Sweden has been doing national domain (.se) harvesting since 1996 (same year the Internet Archive got started). Australia has been doing limited web collections since then as well.
Other countries have been experimenting with limited and national domain harvesting for years. Some have chosen to contract this work to the Internet Archive (France, Australia) where as other countries (Nordic countries) have handled it themselves.
I've been running the Icelandic web harvesting effort since 2003 and we have a fairly comprehensive collection since 2004.
The reason people are often unaware of these efforts is that access to these archives is generally restricted due to copyright laws.
For example, the legal deposit law that enables the Netarkivet.dk to harvest the websites also explicitly forbids public access to the collection.
To minimize duplicated effort a large number of national libraries, archives and other interested partners (including the Internet Archive) have formed the International Internet Preservation Consortium (http://netpreserve.org). The IIPC has supported the development of the Heritrix webcrawler, which is the most used webcrawler within the 'national library' sectory. The IIPC is also sponsoring the development of the OpenWaybackMachine and other tools for accessing web archives.
Come on, folks, admit it. You only believe this study because it concludes what you want to conclude. If it concluded the opposite thing, you'd all be selectively trotting out that good old line, "correlation doesn't imply causation," and holding it up to standards that you won't hold this one up to. (Because, after all, what kind of evidence does imply causation? Don't all experiments, because of their own nature, demonstrate nothing more than correlation?)
You make a fair point in that people will be biased in favor of results that they agree with. However, the good old 'correlation doesn't imply causation' doesn't apply here . The reason is that these studies show a lack of correlation! A lack of correlation is a very strong indicator that there is no causal relationship.
but in much of the west: canada, australia, the usa, i can, for example, call gw bush a fucking moron, and i haven't the faintest doubt nothing bad will come of me for that
I don't imagine that you'd get into trouble for calling G.W. Bush "a fucking moron" anywhere.
But come on, the only problem with their business model is that it is easy to break the law and people are willing to do it.
No, the only problem with this business model is that it relies on an artificial monopoly. A monopoly that the industry has abused so heavily for so long that people no longer respect it.
The equation is pretty simple. To ensure that someone bothers to make 'entertainment' we ensure that they can benefit enough to justify the cost of making it. That was the system. Now, however, with extremely long copyright and limits on what you can do with what you have bought, people are fed up. The balance has tilted too far in favor of the industry. Sadly, probably the only way to right this is to tilt it too far in the other direction...
So, what if I have good genes.... and you have bad? If we are willing to open up the can of worms of risk assignment, then why should we ignore science and not surcharge those people who have doomed genetics? What, exactly, entitles people with weaker genes to a health discount at the expense of someone else?
Indeed, and if you carry that reasoning to its proper conclusion you'll wind up with insurance only covering accidents and communicable diseases. The cost of lifestyle and genetic illnesses (such as most heart problems and most cancers) would be born by the patient. This of course leads to better health care for rich people which can open up a very nasty can of worms....
Geothermal has limited areas in which it can be placed, areas which are invariably tectonically unstable (or worse yet: the "best" places are usually right in the expected lava flow/blast zone of a volcano). This, while partially true, is an exaggeration. There are many (already inhabited) places where geothermal energy is perfectly viable. In fact, in recent years more and more 'colder' areas have been able to tap into geothermal energy as better drilling techniques have come along.
Geothermal energy is not an end-all solution, but where it can be tapped, it provides a very cost efficient solution. It is defiantly better than wind or solar today by any conceivable metric. Investment in it is more than warranted.
If we say there is, we have to accept that any judge who's had or had a significant other that's had an abortion cannot rule on abortion cases. And we also have to accept that any judge that's refused to have or be party to an abortion cannot rule on abortion cases. Taken to the extreme then any judge who's had a child should also recuse him or herself as it would betray a pro-life stance.:-)
The honest way of asking the question would be "do you believe murderers should be executed?" No the honest way of asking that question is "do you believe that people convicted of murder should be executed?"
I don't have a problem with executing murderers. I do not, however, have sufficient faith in the legal system to automatically equate conviction with guilt. Until even unreasonable doubt is removed you should err on the side of caution.
I think it's also interesting to note that the main point of the article is "ISPs, who are in the business of selling connectivity and bandwidth, are doomed because the demand for connectivity and bandwidth is large and getting larger." Imagine how silly it would be to say "grocery stores, who are in the business of selling food, are doomed because the demand for food is large and getting larger."
If my grocery store charged people a monthly price for as much food as they can haul out then an increase in demand for food would cause them problems.
The problem is that ISPs sell bandwidth beyond what they can supply if all users try to access it at the same time. Telephone companies have been doing this for decades and getting away with it because the amount of telephone calls we make has not significantly increased, i.e. not be orders of magnitude. So their estimates for required capacity has held up. No such luck with the internet.
Catholics, myself included, believe that life begins at conception and so when you get rid of an embryo, anytime after fertilization, you are destroying a life.
