of course, that's the idea -- but the idea of being "slightly more accurate" over the course of multiple equations, each depending on the previous one, means that no matter how "almost accurate" your model is, by the time you extrapolate that.0000001% error into 2^99999999999 equations, you're dealing with essentially useless data in the end.
As you point out, we can only predict weather for a very short period of time now, based on what very few atmospheric factors we truly understand. So I guess what i'm asking is, if these guys know a more accurate way to predict the weather, why don't they share it with the rest of the world? if they don't know one, how the heck do they expect to predict even the most general pattern of average temperature 100 years into the future?
It's like suggesting every mayor should run their office by playing SimCity -- SimCity is a fun game, and certainly takes into account varied things like weather, accessability, traffic patterns, and economic development. But no one would seriously consider that it is capable of accurately predicing how a REAL city would develop, as it's obviously crippled in the factors it can consider.
i DO believe that some day we will have the capability to do this sort of calculation -- but probably not until computers are able to LEARN in the sense of being able to provide their own analysis of factors involved, and constantly update their own processes according to new data as it is discovered and verified (and weighed)...
I dunno -- as inherently INTERESTING as the subject is, I suspect it'll be nothing more than a huge waste of processor cycles.
I mean, essentially we're starting out with random parameters (guided by what they offer as "realistic") and project forward with hypothetical rules on behavior to an unknown point in the future where we'll calculate the probability of a particular outcome?
Seriously, there's so much speculation and guesswork in even building the system to time-progress the ecological model that it seems unrealistic. Add on top of that the fact that no valid data at all will be used in the calculation, and of course the obvious limitation on the possibel number of factors we'll be calculating (as opposed to the huge number of factors that really exist) and you're pretty much pissing in the wind.
think about it this way -- assume everything in the simulation is perfect, including all the data it starts out with (two major assumptions) EXCEPT that a year from now we find out the reproductive cycle of the lungfish plays a greater than anticipated role in the production of kelp, which in turn is respoonsible for generating a large portion of the atmospheric oxygen. Every calculation done will be a complete waste of cycles and you'll have to start all over with the new ecological model.
infinitely better than most of his other work (IMHO). Forge of god got me into bear, and unfortunately I haven't gotten as excited by anything else he's done...
i can only assume you're religious, since you attribute morality to religion. Needless to say, being non-religious does not necessarily imply amorality, and many non-religious people take very seriously their moral stances because they are not arbitrary rules sent down from on high, but rather personal decisions that help define the terms of their life.
That said, i do get fairly annoyed at the general consensus that seems to pervade the cracker community that diddling around in other people's systems is harmless fun...
I work at the NASA Commercial Space center for Medical Informatics & Technology Applications, a research group at the Medical College of Virginia.
Yes, health care will be a huge online industry, but not because you have to wait in lines too long. You live in the US, presumably in a heavily populated area (at least populated enough to have a decent hospital nearby).
The vast majority of the humans alive today are not so fortunate -- they live in rural areas, or in countries where graduating medical school requires little more than being born to an influential or wealthy family. There are places on earth where you would rather have a limb amputated than have a so-called "doctor" try to save it. There are places on earth where "going to the hospital" means you're going to die.
Strangely enough, most places on earth have access to the internet! It may be expensive, it may be crappy connections, and in all likelyhood it's not available to the average person, but if you have a cell phone, or a land line, or at the very least can see a satellite, you can get online.
So what happens when you get a rare form of cancer, but you live in the second/third world (where believe me, you don't want to see a "doctor")? if you're rich, you'll simply fly to the USA and get treated for it while you stay at the Four Seasons. But if you're poor, you die, or at best get some second-rate medicine that might relieve the pain for a while.
If you're lucky, and your physician or hospital can get online, you can consult with a specialist in the US who actually knows what he's talking about. The proper medicines can be administered, and the tests can be done in a way that results are broadcast real-time (or delayed for review) to the consulting physician. better procedures can be followed, and knowledge is no longer something you have to TRAVEL somewhere to benefit from.
this is grossly oversimplified, and a whole lot of reasoning and process is left out, but it should give you an idea of the real uses of telemedicine.
