Maybe the extra grant money from the US government means we'll be seeing a whole load more minature pictures...
The proposed additional US funding for nanotech research is probably why we're seeing this picture. It's probably grant posturing, just like the press release from Sandia Labs a couple of weeks ago. I've seen a couple of other releases like like this, too. (Including a really pathetic effort out of Worcester Polytechnic Institute that intentionally or unintentionally confused MEMS with nanotechnology.)
I think he sounds pretentious. "Designer materials"? Who does he think he is, Timmy Milfinger? A buzzword is a buzzword, whether you use one that already exists or one that you make up yourself.
Yeah, "nanotech" is struggling with a bogosity factor, piled onto it by clumsy journalists and clueless geekboys who've learned everything they know about nanotech from Star Trek. What would make "designer materials" immune to that? Nothing.
Saige's title and comments seem to imply that this is new for Sandia Labs, but a gander at the links at the bottom of the release shows that they've been working in the field for a while now.
The press release is just Sandia's way of trying to pre-position themselves for a share of the research funding that Clinton has proposed.
(Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that. They do have a base of knowledge and experience to build on, and they do need to make the effort to get a chunk of the funding. But the press release really isn't really saying anything other than "Yeah, we want a piece of that!")
They are really neat for the first few hours. Then you start to see the limitations.
Then if you put a little more thought into it, you sometimes see interesting ways around the limitations.
Regular solids work well. More complex things don't expand and contract so well.
Unless one puts a little more thought into building them.
If you get the little set, you think, gosh I can make some cool things with the big set. You need the big set to see that you can only build things so large before they just don't work at all.
Until you realize that you've been looking at it wrong.
There are also little playability issues with the extra swivel joints. They are hard to get together.
Sometimes, true.
Sometimes when taking things apart, they come apart in the wrong places.
Only if you're not patient enough.
If you really like construction toys like Lego Technics, assume you'll get 4 to 8 hours of fun out these things. Then it will sit on the shelf.
Then, if you come back and put some more thought into it, you'll get even more fun out of it. Especially if you don't play with it by youself but with a couple of other geeks and/or kids.
Nah, nanotech is cooler. If we shrink the space used for the Library of Congress, we'll have *really* accomplished something.:-(
Well, yes, we will have.
Anyway, the article doesn't go into a lot of detail. It's entirely possible that some of the proposed funds would go to astronomy. Want to increase the odds of that? Contact your gov't reps.
There's also a difference between banks setting up software to secure their own (and their customers') money, and the gov't farming out a contract to the lowest bidder -- say, some group of losers with freshly-printed MS certs -- to set up a "secure" voting system.
The worse thing that can happen to a bank is for their customers to lose confidence in how safe their funds are. But I think most people -- at least in the US -- have already lost confidence in the gov't, so it's not like the gov't would care as much about that risk.
"Wait and see" sounds like a good idea to me.
Besides, if people aren't sufficiently motivated to get off their butts and go somewhere to vote, I'm not sure I'd want them to vote.
Right now spam, and to a lesser extent, e-mail hoaxes and threats are an ongoing problem. I can see this software as a possible tool for spammers and hoaxers.
How does Zero-Knowledge limit spam abuse of Freedom?
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Moreover, Zero-Knowledge has a 'no-spam' policy which it will try to enforce, and reserves the right to delete any nyms or restrict users ability to send email for spamming on the Freedom Network. That said, given Freedom's design goals of complete privacy, if an individual hides behind a nym to send spam via Freedom, Zero-Knowledge will be unable to determine the identity of the nym's owner or to associate a particular nym with any others owned by the same individual.
I've never posted one of these, and this is an honest question: why is this posted to slashdot?
Because it's funny. Laugh. Or else Dino here will bite your leg off.
Seriously, I assume it was posted because Hemos thought it was funny, and because it is science-related, and quite possibly because Hemos thought it would stimulate some interesting discussion.
I'm sure there are exceptions, but librarians in general have been in the front lines fighting censorship for a long time. Which is precisely why the AFA is gunning for them.
