The linked-to article says that the X-ray
telescopes worked by bouncing the X-rays off
of a mirror. With my limited knowledge of
physics, I thought that reflection required
a photon being absorbed by an electron, which
went to a higher orbital and then back down
again, emiting back out the absorbed photon;
I also thought that any time a X-ray photon
interacted with an atom, it ripped the electron
right out of the atom's shells and ionized it.
Thus, I've always thought that it was impossible
to reflect X-rays.
Obviously, I have something wrong. So how do
mirrors that reflect X-rays work?
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a
member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Other than that, though, the interfaces that most search engines use are pretty bad. There is usually no way to filter through a set of results to eliminate things that are obviously not what the searcher wants. Just being able to eliminate a set of domains from the initial results would make a huge difference for me.
AltaVista
has a pretty good set of primitives in its
advanced search, including matching against title,
the whole URL, the hostname, what sites it links
to, and the text in anchors; you can also use
"*" to say "search for anything beginning with
this". So you could do
a serch like:
title:slashdot* AND NOT (host:portman OR
host:hot-grits OR host:penis-bird)
I find that being able to search by title helps
enourmously, and being able to use "*" saves me
from having to search on variations of the same
term/prefix.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a
member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
The license agreement has a bit in it about
not reverse engineering the product. This
seems to be a rather strange clause, given that
they're also distributing source; when you can
look at the source, you don't need to
reverse engineer. Of course, this probably
just boilerplate text for a license agreement.
But my more paranoid side thinks that maybe
this is there so that, should Microsoft add
any "embrace and extend" incomabatabilites, no
one will be able to duplicate those
incompatabilites by looking at the source code,
since that would break the license agreement.
Thus they'd be able to have their cake, and eat
it too: get people to peer reivew and fix their
code, but no other IP6 projects can get any use
out of it.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a
member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
I'm not really a big fan of anime, but I see that Cartoon Network may have quite a market considering how big their Toonami section has grown.
I second that notion! (And third and fourth it, too.) An all-anime, all-the-time station would be great! I don't know if the market/demographics/whatever would support it, but it would be nice to not only be able to turn on the TV any time and see some anime, but also increase the exposure to the general public of more anime than just Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Warner Brothers is probably going to horibly mutilate Card Captor Sakura when they get it on the air next year. Dammit! It's just fine the way it is! Who cares if the fundies will get upset about some vague suggestions of sexuality? Sout Park seems to be doing quite well without them.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Well, to answer my own question, I guess that the Cartoon Network replays the same daytime anime late at night because they've already bought the rights to it. But it would be nice if they could something different, aimed towrads "adults", like Ranma 1/2, Slayers, Fushigi Yugi and so on. Of course, these things would appeal to more people than simply adults, but Cartoon Network seems to be thinking "kids" when it does it's programming: Dragon Ball (blech!), Sailor Moon (blech!).
If Cartoon Network is thinking long-term, they should try to increase the appeal of cartoons to adults, and one of the best ways to do that would be with Anime that has some appeal towards adults. I'd think that they'd also find that kids out there have more mature of a taste than the marketroids are giving them credit for.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
What sort of protection, exactly, is this supposed to provide? For instance, from the article:
The deal also bars Internet firms from using visitors' medical or financial data, Social Security numbers and online sexual behavior to determine which advertisements to flash on their screens.
What, exactly, is so bad about using data to determine what sort of ads you see? I thought that the main point behind privacy laws and advocacy was that personal information might be used for nefarious purposes. Is having banner ads targetted at you nefarious?
Also, most of these privacy innitiatives seem to have the attitude "most people don't know anything about computers and privacy, so we're appointing ourselves their protectors". Frankly, using the government to protect people from their own ignorance of computers makes me a little uneasy. If the advertisers (or whomever) engage in fraud when gathering or distributing personal information, there's already legal measures in place to deal with that. To deal with the rest of the stuff, that might be unsavory but not illegal, I'd prefer to have some non-governmental thing like MAPS deal with it (though I don't know how something like that might work).
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
The author of the essay left out one of the justifications for patents, the one which (I believe) was used in founding the U.S. patent office:
An inventor might come up with some invention, and then keep the process for it secret, and they thus keep a monopoly on their invention. To increase the spread of information, the government gives the inventor an enforced monopoly on the invention, for a limited period of time, in exchange for the inventor sharing the secret of the invention. With the patent system in place, an inventor can take the gamble that no one else will come up with the invention and keep it secret, or he can (for 17 years) protect himself from others duplicating his invention by sharing his knowledge.