Also realize that in the future for wealthy countries like the US, your health will not be something attended to only when you're ill. You'll wear shoes that sense when you're putting too much stress on your joints (great for the elderly), and you'll have an undershirt that monitors your heart condition after you have a heart attack. You'll wear eyeglasses that sense when your eyes strain too much to focus, and update your prescription accordingly.
I know what everyone's thinking, and quite frankly you're right -- patient privacy is shot to hell currently (believe me, if you've never worked in a hospital, you would never believe the access janitors and other idiots have to patient data), and it's only going to get worse.
Especially if you read the sequel to the Forge of God, the Anvil of Stars, in which the guys who used the black holes on us get what they deserve.
BTW, i HIGHLY recommend to anyone that they read the series, it's a great relief to read about a universe in which we are not the center, we are not the victors, but there are many species, of which some are hostile and some are not.
he's completely right that you're being either obtuse or just inaccurate with your words -- privacy is NOT AT STAKE here.
This is NOT A PRIVATE FORUM. I don't know what access method you use to get onto slashdot, but most of us simply use the internet and require no membership or proof of identity to participate. if you are paying dues or have a login in order to see posts, you're doing something wrong.
Slashdot is privately owned, but it is about as public a forum as any that could be concieved. Any person can post here, and person can read posts here. No exceptions that i know of.
if you strip naked in a 7-11 you can be charged with public indecency, because although 7-11 is a privately owned place, it is open to the public! if you strip naked in your local clubhouse, you cannot be charged with public indecency because you are not in a public place, you are in a private place where non-members cannot go.
Slashdot is open to the public, your remarks here are copyrighted by you but are still available to the public, and if a news organization uses them the very LAST thing you could ever charge them with is violation of privacy.
i don't understand at all what you're talking about. You seriously are not making any logical sense.
The original article said "post here and we may print your comments". But you're saying that someone would somehow be surprised or upset by the idea that their comment would be published!? if you don't want to be published, don't follow the instructions for something that says "to possibly be published, do this..."! This is not a major theological or philosophical debate, if you can read plain english you clearly understand the implications of a simple "if...then" statement.
And even aside from the issue of everything being quite explicit, publishing someone's comments in no way "violates their privacy" if they were offered to a public forum! Public posts are not "private" -- this doesn't seem to be a complex idea. i'm not sure where the disconnect is...
You'd have to have a million files in the same directory for that to work, and I don't believe that the DOS or the Mac file systems will allow that many files in any directory (probably only a few tens of thousands at most)...
Dumb dunces? How are they stupid for protecting their rights? As the situation was before, writers got paid nothing more for reuse. Now, as you point out, many places will simply change the contract, and they'll still get nothing more for reuse. How have the freelancers "lost" in any way? At most they've at least made a situation where they *may* be able to profit off of re-use, and at the very least they'll get paid for the work that was already published illegally...
The copyright of a collection is just that -- a copyright over that particular arrangement of work, in that format. You can own a database of public information because YOU are the one who put the information into a format that made it usable and informative.
Similarly, you can own a copyright on an anthology without having the copyright of the individual works -- publishers do this all the time. the individual work may be owned by 12 different companies/people, but they contract for the right to republish in an anthology format, and that particular arrangement and format is protected as a separate work (note they have to have permission for the individual works whenever they publish the anthology). It's like a nested copyright.
This, quite frankly, isn't news to the NYT. they just want more rights without having to pay for them (as do all publishers)...
You've confused who owns what here -- the freelancers shouldn't have to renegotiate, the NYT does. They're the ones who want to use it for a purpose that was never covered in the previous legal agreement, therefore THEY have to pay again.
The freelancers own the copyright to the work, they sell only what is explicit in the contract. This isn't rocket science, but not many freelancers have the financial ability to take the NYT to court over it...
Americans riot maybe once every few years and rarely cause more than property damage -- It's the Soccer (football) fans overseas that riot every freaking week and trample people to death on a monthly basis.
Say what you will about us being violent, we try not to kill as many people while "celebrating" as our more illustrious friends elsewhere...
If you know twins for a while you can easily tell the difference between them - parents can tell their identical babies apart within a very short time of them being born, and the differences only get more exaggerated as they get older...
Oh, certainly there's no basis in the cases you cited for trying to overturn the privelege. Paying money to the IRS isn't a crime, and there's no logical or legal reason you could compel an attorney to reveal why or who the money is coming from. Same with the tax stamps.
