We've already found that. It's called a "lost cluster". That's where crucial elements of your data (you know, the small stuff like system files and important documents) go when you have to reset Windows 98 for the upteenth time.
That's because most people don't realise what giving up your personal liberties and privacy involves. They are unaware of the consequences of letting the government interfere further in their lives. And when they do realise what the consequences are it will be too late. Given that the poll was taken so soon after the tragedy (while everyone is still in shock), it's not suprising that the result came out the way it did.
The one thing that governments the world over do not (and sometimes will not) realise is that prohibition or restriction of anything (whether it's drugs, firearms, explosives or encryption) has not, and probably never will, work.
The main principle that I base this opinion on is that the law only regulates the behaviour of people who abide by the law. People who don't abide by the law aren't affected by any of these prohibitions because they don't affect them (unless they are caught and punished). What this means is that the only people that are really affected by prohibition are law-abiding citizens who, by principle, shouldn't be breaking the law in the first place. Therefore, while some lawbreakers are caught, many more are not and this makes the restrictions inefficient and inconvenient for the average person. The law itself is often not a deterrent for people to change their actions, especially if the action had previously been legal, rather it merely changes the method by which the action is performed. So if the government says that you can't do something, you simply do it when the government isn't looking.
For example, when the prohibition for alcohol (which had previously been completely legal) was introduced, people stopped drinking freely in their bars and in their homes and snuck off to "speak easys" (illegal drinking houses) that were often run by the mob or some other underground association. Therefore, prohibition didn't help the authorities and instead helped the underground. Furthermore, since alcohol was illegal this made the demand high and the supply low, so the quality went down and prices went up. People would be poisioning themselves on "drinks" that would contain large amounts of methanol (a chemical with similar effects to ethanol (alcohol) that is even more poisonous), so the incidents of death and blindness went up. Parallels can be spotted between this example and the drug debate that rages on in society today.
The fact that it's cryptography futher complicates the problem as you also being denied your right to privacy (where the government can't legally monitor your communications without just cause and a lot of paperwork - the NSA don't count as they themselves don't spy on US citizens, which is illegal, so they get other agencies to do it for them) but also your right to freedom of choice (the compulsory nature of these provisions means that the backdoors would be standard on all encryption products and backdoor-free versions could not be legally sold inside the United States). Add to that the prospect (which is more like an inevitability) of government abuse of these powers (one poster's example of the French government's "assistance" to French businesses using this power is a prime example) and you have a law that is so dangerous that its misapplication has the potential to completely erode the freedoms of the citizens of the United States. Furthermore, the rush introduction of this legislation after such the proposal of the SSSCA and the WTC/Pentagon/PA terrorist attacks, when the nation is still in shock and grasping for a way to prevent such an event occuring again (which is impossible to do), is inexcusable. The deaths of innocent citizens should never be used as an excuse to further erode people's freedoms in order to preserve "security" in the future (when it's obvious that there is no such thing as absolute or perfect security, only degrees of security).
My advice is, if you haven't already, to start a letter-writing campaign to your congresscritters now because by the time the Supreme Court rules this law as unconstitutional (which it most likely will - at least, it will if judges aren't being monitored 24/7), it may be too late. If enough people say something about it, then you never know how much effect it could have.
If you need chloroform and bromoform to make this work, the question here is how do you make the end products safe enough for people to use? If you search Google for "chloroform toxicity" you'll find (amongst other things), a fact sheet from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) detailing the effects of exposure to chloroform by humans and animals. Likewise, if you search for "bromoform toxicity", you'll find a paper from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) that explains the effects of exposure to bromoform.
If I was a regular person on the street, I would be seriously concerned that superconducting wires (for example) that were being used in my home contained chemicals that have proven to be carcinogenic to animals (chloroform has been classified by the EPA as Group B2, a probable human carcinogen of low carcinogenic hazard) and have nasty long-term effects such liver damage (both chloroform and bromoform are known to have such effects). I would be concerned for my safety and the safety of others who live in the house. What about leakage, or if the wires break? How do we dispose of these things in the future? It's not like we can just throw them away. Even if the solution were to be in crystalline form, it still doesn't answer questions about exposure to hazards like extreme temperatures, fire and explosions. The bottom line is that we seriously need to consider other options before even thinking about employing this solution.
Sure does. And this phenomenon is not just confined to Slashdot either. The links to the Yahoo! articles also show that two very similar articles were published on this very topic no more than sixteen minutes apart (2:03PM ET and 2:19PM ET). The only difference in the articles was the source - the earlier article's source was Associated Press whereas the later article's source was Reuters.
Pinky And The Brain: Red Planet Madness
on
Mice Headed for Mars?
·
· Score: 4, Funny
Yes, I can see it now:
"What are we going to do tonight, Brain?"
"The same thing we do every night, Pinky. Try to take over Mars!"
I'd be seriously referring this case to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) because this represents a violation of my privacy. Your own ISP is collecting information about your internet access without your prior knowledge or permission (granted the more technically adept have already guessed it by now by looking at their access logs, but I'm also talking about the people who don't know). Yes, I know that other services have doing the same thing for years but it is easier to prevent an external company, that exercises no influence over your ISP (eg. Gator), from collecting personal information without permission.
Now IANAL, but unfortunately there is no specific legal protection for this kind of activity (at least not in NSW) under the Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act 1998 (NSW), as the principles in the Act that must be applied in the collection and use of personal information (see Section 10) only apply to the public sector and are still subject to exemptions.
