If I had to pick a side - and I think it's becoming apparent that we do - then I'd...
It's not at all obvious to me that we need to "pick sides". Why does this issue have to polarized?
Frankly the presumption that every issue has to be dual and polarized is corrosive to intelligent discourse and useful politics at all scales (from software projects to running of countries). For just about any issue, there is a broad spectrum of opinions, with a fairly wide swath I consider to be "reasonable"... and rarely do I consider either extreme to be the most appropriate stance.
For what it's worth, I do agree that Stallman is consistent and correctly predicted many issues of software freedom. You're right that this should cause us to take his warning and opinions seriously. I often agree with his stances, and as such (for instance) use free software wherever possible. But I allow for more frequent pragmatism that Stallman would stand for. Just because he's right on many issues doesn't mean we have to accept all his opinions. And even if we agree with his overall arguments, that doesn't mean we agree with all his suggested methods and actions.
My only point here is that we should not fall into the trap of turning this into an "us vs. them" battle, where you have to pick a champion for your cause. I, personally, am going to make choices about what software to use, advocate for, and so on... based on my own interpretation/evaluation of the importance of software freedom and related issues.
So it transports matter well, I get that (humans and objects can move through), but what about air? Couldn't they just open the new gate to any planet with a good atmosphere and just top up the ship with breathable air?
Assuming this show follows the cannon established in other Stargate shows... The stargates were designed very specifically for inter-planetary travel (they are not just open wormholes but rather the active devices). Gates are one-way. The originating gate lets matter travel to the remote gate, but you can't travel back without closing the connection and opening a new one. But, furthermore, the gates do not allow the latent atmosphere to leak through the gate (e.g. in some episodes where they gate to/from water or the vacuum of space). In some way the gates can differentiate between latent objects in the environment and things that are actively trying to go through the gate (remember these are devices built by the Ancients for exactly this purpose). (I guess this explains why the gates usually disengage shortly after the last person walks through... since there is no activity around the source gate anymore, it closes the connection.)
Also worth noting is that stepping through a stargate does not mean stepping through a magic wall that you span. For instance if you put just your arm through, it is not yet coming out of the gate on the other side. Instead only once you've completely stepped through (and been dematerialized) are you transported to the other side, reformed, and step out. The stargates in fact contain internal "buffers" where matter is accumulated before being sent through the wormhole. For instance in the episode where the small "puddle jumper" ship got stuck was it was flying through the gate, the ship wasn't sticking out from the destination gate.
In other words, the Stargate series has gone into considerable detail about how the gates work. They have been remarkably consistent with the details, and I certainly hope that this series lives up to that standard. So far, they have not contradicted anything we know about established alien technology in the Stargate universe.
Re:Troubleshooting skills.
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Stargate Universe
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· Score: 4, Informative
I'll have to rewatch it to be sure, but my recollection is that the "safety mechanism" prevented the door from being propped-open (they said "like an elevator")... I don't think they said it had to be a person pressing the button.
On the other hand we know from previous shows that Ancient technology seems to check "who" is pressing buttons. Many pieces of tech require the "Ancient gene" specifically, but it's not too far-fetched to suggest that various controls have to be pressed by an actual person (to prevent, for instance, random pieces of debris pressing important buttons).
At a minimum, it would have been nice for them to mention this possible solution. One of the most amazing things about the Stargate series is how for most problems, they will discuss/try a wide variety of solutions before finally finding the right one. In this sense it's much more like real engineering/science... which is satisfying.
Yes, the purpose of courts is to rule in those gray-areas. However some laws (or proposed laws) are more ambiguous than others. In the case of photo-alteration, there is a wide and continuous spectrum, and I have a hard time seeing where the line would be drawn. (Or, just as bad, an end result where every photo has the disclaimer, "just in case".)
For instance, one might consider that doing a simple color-adjustment (which is necessary for any photo, really) shouldn't be covered under this law... and yet creative use of levels can certainly make models look artificially good (e.g. by hiding blemishes and other skintone variations). Airbrushing seems like an obvious candidate for "is model alteration"... but some forms of airbrushing and photo-manipulation are neutral (e.g. changing the color of a piece of clothing). Having the law try to specify "only in cases where you're trying to make the model look artificially good" is hard to define unambiguously.
I also wonder to what extent this will apply to the photography itself. There are plenty of lighting and camera tricks used to make models look better. In an extreme case I could imagine photographers using lenses that alter aspect ratio (making models look thinner), or photographing the model in front of a non-planar mirror. Would they be able to side-step the law if the photos were not altered after the fact? Of course you could broaden the law to include manipulation during the photoshoot itself, but again it's hard to imagine a photoshoot that doesn't involve manipulation (makeup, clothing, choice of lighting, camera lens, shutter speed, shooting angle, etc. are all designed to make the model look good).
Certainly courts could make decisions on all of the above. But it seems like it would be very difficult for agencies to decide whether they were crossing the line or not. What I'm getting at is that requiring a blanket "this photo has been engineered to make the model look artificially good" on every single photograph doesn't do much to help the public. Awareness campaigns could achieve the same effect by reminding people that *all* photographs (especially professional shoots in ads, magazines, etc.) are inherently manipulative and not representative of reality.
Pardon my ignorance, but why would a smartphone have to be classified as a "medical device" in order to be covered under a health insurance? Obviously policies can be arbitrarily detailed and include various restrictions... But it seems like any sensible policy (ha!) would include allowances for expenses relevant to your condition but not explicitly "medical". Like offsetting transportation costs for persons with limited mobility or a better bed for a person with a particular back condition. Does the taxi or bed have to get some special medical certification to be covered?
I would think the limiting factor should be getting a doctor's diagnosis. If a doctor signs-off, and says "person X has condition Y" and the policy covers condition Y, then anything that does the job of helping with condition Y should be fair game. Random people can't try to claim their smartphone as an health expense: only people with conditions that the smartphone helps alleviate.
(Of course, I'm being hopelessly naive about how health insurance works. You can tell I grew up in a country with universal healthcare.)