As a complete movie freak I have to say that I think Gilliam is just about the only director these days who can do Pratchet correctly.
Yes, yes, yes -- I can't picture anyone else doing this right. Nobody else has his twisted grasp of surrealism.
On a side note: Does anyone really think "Good Omens" would've gotten to this stage if "Dogma" hadn't been successful? I don't. This is classic Hollywood follow-the-leader. (Not that I mind, in this case.)
And your conjecture that jealousy is somehow genetic is pure speculation.
Agreed. But it's not my conjecture. Something I picked up from watching the Discovery Channel,
I strongly suspect that you misunderstood what they were saying. Or perhaps the Discovery Channel's standards are lower than I thought.
... reinforced by my own personal experience (for those who must know, went to a swinger's party once.
And as I said, there are many people who do not experience jealousy, and even more for whom it doesn't have any real effect. Obviously this is no more proof that jealousy isn't genetic than your example proves that it is, but I note that anecdotal evidence contrary to your belief doesn't seem to have the same impact that supportive anecdotal evidence has.
In any case, your anecdotal evidence isn't even all that supportive. Whatever the prevelance of jealousy in the context of swinging -- which is not at all the same thing as "free love", and is not a context that anyone could reasonably expect to be somehow magically free of cultural influences -- it has no real implications for the theory that jealousy is genetically based.
In any case, you did not phrase it as a conjecture, you phrased it as a fact:
Evolution has bred into the human creature thing like jealousy.
Furthermore, you rephrased your "original premise" in such a way as to change it -- or perhaps you did not understand the thrust of Katz's essay, which was not about "public sexuality" and sexual activity, but about the availability of sexual information and imagery.
I ask this question, because to much open sexuality CAN breed social discord. Evolution has bred into the human creature thing like jealousy. There are things like STDs (which condoms are NOT a panacea, no matter what you've heard on MTV). Laws against adultery originally arose because of the need to know without question the father of a child.
You are confusing the availability of sexual information and imagery with sexual activity. There is, in fact, a strong inverse correlation between the availability of sexual information and the rates of STDs, unwanted pregnancies, etc. Ignorance is the problem, not pornography.
(And your conjecture that jealousy is somehow genetic is pure speculation. It's at least as likely -- probably more likely -- that jealousy is a learned behavior. Certainly at least the ways in which jealousy is expressed or otherwise dealt with is learned behavior, as evidenced by the existence of many people who are not subject to jealousy, or who are able to deal with jealousy without the extreme reactions some people mistakenly think are "normal".)
You know, it's sad that a woman can spill coffee in her lap and get millions of dollars, but someone like this will be lucky to get their legal expenses covered.
[sigh] There are plenty of questionable court decisions... you might want to use one of them to illustrate your point instead of this one.
The McDonalds coffee was not just hot, it was literally scalding. Contrary to the popular myth, the woman was in the passenger seat and the vehicle was not in motion -- the coffee spilled when she tried to remove the top to add milk and sugar. She suffered third-degree burns over 6% of her body, and initially asked for only $20,000. McDonalds refused. Dumb move, because it was then shown that McDonalds had received hundreds of prior complaints, including more cases involving third-degree burns.
The award was only initially "millions" -- the awards were reduced to $160,000 in compensatory damages and $480,000 in punitive damages.
Sorry, I know this is sorta off-topic, but this kind of intellectual sloppiness bothers me sometimes. Not that I'm always very tidy myself.
Uh, why was this moderated as "Flamebait"? Personally, I find it interesting that there is a common dutch expression for this sort of idiotic behavior by US authorities.
If anything the last 100 years have proven their vision wrong. The last 100 years saw the triumph of individualism. An overall decline in centralized power.
You really believe this? Centralized power hasn't declined much (if at all), it's just shifted and gotten more subtle. Most "individualism" has been guided into nice harmless -- and easily-marketed-to -- channels. I think most people (here in the US, at least) are sheep in wolves' clothing.
After the horrors of WWII, and the civil rights movement in America during the 60's, I think the twentieth century's most important lasting legacy (ideologically speaking) is our greater value of humanity and individual rights.