Your best bet would be the Privacy Amendment (Private Sector) Act 2000 (which amends the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth)), as this adds conditions under which the private sector can collect personal information. It's also a Commonwealth Law, so that the Act can be applied to cases all over the country (although in most cases, the courts tend to follow the lead of NSW). One big caveat of this amendment is that this still could possibly allow Excite@home to collect information if "the collection is necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of a legal or equitable claim" (see Schedule 3, 10.1(e)). But the way things are going for Excite@home at the moment, lawyers would probably be the last thing on their minds.
If you're serious about putting a stop to this, then try your government privacy body (in my state, it's the Office of the NSW Privacy Commissioner). More letters to these people (particularly now as it's close to an election) would help all of us stand up for our collective rights.
I'm wondering if this method of finding objects by mass instead of light (using a nifty property of physics called "gravitational lensing") is in any way related to finding black holes by their gravitational pull or the electromagnetic emissions? In a way, both methods find things by indirect measurement because you don't have to see it to know it's there. You can simply measure the object's effects on everything else around it (e.g. black holes pulling in stars and other matter that generates electromagnetic radiation).
Although the study of human behaviour and its origins is nothing new (psychology is a much older field than neuroscience), the study of behaviour in relation to brain function is a much newer field. The point I am trying to make here is that there is so much we don't know about how the brain works (despite all the advances that we've made so far in terms of PET scans and MRIs that monitor brain activity). So when people make these kinds of claims ("video games make your child violent"), you have to start questioning their methods of research as there could be several factors that influence the child's mental and moral development. Kids who play Quake 3 but live in a nice, stable household in the suburb are not likely to go violent. But kids who live with violence day in day out, even if they don't play video games, are *more likely* (this is the distinction that can be left out in the more vigorous emotional debates) to become violent simply because they've learned to accept violence as a way of life. Something that you learn from experience is that real life has much more of an impact on your behaviour than games do.
So before we start the call for extreme measures to control video game usage, we must learn more about neuroscience's relation to behaviour in general before we can make specific claims about the effects of video games on kids.
While I am happy that Felton managed to get his paper published despite being threatened with the legal equivalent of a *huge* can of whoop-ass (it's actually supposed to be "arse" but that's America for you), I am concerned about the implications that this will have for future research. If people have to hire a lawyer in order for their research to be safely published, then it's likely to seriously restrict the amount and quality of future research. The RIAA may have in fact won after all, if this whole fiasco makes people think twice about publishing material (such as the cracking of SDMI or Adobe's eBook copy protection system) that may go against corporate interests. At any rate, the war for user's rights continues.
While the theory behind this new, high-level superconductor is very interesting there are two important isssues that should be sorted out before we can start celebrating this new discovery:
Firstly, it is only a theory. No actual tests involving this new compound have been performed yet, so for the moment it's merely a very educated guess.
Secondly, the flouroargentates contain Silver in unusually high oxidation states and so the material easily loses Flourine when heated. This becomes a problem as Flourine is the most oxidising of the elements and has the nastly tendancy to corrode glass and some other ceramics. Anyone who has worked with Hydroflouric Acid would agree with me here (HF not only burns your skin but has some other nasty side-effects such as drawing out Calcium from the bones). So containment is going to be a significant problem (and hence makes it very difficult to fashion Silver flouroargentate into wires that would transmit electricity, for example).
So while this is very interesting news for the field of high-temperature superconductors (and also interesting for me as I am a high-school Physics student), my advice is to wait and see. Don't get your hopes up until the results from the practical experiments come out.
It might also be useful to note that there is another compound that has a transition temperature similar to this one. It's a compound of Mercury (although I am unsure which, all constructive suggestions are welcome) and has a transition temperature of around 120K or so.
It might be useful to note that it's not only the hardness of the material that's getting the industry to sit up and take notice. While, the material is harder than practically anything out there (there may be exceptions - all comments are welcome, but remember that it did wear down a Silicon Nitride pin), it's the cost that's also appealing. Super Hard Steel, while being a new concept scientifically, is not an exotic material (in the sense that exotic materials are expensive and difficult to prepare) because it's relatively easy to make; it's apparently made from the transformation of steel alloy (more details in the press release about it's manufacture would have been nice - none of this "coaxing mother nature" bullshit). It's extreme hardness and toughness, combined with a low coefficient of friction means that cost savings will also occur over the lifetime of the part because it lasts longer and requires less maintenance.
It's important that if your discovery is to have "real world" (as in commercial/industrial) applications, it needs to be cost-effective (either it saves money spent on existing processes or generates a profit from new processes). In fact, INEEL materials scientist Daniel Branagan is quoted as saying that the research team "purposely used off-the shelf technology to apply the coatings with the idea of increasing the ease of getting this technology out to industry".
P.S. - The article is quoted as saying that it's one of the hardest metallic materials known so any comparisons to diamond are not really applicable given that diamond is actually an allotrope of Carbon, which is a non-metal. Furthermore, while diamond is a strict, tetrahedral crystalline structure, the Super Hard Steel is actually a "non-crystalline metallic glass" (meaning that it has no specific structure, although the article mentions that the coating can be heated to create a stable structure made up of small crystals). So in all fairness, the two can't really be properly compared because they're not the same types of material.
Why does Slashdot even give crackpots like this a voice? It's typical cold fusion, room temperature super conductors, perpetual motion engine bull shit. It's one guy claiming to have obtained a result that even he admits contradicts general relativity.