Now, whether or not you agree with the scheme, there are certain things that the U.S. patent office is doing that are definatly beyond that scheme's bounds. A prime example is the Amazon signle-click shopping patent. With something like this (a web interface), once they start using it, other people can duplicate it without knowing how they did it, but the patent system is there preciesly to encourage the sharing of the how. The patent system was not (originally) designed to protect the how, the idea, which anyone can understand and (attempt) to copy once they see the invention. Amazon's justication, that they are trying to protect their investment in coming up with and implementing an original idea, has nothing to do with the purpose of the patent system.
Another example is the patenting of genes of which the patenters don't even know what they do. If someone tried to patent an application of a gene, that might fall within the original parameters for a patent. For example, a pig farmer patented a system for better pig farming by feeding the pigs asprin, something he might have done secretly and never shared with other pig farmers. If someone came up with an application for a gene were they could use it without having to first share the information, that might fall under the scope of a patent. But to just say "here's a sequence of DNA codons, we own it" falls way, way outside the parameters of a patent.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Yes, AOL did submit an Open IM Design to IETF, but it just gives a high level discussion of what an IM protocol might be like; it doesn't say anything about how the AIM protocol currently works.
And according to this article by ESR, AOL released the AIM protocol, only to make changes to it once Microsoft began using it, in order to lock Microsoft out. So it doesn't seem like AOL really wants to be open with regards to IM.
For a full discussion of AOL vs. the rest of the world (with regards to AIM), see this article.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
If you concentrate all of your energy into one frequency, you get more power, and so it goes further. If aliens were interested in broadcasting to other solar systems, they'd want the signal to go as far as possible. Also, any alien who wanted to communicate would want the signal to stand out over background noise; SETI isn't looking for aliens who are trying to keep themselves secret.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Oh, then there's the problem of language. How exactly are we going to be able to tell when something is trying to communicate with us if we don't know the language. Imagine getting a burst of static out of your speakers from your PC instead of a picture. Would you be able to decode it? Maybe they're using a different encoding scheme. Something unintelligible like Word 7.doc maybe.
First you try to find the communication, then you attempt to decode it. Any type of communication by ETs is going to look different from normal background radiation, since if their intent is to communicate, they're going to try to make it be distinguishable from background noise.
But that's just theoretical. What SETI@Home does is:
Look for a signal that's in a single frequency. Anyone communicating would likely do this because it enables them to get the most power in their signal.
Look for a singal that changes over time. You can't really communicate much by sending out a signal that never changes.
Any object in the sky that the radio telescode is observing will only be in its window of observation for 12 second. When it first enters, it will be weak, it will get stronger towards the middle, and then weaken. Anything that doesn't follow this pattern is probably a signal local to the solar system.
Look for doppler shift, as the signal source is likely to be in motion relative to the Earth.
The first thing would be to give the source code for Carnivore to someone like the ACLU or the EFF (perhaps under a NDA). Or give it to two or more different groups, and have them all poke through the code.
Then, have one of these groups do the actual compilation of the program, and digitally sign it; this would be done with the FBI, to be sure that the non-govt group didn't diddle with the program. This digitally signed copy would be given to the ISPs, so that they'd know that no one had slipped anything funny into the program after EFF or whoever reviewed the code.
Finally, make it so that the program, rather than giving info directly to the FBI, sends the information to someone within the ISP, who'll check to make sure there actually is a court order before forwarding it the the FBI; this would make it much harder for the FBI to abuse the system. Carnivore could encrypt all the email but the headers, so that the ISP won't be able to look at the body of what's being transmitted, in case the FBI is worried about details of the case being leaked.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
FBI will only use Carnivore to sift through e-mail only with a valid court order
Then why do they need it? The system has been set up to allow these searches if necessary. There are numerous alternatives to a "mysterious black box" that they can use that are already in place.
I'm just guessing here, but Carnivore might store information for a little while back. Thus, if the FBI gets a court order, the can look at some of the activity before they got the order, in addition to the activity after they got.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
From news group alt.irc, thread "eNow scanbots", messageID slrn8ncst0.q9r.remmy@remmy.cistron.nl:
We have received numerous questions and comments from members of various IRC communities. Many of the issues raised by the communities are the same ones that we discuss internally on a regular basis. We take these issues seriously and are very interested in initiating a dialogue with you and your community. As a starting point, we would like to clarify many of the misconceptions about ChatScan by addressing the most frequently raised issues surrounding ChatScan. The following are answers to the concerns that have been raised:
What Is ChatScan All About?