In the current context of money laundering, though, an attorney who moved money from one account to another, or deposited funds, or participated in any material way to such an activity is commiting a crime, as the activity is inherently criminal based on the origin of the money (much as passing counterfeit money is, regardless of if you made it). Paying income taxes on that money wouldn't be criminal, and could thus be done anonymously through your attorney.
That's completely untrue. An attorney who is complicit or accomplice in a crime has no attorney-client privelege (for those actions).
Otherwise, you could have your attorney drive the getaway car, or kill your spouse, or whatever, and they could never put him on the stand.
Attorney-client privlege only applies in LEGITIMATE legal relationships...
Re:Geek Girl reveals where all the Geek Girls are
on
Nitrozac Answers
·
· Score: 2
Be sure to pick up Truffle's new book, "The Geek Rules," where she shares more of her insights on such varied topics as:
Why she won't go out with you Why her friend won't go out with you Why her other friend won't go out with you You want ATA, but she likes SCSI and ATA, too Why you have to ping your own server every night Why IE's "friendly errors" option won't filter her 404's
Why her Little Plastic Castle is a surprise every time...
I had the same issue -- some posts were bumped up to 3 or 4, and contained nothing particularly original or insightful, although they weren't off-topic or flambait, either. I hate to penalize a moderator for pumping up an article, but at the same time I don't think articles that are "1"s should be pumped up to "4"...
One problem I found with the M2 system -- I wound up with 2 comments each appearing twice on the same page, so only 8 of the 10 comments were "original". I hate to vote twice on one comment, so I suspect we need to figure out a way to remove duplicates.
On the idea of always having moderation controls available, I think it's a bad idea simply because I don't have enough time to moderate every comment I ever read, only to find out that only 1% of my effort takes effect. If I've got moderator status, I pay more attention, and make sure I'm being fair and unbiased, but if I don't know if I'm moderating or not, it would take me too long to read everything and I'd wind up NEVER moderating. then you'd wind up with either obsessive-compulsives or people with agendas doing all the moderation...
The united states signed the berne convention in 1976! Your copyright is undeniable, completelyprotected, and requires no formal statement, notice or registration to be valid and legally enforcable. It's not like somebody can "accidentally" exactly copy your creation, so they are well aware they aren't the creators. mailing yourself a copy of your creation has no legal validity whatsoever -- what's to keep someone from mailing themselves an empty unsealed envelope and later putting something in it to "prove" it was created years ago?...
I just don't understand the blind doggedness of advocates -- can't we just deal with reality here? We're all technically competent people.
The reality is that NT is more likely to support a given piece of hardware than Linux, just the same as Win98 is more likely to support it than NT. It has nothing to do with superiority.
Linux is no less potent for having even more specific hardware needs than NT, but that DOES make it more likely to install in an unusable fashion on a PC that wasn't purchased with Linux hardware requirements in mind.
And I know how frustrating it can be -- I have to run 98 on my home system rather than NT because I play games and need the expanded hardware support 98 offers. 3d audio? Programmable joystick? NT speaks not these things!
Oh, I know -- I'm just sick of people acting like he's doing something wrong just because it WASN'T easy the first time.
I myself have installed Linux a half-dozen times, and I wouldn't say it was HARD to install, but those who contend it's easier than NT nead to stop passing the pipe. The main difference is that getting Linux INSTALLED is only 1% of the difficulty -- I've accomplished that several times. Getting it working *properly* with all the hardware, and getting X up and running have been the parts where everything seems to fall apart...
Okay, I have to confess (and not anonymously, I might add) that I'm getting really freaking sick of all the obnoxious people who waste their time posting here (and to other discussions)!
I for one happen to be enjoying hearing JonKatz's tale. Believe it or not, there are actually intelligent, sentient, thoroughly competent beings out here reading slashdot who aren't currently running Linux! For those people these postings may actually be valuable and interesting, even if they aren't to you! If you don't find it interesting, why not just move along and read about the latest build or something more up your alley?
For those of us who are learning I can only let JonKatz know that we ARE reading, and appreciating the considerable amount of free time and energy he's putting into sharing (I keep hearing how Linux is all about sharing?) his experience.