Well having a somewhat small "close" button is reasonable in the sense that it is a UI element that is less frequently used and which you don't want users to click accidentally (for many programs such a mistake is irreversible or at least annoying).
By comparison, site navigation elements should certainly be big and easy to click on, since users will need to click on them very frequently, and there is very little cost associated with a mis-click (just use the back button and you're fine).
By the way, you (and other powerusers like you) may be interested in checking-out Auto-Pager. It's a Firefox add-on that automatically loads the next page, inline, when you scroll down on a page. So instead of clicking ">>", the next page just appears. It has definitions for lots of sites (search engines, news sites, forums, etc.) and makes reading long lists of entries much faster and smoother.
Despite what the articles says, I think projection is still just a big of a challenge as capture. Firstly, consumer acceptance will remain low as long as you need to wear silly glasses. Second, there are some neat technologies in development for capture.
The article points out the most obvious way to do capture: use two independent cameras. However I recently found out about efforts to build "single-lens 3D" cameras. One example of a company working on this is I See 3D (disclosure: I'm indirectly a small-time investor). The idea is to use special high-speed shutters inside the camera (intersecting the optical path) to select left-biased or right-biased imaging. The advantage is that it is much cheaper, since you only need a single sequence of lenses, and only a single detector. This also means that it should be possible to rather cheaply build this into existing manufacturing lines. And a 3D camera of this sort could revert to 2D mode quite easily. A drawback of this type of system is that you can't alter the effective distance between the left- and right- viewing angles (which could be a big deal, depending on distance to subject and the zoom you want to use).
I think such technologies are in particular interesting because they have the chance of being integrated into consumer devices in the near term. I think 3D will really "take off" when people can actually capture 3D with their cell phones and digital cameras. Once people are able to make their own 3D home movies, they will be much more inclined to invest in 3D TVs, players, and so on.
I assume you speak of the successor to my n810? I do enjoy having a full Linux system on my PDA, runs the apps I want etc. HOWEVER! Its is NOT a phone.
FYI, the N900 is a smartphone (an upcoming smartphone, mind you). It is designed much like the N800/N810, and runs Maemo (and can be used as an Internet tablet), but it is also a full-featured cell-phone. More information: official site, Wikipedia, Slashdot story and follow-up.
Does your bank grab control of the contents of safety deposit boxes and then profit from that control?
I'm pretty sure they would if it were not for the legal infrastructure and enforcement currently in place.
For instance, banks routinely make it inconvenient (though not impossible--that would be illegal) to move your money to other banks (procedures, fees, etc.). If they could suddenly make more money by taking control of all of their client's safety deposit boxes (including loss of reputation, etc.) they would do it. Current laws make such a move not "worth it", however.
In the case of cloud computing, there are no laws preventing them from forcing lock-in on their customers or otherwise duping them (other than generic anti-fraud laws). I'm not claiming that we need laws to protect cloud computing customers. I'm merely pointing out that those customers have every reason to not trust the vendors.
In other words, when a customer is trying to calculate the cost/benefit of using a particular solution (e.g. cloud computing vs. local), they absolutely need to take into account the negative of a cloud computing vendor "screwing them over" (e.g. making it difficult or impossible or costly to migrate data).
That's a very good point. And it's not just academic.
I think most courts would contend that any reasonable person would know that the files being offered through links on Pirate Bay are not sanctioned. Conversely any reasonable person would agree that files being offered for purchase through iTunes are sanctioned. But there is a wide middle-ground. YouTube now has so many officially-sponsored channels and deals that it's hard to know, when you watch something, whether it was posted officially or not. In fact there are even a few cases of takedown notices being sent against legitimate postings (the legal branch of some consortium sends a notice to a band's official YouTube channel, for instance). If you search for various TV shows, you'll find a range of sites offering to stream them for "free" (with ads), ranging from Hulu to sites in foreign languages I can't read. How is the consumer supposed to know which ones have licenses and which ones don't? And then there are sites like allofmp3, which are also ambiguous.
It seems really dangerous to criminalize a behavior when it can be so difficult (impossible, really) to know whether or not you're in strict violation of the law. Which is why it makes much more sense to focus on unlicensed distributors, and not on downloaders.
Re:Wake me when they have something in production.
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New Nano-Laser Created
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· Score: 1
I see about three revolutionary breakthroughs per day, three of which never go anywhere because of cost or something.
You're saying that no fundamental breakthroughs ever "go anywhere", which is patently false. The amazing array of technology around us (from computers to MRIs to satellites to medical drugs) can be traced back to fundamental research breakthroughs.
I will grant you that the majority of breakthroughs do not directly translate into a particular product. But that's the nature of research: we have to study a wide-variety of things to find those that are really significant for technology. Moreover just by pushing the boundaries of what we know and what can be done, we inevitably improve technology (e.g. particle physicists built better magnets for accelerators, which wound up making MRI possible/better...).
This reminds me of those "water on mars," articles -- we've been "getting new compelling evidence for water on mars" for decades.
Yes, science is mostly incremental. It requires repeated testing, the accumulation of evidence from different sources, and so on. What's wrong with that?
I've started to lose interest. I'll be excited when it finally goes somewhere. Really, what gets my blood pumping is what I can see coming down the pipe
Ok. So you like new products but don't care so much about the details of the research that goes into making all that happen. That's cool. But your implication (by posting a "Wake me up..." comment in a discussion about fundamental research) is that such things are just not interesting or relevant. There are many of us who disagree: we like fundamental science, we find the interim steps in research quite interesting, we like being aware of cool technologies years before they are commercialized, and so on.
If all you care about are the final specs of the latest tech, then you can certainly ignore all those boring science articles.
Yes, this is true. Information is slippery: it's easy to copy and hard to contain.
This is why a non-encrypted, non-authenticated short sequence of digits that you give out to many different companies is a terrible thing to use as a secret access code for financial-identity verification.