To paraphrase an insightful rant by George Carlin; "life began billions of years ago and is an ongoing process"
An egg (or a sperm cell for that matter) is, by many definitions, as much alive as any other cell. Sure, they can only reproduce by joining with another cell, but the same can be said of us! (Yes, we're not destroyed in the process but many other lifeforms have reproductive cycles that end their lives.)
For me it isn't really a question of when "life" begins, but rather consciousness. A single cell organism, regardless of its future potential, can never be called conscious in any way. Exactly when a fetus's brain is sufficiently developed to be considered conscious is a difficult line to draw but surely we can agree that there should at least be a brain (or indeed any organs).
There is so much life all around us, living and dying each moment (at a cellular level) that the notion of the 'sanctity of life' can become rather absurd when put into context. The sanctity of consciousness is both muddier and less suitable to mindless chanting but at least avoids most hypocrisy. After all, without consciousness we do nothing but occupy space.
People have been laughing at Uranus for years. It's no wonder that astronomers worldwide don't want to repeat that mistake. Indeed, I move that we immediately rectify the situation and rename that planet Urectum!
Regardless, 40 and 50 <snip> If you have to stretch that far to get into a house, rent a fucking apartment and save up some money for cryin' out loud.
While it is certainly prudent to consider all your options in some cases (such as mine) a long term loan may work out as the best option.
My current loan has 40 year term. I did look into the numbers quite a bit and decided that a shorter term loan would squeeze my monthly budget unnecessarily. Renting a comparable apartment would have been even more expensive (I did have considerable equity so the loan only needed to cover about 65% of the purchase price). I guess I could have tried for something cheaper but that would have meant either a substantially inferior apartment or at least an additional hour/hour and a half commute plus living further from family and friends. Most likely both.
All the numbers simply added up to the 40 year loan making sense.
A) Wait for it on DVD. B) Watch it streamed from the site in a little 2" by 2" box. C) Download it illegally and without commercials and in full quality, watchable wherever and whenever I like.
Gee... Wonder which most people would pick? How about C and A. Just because you download it for that immediate gratification doesn't preclude purchasing the DVD once it is released.
I live outside the US in a small country where we don't get many shows with smaller followings (such as Battlestar Galactica) or only after a very significant delay (I think Stargate SG-1 is on season 2 or 3 here). So I often download episodes as they are aired in the US. I do however purchase the DVDs of most of them even knowing that I will probably not watch them much, if at all in some cases. This seems to me to be the most fair solution available.
Some would say I have no 'entitlement' to the programs and should just wait for the DVD. This is correct from a legal standpoint, but clearly not from a moral one. If it were, piracy wouldn't be as widespread as it is. These TV shows are a a part of our culture, like it or not. Copyright only exists in order to encourage content producers to actually produce and distribute their content. They are, in my book, free to withhold that content entirely, but it seems at the least unfair to make it only available to some and not to others.
I am convinced that the way to get people in to science is to get down to brass-tax much earlier on; get down to the real physics of what's going on. You are right in that this would be a far more inspiring. The problem is that it would only really appeal to a part of the student body. Some people just aren't interested in science, period. They are however interested in getting good grades without much effort.
Slashdot Mirror
It hasn't, not everywhere anyway.
Sweden has been doing national domain (.se) harvesting since 1996 (same year the Internet Archive got started). Australia has been doing limited web collections since then as well.
Other countries have been experimenting with limited and national domain harvesting for years. Some have chosen to contract this work to the Internet Archive (France, Australia) where as other countries (Nordic countries) have handled it themselves.
I've been running the Icelandic web harvesting effort since 2003 and we have a fairly comprehensive collection since 2004.
The reason people are often unaware of these efforts is that access to these archives is generally restricted due to copyright laws.
For example, the legal deposit law that enables the Netarkivet.dk to harvest the websites also explicitly forbids public access to the collection.
To minimize duplicated effort a large number of national libraries, archives and other interested partners (including the Internet Archive) have formed the International Internet Preservation Consortium (http://netpreserve.org). The IIPC has supported the development of the Heritrix webcrawler, which is the most used webcrawler within the 'national library' sectory. The IIPC is also sponsoring the development of the OpenWaybackMachine and other tools for accessing web archives.
Come on, folks, admit it. You only believe this study because it concludes what you want to conclude. If it concluded the opposite thing, you'd all be selectively trotting out that good old line, "correlation doesn't imply causation," and holding it up to standards that you won't hold this one up to. (Because, after all, what kind of evidence does imply causation? Don't all experiments, because of their own nature, demonstrate nothing more than correlation?)
You make a fair point in that people will be biased in favor of results that they agree with. However, the good old 'correlation doesn't imply causation' doesn't apply here . The reason is that these studies show a lack of correlation! A lack of correlation is a very strong indicator that there is no causal relationship.
but in much of the west: canada, australia, the usa, i can, for example, call gw bush a fucking moron, and i haven't the faintest doubt nothing bad will come of me for that
I don't imagine that you'd get into trouble for calling G.W. Bush "a fucking moron" anywhere.