Slashdot Mirror
of course, that's the idea -- but the idea of being "slightly more accurate" over the course of multiple equations, each depending on the previous one, means that no matter how "almost accurate" your model is, by the time you extrapolate that .0000001% error into 2^99999999999 equations, you're dealing with essentially useless data in the end.
As you point out, we can only predict weather for a very short period of time now, based on what very few atmospheric factors we truly understand. So I guess what i'm asking is, if these guys know a more accurate way to predict the weather, why don't they share it with the rest of the world? if they don't know one, how the heck do they expect to predict even the most general pattern of average temperature 100 years into the future?
It's like suggesting every mayor should run their office by playing SimCity -- SimCity is a fun game, and certainly takes into account varied things like weather, accessability, traffic patterns, and economic development. But no one would seriously consider that it is capable of accurately predicing how a REAL city would develop, as it's obviously crippled in the factors it can consider.
i DO believe that some day we will have the capability to do this sort of calculation -- but probably not until computers are able to LEARN in the sense of being able to provide their own analysis of factors involved, and constantly update their own processes according to new data as it is discovered and verified (and weighed)...
I dunno -- as inherently INTERESTING as the subject is, I suspect it'll be nothing more than a huge waste of processor cycles.
I mean, essentially we're starting out with random parameters (guided by what they offer as "realistic") and project forward with hypothetical rules on behavior to an unknown point in the future where we'll calculate the probability of a particular outcome?
Seriously, there's so much speculation and guesswork in even building the system to time-progress the ecological model that it seems unrealistic. Add on top of that the fact that no valid data at all will be used in the calculation, and of course the obvious limitation on the possibel number of factors we'll be calculating (as opposed to the huge number of factors that really exist) and you're pretty much pissing in the wind.
think about it this way -- assume everything in the simulation is perfect, including all the data it starts out with (two major assumptions) EXCEPT that a year from now we find out the reproductive cycle of the lungfish plays a greater than anticipated role in the production of kelp, which in turn is respoonsible for generating a large portion of the atmospheric oxygen. Every calculation done will be a complete waste of cycles and you'll have to start all over with the new ecological model.
or am i missing something?
infinitely better than most of his other work (IMHO). Forge of god got me into bear, and unfortunately I haven't gotten as excited by anything else he's done...
i can only assume you're religious, since you attribute morality to religion. Needless to say, being non-religious does not necessarily imply amorality, and many non-religious people take very seriously their moral stances because they are not arbitrary rules sent down from on high, but rather personal decisions that help define the terms of their life.
That said, i do get fairly annoyed at the general consensus that seems to pervade the cracker community that diddling around in other people's systems is harmless fun...
I work at the NASA Commercial Space center for Medical Informatics & Technology Applications, a research group at the Medical College of Virginia.
Yes, health care will be a huge online industry, but not because you have to wait in lines too long. You live in the US, presumably in a heavily populated area (at least populated enough to have a decent hospital nearby).
The vast majority of the humans alive today are not so fortunate -- they live in rural areas, or in countries where graduating medical school requires little more than being born to an influential or wealthy family. There are places on earth where you would rather have a limb amputated than have a so-called "doctor" try to save it. There are places on earth where "going to the hospital" means you're going to die.
Strangely enough, most places on earth have access to the internet! It may be expensive, it may be crappy connections, and in all likelyhood it's not available to the average person, but if you have a cell phone, or a land line, or at the very least can see a satellite, you can get online.
So what happens when you get a rare form of cancer, but you live in the second/third world (where believe me, you don't want to see a "doctor")? if you're rich, you'll simply fly to the USA and get treated for it while you stay at the Four Seasons. But if you're poor, you die, or at best get some second-rate medicine that might relieve the pain for a while.
If you're lucky, and your physician or hospital can get online, you can consult with a specialist in the US who actually knows what he's talking about. The proper medicines can be administered, and the tests can be done in a way that results are broadcast real-time (or delayed for review) to the consulting physician. better procedures can be followed, and knowledge is no longer something you have to TRAVEL somewhere to benefit from.
this is grossly oversimplified, and a whole lot of reasoning and process is left out, but it should give you an idea of the real uses of telemedicine.