The fact that companies want your SSN, use it as an identifier, and store it indefinitely is bad. But the really bad part is that the SSN has so much power in the first place. At this point the SSN should just be downgraded to the status of an identifier or unique customer number, without it having any power to, say, open an account. (Other, proper means of identification should instead be required for such things.)
Cute. But actually the paper is more about the probability of forming jams, not about getting rid of jams once they've already formed.
The conclusion is more like: Though traffic rules are designed to lead to orderly flows, the lowest jamming rate (under certain conditions) actually occurs when some fraction of participants ignore the rules.
(As a side note, it's a bit of a pet-peeve of mine when people make fun of studies by saying "That conclusion is so obvious! What a waste of time!" Common sense, hunches, and gut feelings are often wrong, which is why we do rigorous research to get at the right answers. And even if the general conclusion is obvious (in hindsight, mind you), rigorous research means that we can say something about error bars and make specific statements about applicability and predictability of models.)
Okay. This is "better" in the sense that it is not Facebook itself exploiting user pictures. But it's still bothersome on some level. In particular it's bothersome that Facebook's default privacy rules make this possible. It seems that enabling an application gives that application near-limitless access to a person's account. It's all well and good that Facebook's policies forbid this, and that they've retroactively done something about it. But why was the access there in the first place?
I do think users need to take some responsibility. They should be more careful about the text and photos they upload to some company's servers, and the applications they enable. But still it seems that Facebook is way too permissive with privacy and security settings, and that they are continually pushing the boundaries of what's acceptable with respect to advertising. For instance, why is it that when you go: SETTINGS > PRIVACY SETTINGS > NEWS FEEDS AND WALL, the "Appearance in Facebook Ads" is by default enabled. You need to manually turn it off. Yes it's up to users to manage their privacy settings, but having users continually being opted-in to these kinds of things (without any particular announcement, that I'm aware of) smacks of "let's see what we can get away with--and apologize only if we have to...".
Microsoft just needs to pull out of the EU and say "Piss off"
Why on Earth would Microsoft do that? To prove a point? Because Microsoft is prideful? Because the EU hurt Microsoft's feelings?
If they "pull out" two things could happen: either the EU would switch to alternatives (OpenOffice, Mac, Linux, etc.) or they would just make a decree to the effect of "corporations that refuse to follow our laws are not subject to copyright protections" and use MS products without paying license fees. Both of those outcomes bring no money to Microsoft.
All Microsoft (and, indeed, any business) cares about is money. They would only "pull out" if the fines being imposed were greater than the profits they make in the EU. Given the size of the EU market, that isn't likely. Evidently, Microsoft has decided that it is cheaper to provide browser options in their OS than it is to deal with noncompliance fines or shipping delays.
It's about the money. "Pulling out" is ridiculous and I don't know why people keep suggesting it, as if it were a credible threat.
The scheme I've been thinking about* for fixing the patent system involves the patent being reviewed by two examiners: one who is trying to get the patent denied, and a standard examiner. It's like a mini court case: the applicants are arguing for their case, the "con" examiner is arguing against their case, and a (more senior) patent examiner judges between the two.
1.Patent application is submitted to patent office, with a non-trivial (but not enormous) fee. This fee keeps the useless applications to a minimum.
2. The "con" examiner looks over the application, and lists all the reasons he can think of why it should be denied. E.g. if it's too obvious. He does some searches for prior art both in the patent database and elsewhere (the Internet, journals, etc.). He puts his "this should be denied" case together and submits it.
3. The applicants see the "this should be denied" reasons. They have the option to withdraw their application, if they agree with the "con" examiner. Thus if they are made aware of prior art they had not otherwise known about, they can withdraw. Maybe they get half their application fee back. The other half goes to the "con" examiner as a bonus (this encourages them to do proper searches for prior art, etc.).
4. If the applicants disagree with the "con" examiner, they can push their application into the next round. In this round a more senior patent examiner looks over the patent, and compares what they are claiming with the evidence the "con" examiner managed to put together. He can then either grant or reject the application, without any refund of the application fee.
The point here is that the patent office makes the same amount of money whether they accept or reject the final application. And the "con" examiner has a financial incentive to put together a strong case against the patent. Moreover, this system prevents any applicant from claiming "I didn't know about that prior art!" either during the application process or in later patent court cases: because they were provided with a detailed summary of possible prior art. Of course if the "con" examiner can't find any reasonable rejection reasons, that's great: this can strengthen the patent holder's case for the application and any subsequent court cases.
By forcing the applicants to read and sign-off on a document detailing possible problems with their patent, they can't claim ignorance; there is a paper trail showing that they were made aware. This could be very nicely be combined with stiffer legal penalties for frivolous patents, at least in cases where they chose to willfully ignore the recommendations of the "con" examiner.
[*Like any scheme, there are plenty of problems (some of which have solutions that I didn't have time to get in to). Feel free to point them out. And yes, I'm well-aware that the primary problem is "reform is nearly impossible, this idea will never be implemented by the powers-that-be."]
Re:Obligatory car analogy
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P.I.I. In the Sky
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I fully agree that name/birthday/SSN are "more important" PII than, say, a phone number. But the reason PII is defined more broadly is that the dangers are broad. The dangers are not only due to being accused of a crime or sued. Or identity theft.
For instance, if a medical record were leaked that said "John Smith, DOB: 01-05-1970 has lung cancer" that would be bad because it includes personally-identifying information, so everyone knows Mr.Smith's personal medical information. But a leaked medical record that said "person with phone number 260-555-1234 has lung cancer" isn't much better. Sure phone numbers don't match 1:1 to people, but the 2nd example I gave of leaked information would be just as damaging, to the person, as the first, since the phone number reveals the identity of the person. Not uniquely, perhaps, but close enough for it to be a problem (close enough for someone unscrupulous to do damage, unfairly discriminate, use for identity theft, damage reputation, etc.).
Again, this is why PII has to be defined fairly broadly: because a combination of even fairly innocuous data (even something quasi-public, like your phone number) with more sensitive data can be damaging. The extent to which these arguments apply also to IP addresses (which are, generally, not listed) is debatable.