ChatScan enables users to search ongoing public chat-conversations for real-time dialogue about subjects of interest to them. By using the ChatScan Services, users may search chats for their favorite topic or browse a real time chat directory. The ChatScan's search functionality enables users to search in real time for a specific topic being discussed in public chat channels, across a multitude of networks. The users can then instantaneously join on-going conversations discussing their favorite topics, by using either mIRC or the ChatScan client. ChatScan's Live Directory is a real time directory of chat channels, organized by categories. The Live Directory includes a preview of on-going conversations and enables users to easily find chats of interest. The ChatScan service is a free service and does not require any registration by the user.
See www.chatscan.com for more information and a beta version of these services.
What Is Unique About eNow's Search Functionality?
eNow allows users to search across multiple networks. Its also prioritizes rooms that are currently active over room that no one is talking in at the moment. But most important - eNow allows users to search the content of the conversations in chat channels, not simply the names of the channels.
What Do eNow's Bots Do?
Making chats searchable in real time is achieved through advanced search technology and the use of friendly bots. The bots perform the following two functions: (1) "Transient" bots gauge the activity in public channels to ensure that users find "hot" rooms with on-going conversations. Therefore, transient bots will enter public channels for less than a minute approximately once an hour. (2) "Persistent" bots attend selected public channels in order to index on-going conversations. The index contains the main words that were mentioned in the last 5 minutes of each conversation. The actual messages of the channels and any data older than 5 minutes are discarded.
What eNow's Bots Do Not Do?
eNow's bots do not log the on-going conversations.
eNow's bots do not talk and do not actively participate in conversations.
eNow's bots do not engage in any unwanted activities, such as: cloning, flooding,solicitation, advertising and mass messaging.
eNow's bots do not attend any form of private chat.
Will eNow's Bots Be Identifiable?
eNow is working on making its bots and clients reply to VERSION and PING CTCP messages. eNow intends to define a naming convention for its bots together with IRC networks.
What Is The Effect Of ChatScan's Bots On IRC Networks' Resources?
At any given time the amount of bandwidth that eNow's bots use is minute. Currently, ChatScan does not use more than 100 concurrent connections across all IRC networks. eNow is also in the process of implementing a restriction of two connections per server and 20 per network. The bandwidth used by ChatScan from even the largest networks never exceeds an aggregate of 5KB across all servers of the network. Considering the size and the traffic of large IRC networks these resources are negligible. Moreover, in the near future, eNow will be providing servers hosted by eNow to qualified IRC networks that have legitimate concerns with ChatScan's consumption of their resources. eNow will ensure that all ChatScan connections will be directed to those servers.
Does eNow Make Money From The IRC Communities?
eNow does not derive any revenues from the IRC communities and currently does not advertise on the ChatScan client or Web site. eNow is developing IRC related services that will be free to the IRC networks. In the future, eNow plans to generate revenue by charging for similar services provided to commercial communities based on eNow's proprietary technology.
How Can ChatScan Benefit IRC Communities?
If we work together, we are confident that you will find that ChatScan is an exciting new tool that can greatly enhance your IRC community and improve your chatters' user-experience. Among the myriad of possibilities, ChatScan's search capabilities and ChatScan's Live Directory, can be personalized by making the services "Network-Specific", and incorporated into your community's web pages. In addition, eNow is willing to provide you with the applications and support necessary to turn your community Web pages into your "community portal."
As I mentioned above, we are very interested in initiating a dialogue with you that will result in a win-win relationship. Please continue to provide us with your feedback, as we consider your input invaluable. If you have additional thoughts, questions etc. regarding ChatScan please contact me at contact@enow.com. I look forward to hearing from you. Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Do it yourself decafination for teas
on
Caffeine Vault
·
· Score: 2
If you like tea, but can't drink caffine for medical reasons, try this: steep the tea leaves in boiling water for 30 seconds, throw out the water, and then steep the leaves in new water. Caffeine is highly water soluble, and 80% of the caffine is disolved in the first 30 seconds.
I've found this technique to be very useful, since the selection of pre-decafinated teas at the local stores is piss-poor. Now I can drink whatever flavor I like.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
The main problem with these free ISPs is the lack of service. Try calling the tech support for freei.net and you'll be on hold for hours. f these free providers could straighten their acts up in regards to tech support, they'd be a lot better.... I like the idea of free internet, but something tells me it's a long way from being perfected.