I disagree. Those things come from earlier than the twentieth century. Some people in the twentieth century were more-or-less successful in pointing out some of the contexts where we've failed to live up to those ideals, but the ideals themselves are a legacy of an earlier time.
Though I suppose the author would find it more entertaining to speak of gizmo's and intangible social trends.
Social trends are at least as tangible as the things you speak of. They overlap quite a bit, actually.
Yup. There were clear signs of talent in his performance in Phantom Menace. Granted, given the lame script and even lamer direction of that movie, those signs may have been hard for some people to see. But they were there. Hopefully they'll get a better showing in Ender's Game.
I'm glad Jake Lloyd will be playing Ender. I was afraid that his being in Phantom Menace would ruin the careeer of someone who obviously has some talent.
I guess I shouldn't have worried too much -- after all, Harrison Ford managed to live down being cast as Han Solo. (True, Hamill didn't survive being Skywalker... but I'm not sure that much was lost in that case.)
Re:Whats not Sci-fi about it?
on
The Sparrow
·
· Score: 2
The science fiction ghetto seems to still be alive and well in some people's minds. "This isn't science fiction, it's Real Literature." Blah, blah, blah.
Courses focusing on science fiction are being taught in many (most?) Literature curriculums and there's a long, solid history of quite literate science fiction. (Granted, one sometimes has to dig through the never-ending "novelizations" to find them, but "mainstream" fiction has no shortage of pulp either.) But some people still Don't Get It... and clueless marketers don't help.
(Nitpick: Not all science fiction is set in the future.)
People try to make the best decisions based on the resources and information available.
Oh, if only that were true, what happy times we would live in!
IME&O, most people are jerked around by their emotional responses, and if they use information at all, they use whatever subset of info that they can scrape together that allows them to rationalize their decisions.
I'm not too keen on USA from 1945-1960, but Roosevelt was one of the ugliest people imaginable... he was no better than stalin. A complete brute if there ever was one.
I don't question that the US has indeed caused problems with our mixed motivations, but I can't say I'm impressed with criticism coming from someone who can't even get the basic facts right.
Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was president of the US from 1901 to 1909.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was president of the US from 1933 until his death in 1945.
(And while he was far from perfect, comparing him to Stalin is just ludicrous.)
Slashdot Mirror
The proposed additional US funding for nanotech research is probably why we're seeing this picture. It's probably grant posturing, just like the press release from Sandia Labs a couple of weeks ago. I've seen a couple of other releases like like this, too. (Including a really pathetic effort out of Worcester Polytechnic Institute that intentionally or unintentionally confused MEMS with nanotechnology.)
Didn't read the article, huh?
Where is the evolution then?
I wasn't aware that low-scorers on the SATs were fed to the wolves.
I think he sounds pretentious. "Designer materials"? Who does he think he is, Timmy Milfinger? A buzzword is a buzzword, whether you use one that already exists or one that you make up yourself.
Yeah, "nanotech" is struggling with a bogosity factor, piled onto it by clumsy journalists and clueless geekboys who've learned everything they know about nanotech from Star Trek. What would make "designer materials" immune to that? Nothing.
The press release is just Sandia's way of trying to pre-position themselves for a share of the research funding that Clinton has proposed.
(Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that. They do have a base of knowledge and experience to build on, and they do need to make the effort to get a chunk of the funding. But the press release really isn't really saying anything other than "Yeah, we want a piece of that!")
Then if you put a little more thought into it, you sometimes see interesting ways around the limitations.
Regular solids work well. More complex things don't expand and contract so well.
Unless one puts a little more thought into building them.
If you get the little set, you think, gosh I can make some cool things with the big set. You need the big set to see that you can only build things so large before they just don't work at all.
Until you realize that you've been looking at it wrong.
There are also little playability issues with the extra swivel joints. They are hard to get together.
Sometimes, true.
Sometimes when taking things apart, they come apart in the wrong places.
Only if you're not patient enough.
If you really like construction toys like Lego Technics, assume you'll get 4 to 8 hours of fun out these things. Then it will sit on the shelf.