But Wikimedia's position is equally valid. The images are public domain (in the US) and they are trying to distribute them as widely as possible.
So, unless you're suggesting the US change its law to accommodate to UK, your counterargument amounts to "Wikimedia should just be nice and back off so that the museums can keep this revenue stream, which supports their useful work." But this argument has many problems: (1) If it's just based on "being nice", even if Wikimedia backs off, someone else can just (legally) go ahead and do it instead (and it could be a non-profit or some US corporation...); (2) What makes museums special? Should we also "be nice" to companies and not distribute public domain works that are related to them, because then their profits would be reduced? (3) If the whole argument is based on "being nice" then instead of asking Wikimedia to be nice and back off, why not just argue that people should be nice and donate to the museums more? Why is one kind of "just be nice!" more valid than another?
On the other hand, perhaps you are suggesting that reproductions of public domain works should themselves be subject to copyright, as they apparently are in the UK. I disagree with this because it becomes yet another way to skew the copyright balance in favor of the copyright holders. Could Disney arbitrarily re-extend the copyright to their movies by making a copy of their copies? If so, in what sense do copyright terms mean anything at all anymore? At some point how can we even tell the difference between "which copy" this is, and how long the term is. Even with respect to physical objects, can the museum just take new photographs of the paintings in 70 years, and thus reset the copyright on those reproductions? Again if we have a JPEG of the 2008 digital photo and a JPEG of the 2108 digital photo, how do we sensibly know which one is still under copyright? Or are we just supposed to abandon that whole "public domain" thing and accept that art in the modern age is forever commercial and never cultural?
I understand the appeal to our "be nice" natures by saying that someone has to pay for digitization. We all benefit from such efforts. But in my opinion this should then mean an appeal to the public (by museums or Wikimedia or whoever) for the funds necessary to preserve the art. It should not mean restrictive laws. If you are really convinced that the public supports art preservation but won't bother spending money for it without a law... then argue for a law that sends tax dollars to art preservation (with results being in public domain). The total burden on society on that case will be lower, since at least corporations won't be able to extend copyrights forever.
The Firefox Add-on AutoPager is your friend: automatically loads the next page inline as you scroll downwards. Turns multi-page sites into the single page they are supposed to be. Works great with many popular pages, including search results... and idiotic news sites.
Why not just put up a poll asking if users should be able to upload random pictures on the internet that don't have a clear copyright assignment on them? What a fucking joke.
And yet, despite the process being "a fucking joke", the community does not allow the upload of random pictures on the internet that they don't have a clear copyright assignment for. In fact, with respect to photographs of public-domain art, the community appears to have voted that only simple reproduction-style photographs of 2-dimensional artwork are presumptively acceptable, since photography of 3-dimensional art would necessary include creative elements (framing, lighting).
You may disagree with the result of their debate and consensus in this (and other) cases, but pretending that Wikimedia's self-policing is "a joke" and that they allow themselves any and all liberties is frankly ridiculous. A large number of Wikipedia pages have those "Have a free picture? Upload it." boxes precisely because they are quite strict about the requirement for images used on their pages.
The process is not difficult for one or two photos, but would be prohibitive for many photos. Moreover it is unlikely they would grant permission for so many photos to be used elsewhere, as demonstrated by the fact that they are threatening to sue over this issue.
Common courtesy is important. On the other hand, the real question is whether the user has "the right" to do this even if they object (legally and morally). I can't comment on the legality (IANAL), but I don't see any ethical problem with distributing simple reproduction-style pictures of public-domain art. As such, I think the user had/has the freedom to upload them elsewhere. And freedom stops being freedom if you need to ask permission to exercise it. Yes, it would be "nice" to ask permission and refrain if they don't like it... but on the other hand it's not immoral to ignore their feelings and exercise your freedoms.
Taken to the extreme, the "common courtesy" argument becomes banal. A store may request that I never do business with their competitors, and I guess it would be "nice" of me to comply with their request. But ultimately their request has no legal nor moral backing. As such I can and will continue to exercise my freedoms and do business with competitors. That's the power of freedom.
I don't think the pillars are acting as antennas in the way you're thinking. It's simpler than that. The pillars are just providing a higher surface area of interface between the light-absorbing material and the conducting material, and creating a shorter path for the electron-hole-pairs (EHP) to reach their respective conducting materials. Basically one of the main limitations in photovoltaics of this type is the short lifetime of the EHP before it recombines... having the pillars penetrate into the absorbing layers means the EHP have a shorter path to travel. From the paper:
Conventional thin-film photovoltaics rely on the optical generation and separation of electron-hole pairs (EHPs) with an internal electric field, as shown in Fig. 1a. Among different factors, the absorption efficiency of
the material and the minority carrier lifetime often determine the energy conversion efficiency15. In this regard, simulation studies have previously shown the advantages of three-dimensional (3D) cell structures, such as those using coaxially doped vertical nanopillar arrays, in improving the photocarrier separation and collection by orthogonalizing the direction of light absorption and EHPs separation (Fig. 1b)16.
Later in the paper they discuss the light-absorbing properties of these kinds of pillar arrays:
In addition, 3D nanopillar or nanowire arrays, similar to the ones used in this work, have been demonstrated in the past to exhibit unique optical absorption properties13,18. Similarly, we have observed reduced reflectivity from CdS nanopillar arrays especially when the inter-pillar distance is small (see Supplementary Fig. S6). This observation suggests that 3D nanopillar-based cell modules can potentially improve the light absorption while enhancing the carrier collection.
We found that, in comparison to thin films, nanowire array based solar cells have an intrinsic antireflection effect that increases absorption in short wavelength range.
Essentially the nanowire arrays are acting as anti-reflection coatings and allowing the light to instead be absorbed.
Their device uses a cadmium telluride (CdTe) active layer. Actually the tellurium is the limiting factor since it is even rarer than cadmium. Of course that could change depending on the economics of exploitation and what new sources are discovered. Whether Cd or Te is the limiting factor, devices based on CdTe (including the one in the scientific article) use a CdTe layer only 1 micrometer thick. So a metric ton of raw material would be enough for roughly 171,000 m^2 of solar cells. This gives us 1 GW of power per 66 metric tons. Not great, perhaps, but probably good enough to justify manufacture and distribution.