I don't think that the Australian ISP being discussed is free, just low-cost. Also, even if they don't have good tech support, being able to get Internet connectivity with bad tech support is better than not having it at all.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Now, given that Australia Internet is currently severely restricted by the Telus monopoly (which is, to be certain, idiotic), you might think that is still a improvement. But it seems to me like that this isn't much better -- sure, it might be non-profit, but if it doesn't have incentive to improve, you might wind up stuck using a ridiculously overpriced ISP with terrible customer service. And you know what? They won't care, because they don't want your money
So what, exactly, is wrong with them providing this service? If it gets to be too expensive, or too crappy, then (if there's enough demand) a for-profit company can compete with them. Or does the fact that they're non-profit, and can thus offer low prices, exclude compition? Would it be better for these people to have no ISPs, or really high-price ISPs, until (sometime in the future) decent Internet connectivity trickles into the area?
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
In the United States, the theory on why the government should regulate broadcasting is:
There are only a limited number of frequency bands out there to use.
The electro-magnetic spectrum is public property.
(Or it used to be something like this).
However, the Internet isn't limited to a certain number of bands, and the Internet isn't considered public property, so the FCC hasn't applied broadcasting regulations to the Internet (thank God!).
But in Australia, what is the theory behind regulating broadcast mediums? Would this theory hold that the Internet should be regulated as well?
-- Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Yes, content is king. Content in the sense of *usable information*. But also keep in mind that people love to get things presented in an attractive way. And that also includes graphics.
Even if the pictures don't have much (or anything) to do with presenting revelant information, the "commercial web" would probably keep them there, because they're expected. Sorta like background noise; if it's too quite, you get distracted.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
This current work is neither a survey such as an exit poll, nor an experiment with controlled conditions, but rather a study. We went out and looked at the way things were for a certain subset of people, a sample of those who read online news at least three times a week. The main advantage of a study is that it allows the researcher to look around in an open-minded way, without a predetermined agenda.
...
However, studies are not predictive in the way that an experiment or a survey is. They require more judgment about what constitutes "a lot" or "a little." And they require more judgment about what aspects of the data are stable and noteworthy, and which are ephemeral.
...
This study is not statistically valid as would be a survey, but we are able to draw general conclusions in some areas and make inferences in others. As researchers, we try to present carefully what we say 'flat out' and what we hedge or qualify.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Where do eyes go initially after firing up the first screenful of online news? To text, most likely. Not to photos or graphics, as you might expect. Instead, briefs or captions get eye fixations first, by and large. The eyes of online news readers then come back to the photos and graphics, sometimes not until they have returned to the first page after clicking away to a full article.
News flash! When people read news, they actualy do read!
Wow. Who'da thunk, huh?
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
A way to get more specific answers than one can from videotaping is to track eye movements. So we began another study. This one used eyetracking equipment that recorded where the eyes stopped to absorb information. That tells us what our subjects read. We also could track movement from site to site.
News watching log digest for user B1FF:
TEXT: In this latest issue of Sports Illustrated, we have Natalie Portman modeling the latest bikinis, and
Follows link, eyes hover over pictures for 100 minutes.
.............
TEXT: In today's 1M A K001 D00D cooking section, a new recipe for hot grits!
Follows link, eyes follow text at rate of 2 words a minute.
...............
TEXT: H0W T0 B3 AN 3133T HAX0R revals the pros secrets on how to turn your computer on!
Follows link, computer powered off 30 seconds after eyes are on main article page.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
"CraftShop promised that it wouldn't release the names without approval," Mackey said. "So we just can't take the names and sell them to anyone interested. We couldn't deal them independently. (The company name and customer list) had to go together."
While such a transfer may be perfectly legal, some privacy advocates find that to be little solace.
Such a sale is taking advantage of a loophole, according to Andrew Shen, policy analyst with the Electronic Privacy and Information Center (EPIC), a privacy watchdog group based in Washington, D.C.
"This is why the (Federal Trade Commission) act is not a sufficient manner in which to protect privacy," Shen said. "We need stronger laws to prevent the exchange of customer information when companies merge or are sold."
An area like this can get complicated. If, say, little.com says it won't share it's customer info with anyone, and big.com buys little.com, I don't see any reason why they should just have to throw out little.com's customer info at that point; little.com has just become a part of big.com, so big.com should be able to inhert little.com's customer info (with all the original privacy argreemts on it still legal binding on big.com).
But if, say, marketing.com buys the little.com "name" along with it's customer info, they shouldn't be able to set up a subsidiary "little-marketing.com" which markets to the customers of little.com as little.com; that's violating the spirit of the agreement, if perhaps not the letter of it.
