I haven't commented in a long time, but the reporting on this subject is heavily biased to support the pre-determined conclusion that the manuscript predates Mohammed (pbuh). The Daily Mail is guilty of this (shock! horror!) and so is the summary with its strategic "typo".
From the Mail article, Carbon dating places the manuscript between 568 and 645AD, while Mohammed is thought to have lived between 570 and 632AD. Most intelligent persons would take a quick glance at those dates and be able to dismiss the headlines outright. The range on the dating is nowhere near precise enough to make such a bold statement which is obviously meant to be inflammatory.
Also, as others have rightly stated, the dating is for the parchment, not the ink itself. It is perfectly possible for the parchment to have been produced and not been used for a length of time. Writing paraphernalia was extremely precious at that time; they may have been saved for something important.
Finally, while it is correct that the FULL Quran was not compiled in written form until after the prophet's death, and was primarily stored in memory of the followers, that does not preclude writing completely! The discovered script contains only a couple of chapters, and is not a complete version.
tl;dr: inaccurate and sensationalist headline and reporting on results which may actually point to the opposite.
The video does not show any auto-driving. It seems like they were trying to demonstrate an auto-brake accident avoidance feature.
Basically, the driver (appearing to be fully in control the whole time) reversed the car and then gunned it, aiming at the pedestrians. I'm guessing the expectation was that auto-brake would kick in before ploughing into the bystanders.
This was a boneheaded move on part of the driver and the idiots who agreed to basically be crash test dummies. Fifth Gear tested auto-braking with a sophisticated dummy car, and it didn't always work reliably (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?...).
Just to reiterate, this was not any kind of auto-driving failure.
Ok, so what? The shuttle goes fast and far, doesn't mean there cannot be a reusable orbital craft. Not to mention that 99.99999% of the 'far' is spent in almost no stress drifting around. It's nearly meaningless, even though it sounds impressive to the uneducated.
It's not exactly no stress. The shuttle's interior is pressurized while it's in a vacuum. Pressure = stress. It's tremendously critical that everything is absolutely airtight. While I agree that liftoff/re-entry are probably the most stressful parts of the mission, I think you are taking credit away from the amazing engineering that goes into the shuttle. Even if it is just "drifting around".
Your analogy doesn't apply here. ISPs do in fact charge you more when you want to use more bandwidth (analogous to your bigger car).
In this case what's happening is (in a car analogy no less) that some new theme park opens which is very popular (YouTube), so more people start driving their cars on government owned roads to visit it (ISP pipes). The government is making the visitors (ISP clients) pay tolls to use the road (bandwidth), but now also wants to make the theme park owner (Google) pay for being so popular that many people want to visit them! Which is a bullshit argument since if the theme park wasn't there, no one would use the road to get to it which would mean no revenue for the government.
These greedy ISPs just want to profit off of Google's success.
Although it's an important discovery, the real importance lies on finding water on objects that we may one day need to live on. We're never going to set up facilities on an asteroid. But on a moon we certainly could, and finding water ice there would be significantly more revelatory.
By that logic, Galileo and other early astronomers who sought to explore space and discover distant planets were wasting their time. Since at that point in history getting into space was barely conceivable.
Exploration for the sake of exploration may seem pointless to you now, but knowledge about our universe is beneficial to the human race.
Amazon should not have caved to this ridiculous request. The final choice is with consumers, who should refuse to buy any book that they can't run through text-to-speech or any other device that enables them to use their purchase.
While I agree that Amazon should have told these guys to go fuck themselves, what they have actually done is a brilliant "carrot and stick" maneuver that will ultimately get them what they want:
1. Amazon gives in to the Guild's demand (the carrot), and will conveniently label those books on their site which prohibit TTS.
2. People who think the Authors Guild is a bunch of dicks can boycott the clearly-marked titles and purchase others.
3. Sales of TTS-prohibited books plummet (the stick).
4. Authors Guild realizes that their greed has actually cost them money, and reverses their decision.
Ok now this is seriously annoying. If they claim they can use my content while I am a member then that's probably acceptable since you can choose to deactivate your account at any time. But forever? I mean this probably won't affect most users but how about people who'd like to showcase their artwork/photography or something to their friends and family? They can just take it and use it for commercial purposes without consent and if you currently have them on their servers you have no chance of opting out? I'm wondering if they gave any warning about this change, but since I'm a relatively active Facebook user and haven't noticed anything I doubt it. The shame is that most people won't even have a clue about this.
So you're saying that having a less-than-brilliant business model should be illegal? As in, Congress or state legislature should pass a law banning bad business ideas? If so you're just as screwed up as this FlexPlay crap. Ummm no that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that selling a product that renders itself useless after a set period of time for no apparent reason should be illegal. If I buy it, I own it, and if they want to govern how long I can use the product... well that's what rentals are for!