Moreover, I don't understand the pessimism of:
Leave it to engineers not to consider the ugly realities of supply-and-demand economics.
How else do we consider these ugly realities if not to study available materials, test the limits of what works and what doesn't, build prototypes, publish results, and work towards commercialization... ? Other materials may eventually be used in real devices (either after a period of using the relatively rare Cd and Te, or perhaps well in anticipation of those supply problems). Even if the device, as presented, doesn't mesh up with the realities of current supply-and-demand, it is part of the process of getting from a problem ('we need energy') to economically-viable solutions.
Slashdot Mirror
If I had to pick a side - and I think it's becoming apparent that we do - then I'd...
It's not at all obvious to me that we need to "pick sides". Why does this issue have to polarized?
Frankly the presumption that every issue has to be dual and polarized is corrosive to intelligent discourse and useful politics at all scales (from software projects to running of countries). For just about any issue, there is a broad spectrum of opinions, with a fairly wide swath I consider to be "reasonable"... and rarely do I consider either extreme to be the most appropriate stance.
For what it's worth, I do agree that Stallman is consistent and correctly predicted many issues of software freedom. You're right that this should cause us to take his warning and opinions seriously. I often agree with his stances, and as such (for instance) use free software wherever possible. But I allow for more frequent pragmatism that Stallman would stand for. Just because he's right on many issues doesn't mean we have to accept all his opinions. And even if we agree with his overall arguments, that doesn't mean we agree with all his suggested methods and actions.
My only point here is that we should not fall into the trap of turning this into an "us vs. them" battle, where you have to pick a champion for your cause. I, personally, am going to make choices about what software to use, advocate for, and so on... based on my own interpretation/evaluation of the importance of software freedom and related issues.
So it transports matter well, I get that (humans and objects can move through), but what about air? Couldn't they just open the new gate to any planet with a good atmosphere and just top up the ship with breathable air?
Assuming this show follows the cannon established in other Stargate shows... The stargates were designed very specifically for inter-planetary travel (they are not just open wormholes but rather the active devices). Gates are one-way. The originating gate lets matter travel to the remote gate, but you can't travel back without closing the connection and opening a new one. But, furthermore, the gates do not allow the latent atmosphere to leak through the gate (e.g. in some episodes where they gate to/from water or the vacuum of space). In some way the gates can differentiate between latent objects in the environment and things that are actively trying to go through the gate (remember these are devices built by the Ancients for exactly this purpose). (I guess this explains why the gates usually disengage shortly after the last person walks through... since there is no activity around the source gate anymore, it closes the connection.)
Also worth noting is that stepping through a stargate does not mean stepping through a magic wall that you span. For instance if you put just your arm through, it is not yet coming out of the gate on the other side. Instead only once you've completely stepped through (and been dematerialized) are you transported to the other side, reformed, and step out. The stargates in fact contain internal "buffers" where matter is accumulated before being sent through the wormhole. For instance in the episode where the small "puddle jumper" ship got stuck was it was flying through the gate, the ship wasn't sticking out from the destination gate.
In other words, the Stargate series has gone into considerable detail about how the gates work. They have been remarkably consistent with the details, and I certainly hope that this series lives up to that standard. So far, they have not contradicted anything we know about established alien technology in the Stargate universe.
I'll have to rewatch it to be sure, but my recollection is that the "safety mechanism" prevented the door from being propped-open (they said "like an elevator")... I don't think they said it had to be a person pressing the button.
On the other hand we know from previous shows that Ancient technology seems to check "who" is pressing buttons. Many pieces of tech require the "Ancient gene" specifically, but it's not too far-fetched to suggest that various controls have to be pressed by an actual person (to prevent, for instance, random pieces of debris pressing important buttons).
At a minimum, it would have been nice for them to mention this possible solution. One of the most amazing things about the Stargate series is how for most problems, they will discuss/try a wide variety of solutions before finally finding the right one. In this sense it's much more like real engineering/science... which is satisfying.
Yes, the purpose of courts is to rule in those gray-areas. However some laws (or proposed laws) are more ambiguous than others. In the case of photo-alteration, there is a wide and continuous spectrum, and I have a hard time seeing where the line would be drawn. (Or, just as bad, an end result where every photo has the disclaimer, "just in case".)
For instance, one might consider that doing a simple color-adjustment (which is necessary for any photo, really) shouldn't be covered under this law... and yet creative use of levels can certainly make models look artificially good (e.g. by hiding blemishes and other skintone variations). Airbrushing seems like an obvious candidate for "is model alteration"... but some forms of airbrushing and photo-manipulation are neutral (e.g. changing the color of a piece of clothing). Having the law try to specify "only in cases where you're trying to make the model look artificially good" is hard to define unambiguously.
I also wonder to what extent this will apply to the photography itself. There are plenty of lighting and camera tricks used to make models look better. In an extreme case I could imagine photographers using lenses that alter aspect ratio (making models look thinner), or photographing the model in front of a non-planar mirror. Would they be able to side-step the law if the photos were not altered after the fact? Of course you could broaden the law to include manipulation during the photoshoot itself, but again it's hard to imagine a photoshoot that doesn't involve manipulation (makeup, clothing, choice of lighting, camera lens, shutter speed, shooting angle, etc. are all designed to make the model look good).
Certainly courts could make decisions on all of the above. But it seems like it would be very difficult for agencies to decide whether they were crossing the line or not. What I'm getting at is that requiring a blanket "this photo has been engineered to make the model look artificially good" on every single photograph doesn't do much to help the public. Awareness campaigns could achieve the same effect by reminding people that *all* photographs (especially professional shoots in ads, magazines, etc.) are inherently manipulative and not representative of reality.