Looks like places like TrustE will have to get some more comprehensive (and, unfortunatly, more complicated) privacy policies for dot-coms to follow.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
The article doesn't seem to say anything about what the tourist will be doing up on Mir. Will he actually be doing the work that a normal cosmonaut would do, or will he just be sitting around... er, floating around for a week watching the other two do stuff?
Even if he does do some work, exactly how important can it be, given that he his expertise is in investing, and he's only going to be up there for a week. Now, if I were paying $20 mil to go up there, I'd want to do something important. I'd want to stay up there for months and help in the construction of the next space station, or help in the construction of a moon surface habitat. Something so after it was over I could look back and say "Damn, I did something up there"; just experiencing zero g for seven days just wouldn't cut it.
Slashdot Mirror
The linked-to article says that the X-ray telescopes worked by bouncing the X-rays off of a mirror. With my limited knowledge of physics, I thought that reflection required a photon being absorbed by an electron, which went to a higher orbital and then back down again, emiting back out the absorbed photon; I also thought that any time a X-ray photon interacted with an atom, it ripped the electron right out of the atom's shells and ionized it. Thus, I've always thought that it was impossible to reflect X-rays.
Obviously, I have something wrong. So how do mirrors that reflect X-rays work?
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
AltaVista has a pretty good set of primitives in its advanced search, including matching against title, the whole URL, the hostname, what sites it links to, and the text in anchors; you can also use "*" to say "search for anything beginning with this". So you could do a serch like:
I find that being able to search by title helps enourmously, and being able to use "*" saves me from having to search on variations of the same term/prefix.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
The license agreement has a bit in it about not reverse engineering the product. This seems to be a rather strange clause, given that they're also distributing source; when you can look at the source, you don't need to reverse engineer. Of course, this probably just boilerplate text for a license agreement. But my more paranoid side thinks that maybe this is there so that, should Microsoft add any "embrace and extend" incomabatabilites, no one will be able to duplicate those incompatabilites by looking at the source code, since that would break the license agreement. Thus they'd be able to have their cake, and eat it too: get people to peer reivew and fix their code, but no other IP6 projects can get any use out of it.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
I'm not really a big fan of anime, but I see that Cartoon Network may have quite a market considering how big their Toonami section has grown.
I second that notion! (And third and fourth it, too.) An all-anime, all-the-time station would be great! I don't know if the market/demographics/whatever would support it, but it would be nice to not only be able to turn on the TV any time and see some anime, but also increase the exposure to the general public of more anime than just Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Warner Brothers is probably going to horibly mutilate Card Captor Sakura when they get it on the air next year. Dammit! It's just fine the way it is! Who cares if the fundies will get upset about some vague suggestions of sexuality? Sout Park seems to be doing quite well without them.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Well, to answer my own question, I guess that the Cartoon Network replays the same daytime anime late at night because they've already bought the rights to it. But it would be nice if they could something different, aimed towrads "adults", like Ranma 1/2, Slayers, Fushigi Yugi and so on. Of course, these things would appeal to more people than simply adults, but Cartoon Network seems to be thinking "kids" when it does it's programming: Dragon Ball (blech!), Sailor Moon (blech!).
If Cartoon Network is thinking long-term, they should try to increase the appeal of cartoons to adults, and one of the best ways to do that would be with Anime that has some appeal towards adults. I'd think that they'd also find that kids out there have more mature of a taste than the marketroids are giving them credit for.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
What sort of protection, exactly, is this supposed to provide? For instance, from the article:
What, exactly, is so bad about using data to determine what sort of ads you see? I thought that the main point behind privacy laws and advocacy was that personal information might be used for nefarious purposes. Is having banner ads targetted at you nefarious?
Also, most of these privacy innitiatives seem to have the attitude "most people don't know anything about computers and privacy, so we're appointing ourselves their protectors". Frankly, using the government to protect people from their own ignorance of computers makes me a little uneasy. If the advertisers (or whomever) engage in fraud when gathering or distributing personal information, there's already legal measures in place to deal with that. To deal with the rest of the stuff, that might be unsavory but not illegal, I'd prefer to have some non-governmental thing like MAPS deal with it (though I don't know how something like that might work).
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
The author of the essay left out one of the justifications for patents, the one which (I believe) was used in founding the U.S. patent office:
An inventor might come up with some invention, and then keep the process for it secret, and they thus keep a monopoly on their invention. To increase the spread of information, the government gives the inventor an enforced monopoly on the invention, for a limited period of time, in exchange for the inventor sharing the secret of the invention. With the patent system in place, an inventor can take the gamble that no one else will come up with the invention and keep it secret, or he can (for 17 years) protect himself from others duplicating his invention by sharing his knowledge.