Oh, so you want me to pay you $5 for something that will self destruct in two days? Sure I'd be glad to... NOT! Who the hell came up with such a stupid idea? Why on earth would I buy this piece of crap when I can rent a DVD for less than that? This shouldn't even be legal and if it is then humanity is more screwed up than I thought.
I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure that forging a signature onto a high resolution scan of a document is even easier than doing so on a fax given an authentic signed document.
You can't steal it, but if you are able to make an exact replica of it while still leaving my car right where it is, please: be my guest!
Make me one while you're at it and then I'll have spare parts. Thanks. Umm when you make your own car from scratch costing you hundreds of thousands of dollars in research and development, then manufacture it and sell it for x dollars and some one figures out how to replicate it for free, lets see you say "be my guest"!
Well that's just fabulous. Microsoft are basically telling their customers that in a few months your music is precariously balanced on the edge of not playing. How about unlocking all the music and getting over your failure of a music store huh?
Whoever approves articles is at least supposed to read the front page don't you think? The article quoted isn't even from a different source, its the exact same BBC link.
To those who are talking about how 2.6 mil is nothing to a pizza chain I ask: How are you going to get the public aware of the fact that pizza.com even exists? Personally, if I wanted pizza I'd type dominospizza.com or pizzahut.com as a first guess at anything pizza related online. Even as a computer literate person I can draw from experience that most generic domain names are link farms and still not go to pizza.com. Maybe the pizza stores have to advertise their new site on tv for another 2..... oh wait
In the absence of a permanent archiving system, the White House has been archiving e-mails on White House servers since early in the administration.
The White House says it does not know if any e-mails are missing, but is looking into the matter.
It would be costly and time-consuming for the White House to institute an e-mail retrieval program that entails pulling data off each individual workstation, the court papers filed Friday state. God forbid they actually do some.... work! And why the hell do they not have a backup server for this stuff at the White House? This whole story is fishy to say the least.
I've been using Facebook for a couple of months now but I had no idea that there is no way to permanently erase my info from their servers. Even if there wasn't a delete button, a simple e-mail with a polite request for deletion should be enough. Apparently someone is hearing the outcry; this is a quote from the group mentioned in the article:
"The Chief Privacy Officer for Facebook, Chris Kelly, was a speaker at a Privacy and Security Conference last week in Victoria (BC). Someone in the audience ask him about this and he mentioned that facebook was working on some kind of "nuke me" button (basically will erase each and every entry ever created by your account and all your account information) that will address all these concerns and that should be available sometime during this year. Let's hope they fulfill their promises."
This "nuke me" button should have been there all along, but at least they're working on it.
NASA wants a name that will capture the excitement of GLAST's mission and call attention to gamma-ray and high-energy astronomy
I don't think that this topic will ever be exciting. NASA is doing PR work to get more public support and as a result, more funding. If they do want support, show the public some amazing images of what this thing can capture, then the public will be interested. It's sad that NASA has to do this instead of focusing on the science.
Then they should take as a lesson and improve their site.
Product information -including price- is most likely manually entered into their database. Why do you think Amazon should swallow thousands of dollars worth of losses over a typo?
No, THEY MADE A MISTAKE. Nothing wrong about it, and the converse is equally true: if you buy a cd set from Amazon priced at $400 when another site has it priced at $30, it's your own damn fault for not checking the price.
Wow, is the idea of screwing the corporations so tempting to you that any shred of morals is lost? I don't think you would be saying what you are saying if any of this involved your money now would you?
And while we're on the subject of right and wrong, Ms. Manners, what about the retailer trying to sweep their mistake under the rug instead of manning up and admitting their mistake?
I'm afraid I can't disagree with you there, that is exactly what they should do.
Yahoo is resisting, but they are just delaying the inevitable if you ask me. Microsoft has this crazy fixation on beating Google that isn't going to end anytime soon. It would serve them better if they just focus on their core business more; $46,000,000,000 would pay for a lot of R&D.
Daddy's little girl can then go into the doctor's office and say: "I want to look like Britney Spears/Paris Hilton/whatever the slutty starlet flavor of the month is!"
A vault of casts from different star's bodies is opened, and they stuff the parts into our victi.. err patient's already over sized abdomen. Then they tear off her body parts one by one and replace them with the "improved" versions. Everyone will end up looking like Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. Wait, is that why... oh crap!
Ridiculously impossible ideas aside, this is great news, seriously. No no don't worry, I wouldn't want to look like Tom Cruise either.
It continues to surprise me that some people will jump on every possible opportunity to hate on Steam. As was already mentioned, this is nothing more than a scam by some retailer and now everyone is pulling out their shotguns and aiming for Valve...