Pardon my ignorance, but why would a smartphone have to be classified as a "medical device" in order to be covered under a health insurance? Obviously policies can be arbitrarily detailed and include various restrictions... But it seems like any sensible policy (ha!) would include allowances for expenses relevant to your condition but not explicitly "medical". Like offsetting transportation costs for persons with limited mobility or a better bed for a person with a particular back condition. Does the taxi or bed have to get some special medical certification to be covered?
I would think the limiting factor should be getting a doctor's diagnosis. If a doctor signs-off, and says "person X has condition Y" and the policy covers condition Y, then anything that does the job of helping with condition Y should be fair game. Random people can't try to claim their smartphone as an health expense: only people with conditions that the smartphone helps alleviate.
(Of course, I'm being hopelessly naive about how health insurance works. You can tell I grew up in a country with universal healthcare.)
Well having a somewhat small "close" button is reasonable in the sense that it is a UI element that is less frequently used and which you don't want users to click accidentally (for many programs such a mistake is irreversible or at least annoying).
By comparison, site navigation elements should certainly be big and easy to click on, since users will need to click on them very frequently, and there is very little cost associated with a mis-click (just use the back button and you're fine).
By the way, you (and other powerusers like you) may be interested in checking-out Auto-Pager. It's a Firefox add-on that automatically loads the next page, inline, when you scroll down on a page. So instead of clicking ">>", the next page just appears. It has definitions for lots of sites (search engines, news sites, forums, etc.) and makes reading long lists of entries much faster and smoother.
Despite what the articles says, I think projection is still just a big of a challenge as capture. Firstly, consumer acceptance will remain low as long as you need to wear silly glasses. Second, there are some neat technologies in development for capture.
The article points out the most obvious way to do capture: use two independent cameras. However I recently found out about efforts to build "single-lens 3D" cameras. One example of a company working on this is I See 3D (disclosure: I'm indirectly a small-time investor). The idea is to use special high-speed shutters inside the camera (intersecting the optical path) to select left-biased or right-biased imaging. The advantage is that it is much cheaper, since you only need a single sequence of lenses, and only a single detector. This also means that it should be possible to rather cheaply build this into existing manufacturing lines. And a 3D camera of this sort could revert to 2D mode quite easily. A drawback of this type of system is that you can't alter the effective distance between the left- and right- viewing angles (which could be a big deal, depending on distance to subject and the zoom you want to use).
I think such technologies are in particular interesting because they have the chance of being integrated into consumer devices in the near term. I think 3D will really "take off" when people can actually capture 3D with their cell phones and digital cameras. Once people are able to make their own 3D home movies, they will be much more inclined to invest in 3D TVs, players, and so on.
I assume you speak of the successor to my n810? I do enjoy having a full Linux system on my PDA, runs the apps I want etc. HOWEVER! Its is NOT a phone.
FYI, the N900 is a smartphone (an upcoming smartphone, mind you). It is designed much like the N800/N810, and runs Maemo (and can be used as an Internet tablet), but it is also a full-featured cell-phone. More information: official site, Wikipedia, Slashdot story and follow-up.
Does your bank grab control of the contents of safety deposit boxes and then profit from that control?
I'm pretty sure they would if it were not for the legal infrastructure and enforcement currently in place.
For instance, banks routinely make it inconvenient (though not impossible--that would be illegal) to move your money to other banks (procedures, fees, etc.). If they could suddenly make more money by taking control of all of their client's safety deposit boxes (including loss of reputation, etc.) they would do it. Current laws make such a move not "worth it", however.
In the case of cloud computing, there are no laws preventing them from forcing lock-in on their customers or otherwise duping them (other than generic anti-fraud laws). I'm not claiming that we need laws to protect cloud computing customers. I'm merely pointing out that those customers have every reason to not trust the vendors.
In other words, when a customer is trying to calculate the cost/benefit of using a particular solution (e.g. cloud computing vs. local), they absolutely need to take into account the negative of a cloud computing vendor "screwing them over" (e.g. making it difficult or impossible or costly to migrate data).
FYI, you can use DownForEveryoneOrJustMe.com to check these kinds of things. It appears that the Pirate Bay is indeed offline right now.
You remember right. If you directly go to UID #1, you get CmdrTaco. If you go directly to UID #666, you get "Anonymous Coward".
And 1 < 666.
That's a very good point. And it's not just academic.
I think most courts would contend that any reasonable person would know that the files being offered through links on Pirate Bay are not sanctioned. Conversely any reasonable person would agree that files being offered for purchase through iTunes are sanctioned. But there is a wide middle-ground. YouTube now has so many officially-sponsored channels and deals that it's hard to know, when you watch something, whether it was posted officially or not. In fact there are even a few cases of takedown notices being sent against legitimate postings (the legal branch of some consortium sends a notice to a band's official YouTube channel, for instance). If you search for various TV shows, you'll find a range of sites offering to stream them for "free" (with ads), ranging from Hulu to sites in foreign languages I can't read. How is the consumer supposed to know which ones have licenses and which ones don't? And then there are sites like allofmp3, which are also ambiguous.
It seems really dangerous to criminalize a behavior when it can be so difficult (impossible, really) to know whether or not you're in strict violation of the law. Which is why it makes much more sense to focus on unlicensed distributors, and not on downloaders.
I see about three revolutionary breakthroughs per day, three of which never go anywhere because of cost or something.
You're saying that no fundamental breakthroughs ever "go anywhere", which is patently false. The amazing array of technology around us (from computers to MRIs to satellites to medical drugs) can be traced back to fundamental research breakthroughs.
I will grant you that the majority of breakthroughs do not directly translate into a particular product. But that's the nature of research: we have to study a wide-variety of things to find those that are really significant for technology. Moreover just by pushing the boundaries of what we know and what can be done, we inevitably improve technology (e.g. particle physicists built better magnets for accelerators, which wound up making MRI possible/better...).
This reminds me of those "water on mars," articles -- we've been "getting new compelling evidence for water on mars" for decades.
Yes, science is mostly incremental. It requires repeated testing, the accumulation of evidence from different sources, and so on. What's wrong with that?