That's exactly what they said when Newton proposed the theory of gravitational acceleration (the famous "feather and cannon ball fall at the same rate" experiment) and when Einstein published his Special Theory of Relativity. Both of those ideas contradicted conventional thinking, but came to be accepted as some of the most valuable scientific contributions of all time. While you could be right in saying that this is the scientific equivalent of vapourware, it would be worth your while to observe this point. History has told us time and time again that more people spend more time thinking and talking about what they can't do than what they can do.
Sure, sometimes these fantastic paradigm-shifting things happen. But when it's this far fetched, how about waiting for at least a little peer review?
Because peer review often takes time to verify/disprove your research. By that time someone else may have discovered it and you want to make sure your hard work accounts for something. So you publish as soon as you have something concrete. Even if it gets retracted later on (Element 118, for example) the point is that you've still asked the questions anyway. You may even inspire further research into the field (for instance, the synthesis of transuranics continues to this day).
And as a final note:
Get into the conversation, log in. Most people don't read AC comments.
I'll agree with people that this paper is much more than your average MS-bashing that we experience here at Slashdot. It's good to see that the authors had done the technical research and had the evidence to back up their claims. It also had some interesting points that I though I'd might mention here:
The first interesting point I noted is that while using Netscape, clicking on the Logout button for Hotmail would appear to log you out of Hotmail and redirect you to msn.com. But if you were to click the Hotmail link again, you would appear in your inbox without reauthenticating. Needless to say, this creates a major practical security flaw for non-technically-minded users (ie. the users most at risk because they don't fully understand how the whole process works) as someone on a public terminal can commandeer a previous user's Passport account by simply clicking on the Hotmail icon, hence gaining access to their account. So Passport doesn't work properly with Netscape, but works fine with Microsoft Internet Explorer Conspiracy theorists and Microsoft bashers, do what you will with that statement. The obvious solution to this problem is to use MSIE (a morally repugnant option to some in the Slashdot community), but it shows the problems that can occur when differing platforms aren't properly taken into consideration.
The central point of authenication can also prove a security risk as it provides a central point of attack. There's no real way around this particular risk as it's a long-accepted notion that the more valuable data is on a machine, the more likely it is going to be compromised (or at least, attempts are made). So to have vital information for all Passport users on a single server (correct me if I'm wrong) makes a very tasty target for hackers, crackers and anarchists the world over.
It's been a long-accepted notion that the weakest part of any security system is the people, and that includes everyone from users to sysadmins. So if you choose an obvious password (like "swordfish"), then your account is more likely to be compromised because the hacker can just guess your password, rather than employing elaborate methods (such as DNS spoofing, explained here in this SANS article) to compromise your account.
And finally, I'd like to point out that Passport, while having serious security flaws, is an abitious project that makes the best of existing technology. It's alright to stand up and say (or post, in this instance) that Passport is insecure but until we fundamentally change existing protocols (DNSSEC and IPSec are two suggested standards) then this is what we have to deal with.
In conclusion, you can say what you like about Microsoft, but unless you have evidence to back it up, you won't have much credibility. At least these people did their homework.
Are there any people (who have enough knowledge of Internet Explorer or the Windows OS in general) how this could be achieved? I find it very disturbing that such settings (such as your browser's home page) could be altered remotely without your permission, which could constitute a breach of computer security. As far as I know, (depending on your jurisdiction) there isn't any specific legislation that marks your computer's settings as your private property. The only thing you can do is, like Taco said, disable JavaScript or don't run IE. Which makes sense anyway.
My school, after losing their T1 connection to the demise of One.Tel, recently installed a high-speed link from Telstra. This I have no problem with. What I have a problem with is that they have also installed the proxy-based filter WebSense (as in doesn't have any) to censor their access.
This means I can't access my email as the parent website (Subdimension) is filtered by WebSense as a "Proxy Avoidance System" because the website has an "anonymizer" feature on the site. I am forced to browsing "forbidden" websites (Slashdot is not one of them, thankfully) through Babelfish.
Needless to say that if this legislation ever catches on in Australia (let's hope it doesn't), it will make my efforts to "bypass" this "feature" illegal. This legislation obviously doesn't come from a mandate from the people. It's a result of technically ignorant politicians with a so-called moral conscience try to run our lives their way.
Did Bleem circumvent any access controls, or was it a simple case of reverse engineering?
It depends on how it can be applied under the DMCA. The Bleem software (as far as I know, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) was created before the DMCA, so the considerations made then were different. The reason that Sony sued Bleem is more of a case of piracy than reverse engineering. I'm not completely aware of what the decision was there.
The ability of someone else (eg. Sony) to prosecute the creators of Bleem under the DMCA depends on what exactly Bleem is violating. Is it the law against circumventing access controls, since the PlayStation console acted as an access control because you had to have one to play the PlayStation games? Or is it reverse engineering because it allows you to play PlayStation games on the PC by simulating the PlayStation hardware through software?
A half-decent lawyer could possibly make a case out of either of those points, but chances are they won't because Bleem isn't widespread enough to be a problem. This, of course, wouldn't rule out "preventative" litigation to prevent the software that reverse engineers PlayStation hardware from spreading (as is the case with Dimitry Skylarov). Of course, I could be completely wrong and if anyone has any further comment to make on this topic, feel free.
According to this article by New Scientist, the arrow was discovered almost by accident. A CT scan performed in April by team specialist Paul Gostner showed no sign of foreign objects. Then three weeks ago, he took a chest X-ray that showed the outline of the arrow. A second examination of the CT scan confirmed the finding, as did the physical examination with pathologist Eduard Egarter which showed a two-centimetre cut in the skin matching the trajectory of the arrow. It turns out that because the arrow lies between the shoulder bone and the ribs, it would only show up on a scan of the side. And since all previous scans had been of only the front and back of the body, they hadn't found it until now.