Then, if you come back and put some more thought into it, you'll get even more fun out of it. Especially if you don't play with it by youself but with a couple of other geeks and/or kids.
Well, yes, we will have.
Anyway, the article doesn't go into a lot of detail. It's entirely possible that some of the proposed funds would go to astronomy. Want to increase the odds of that? Contact your gov't reps.
The worse thing that can happen to a bank is for their customers to lose confidence in how safe their funds are. But I think most people -- at least in the US -- have already lost confidence in the gov't, so it's not like the gov't would care as much about that risk.
"Wait and see" sounds like a good idea to me.
Besides, if people aren't sufficiently motivated to get off their butts and go somewhere to vote, I'm not sure I'd want them to vote.
From their FAQ:
How does Zero-Knowledge limit spam abuse of Freedom?
Zero-Knowledge is very much aware of the possibility that our technology may be used by spammers to distribute unsolicited commercial email. To discourage this, Freedom attempts to limit the potential for spam through a number of measures:
* Limits on the total number of recipients/newsgroups to which email may be sent on any day
* Reduced limits on the total number of recipients/newsgroups to which email may be sent on any day for trial nyms
* Limits on cross-posting to newsgroups
* Limited lifespans for trial nyms, discouraging their use for spamming purposes
* Internet users can block email from any particular nym
Moreover, Zero-Knowledge has a 'no-spam' policy which it will try to enforce, and reserves the right to delete any nyms or restrict users ability to send email for spamming on the Freedom Network. That said, given Freedom's design goals of complete privacy, if an individual hides behind a nym to send spam via Freedom, Zero-Knowledge will be unable to determine the identity of the nym's owner or to associate a particular nym with any others owned by the same individual.
Because it's funny. Laugh. Or else Dino here will bite your leg off.
Seriously, I assume it was posted because Hemos thought it was funny, and because it is science-related, and quite possibly because Hemos thought it would stimulate some interesting discussion.
Check out the ALA website.
Yes, yes, yes -- I can't picture anyone else doing this right. Nobody else has his twisted grasp of surrealism.
On a side note: Does anyone really think "Good Omens" would've gotten to this stage if "Dogma" hadn't been successful? I don't. This is classic Hollywood follow-the-leader. (Not that I mind, in this case.)
Agreed. But it's not my conjecture. Something I picked up from watching the Discovery Channel,
I strongly suspect that you misunderstood what they were saying. Or perhaps the Discovery Channel's standards are lower than I thought.
And as I said, there are many people who do not experience jealousy, and even more for whom it doesn't have any real effect. Obviously this is no more proof that jealousy isn't genetic than your example proves that it is, but I note that anecdotal evidence contrary to your belief doesn't seem to have the same impact that supportive anecdotal evidence has.
In any case, your anecdotal evidence isn't even all that supportive. Whatever the prevelance of jealousy in the context of swinging -- which is not at all the same thing as "free love", and is not a context that anyone could reasonably expect to be somehow magically free of cultural influences -- it has no real implications for the theory that jealousy is genetically based.
In any case, you did not phrase it as a conjecture, you phrased it as a fact:
Evolution has bred into the human creature thing like jealousy.
Furthermore, you rephrased your "original premise" in such a way as to change it -- or perhaps you did not understand the thrust of Katz's essay, which was not about "public sexuality" and sexual activity, but about the availability of sexual information and imagery.
You are confusing the availability of sexual information and imagery with sexual activity. There is, in fact, a strong inverse correlation between the availability of sexual information and the rates of STDs, unwanted pregnancies, etc. Ignorance is the problem, not pornography.
(And your conjecture that jealousy is somehow genetic is pure speculation. It's at least as likely -- probably more likely -- that jealousy is a learned behavior. Certainly at least the ways in which jealousy is expressed or otherwise dealt with is learned behavior, as evidenced by the existence of many people who are not subject to jealousy, or who are able to deal with jealousy without the extreme reactions some people mistakenly think are "normal".)