Indeed, we're in the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy...
But come on, the only problem with their business model is that it is easy to break the law and people are willing to do it.
No, the only problem with this business model is that it relies on an artificial monopoly. A monopoly that the industry has abused so heavily for so long that people no longer respect it.
The equation is pretty simple. To ensure that someone bothers to make 'entertainment' we ensure that they can benefit enough to justify the cost of making it. That was the system. Now, however, with extremely long copyright and limits on what you can do with what you have bought, people are fed up. The balance has tilted too far in favor of the industry. Sadly, probably the only way to right this is to tilt it too far in the other direction...
So, what if I have good genes.... and you have bad? If we are willing to open up the can of worms of risk assignment, then why should we ignore science and not surcharge those people who have doomed genetics? What, exactly, entitles people with weaker genes to a health discount at the expense of someone else?
Indeed, and if you carry that reasoning to its proper conclusion you'll wind up with insurance only covering accidents and communicable diseases. The cost of lifestyle and genetic illnesses (such as most heart problems and most cancers) would be born by the patient. This of course leads to better health care for rich people which can open up a very nasty can of worms....
Geothermal energy is not an end-all solution, but where it can be tapped, it provides a very cost efficient solution. It is defiantly better than wind or solar today by any conceivable metric. Investment in it is more than warranted.
This is an unfortunate side effect of their policies but it is very understandable that they would like to err on the side of caution.
Should the robots.txt ever go away or change then your old stuff will become accessible again.
They obey robots.txt so no.
I don't have a problem with executing murderers. I do not, however, have sufficient faith in the legal system to automatically equate conviction with guilt. Until even unreasonable doubt is removed you should err on the side of caution.
Man: Err
Police: Why? What have you got to hide?
If my grocery store charged people a monthly price for as much food as they can haul out then an increase in demand for food would cause them problems.
The problem is that ISPs sell bandwidth beyond what they can supply if all users try to access it at the same time. Telephone companies have been doing this for decades and getting away with it because the amount of telephone calls we make has not significantly increased, i.e. not be orders of magnitude. So their estimates for required capacity has held up. No such luck with the internet.
To paraphrase an insightful rant by George Carlin; "life began billions of years ago and is an ongoing process"
An egg (or a sperm cell for that matter) is, by many definitions, as much alive as any other cell. Sure, they can only reproduce by joining with another cell, but the same can be said of us! (Yes, we're not destroyed in the process but many other lifeforms have reproductive cycles that end their lives.)
For me it isn't really a question of when "life" begins, but rather consciousness. A single cell organism, regardless of its future potential, can never be called conscious in any way. Exactly when a fetus's brain is sufficiently developed to be considered conscious is a difficult line to draw but surely we can agree that there should at least be a brain (or indeed any organs).
There is so much life all around us, living and dying each moment (at a cellular level) that the notion of the 'sanctity of life' can become rather absurd when put into context. The sanctity of consciousness is both muddier and less suitable to mindless chanting but at least avoids most hypocrisy. After all, without consciousness we do nothing but occupy space.
While it is certainly prudent to consider all your options in some cases (such as mine) a long term loan may work out as the best option.
My current loan has 40 year term. I did look into the numbers quite a bit and decided that a shorter term loan would squeeze my monthly budget unnecessarily. Renting a comparable apartment would have been even more expensive (I did have considerable equity so the loan only needed to cover about 65% of the purchase price). I guess I could have tried for something cheaper but that would have meant either a substantially inferior apartment or at least an additional hour/hour and a half commute plus living further from family and friends. Most likely both.
All the numbers simply added up to the 40 year loan making sense.
B) Watch it streamed from the site in a little 2" by 2" box.
C) Download it illegally and without commercials and in full quality, watchable wherever and whenever I like.
Gee... Wonder which most people would pick? How about C and A. Just because you download it for that immediate gratification doesn't preclude purchasing the DVD once it is released.
I live outside the US in a small country where we don't get many shows with smaller followings (such as Battlestar Galactica) or only after a very significant delay (I think Stargate SG-1 is on season 2 or 3 here). So I often download episodes as they are aired in the US. I do however purchase the DVDs of most of them even knowing that I will probably not watch them much, if at all in some cases. This seems to me to be the most fair solution available.
Some would say I have no 'entitlement' to the programs and should just wait for the DVD. This is correct from a legal standpoint, but clearly not from a moral one. If it were, piracy wouldn't be as widespread as it is. These TV shows are a a part of our culture, like it or not. Copyright only exists in order to encourage content producers to actually produce and distribute their content. They are, in my book, free to withhold that content entirely, but it seems at the least unfair to make it only available to some and not to others.