Kind of makes you think how some of the greatest scientific discoveries were made almost entirely by accident (like how they discovered the electron, electric motors or radiation).
"38. The Windows XP operating system leaves the user with little choice but to employ
Passport. As soon as the user starts a computer and uses a modem, a dialog box appears
on the screen stating: "You've just connected to the Internet. You need a Passport to use
Windows XP Internet communications features (such as instant messaging, voice chat
and video), and to access Net-enabled features. Click here to set up your Passport."
Am I reading this correctly as MS not allowing an internet connection at all without a Passport?
Actually, no. What the paper is saying is that the setup of Windows XP to use the Internet automatically (this is where the problem lies as the user has no control over its appearance) presents you with a screen that requires you to setup a Passport account in order to use Microsoft's Internet services (ie. multimedia, IM etc). It doesn't stop you from installing your own software. The scary part about this is that the average user (as opposed to technically adept "geeks" like most of the Slashdot audience here) don't know this, and this gives Microsoft an(other) unfair advantage over its competitors. Paragraph 44 of the complaint also shows this.
What people have to learn is that the more that people want to have everything taken care for them (the iMac's software was preinstalled because people wanted to take it out of the box, plug it in and use it), the less control they will have other what they can do with their computer. Giving the power to set up your PC to someone else (especially corporations) and they will mean that it will be less suited to what you want and more to what Microsoft (or Compaq or whoever the company is) wants. The answer is simple: stop treating the computer like it's a glorified, Internet-accessible TV. Computers are complex machines that can be custom-built for various purposes (eg. servers, graphics computers). They are meant to be interactive. You reap what you sow, and the less effort you put into setting up your computer, the less you'll get out of it. The reason that XP is able to exercise this level of control over your computer is that people will not make the effort to take that control.
Although I will protest against having to register an account just to download some software (this means you too, FilePlanet).
Biological attacks are (at least on current level) probably the most highly overrated threats of them all, though.
While that may possibly be the case, there are a couple of points that also need to be mentioned:
It not only includes risky feed-back property of nuclear stuff (you think your disease will stay in enemy territory for long?
True, and this is the reason why biological warfare didn't become something that was used in the battlefield. There's not much use for a weapon that not only kills the enemy but also your own troops (while that holds also applies to "conventional weapons" the ill-effects of friendly fire in this case could be far greater). But it's most likely that the threat the security experts (who themselves have all held government positions) were talking about is internal, rather than external. It's much harder to launch an attack across borders if what you're looking for is stealth (which an essential element in biological attacks). And if the attack is internal, you are more likely to be dealing with extremists who do not care about friendly casualties (commonly referred to as "collatoral damage") because they tend to act under a higher cause (God, Allah, freedom etc).
and either slow-incubating ineffective (low lethality) aspects (like HIV) or fast and kind of effective disease that quickly runs out of steam (Ebola).
This is also true, and explains why the casualties of natural outbreaks of Ebola are low (because the virus quickly runs out of steam) and that projected casualties of HIV/AIDS will be high (because the long incubation period assists in infection). But what the exercise seeks to demonstrate is not that the virus itself will be particularly effective, but that the vulnerabilities of such a large society will amplify the effectiveness into "doomsday" status. A large society would have many problems dealing with a bioterrorist attack. The slow reaction time of the public health system (because it would take time for a noticeable pattern of infection to emerge and to be classified as an outbreak) and the widespread panic created by public awareness of the attack, which further creates a "surge" in demand for vaccines are cures that the health system is not prepared for.
As a resident of Australia, this doesn't come as a big suprise to me. Ever since the Liberal government decided that selling off Telstra would actually be a *good* idea, the service has just gone completely downhill. Of course, in some ways it was never great to begin with but privatising it just makes it worse.
The point that successive governments (state and federal) don't understand is when you privatise a service, you change whatever the service is responsible to. Public-sector services are responsible to the government, who are in turn responsible (at least, they used to be) to the people. Politicians can be very sensitive to voter dissatisfaction (so the theory goes), especially around election times. But when you privatise the service, it becomes a private-sector entity whose responsibility is to the shareholders, not the people. Profits become the primary focus, and the quality of service declines. Witness such effects with the electricity and natural gas industries in Australia, and the electrical industry in California (the one currently being bailed out with taxpayers' money). What's worse is that as Telstra, being the government body in charge of telecommunications, was the one that set up and maintained all the infrastructure (phone lines etc). This puts them in a wonderful monopoly position as they own practically most of the telecommunications infrastructure in Australia (Optus has some infrastructure of their own as well as leasing from Telstra), and therefore can effectively charge what they like. Not only do the customers pay high prices for inferior service from Telstra, they have to pay high prices to Telstra's competitors because Telstra also charges high prices for them to use their network.
Telstra should have never been privatised to begin with. It was a simple election ploy for little Johnny Howard so that he would have some money to throw around, a way to buy votes. The Liberal government will spend the money on grand election promises and when they are voted out (it's only a matter of time, really) they will leave the successive Labor government with a dilemma. Raise income taxes/GST or sell off Telstra completely (the latter being the most likely). The sad reality of this is that while Telstra is responisble to the shareholders, the "mum-and-dad" shareholders that were meant to be the main beneficiaries of the sale hold precious little stock and can do absolutely nothing to influence the way the company is run.