I'll say. Sure as heck beats "I spent it getting shitfaced in the company of thousands of people I didn't know."
[sigh] There are plenty of questionable court decisions ... you might want to use one of them to illustrate your point instead of this one.
The McDonalds coffee was not just hot, it was literally scalding. Contrary to the popular myth, the woman was in the passenger seat and the vehicle was not in motion -- the coffee spilled when she tried to remove the top to add milk and sugar. She suffered third-degree burns over 6% of her body, and initially asked for only $20,000. McDonalds refused. Dumb move, because it was then shown that McDonalds had received hundreds of prior complaints, including more cases involving third-degree burns.
The award was only initially "millions" -- the awards were reduced to $160,000 in compensatory damages and $480,000 in punitive damages.
Sorry, I know this is sorta off-topic, but this kind of intellectual sloppiness bothers me sometimes. Not that I'm always very tidy myself.
Uh, why was this moderated as "Flamebait"? Personally, I find it interesting that there is a common dutch expression for this sort of idiotic behavior by US authorities.
1) I don't consider myself to be not-sheep, though I like to think (perhaps mistakenly, of course) that I'm less sheep than most people.
2) I don't think that some "evil conspiracy" is necessary for what I've said to be true. In fact, I consider that to be the least likely scenario.
You really believe this? Centralized power hasn't declined much (if at all), it's just shifted and gotten more subtle. Most "individualism" has been guided into nice harmless -- and easily-marketed-to -- channels. I think most people (here in the US, at least) are sheep in wolves' clothing.
I disagree. Those things come from earlier than the twentieth century. Some people in the twentieth century were more-or-less successful in pointing out some of the contexts where we've failed to live up to those ideals, but the ideals themselves are a legacy of an earlier time.
Though I suppose the author would find it more entertaining to speak of gizmo's and intangible social trends.
Social trends are at least as tangible as the things you speak of. They overlap quite a bit, actually.
Yup. There were clear signs of talent in his performance in Phantom Menace. Granted, given the lame script and even lamer direction of that movie, those signs may have been hard for some people to see. But they were there. Hopefully they'll get a better showing in Ender's Game.
I'm glad Jake Lloyd will be playing Ender. I was afraid that his being in Phantom Menace would ruin the careeer of someone who obviously has some talent.
I guess I shouldn't have worried too much -- after all, Harrison Ford managed to live down being cast as Han Solo. (True, Hamill didn't survive being Skywalker ... but I'm not sure that much was lost in that case.)
Courses focusing on science fiction are being taught in many (most?) Literature curriculums and there's a long, solid history of quite literate science fiction. (Granted, one sometimes has to dig through the never-ending "novelizations" to find them, but "mainstream" fiction has no shortage of pulp either.) But some people still Don't Get It ... and clueless marketers don't help.
(Nitpick: Not all science fiction is set in the future.)
People try to make the best decisions based on the resources and information available.
Oh, if only that were true, what happy times we would live in!
IME&O, most people are jerked around by their emotional responses, and if they use information at all, they use whatever subset of info that they can scrape together that allows them to rationalize their decisions.
Perhaps you mean the US-Philippine war? (I'm don't usually care about spelling mistakes, but given the context ...)
1 million Phillipino civilians and 20,000 Phillipino millitary casualities (estimate).
Whose estimate? Source, please?
One of the more interesting american policies: "Kill everyone over ten".
Who are you quoting? Source, please?
Yes,I think Roosevelt was a bit much like Stalin.
So's my Aunt Tilda ... but not in any meaningful way.
I was not confusing the Roosevelts, although it might look that way;
It does.
I just meant to say that I don't know too much about G. Marshall & Co.
Hmmm. To say that you don't know too much about a person, you criticized a different person whose name you didn't get right. [shrug] Okay, whatever.
I don't question that the US has indeed caused problems with our mixed motivations, but I can't say I'm impressed with criticism coming from someone who can't even get the basic facts right.
Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was president of the US from 1901 to 1909.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was president of the US from 1933 until his death in 1945.
(And while he was far from perfect, comparing him to Stalin is just ludicrous.)