Now, whether or not you agree with the scheme, there are certain things that the U.S. patent office is doing that are definatly beyond that scheme's bounds. A prime example is the Amazon signle-click shopping patent. With something like this (a web interface), once they start using it, other people can duplicate it without knowing how they did it, but the patent system is there preciesly to encourage the sharing of the how. The patent system was not (originally) designed to protect the how, the idea, which anyone can understand and (attempt) to copy once they see the invention. Amazon's justication, that they are trying to protect their investment in coming up with and implementing an original idea, has nothing to do with the purpose of the patent system.
Another example is the patenting of genes of which the patenters don't even know what they do. If someone tried to patent an application of a gene, that might fall within the original parameters for a patent. For example, a pig farmer patented a system for better pig farming by feeding the pigs asprin, something he might have done secretly and never shared with other pig farmers. If someone came up with an application for a gene were they could use it without having to first share the information, that might fall under the scope of a patent. But to just say "here's a sequence of DNA codons, we own it" falls way, way outside the parameters of a patent.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Last year, ESR blasted AOL over attempting to close up the AIM protocol after it had oppened it. Look here.
NOTE: I put this link in a comment in another thread, but it might be of more general interest.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Yes, AOL did submit an Open IM Design to IETF, but it just gives a high level discussion of what an IM protocol might be like; it doesn't say anything about how the AIM protocol currently works.
And according to this article by ESR, AOL released the AIM protocol, only to make changes to it once Microsoft began using it, in order to lock Microsoft out. So it doesn't seem like AOL really wants to be open with regards to IM.
For a full discussion of AOL vs. the rest of the world (with regards to AIM), see this article.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
If you concentrate all of your energy into one frequency, you get more power, and so it goes further. If aliens were interested in broadcasting to other solar systems, they'd want the signal to go as far as possible. Also, any alien who wanted to communicate would want the signal to stand out over background noise; SETI isn't looking for aliens who are trying to keep themselves secret.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Oh, then there's the problem of language. How exactly are we going to be able to tell when something is trying to communicate with us if we don't know the language. Imagine getting a burst of static out of your speakers from your PC instead of a picture. Would you be able to decode it? Maybe they're using a different encoding scheme. Something unintelligible like Word 7 .doc maybe.
First you try to find the communication, then you attempt to decode it. Any type of communication by ETs is going to look different from normal background radiation, since if their intent is to communicate, they're going to try to make it be distinguishable from background noise.
But that's just theoretical. What SETI@Home does is:
The this info is from the SETI@Home page which explains these things.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
The first thing would be to give the source code for Carnivore to someone like the ACLU or the EFF (perhaps under a NDA). Or give it to two or more different groups, and have them all poke through the code.
Then, have one of these groups do the actual compilation of the program, and digitally sign it; this would be done with the FBI, to be sure that the non-govt group didn't diddle with the program. This digitally signed copy would be given to the ISPs, so that they'd know that no one had slipped anything funny into the program after EFF or whoever reviewed the code.
Finally, make it so that the program, rather than giving info directly to the FBI, sends the information to someone within the ISP, who'll check to make sure there actually is a court order before forwarding it the the FBI; this would make it much harder for the FBI to abuse the system. Carnivore could encrypt all the email but the headers, so that the ISP won't be able to look at the body of what's being transmitted, in case the FBI is worried about details of the case being leaked.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Then why do they need it? The system has been set up to allow these searches if necessary. There are numerous alternatives to a "mysterious black box" that they can use that are already in place.
I'm just guessing here, but Carnivore might store information for a little while back. Thus, if the FBI gets a court order, the can look at some of the activity before they got the order, in addition to the activity after they got.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
From news group alt.irc, thread "eNow scanbots", messageID slrn8ncst0.q9r.remmy@remmy.cistron.nl:
We have received numerous questions and comments from members of various IRC communities. Many of the issues raised by the communities are the same ones that we discuss internally on a regular basis. We take these issues seriously and are very interested in initiating a dialogue with you and your community. As a starting point, we would like to clarify many of the misconceptions about ChatScan by addressing the most frequently raised issues surrounding ChatScan. The following are answers to the concerns that have been raised:What Is ChatScan All About?
ChatScan enables users to search ongoing public chat-conversations for real-time dialogue about subjects of interest to them. By using the ChatScan Services, users may search chats for their favorite topic or browse a real time chat directory. The ChatScan's search functionality enables users to search in real time for a specific topic being discussed in public chat channels, across a multitude of networks. The users can then instantaneously join on-going conversations discussing their favorite topics, by using either mIRC or the ChatScan client. ChatScan's Live Directory is a real time directory of chat channels, organized by categories. The Live Directory includes a preview of on-going conversations and enables users to easily find chats of interest. The ChatScan service is a free service and does not require any registration by the user.