The same Liberal government that sold Telstra is also unable (more likely they are unwilling) to send in the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the same people who said "no thank you" to DVD regional zoning) and put the hard word on Telstra to improve their service. So, to be honest, this whole sorry saga has been an ill-conceived, money-motivated botch from the word go. Unless we either send in the ACCC and try to get some real results, or buy back the 51% of Telstra already sold (and pay for it later through higher national debt), this situation is unlikely to change.
As far as my high-school physics & chemistry education allows, it is true that Deuterium is found in large bodies of "light" water in the form of D20 or "heavy water" (certain tests are done using emissions from the Deuterium in "light" water or something like that).
The problem is that it exists in extremely small amounts (somewhere in the order of a particle of D20 per few million particles of H20). So to extract it would require an even greater investment in industrial resources than you would get out of fusing the few pounds of Deuterium that you'd extract. It's like saying that we could extract Gold from the oceans because it exists in trace amounts in sea water. Yes, that's true, but it requires so much effort that extracting it is not economically viable.
Slashdot Mirror
We've already found that. It's called a "lost cluster". That's where crucial elements of your data (you know, the small stuff like system files and important documents) go when you have to reset Windows 98 for the upteenth time.
That's because most people don't realise what giving up your personal liberties and privacy involves. They are unaware of the consequences of letting the government interfere further in their lives. And when they do realise what the consequences are it will be too late. Given that the poll was taken so soon after the tragedy (while everyone is still in shock), it's not suprising that the result came out the way it did.
The one thing that governments the world over do not (and sometimes will not) realise is that prohibition or restriction of anything (whether it's drugs, firearms, explosives or encryption) has not, and probably never will, work.
The main principle that I base this opinion on is that the law only regulates the behaviour of people who abide by the law. People who don't abide by the law aren't affected by any of these prohibitions because they don't affect them (unless they are caught and punished). What this means is that the only people that are really affected by prohibition are law-abiding citizens who, by principle, shouldn't be breaking the law in the first place. Therefore, while some lawbreakers are caught, many more are not and this makes the restrictions inefficient and inconvenient for the average person. The law itself is often not a deterrent for people to change their actions, especially if the action had previously been legal, rather it merely changes the method by which the action is performed. So if the government says that you can't do something, you simply do it when the government isn't looking.
For example, when the prohibition for alcohol (which had previously been completely legal) was introduced, people stopped drinking freely in their bars and in their homes and snuck off to "speak easys" (illegal drinking houses) that were often run by the mob or some other underground association. Therefore, prohibition didn't help the authorities and instead helped the underground. Furthermore, since alcohol was illegal this made the demand high and the supply low, so the quality went down and prices went up. People would be poisioning themselves on "drinks" that would contain large amounts of methanol (a chemical with similar effects to ethanol (alcohol) that is even more poisonous), so the incidents of death and blindness went up. Parallels can be spotted between this example and the drug debate that rages on in society today.
The fact that it's cryptography futher complicates the problem as you also being denied your right to privacy (where the government can't legally monitor your communications without just cause and a lot of paperwork - the NSA don't count as they themselves don't spy on US citizens, which is illegal, so they get other agencies to do it for them) but also your right to freedom of choice (the compulsory nature of these provisions means that the backdoors would be standard on all encryption products and backdoor-free versions could not be legally sold inside the United States). Add to that the prospect (which is more like an inevitability) of government abuse of these powers (one poster's example of the French government's "assistance" to French businesses using this power is a prime example) and you have a law that is so dangerous that its misapplication has the potential to completely erode the freedoms of the citizens of the United States. Furthermore, the rush introduction of this legislation after such the proposal of the SSSCA and the WTC/Pentagon/PA terrorist attacks, when the nation is still in shock and grasping for a way to prevent such an event occuring again (which is impossible to do), is inexcusable. The deaths of innocent citizens should never be used as an excuse to further erode people's freedoms in order to preserve "security" in the future (when it's obvious that there is no such thing as absolute or perfect security, only degrees of security).
My advice is, if you haven't already, to start a letter-writing campaign to your congresscritters now because by the time the Supreme Court rules this law as unconstitutional (which it most likely will - at least, it will if judges aren't being monitored 24/7), it may be too late. If enough people say something about it, then you never know how much effect it could have.
Well, you know what they say. What do you give the man who has everything? A Son Of Wyachi to smash it all into tiny pieces.
In space, there is no "on top" (just like there is no "up" in space).
If you need chloroform and bromoform to make this work, the question here is how do you make the end products safe enough for people to use? If you search Google for "chloroform toxicity" you'll find (amongst other things), a fact sheet from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) detailing the effects of exposure to chloroform by humans and animals. Likewise, if you search for "bromoform toxicity", you'll find a paper from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) that explains the effects of exposure to bromoform.
If I was a regular person on the street, I would be seriously concerned that superconducting wires (for example) that were being used in my home contained chemicals that have proven to be carcinogenic to animals (chloroform has been classified by the EPA as Group B2, a probable human carcinogen of low carcinogenic hazard) and have nasty long-term effects such liver damage (both chloroform and bromoform are known to have such effects). I would be concerned for my safety and the safety of others who live in the house. What about leakage, or if the wires break? How do we dispose of these things in the future? It's not like we can just throw them away. Even if the solution were to be in crystalline form, it still doesn't answer questions about exposure to hazards like extreme temperatures, fire and explosions. The bottom line is that we seriously need to consider other options before even thinking about employing this solution.