Also realize that in the future for wealthy countries like the US, your health will not be something attended to only when you're ill. You'll wear shoes that sense when you're putting too much stress on your joints (great for the elderly), and you'll have an undershirt that monitors your heart condition after you have a heart attack. You'll wear eyeglasses that sense when your eyes strain too much to focus, and update your prescription accordingly.
I know what everyone's thinking, and quite frankly you're right -- patient privacy is shot to hell currently (believe me, if you've never worked in a hospital, you would never believe the access janitors and other idiots have to patient data), and it's only going to get worse.
Using black holes as weapons is suicide
Especially if you read the sequel to the Forge of God, the Anvil of Stars, in which the guys who used the black holes on us get what they deserve.
BTW, i HIGHLY recommend to anyone that they read the series, it's a great relief to read about a universe in which we are not the center, we are not the victors, but there are many species, of which some are hostile and some are not.
it was written by greg bear, though!...
he's completely right that you're being either obtuse or just inaccurate with your words -- privacy is NOT AT STAKE here.
This is NOT A PRIVATE FORUM. I don't know what access method you use to get onto slashdot, but most of us simply use the internet and require no membership or proof of identity to participate. if you are paying dues or have a login in order to see posts, you're doing something wrong.
Slashdot is privately owned, but it is about as public a forum as any that could be concieved. Any person can post here, and person can read posts here. No exceptions that i know of.
if you strip naked in a 7-11 you can be charged with public indecency, because although 7-11 is a privately owned place, it is open to the public! if you strip naked in your local clubhouse, you cannot be charged with public indecency because you are not in a public place, you are in a private place where non-members cannot go.
Slashdot is open to the public, your remarks here are copyrighted by you but are still available to the public, and if a news organization uses them the very LAST thing you could ever charge them with is violation of privacy.
i don't understand at all what you're talking about. You seriously are not making any logical sense.
The original article said "post here and we may print your comments". But you're saying that someone would somehow be surprised or upset by the idea that their comment would be published!? if you don't want to be published, don't follow the instructions for something that says "to possibly be published, do this..."! This is not a major theological or philosophical debate, if you can read plain english you clearly understand the implications of a simple "if...then" statement.
And even aside from the issue of everything being quite explicit, publishing someone's comments in no way "violates their privacy" if they were offered to a public forum! Public posts are not "private" -- this doesn't seem to be a complex idea. i'm not sure where the disconnect is...
You'd have to have a million files in the same directory for that to work, and I don't believe that the DOS or the Mac file systems will allow that many files in any directory (probably only a few tens of thousands at most)...
Dumb dunces? How are they stupid for protecting their rights? As the situation was before, writers got paid nothing more for reuse. Now, as you point out, many places will simply change the contract, and they'll still get nothing more for reuse. How have the freelancers "lost" in any way? At most they've at least made a situation where they *may* be able to profit off of re-use, and at the very least they'll get paid for the work that was already published illegally...
The copyright of a collection is just that -- a copyright over that particular arrangement of work, in that format. You can own a database of public information because YOU are the one who put the information into a format that made it usable and informative.
Similarly, you can own a copyright on an anthology without having the copyright of the individual works -- publishers do this all the time. the individual work may be owned by 12 different companies/people, but they contract for the right to republish in an anthology format, and that particular arrangement and format is protected as a separate work (note they have to have permission for the individual works whenever they publish the anthology). It's like a nested copyright.
This, quite frankly, isn't news to the NYT. they just want more rights without having to pay for them (as do all publishers)...
You've confused who owns what here -- the freelancers shouldn't have to renegotiate, the NYT does. They're the ones who want to use it for a purpose that was never covered in the previous legal agreement, therefore THEY have to pay again.
The freelancers own the copyright to the work, they sell only what is explicit in the contract. This isn't rocket science, but not many freelancers have the financial ability to take the NYT to court over it...
Americans riot maybe once every few years and rarely cause more than property damage -- It's the Soccer (football) fans overseas that riot every freaking week and trample people to death on a monthly basis.
Say what you will about us being violent, we try not to kill as many people while "celebrating" as our more illustrious friends elsewhere...
Haven't known many identical twins, have you?
If you know twins for a while you can easily tell the difference between them - parents can tell their identical babies apart within a very short time of them being born, and the differences only get more exaggerated as they get older...
