sudden release (and I do read PQ so I didn't see anything indicating it was to be out soon) when all other major mod'ed FPSs have given fair warning to mod authors prior to a patch.
It looks like ID here didn't seed the changes, and didn't indicate that most mods wouldn't work with the change (omitted accidently). This indicates lots of poor planning on Id's part, as more people play the mods than the standard Q3 modes. You'd think that with similar problems encounters by UT and HL, they would learn as well, but...