Sure does. And this phenomenon is not just confined to Slashdot either. The links to the Yahoo! articles also show that two very similar articles were published on this very topic no more than sixteen minutes apart (2:03PM ET and 2:19PM ET). The only difference in the articles was the source - the earlier article's source was Associated Press whereas the later article's source was Reuters.
Yes, I can see it now:
"What are we going to do tonight, Brain?"
"The same thing we do every night, Pinky. Try to take over Mars!"
Or maybe I just need more sleep...
I'd be seriously referring this case to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) because this represents a violation of my privacy. Your own ISP is collecting information about your internet access without your prior knowledge or permission (granted the more technically adept have already guessed it by now by looking at their access logs, but I'm also talking about the people who don't know). Yes, I know that other services have doing the same thing for years but it is easier to prevent an external company, that exercises no influence over your ISP (eg. Gator), from collecting personal information without permission.
Now IANAL, but unfortunately there is no specific legal protection for this kind of activity (at least not in NSW) under the Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act 1998 (NSW), as the principles in the Act that must be applied in the collection and use of personal information (see Section 10) only apply to the public sector and are still subject to exemptions.
Your best bet would be the Privacy Amendment (Private Sector) Act 2000 (which amends the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth)), as this adds conditions under which the private sector can collect personal information. It's also a Commonwealth Law, so that the Act can be applied to cases all over the country (although in most cases, the courts tend to follow the lead of NSW). One big caveat of this amendment is that this still could possibly allow Excite@home to collect information if "the collection is necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of a legal or equitable claim" (see Schedule 3, 10.1(e)). But the way things are going for Excite@home at the moment, lawyers would probably be the last thing on their minds.
If you're serious about putting a stop to this, then try your government privacy body (in my state, it's the Office of the NSW Privacy Commissioner). More letters to these people (particularly now as it's close to an election) would help all of us stand up for our collective rights.
Yes, I can certainly see it now:
"Every dead machine that is not exterminated gets up and kills! The machines it kills get up and kill!"
Or maybe it's just way too early in the morning...
I'm wondering if this method of finding objects by mass instead of light (using a nifty property of physics called "gravitational lensing") is in any way related to finding black holes by their gravitational pull or the electromagnetic emissions? In a way, both methods find things by indirect measurement because you don't have to see it to know it's there. You can simply measure the object's effects on everything else around it (e.g. black holes pulling in stars and other matter that generates electromagnetic radiation).
Although the study of human behaviour and its origins is nothing new (psychology is a much older field than neuroscience), the study of behaviour in relation to brain function is a much newer field. The point I am trying to make here is that there is so much we don't know about how the brain works (despite all the advances that we've made so far in terms of PET scans and MRIs that monitor brain activity). So when people make these kinds of claims ("video games make your child violent"), you have to start questioning their methods of research as there could be several factors that influence the child's mental and moral development. Kids who play Quake 3 but live in a nice, stable household in the suburb are not likely to go violent. But kids who live with violence day in day out, even if they don't play video games, are *more likely* (this is the distinction that can be left out in the more vigorous emotional debates) to become violent simply because they've learned to accept violence as a way of life. Something that you learn from experience is that real life has much more of an impact on your behaviour than games do.
So before we start the call for extreme measures to control video game usage, we must learn more about neuroscience's relation to behaviour in general before we can make specific claims about the effects of video games on kids.
While I am happy that Felton managed to get his paper published despite being threatened with the legal equivalent of a *huge* can of whoop-ass (it's actually supposed to be "arse" but that's America for you), I am concerned about the implications that this will have for future research. If people have to hire a lawyer in order for their research to be safely published, then it's likely to seriously restrict the amount and quality of future research. The RIAA may have in fact won after all, if this whole fiasco makes people think twice about publishing material (such as the cracking of SDMI or Adobe's eBook copy protection system) that may go against corporate interests. At any rate, the war for user's rights continues.
While the theory behind this new, high-level superconductor is very interesting there are two important isssues that should be sorted out before we can start celebrating this new discovery:
So while this is very interesting news for the field of high-temperature superconductors (and also interesting for me as I am a high-school Physics student), my advice is to wait and see. Don't get your hopes up until the results from the practical experiments come out.
It might also be useful to note that there is another compound that has a transition temperature similar to this one. It's a compound of Mercury (although I am unsure which, all constructive suggestions are welcome) and has a transition temperature of around 120K or so.
It might be useful to note that it's not only the hardness of the material that's getting the industry to sit up and take notice. While, the material is harder than practically anything out there (there may be exceptions - all comments are welcome, but remember that it did wear down a Silicon Nitride pin), it's the cost that's also appealing. Super Hard Steel, while being a new concept scientifically, is not an exotic material (in the sense that exotic materials are expensive and difficult to prepare) because it's relatively easy to make; it's apparently made from the transformation of steel alloy (more details in the press release about it's manufacture would have been nice - none of this "coaxing mother nature" bullshit). It's extreme hardness and toughness, combined with a low coefficient of friction means that cost savings will also occur over the lifetime of the part because it lasts longer and requires less maintenance.
It's important that if your discovery is to have "real world" (as in commercial/industrial) applications, it needs to be cost-effective (either it saves money spent on existing processes or generates a profit from new processes). In fact, INEEL materials scientist Daniel Branagan is quoted as saying that the research team "purposely used off-the shelf technology to apply the coatings with the idea of increasing the ease of getting this technology out to industry".