Does Valve have the right to sell their product at regionally appropriate prices? Hell yeah. Do they have the right to lock the Orange Box to a certain country? That is debatable especially since only two countries are affected by this. If anyone should be called out for this, it should be the scammers who failed to inform their buyers that you're buying something which you basically can't use (unless you decide to move to Thailand soon).
My point is, give Valve a break. Steam is a revolutionary service IMO and it's absolutely great despite a few hiccups here and there. It gives smaller developers a shot at superstardom and offers new and old games for less than retail prices. I for one think Valve is doing a great job...... I feel lonely!
Slashdot Mirror
I haven't commented in a long time, but the reporting on this subject is heavily biased to support the pre-determined conclusion that the manuscript predates Mohammed (pbuh). The Daily Mail is guilty of this (shock! horror!) and so is the summary with its strategic "typo".
From the Mail article, Carbon dating places the manuscript between 568 and 645AD, while Mohammed is thought to have lived between 570 and 632AD. Most intelligent persons would take a quick glance at those dates and be able to dismiss the headlines outright. The range on the dating is nowhere near precise enough to make such a bold statement which is obviously meant to be inflammatory.
Also, as others have rightly stated, the dating is for the parchment, not the ink itself. It is perfectly possible for the parchment to have been produced and not been used for a length of time. Writing paraphernalia was extremely precious at that time; they may have been saved for something important.
Finally, while it is correct that the FULL Quran was not compiled in written form until after the prophet's death, and was primarily stored in memory of the followers, that does not preclude writing completely! The discovered script contains only a couple of chapters, and is not a complete version.
tl;dr: inaccurate and sensationalist headline and reporting on results which may actually point to the opposite.
The video does not show any auto-driving. It seems like they were trying to demonstrate an auto-brake accident avoidance feature.
Basically, the driver (appearing to be fully in control the whole time) reversed the car and then gunned it, aiming at the pedestrians. I'm guessing the expectation was that auto-brake would kick in before ploughing into the bystanders.
This was a boneheaded move on part of the driver and the idiots who agreed to basically be crash test dummies. Fifth Gear tested auto-braking with a sophisticated dummy car, and it didn't always work reliably (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?...).
Just to reiterate, this was not any kind of auto-driving failure.
Ok, so what? The shuttle goes fast and far, doesn't mean there cannot be a reusable orbital craft. Not to mention that 99.99999% of the 'far' is spent in almost no stress drifting around. It's nearly meaningless, even though it sounds impressive to the uneducated.
It's not exactly no stress. The shuttle's interior is pressurized while it's in a vacuum. Pressure = stress. It's tremendously critical that everything is absolutely airtight. While I agree that liftoff/re-entry are probably the most stressful parts of the mission, I think you are taking credit away from the amazing engineering that goes into the shuttle. Even if it is just "drifting around".
Your analogy doesn't apply here. ISPs do in fact charge you more when you want to use more bandwidth (analogous to your bigger car).
In this case what's happening is (in a car analogy no less) that some new theme park opens which is very popular (YouTube), so more people start driving their cars on government owned roads to visit it (ISP pipes). The government is making the visitors (ISP clients) pay tolls to use the road (bandwidth), but now also wants to make the theme park owner (Google) pay for being so popular that many people want to visit them! Which is a bullshit argument since if the theme park wasn't there, no one would use the road to get to it which would mean no revenue for the government.
These greedy ISPs just want to profit off of Google's success.
Although it's an important discovery, the real importance lies on finding water on objects that we may one day need to live on. We're never going to set up facilities on an asteroid. But on a moon we certainly could, and finding water ice there would be significantly more revelatory.
By that logic, Galileo and other early astronomers who sought to explore space and discover distant planets were wasting their time. Since at that point in history getting into space was barely conceivable.
Exploration for the sake of exploration may seem pointless to you now, but knowledge about our universe is beneficial to the human race.
Amazon should not have caved to this ridiculous request. The final choice is with consumers, who should refuse to buy any book that they can't run through text-to-speech or any other device that enables them to use their purchase.
While I agree that Amazon should have told these guys to go fuck themselves, what they have actually done is a brilliant "carrot and stick" maneuver that will ultimately get them what they want:
1. Amazon gives in to the Guild's demand (the carrot), and will conveniently label those books on their site which prohibit TTS.
2. People who think the Authors Guild is a bunch of dicks can boycott the clearly-marked titles and purchase others.
3. Sales of TTS-prohibited books plummet (the stick).
4. Authors Guild realizes that their greed has actually cost them money, and reverses their decision.
.
.
.
5. Profit!
~Philly
There I corrected that for you.