Oh, certainly there's no basis in the cases you cited for trying to overturn the privelege. Paying money to the IRS isn't a crime, and there's no logical or legal reason you could compel an attorney to reveal why or who the money is coming from. Same with the tax stamps.
In the current context of money laundering, though, an attorney who moved money from one account to another, or deposited funds, or participated in any material way to such an activity is commiting a crime, as the activity is inherently criminal based on the origin of the money (much as passing counterfeit money is, regardless of if you made it). Paying income taxes on that money wouldn't be criminal, and could thus be done anonymously through your attorney.
That's completely untrue. An attorney who is complicit or accomplice in a crime has no attorney-client privelege (for those actions).
Otherwise, you could have your attorney drive the getaway car, or kill your spouse, or whatever, and they could never put him on the stand.
Attorney-client privlege only applies in LEGITIMATE legal relationships...
Be sure to pick up Truffle's new book, "The Geek Rules," where she shares more of her insights on such varied topics as:
Why she won't go out with you
Why her friend won't go out with you
Why her other friend won't go out with you
You want ATA, but she likes SCSI and ATA, too
Why you have to ping your own server every night
Why IE's "friendly errors" option won't filter her 404's
Why her Little Plastic Castle is a surprise every time...
Nathaniel
I had the same issue -- some posts were bumped up to 3 or 4, and contained nothing particularly original or insightful, although they weren't off-topic or flambait, either. I hate to penalize a moderator for pumping up an article, but at the same time I don't think articles that are "1"s should be pumped up to "4"...
nathaniel
One problem I found with the M2 system -- I wound up with 2 comments each appearing twice on the same page, so only 8 of the 10 comments were "original". I hate to vote twice on one comment, so I suspect we need to figure out a way to remove duplicates.
On the idea of always having moderation controls available, I think it's a bad idea simply because I don't have enough time to moderate every comment I ever read, only to find out that only 1% of my effort takes effect. If I've got moderator status, I pay more attention, and make sure I'm being fair and unbiased, but if I don't know if I'm moderating or not, it would take me too long to read everything and I'd wind up NEVER moderating. then you'd wind up with either obsessive-compulsives or people with agendas doing all the moderation...
nathaniel
The united states signed the berne convention in 1976! Your copyright is undeniable, completelyprotected, and requires no formal statement, notice or registration to be valid and legally enforcable. It's not like somebody can "accidentally" exactly copy your creation, so they are well aware they aren't the creators. mailing yourself a copy of your creation has no legal validity whatsoever -- what's to keep someone from mailing themselves an empty unsealed envelope and later putting something in it to "prove" it was created years ago?...
I just don't understand the blind doggedness of advocates -- can't we just deal with reality here? We're all technically competent people.
The reality is that NT is more likely to support a given piece of hardware than Linux, just the same as Win98 is more likely to support it than NT. It has nothing to do with superiority.
Linux is no less potent for having even more specific hardware needs than NT, but that DOES make it more likely to install in an unusable fashion on a PC that wasn't purchased with Linux hardware requirements in mind.
And I know how frustrating it can be -- I have to run 98 on my home system rather than NT because I play games and need the expanded hardware support 98 offers. 3d audio? Programmable joystick? NT speaks not these things!
Oh, I know -- I'm just sick of people acting like he's doing something wrong just because it WASN'T easy the first time.
I myself have installed Linux a half-dozen times, and I wouldn't say it was HARD to install, but those who contend it's easier than NT nead to stop passing the pipe. The main difference is that getting Linux INSTALLED is only 1% of the difficulty -- I've accomplished that several times. Getting it working *properly* with all the hardware, and getting X up and running have been the parts where everything seems to fall apart...
Okay, I have to confess (and not anonymously, I might add) that I'm getting really freaking sick of all the obnoxious people who waste their time posting here (and to other discussions)!
I for one happen to be enjoying hearing JonKatz's tale. Believe it or not, there are actually intelligent, sentient, thoroughly competent beings out here reading slashdot who aren't currently running Linux! For those people these postings may actually be valuable and interesting, even if they aren't to you! If you don't find it interesting, why not just move along and read about the latest build or something more up your alley?
For those of us who are learning I can only let JonKatz know that we ARE reading, and appreciating the considerable amount of free time and energy he's putting into sharing (I keep hearing how Linux is all about sharing?) his experience.