P.S. - The article is quoted as saying that it's one of the hardest metallic materials known so any comparisons to diamond are not really applicable given that diamond is actually an allotrope of Carbon, which is a non-metal. Furthermore, while diamond is a strict, tetrahedral crystalline structure, the Super Hard Steel is actually a "non-crystalline metallic glass" (meaning that it has no specific structure, although the article mentions that the coating can be heated to create a stable structure made up of small crystals). So in all fairness, the two can't really be properly compared because they're not the same types of material.
Why does Slashdot even give crackpots like this a voice? It's typical cold fusion, room temperature super conductors, perpetual motion engine bull shit. It's one guy claiming to have obtained a result that even he admits contradicts general relativity.
That's exactly what they said when Newton proposed the theory of gravitational acceleration (the famous "feather and cannon ball fall at the same rate" experiment) and when Einstein published his Special Theory of Relativity. Both of those ideas contradicted conventional thinking, but came to be accepted as some of the most valuable scientific contributions of all time. While you could be right in saying that this is the scientific equivalent of vapourware, it would be worth your while to observe this point. History has told us time and time again that more people spend more time thinking and talking about what they can't do than what they can do.
Sure, sometimes these fantastic paradigm-shifting things happen. But when it's this far fetched, how about waiting for at least a little peer review?
Because peer review often takes time to verify/disprove your research. By that time someone else may have discovered it and you want to make sure your hard work accounts for something. So you publish as soon as you have something concrete. Even if it gets retracted later on (Element 118, for example) the point is that you've still asked the questions anyway. You may even inspire further research into the field (for instance, the synthesis of transuranics continues to this day).
And as a final note:
Get into the conversation, log in. Most people don't read AC comments.
Now that, I can agree with.
I'll agree with people that this paper is much more than your average MS-bashing that we experience here at Slashdot. It's good to see that the authors had done the technical research and had the evidence to back up their claims. It also had some interesting points that I though I'd might mention here:
In conclusion, you can say what you like about Microsoft, but unless you have evidence to back it up, you won't have much credibility. At least these people did their homework.
Are there any people (who have enough knowledge of Internet Explorer or the Windows OS in general) how this could be achieved? I find it very disturbing that such settings (such as your browser's home page) could be altered remotely without your permission, which could constitute a breach of computer security. As far as I know, (depending on your jurisdiction) there isn't any specific legislation that marks your computer's settings as your private property. The only thing you can do is, like Taco said, disable JavaScript or don't run IE. Which makes sense anyway.
My school, after losing their T1 connection to the demise of One.Tel, recently installed a high-speed link from Telstra. This I have no problem with. What I have a problem with is that they have also installed the proxy-based filter WebSense (as in doesn't have any) to censor their access.
This means I can't access my email as the parent website (Subdimension) is filtered by WebSense as a "Proxy Avoidance System" because the website has an "anonymizer" feature on the site. I am forced to browsing "forbidden" websites (Slashdot is not one of them, thankfully) through Babelfish.
Needless to say that if this legislation ever catches on in Australia (let's hope it doesn't), it will make my efforts to "bypass" this "feature" illegal. This legislation obviously doesn't come from a mandate from the people. It's a result of technically ignorant politicians with a so-called moral conscience try to run our lives their way.
Self Bias Resistor
Did Bleem circumvent any access controls, or was it a simple case of reverse engineering?
It depends on how it can be applied under the DMCA. The Bleem software (as far as I know, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) was created before the DMCA, so the considerations made then were different. The reason that Sony sued Bleem is more of a case of piracy than reverse engineering. I'm not completely aware of what the decision was there.
The ability of someone else (eg. Sony) to prosecute the creators of Bleem under the DMCA depends on what exactly Bleem is violating. Is it the law against circumventing access controls, since the PlayStation console acted as an access control because you had to have one to play the PlayStation games? Or is it reverse engineering because it allows you to play PlayStation games on the PC by simulating the PlayStation hardware through software?
A half-decent lawyer could possibly make a case out of either of those points, but chances are they won't because Bleem isn't widespread enough to be a problem. This, of course, wouldn't rule out "preventative" litigation to prevent the software that reverse engineers PlayStation hardware from spreading (as is the case with Dimitry Skylarov). Of course, I could be completely wrong and if anyone has any further comment to make on this topic, feel free.
Self Bias Resistor
According to this article by New Scientist, the arrow was discovered almost by accident. A CT scan performed in April by team specialist Paul Gostner showed no sign of foreign objects. Then three weeks ago, he took a chest X-ray that showed the outline of the arrow. A second examination of the CT scan confirmed the finding, as did the physical examination with pathologist Eduard Egarter which showed a two-centimetre cut in the skin matching the trajectory of the arrow. It turns out that because the arrow lies between the shoulder bone and the ribs, it would only show up on a scan of the side. And since all previous scans had been of only the front and back of the body, they hadn't found it until now.
Kind of makes you think how some of the greatest scientific discoveries were made almost entirely by accident (like how they discovered the electron, electric motors or radiation).
Self Bias Resistor
"38. The Windows XP operating system leaves the user with little choice but to employ Passport. As soon as the user starts a computer and uses a modem, a dialog box appears on the screen stating: "You've just connected to the Internet. You need a Passport to use Windows XP Internet communications features (such as instant messaging, voice chat and video), and to access Net-enabled features. Click here to set up your Passport."
Am I reading this correctly as MS not allowing an internet connection at all without a Passport?