I've started to lose interest. I'll be excited when it finally goes somewhere. Really, what gets my blood pumping is what I can see coming down the pipe
Ok. So you like new products but don't care so much about the details of the research that goes into making all that happen. That's cool. But your implication (by posting a "Wake me up..." comment in a discussion about fundamental research) is that such things are just not interesting or relevant. There are many of us who disagree: we like fundamental science, we find the interim steps in research quite interesting, we like being aware of cool technologies years before they are commercialized, and so on.
If all you care about are the final specs of the latest tech, then you can certainly ignore all those boring science articles.
Yes, this is true. Information is slippery: it's easy to copy and hard to contain.
This is why a non-encrypted, non-authenticated short sequence of digits that you give out to many different companies is a terrible thing to use as a secret access code for financial-identity verification.
The fact that companies want your SSN, use it as an identifier, and store it indefinitely is bad. But the really bad part is that the SSN has so much power in the first place. At this point the SSN should just be downgraded to the status of an identifier or unique customer number, without it having any power to, say, open an account. (Other, proper means of identification should instead be required for such things.)
Cute. But actually the paper is more about the probability of forming jams, not about getting rid of jams once they've already formed.
The conclusion is more like: Though traffic rules are designed to lead to orderly flows, the lowest jamming rate (under certain conditions) actually occurs when some fraction of participants ignore the rules.
(As a side note, it's a bit of a pet-peeve of mine when people make fun of studies by saying "That conclusion is so obvious! What a waste of time!" Common sense, hunches, and gut feelings are often wrong, which is why we do rigorous research to get at the right answers. And even if the general conclusion is obvious (in hindsight, mind you), rigorous research means that we can say something about error bars and make specific statements about applicability and predictability of models.)
Okay. This is "better" in the sense that it is not Facebook itself exploiting user pictures. But it's still bothersome on some level. In particular it's bothersome that Facebook's default privacy rules make this possible. It seems that enabling an application gives that application near-limitless access to a person's account. It's all well and good that Facebook's policies forbid this, and that they've retroactively done something about it. But why was the access there in the first place?
I do think users need to take some responsibility. They should be more careful about the text and photos they upload to some company's servers, and the applications they enable. But still it seems that Facebook is way too permissive with privacy and security settings, and that they are continually pushing the boundaries of what's acceptable with respect to advertising. For instance, why is it that when you go: SETTINGS > PRIVACY SETTINGS > NEWS FEEDS AND WALL, the "Appearance in Facebook Ads" is by default enabled. You need to manually turn it off. Yes it's up to users to manage their privacy settings, but having users continually being opted-in to these kinds of things (without any particular announcement, that I'm aware of) smacks of "let's see what we can get away with--and apologize only if we have to...".
Why on Earth would Microsoft do that? To prove a point? Because Microsoft is prideful? Because the EU hurt Microsoft's feelings?
If they "pull out" two things could happen: either the EU would switch to alternatives (OpenOffice, Mac, Linux, etc.) or they would just make a decree to the effect of "corporations that refuse to follow our laws are not subject to copyright protections" and use MS products without paying license fees. Both of those outcomes bring no money to Microsoft.
All Microsoft (and, indeed, any business) cares about is money. They would only "pull out" if the fines being imposed were greater than the profits they make in the EU. Given the size of the EU market, that isn't likely. Evidently, Microsoft has decided that it is cheaper to provide browser options in their OS than it is to deal with noncompliance fines or shipping delays.
It's about the money. "Pulling out" is ridiculous and I don't know why people keep suggesting it, as if it were a credible threat.
The scheme I've been thinking about* for fixing the patent system involves the patent being reviewed by two examiners: one who is trying to get the patent denied, and a standard examiner. It's like a mini court case: the applicants are arguing for their case, the "con" examiner is arguing against their case, and a (more senior) patent examiner judges between the two.
1.Patent application is submitted to patent office, with a non-trivial (but not enormous) fee. This fee keeps the useless applications to a minimum.
2. The "con" examiner looks over the application, and lists all the reasons he can think of why it should be denied. E.g. if it's too obvious. He does some searches for prior art both in the patent database and elsewhere (the Internet, journals, etc.). He puts his "this should be denied" case together and submits it.
3. The applicants see the "this should be denied" reasons. They have the option to withdraw their application, if they agree with the "con" examiner. Thus if they are made aware of prior art they had not otherwise known about, they can withdraw. Maybe they get half their application fee back. The other half goes to the "con" examiner as a bonus (this encourages them to do proper searches for prior art, etc.).
4. If the applicants disagree with the "con" examiner, they can push their application into the next round. In this round a more senior patent examiner looks over the patent, and compares what they are claiming with the evidence the "con" examiner managed to put together. He can then either grant or reject the application, without any refund of the application fee.
The point here is that the patent office makes the same amount of money whether they accept or reject the final application. And the "con" examiner has a financial incentive to put together a strong case against the patent. Moreover, this system prevents any applicant from claiming "I didn't know about that prior art!" either during the application process or in later patent court cases: because they were provided with a detailed summary of possible prior art. Of course if the "con" examiner can't find any reasonable rejection reasons, that's great: this can strengthen the patent holder's case for the application and any subsequent court cases.
By forcing the applicants to read and sign-off on a document detailing possible problems with their patent, they can't claim ignorance; there is a paper trail showing that they were made aware. This could be very nicely be combined with stiffer legal penalties for frivolous patents, at least in cases where they chose to willfully ignore the recommendations of the "con" examiner.
[*Like any scheme, there are plenty of problems (some of which have solutions that I didn't have time to get in to). Feel free to point them out. And yes, I'm well-aware that the primary problem is "reform is nearly impossible, this idea will never be implemented by the powers-that-be."]
I fully agree that name/birthday/SSN are "more important" PII than, say, a phone number. But the reason PII is defined more broadly is that the dangers are broad. The dangers are not only due to being accused of a crime or sued. Or identity theft.