See www.chatscan.com for more information and a beta version of these services.
What Is Unique About eNow's Search Functionality?
eNow allows users to search across multiple networks. Its also prioritizes rooms that are currently active over room that no one is talking in at the moment. But most important - eNow allows users to search the content of the conversations in chat channels, not simply the names of the channels.
What Do eNow's Bots Do?
Making chats searchable in real time is achieved through advanced search technology and the use of friendly bots. The bots perform the following two functions: (1) "Transient" bots gauge the activity in public channels to ensure that users find "hot" rooms with on-going conversations. Therefore, transient bots will enter public channels for less than a minute approximately once an hour. (2) "Persistent" bots attend selected public channels in order to index on-going conversations. The index contains the main words that were mentioned in the last 5 minutes of each conversation. The actual messages of the channels and any data older than 5 minutes are discarded.
What eNow's Bots Do Not Do?
Will eNow's Bots Be Identifiable?
eNow is working on making its bots and clients reply to VERSION and PING CTCP messages. eNow intends to define a naming convention for its bots together with IRC networks.
What Is The Effect Of ChatScan's Bots On IRC Networks' Resources?
At any given time the amount of bandwidth that eNow's bots use is minute. Currently, ChatScan does not use more than 100 concurrent connections across all IRC networks. eNow is also in the process of implementing a restriction of two connections per server and 20 per network. The bandwidth used by ChatScan from even the largest networks never exceeds an aggregate of 5KB across all servers of the network. Considering the size and the traffic of large IRC networks these resources are negligible. Moreover, in the near future, eNow will be providing servers hosted by eNow to qualified IRC networks that have legitimate concerns with ChatScan's consumption of their resources. eNow will ensure that all ChatScan connections will be directed to those servers.
Does eNow Make Money From The IRC Communities?
eNow does not derive any revenues from the IRC communities and currently does not advertise on the ChatScan client or Web site. eNow is developing IRC related services that will be free to the IRC networks. In the future, eNow plans to generate revenue by charging for similar services provided to commercial communities based on eNow's proprietary technology.
How Can ChatScan Benefit IRC Communities?
If we work together, we are confident that you will find that ChatScan is an exciting new tool that can greatly enhance your IRC community and improve your chatters' user-experience. Among the myriad of possibilities, ChatScan's search capabilities and ChatScan's Live Directory, can be personalized by making the services "Network-Specific", and incorporated into your community's web pages. In addition, eNow is willing to provide you with the applications and support necessary to turn your community Web pages into your "community portal."
As I mentioned above, we are very interested in initiating a dialogue with you that will result in a win-win relationship. Please continue to provide us with your feedback, as we consider your input invaluable. If you have additional thoughts, questions etc. regarding ChatScan please contact me at contact@enow.com. I look forward to hearing from you.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
If you like tea, but can't drink caffine for medical reasons, try this: steep the tea leaves in boiling water for 30 seconds, throw out the water, and then steep the leaves in new water. Caffeine is highly water soluble, and 80% of the caffine is disolved in the first 30 seconds.
I've found this technique to be very useful, since the selection of pre-decafinated teas at the local stores is piss-poor. Now I can drink whatever flavor I like.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
The main problem with these free ISPs is the lack of service. Try calling the tech support for freei.net and you'll be on hold for hours. f these free providers could straighten their acts up in regards to tech support, they'd be a lot better. ... I like the idea of free internet, but something tells me it's a long way from being perfected.
I don't think that the Australian ISP being discussed is free, just low-cost. Also, even if they don't have good tech support, being able to get Internet connectivity with bad tech support is better than not having it at all.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Now, given that Australia Internet is currently severely restricted by the Telus monopoly (which is, to be certain, idiotic), you might think that is still a improvement. But it seems to me like that this isn't much better -- sure, it might be non-profit, but if it doesn't have incentive to improve, you might wind up stuck using a ridiculously overpriced ISP with terrible customer service. And you know what? They won't care, because they don't want your money
So what, exactly, is wrong with them providing this service? If it gets to be too expensive, or too crappy, then (if there's enough demand) a for-profit company can compete with them. Or does the fact that they're non-profit, and can thus offer low prices, exclude compition? Would it be better for these people to have no ISPs, or really high-price ISPs, until (sometime in the future) decent Internet connectivity trickles into the area?