Actually, no. What the paper is saying is that the setup of Windows XP to use the Internet automatically (this is where the problem lies as the user has no control over its appearance) presents you with a screen that requires you to setup a Passport account in order to use Microsoft's Internet services (ie. multimedia, IM etc). It doesn't stop you from installing your own software. The scary part about this is that the average user (as opposed to technically adept "geeks" like most of the Slashdot audience here) don't know this, and this gives Microsoft an(other) unfair advantage over its competitors. Paragraph 44 of the complaint also shows this.
What people have to learn is that the more that people want to have everything taken care for them (the iMac's software was preinstalled because people wanted to take it out of the box, plug it in and use it), the less control they will have other what they can do with their computer. Giving the power to set up your PC to someone else (especially corporations) and they will mean that it will be less suited to what you want and more to what Microsoft (or Compaq or whoever the company is) wants. The answer is simple: stop treating the computer like it's a glorified, Internet-accessible TV. Computers are complex machines that can be custom-built for various purposes (eg. servers, graphics computers). They are meant to be interactive. You reap what you sow, and the less effort you put into setting up your computer, the less you'll get out of it. The reason that XP is able to exercise this level of control over your computer is that people will not make the effort to take that control.
Although I will protest against having to register an account just to download some software (this means you too, FilePlanet).
Self Bias Resistor
Biological attacks are (at least on current level) probably the most highly overrated threats of them all, though.
While that may possibly be the case, there are a couple of points that also need to be mentioned:
True, and this is the reason why biological warfare didn't become something that was used in the battlefield. There's not much use for a weapon that not only kills the enemy but also your own troops (while that holds also applies to "conventional weapons" the ill-effects of friendly fire in this case could be far greater). But it's most likely that the threat the security experts (who themselves have all held government positions) were talking about is internal, rather than external. It's much harder to launch an attack across borders if what you're looking for is stealth (which an essential element in biological attacks). And if the attack is internal, you are more likely to be dealing with extremists who do not care about friendly casualties (commonly referred to as "collatoral damage") because they tend to act under a higher cause (God, Allah, freedom etc).
This is also true, and explains why the casualties of natural outbreaks of Ebola are low (because the virus quickly runs out of steam) and that projected casualties of HIV/AIDS will be high (because the long incubation period assists in infection). But what the exercise seeks to demonstrate is not that the virus itself will be particularly effective, but that the vulnerabilities of such a large society will amplify the effectiveness into "doomsday" status. A large society would have many problems dealing with a bioterrorist attack. The slow reaction time of the public health system (because it would take time for a noticeable pattern of infection to emerge and to be classified as an outbreak) and the widespread panic created by public awareness of the attack, which further creates a "surge" in demand for vaccines are cures that the health system is not prepared for.
If anyone is interested in further information regarding the topic of bioterrorism, then there are sites by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
Self Bias Resistor
As a resident of Australia, this doesn't come as a big suprise to me. Ever since the Liberal government decided that selling off Telstra would actually be a *good* idea, the service has just gone completely downhill. Of course, in some ways it was never great to begin with but privatising it just makes it worse.
The point that successive governments (state and federal) don't understand is when you privatise a service, you change whatever the service is responsible to. Public-sector services are responsible to the government, who are in turn responsible (at least, they used to be) to the people. Politicians can be very sensitive to voter dissatisfaction (so the theory goes), especially around election times. But when you privatise the service, it becomes a private-sector entity whose responsibility is to the shareholders, not the people. Profits become the primary focus, and the quality of service declines. Witness such effects with the electricity and natural gas industries in Australia, and the electrical industry in California (the one currently being bailed out with taxpayers' money). What's worse is that as Telstra, being the government body in charge of telecommunications, was the one that set up and maintained all the infrastructure (phone lines etc). This puts them in a wonderful monopoly position as they own practically most of the telecommunications infrastructure in Australia (Optus has some infrastructure of their own as well as leasing from Telstra), and therefore can effectively charge what they like. Not only do the customers pay high prices for inferior service from Telstra, they have to pay high prices to Telstra's competitors because Telstra also charges high prices for them to use their network.
Telstra should have never been privatised to begin with. It was a simple election ploy for little Johnny Howard so that he would have some money to throw around, a way to buy votes. The Liberal government will spend the money on grand election promises and when they are voted out (it's only a matter of time, really) they will leave the successive Labor government with a dilemma. Raise income taxes/GST or sell off Telstra completely (the latter being the most likely). The sad reality of this is that while Telstra is responisble to the shareholders, the "mum-and-dad" shareholders that were meant to be the main beneficiaries of the sale hold precious little stock and can do absolutely nothing to influence the way the company is run.
The same Liberal government that sold Telstra is also unable (more likely they are unwilling) to send in the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the same people who said "no thank you" to DVD regional zoning) and put the hard word on Telstra to improve their service. So, to be honest, this whole sorry saga has been an ill-conceived, money-motivated botch from the word go. Unless we either send in the ACCC and try to get some real results, or buy back the 51% of Telstra already sold (and pay for it later through higher national debt), this situation is unlikely to change.
Self Bias Resistor
As far as my high-school physics & chemistry education allows, it is true that Deuterium is found in large bodies of "light" water in the form of D20 or "heavy water" (certain tests are done using emissions from the Deuterium in "light" water or something like that).
The problem is that it exists in extremely small amounts (somewhere in the order of a particle of D20 per few million particles of H20). So to extract it would require an even greater investment in industrial resources than you would get out of fusing the few pounds of Deuterium that you'd extract. It's like saying that we could extract Gold from the oceans because it exists in trace amounts in sea water. Yes, that's true, but it requires so much effort that extracting it is not economically viable.
Self Bias Resistor