For instance, if a medical record were leaked that said "John Smith, DOB: 01-05-1970 has lung cancer" that would be bad because it includes personally-identifying information, so everyone knows Mr.Smith's personal medical information. But a leaked medical record that said "person with phone number 260-555-1234 has lung cancer" isn't much better. Sure phone numbers don't match 1:1 to people, but the 2nd example I gave of leaked information would be just as damaging, to the person, as the first, since the phone number reveals the identity of the person. Not uniquely, perhaps, but close enough for it to be a problem (close enough for someone unscrupulous to do damage, unfairly discriminate, use for identity theft, damage reputation, etc.).
Again, this is why PII has to be defined fairly broadly: because a combination of even fairly innocuous data (even something quasi-public, like your phone number) with more sensitive data can be damaging. The extent to which these arguments apply also to IP addresses (which are, generally, not listed) is debatable.
But Wikimedia's position is equally valid. The images are public domain (in the US) and they are trying to distribute them as widely as possible.
So, unless you're suggesting the US change its law to accommodate to UK, your counterargument amounts to "Wikimedia should just be nice and back off so that the museums can keep this revenue stream, which supports their useful work." But this argument has many problems: (1) If it's just based on "being nice", even if Wikimedia backs off, someone else can just (legally) go ahead and do it instead (and it could be a non-profit or some US corporation...); (2) What makes museums special? Should we also "be nice" to companies and not distribute public domain works that are related to them, because then their profits would be reduced? (3) If the whole argument is based on "being nice" then instead of asking Wikimedia to be nice and back off, why not just argue that people should be nice and donate to the museums more? Why is one kind of "just be nice!" more valid than another?
On the other hand, perhaps you are suggesting that reproductions of public domain works should themselves be subject to copyright, as they apparently are in the UK. I disagree with this because it becomes yet another way to skew the copyright balance in favor of the copyright holders. Could Disney arbitrarily re-extend the copyright to their movies by making a copy of their copies? If so, in what sense do copyright terms mean anything at all anymore? At some point how can we even tell the difference between "which copy" this is, and how long the term is. Even with respect to physical objects, can the museum just take new photographs of the paintings in 70 years, and thus reset the copyright on those reproductions? Again if we have a JPEG of the 2008 digital photo and a JPEG of the 2108 digital photo, how do we sensibly know which one is still under copyright? Or are we just supposed to abandon that whole "public domain" thing and accept that art in the modern age is forever commercial and never cultural?
I understand the appeal to our "be nice" natures by saying that someone has to pay for digitization. We all benefit from such efforts. But in my opinion this should then mean an appeal to the public (by museums or Wikimedia or whoever) for the funds necessary to preserve the art. It should not mean restrictive laws. If you are really convinced that the public supports art preservation but won't bother spending money for it without a law... then argue for a law that sends tax dollars to art preservation (with results being in public domain). The total burden on society on that case will be lower, since at least corporations won't be able to extend copyrights forever.
on one page instead of 12
The Firefox Add-on AutoPager is your friend: automatically loads the next page inline as you scroll downwards. Turns multi-page sites into the single page they are supposed to be. Works great with many popular pages, including search results... and idiotic news sites.
Why not just put up a poll asking if users should be able to upload random pictures on the internet that don't have a clear copyright assignment on them? What a fucking joke.
And yet, despite the process being "a fucking joke", the community does not allow the upload of random pictures on the internet that they don't have a clear copyright assignment for. In fact, with respect to photographs of public-domain art, the community appears to have voted that only simple reproduction-style photographs of 2-dimensional artwork are presumptively acceptable, since photography of 3-dimensional art would necessary include creative elements (framing, lighting).
You may disagree with the result of their debate and consensus in this (and other) cases, but pretending that Wikimedia's self-policing is "a joke" and that they allow themselves any and all liberties is frankly ridiculous. A large number of Wikipedia pages have those "Have a free picture? Upload it." boxes precisely because they are quite strict about the requirement for images used on their pages.
The process is not difficult for one or two photos, but would be prohibitive for many photos. Moreover it is unlikely they would grant permission for so many photos to be used elsewhere, as demonstrated by the fact that they are threatening to sue over this issue.
Common courtesy is important. On the other hand, the real question is whether the user has "the right" to do this even if they object (legally and morally). I can't comment on the legality (IANAL), but I don't see any ethical problem with distributing simple reproduction-style pictures of public-domain art. As such, I think the user had/has the freedom to upload them elsewhere. And freedom stops being freedom if you need to ask permission to exercise it. Yes, it would be "nice" to ask permission and refrain if they don't like it... but on the other hand it's not immoral to ignore their feelings and exercise your freedoms.
Taken to the extreme, the "common courtesy" argument becomes banal. A store may request that I never do business with their competitors, and I guess it would be "nice" of me to comply with their request. But ultimately their request has no legal nor moral backing. As such I can and will continue to exercise my freedoms and do business with competitors. That's the power of freedom.
Later in the paper they discuss the light-absorbing properties of these kinds of pillar arrays:
References 13,18 are:
L. Tsakalakos, J. Balch, J. Fronheiser, B. A. Korevaar, O. Sulima and J. Rand "Silicon nanowire solar cells". Appl. Phys. Lett. 91, 233117 (2007). doi 10.1063/1.2821113
Hu, L. and Chen, G. "Analysis of optical absorption in silicon nanowire arrays for photovoltaic applications". Nano Lett. 7, 3249-3252 (2007). doi 10.1021/nl071018b
Quoting from that second paper:
Essentially the nanowire arrays are acting as anti-reflection coatings and allowing the light to instead be absorbed.
Moreover, I don't understand the pessimism of:
Leave it to engineers not to consider the ugly realities of supply-and-demand economics.
How else do we consider these ugly realities if not to study available materials, test the limits of what works and what doesn't, build prototypes, publish results, and work towards commercialization... ? Other materials may eventually be used in real devices (either after a period of using the relatively rare Cd and Te, or perhaps well in anticipation of those supply problems). Even if the device, as presented, doesn't mesh up with the realities of current supply-and-demand, it is part of the process of getting from a problem ('we need energy') to economically-viable solutions.