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
In the United States, the theory on why the government should regulate broadcasting is:
- There are only a limited number of frequency bands out there to use.
- The electro-magnetic spectrum is public property.
(Or it used to be something like this).However, the Internet isn't limited to a certain number of bands, and the Internet isn't considered public property, so the FCC hasn't applied broadcasting regulations to the Internet (thank God!).
But in Australia, what is the theory behind regulating broadcast mediums? Would this theory hold that the Internet should be regulated as well?
--Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Yes, content is king. Content in the sense of *usable information*. But also keep in mind that people love to get things presented in an attractive way. And that also includes graphics.
Even if the pictures don't have much (or anything) to do with presenting revelant information, the "commercial web" would probably keep them there, because they're expected. Sorta like background noise; if it's too quite, you get distracted.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
This current work is neither a survey such as an exit poll, nor an experiment with controlled conditions, but rather a study. We went out and looked at the way things were for a certain subset of people, a sample of those who read online news at least three times a week. The main advantage of a study is that it allows the researcher to look around in an open-minded way, without a predetermined agenda.
However, studies are not predictive in the way that an experiment or a survey is. They require more judgment about what constitutes "a lot" or "a little." And they require more judgment about what aspects of the data are stable and noteworthy, and which are ephemeral.
This study is not statistically valid as would be a survey, but we are able to draw general conclusions in some areas and make inferences in others. As researchers, we try to present carefully what we say 'flat out' and what we hedge or qualify.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Where do eyes go initially after firing up the first screenful of online news? To text, most likely. Not to photos or graphics, as you might expect. Instead, briefs or captions get eye fixations first, by and large. The eyes of online news readers then come back to the photos and graphics, sometimes not until they have returned to the first page after clicking away to a full article.
News flash! When people read news, they actualy do read!
Wow. Who'da thunk, huh?
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
A way to get more specific answers than one can from videotaping is to track eye movements. So we began another study. This one used eyetracking equipment that recorded where the eyes stopped to absorb information. That tells us what our subjects read. We also could track movement from site to site.
News watching log digest for user B1FF:
TEXT: In this latest issue of Sports Illustrated, we have Natalie Portman modeling the latest bikinis, and
Follows link, eyes hover over pictures for 100 minutes.
TEXT: In today's 1M A K001 D00D cooking section, a new recipe for hot grits!
Follows link, eyes follow text at rate of 2 words a minute.
TEXT: H0W T0 B3 AN 3133T HAX0R revals the pros secrets on how to turn your computer on!
Follows link, computer powered off 30 seconds after eyes are on main article page.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
From the article:
"CraftShop promised that it wouldn't release the names without approval," Mackey said. "So we just can't take the names and sell them to anyone interested. We couldn't deal them independently. (The company name and customer list) had to go together."
While such a transfer may be perfectly legal, some privacy advocates find that to be little solace.
Such a sale is taking advantage of a loophole, according to Andrew Shen, policy analyst with the Electronic Privacy and Information Center (EPIC), a privacy watchdog group based in Washington, D.C.
"This is why the (Federal Trade Commission) act is not a sufficient manner in which to protect privacy," Shen said. "We need stronger laws to prevent the exchange of customer information when companies merge or are sold."
An area like this can get complicated. If, say, little.com says it won't share it's customer info with anyone, and big.com buys little.com, I don't see any reason why they should just have to throw out little.com's customer info at that point; little.com has just become a part of big.com, so big.com should be able to inhert little.com's customer info (with all the original privacy argreemts on it still legal binding on big.com).
But if, say, marketing.com buys the little.com "name" along with it's customer info, they shouldn't be able to set up a subsidiary "little-marketing.com" which markets to the customers of little.com as little.com; that's violating the spirit of the agreement, if perhaps not the letter of it.
Looks like places like TrustE will have to get some more comprehensive (and, unfortunatly, more complicated) privacy policies for dot-coms to follow.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
The article doesn't seem to say anything about what the tourist will be doing up on Mir. Will he actually be doing the work that a normal cosmonaut would do, or will he just be sitting around... er, floating around for a week watching the other two do stuff?
Even if he does do some work, exactly how important can it be, given that he his expertise is in investing, and he's only going to be up there for a week. Now, if I were paying $20 mil to go up there, I'd want to do something important. I'd want to stay up there for months and help in the construction of the next space station, or help in the construction of a moon surface habitat. Something so after it was over I could look back and say "Damn, I did something up there"; just experiencing zero g for seven days just wouldn't cut it.