Ok now this is seriously annoying. If they claim they can use my content while I am a member then that's probably acceptable since you can choose to deactivate your account at any time. But forever? I mean this probably won't affect most users but how about people who'd like to showcase their artwork/photography or something to their friends and family? They can just take it and use it for commercial purposes without consent and if you currently have them on their servers you have no chance of opting out? I'm wondering if they gave any warning about this change, but since I'm a relatively active Facebook user and haven't noticed anything I doubt it. The shame is that most people won't even have a clue about this.
Oh, so you want me to pay you $5 for something that will self destruct in two days? Sure I'd be glad to... NOT! Who the hell came up with such a stupid idea? Why on earth would I buy this piece of crap when I can rent a DVD for less than that? This shouldn't even be legal and if it is then humanity is more screwed up than I thought.
I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure that forging a signature onto a high resolution scan of a document is even easier than doing so on a fax given an authentic signed document.
Well that's just fabulous. Microsoft are basically telling their customers that in a few months your music is precariously balanced on the edge of not playing. How about unlocking all the music and getting over your failure of a music store huh?
Whoever approves articles is at least supposed to read the front page don't you think? The article quoted isn't even from a different source, its the exact same BBC link.
To those who are talking about how 2.6 mil is nothing to a pizza chain I ask: How are you going to get the public aware of the fact that pizza.com even exists? Personally, if I wanted pizza I'd type dominospizza.com or pizzahut.com as a first guess at anything pizza related online. Even as a computer literate person I can draw from experience that most generic domain names are link farms and still not go to pizza.com. Maybe the pizza stores have to advertise their new site on tv for another 2..... oh wait
I've been using Facebook for a couple of months now but I had no idea that there is no way to permanently erase my info from their servers. Even if there wasn't a delete button, a simple e-mail with a polite request for deletion should be enough. Apparently someone is hearing the outcry; this is a quote from the group mentioned in the article:
"The Chief Privacy Officer for Facebook, Chris Kelly, was a speaker at a Privacy and Security Conference last week in Victoria (BC). Someone in the audience ask him about this and he mentioned that facebook was working on some kind of "nuke me" button (basically will erase each and every entry ever created by your account and all your account information) that will address all these concerns and that should be available sometime during this year. Let's hope they fulfill their promises."
This "nuke me" button should have been there all along, but at least they're working on it.NASA wants a name that will capture the excitement of GLAST's mission and call attention to gamma-ray and high-energy astronomy
I don't think that this topic will ever be exciting. NASA is doing PR work to get more public support and as a result, more funding. If they do want support, show the public some amazing images of what this thing can capture, then the public will be interested. It's sad that NASA has to do this instead of focusing on the science.Then they should take as a lesson and improve their site.
Product information -including price- is most likely manually entered into their database. Why do you think Amazon should swallow thousands of dollars worth of losses over a typo?
No, THEY MADE A MISTAKE. Nothing wrong about it, and the converse is equally true: if you buy a cd set from Amazon priced at $400 when another site has it priced at $30, it's your own damn fault for not checking the price.
Wow, is the idea of screwing the corporations so tempting to you that any shred of morals is lost? I don't think you would be saying what you are saying if any of this involved your money now would you?
And while we're on the subject of right and wrong, Ms. Manners, what about the retailer trying to sweep their mistake under the rug instead of manning up and admitting their mistake?
I'm afraid I can't disagree with you there, that is exactly what they should do.
Yahoo is resisting, but they are just delaying the inevitable if you ask me. Microsoft has this crazy fixation on beating Google that isn't going to end anytime soon. It would serve them better if they just focus on their core business more; $46,000,000,000 would pay for a lot of R&D.
Daddy's little girl can then go into the doctor's office and say: "I want to look like Britney Spears/Paris Hilton/whatever the slutty starlet flavor of the month is!" A vault of casts from different star's bodies is opened, and they stuff the parts into our victi.. err patient's already over sized abdomen. Then they tear off her body parts one by one and replace them with the "improved" versions. Everyone will end up looking like Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. Wait, is that why... oh crap! Ridiculously impossible ideas aside, this is great news, seriously. No no don't worry, I wouldn't want to look like Tom Cruise either.
It continues to surprise me that some people will jump on every possible opportunity to hate on Steam. As was already mentioned, this is nothing more than a scam by some retailer and now everyone is pulling out their shotguns and aiming for Valve...
Does Valve have the right to sell their product at regionally appropriate prices? Hell yeah. Do they have the right to lock the Orange Box to a certain country? That is debatable especially since only two countries are affected by this. If anyone should be called out for this, it should be the scammers who failed to inform their buyers that you're buying something which you basically can't use (unless you decide to move to Thailand soon).
My point is, give Valve a break. Steam is a revolutionary service IMO and it's absolutely great despite a few hiccups here and there. It gives smaller developers a shot at superstardom and offers new and old games for less than retail prices. I for one think Valve is doing a great job...... I feel lonely!